The Hub of Politics

Tom DeLay, Majority Leader in the House of Representatives, took a big gamble when he inserted the GOP House delegation squarely into the middle of the Terri Schiavo dispute. By reputation, DeLay is a smart, shrewd, somewhat ruthless politician - all the things we should look for in a Majority Leader. However, he also comes with more than a little baggage, some of which is pure bunk from his leftist enemies, but some of which is starting to look more than a little legit - as a recent Op-Ed from that leftist rag, the Wall Street Journal, (linked at the bottom of this post) points out.

My thoughts on the situation are best summed-up in this editorial from our local paper. Here's the money passage for me:

In his effort to pander to right-to-life groups, the ethically challenged House Majority Leader Tom DeLay has set in motion a chain of events that Democratic liberals are only too happy to exploit for their own purposes. There used to be a philosophical base to Republican congressional thinking - and action - that left to the states issues properly within their purview.

But it's difficult to remain philosophically pure and pander at the same so. Today too many congressional Republicans have abandoned any notion of state's rights, of federalism, of the appropriate role of government in their quest to score political points.

Now, the leftist dinosaur Barney Frankus Liberalus is leading a congressional charge to legislate end-of-life issues - under the guise of "disability rights". In the good-old-days, federalist Republicans (who could at least talk a good game not too long ago) could shut this down by (rightly) claiming that this was an issue best left to the states. Cannot rightly do that now, can we?

We can (with cause) scream all we want about the Demos hypocrisy on this issue - these new champions of "state's rights" have wasted no time in using the Schiavo case to try to expand the federal role in these decisions. But the fact of the matter is that our side has given them a stick to beat us with - and that is unforgivable in a party leader.

Add to this the little fact that Congress issued a subpoena for Terri that they didn't have the stones to enforce, and you are left with the conclusion that the GOP's (and DeLay's in particular) intervention into the Schiavo affair was both spectacularly stupid, nakedly hypocritical and demostrated the GOP as being willing to abandon long-supported principles (such as State's Rights and Federalism) to shamelessly pander to Christian Right.

It might be time to start looking for a new House leader. I find it impossible to believe that we cannot find someone as effective at "marshaling the troops" who doesn't have the Stench of the Beltway about him.

The Washington Times reported yesterday that Republicans may no longer have the 50-votes necessary to exercise the Constitutional Option for un-blocking GWBs long-stalled appellate court nominees. Funny, I could swear that they counted 53-noses in favor only last week.

Rocket Man has picked up on this as well, and nicely summarizes the situation:

Sad, if true.

The names of the Republicans going squishy on the Constitutional Option should be a surprise to no-one:

• Chaffee (RINO-RI): firmly opposed - explain to me again why we should keep him and not the pro-life likely Democrat nominee in '06?
• Snowe (RINO-ME): citing "concerns about protecting the minority party and avoiding a Democratic promise to halt most Senate business" - blah blah blah
• Collins (R(sometimes)-ME): uncommitted, reported to be "very concerned about the overuse of the filibuster", but "also concerned that a rule change will further charge the partisan atmosphere to the point that we will not be able to conduct business" - Uh, memo to Ms. Collins: voting on judicial nominees is the Senate's business, and that ain't getting done now, is it?
• Warner (R(for the most part)-VA): claims to have a problem changing Senate tradition, in spite of the fact that the Demos have already done so by setting the bar for judicial confirmation at 60.
• And, of course, the Twins - Hagel and McCain: 'nuf said.

On the up-side, McConnell (KY) and Stevens (AK), long rumored to be soft on the Constitutional Option, both announced their strong support. From McConnell's statement:

Unfortunately, this obstruction necessitates that we restore these norms and traditions, and that includes through the use of the so-called 'constitutional' option.

Indeed.

Other senators (Sununu, Cochran and Voinovich) have remained uncommitted, but I would only be worried about Voinovich, personally.

The bottom-line is that if Frist doesn't get this done then he may as well run for re-election to the Senate against Harold Ford, Jr. in 2006 because he would have precisely zero chance of securing the nomination to the Big Office in '08.

Similarly, if Hagel and/or McCain vote against Frist and the GOP on this one, they may as well kiss their national aspirations goodbye.

No one likes a "maverick" that torpedoes their leader and their party when the chips are down - just ask former CT Senator/Governor/RINO Lord Lowell P Weicker, Jr. - who left office in 1994 with an approval rating in the low-teens.

Update: Oh well, it would appear that Linc may be the best option for us in the Isle of Rhode after all.

It has been a hoot watching the Democrats and other socialists getting their frilly, pink panties in a bunch over the death of Federalism - after all, these are the same folks who danced gleefully when the SCOTUS rammed a schiv into the back of the 10th Amendment only a week-or-so ago with regard to the "juvenile" death penalty, right? Oh, and on the subject of federal court intervention into state affairs - can anyone say "Roe v. Wade"? Funny, I don't seem to recall the leftists being too upset over that little piece of federal activism - must have missed that.

Seriously, I (being both a process and social conservative) am distressed at the actions taken by Congress and GWB in the Schiavo case, but I'm equally distressed at the fact that my side seems to be getting our Constitutional teeth kicked-in by an out-of-control judiciary and a left-wing in the US that has very successfully turned everything into a (pun intended) federal case.

So, if Federalism is indeed dead (a loss that I would greatly mourn), should we unilaterally disarm and turn the future of our country over to an emboldened leftist fringe and leave ourselves entirely at the tender mercies of an out-of-control court system? If every issue is indeed going to become a "federal case", then isn't it best that our elected representatives, and not a cotillion of unelected, lifetime appointees, be the ones driving that bus?

Granted, it gives me no joy to think along these lines - but with the Senate GOP not demonstrating the stones required to even get Bush's qualified appellate nominees a simple up-or-down vote, I don't see the composition of the courts changing greatly in the near future.
I suppose what I'm saying is that the GOP abandoning their Federalist traditions scares me less, much less in fact, than leaving every issue in society in the hands of a leftist judiciary.

What a God-awful horrible choice.

For the record on the Schiavo case...

I am very sympathetic to the arguments made on behalf of Terry's parents. If an error is going to be made, I would much prefer to err on the side of caution and keep the feeding tube in place - I hardly consider provision of water and food to be an "extraordinary means" for survival.

Michael Schiavo looks like pond-scum - he is a wholly unlikable, unctuous piece of filth who has changed his story repeatedly (how come it took him 7-years to recall that Terry would never want to be kept alive this way?) and clearly does not seem to have the best interests of his estranged wife at heart.

That said, I have a hard time understanding how the original ruling of the Florida trial court (Judge Greer, is it?) was wrong on the law. For better or worse, the spouse is the "family" in the eyes of the court and the spouse in this case said that the patient's wishes would be for the tube to be removed. As I understand it, this was the only court that stated this as a "finding of fact" - a ruling that has now been sustained on appeal several times.

The solution seems to me to be - you don't like the law, change the law. It would appear that Gov. Jeb Bush and the FL legislature are doing just that, but I fail to see why this couldn't have all been done months if not years ago.

I will not speculate on the politics of this other than to say that I think it's a wash. The American electorate has the attention span of a flea on crack - there is every reason to believe that this will be long forgotten come November 2006 by all but the activists on both sides - and they already know who they're voting for.

Cross-posted at Random Thoughts.

Massachusetts Attorney General and presumptive Democrat 2006 gubernatorial nominee Tom Reilly has come out in opposition to Governor Mitt Romney's plan to make good on a pledge Massachusetts taxpayers got from their elected officials some 16-years ago - that the increase in the state income tax from the historic 5% level was only "temporary".

Shocking, no?

But then again, as Democrats in the legislature seem to be having a problem paying their own tax bills, I suppose the rest of us not fortunate enough the be in the Majority caucus have to pick up the slack.

Money quote from the AG: "We have difficult financial challenges ahead of us over the foreseeable future, over the next few years, and right now we cannot afford to be rolling back taxes.''

I wonder if those "difficult financial challenges" will stop the Democrat nominee from proposing a whole host of new programs that expand the reach, and cost, of the Commonwealth in our lives.

You can all stop guffawing now, thank you.

So just as an example, we cannot possibly merge the Mass Pike authority with the Mass Highway department - they can share a bathroom, but they apparently cannot share a secretary. And we suckers who pay for this largesse must continue to pay higher rates, according The Man who would be Governor, because that would be "short-changing the future'' of the Commonwealth.

Of course, the fat-cats at the badly-named Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation (Orwellian, don't you think?) were more than happy to give the AG a platform from which he could promise to keep the spicket of other people's money wide-open.

Once again, the taxpayers of Massachusetts come last in the eyes of the Democrats.

Dog Bites Man... again.

It would appear that our Legislature is poised to pass a bill directing some (amount: TBD) taxpayer money to the latest version of corporate scientific welfare known as Stem-Cell research, including a rather controversial proposal to allow stem-cells to be harvested from cloned embryos. It should be noted that cloning is a process so beyond the mainstream that even the United Nations has moved to urge it be banned. I suppose our Legislature knows best.

Certainly, more than a few companies are anxious for the chance to fatten themselves from the largesse of the Massachusetts taxpayers - ethics be damned.

As to the efficacy of embryonic stem cell research, well here's one point of view, and another along the same lines. While several companies tout that they are "developing cures" for any number of maladies, and at least one doctor has bemoaned the "missed opportunities" due to the Bush "ban" on such research, the fact still remains that embryonic stem cell research has yet to produce a single, unqualified therapeutic success in human beings. Not one. Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada.

Governor Mitt Romney has indicated he would veto any bill that includes cloning. Obviously, some Boston Globe readers think Romney is just being a jerk about this - I suppose we're all entitled to our opinions.

There is little doubt that the Legislature will be able to muster the votes to override Romney's veto.

The sad fact is that the overwhelming majority of these dim-bulbs probably have absolutely no idea what they are voting for.

You would think that the Boston Herald would be all-over the Milton Academy sex scandal. After all, the story has everything a tabloid is supposed to live for - sex, money, sex, the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and oh, did I mention sex? Well, the Boston Globe has been consistently scooping it's competitor since the story broke on February 18th - that is until today.

Today's Boston Herald carries a Page 2 story by Jennifer Rosinski detailing how, two weeks after the original incident in the Academy's Boys' Locker Room, many of the same teens, including (you cannot make this up) the same 15-year old young lady at the center (literally) of the story, allegedly spent a lovely evening at a local Marriott in what could possibly be described as a drunken orgy disguised as a Sweet-16 party.

Doesn't everyone have Sweet-16 parties in a suite at the Copley Square Marriott, where you are "greeted at the door by two topless girls, including the 15-year-old involved in the earlier oral sex allegation", where the Herald's source "saw the 15-year-old girl engage in oral sex with a boy, witnessed other guests engage in sex acts and watched still others drink beer and other alcoholic drinks".

(As an aside, is it fair to say that this young lady is T-R-O-U-B-L-E, and that while most teenage boys generally let the little-head do the thinking for the big-head, at some point even a hormone-crazed 16-year old boy would have to think that a girl like this is bad news?)

The official Milton Academy position is that this is a separate and unrelated incident from the one that occurred back on January 24th, leading to the expulsion of 5 hockey players and the sending-home of the radioactive young girl on administrative leave.

Separate? Certainly. The Copley Square Marriott is rather a good distance from the Milton Academy campus, and a hotel source confirms that "the birthday girl's mother reserved two rooms at the Courtyard by Marriott for a party on Saturday Feb. 12" - clearly the school was not involved.

Unrelated? Yea, right. Of course these incidents are related. First, it would appear that at least some of the principals - and certainly the main principal – were not only present but active participants in both incidents. Second, let’s be frank here – we’re talking about a culture of permissiveness that clearly is condoned at the school, though it obviously did not start there.

Then there’s this gem from the Herald story

But the birthday girl's father last night said he was unaware of any sexual activity at the sleepover he and his wife monitored from the room next door.

"They had some uninvited guests arrive and those uninvited guests were asked to leave,'' he said. "There was some evidence of drinking going on, but unless these kids are way beyond normal there was no sexual activity that I know of.''

Now, something clearly doesn't add up. If the parents were in the suite next door, don't you think they would notice if a pair of teenage girs, at least one of whom is underage, were answering the door to the next suite topless? Are we to assume that upon being greeted in such a fashion that your average teenage boy wouldn't whoop it up at least a little bit? Would these two girls be so cavalier as to answer the door half in the buff knowing that there were adults supposedly monitoring the action next door?

I suspect we've not heard the last of this story.

Massachusetts Democrats are raising an eyebrow overt the fact Governor Mitt Romney recently paid back to the Commonwealth roughly $5400 in travel expenses ($5429, to be exact). It's important to recall in this context than neither Governor Romney nor Lt. Governor Healey draw a salary for their service to the Commonwealth, and the Governor has in the past reimbursed the State Treasury for expenses that he believed were outside the normal bounds of his duties as Governor. In this case, the Governor took a day of vacation for some skiing.

"I spent one day out of state last week. I don't know that that's terribly excessive. It happened to be a vacation day and I got a chance to speak to a wide number of people and went to my home in the West and did some skiing. Hopefully, I'm allowed to take vacations," (Romney) said.

Still, because the Democrat Party in Massachusetts excels only in finding ways to produce bluster and noise while doing precisely nothing, they feel compelled to raise questions about the reimbursement. For example, the official mouthpiece for the state Democrats had this to say:

"What purpose do these out-of-state trips serve? The honest response is Gov. Romney's national ambitions. The taxpayers are really the ones being taken for a ride," (Jane Lane, MASS DEM mouthpiece) said.

Clever. Being taken for a ride, get it? Man, where do these folks come up with this A-list material?

Somehow, I seem to have missed all this angst when our Junior Senator was running around the country for two years running for President, missing Senate votes, not setting foot in the Commonwealth except to attend fundraisers.

Funny, isn't it.

Well, this is what I gather we can expect from a party that is too busy tying to pass a Cell-Phone User's Bill-of-Rights than to reform the bloated state bureaucracy. By the way, Steven Walsh of Lynn (Lynn, Lynn, city of Sin), the state rep mentioned in the Herald piece, who looks like he's about 25 and probably hasn't held a real job in his adult life, lists "Legislator" as his occupation. When you consider that our legislature is supposed to be a part-time gig, you get a feeling for the caliber of folks the Democrats recruit for service in the General Court of the Commonwealth.

I consider myself an environmentalist. I believe that "Conservation is Conservative" - the motto of Republicans for Environmental Protection, of which I am a proud (and new) member. I'm going shopping for a hybrid car to replace my gas-guzzling 1999 Ford POS.

That said, while I write the Boston-area is being hit with about the 38th serious snow storm this winter after enduring one of the mildest summers in generations. Could someone explain to me how this all ties-in to global warming? Please? Could ya?

Here's what I gather is the Dirt First!/EDF position on Global Warming:

- when it's hot in summer, that's global warming
- when it's mild in summer, that's global warming
- when it's freeze-your-face-off-cold in winter, that's global warming
- when it's mild in winter, that's global warming
- when it rains or snows a ton, that's global warming
- when it hardly ever rains or snows, that's global warming
- calm weather is caused by global warming
- severe weather is caused by global warming

It must be some theory - it literally encompasses every weather event know to man and even some known only to fish.

Look, no one likes dirty air and mucky water. I've long thought that if enviros could drop their over-the-top, marxist, anti-capitalist, 'everyone-should-poop-in-a-hole-and-wash-their-clothes-in-a-bucket' rhetoric, our environmental policy would be substantially more like the Sierra Club wants.

Makes me think most of these folks are really what I like to call "Watermelons" (Green on the outside, but Red - as in commie-pinko - on the inside).

Cheers.