The American Spectator

Leftists for More Dead Israelis

Posted by Philip Klein on 1.5.09 @ 7:11PM

A DailyKos poster ponders, "Why Do I Find Israeli Troop Deaths Satisfying?"

Via Contentions.

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Republicans Tearing Down Pelosi's House

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 1.5.09 @ 6:49PM

The House Republican leadership team has presented a united front against Nancy Pelosi's proposed rules changes that would make it harder for the minority to have any voice in legislating and easier for committee chairmen to wield their gavels for life. "President Obama has pledged to lead a government that is open and transparent," the leaders wrote in their letter (pdf) to Speaker Pelosi. "This does not represent change; it is reverting back to the undemocratic one-party rule and backroom deals that the American people rejected more than a decade ago."

That's exactly the right tone to strike, though there is little time to generate public outrage over a power grab that may seem more like an arcane rules change and little that can stand in the way of such a large Democratic majority. One-party rule isn't likely to turn out to be "change" you can believe in.

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Minnesota Madness Update

Posted by Philip Klein on 1.5.09 @ 6:20PM

The latest is that Al Franken has been declared the winner by 225 votes, but he will not be able to receive an actual certificate of election until all legal challenges are resolved. The main remaining issues concern the Coleman campaign's contention that hundreds of rejected absentee ballots from Coleman-friendly areas should have been counted just as the ballots from Franken-friendly areas were, and the dispute over whether some ballots were double-counted.

Coleman recount attorney Tony Trimble released a statement on the matter, and here's an excerpt:

The actions today by the Canvassing Board are but the first step in what, unfortunately, will now have to be a longer process. This process isn't at the end; it is now just at the beginning. We will contest the results of the Canvassing Board -- otherwise, literally millions of Minnesotans will be disenfranchised.

While we appreciate the effort of this board to do the work, the reality is that any certification of vote totals at this point is only preliminary. As this Canvassing Board has recognized, there still exist serious problems with inconsistencies in the administrative recount, and therefore in the validity and reliability of the numbers certified today. There can be no count that is accurate or valid when 654 potentially valid absentee votes remain disenfranchised and when some votes are counted twice - leading to a violation of one of the most sacred principles of our constitution - "One person, One vote."

And, there can be no justification to report out a total when 133 votes were included in a count where there are not ballots to support them. Or when a batch of votes were not counted on Election Night, but were miraculously "found" during the recount and included.

If the Canvassing Board had resolved all these issues, then the process might be completed. But the Board has deferred the resolution of those issues for the contest phase provided for in Minnesota law. Since the process is far from complete, there can be no confidence in the current results of the United States Senate Recount, and we will file a contest within the next 24 hours to promptly correct those problems and inaccuracies. The Supreme Court ruling today also emphasizes that that's what we must do to provide an accurate count for this election.

Roll Call is reporting that Harry Reid will try to seat Franken without a certificate of election, even though he has cited a lack of a certificate of election in Illinois as the reason why he won't seat Roland Burris.

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Panetta as CIA Director

Posted by Philip Klein on 1.5.09 @ 6:00PM

The knock on President Bush is that he made selections based on personal loyalty rather than qualifications, and Barack Obama has earned praise for moving away from this practice. However, it's hard to reconcile that narrative of Obama's appointments with his naming of Leon Panetta -- a key political ally with no relevant experience -- as director of the CIA during a time of war.  Even Dianne Feinstein was caught of guard by the bizzare pick, according to the NY Times: "'My position has consistently been that I believe the agency is best-served by having an intelligence professional in charge at this time,' said Senator Dianne Feinstein who, as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, would be in charge of Mr. Panetta's confirmation."

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RNC Rumble

Posted by Philip Klein on 1.5.09 @ 4:27PM

Earlier this afternoon, I attended the RNC chairmanship debate sponsored by Americans for Tax Reform. As I noted in an earlier post, it's difficult to determine from this sort of event who would make a good RNC chair given that so much of that role happens behind the scenes. During the debate -- which was more like a forum since there wasn't much arguing going on -- there was broad agreement that the party needed to stick to Republican principles, make better use of technology, help Republicans become competitive in all fifty states, and do a better job of reaching out to young and minority voters.

Ken Blackwell used examples of his record of as an activist and politician and showed flashes of humor to make the case that Republicans needed to reinvigorate the base by returning to conservative principles on small government and individual liberty; RNC chairman, Mike Duncan, emphasized that in a tough year for Republicans, under his leadership the RNC still did a good job raising a lot of money and recruiting volunteers; Michael Steele tried to deliver an optimistic message, dismissing as "bunk" the idea that the Republican Party is at "death's door" and he discussed providing adequate resources at the state and local level; Saul Anuzis cited his experience in a blue state of Michigan as an asset in expanding the map; Chip Saltsman boasted that his leadership as state party chairman helped defeat Al Gore in his home state of Tennessee in 2000, which made the difference in electing Bush; Katon Dawson described how he turned around a South Carolina Republican Party that was in disarray when he took over in 2002.

Moderator Grover Norquist asked the candidates who was their favorite Republican president (you can guess who each of them named), and then Norquist followed up by asking who was their least favorite president. Four candidates declined to take the bait, while Duncan named Warren Harding, and Blackwell named Hoover, for setting the stage for massive government intervention before the New Deal, just as President Bush set the stage for Barack Obama to pursue big government economic policies.

While, as I said, there wasn't much of an actual "debate," to the extent that there was some back and fourth, it seemed to be between Blackwell and Dawson -- which may or may not be an indicator of anything. In his opening remarks, Blackwell noted that he's won more elections than anybody else on the stage except perhaps Dawson, joking, "who's won races in the swing state of South Carolina." Dawson later responded that there was difficulty in winning those elections, and told me after that Blackwell benefitted from the Republican Party infrastructure when elected to public office, but Dawson was the one who was getting other people elected, which is more in tune with the role of the RNC chair.

Dawson has been hurt by his longtime membership in an all-white country club, an issue which he not-too subtly tried to address in his opening remarks, when he asked Ron Thomas -- a black Army veteran who he hired as his political director when he took over the SC GOP -- to stand up to be seen by the hundreds of people in attendance. When I asked Dawson about the controversy after the event, he said it was a "political ploy" and that it had been answered by his recruitment of and hiring of qualified minorities, as demonstrated by Thomas.

One thing to keep in mind is that, as Dawson told me, the audience isn't Americans for Tax Reform or anybody else, but the RNC members who will actually be voting for the new chairman. So that's why it's hard to say who "won" the debate in the traditional sense.

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Nancy Pelosi's House

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 1.5.09 @ 4:08PM

The Democrats are considering rolling back the reforms adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives after the Republicans took control in 1995. That means eliminating the term limits for committee chairs and making it even more difficult for the Republican minority to have any input or impact on legislative outcomes in the House. Republicans will effectively be banned from amending Democratic bills, proposing alternative bills or even participating in open debate under motions to recommit. It's not clear whether open committee hearings or the ban on committee proxy voting are similarly in danger.

Remember all the outrage of how intolerant Tom DeLay's House was of the Democratic minority? If these rules changes are adopted, Nancy Pelosi's Democrats will be getting rid of protections for the minority that existed throughtout DeLay's tenure and the Republican majority. House Republicans leaders have pledged to fight the changes, but votes on these procedural issues tend to be along party lines.

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Obama Conceding the Tax Debate

Posted by W. James Antle, III on 1.5.09 @ 12:06PM

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Barack Obama and the Democrats are adding up to $300 billion in tax cuts to their stimulus proposal, making the plan now 40 percent tax cuts. Some of these tax cuts, like speeding up the ability of businesses to write off losses and adding investment incentives, make sense. Others, like the human employment tax credit, less so. The move is being billed as an effort to peel off Republican votes.

Republicans should instead up the ante, using this latest concession to push more tax cuts and less spending. Barack Obama has already conceded that tax increases could hurt the economy, at least under present conditions. He has conceded that tax cuts can help. And he hasn't done much to make sure that his tax proposals are realistically revenue-neutral. At the very least, these points need to be remembered when Obama and the Democrats move to raise taxes later.

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RNC Candidates Ready to Rumble

Posted by Philip Klein on 1.5.09 @ 11:07AM

I'll be heading over to the National Press Club soon to see six candidates for the RNC chairmanship debate (Mike Duncan, Saul Anuzis, Ken Blackwell, Katon Dawson, Chip Saltsman, and Michael Steele). The event is being organized by Americans for Tax Reform and they've set up a website where you can submit questions and watch live starting at 1 pm. I have to say that in all honesty, I'm not really sure what makes a good RNC chair in the first place, let alone how I could gauge something like that from a debate. Much of what an RNC chair does is behind the scenes, making phone calls, attending meetings, and raising money. There's an argument to be made that the RNC chairman needs to be a dynamic spokesperson for the party, but also an argument that a relatively boring leader who is a great fundraiser is a better choice. How relevant are the chair's individual policy positions to whether that person can competently run the RNC? Does having a more conservative RNC chair mean the party is going to become more conservative? I'm not sure I really know, so it's hard for me to get as passionate about this race as a lot of other people here in DC. But I'm curious to learn more about the candidates today and hear what they have to say. I'll report back in the afternoon with some impressions.

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Resigned

Posted by Wlady Pleszczynski on 1.5.09 @ 10:42AM

Over at Townhall, they're spotlighting a petition drive calling on "Rahm Emmanuel" to "resign." Wouldn't such an initiative have greater cred if it first bothered to spell Emanuel's name right?

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Did You Hear the One About When Harry Reid Won the Iraq War?

Posted by Philip Klein on 1.5.09 @ 10:19AM

A reader passes along this shameless exchange from "Meet the Press":

MR. GREGORY: Let me ask you about the war in Iraq.  In April of 2007, this is what you said: "I believe myself that ... this war is lost and the surge is not accomplishing anything." Were you wrong?

SEN. REID: David, I first met General David Petraeus in Iraq.  He was training the Iraqi forces at that time.  At that time, he knew it wasn't working.  After he became the commander in Iraq, he and I sat down and talked. He said to me, and he said within the sound of everyone's voice, "The war cannot be won militarily." I said it differently than he did.  But it needed a change in direction.  Petraeus brought that about.  He brought it about--the surge helped, of course it helped.  But in addition to that, the urging of me and other people in Congress and the country dictated a change, and that took place.  So...

MR. GREGORY: But you said the surge was not accomplishing anything.  Even Barack Obama said last fall that it exceeded everyone's expectations and succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.

SEN. REID: Listen, at that--the time that statement was made, the surge--they weren't talking about the surge.  Petraeus added to the surge some very, very interesting things that changed things.  He said a lot--just simply numbers of troops is not going to do the deal.  What we need to do is work with the Iraqi people, which we haven't done before.  That's where the Awakening Councils came about, as a result of David Petraeus' genius.  He's done--he will be written about in the history books for years to come.  My original statement was in keeping what David Petraeus said; that is, the war cannot be won militarily.

With the possible exception of the sentence, "I first met General David Petraeus in Iraq," everything that Reid says is contradicted by history.

When Petraeus said the war couldn't be won militarily, he meant that the war couldn't be won with military action alone, but only with a more comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy that involved working with local tribal leaders as well as using diplomacy to improve the political situation. When Reid said the war was lost, he meant the war was lost ... and that we should withdraw troops from Iraq. Reid and the Democrats did want a change in direction, but that change in direction was supposed to be withdrawal, not the surge, which they referred to as an "escalation" and fiercely opposed.

Yesterday Reid said that, "at that--the time that statement was made, the surge--they weren't talking about the surge" -- but the surge was proposed in January of 2007, and was already underway when Reid made his statement in April of 2007. In fact, Reid's statement was, "I believe ... that this war is lost, and this surge is not accomplishing anything, as is shown by the extreme violence in Iraq this week."

And Reid is right that simply adding more troops wasn't sufficient to do the job, but they were still necessary to implement the overall strategy.

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Daily Must-Reads

Posted by Joseph Lawler on 1.5.09 @ 10:15AM

• Can't keep the change in Argentina (WSJ)

• We need a farm bill that's less... evil (NY Times)

• Trouble in progressiveland as Vermonters struggle to argue against, of all things, pornographic snowboards (Boston Globe)

• Obama administration vs. Barnum and Bailey (National Review)

• To win Republicans' support, Obama's increases in spending will also include... increases in taxes (Cafe Hayek)

• Business as usual in horribly corrupt Democratic Massachusetts (Dan Dunn's Podium)

• Obama and Burris, making race politics a little more interesting (Democracy in America)

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What About the Voters?, Asks the Chicago Tribune

Posted by Doug Bandow on 1.5.09 @ 9:17AM

Roland Burris wants the Senate seat.  Harry Reid doesn't want to give it to him.  But shouldn't someone else have a say?

Editorializes the Chicago Tribune:

We know what Roland Burris wants: a U.S. Senate seat he thinks he's earned by riding shotgun to an accused felon.

We know what Rod Blagojevich wants: to share the humiliation that has doomed his own big dreams by now humiliating as many other public figures as he can.

We know what Dick Durbin and Pat Quinn want-or wanted-because they told us early in this fiasco: a special election to fill Illinois' vacant Senate seat. Durbin and Quinn have since lost their voices on this point. That stuff about holding an election? That was then.

We know what Harry Reid of Nevada wants: a Senate seat that stays reliably in his party's possession-so much so that he was tutoring Blagojevich on whom to appoint.

We know what Illinois legislators want: damage control. They failed last month to schedule the special election that every voice of fairness initially wanted. The Springfield lawmakers figure that when a new governor sends someone other than Burris to Washington, they'll quietly be forgiven for having left Blagojevich with the power to make them look so foolish.

We can guess what Barack Obama wants: for the buffoonery over what was once his proud Senate seat to abate. Illinois is embarrassing its president-elect.

But what about the voters in this plundered state? Is anyone asking them what they want? They elected Barack Obama to the Senate. Obama quit to accept a better job. That's his privilege. Choosing his replacement should be their privilege, just as replacing Rahm Emanuel is the privilege of voters who live in his congressional district.

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The Next Bail-Out: Academia!

Posted by Doug Bandow on 1.4.09 @ 3:51PM

If you thought that no one else was coming after your money, think again!  America's universities, already deeply on the federal dole, want an extra dose of taxpayer money.  Reports Barbara Hollingsworth in the Washington Examiner:

Just before Christmas, the Carnegie Corporation of New York - a philanthropic organization set up by steel baron Andrew Carnegie, who in his day was the richest man in the world - took out a rare double-page ad in several prominent newspapers.

The ad, an open letter asking President-elect Barack Obama to put them on his economic stimulus list, was signed by the heads of 54 academic institutions, including UVA president John Casteen.

Like most investors, UVA lost $1 billion in the recent stock market meltdown due to the fact that if followed the so-called "Yale model" - shunning safe, traditional investments such as Treasury bonds to pursue much higher yields in risky hedge funds and then-popular private equity offerings.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine also says that the commonwealth's own worsening financial condition will force him to cut $23 million out of the $160 million UVA typically receives.

So like many of his peers, Casteen is now publicly begging for a federal bailout. Does the man have no shame?

For one thing, UVA had a $4 billion endowment as of October 31. Watching it lose $1 billion in value was no doubt a most unpleasant experience, as millions of workers with much smaller 401(k)s can attest, but when you still have about $3 billion left over, it's survivable.
And despite the fact that UVA will receive $23 million less in state funds, the university has no plans to lay off any employees - even though payroll accounts for two-thirds of UVA's operating budget.

Besides his reported $797,048 university salary, Casteen himself also made $220,000 annually for serving as a part-time director of Wachovia Bank. He's apparently okay with the federal government taking even more money away from single mothers and truck drivers, but won't even consider scaling back his own lavish lifestyle.

I keep arguing that the best thing we could do is load up B-52s with $100 bills and carpet bomb America.  Then at least everyone would have a chance of getting their hand on some of the loot!

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Gaza, Greenwald and Goldfarb

Posted by Robert Stacy McCain on 1.4.09 @ 12:54PM

Glenn Greenwald today lectures Michael Goldfarb about "excessive tribalistic identification," and I have a few thoughts on the subject. Meanwhile, a quick rundown on the war in Gaza:

• IDF has surrounded Gaza City.
• Melanie Phillips on "moral inversion."
• Speaking of "moral inversion," a Newsweek columnist insists that Barack Obama must "get tough" -- not with Hamas, but with Israel.
• Abu Zakaria al-Jamal joins Hussam Hamdan, Muhammad Hilo, and Nizar Ghayan among the Hamas terorrist leaders killed during the Israeli offensive.

An IDF video briefing on the Gaza campaign:

In related news, don't mess with Sonny Corleone's sister:

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Franken + 225

Posted by Nicole Russell on 1.3.09 @ 6:24PM

On Saturday, election officials counted 933 ballots that both the Franken and Coleman campaigns agreed were wrongly tossed out. With the recount complete, Franken leads with 225, according to the Strib. Some folks are saying he'll be able to declare victory as soon as Monday. Strib:

At least two things, however, still stand in the way of Franken becoming Minnesota's newest U.S. senator: the possibility of a ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court that more wrongly rejected absentee ballots should be counted, and a legal contest that Coleman attorneys all but promised should Franken prevail.

Seems like both possibilities are at least likely, with the latter being a sure bet.

One of the comments under the Strib's story, by a mnhusker4:

We now know that Franken made up about 1,000 votes since election night. We also know that this is statistically impossible. Good thing that ACORN had Ritchie on their side...Minnesota's reputation will be flawed forever if the courts allow Franken to steal this election.

Call me a sore loser but I tend to agree with this concerned conservative.  Though, I should say, it ain't over until Franken's walking the streets of Washington with that goofy grin on his face. 

If he's won fair and square, I say, obviously, the people of Minnesota have spoken and should reap the rewards (or the havoc) of their elected Senator.

If he hasn't, that's another thing entirely. I haven't followed this as closely as some (waiting for Philip Klein's input here) nor have I followed up with some of the folks I know at Coleman's camp and frankly (no pun intended) don't quite understand some of the rifraf going on, but it looks a little fishy. And that's no euphemism.

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