It’s Back RAHM!

Rahm Emanuel was placed back on the ballot by the Illinois Supreme Court, despite the fact that he was renting his house in Chicago out to someone else while he stayed in DC.  His lawyers argued that he was serving his country and always planned on returning to the Chicago area.  The Washington Post has a full report here.  So, we are pretty much looking at the future Mayor of Chicago… at least, according to the most recent polls:

Front-runner has 44%

Braun next with 21%

…..Thanks a lot, Nick.

-rj

Komrade Kagan?

Who else but those marvelous sleuths at RedState have dug up Elena Kagan’s College Thesis.  Take it, read it, arm yourselves with knowledge!

-rj

In Support of Gun Rights

Hot Air’s “Doctor Zero” makes an excellent, tie-all-the-loose-knots-together argument in favor of the right of private citizens to own guns. Some clips are below.

I wish the Supreme Court would do more than rule the Second Amendment applies to the states. It’s long past time the last, ridiculous cobwebs of ambiguity were cleared away from the right to keep and bear arms. Gun control has been simmering on low heat for a while, after boiling over in the Nineties. We should clear it off the Constitutional stove altogether. We have better things to do than slip into another bitter, tedious argument about whether the government can interfere with our right, and duty, to defend ourselves.

The very areas of privacy that allow us to relax with our friends and families will always be soft targets for criminals… unless we fortify them ourselves. The police arrived at my house several minutes too late to play a role in my attempted execution. They made excellent time – there happened to be a unit in the area. If things had gone a little different, they might have arrived just in time to avenge me.

Citizen access to firearms has reduced crime rates time and again, but this is more than a matter of practicality. It’s a question of principle. The people of an orderly nation surrender the business of vengeance to the government, replacing it with the rule of law. They cannot be expected to surrender the right of defense. The right to protect yourself, and your family, from injury and death is an essential part of your dignity as a free man or woman. Without the First Amendment, you are a slave. Without the Second, you are a child.

Losing the dignity of self-defense is part of the degeneration from master of the State to its client. As this dignity fades, the people and their government speak less of responsibilities, and more of entitlements.

The Second Amendment is a concrete expression of the American birthright of independence. With the right of self-defense bargained away, our rights to speak and vote give us modest influence in a collective. The Founders wanted more, and better, for us.

The New York Times article about the case before the Supreme Court ends this way:

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has made clear that it is very concerned about the right to bear arms. There is another right, however, that should not get lost: the right of people, through their elected representatives, to adopt carefully drawn laws that protect them against other people’s guns.

Carefully drawn laws will not protect you from other people’s guns.  Believe me.  None of the people carefully drawing those laws will rely upon them for their protection.

 Doctor Zero points out the many facets of supporting private ownership of guns. Those who say we need onerous regulations because of the high number of gun deaths per capita in America- at least, when compared to other countries- forget that it is not the weapon that causes harm, it is the person pulling the trigger. To paraphrase what a professor told me before class once, every male over 18 in Switzerland has a weapon. They are all deputized. The high gun deaths in America take place because we are a more violent country, not because we have a lot of guns.

My professor was correct. If you want fewer gun deaths, create a culture of responsibility. Do not put people at risk. After all, if we take guns away from the law-abiding citizens, who will have weapons? Only those are with the government or law-breakers. I don’t trust the latter to protect me, and in fact can guarantee they will use guns frequently in their crimes, which will happen with more and more frequency themselves. Too, while the vast majority of police and military members are hard-working, dedicated citizens, tyranny is not something I want to avoid through trust in government. Guns are a great political, physical and psychological deterrent to taking away the rights of a nation’s people.

The Heritage Foundation Bloggers Briefing

Rob Bluey, The Director of Online Strategy for The Heritage Foundation, was kind enough to invite me to the weekly Bloggers Briefing held at The Heritage Foundation every Tuesday. Today’s speaker was Representative Mike Pence (R-IN), a leading conservative in the House and the first Member of Congress to have a blog, which can be seen here.

Below are my takes from the event:

1. I met a number of interesting people, including Dan Kotman, Press Secretary for American Solutions and Steve Johnston, Associate Director of New Media for the office of the Republican Whip. I also met bloggers from Think Progress and RedState, and managed to give my card for www.thelobbyist.net to all of these people.

2. Pence spoke and, as always, was excellent (this is the third time since October I have heard him speak in person). He turned down the opportunity to run for the Senate this year, and he said it was because he wanted to lead a “conservative majority” in retaking the House in 2010. When asked if he wanted to run for President in 2012, Pence said of course he did (as he said, “Isn’t that the American Dream?), but that it would depend on the time and circumstances. He also said he was staying because he felt it was his “duty.”

3. The Think Progress blogger- a very brave young man, showing his face and speaking up, I might add- asked Pence about the Citizens United vs. FEC decision by the Supreme Court last week. In short, Pence made two points: first, that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech” means just that. Secondly, he said he agreed with the great conservative writer George Will, in that transparency was the issue at hand, not who can and cannot have freedom of speech. He said he would have no problem with a requirement that all Members of Congress should have to put received funds on their websites at the end of every day.

One thing Pence avoided answering by sticking to the transparency and freedom arguments was the Think Progress blogger’s second question, which was what did Pence think of the ramifications of the SCOTUS decision regarding international funding of campaigns. Pence made reference to the Democrats having to pay back such funding in the 1990s, said foreign funds should not have influence on our elections…and then never really answered the question any further.

4. I managed to put a plug in for www.rightosphere.com. A CATO blogger sitting next to me immediately began asking me about www.Race42012.com, which he said he enjoyed reading.

5. I asked Pence two questions. The first was would he prefer a Republican majority in the House or a conservative majority? He stated that he believed the new conservative majority would be made up of a new generation of leadership in Washington, DC, but never answered the real question I had, which was the difference between conservatives and Republicans.

The second question was what would a new conservative majority in 2011 push for their first step in transparency. While he never directly answered the question, he did reference negotiating bills in front of the public and a couple of other basic points that are slipping my mind at the moment.

6. Four excellent quotes from Pence:

A. On the expected move by President Obama to try to freeze billions of dollars over three years: “I never met a spending freeze I didn’t like.” Pence was also asked when he had first heard about this freeze proposal, and said it was in December, when Republicans recommended it to President Obama at a jobs summit. 

B. “Any gesture at fiscal sanity would be welcome.” Pence said , however, that Republicans would compare that proposed freeze to the laundry list of expected spending programs in tomorrow’s State of the Union speech. 

C. “This isn’t anymore about debates about actuarial perfection – this is about what kind of country we are.” Possibly the best quote of his 50-minute presentation (including Q & A). Pence made the point that the bailout in 2008, the stimulus from 2009, the takeover of the private industry etc. by the government was about who we are as a country regarding the role and size of government, as well as regarding personal responsibility. Regarding the latter, Pence was almost entirely directing his comments at Wall Street.

D. Paraphrased: “Two things have happened [since I came to Washington in 2000]. My opinion of national government has gone down and my opinion of the American people has gone up.”

*Originally posted at THE LOBBYIST.

Free Speech is now Freer

Ed Morrissey reports and comments on the Supreme Court’s declaring McCain-Feingold unconstitutional. In short, freedom reigns and Congressional overreach is unconstitutional. He also has the official opinion and thoughts on the matter from CATO and Cal Thomas.

Morrissey makes the same point so many conservatives already know- that transparency is the key to reform:

Will this open the floodgates to corporate and union money in elections? Well, it never really left. The restrictions in the BCRA and other campaign-finance “reforms” just forced the money into less-transparent channels, creating mini-industries of money laundering in politics. This ruling will just allow the money to be seen for what it is, rather than hiding behind PR-spin PAC names and shadowy contribution trails.

The best campaign finance reform is still transparency. If burning a flag in the street is free speech, then so are political contributions, especially when made in the open. If the reformers in Congress want to clean up elections, then force immediate reporting on the Internet of all contributions to all presidential, Senate, and Congressional races, and full weekly financial reports on expenditures. That will do more than all of the speech-restricting, unconstitutional efforts made since Watergate, and make the entire system a lot more honest.

Freedom of speech is freedom of speech, specifically defined in the Constitution. If you don’t like it, change the Constitution. Otherwise, work for transparency, something that would increase freedom of speech for the average person.

GOP Senators: Stand Athwart History

There is unfortunately no doubt that Judge Sonya Sotomayor will be confirmed as an Associate Justice to our nation?s highest court. As National Review?s Jim Geraghty pointed out, ?when a still relatively popular president nominates a judge with 17 years? experience to be the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, and his party holds 60 seats in the Senate, the final result is not hard to predict.? The Senate Democrats are infatuated with her, as I watched the hearings on CSPAN; almost every democratic senator prefaced their comments by stating their adoration for Judge Sotomayor. They all applauded her academic achievements, ?graduated summa cum laude from Princeton,? and hailed her as the embodiment of the ?American Dream.? This is all true, and she deserves credit for her scholarship, successful legal career, and her ability to have risen out of the working class as a ?novus homo,? but as nationally syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer simply noted in his May 29 column:

?Sonia Sotomayor has a classic American story. So does Frank Ricci.?

Ricci is of the course, the dyslexic New Haven Firefighter who ?spent $1,000 on books, quit his second job so he could study eight to 13 hours a day, and, because of his dyslexia, hired someone to read him the material.? He was then denied his promotion to lieutenant because none of the African-American firefighters who passed the exam had scored high enough to be considered for the positions. The City of New Haven feared a lawsuit over the test?s disparate impact on a protected minority and therefore invalidated the examination scores. Judge Sotomayor?s decision to uphold the lower court?s decision in Ricci v. DeStefano, clearly shows, despite her very weak attempts to dismiss the accusation at her confirmation hearings, that she is a strong believer in identity politics, ?which assigns free citizens to ethnic and racial groups possessing a hierarchy of wisdom and entitled to a hierarchy of claims upon society.?

During the hearings, her efforts to hide the real Sotomayor were blatantly transparent. Her comments do not reflect her record. She defended her racially hierarchical statements by replying; ?I also, as I explained, was using a rhetorical flourish that fell flat.? In later questioning she told Senator Kyl that ?it was a bad idea.? However, if it was it a bad idea, and a ?flourish that fell flat,? why did she repeat her comments six separate times rather than try and recant them after she first issued the comment? The answer is she has a clear credibility gap.

Sotomayor also repeatedly stated that her role as judge is to merely ?interpret the law,? and that ?we don?t make policy choices in the court,? despite that in a 2005 appearance at Duke University she stated that the ?Court of Appeals is where policy is made.?

Liberal Georgetown law professor Mike Seidman wrote that he was ?completely disgusted by Judge Sotomayor’s testimony.? He furthered his disapproval by saying ?if she was not perjuring herself, she is intellectually unqualified to be on the Supreme Court. If she was perjuring herself, she is morally unqualified.?

Unfortunately, at least three Republican Senators ? Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, Mel Martinez of Florida, and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine (not surprisingly ), said they intended to vote for her after the confirmation hearings this past week. While assuredly Sotomayor will be confirmed, the Republican Senators need to be unified in dissent. This will show the American people that elections have consequences.
As Krauthammer wrote,

?Vote Democratic and you get mainstream liberalism: A judicially mandated racial spoils system and a jurisprudence of empathy that hinges on which litigant is less advantaged.”

Just as the House Republicans united in opposition against the stimulus bill in January, the Sotomayor confirmation vote presents another opportunity for them to stand behind principle, conservatives don?t vote to confirm judicial activists. The Senate Republicans need to vote a collective ?no,? and to borrow a line from William F. Buckley, Jr., stand ?athwart history yelling stop.?

-sam

Appointed by the Anointed

The country is at a point in history where the President gets to appoint a Supreme Court Justice to replace Justice Suter who was appointed by then-President George H.W. Bush (41 in case someone didn’t see the middle initials).? Now, in the end there is not much ground being made by liberalism: they are replacing a moderately liberal justice with what we can assume to be another.? The numbers don’t change regarding those who respect the gestalt of the United States Constitution versus those who consider it an outdated parchment in need of continuous overhaul.? I have found it ironic that many conservatives hold Thomas Jefferson so near and dear when he made the remark that no generation has the right to bind another generation to its own mores and laws.? This is the view of the Progressives and modern liberalism in America today.

With this in mind, I am very worried by the type of pick we can expect from President Obama.? I understand that he has attempted to quell uneasiness by conservatives and moderates by saying that he will appoint a moderate justice.? I cannot help but wonder why I should take the President at his word on this?? (Radio Show Interview)? Not too long ago I remember coming across the clip of then-State Senator Obama where he scolds the Warren Court (1953-1969) for not being “activists enough.”? The Warren Court was arguably the most active Supreme Court in this country’s history.? With reckless disregard for the Constitution they were sworn to uphold and observe, they expounded the size of the Federal government to an extent that we may never be able to scale back.

Furthermore, I have grown a bit weary of this talk about “what” President Obama should appoint.? Should he appoint a black, a woman, a gay, a Hispanic, a black woman who’s gay and Jewish?? Who the hell cares?? I certainly hope that all of those self professed “open minded individuals” who can see past the color of one’s skin or their religion or their sexual preferences can do us all a favor and stop deconstructing every human being so that they fit into a particular demographic and can be heralded as a symbol for their cause.? Pick a justice because of their respect for the rule of law, and not because you want to be able to say “we appointed the first female Hispanic.”? It’s this conversation that shows liberals for who they really are.? If the president were to appoint a homosexual Hispanic woman who calls herself an original intentist, I would celebrate and applaud the man with all sincerity.? I will not be holding my breath however.