I’m late putting this up tonight. You can listen live at http://wsbradio.com

I’ll be talking about the PATRIOT Act, iPads in school, CPAC, etc. tonight on the air.

You can call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK

Consider this an open thread.

Just couldn’t handle the thought of running again for VA-SEN, apparently - although I’m sure that the lack of money didn’t help much there, either.  Or the fact that Webb was practically guaranteed a messy primary, thanks to his race-related thoughtcrime last year.  What ever it was, this isn’t a surprise, of course: it was obvious last week that Webb didn’t have the right stuff to run again in a year where things weren’t guaranteed to go his way.  I wonder whether enabling the extremist agenda of the exact same people who spit on his troops was worth it to the man?

…Actually, no, I really could care less whether it did or not.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Please run Tim Kaine for VA-SEN, Democrats. Please, please, please, please, please, please run Tim Kaine.

As anyone who has spent any time reading them knows, left-wing bloggers and activists tend to live in a world of their own, in which the most outrageous sorts of allegations against conservatives and Republicans are not required to be supported by any evidence. This is especially true when it comes to accusing conservatives and Republicans of bigotry and other improper motivations; left-wingers feel free to lecture us on how they know better than we do what motivates us and how we think, and leave conservatives and Republicans stuck attempting to disprove a negative.

In theory, the Washington Post is supposed to be a reputable newspaper and above this sort of thing. But Greg Sargent, the former Talking Points Memo blogger and the Post’s current in-house left-wing activist, doesn’t see himself as bound by such mundane considerations as having evidence before slandering an entire movement. Consider this Tweet today from Sargent:

Hah! RT @Redshift4 TP leader compares Tea Party to abolitionism, civil rights, & women’s suffrage. // 3 things they want to reverse

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Today, twenty-eight Republican governors sent a letter to the White House urging President Obama to support an expedited review of his namesake health care law by the Supreme Court. Here’s the PDF of the letter, which reads in part:

“Given the daunting and costly financial and regulatory burdens that our states and the private sector will face in implementing PPACA over the coming years, particularly during this unprecedented budgetary time, public interest requires expediting a final resolution of the litigation to give certainty as soon as possible. We should not endure years of litigation in the circuit courts, when the Supreme Court can promptly provide finality.”

This isn’t really debatable, and Republicans aren’t alone in urging the U.S. Department of Justice to support expedited review — Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida voiced support for this, and other leaders outside of politics have also supported reaching a determination as soon as possible on what aspects of the law are constitutional or not. Otherwise, of course, businesses will have to play the waiver game as states debate how much of the law they should implement, if any.

It’s unlikely, of course, that Obama’s DOJ will approve of bypassing the appellate process, even given the vast national uncertainty and expense associated with Obamacare. It’s worth asking — but I’d expect that we stay on target for a June 2012 decision from SCOTUS, right after a GOP nominee has been decided on and just in time for the summer.

Note: in case you wanted the legalese, here’s the formal petition from Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli seeking expedited review from the Supreme Court.

From the diaries by Jeff

….individualism or consequentialism? Pick the first, and you drift steadily toward liberalism and lose what makes your side distinct. Pick the latter and you can no longer promise “liberty” to everyone while ignoring the destructive consequences of their actions.

- Brett Stevens (HT: Amerika.org)

America was founded on libertarian principles. This tradition empowered the rise of America. It inspired the creativity and entrepreneurial energy of our people to such an extent that after WWII our culture, economy, military and society bestrode the world like a mighty colossus. Even in modern America, the more libertarian Texas is gaining population at nearly the same rate that the more authoritarian Massachusetts and California hemorrhage tax slaves from their welfare states.

Yet, despite the epic win powered by this libertarian ideology in America, the Libertarian Party has yet to paint the electoral map gold, ban the Fed, legalize Oaxacan ditch weed, or privatize or power down any of the myriad functions that our Federal Government (in my humble opinion) has no business exerting dominion over. In today’s blog, I endeavor to explain to all five or six of my constant readers exactly why Ron Paul (or any other perspective Libertarian Party Presidential candidate) won’t make it anywhere near Mt. Rushmore without a ticket and a means of transportation. They do not get the entire concept of consequentialism.

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Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has put out yet another excellent report on waste, fraud and abuse in federal job training programs.  The report titled “Help Wanted” describes specific instances of “waste, mismanagement, and even corruption.”  This report proves, in addition to other reports by Senator Coburn, that the government is a poor allocator of resources.

The Coburn report indicates that these federal jobs training programs are wasting your tax dollars.

Over the past several years, Congress has approved hundreds of billions of dollars to support a host of new government programs intended to stimulate the economy, but as the statistics demonstrate, this approach has failed to put enough Americans back to work.

It is unlikely that our President will lift a finger to solve this problem, because it does not fit into his philosophy that the government is the best allocator of resources.  The President told ABC News on his inauguration day in 2009 that “government is going to work, we’re going to make it work.”  Well that never happened, because it is impossible to make government provide effective job training programs.

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Here is the only piece you need to read about the House GOP’s budget cuts and how insignificant they are.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) is filing a budget limit this week that would cut government spending by $32 billion starting March 5. 

The Appropriations Committee will use the new spending levels to determine specific government department cuts and write a new Continuing Resolution (CR) bill that will come to the floor for a vote next week. 

The CR would be the largest one-time discretionary spending cut in history. However, the $32 billion would only cut this year’s budget deficit by 2.2%.

I implore you — go read the whole thing.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Brad Jackson and Ben Domenech are joined by Lee Smith to discuss the uprising in Egypt, the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood, and threats it poses for the region.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

Autumn of the Arab Patriarchs?
The Weekly Standard: Mubarak Calls Obama’s Bluff
Lee Smith’s Book - The Strong Horse: Power, Politics, and the Clash of Arab Civilizations

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Right about now, House Republicans are assembling for their weekly meeting together. Undoubtedly, the mess that remains the undelivered promise to cut $100 billion in the first year is being discussed in full.

Leadership is still spinning with conservatives and a skeptical press, insisting that their “annualized” $58 billion over two years is the same thing as $100 billion in the first year (“not next year, now”). In doing so, Leadership continues to put their rank-and-file members in a difficult situation. “Be a team player” and support Leadership or stand for fiscal responsibility and honor your full pledge to the American people.

Many in the Leadership camp are pointing to an upcoming vote on a Republican Study Committee amendment to cut the full $100 billion. Leadership has committed to an open amendment process, and many have even intimated that they will support it. It will be interesting to see if the amendment passes. At this point, I am skeptical that it will.

Notice, for instance, that yesterday Majority Leader Cantor extinguished yet another brushfire by essentially guaranteeing that the continuing resolution (the vehicle for these cuts) would not fund Obamacare—even though it is still not clear whether the underlying bill will defund the law or whether it will be adopted by amendment. In this case, it doesn’t matter because the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives went out and said it would be so—showing that Leadership is behind the effort.

If proponents of the $100 billion are confident about the RSC amendment passing, then why hasn’t Leadership made similar predictions and why are they wasting precious credibility pushing the “annualized” $58 billion? If proponents are not confident that the amendment passes, then an amendment strategy should be the last resort, and the full slate of cuts need to be included in the underlying bill before it is brought to the floor (it is much harder to take things out of bill, then to add them).

Leadership has an opportunity to take a step back and fix this mess. They could announce today that the House will bring a bill to the floor with the full $100 billion. This would unite House Republicans on one front against all critics who say that the full cuts cannot be done in the face of a $1.5 trillion deficit. And then we could all applaud the House GOP and get on with the business of getting the nation’s fiscal situation under control.

Reason.com editor and hardcore Libertarian Nick Gillespie ”responded” to Ben Howe’s post on the connection between the Muslim Brotherhood and the ACU yesterday here. I use scare quotes around “responded” because Gillespie, in true Libertarian form, breezes completely around the essential thrusts of the post, including Hasan’s ludicrous statement that the 9-11 hijackers were not Muslims, and studiously ignores the fact that the connection being drawn was not between the Muslim Brotherhood and Muslims for America, but rather between the Muslim Brotherhood and the ACU Board of Directors. Hey, it’s easy to see how he could have missed that little tidbit; it was only in the title of Ben’s post. Why not instead whack down a nice, satisfying man of straw by claiming that we’re suggesting that Sharia Law is going to break out at CPAC? Sneering contempt and intellectual condescension has always been a useful substitution for argument with Gillespie and the big-L Libertarians.

Really, though, even if Gillespie had noted these points, it is certain that it would not have mattered to Gillespie’s final analysis. You see, there is almost nothing more important to Gillespie and his ilk than being blasé about Islamic terrorism. At this point, it has actually become tiresome. Yes, Nick, we are all very impressed at how very little you care about the government protecting the lives of your fellow citizens, and we are all admiringly agape at your daring suggestion that we have nothing to fear from Islamic terrorists. The victims of the families of 9/11, the USS Cole bombing, and the World Trade Center bombing I’m sure find you edgy and cool and would like to hear your views on the relative merits of The White Stripes and The Black Keys at their next cocktail party.

Of course, the real “point” of Gillespie’s post is for a hard-boiled Libertarian to lecture mainstream Republicans on what they ought to do to win elections. Ordinary people might find this as out of place as me lecturing Kobe Bryant on what it takes to win NBA titles, but Gillespie manages the trick with such panache that none of the other authors or commenters at Reason (who are also smarter and much more in tune with todays voters than anyone who might read such a pedestrian site as RedState) seem to notice what a majestic buffoon he makes of himself in the process. To recap, the Republican party has held the White House for 20 of the last 30 years with pro-life, anti-gay marriage candidates; the Libertarian party has never cracked double digits in a Presidential election, ever. Even in 2008, with Republican brand identity at generational lows and a relatively high profile candidate in Bob Barr, the Libertarians managed to get beat by Ralph Nader who was running without the Green Party nomination. If we are smart enough to follow Gillespie’s advice, someday the GOP nominee might well reach the soaring heights of barely beating Cynthia McKinney.

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RedState Morning Briefing
For February 9, 2011

Go to www.RedStateMB.com to get
the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

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There are reasons certain controversial pieces of legislation have short sell-by dates.  They can be unusual powers authorized by the legislature in moments of extreme danger, powers that during less turbulent times are not worth impinging on our civil liberties.

Tonight, House Republicans failed to hold the line on one such bill–the Patriot Act.  It needed a two-thirds majority to pass, and it didn’t get it.  I remember, and it does not seem like so long ago, when the Patriot Act was a hill to die on.  Sure the concept was unpopular, but it was worth risking all your political capital because the fight we were engaged in was so important.

It seems times have changed, and the threat is not quite so imminent.  26 Republicans and 177 Democrats have concluded we no longer need to listen in on potential terrorist cell phone conversations or access their financial records.

Here’s hoping they are right.