Boston.com reports that the Massachusetts legislature is going in through the out door again, passing a law to ignore the will of their people, and instead just give their electoral votes to the popular vote winner nation wide.
But Senate minority leader Richard Tisei said the state was meddling with a system that was “tried and true” since the founding of the country.
. . .
Tisei also criticized the proponents for not following the normal procedures to seek a constitutional amendment.
“The thing about this that bothers me the most is it’s so sneaky. This is the way that liberals do things a lot of times, very sneaky,” he said. “This is sort of an end run around the Constitution.”
Abso-effing-lutely. This is what Article Five is about. Understood, there seems to be a psychological joy, which some find, in taking words to mean whatever they wish. Hence the Commerce Clause becoming the Constitution over the last century. Hence the “judicial deference” doctrine, where Congress can emote whatever it wishes, and We The People get to watch the 14-ish trillion dollar debt pile up due to Federal over-reach.
Does this state even merit the privilege of having the USS Constitution moored in Charlestown?
One hopes the American people grasp that this is one more step down the path of collapse into tyranny. Possibly not a big one, but a step nonetheless, and unlikely to gain much traction in Virginia.
As in other states where this measure has been passed, it will not take effect unless and until enough states adopt the measure to give it teeth. From Article III of the bill:
“This article shall govern the appointment of presidential electors in each member state [i.e., states having passed similar acts] in any year in which this agreement is, on July 20, in effect in states cumulatively possessing a majority of the electoral votes.”
I don’t usually talk politics with strangers. But for Google? Why not “tweak” them a little!
So I look into her camera all serious and say, “I know what will make me happy. The first time I hear 3 simple words, probably the greatest three words ever to be uttered by man.”
Now everybody is looking at me. “What 3 words?” someone asks. Very slowly I say,
Monday, 26 July 2010, I had the privilege of attending a fund raiser for Patrick Murray, in the crucial effort to retire Gentleman Jim Moran.
While the traffic situation on parking lot I-95 kept him from delivering the detailed update on the ObamaCare case he’s championing down at the Rocket Docket, the good AG does offer some feedback to our ‘honorable’ Representative, down in Clip 5. If your time is limited, or your AG seems an abject doof, take in Clip 5. Clip 6 concludes on the theme of the Creepshow Congress. Continue reading VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: VA AG Ken Cuccinelli In Alexandria →
Delaware Rep. Mike Castle was one of the infamous gang whom Michelle Malkin dubbed the “Waxman-Markey 8” — liberal Republican members of the House who voted for Nancy Pelosi’s job-killing energy tax bill last year.
“Passing Cap and Trade would throw sand into the gears of the American economy,” said Christine O’Donnell. “It would cripple our already struggling markets, taxing goods and services at every point of production and consumption. This bill would kill jobs and drive up prices on everything from peanuts to gasoline.”Rising in the polls, Christine O’Donnell has taken the offensive against her opponent Mike Castle’s voting record. Castle was rated one of the most liberal Republicans in Congress by the American Conservative Union.
“I will continue to hold Mike Castle to account for his liberal voting record,” said O’Donnell. “He has already voted for Cap and Tax, and he will do it again.”
Read the whole thing. Let’s face it: The only difference between Mike Castle and Dede Scozzafava is lipstick and a pair of pantyhose.
BTW, my post yesterday about Team O’Donnell adding staffers from last year’s Doug Hoffman NY-23 campaign seems to have both Castle’s RINO supporters and Delaware Democrats sweating bullets. Tweet from Steve Foley:
I wonder if any of these guys has juice with Palin? If they pull in that endorsement, all bets are off. . . . Moderate Republicans who laugh these guys off will be sorry.
Clearly, the O’Donnell campaign’s momentum is getting the attention of important people, including the overpaid sellout RINO operatives working for Castle. Maybe the pressure will cause those GOP Establishment swine to go negative early. It’s probably only a matter of time before the call in Will Folks to “reluctantly admit” to an affair with O’Donnell. Maybe they’re saving the real slime (“She’s a secret Muslim!”) until after O’Donnell pulls ahead in the polls, like they did to Nikki Haley.
And just so you know where the Sherrods are coming from: When their daughter was born in 1967, while America was at war with communist North Vietnam, Charles and Shirley named their baby girl Russia — “with love,” no doubt. Read the rest at Riehl World View.
UPDATE: Yesterday, I called Dan out of the blue — more or less randomly, because I hadn’t talked to him in a while and his name came up in a conversation at the Right Online conference– and he told me about this scoop, which caused me to Tweet:
In phone call today, @danriehl told me, “I swear, I’ll hunt you down and kill your family.” Kinda out of context. #tcot
The “out of context,” you see, was kind of an inside joke, allusion to the charge of “raaaaacism” against Andrew Breitbart after he published a video of Shirley Sherrod. Breitbart says he only later learned had been edited to omit Sherrod’s “moral of the story” explanation that changed the meaning of comments that, in the edited version, were explosively inflammatory — but not as inflammatory as Sherrod’s subsequent accusation on CNN that Breitbart wants to reinstitute chattel slavery.
Dan worked very hard to find this new video and then to document the facts about Charles and Shirley Sherrod’s political history. So when he told me yesterday what he was preparing to release this morning, he made me promise not to breathe a word prematurely to anyone about the content, on penalty of death.
Was this threat merely a figure of speech? Probably. He laughed after he said it. But it’s Dan Riehl, and I certainly wouldn’t want to risk discovering whether he meant “hunt you down and kill your family” as a metaphor.
Dan’s from Jersey, y’know.
UPDATE II: OK, so the Sherrods named their daughter “Russia,” what about their son, Kenyatta? No doubt, he was named for Kenyan dictator Jomo Kenyatta. Because I’m in Vegas today, I don’t have access to my home-office reference library, but from Wikipedia we learn:
In 1932 to 1933, he briefly studied economics in Moscow at the Comintern School, KUTVU (University of the Toilers of the East) before his sponsor, the Trinidadian communist George Padmore,fell out with his Soviet hosts, forcing Kenyatta to move back to London. . . .
He made the Kikuyu-led KANU practically the only political party of Kenya. He consolidated his power greatly, and placed several of his Kikuyu tribesmen in most of the powerful state and security offices and posts. State security forces harassed dissidents and were suspected of complicity in several murders of prominent personalities deemed as threats to his regime . . .
In the 1969 elections, Kenyatta banned the only other party, KPU . . .
He remained president until his death . . . in 1978.
So, like Mussolini, Kenyatta was a communist-turned-nationalist. He made Kenya a one-party state and thus became one of those typical Third World despots who suppress all opposition and surround themselves with corrupt cronies.
This was the man for whom the Sherrods named their son. And because we wouldn’t want to be accused of taking that out of context, we’ll point out that Kenyatta Sherrod seems to have turned out to be an upstanding citizen, a health care executive for Pfizer-Thermacare in Albany, Ga.
Another triumph of capitalism. Is America a great country or what?
Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports made public Sunday.
The documents . . . suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.
The White House has denounced the leaks as “irresponsible,” but what about the facts revealed? For $1 billion a year, we’re paying for Pakistan’s ISI intelligence agency to help kill our troops in Afghanistan.
So on Morning Joe we have a panel of people all against the war commenting on it. (In fairness the entire regular panel is against the war anyway so they would have to have a guest on to defend it.) Is there outrage, is there anger and this kind of leak? Nah. . . .
[T]hey say it is info we mostly already know, no big surprises. Harold Ford makes the correct observation that war is generally not clean and easy and the administration needs to explain that to the public. Barnicle points out that “this is Bush info” is not going to fly.
Will anyone be prosecuted for this? Unlikely. That would depress the administration’s base that is already depressed going into a midterm. They may or may not care about Afghanistan but they sure care if it is lost on their watch.
It’s probably not an initial lesson in leadership, but, after a while, some fertilizer hits the air circulator, and a real leader has to stand by the troops. Hopefully, there is a foundation of communication, confidence, trust, and a clearly articulated direction of movement. If a subordinate makes an unforced error, it becomes a training opportunity.
A brief example. While standing a watch in the engineering plant on a warship, oh, twelve years ago, I made a marginal call that dumped the load. The ship went dark. The senior troops in the Engineering Department had to rush in at a fine Navy hour and clean up. Fortunately, we were at anchor, but I was still about 2″ tall. Going over the details, I had been insufficiently skeptical about some readings, and had pushed a generator a bit too hard. It was a mistake you make once. The Chief Engineer, once the plant was alive and re-settled, took me to the wardroom and explained that this was an expensive lesson, but that I had to get back down there and do the job.
So here is former Governor and Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean looking a total apparatchik on Fox:
Sherrod’s been scuttled. Dean must be prescribing himself something good to numb the aftereffects of this debacle.
But forget those people. Think about the remainder. When Abu Ghraib went down, did Bush call for Rumsfeld’s head, as did so many in the media? No. It wasn’t until after the 2006 election, when that narcissistic ego-centric Bush, who never listened to the will of the people, ever, finally accepted Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation. You can argue that Bush was loyal to the point of blindness.
And it may be possible that Sherrod was so atrocious that she had to be ushered out now, now, now. Even in the case of General McChrystal, where the magnitude of the offense seemed smaller, there seemed to be so much more deliberation before the decision. At least some time passed between the announcement and the decision.
However, in light of the amateurish and sloppy approach to the whole Sherrod affair, where you have a senior party tool going on Fox news woefully un-briefed and having his backside amputated, what does that do for the rest of the administration? Is this a sign of exhaustion, or near collapse? Can we have a reporter offer a sewing kit to Gibbs to pass to Dean, so that Howard can stitch up his tatters?
The situation doesn’t look healthy. With the primaries finishing and the election campaign gearing up, it seems like the hits just keep on comin’ for the Unready Administration. They really should resurrect that old ‘cool, above the fray’ branding from the 2008 campaign, and apply it to these emergencies. I don’t care if the POTUS is a chain-smoking wreck: it doesn’t help the country for that to be so obvious.
The wisdom of the Framers in re-electing the House at a two year frequency shines at times like this. As fragile as all of this appears, would anyone be surprised by a resignation after an ‘unforseen, unanticipated’ drubbing for the Democrats in the election? The Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi even sets up the bogus medical precedent needed as a fig leaf. Write another best-seller, hit the golf course. Spare us all the political revenge talk, if Congress flips sufficiently.
Being in an organization where you don’t think the superiors will back you up is a special form of hell. You still have a job to do, irrespective of those superiors, but the overhead of second-guessing every decision is debilitating. I rejoice that none of the officers under whom I served were ever like this. If the administration isn’t standing by its people until the facts are known, we may have to amuse ourselves with a Body Count Lotto on how many more acts of Sherrodism will occur. We’ll have to pin down exactly what ‘Sherrodism’ means, and whether the count goes back to the Inauguration, or starts how. Discuss.
At least when Mel was shouting ugly things, he had the excuse of being drunk. Oliver Stone, not so much:
Director Oliver Stone belittled the Holocaust during a shocking interview with the Sunday Times today, claiming that America’s focus on the Jewish massacre was a product of the “Jewish domination of the media.”
The director also defended Hitler and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and railed against the “powerful lobby” of Jews in America.
Stone said that his upcoming Showtime documentary series “Secret History of America,” seeks to put Hitler and Communist dictator Joseph Stalin “in context.”
In the “context,” that is, of hating America. And Oliver Stone’s hatred of American is probably the best explanation for why a formerly successful feature director, an Academy Award winner, is reduced to directing crackpot “documentaries” for cable TV. Who wants to watch movies based on the theme that America is the unique embodiment of evil in the world?
There’s something frightening, really, when you realize how many people bought into the conspiratorial worldview of Stone’s JFK and then ponder the pathological destination to which this worldview has led Stone. And does anybody doubt that Stone has a handy scapegoat for his career problems? Blame the Jews!
