Santa Clause and Barak Obama

There was an election in November.

It went badly.

Santa Clause, running on a Robin Hood platform, beat the Republican challenger.

The Republican, Mit Romney, promised prosperity through hard work.  This did not sit too well with an electorate that wanted to rob the rich to support the welfare state.

The nation has sold it's soul for ObamaPhones and ObamaCare.

A cheap price for a once rich nation.

Heaven help us.

Vote for Obama and get FREE STUFF!

About that Free Healthcare, . . .

See: BAD WEEK FOR FREEDOM

Only a deceitful government busybody do-gooder would actually argue that forcing insurance companies to cover millions more Americans and cover pre-existing conditions would result in lower costs for the average family. I wonder what will happen in 2014 when 30 million more Americans are guaranteed “free” healthcare under Obamacare. The saddest part of this oncoming train wreck is that millions of willfully ignorant people actually believed the blatant lies and false storyline fed to them by sociopathic politicians who desire to control every aspect of their lives. These people believe they know what is best for you. They believe they are smarter than you. They do not care what means are required to achieve their ends of absolute domination over your life. Personal freedom, individual liberty and a critical thinking populace are the antithesis to the desires of the governing elite.

And about all of that other Free Stuff that you are being promised . . .

See: Can Obama Win Re-Election by Promising Free Stuff

Mr. Obama says he is not waging class warfare against the wealthy in America. He is, of course. His campaign slogan might as well be: ” Vote for Me … I’ll Give You Free Stuff.” This is enticing. Imagine if you pay no federal income taxes and one of the candidates says, “I’ll take money from rich people and give it to you to pay your mortgage – even if you were irresponsible and bought a house you couldn’t afford. Vote for me, I’ll make sure you get unemployment benefits for almost two full years. And, oh yeah, vote for me and I’ll make sure you get birth control pills — free of charge.

The most important, underreported story in America is the one about who we Americans are becoming. As Bill O’Reilly put it: President Obama is “calculating that the American voter has changed into a person who wants free stuff from the government and is willing to sacrifice some freedoms in order to get the free stuff. And you know what? The President might be right.”

Like Bernard Goldberg, I am not convinced that this election is a slam-dunk for the Republicans. I think that when a large enough portion of the voting population is dependent on the government for their material comforts and wants, our mandate to be "a free people" devolves into pleading to be "a people of free stuff."

We are becoming more and more like the serfs of our feudal past.

No Blank Checks For Obama

See: Speaker Boehner's Debt Ceiling Speech

Speaker Boehner tells President Obama to get stuffed.

The sad truth is that the president wanted a blank check six months ago, and he wants a blank check today. That is just not going to happen.

You see, there is no stalemate in Congress. The House has passed a bill to raise the debt limit with bipartisan support. And this week, while the Senate is struggling to pass a bill filled with phony accounting and Washington gimmicks, we will pass another bill - one that was developed with the support of the bipartisan leadership of the U.S. Senate.

Obviously, I expect that bill can and will pass the Senate, and be sent to the President for his signature. If the President signs it, the 'crisis' atmosphere he has created will simply disappear. The debt limit will be raised. Spending will be cut by more than one trillion dollars, and a serious, bipartisan committee of the Congress will begin the hard but necessary work of dealing with the tough challenges our nation faces.

The problem is not on the revenue side. It is on the spending side.

Raising taxes only robs the productive of the means and the reason to produce.

Raising spending only feeds the addiction of the looter's to other people's money.

Raising the Debt Limit only increases the already unmanageable levels of debt that are being passed on to future generations.

We might be better off to just shut it all down.

Barbara Walters hopes for an Obama reelection effort boost

See: Barbara Walters: I'd "Hate To Be A Republican" Running Against Obama

Babs, you are confusing how much you would hate to be a Republican with how much Osama's execution won't help Obama's reelection effort.

Trump Wins, Obama Loses - The Obama Birth Certificate Circus

I will Give Trump a win on this. He has managed to get Obama to release his birth-certificate after having made a game of it for the entire length of his short Presidential career.

“We do not have time for this kind of silliness,” he said to reporters after the White House released a long-form copy of his birth certificate. Potential Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stirred up the controversy in recent weeks by demanding Obama prove he was born in Hawaii, not Kenya.

Obama, me-thinks though dost protest too much.

The whole of the birther circus was Obama's creation. He stoked and fuelled it from day one. He has no one to blame for it but himself. All that he had to do was release the damnable thing early on. Instead, he kept the controversy alive. Obama was in control of this issue the whole time. Everyone knows it.

Trump, calls Obama on this while taking credit for getting Obama to release the document.

"I'm taking great credit and you have to ask the president, 'why didn't he do this a long time ago? Why didn't he do it a long time ago?' When Hillary Clinton was asking, when everybody was asking, why didn't he do it? It's shocking. It's shocking," Donald Trump said at a press conference this morning on President Obama's birth certificate.

And like the proven and expert negotiator that Trump has proven himself to be in his business life, he has upped the stakes on Obama, demanding that Obama now release his college transcripts.

"I'd like to know how does he get into Harvard, how does he get into Colombia if he isn't a very good student," Donald Trump told the press this morning in New Hampshire.

"If he wants to release it that's fine, if he doesn't want to release it that's fine too. But the word is he wasn't a very good student," Trump added.

I don't think that Trump understands foreign policy very well. But it is pretty clear that he knows how to "steal the oxygen" in a political campaign. Trump is driving the campaign, Obama is reacting, and reacting badly.

Trump wins today. Obama loses.

If the vote ends up being between Obama the Community Organizer incumbent and Trump the Side-Show Pop-Icon challenger, I will hold my nose and vote for Trump.

About The Republican Redistricting Advantage

See: Will Redistricting Be a Bloodbath for Democrats?

Republicans took control of at least 19 Democratic-controlled state legislatures Tuesday and gained more than 650 seats, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The last time Republicans saw such victories was in 1994, when they captured control of 20 state legislatures.

Republicans haven't controlled as many state legislatures since 1928.

Across the country, the map for state legislatures has turned noticeably red as Republicans now control 55 chambers, with Democrats at 38 and the remaining yet to be decided. At the beginning of this week, Democrats controlled 60 of the country's state legislative chambers and Republicans 36.

Tuesday also was a historic day for many state legislatures. In Minnesota, Republicans won the Senate for the first time ever, while in Alabama, they took control for the first time since reconstruction.

The answer to the headline writer's question is yes! (Sort of.)

There will be a bloodbath, but if the Republicans forget about the future, they will just piss away the brief and ephemeral advantage that redistricting will give them.

Republicans will have a unique opportunity to shape the political landscape for the next decade. Redistricting in the States where Republicans now dominate will help adjust the balance of political power at both the state and the federal levels.

Red States will become more red. Blue states will become more blue.

The end result will be a deeper divide between the Constrained in the Red States and the Unconstrained in the Blue States.

Think San Francisco versus Boise.

Republicans should not get too full of themselves over their truly monumental and historic win. Republicans need to keep in mind that the opposition is still convinced that their Unconstrained world-view is the one that should dominate our nation politically and they still have a sizable following.

The main challenge for Republicans over the coming decade will be to seize this historic opportunity to reshape the political landscape by arguing forcefully and confidently for liberty as the best solution to our nations problems. On the other side, the left will argue for Statism as the solution to our nations problems. They will do so boldly and self-righteously. They will not just wither up and blow away.

Redistricting will help Republicans on the margin, but it is not a long term solution to our nation's problems. Our nations's problems are in our culture. Only by reshaping our culture will we be able to help our nation step away from the Statist precipice that the left has brought us.

With every issue that comes up in our nations future, we must argue for increasing individual Liberty as the best solution. Whenever our counterparts on the left offer Statism as a solution to a problem, we must aggressively challenge them and their assertions that surrendering our liberties to the state will solve our problems. Make them defend their assertions. They aren't used to being challenged on their core principles, so this can be fun too.

This is a long term generational project. Do not expect or even hope for quick results. Changing a culture takes time, patience and persistence.

Look to the future, not to just tomorrow.

A Deep and Wide Loss For The Democrats.

The Democrats received a historic shellacking at the hands of the voters on Tuesday. The Depth of the repudiation can be seen in the results at the State House level.

See: Republicans Won More Than 23 Legislative Chambers in Historic Wave Election

Last night, Republicans won more than 23 legislative chambers and counting, many in the large states of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Indiana. Republicans also won majorities in both houses in the southern states of North Carolina and Alabama and in the New England states of New Hampshire and Maine. We also gained majorities in the West in the Colorado House and Oregon House

That is a big loss.

Note that Oregon is on that list. Oregon is about as deep blue as it is possible for a state to get. Just to the north of Oregon is blue Washington, the Republicans may take the state senate. (And the Race between Rossi (R) and Murray (D) is still too close to call.)

Most of the media coverage about the election will likely focus on the few races that the Democrats one and on a few of the ones that the Republicans one on the Federal level. Reid's win in Nevada looks crooked as all hell but will likely stand. (Something about those machines and the technician that "serviced" them.) Boxer's win in California was not that unexpected. It stinks, but California has some serious issues. Bloody hell, they elected Jerry Brown as Governor. That is seriously deranged.

On the Republican side, Marco Rubio will shake the foundations of the Democrat's race-card political strategies that have helped them divide the country and our politics along racial lines since the civil war. For the Democrats, that is a serious threat to their power at every level. They will probably try to make his life hell. Watch for the Democrats to pull the same kind of stunts against Marco Rubio that they pulled on Clarence Thomas.

For Republicans, there is a danger.

This election was a deep and wide repudiation of Democrats. It was not an affirmation of Republicans.

Republicans now have the best opportunity to make the case for liberty since The Republican Revolution or Revolution of '94. They also risk blowing again.

See: Washington the Biggest Loser as Wave Sweeps Through Congress

Newt Gingrich, the GOP firebrand who helped force Democrats from power in 1994, said Tuesday's results created "a dramatically weaker Democratic Party and a severely repudiated President Obama." He's right about that, of course. But does Gingrich really think Americans gave the GOP a full-throated mandate? He made that miscalculation a generation ago and overreached as the new House Speaker.

That mistake helped reelect Democrat Bill Clinton.

Obama is not on any ballot, but the votes cast are a reflection of how his first two years failed to meet the lofty expectations set in 2008. Liberals accuse him of accomplishing too little. Conservatives accuse him of turning too often to government as a solution.

The Republicans need to take this historic opportunity and make the case for liberty. If they assume they have a mandate, they will be the ones that will get shellacked in the next go-round.

[HT to FinallyFree at c2 - see post 144 for the link to Gateway Pundit]

More then ever, Your vote, Every vote, is important.

See: Republicans Appear Poised to Win Big on Tuesday

PRINCETON, NJ -- The final USA Today/Gallup measure of Americans' voting intentions for Congress shows Republicans continuing to hold a substantial lead over Democrats among likely voters, a lead large enough to suggest that regardless of turnout, the Republicans will win more than the 40 seats needed to give them the majority in the U.S. House.

The results are from Gallup's Oct. 28-31 survey of 1,539 likely voters. It finds 52% to 55% of likely voters preferring the Republican candidate and 40% to 42% for the Democratic candidate on the national generic ballot -- depending on turnout assumptions. Gallup's analysis of several indicators of voter turnout from the weekend poll suggests turnout will be slightly higher than in recent years, at 45%. This would give the Republicans a 55% to 40% lead on the generic ballot, with 5% undecided.

Every Republican vote is an essential vote.

This will be an election decided by turnout.

Even Democrats in the safest districts are now in close races.

Take Norm Dicks in Washington state.

See: Poll shows Cloud leads over Dicks

The most notable results in the poll came in the question that asked “If the election for the United States Congress were today and the candidates were Republican Doug Cloud and Democrat Norm Dicks, for whom would you vote?” The answer options were “definitely for Cloud, leaning for Cloud, definitely for Dicks, leaning for Dicks, and not sure”. Doug Cloud received a combined 609 votes for “definitely for” and “leaning for” while Dicks only received 558 for the 2 answers. 95 were still unsure.

Even Norm Dicks is in trouble.

Get every Republican that you know to the polls.

This time, it really matters.

This time, we could really win this.

[HT JCM at C2 - See post#218]

Rossi 48% - Murray 47% in latest Rasmussen Poll

Rasmussen is calling it a tie. The margin of error in the poll is (+/-) 4. This will be an election decided by turn-out, and heavily dependent on an honest counting of the ballots.

See: Election 2010: Washington Senate - Washington Senate: Rossi (R), Murray (D) Tied

Republican Dino Rossi and incumbent Democrat Patty Murray are separated by a single point in the U.S. Senate race in Washington with less than a week until Election Day.

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Rossi picking up 48% of the vote, while Murray draws support from 47%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate, and two percent (2%) are still undecided.

There is also the 50% ("Incumbent Rule") for the Murray camp to worry about. While undecided number of 2% is small it can be the deciding factor in this race. If the Incumbent rule holds in this case, Rossi will be Washington State's next Senator.

Of course, all of this pre-election polling is only a good indicator of how an honestly conducted count of the vote might look like. Rossi has had trouble with the state engaging in some very strange ballot counting practices before. in his 2004 gubernatorial campaign Rossi won the Governor's race in the first count and the second in a recount, only to lose it to a strange as all hell third count. The 2004 gubernatorial count strongly suggests that an honest counting of ballots can be problematic, if not downright Chicago-esque here in Washington State.

This will be an election to keep an eye on.

Washington State Senate Race Still Too Close To Call - Rossi Polling Ahead Of Murray

The Washington State Senate race is one of a handful of contests that could go either way.

See: Rasmussen Predicts GOP Gain of 55 in House

“Republicans should have 48 seats [after the elections next month], Democrats 47, and five seats could slide either way,” said Rasmussen in his banquet address at the Western Conservative Political Action Conference. He was referring to seats in five states in which the Senate race this year he considers too close to call: California, Illinois, Washington, West Virginia, and Nevada (or “that mudwrestling contest,” as Rasmussen described the race between Republican Sharron Angle and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid).

That is bad news for long time incumbent, Patty Murray. She has been in office since 1988. That is long time. A very long time. (Think back, way back, all the way back to when George Bush Sr. beat Michael Dukakis.)

[Update and Correction - Patty Murray won her US Senate seat in 1992, the same year that George Bush Senior lost to Bill Clinton, with Ross Perot making a mess on the fringe. I confused Patty Murray's first race for the state legislature, where she won a seat in the Washington State Senate.]

Rossi now leads in Rasmussen's October 8th report.

A new Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Voters in Washington shows Rossi with 49% of the vote, while Murray’s support stands at 46%. Three percent (3%) prefer some other candidate in the race, and two percent (2%) are undecided.

What should especially worry Murray is the Incumbent 50% Rule. This rule says that if the incumbent polls bellow 50% in the poll closest to the election, the "undecideds" will over 80% of the time, break for the challenger. (Go Rossi!)

I can see November from my house.

$100 To Dino Rossi

I just sent the Dino Rossi campaign $100.00.

This is not something that I can really afford to do. It is also something that I could not afford to not do.

In our lives, we are often confronted with "put-up or shut-up" moments.

Now is one of those times.

The race is close. Rasmussen has called the Washington State Senate Race a toss up. Rasmussen is a competent polling company. Their work is good.

On the sidelines, there is very little that individual voters like you and I can do to help move our nation in the right direction. So much of what happens in the political sphere that will shape our future happens in political campaigns like Dino Rossi's.

We can help.

We can help a candidate like Dino Rossi take his message to the voters by sending him and his campaign a small amount of money. We can do this much. If we are serious about what we believe, we must do at least this much.

Dino Rossi has answered the call.

We must, in kind, answer it too.

Washington State Senate Race Now A Toss Up.

See: Election 2010: Washington Senate

Incumbent Democratic Senator Patty Murray and Republican challenger Dino Rossi are back to a virtual tie in Washington’s race for U.S. Senate.

The latest Rasmussen Reports statewide telephone survey of Likely Voters shows Rossi picking up 48% support, while Murray earns 47% of the vote when leaners are included. Two percent (2%) prefer some other candidate, and three percent (3%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

This race now moves back to a Toss-Up from Leans Democrat in the Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 Senate Balance of Power rankings.

We are about a month away from election day.

Washington State's Senate race will be decided on turn-out.

Can the Democrats get their people to the polls this November?

We shall see.

The Republicans are all fired up.

They will vote.

The Democrats . . .

Its not looking so good for the Democrats.

See: DC rally shows support for struggling Democrats

Organizers claimed they had as many participants as Beck's rally. But Saturday's crowds were less dense and didn't reach as far to the edges as they did during Beck's rally. The National Park Service stopped providing official crowd estimates in the 1990s.

In other words, the Democrat's rally was a flop.

Obama And The Politics Of Failure

An interesting question from the other side of the pond.

See: The great Obama-Axelrod-etc. mystery

Here's one of the big questions, really, one to chew on over the weekend, one that's asked a lot around this town. How could a bunch of people who ran such a brilliant campaign be doing such a lousy job at the politics of governing?

The answer is actually very simple.

Obama and his team have successfully rammed through a number of measures through the congress that would, and will, fundamentally change the nature of our government and our relationship with it.

Obama's plummeting popularity is a consequence of his political success.

Confusing President Obama's popularity with his political success is a mistake. He has been very successful. Obama is very unpopular now because of his political successes.

Anchor Babies And The Move To Change The 14th Amendment

Often in politics, the wrong solution to a issue is sought to solve a problem that the law already provides a workable remedy.

In an attempt to discourage illegal immigrants from exploiting their children as a means to remain in the US, Republican politicians are suggesting that it is time to revise the 14th Amendment of the constitution to disallow birth-right citizenship.

Birth-right citizenship is being exploited. The numbers are truly staggering.

See: Across Texas, 60,000 babies of noncitizens get U.S. birthright

In Texas, between 60,000 to 65,000 babies achieve U.S. citizenship annually by being born in the state's hospitals, according to a tally released by the state's Health and Human Services Commission. Last year, such births represented almost 16 percent of the total births statewide.

Between 2001 and 2009, births to illegal immigrant women totaled 542,152 in Texas alone.

Thats just Texas.

It would be interesting to know what the national numbers are.

The 14th Amendment is not the problem. The lack of will at the federal level to enforce our immigration laws is the problem.

If Illegal aliens have a baby in the US, fine. The children may have US citizenship. The parents still do not. The parents still should be made to leave the US. The children may return to the US at a later time or even be allowed to remain with legal US residents. The Illegal parents still MUST leave.

If the law was enforced, there would be no anchor-baby problem. The law is not enforced, so anchor-babies are exploited.

5 to 4 - The Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutional right of US citizens to keep and bear arms.

See: Gun rights extended by Supreme Court

Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court, said the Second Amendment right "applies equally to the federal government and the states."

The court was split along familiar ideological lines, with five conservative-moderate justices in favor of gun rights and the four liberals, opposed.

The article's headline is an insult. The Supreme Court did not extend gun rights. The Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutional right of US citizens to keep and bear arms.

The ruling is a must read.

See: MCDONALD ET AL. v. CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, Et Al.

The following is excerpted from the ruling, starting at page 23.

After the Civil War, many of the over 180,000 African Americans who served in the Union Army returned to the States of the old Confederacy, where systematic efforts were made to disarm them and other blacks. See Heller, 554 U. S., at ___ (slip op., at 42); E. Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877, p. 8 (1988) (hereinafter Foner). The laws of some States formally prohibited African Americans from possessing firearms. For example, a Mississippi law provided that “no freedman, free negro or mulatto, not in the military service of the United States government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her county, shall keep or carry fire-arms of any kind, or any ammunition, dirk or bowie knife.” Certain Offenses of Freedmen, 1865 Miss. Laws p. 165, §1, in 1 Documentary History of Reconstruction 289 (W. Fleming ed. 1950); see also Regulations for Freedmen in Louisiana, in id., at 279–280; H. R. Exec. Doc. No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 233, 236 (1866) (describing a Kentucky law); E. McPherson, The Political History of the United States of America During the Period of Reconstruction 40 (1871) (describing a Florida law); id., at 33 (describing an Alabama law).18

Throughout the South, armed parties, often consisting of ex-Confederate soldiers serving in the state militias, forcibly took firearms from newly freed slaves. In the first session of the 39th Congress, Senator Wilson told his colleagues: “In Mississippi rebel State forces, men who were in the rebel armies, are traversing the State, visiting the freedmen, disarming them, perpetrating murders and outrages upon them; and the same things are done in other sections of the country.” 39th Cong. Globe 40 (1865). The Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction— which was widely reprinted in the press and distributed by Members of the 39th Congress to their constituents shortly after Congress approved the Fourteenth Amendment19—contained numerous examples of such abuses. See, e.g., Joint Committee on Reconstruction, H. R. Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., pt. 2, pp. 219, 229, 272, pt. 3, pp. 46, 140, pt. 4, pp. 49–50 (1866); see also S. Exec. Doc. No. 2, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 23–24, 26, 36 (1865). In one town, the “marshal [took] all arms from returned colored soldiers, and [was] very prompt in shooting the blacks whenever an opportunity occur[red].” H. R. Exec. Doc. No. 70, at 238 (internal quotation marks omitted). As Senator Wilson put it during the debate on a failed proposal to disband Southern militias: “There is one unbroken chain of testimony from all people that are loyal to this country, that the greatest outrages are perpetrated by armed men who go up and down the country searching houses, disarming people, committing outrages of every kind and description.” 39th Cong. Globe 915 (1866).20

Union Army commanders took steps to secure the right of all citizens to keep and bear arms,21 but the 39th Congress concluded that legislative action was necessary. Its efforts to safeguard the right to keep and bear arms demonstrate that the right was still recognized to be fundamental.

The most explicit evidence of Congress’ aim appears in §14 of the Freedmen’s Bureau Act of 1866, which provided that “the right . . . to have full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings concerning personal liberty, personal security, and the acquisition, enjoyment, and disposition of estate, real and personal, including the constitutional right to bear arms, shall be secured to and enjoyed by all the citizens . . . without respect to race or color, or previous condition of slavery.” 14 Stat. 176–177 (emphasis added).22 Section 14 thus explicitly guaranteed that “all the citizens,” black and white, would have “the constitutional right to bear arms.”

It is an important ruling.

4 of the 5 Supreme Court Justices opposed it.

Elena Kagan is now up in front of the Senate for her Confirmation hearing.

If she were on the Court, how do you think she would have ruled?

The BP Gulf Oil Spill, Regulatory Capture and Government Failure

As the BP Gulf Oil Spill crisis drags on, the calls and screams to have people criminally prosecuted will become ever more shrill and demanding.

Who and what is ultimately to blame?

Looking at BP's role and lobbying efforts in American politics reveals something very interesting about the nature of political systems and the human condition.

See: Feel the Rage

The liberals' fury at the President is almost as astounding as their outrage over the discovery that oil companies and their regulators might have grown too cozy. In economic literature, this behavior is known as "regulatory capture," and the current political irony is that this is a long-time conservative critique of the regulatory state.

The Nobel economist George Stigler of the University of Chicago was one of the concept's main developers, and it is a seminal plank of the "public choice" school of economics for which James Buchanan won the economics Nobel in 1986. Ronald Reagan warned about this in different words in one of his farewell speeches.

In the better economic textbooks, regulatory capture is described as a "government failure," as opposed to a market failure. It refers to the fact that individuals or companies with the highest interest or stake in a policy outcome will be able to focus their energies on politicians and bureaucracies to get the outcome they prefer.

See: Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool

While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

Now that BP’s oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

Making government more powerful, makes it more corruptible.

Government is corruptible because people are corruptible. There is no getting around or away from that fact.

As government grows and is given more control over the details and minutia of our daily lives, the scope of corruptibility of the government grows with it.

When the government makes a law, a rule or a regulation regarding a behavior, it affects peoples lives. Laws, rules and regulations are created with the specific intent of affecting peoples lives. Since laws, rules and regulations affect peoples lives, they create an incentive for those most affected to be able to influence those that are making the laws, rules and regulations.

There is a give an take to this. Everyone has things that they want. Everything becomes negotiable. Anything can be bought if the price is right and a seller has something that a buyer wants.

The process that this all gets worked out in, where the negotiations are made, the horse trading is done and back room deals are dealt, we call politics.

People's property and lives are at stake. The costs and prices become greater as the scope and power of the laws, rules and regulations increase.

The end results can be disturbing and very predictable.

Federal Courthouses Should Command Respect.

Our Federal government has spent itself into a huge gaping hole.

There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth as scape-goats are sought to be slaughtered as offerings on the alter of public opinion.

We can see an example of this happening now with a new report that has come out that complains about the costs of building Federal Courthouses.

See: Building oversize federal courts wastes millions

Federal courthouses built larger than necessary have cost taxpayers $835 million in wasted construction funds since 2000 while the extra space requires $51 million annually to maintain, the Government Accountability Office told a congressional committee on Tuesday.

The GAO found that the 33 courthouses or courthouse annexes completed in the past decade contain 3.56 million square feet of unnecessary space, said Mark L. Goldstein, the GAO's director of physical infrastructure issues.

Larger than necessary? That is the value judgment of someone that does not understand the role of the courthouse in making the law worthy of respect.

Should a Federal Courthouse be a grand and impressive structure? Or should it be a cheap and unremarkable building?

This is not a trivial mater.

Some may argue that over-sized and overbuilt courthouses are a waste of money. They make a serious if not a fatal mistake when the think this.

The over-sized courthouse, with its high ceilings, stone walls and polished marble floors set the stage for the ritual, the ceremony, the drama and the consequence of the law. People's lives and property are at stake in these buildings. In such halls, people's fortunes are saved or destroyed. Even their very lives can be at stake, balanced on the fulcrum of evidence and the rod of the law, with their freedom or death to be decided by judge and jury.

There is a certain stage-craft to the law. It must command respect. Its edifices and facilities should and really must convey to those that are made to stand before it in judgment and appeal, the full majesty of the law as well as the might and authority of the state.

There is ritual and ceremony in the adjudication of the law. There is also the stage that the ceremony and the ritual is set. The ceremony, the ritual and the stage make the legal process stand apart and separate from the everyday events of working, shopping or playing that we all engage in our daily lives. The seriousness of the ritual, the ceremony and the stage that the law is dispensed in can help make it respectable, or help make it a farce.

Think about what a different perception we would have of the law if it was dispensed from triple-wide mobile-home type structures. Can you picture it? Imagine the nine justices of the Supreme Court trying to be taken seriously in a low ceilinged room with plastic coated fake wood paneling.

The law must be respected. Having it dispensed from buildings that scream “cheap” and “disposable” does not make the government that it represents worthy of respect.

Our government is not going broke because it is building grand courthouses. It is going broke because it has turned away from being a protector of rights to a dispenser of welfare benefits. The welfare state is bleeding us dry, not over-sized courthouses.

This may seem like a small thing to some people, but it is not a small thing.

Again, think about how much respect you would have for a court system that was run from disposable buildings. How can you take the legal system of a government seriously that thought its laws should be adjudicated in courthouses that were no more impressive or respectable than trailers in a mobile-home park?

Raise Taxes Or Cut Spending – Two World-views

Democrats in California have put together a plan to tax California out of their spending problems. They can't afford what they have promised, so they will take more from the productive to finance their shortfall.

See: California Democrats unveil tax-increase package

The plan by state Senate Democrats would raise $4.9 billion by raising California's vehicle registration fee, suspending corporate tax breaks scheduled to begin next year and boosting the state's tax on alcoholic beverages.

Democrats control both chambers of the state's legislature and have said they would seek new revenue to help plug the shortfall.

Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, by contrast, has ruled out tax increases and is relying largely on deep spending cuts in his plan for balancing the state's books. He has called for $12.4 billion of cuts and would scrap the state's welfare system, a plan Democrats have rejected.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's approach would be to cut spending as the best means to solve the state's spending problem. Arnold may not be the best representative of Republican philosophy, but in this example, he does so well.

For Democrats, raising taxes to solve an over-spending problem is the right thing to do because of the good intentions that drive their want to spend. They really do believe that raising taxes on the productive is a good way to support the poor and the disadvantaged that they want to help.

For Republicans, raising taxes to solve a spending problem is a little bit to much like shooting up with heroin in order to solve a drug problem. Its nuts. It only makes things worse. Reducing the incentive for the productive to produce will not only reduce how many people that the productive can employee, but it will also reduce the amount of profit that they will have that can be taxed. Everybody loses.

The road to hell is paved with . . .

The Partisan Dividing Line On Illegal Immigration

The question that will play out over the coming months will be: “Are the Democrats now the Party of Illegal Immigration?”

One Democrat candidate for Senate in California has charged that the “Democrat Elite” are manipulating today's May Day/Pro-Amnesty Protesters to push an unpopular reform package that includes Amnesty for Illegal aliens.

See his Press Release: Democrats Are Manipulating the Marchers

"There is not going to be an amnesty this year, or next year. The majority of the American people don't want it, for good reason. They want to secure the borders first," he said. "Amnesty before we secure the borders would only encourage yet another wave of illegals and hurt the wages of unskilled Americans (and legal immigrants)."

"But every time Democratic politicians in D.C. need to rev up the Latino vote, they dangle the false promise of an amnesty bill. At some point. Latino voters are going to realize they're being used."

Kaus is the only Democratic Senate candidate on the ballot to oppose amnesty proposals, even when they are packaged with enforcement measures and billed as "comprehensive reform." The incumbent, Barbara Boxer, supports "comprehensive reform" that includes a "path to citizenship" for illegals--i.e., amnesty.

"It's time Democrat politicians stopped holding enforcement measures hostage to their goal of amnesty--of giving citizenship to millions who are here illegally."

"We need to secure the borders first. Build the actual, physical fence that was supposed to be built. Extend E-verify or another effective means of checking immigration status at the time of employment. Create a system for monitoring visa overstays. Let the ACLU sue. Let the Chamber of Commerce sue. Let MALDEF sue. Then if the system survives those assaults, and works--actually stops illegal immigration and sends a signal to the world that the game has changed--then in a few years we can start to talk about amnesty."

"Until then it's a false promise, a fraud."

What Democrat Candidate for Senate, running in California of all places, would have the courage to say such things? Mickey Kaus. Yes, Mickey Kaus of Kausfiles.com. Mickey Kaus has also recently received the endorsement of Victor Davis Hanson.

An Ezra Klein piece in the Washington Post discusses this issue and the poll numbers.

See: Like it or not, the 2010 election is now (substantially) about immigration

The Democrats' immigration plan is based on a simple compromise: Restrictionists get increased border security, reformers get a path to legalization. And the compromise is in that order, too: The legalization path doesn't kick in until eight separate security benchmarks are met (head here for an excellent summary).

The question is whether anyone wants this compromise, at least right now. Consider this: The Arizona plan is popular. According to Gallup, 51 percent of Americans who have heard of the law support it. Only 39 percent oppose the legislation.

This is an issue the divides the public in lines that are very difficult to cross.

Have the Democrats become the Party of Illegal Imigration? With a few rare indivdual exceptions like Kaus and Hanson, the answer seems to be an obvious and overwhelming "Yes."

The elections will get very interesting. If you think that Amnesty is an issue that can wait until real and meaningful measures are in place to secure the borders and enforce our immigration laws, be prepared to be called a Racist by the welfare pimps and whores on the left. The Race-Card is the only card they have on this issue. They will play it for all that its worth.

Leftist Bad-Crazy On Arizona Immigration Law Enforcement

See: How to fight Arizona's misguided immigration law

An Arizona Legislature dominated by crazies -- they're birthers, they've allowed people to pack concealed weapons into restaurants, and axed a health insurance program for poor kids -- has just made it a crime to be an illegal immigrant in the Grand Canyon State. Law enforcement officers are now required to demand papers from anyone they suspect to be in the country illegally.

This may come as a shock to Mr. Connelly and other fringe-kook leftist like him but it is already illegal to be be an illegal immigrant in the Grand Canyon State as well as in all of the other 49 states.

This is an illustration of why the situation has gotten so out of control that states like Arizona have decided that they can no longer count on the Federal Government to be an agent of Justice and must take the matter into their own hands.

Arizona and other states that may follow in its footsteps would not have to go to the such extraordinary steps if the Federal Government was enforcing the law instead of playing politics with peoples lives.