The Exercise of Vital Powers

Interesting background on Ralph Reed. I’d recommend reading this with an eye towards political tactics and strategy. Love him or hate him, Reed has been sucessful.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/732ujayv.asp?pg=1

I got this in my mailbox from the Club for Growth. All I can say is I hope Sen. Colburn sticks to his guns. We need more like him in Washington.

Coburn Freely Placing Holds
June 23, 2005
By Emily Pierce,
Roll Call Staff

Senators, take heed: Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) may have a “hold” on your bill.

The freshman is using his power as a Senator to put a hold - or secret filibuster threat - on any bill he believes would create a new spending program, whether it is included in an appropriations bill or an authorizing bill.

That means that many a Senator’s home-state pet project could be held up indefinitely by a man known for sticking to his guns, even to the point of making enemies.

“I don’t think we ought to be passing new legislation, spending new money when we can’t pay for what we’re doing today, and we’re not willing to cut what we’re doing today,” said Coburn in a recent interview.

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Cato Analyst Radley Balko has an interesting summation on the implications of the Kelo case. Basically our rights are being eroded before our very eyes, but the public is more focused on stupid comments made by both sides (a la Durbin and Rove). This is a classic magician’s trick - direct people’s attention elsewhere while you slip the rabbit in the hat.

Joe Henchman wrote a great OpEd on the Kelo and Raich decisions and how they have fundamentally changed American Jurisprudence.

Update: The GA Senate has just created a committee to study the Kelo decision and recommend laws to protect property owners.

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Connecticut children stand next to their destroyed family home on an informal subdivision near the outskirts of New London, 450 km (280 miles) North East of the New York City, June 21, 2005. Connecticut police continued with their statewide Operation Increase Tax Revenue which has seen the destruction of thousands of ‘inexpensive’ houses, informal markets and rural settlements which has left more than one million people homeless. Photo by Reuters/File/Stringer

With apologies to the millions undergoing genocide in Zimbabwe, I couldn’t help compare Mugabe’s Operation Restore Order with the Supreme Court’s Kelo decision.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/06/23/rove.speech.ap/index.html

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called on Bush to “show some leadership and unequivocally repudiate Rove’s divisive and damaging political rhetoric.”

Uh, yeah Howard - about the same time you apologize for saying us Republicans never worked an honest day in our lives.

Well the Supreme[sic] Court decided today that property rights don’t really matter. The case of Kelo vs New London was a case about Eminent Domain where the city of New London CT wanted to take people’s homes so they could give it to Pfizer for a new office campus. The justification New London used was that an office park will generate more property tax revenue than residential homes would. Thus this was a “public use”. Total F—ing BullS–t but that is government for you.

So the Court found for New London. Municipalities can kick you out of the home you lived in since childhood to build a Wal-Mart, office complex or multi-million dollar homes. Way to uphold the constitution there guys.

What does this mean for L/libertarians? It means it is that much more important for concerned citizens to run for an get elected to their city and county commissions. The Supremes just handed local governments a loaded handgun. The only way to prevent innocent causalities is to have someone responsible controlling the trigger.

Thanks to Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas and O’Connor for knowing right from wrong.

What a crappy way to start the day.

http://www.venganza.org/

Some guy wrote a hilarious and sarcastic open letter to the Kansas school board regarding their efforts to have Intelligent Design taught along side Evolution in public schools.

This guy does bring up one of the reasons I oppose any overt religion being taught in the classroom. There are just too many religions out there and, if you are going to not establish an official state religion, you need to teach all of them. Why do the Christians get a prayer at commencement but not the Jews or Muslims? If you will have a school sponsored bible club, what about a school sponsored wicca club? If we teach evolution and intelligent design, we also need to teach about the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Grad Student Theory of Creation.

Of course if we stopped teaching these things we are not doing right by our children. The issue then is to end the practice of one-size-fits-all schooling. If you end the government’s monopoly on providing education then Intelligent Design parents can send kids to schools that teach that theory, while secular minded parents can send their kids to schools that teach evolution.

Neal Boortz is correct when he says that all this nonsense about evolution and prayer in schools isn’t about making sure that your kids get the education you want for them. It is about making sure you can impose your beliefs on someone else’s kid. And both the right and the left are guilty of that.

Interesting article on the Iraqi Insurgents. Apparently they are becoming much more technically advanced. As an example, the first generation of IEDs were manually triggered, the US shot the trigger man so they went to radio controlled IEDs. So the US starts jamming the signals. Now the insurgents are using encrypted radio detonators.

Just like the Russo-Afghan war, the Iraq war is generating an entire new class of terrorists. The Class of ‘05. We can kill them, but more will take their place. We can run home with our tail between our legs, but then they will gain control of a failed state. We can try and wait them out, but mealy-mouthed politicians more interested in their careers will sabotage our efforts.

The only solution is to bring economic development to Iraq. Not democracy - democracy is irrelevant. What is needed is jobs. We need to give them something better to do than plotting to blow up building in New York. We need to bring them the technological and lifestyle advances that come with being a globally connected nation.

We need to offer the Iraqi people a future worth creating for themselves and their children.

Watching the Dems on this one [CAFTA] is like watching the French and Dutch on the EU Constitution. It is typically the out-of-power party in the Core that argues for go-slow on globalization, preying on people’s pain and fears. Ross Perot and the Republicans did it plenty under Clinton, and now the Dems do it big time under Bush. Leading is all about the future, and when you’re in power, it’s hard to do anything but embrace globalization for the challenges it represents. But when you feel like you’re falling behing in the game, like the French seem to feel across the board, then the best you can do is try and prevent the future for as long as possible.

–Thomas Barnett

So I finally read the infamous Downing Street Memo. Not much there I didn’t already learn from Bob Woodward. Reading the memo I’m reminded of the scene in ESB when Luke asks “What’s in there?” and Yoda replies “Only what you take with you”. If you are an anti-war Bush hater you’ll see all the damning evidence of a conspiracy.

There are two interesting parts of the memo - beyond the glimpse into UK military jargon.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action. (emphasis mine)

The allegations that policy drove the intelligence is old news. As is the fact that post-conflict planning was severely lacking. Given the sorry state of Iraq today - the fact that the Blair Government knew this before hand is more of an black-eye to him than to the Bush Administration.

The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force

First off, just because Saddam wasn’t actively threatening people doesn’t mean he wasn’t a threat. And just because other countries had greater WMD capacities doesn’t necessarily mean they need to be bumped to a higher number of the regime change list. Iran is on the road to reform, so invasion doesn’t make sense at this time. Qaddafi is looking to be the elder statesmen of Africa - and has voluntarily shut down some of his WMD programs. North Korea is its own quagmire that China needs to deal with.

Iraq was unique in that we already had the UN resolutions in place, it had a mostly crippled military, and we already had lots of troops in place. If we wanted to pick a target to make an example of, Iraq was the prime choice.

All in all I don’t see the smoking gun evidence of wrong doing. But then again I didn’t go in there carrying the hatred that leads to the dark side either.