Cicilline was elected in November to Congress in Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District (my home district), for the open seat vacated by Patrick Kennedy.

Cicilline is an openly gay Italian Jew, and Cicilline cultivated that public persona, often joking about the combination.  Cicilline also was the darling of the Providence liberal establishment, particularly those on the wealthy East Side of Providence, in the communities surrounding Brown University.

Cicilline’s congressional campaign was old-time classic Democratic demagoguery.  Cicilline mounted a tour of senior citizen centers in which he brazenly scared the elderly with false tales of how his opponent, Republican John Loughlin, wanted to take their social security money and invest it in the stock market. 

The Providence Journal, the only statewide newspaper and a powerhouse in local politics, failed to call out Cicilline for this tactic when I challenged the ProJo to do so.  Instead, the ProJo endorsed Cicilline in an October 25, 2010 editorial which praised Cicilline’s “fiscal discipline.”

While Providence was known to have fiscal problems prior to the November elections, those problems were viewed as manageable. 

In June 2010, when Loughlin challenged Cicilline’s fiscal record in Providence, Cicilline’s campaign blamed state aid cuts for increased borrowing by the city, but stressed that Providence’s finances were sound:

“With Governor Carcieri trying to balance Rhode Island’s budget on the backs of our cities and towns, the City of Providence faced deep cuts in state aid,” the campaign said in a statement. “Fortunately, the strong fiscal health that Providence has maintained under Mayor Cicilline’s leadership made it possible to hold the line on taxes and still balance the City’s budget. That made a lot more sense than raising taxes in the middle of a painful recession.”

“In fact, the Mayor’s good fiscal management has earned the City A bond ratings and awards for excellence in financial reporting,” the campaign concluded.

In August 2010, when a scandal broke over previously undisclosed pay raises for senior Providence staffers, Cicilline vigorously defended the city’s fiscal position against criticisms from Democratic City Council members:

Both the city council and Cicilline also disagree on the magnitude of the deficit the city is facing in 2011. [Director of Administration, Richard] Kerbel says the city has a gap of $29 million, due to a loss in state funding, but [chairman of the finance committee for the city council, John] Igliozzi said the deficit was actually $41 million.

At the time Cicilline was elected to Congress, and left Providence as something of a hero, no one could anticipate the bombshell to be dropped by the new Democratic Mayor, Angel Taveras.

In late February 2011, Mayor Taveras announced that he was issuing termination notices to every teacher in the Providence School District because the city’s finances were much worse than he had anticipated when he was sworn in in January.

A devastating report issued by a municipal review board earlier this week revealed that contrary to Cicilline’s rosy assurances the prior summer and fall, Providence faced devastating budget deficits:

Exactly two months after taking the oath of office, Mayor Angel Taveras held a press conference releasing the findings of the Municipal Finances Review Panel he commissioned immediately upon taking office. Through Executive Order, Taveras tasked the Panel with conducting a comprehensive review of the City’s current fiscal condition.

The findings of the Municipal Finances Review Panel show the true extent of Providence’s financial emergency, revealing that this fiscal year’s structural deficit is $70 million and next fiscal year’s structural deficit is $110 million. Without immediate remediation efforts, the City is expected to end this year with a deficit of as much as $29 million.

Now the finger-pointing begins.  The City Controller has been fired.

The ProJo, which was so solidly behind Cicilline in the November elections, has unleashed its formidable and talented pool of reporters on Cicilline, questioning whether he hid the extent of Providence’s problems:

Rep. David N. Cicilline denied Thursday that during his last months as mayor of Providence he masked a burgeoning financial crisis that has now emerged as a $29-million shortfall this year with much worse to come.

Democrat Cicilline, who served eight years as mayor, also denied that he lost his focus on the financial affairs of the city as he ran for Congress during the crucial first months of the current fiscal year.

“Of course not,” Cicilline replied when asked whether it was true, as charged by City Councilman John J. Igliozzi, that he had hidden the city’s financial problems through the use of “illusory revenues, borrowing and other tricks.” He spoke during an interview in the Capitol complex in Washington.

The ProJo published an exchange of e-mails between one of its reporters and Cicilline’s staff, including this e-mail from the reporter:

I would still like to talk to the Congressman today because we have multiple stories for tomorrow, one of which is how did it get so bad? What did the mayor know and when; what did he do to address the looming budget crisis?

Cicilline, as the mayor for 8 years, is key to that article. He still has responsibility to the taxpayers to explain. “No comment” until more detail is released is not an acceptable response. He continues to say he balanced budgets for all of his eight years as mayor. Clearly, that is not accurate.

Chances are very good that we will want to talk to him again tomorrow, or in the coming days, as this huge story for Rhode Island plays out.

There are many who believe he focused more on the campaign than on the city’s finances in his later months. He should respond to that criticism.

Does he believe his accountability as mayor stopped the day he entered Congress? What is his perspective and recommendation as a resident and taxpayer of Providence?

This is a conversation best handled in a give-and-take over the phone; not via e-mail. But, if it helps, some of the specific questions are below.

Alisha’s questions for Congressman Cicilline:

Providence had a $57-million deficit last year, according to the independent auditor.

It says this year’s structural deficit will be $70 million. Of that, Mayor Taveras has to find $29 million of cuts or revenues before June 30.

How did this happen?

Even with the loss of $30-plus million in state aid, the city under your administration clearly overspent. Were you aware of this and what specifically did you do to cut costs?

In one fiscal year, your administration also reduced the city’s reserve account from $17.36 million in July 2009 to $3.46 million by June 2010. You said at the time the money would be replenished with revenue. Why wasn’t it?

Cicilline has rushed back to Providence from Washington, D.C., to defend his record.  In an interview published today in the ProJo, Cicilline denied any misconduct, blaming everyone from prior administrations, to the state, to the City Council for the problems:

The Democrat told The Journal that while he was mayor, he cut hundreds of jobs, negotiated to have city employees share in their health insurance costs, accomplished pension reforms, and formalized payments in lieu of taxes from private colleges and universities to the city.
“I took my responsibility as mayor of the city of Providence seriously every single day I did it,” Cicilline said at his new Main Street office in Pawtucket. “I took my responsibilities to manage the city’s finances seriously. I consider having the privilege of serving this job for the last eight years an extraordinary honor.”

Cicilline’s explanations simply are not good enough.  Cicilline either knew of the fiscal problems and concealed them, willingly chose not to know the full extent of the problems, or negligently ignored the rising fiscal menace.

What did David Cicilline know and when did he know it?

That question will dominate Rhode Island politics for years to come
I wonder if the ProJo will endorse Cicilline again when he runs for re-election to Congress in November 2012, and whether another Scare Grandma tour will be enough to earn Cicilline a second term in Congress.

I suspect not, on both accounts.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

The Muslim Brotherhood must know that if it were to assume power so quickly, there would be a military backlash.  Much as the military in Turkey at one time (but no longer) was the guardian of secular society, so too the military in Egypt will be seen in the short run as the protector of secular Egyptian society.  So long as the military is independent and strong, the Muslim Brotherhood must tread lightly.

Victor Davis Hanson makes the case that the Muslim Brotherhood will follow the Iranian model, with only a year or two needed to take control:

In other words, when the crowds go home and return to their jobs, the most zealous, organized, and ruthless will go to work to consolidate power. Let us hope for the best — a secular, pro-Western constitutional republic backed by a professional military — and prepare for the worst — two to three years of revolutionary fervor as Islamists, month by month, gain control of the Arab world’s largest state after coming to power by one man, one vote, one time.

I certainly don’t discount that things could move that quickly, particularly if there were some event which provided a trigger mechanism for a takeover. 

But the Muslim Brotherhood’s announcement leads me to believe that it will follow the Turkish model, in which Islamist political parties over time gained influence over and ultimately control of the government, and used such power to purge the military of secular forces.  While Turkey is not Iran, yet, the power center of secularism has been neutered.

If the transition in Egypt is not handled well, and if the more secular forces do not have time to organize and consolidate power in the coming years, the result will be an Islamist state. 

Whether the Islamists in Egypt follow the Iranian or Turkish model really doesn’t matter.  The end result will be the same.

Hopefully there will be a new model, the Egyptian model, with a very different result.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

The first and most serious is the sickness living in Loughner’s head.  Evidence in the form of farewell videos, internet postings, and the recollections of people who knew him reveal a profoundly disturbed person who had veered far into a paranoid world.  Loughner’s complaints about government mind control and other rants were not “anti-government” in any political sense, but anti-government or anarchist in the Ted Kazynski-deranged sense.  We do not know Loughner’s motives, but those motives whatever they were were the byproduct of Loughner’s clearly delusional view of the world.

There also was a second sickness on display, and it was the swiftness and the vigor with which the left-wing blogosphere and some more mainstream Democrats immediately sought to blame Sarah Palin and right-wing “vitriol” in general for the shooting.

Within minutes of the shooting being made known, two of the highest profile left-wing bloggers, Markos Moulitsas of DailyKos and Matthew Yglesias of Think Progress, pulled out a 10-month-old electoral map used at a Sarah Palin website showing almost two dozen congressional districts being targeted, including Giffords’ district.  The map was similar to one used by the Democratic Leadership Committee to target Republicans in the prior election cycle, and as Howard Kurtz points out, simply typical of campaign rhetoric using military-themed language.

Markos explicitly accused Palin of having blood on her hands and Yglesias did so implicitly.  Through retweets of this message and the map, the left-blogosphere (with some exceptions who took a wait-and-see attitude) took up the cudgel of turning this shooting to their political advantage.  Think Progress ran updates with details on the Palin map and also an advertisement several months ago by Giffords’ congressional campaign opponent also using military terminology.  But clearly, Palin has been the focus, with a larger attack on “right wing vitriol.”

Not surprisingly, Keith Olbermann — one of the most hateful television personalities who names a nightly “Worst Person In The World” — joined the chorus.  Even The New York Times joined the fray, reporting on the Palin map in its initial coverage, and running a Paul Krugman blog post blaming right-wing rhetoric. 

Numerous sources also are reporting that Judge John M. Roll, who was killed, had been the subject of threats because of an immigration ruling, but by all accounts Roll was not targeted and was at the event in a shopping area purely by coincidence.

Yet not a single person pushing the blame-Palin line has offered a shred of evidence that Loughner ever saw Palin’s electoral map, was motivated by it, was right-wing (anectodally it appears Loughner was quite left-wing as of a few years ago), was motivated by right-wing radio, or did any of the things being assumed by the left-blogosphere, the mainstream media and some Democratic politicians.

Not a shred of evidence connecting Loughner to Palin, the Tea Parties, or the right wing, yet the left-blogosphere, mainstream media and Democratic politicians have erupted into a frenzy of name-calling directed at Palin and those who oppose Obama’s agenda. 

Who knows what evidence will come forward in coming days, but based on what we know now, the attempt to blame Palin and opponents of Obama for the shooting is every bit as delusional as Loughner’s attempt to blame government mind control.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have seen this type of reaction.  The meme that opponents of Obama are crazy and dangerous has been an explicit Democratic Party campaign strategy for over two years.  Here is just a partial list of events in which the left-wing and Democratic Party media operation has immediately blamed right-wing rhetoric, only to be proven wrong when the facts finally came out:  Bill Sparkman, Amy Bishop, The Fort Hood Shooter, The IRS Plane Crasher, The Cabbie Stabbing, and The Pentagon Shooter.

The facts will come out about the shooting and murder by Loughner.  Until then, we’ll be subjected to the sickness of people who seek to use the crime to their political advantage and who will worry about the facts later on, if ever.

In the meantime, our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of the deceased and those injured.

Notwithstanding the lame duck session, give Mitch McConnell some credit for the war which has been fought the past two years. 

When Obama took office, Republicans had been routed in two consecutive elections.  With Democrats having an overwhelming majority in the House, and a near filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, there was not much the Republican leadership could do.

As I noted before, in my post Some of Our Finest Hours, a variety of players and people fought valiant political battles to slow down the Obama onslaught.  Those battles, particularly over Obamacare, created the landscape which led to victories in 2010.

But there was only so much McConnell could do. 

All Obama had to do was flip one or two Republicans on an issue, and the filibuster was meaningless.  Yet, McConnell managed to keep Republicans on the same page as to Obamacare (as did John Boehner and Eric Cantor in the House), so that Democrats owned Obamacare completely.

In light of the November elections, the lame duck session has been something of a disaster.  The “tax deal” has been spun — as I predicted — as an Obama victory and move to the center.  In reality, it was neither, but perception is everything  in politics.

But the defeat of the Omnibus bill was an enormous victory which will give the incoming Republican House a chance to kill Obamacare in its infancy, and to impose fiscal discipline.  Again, McConnell managed to keep Republicans sufficiently together to kill the bill and force Harry Reid into his one humiliating defeat in the lame duck session.

Most of the damage in the lame duck session came, once again, from a handful of Republicans — some of whom are leaving office — not holding to their pledge to stall votes on any legislation until taxes and the budget resolution were passed.  And as National Journal found, Lisa Murkowski was Obama’s best friend in the lame duck session; I’m not sure what McConnell could do about that.

But the lame duck session, as dismal as it has been, cannot define the past two years.

Against overwhelming odds in which the defeat of the Obama agenda was not possible, the best that could be hoped for was to get Obama and the Democrats stuck in the mud, to have them advance to places they did not want to be, and to set up the stage for the electoral counterattack.

I’m not a military historian or tactician, but I do understand the concept of prepping the battlefield.  That is as true in politics as in war.

For his role in prepping the 2010 political battlefield, for getting Obama and Democrats stuck in the mud of their own creating, and for giving us the possibility of significant gains in the coming years, Mitch McConnell deserves our praise.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Contrary to popular media hype, repeal of the law does not itself require the military to allow open service by gays:

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by subsection (f) shall take effect only on the date on which the last of the following occurs:

(1) The Secretary of Defense has received the report required by the memorandum of the Secretary referred to in subsection (a).

(2) The President transmits to the congressional defense committees a written certification, signed by the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stating each of the following:

(A) That the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have considered the recommendations contained in the report and the report’s proposed plan of action.

(B) That the Department of Defense has prepared the necessary policies and regulations to exercise the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f).

(C) That the implementation of necessary policies and regulations pursuant to the discretion provided by the amendments made by subsection (f) is consistent with the standards of military readiness, military effectiveness, unit cohesion, and recruiting and retention of the Armed Forces.

There were a number of arguments in favor of (and against) repeal, but the one argument which carried zero weight with me was that prompt action was necessary to avoid having the change imposed through the courts.

How convenient this argument was considering that leaving such matters to popular will (whether by legislature or referendum) is the exact opposite of the strategy to date both as to DADT repeal and gay marriage.  The prospects of a judicially imposed military policy were slight, notwithstanding trial court rulings to the contrary.

That is not to say that the legislative rather judicial than approach was wrong.  My issue is that the overhyped threat of judicial action was used as an excuse by some not to take a position on the merits.

Repeal of DADT will have lasting societal impact and acceptance precisely because the legislative vote reflected changing societal views and public opinion, and will not be seen as having been forced on society by the sole unelected branch of government.

Not everything which is desired or good constitutes a constitutional right to be obtained through the courts.

When courts stretch to find constitutional grounds for political ends, the result is societal illegitimacy and lingering political turmoil.  Just ask Roe v. Wade.

Democracy worked on DADT repeal, which is a lesson advocates of gay marriage would do well to learn.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

As I have pointed out before, a marginally acceptable bill as originally announced has become an insult to voters who put Republicans back in charge of the House and substantially closed the gap in the Senate.  The bill now is what John Fund correctly calls a Tax Deal With A Side of Bacon.

I don’t begrudge the original “deal” although there were very good arguments against it. 

But did we really need to buy off Chuck Grassley (R-IA) with ethanol subsidies?  Of course not, this was all just pork barrel politics of the type which infuriated the electorate when Democrats were buying off Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu when it came to Obamacare.

We may not be able to stop it this time, but we should hold the Republican leadership to account for failing to provide courage and leadership on these payoffs.

This type of conduct has to stop, or the Republican leadership will rip the momentum out of the emerging Republican majority.

The voters in the Republican Party are not hostages, and we do not suffer from Stockholm Syndrome.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

That goes double for liberal entertainers and academics, and triple for the left-blogosphere, which is nuts-in-the-head (that’s a precise medical term in Austrian) when it comes to Palin.

But this obsession is not a one-way street. 

Admit it, many of us in the right-blogosphere are obsessed with liberals’ obsession with Palin.  Or more specifically, we are obsessed with defending against the relentless, irrational, and untruthful attacks.

I have 93 posts (94 with this one) in my Palin tag, most of which are devoted to responding to Palin Derangement Syndrome.

Andrew Sullivan wants a virtual inspection of Palin’s uterus to verify if Trig really is her son – I post on it.  A multitude of left-blogs claimed Trig was being used as a prop – I post on it.  They PhotoShop and generally mock Trig – I post on it.

They make up tales about Palin’s childhood health care, whether she had a boob job, make jokes about her giving hand jobs, claim she “rolled her eyes” when told someone was a teacher, examine the color of her bracelet to claim she dishonored war dead, falsely claim she advocated war with Iran, distort polling about her, attack her intelligence, berate her for recommending followers read a Thomas Sowell column, move next door to her to snoop on her, go after a blogger who defends her on MSNBC, claim her success is because men are aroused by her, go nuts because of her (first) book tour including counting the number of non-white people in crowds, blame her for a turkey farmer’s problems, suggest she contributed to a swine flu outbreak in Alaska, turn her into a pin-up girl for a news magazine, misrepresent her comment about “death panels,” claim she is “too sexy” to be a national politician, concoct the hoax that she didn’t know Africa was a continent, and hang her in effigy – and I post on it.

And it goes on and on.  And I am not alone.

It didn’t start out this way.  But it has developed not because of who Palin is, but who the Palin haters are.  Palin never did nothin’ to nobody, so to speak.

I’ve put forth the proposition that the best way to defeat Obama is to put forward a conservative but non-controversial candidate who will keep the election focused on Obama.  Because the Obama record and devolving persona are the equivalent of a death panel for Obama’s reelection. 

And nothing matters more than defeating Obama because the damage he is doing to the country is generational.

But as I reflect back on the past two plus years since Palin’s nomination, I’m wondering if an all-out, knock-down, drag-out fight with the Palin haters is just what this country needs most, not least.  And whether that is just as likely to be successful in defeating Obama as the “safe” route.

I still like Camille Paglia’s defense of Palin in October 2008, and Paglia’s observation of how disruptive Palin was to standard liberal doctrine:

The hysterical emotionalism and eruptions of amoral malice at the arrival of Sarah Palin exposed the weaknesses and limitations of current feminism. But I am convinced that Palin’s bracing mix of male and female voices, as well as her grounding in frontier grit and audacity, will prove to be a galvanizing influence on aspiring Democratic women politicians too, from the municipal level on up. Palin has shown a brand-new way of defining female ambition — without losing femininity, spontaneity or humor. She’s no pre-programmed wonk of the backstage Hillary Clinton school; she’s pugnacious and self-created, the product of no educational or political elite — which is why her outsider style has been so hard for media lemmings to comprehend.

And also Paglia’s assessment of the Democratic Party (notwithstanding her adoration of Barack Obama at the time) and how Palin hatred fit into that scheme:

The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances.

Nothing and no one brings out the worst in the Democratic Party, in the liberal media, entertainment and academic establishments, and in the left-wing blogosphere, as does Sarah Palin.  Bringing out this worst may be the path to a lasting, generational conservative victory. 

Maybe this is the battle which needs to be joined, once and for all.

The path forward, or just obsession?

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

With a usual flair for the dramatic, Steve Benen sums it ups, None Dare Call It Sabotage (my annotations in italics):

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine you actively disliked the United States, and wanted to deliberately undermine its economy. What kind of positions would you take to do the most damage?  [Let me guess ... still thinking ... I've got it ... Tea Party!] ….

Matt Yglesias had an item the other day that went largely unnoticed, but which I found pretty important.

“… Which is just to say that specifically the White House needs to be prepared not just for rough political tactics from the opposition (what else is new?) but for a true worst case scenario of deliberate economic sabotage.”  [Don't look here, or here, or here, or here, or here, just take his word for it.]

Budget expert Stan Collender has predicted that Republicans perceive “economic hardship as the path to election glory.” [Hello-o, Stan Collender is the same person responsible for the Worst. Prediction. Ever., that Barack Obama would by now be called "The Deficit Slayer."]

Paul Krugman noted in his column yesterday that Republicans “want the economy to stay weak as long as there’s a Democrat in the White House.”  [Central Falls! Central Falls! Attica! Attica!]

As best as I can tell, none of this analysis — all from prominent observers — generated significant pushback. The notion of GOP officials deliberately damaging the economy didn’t, for example, spark widespread outrage or calls for apologies from Matt or anyone else.  [Oh, please.  The lack of "push back" is not evidence that you are correct, there are only so many flies we can swat in a day.  I bet you think this annotation is about you, don't you, don't you?]

And that, in and of itself, strikes me as remarkable. We’re talking about a major political party, which will control much of Congress next year, possibly undermining the strength of the country — on purpose, in public, without apology or shame — for no other reason than to give themselves a campaign advantage in 2012.  [Psst, do you really want to go there? ... The War Is Lost, The Surge Has Failed, Bush Lied Us Into War, Bush stole the election, Bush knew about 9/11 beforehand, blah, blah, blah.]

Maybe now would be a good time to pause and ask a straightforward question: are Americans O.K. with this? [The Revolt of The Kulaks Has Begun.]

The Boehner/McConnell GOP appears willing to gamble: if they can hold the country back, voters will just blame the president in the end. And that’s quite possibly a safe assumption.  [Your "holding back" is our "Stop the Bleeding."]

If that’s the case, though, then it’s time for a very public, albeit uncomfortable, conversation. If a major, powerful political party is making a conscious decision about sabotage, the political world should probably take the time to consider whether this is acceptable, whether it meets the bare minimum standards for patriotism, and whether it’s a healthy development in our system of government. ["Dissent is patriotic!" is so 2006.]

I have an idea.  It worked really well before.  Remember, use your toughest people for this.

You’ll need them.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Mr. Jacobson,

You wrote: “While the mainstream media and left-wing blogs constantly tell us that Republicans and conservatives are dead politically, I don’t think they actually believe what they are saying.”

Actually, some of us remember 1993-94. We assumed you were “dead” then too. We learned a lesson there. Respond. And respond quickly, no matter how absurd or seemingly petty the attacks from conservatives.

This time, Mr. Jacobson, we know you’re down and we’re going to keep you there. We intend to step on your throat.

That’s why you’re seeing this reaction. You can’t get away with your garbage any longer.

Get used to it.

I could identify the person (he owns a fairly major business and probably caters to a lot of us wingnuts) but it’s not (yet) necessary, because it was the message not the person which was important.

Tomorrow is my revenge, and if you are watching, I hope you enjoy it.  And given the weather predictions, it will be served cold.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

From the moment she won the primary, O’Donnell was sexualized by the left with the excuse being O’Donnell’s 1996 video regarding masturbation.  That 14-year old tape has been the focus of jokes and ridicule without let up.

Rachel Maddow started it off on election night with much fanfare by announcing she had uncovered the video and the left blogosphere followed right along, including liberal feminists (image below).

The New York Times started its lead article about O’Donnell’s primary victory by talking about, you guessed it, masturbation.

The attacks from the left-blogpshere based on O’Donnell’s sexuality were so intense that columnist Kirsten Powers demanded the bloggers and media “grow up.”

The media is so obsessed that as I am writing this post while listening to Jay Leno on television, Leno is joking about how if O’Donnell is elected she will push her “anti-masturbation agenda.”

I have no doubt that the people who run Gawker thought they would be heroes for taking another sexual pound of flesh out of O’Donnell, just as Rachel Maddow became a hero for taking the 1996 video national. 

And why wouldn’t Gawker think it would be greeted with joyous laughter, after all, exposing and mocking O’Donnell’s sexuality had gone mainstream.

But Gawker went too far, with the overstated title of the article (it was not a “one night stand” as that term usually is used) and the details of O’Donnell’s pubic hair.

The backlash was inevitable.

I don’t believe for a second that the criticisms of Gawker by most of the left-blogosphere are genuine. 

These are crocodile tears from people who are afraid that the backlash will help O’Donnell politically, so they are pretending to unite in her defense on this limited point.  Just read almost any of their posts, and they condemn Gawker while taking pains to point out that O’Donnell still is crazy and dangerous.

The left-blogosphere and media enabled Gawker, and if there is any justice, the monster they created will come back to bite them in the voting booth on November 2.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

The left is focused on the failure of the U.S. to stop Iraqi-on-Iraqi brutality and torture. 

But there is a theme in the documents which has enormous implications not so much for the past, but for the future.  Iran has been killing American soldiers for years in Iraq, both directly and through groups trained and deployed by Iran, as has Syria to a lesser degree.

As reported by The New York Times, one of the newspapers given prior access to the Wikileaks files:

Scores of documents made public by WikiLeaks, which has disclosed classified information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, provide a ground-level look — at least as seen by American units in the field and the United States’ military intelligence — at the shadow war between the United States and Iraqi militias backed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

During the administration of President George W. Bush, critics charged that the White House had exaggerated Iran’s role to deflect criticism of its handling of the war and build support for a tough policy toward Iran, including the possibility of military action.

But the field reports disclosed by WikiLeaks, which were never intended to be made public, underscore the seriousness with which Iran’s role has been seen by the American military. The political struggle between the United States and Iran to influence events in Iraq still continues as Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has sought to assemble a coalition — that would include the anti-American cleric Moktada al-Sadr — that will allow him to remain in power. But much of the American’s military concern has revolved around Iran’s role in arming and assisting Shiite militias.

Few in the media will choose to make the connection between the intra-Iraqi violence and Iran’s role, but there is a connection.  Iraq without Iranian (and Syrian) meddling would not have devolved as it did.

If there was a clear failure of the Bush administration, it was the failure to deal with the Iranian and Syrian involvement in Iraq, under domestic Democratic Party pressure claiming that Bush officials were looking for a pretext to expand the war.

Our policy makers need to accept that the Iranian regime – much like al-Qaeda in the 1990s — declared war on us long before the American public knew it. 

If anything good comes from the Wikileaks disclosure, it will be to pull the mask off of Iranian involvement in Iraq, how much the Iranians contributed to the deterioration of Iraq after the 2003 invasion (and yes, the intra-Iraqi violence), and the continuing Iranian war against us.

When are we going to stop kidding ourselves about Iran?  The Iranian war against us cannot be swept under the rug anymore in light of Iran’s nuclear program.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Background here, Is Rhode Island’s Name Racist?

AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE

(CHANGING THE OFFICIAL NAME OF THE STATE)

(Section 1 of Article XIV of the Constitution)

Approval of the amendment to the Title, Preamble and Section 3 of Article III of the Rhode Island Constitution set forth below will have the effect of changing the official name of the State from “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations” to “State of Rhode Island”:

Full text of amendment for Question 1

The Title of the Constitution shall be amended to read as follows:

CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND

The Preamble of the Constitution shall be amended to read as follows:

We, the people of this State which state shall henceforth be known as the state of Rhode Island, grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us to enjoy, and looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and to transmit the same, unimpaired, to succeeding generations, do ordain and establish this Constitution of government.

Section 3 of Article III of the Constitution shall be amended to read as follows:

Section 3. Oath of general officers.

- – All general officers shall take the following engagement before they act in their respective offices, to wit: You being by the free vote of the electors of this state of Rhode Island, elected unto the place of do solemnly swear (or, affirm) to be true and faithful unto this state, and to support the Constitution of this state and of the United States; that you will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties of your aforesaid office to the best of your abilities, according to law: So help you God. [Or: This affirmation you make and give upon the peril of the penalty of perjury.]

Bonus question:  How long before an amendment is proposed to remove the words “grateful to Almighty God”?

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

That’s not the literal name of the tour, but it is a fair characterization of the “Fighting for Social Security” tour of senior citizen centers launched last week by Democratic congressional candidate David Cicilline.

Cicilline, the current Mayor of Providence, is running in the 1st District of Rhode Island, for the open seat currently held by Patrick Kennedy, who is not running again.  The Republican candidate is John Loughlin.  The Cook Report recently moved the race from Likely-D to Lean-D.

As part of the Tour, Cicilline will visit senior citizen centers around the state to warn the elderly that Republicans are a threat to their checks. 

Ciciilline kicked off at a senior center in Pawtucket, RI, where Cicilline and two state Democratic candidates offered free pizza to lure seniors to attend.  As reported by a local Rhode Island political website (see also video below and image above):

Democratic Congressional candidate David Cicilline yesterday vowed to fight with “every fiber of his body” any efforts to privatize Social Security, which he warned his Republican opponent, John Loughlin, would do if elected to Congress.

Cicilline also said he would help seniors get transportation to everything from doctor visits to senior centers. He also said he would get more federal funding for prescription drugs, saying seniors shouldn’t have to choose between their medicine and buying groceries. “In the richest, most powerful nation in the world, no senior … should face that choice,” Cicilline said. He spoke at the St. Germain Manor Senior Center in Pawtucket, kicking off what his campaign called the “Fighting for Social Security” tour.

The Providence Journal quoted part of Cicilline’s speech in which Cicilline falsely told seniors their checks would be at risk if Republicans were elected (emphasis mine):

“There are people all across this country, Republicans, that are [saying] what we have to do is privatize Social Security,” Cicilline told about 50 seniors who had gathered for a candidate-sponsored pizza dinner. “Now, if we privatize Social Security, and you take what happened in the stock market over the last several years, that will put so many of our seniors and people who rely on Social Security at a terrible, terrible risk.”

Cicilline’s presentation to seniors was false in numerous respects. There is no threat to the checks to be received by seniors now in the system either under the present system or with any reforms now in the early stages of discussion. None, yet Cicilline cynically suggests to the elderly that their checks are in jeopardy.

Cicilline’s fear mongering about ”privatization” also was misleading because the types of changes proposed by people like Paul Ryan would not affect anyone currently receiving social security, or even people a decade or more away, and would not require people to invest in the stock market.

Yet Cicilline raises the bogeyman of privatization to scare the elderly at senior centers.

There is a method to Cicilline’s political madness.  Rhode Island has one of the highest percentages of seniors in the nation, so scaring the elderly makes good politics.

What type of politician lures the elderly to meetings with offers of free pizza only to scare them half to death with false claims that their social security checks are in danger?

Well, let’s just say Cicilline is not one of those Democrats running away from Obama.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

“Support the most conservative candidate who is electable.”

The Buckley Rule is for primaries.  The Delaware primary is over.  To paraphrase Krauthammer, Castle supporters didn’t go to Delaware and make it happen.

The choice now is between Christine O’Donnell and Chris Coons.

Yet some of our leading bloggers and pundits are on a mission to prove that they were right, and that O’Donnell was not the best pick.  To that end, they regurgitate every snippet of gossip and every tape from the 1990s without context or reflection, much less waiting until the O’Donnell campaign has a chance to respond.

They must have a pretty dim view of the voters in Delaware to think that some sophomoric videos from the 1990s outweigh the national issues hovering over the race, not to mention Coons’ recent problems, like multiple tax increases and an exploding budget deficit in his county.

Do these bloggers on the right think that someone whose job just got shipped to China because of our excessive regulation and taxes gives half a crap about whether Christine O’Donnell “dabled into witchcraft” when she was younger?

Do our self-appointed guardians of “the Buckley Rule” think that the tens of thousands of Delawareans who will be forced off their private health plans, whose businesses will be decimated by cap-and-trade, whose 2nd Amendment rights are under attack, whose right to be left the hell alone is about to evaporate, really care that when Christine O’Donnell was young and irresponsible, she was young and irresponsible?

Does high blog traffic trump our collective national desire to see our kids grow up in a nation in which the state is the servant not the master (h/t Margaret Thatcher)?

To those on the right playing into the Think Progress and Media Matters playbook because they think it makes them look wise, don’t you see the game? 

The left is doing to O’Donnell exactly what they did to Sharron Angle — swamp her with accusations and nonsense in the days after the primary to keep her from organizing her campaign.  The Nevada primary was months ago, so Angle had a chance to recover.  O’Donnell doesn’t have that luxury of time given the late primary.  She needs to integrate millions of dollars in new cash, gear up with staff, and plan her attack. 

With each of your self-righteous columns and snide blog posts, you become part of the problem not part of the solution.

The woman (at the time, a young woman) went on MTV and Maher and who knows where else, and said somethings that she would not say now.  For that sin you are ready to toss her overboard so that you can declare yourselves to have been wiser than the unwashed voters who elected her in the primary?

And we call the Democrats elitist snobs?  Stop being so damn selfish.  November is not about who was right or wrong in the primaries.  If Castle had won, O’Donnell supporters would have rallied around him, or at least kept their mouths shut.

Quin Hillyer and Mary Katherine Ham have advised that there not be a conservative blog war, because we have more important things to do right now.  Fine, the perps have been called out already and it is time to rally around the effort.

Now that the primary is over, so too is the Buckley Rule.  Please take notice that the Lombardi Rule is in effect:

“The object is to win fairly, by the rules – but to win.” 

So [names of conservative blogs and pundits still dumping on O'Donnell deleted], get over it and get to work defeating Democratic rubber-stamp hack Chris Coons.

Because, as Hillyer says, “[w]e are fighting for our country here.”

And winning that fight in November is all that matters.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

Christine O’Donnell is polling worse than a month ago, which proves that all of our attacks on her for the past month which drove down her numbers were justified.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Just another example of how we are held hostage when our foreign policy becomes a means of satisfying some deep psychological need to be forgiven and liked. 

When the desire to be liked by people who never will like us is the policy, we are hostages to irresponsible people like:

• The Florida Pastor who knew what the reaction would be to his stunt, and thereby got his 15 minutes of fame to such an extent that the President and Defense Secretary had to beg him to stop; and
• The Cordoba House Imam who has made the fear of violence part of his media strategy, and who, even before that, got his 15 minutes of fame to such an extent that the President and Mayor had to beg him to keep going..

Our nation now is held hostage to every kook with a match and every huckster who knows how to play the Islamophobia card.

I’d rather be respected than liked, and right now in the world, we are neither.  We’re just hostages.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Two days after Sarah Palin fired up a large crowd at Glenn Beck’s Restoring Honor rally in Washington, a newly released survey suggests a clear majority of Americans don’t think the former vice presidential nominee has the right credentials to be president.

According to the new survey from Vanity Fair and CBS News’ 60 Minutes, only 1 in 4 of all adults thinks Palin is qualified to be commander-in-chief while 60 percent say she is not.

This description of the poll is an outright fabrication.  The actual poll question had nothing to do with credentials, qualifications, or even electability.  Here was the actual question: “Do you think SARAH PALIN would have the ability to be an EFFECTIVE PRESIDENT?”:

Similarly distorted versions are all over the internet, in which the authors misread the actual question asked, and use it to opine on Palin’s qualifications or election prospects.

Time Magazine’s Swampland blog, which partners with CNN, asks the headline question Could Palin Be President? (emphasis mine):

A new poll suggests not. Only one in four Americans consider her qualified to be commander in chief, with 60 percent sure that she is not qualified. Those are awful numbers and I’m one who thinks the prospects of a Palin presidency are, for the moment, quite unlikely.

Again, there is no truth to the characterization that the poll concerned qualifications or election prospects.

(added) Whether someone would be an “effective” president could turn on a number of factors, including the strength of opposition. On that account, given pervasive Palin Derangement Syndrome in the media, as witnessed by the CNN article linked above, Palin may have trouble being an “effective” president.

These Vanity Fair polls are a joke; there are few choices given to the interviewees, there is no depth of questioning, and they mix pop culture questions (such as Which word is overused the most?) in with political questions.

That said, at least accurately report the question and the context.

Which is what HuffPo did, by also noting other polls on Palin’s prospects:

While the 2012 election is a long way off and poll numbers are difficult to interpret, in one recent poll of potential 2012 matchups, conducted Aug. 6-9 by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, 43% of registered voters said they would support Palin to 49% for Obama.

HuffPo more fair than CNN and Time Magazine.  It has come to this.

Cross-Posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

I posted earlier about a school which banned the singing of Happy Birthday out of fear of, well, it’s a little hard to articulate the irrational.

But that’s not the real story, according to Peter Daou, who uses the following diagram to explain how the extreme right wing moves the national discussion on almost any topic to the right:

What does this have to do with the Happy Birthday story?  According to Daou, the real story is that the extreme right wing is using the Happy Birthday story to, well, it’s a little hard to articulate the irrational:

So when we see seemingly inane local controversies brewing, we should keep in mind that these can quickly become national conflagrations if the right determines it’s a way to manipulate the public discourse.

In that regard, the “war on Christmas” has been raging for years and now it seems the war on Happy Birthday has begun….

Yes, the right is manipulating the national discourse by pointing to the absurdity of an elementary school banning the singing of Happy Birthday.

I see.

Can “they lied us into the War on Happy Birthday” be far behind?

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Frank’s point apparently is that opposition to the Cordoba mosque and Islamic center being built in the planned location has undercut General David Petraeus’s surge strategy in Afghanistan, and doomed the war to failure (emphasis mine):

Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.

It is, of course, interesting that Rich now claims that opposition to the Cordoba mosque is what will cause the surge to fail and the war to be lost. 

Because in October 2009, Rich predicted that an Iraq-style surge (which Rich also opposed) would not work in Afghanistan and the war would be lost:

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention. Even if the countries were interchangeable, the wars are not. No one-size surge fits all. President Bush sent the additional troops to Iraq only after Sunni leaders in Anbar Province soured on Al Qaeda and reached out for American support. There is no equivalent “Anbar Awakening” in Afghanistan.

And again in December 2009, Rich declared the nascent surge a failure and the war already lost after Obama announced his new Afghanistan policy (emphasis mine):

AFTER the dramatic three-month buildup, you’d think that Barack Obama’s speech announcing his policy for Afghanistan would be the most significant news story of the moment. History may take a different view. When we look back at this turning point in America’s longest war, we may discover that a relatively trivial White House incident, the gate-crashing by a couple of fame-seeking bozos, was the more telling omen of what was to come.

Obama’s speech, for all its thoughtfulness and sporadic eloquence, was a failure at its central mission. On its own terms, as both policy and rhetoric, it didn’t make the case for escalating our involvement in Afghanistan. It’s doubtful that the president’s words moved the needle of public opinion wildly in any direction for a country that has tuned out Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq alike while panicking about where the next job is coming from…

What he’s ended up with is a too-clever-by-half pushmi-pullyu holding action that lacks both a credible exit strategy and the commitment of its two most essential partners, a legitimate Afghan government and the American people. Obama’s failure illuminated the limits of even his great powers of reason.

On July 31, just three weeks ago, Rich even wrote a column titled Kiss This War Goodbye, arguing that the leak of tens of thousands of classified files by WikiLeak’s was a Pentagon Papers-like turning point in Afghanistan, signaling that the war was lost.

So if I understand Rich’s current column correctly, the surge which Rich declared in October 2009 could not work in Afghanistan, which Rich declared had failed by December 2009, and the war that Rich kissed-off just three weeks ago, really would have worked out for us if not for the wingnuts who object to the location of the Cordoba mosque and Islamic Center.

Am I crazy and dangerous for pointing out Rich’s intellectual laziness and predictability?

Just insert at random into blog posts on almost any topic, and it will work like a charm:

“This just makes the Dems look weak, unorganized, cowardly, and unwilling to take a stand for principles they plainly believe in.”

Contest: Name a topic, person, or policy as to which the quote will not work.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Outrage! Shock! How Dare She!

And not just from the usual suspects.

I say:

How refreshing! Truth! More please!

Now Harry Reid would never make such a mistake. He’s too much the politician to tell the truth about his media strategy, such as why he is ducking and running from a debate with Angle (he’s “too busy” for several months).

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

One common theme, echoed by Sam Stein at HuffPo, and various people he quotes, is that the original clip released by Breitbart was “false.”

To portray the clip as “false” is wrong. The clip itself was what it was. No one is claiming that the words were changed or edited within the time span shown on the clip.

The original Sherrod clip was no worse, and in many way much more fair, than the clips and words taken out of context that we see every day at Democratic media machines.

I previously posted about how Gawker and Think Progress ran headlines that Bill O’Reilly had said that a black guest looked like a drug dealer? Those headlines and the articles were literally true, but wildly out of context meant to portray O’Reilly as racist. Breitbart’s conduct did not rise anywhere near that.

The original Sherrod clip certainly gave enough of a flavor that Sherrod was talking about something in the past, and had changed (watch the clip beginning at 1:50, where Sherrod mentions that she no longer views race as the real issue). The full speech gives an even more complete version of that supposed transformation, but that does not make the shorter version “false.”

Even Breitbart’s original description of the tape — before the full tape was available, actually disclosed Sherrod’s transformation (emphasis mine):

In the first video, Sherrod describes how she racially discriminates against a white farmer. She describes how she is torn over how much she will choose to help him. And, she admits that she doesn’t do everything she can for him, because he is white. Eventually, her basic humanity informs that this white man is poor and needs help. But she decides that he should get help from “one of his own kind”. She refers him to a white lawyer.

To the extent the original clip and Breitbart’s description portrayed Sherrod as having engaged in a racist act in the past, such implication literally was true, as Sherrod admits. The actions people in the Obama administration took, and the conclusions the media drew from that literal truth may have been unfair and precipitous, but that does not make the clip defamatory.

I think Sherrod’s chances of winning a suit are much, much weaker than portrayed by Stein and the people he quotes.

Any such suit would be political in nature, done for some ulterior motive.

Which, as I have pointed out, may not be the worst of outcomes for Breitbart, because a lot of people will be in the hot seat.

Cross-posted with updates as Legal Insurrection Blog

Coakley had almost a 30 point lead in the polls and much more money. Democrats held an enormous registration advantage, and SEIU was working to get our her vote. Coakley was the state Attorney General, with almost 100% name recognition, whereas Brown had been a state Senator with little statewide appeal. The open seat was held by Ted Kennedy, so winning the seat held a special importance for Democrats.

Democrats mocked Brown because in his younger years Brown had posed almost totally nude for Cosmo; Brown was not a serious candidate, they said. As a candidate whose support arose out of the Tea Party movement, Brown was painted as extreme.

Brown received little help from mainstream Republicans. Mitt Romney helped logistically, as did the Republican National Senatorial Committee, but otherwise Brown was on his own. John McCain gave an early endorsement, but otherwise, Washington, D.C. Republicans stay clear of Brown. Lacking establishment Republican support, everyone speculated whether Sarah Palin would endorse Brown, and whether that would help or hurt in Blue Massachusetts.

But Scott Brown won the election by several percentage points. But it wasn’t easy. Coakley supporters in the nutroots and in Democratic Party circles tried to paint Brown as a “Birther” and hostile to rape victims (and racist too).

Brown, however, was able to tap into the rising disgust in the nation with Washington, D.C. politicians. In hindsight, it probably worked to Brown’s advantage that establishment Republicans kept their distance. But at least none of them actively tried to undermine Brown.

Fast forward to Nevada 2010. There are two narratives the Reid campaign wants to develop.

First, that Angle is “extreme” and crazy. But that cannot win the election for Reid. Because Reid has too long a history as the engineer on the Obamaconomy train wreck. With double digit unemployment and the highest foreclosure rate in the country, Nevada is a much better candidate for a revolt against massive deficits and debt, stifling over regulation of businesses, destruction of the health care system, and lobbyist funded professional politicians epitomized by Harry Reid.

Second, like the Coakley campaign, Reid seeks to create a sense of inevitability. Reid has been there so long, has handed out so many favors he now can call in, and is so good at “vaporizing” his opponents, that Sharron Angle doesn’t stand a chance. Notwithstanding her lead in the polls (which undoubtedly will tighten quickly), Angle should just hang it up. Demoralizing the opposition and getting voters to choose “None of the Above” (which is an option on the Nevada ballot), is Harry Reid’s best chance.

This narrative of inevitability has been picked up by the disgruntled and bitter Bob Bennett, current Republican Senator from Utah who claims that his inside sources tell him Harry Reid is sure to win. Bennett is hardly neutral; he could not even convince delegates in Utah to put him back on the ballot as a result of a Tea Party inspired revolt against establishment Republicans. So now Bennet has decided to get even by trying to undermine Angle.

Angle’s job is to keep the focus on Harry Reid, and keep pushing forward despite back stabbing by people like Bob Bennett.

As long as Harry Reid’s role in destroying the economy is on the ballot, Angle has a good chance of winning. At least as good as Scott Brown.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Last January, Democrats in Massachusetts sent out a mailer accusing Scott Brown of wanting to deny medical care to rape victims, because he had introduced state legislation providing health care providers with a religious conscience exemption to providing abortion-related services, so long as alternative arrangements were in place. 

The provision proposed by Brown was almost identical to a provision which was in the Democratic health care bill crafted by Harry Reid.

Since such exemption would have applied even to circumstances where the abortion services arose out of a rape, the Democrats played the political rape card by sending a mailer claiming that Brown wanted rape victims turned away from hospitals.

Now we are seeing the rape card used against Sharron Angle because she is pro-Life. 

On mulitple occasions, Angle has stated her personal belief that abortion is not justified because life starts at conception.  Since Angle’s view is that innocent life should not be taken, the circumstances of the conception make no difference.  As a result, Angle’s personal belief is that she would counsel even rape victims who become pregnant to consider carrying the child to term.

Angle’s personal belief is shared by tens of millions of Americans, and is the position of Catholic Church among others.

Predictably, Harry Reid’s supporters have tried to spin Angle alternatively as pro-rape or as someone who wants to force her view on rape victims. 

But nothing Angle actually has said supports such conclusions, any more so than Scott Brown proposing a religious conscience exemption made Scott Brown pro-rape or hostile to rape victims.

Is Harry Reid pro-rape and hostile to rape victims because the health care bill has a religious conscience exemption which would apply even in cases of rape?

Playing the rape card is about as low as it gets.  But then again, when the goal is to “vaporize” your political opponents, nothing is beyond the pale.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

That fake website was launched by the Reid campaign, as a press release from the Reid Campaign made clear, Reid Campaign Re-Launches Sharron Angle’s Campaign Website:

As reported by Politico, the original Disclaimer at the bottom of the fake website stated that it was paid for by the Reid campaign.

The Reid campaign was forced to take down the fake website because the Reid campaign was misleading the public, and also obtaining names and contact information on Angle supporters under false pretenses.

After the fake website was taken down, the web address “TheRealSharronAngle.com” was re-directed to a cheesy website supposedly run by the Nevada State Democratic Party (see below), titled “Sharon Angle’s Underground Bunker.”

The Reid campaign then scrubbed the fake website, and re-launched it in a manner which was less deceptive, including eliminating the forms for Angle supporters to provide names and e-mail addresses and to sign up to volunteer.

But an interesting thing happened after the Reid campaign scrubbed the fake Angle website.

Now, the Disclaimer at the bottom claims that the website has no connection to the Reid campaign: “PAID FOR BY THE NEVADA STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY. NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.”

But clearly this Disclaimer is not true. The fake website was a creation of the Reid campaign, and continues to be run by the Reid campaign even after the scrubbed version was re-launched (emphasis mine):

“While we disagree with the assertions in Angle’s “cease and desist” letter, we took the website down temporarily to make it more clear that the intent is solely to point out how far Sharron Angle is running from her own embarrassing record,” said Reid campaign manager Brandon Hall. “We are not attempting to deceive anyone. Unfortunately, that point was lost on Angle’s campaign as evidenced by the threat of legal action to get her own website taken down. We made minor changes to address her frivolous concerns and now hope the new Sharron Angle can now focus on explaining why the old Sharron Angle’s views are so unacceptable.”

So if the Reid campaign launched and then re-launched the fake Angle website, and controls the content, why does the Disclaimer now claim no connection to the Reid campaign?

The answer almost certainly lies in the campaign finance laws, which limit how much money (or valuable goods or services) a state campaign committee can donate to or coordinate with a candidate’s campaign.

By claiming the fake Angle website has no connection to or coordination with the Reid campaign, the Nevada State Democratic Party would not have to include such expenditures towards their limits, allowing it to spend more money to help the Reid campaign.

Here is how the Congressional Research Service summarizes the law (emphasis mine):

Federal campaign finance law provides political parties with three major options for providing financial support to House, Senate, and presidential candidates: (1) direct contributions, (2) coordinated expenditures, and (3) independent expenditures. With direct contributions, parties give money (or in the case of in-kind contributions, financially valuable services) to individual campaigns, but such contributions are subject to strict limits; most party committees are limited to direct contributions of $5,000 per candidate, per election….

Coordinated expenditures allow parties (notwithstanding other provisions in the law regulating contributions to campaigns) to buy goods or services on behalf of a campaign, and to discuss those expenditures with the campaign. Candidates may request that parties make coordinated expenditures, and may request specific purchases, but parties may not give this money directly to campaigns. Because parties are the spending agents, they (not candidates) report their coordinated expenditures to the FEC. Coordinated party expenditures are subject to limits based on office sought, state, and voting-age population (VAP). Exact amounts are determined by formula.

(Per the CRS, the Citizens United case has not changed the these expenditure limits.)

It is unclear how the Nevada State Democratic Party will report the costs associated with the fake Angle website.  The Disclaimer at the bottom of the fake Angle website indicates, however, that the Party plans on claiming that the expenditures are neither directly to nor coordinated with the Reid campaign, a clearly false factual assertion.

One has to wonder how many other activities by the Nevada State Democratic Party really are being controlled by the Reid campaign, and therefore should count towards the spending limits.  For example, the “Sharron Angle’s Underground Bunker” website has the same disclaimer as the fake Angle website; is the Reid campaign really behind that other website as well?

I have a strong suspicion that Kelly Steele, the person tasked by the Reid campaign to “vaporize” Reid’s political opponents, is behind the “Sharron Angle’s Underground Bunker” website. 

On June 23, after I posted a negative analysis of the Reid campaign strategy, the Twitter accounts of both Steele and Angle’s Bunker signed up to follow me at precisely the same minute.  It would be an amazing coincidence if Steele and the person behing the other website acted at precisely the same minute.

If the Reid campaign wants to issue a denial that it has any connection to the Sharron Angle’s Underground Bunker website, I would be happy to post that denial as an update.  If there is a connection, the Reid campaign should come clean.

What is clear is that by now claiming the fake Angle website has no connection to and is not coordinated with the Reid campaign, the Reid campaign is playing games with the federal campaign finance laws. 

The question is, what else is the Reid campaign secretly doing behind the scenes to “vaporize” Sharron Angle, and are those activities properly being accounted for in accordance with the federal campaign finance laws?

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Contrary to the spin put out by the Reid campaign and its sympathizers, the threatened legal action was not just because the Reid campaign merely quoted Angle’s positions, but the fact that the fake website misled viewers and obtained names and email addresses of Angle supporters under false pretenses.

But now the website is back up, without the spoofing and phishing. 

Now that the Reid campaign is done phishing, can it find the time to schedule Reid for a debate with Angle?

Or is Reid still too busy for the next several months?

If Sharron Angle really is a “mental patient” (as noted plagiarist Mike Barnacle at MSNBC claims), and so extreme (as the Reid campaign claims), then Reid should be jumping at the chance to debate Angle.

Instead, Reid is hiding in his bunker (to use the verbiage of the Reid campaign).

How about a debate?

What is Harry Reid afraid of?  Being made to look bad by an “extreme” “mental patient”?

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Harry Reid’s campaign, however, took the code from the prior Angle website and launched a website called “TheRealSharronAngle.com.” The fake website was what, in internet terminology, is called spoofing, where a seemingly real website is created, usually to obtain information under false pretenses (frequently referred to as “phishing”).

The purported purpose of the spoofed website — according to a press release by the Reid campaign — was to preserve Angle’s position statements on various issues — but that purpose surely was contrived, since Angle’s prior website was cited and quoted extensively. All of Angle’s positions, as reflected on the original website, were fully preserved.

There even was a controversy back in June when the “issues” section of Angle’s original website momentarily disappeared as the website was being revamped, and there were plenty of screen shots and other information preserved from the original website. For example, in early June a reporter easily recovered old Angle web pages from Google Cache.

There simply would be no legitimate reason for the Reid campaign to create a spoofed Angle website if what it merely wanted to do was preserve Angle’s policy positions.

While creating a spoofed website may have reflected the childish ways of the Reid campaign, the way the Reid campaign set up the spoofed website was more nefarious.

The Reid campaign activated the prior sections of Angle’s original website where supporters of Angle could enter their e-mail and other contact information for future campaign communications, as well as a form to sign up as a volunteer. I know that the “contact” section was operable because I filled it out the form and hit the “submit” button.

Turning these contact and volunteer functions live must have been a deliberate Reid campaign decision, because the “contribute” function on the spoofed website was inoperable. The Reid campaign clearly wanted to gather names and contact information on Angle supporters, but did not want to go so far as to take fraudulent donations.

Since the website was titled “The Real Sharron Angle” and looked like Angle’s original website, it is likely that some people would have thought it was the real Sharron Angle website, and would provided private information under false pretenses if the fake website had continued.

The Reid campaign pulled the spoofed website this weekend, however, after receiving a demand letter from the Angle campaign threatening legal action (emphasis in original):

In addition, it appears that the only interactive function on the fake site is the capturing of names of persons seeking to add their names and email addresses as supporters of Sharron Angle.

Surely the Reid campaign is not planning to obtain the names and email addresses of Angle supporters under false pretenses and the to misuse those names and email addresses for some purposes other than the purposes for which the individual signors intended!

The web address of the spoofed website now redirects to a cheesy website run by the Nevada Democratic Party titled “Sharron’s Underground Bunker.”

Needless to say, the Reid campaign and its supporters are spinning the incident as one where Angle wanted to preserve what TPM calls Angle’s “Memory Hole.”

But the reality is that by creating a spoofed website with the contact and volunteer functions operable, the Reid campaign sought to obtain personally identifiable information about Angle supporters. At a minimum, such information about Angle supporters would have been gathered under false pretenses.

The phishing function also would have been disruptive to the Angle campaign because people who thought they had volunteered for the Angle campaign never would have been contacted to help out because they had, in fact, been tricked.

Regardless of whether the Reid campaign’s spoofing and phishing attempt was criminal, it was sleazy.

Harry Reid needs to explain why his campaign engages in such tactics. Perhaps after he explains why he refuses to debate Sharron Angle for several months.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Here goes Michael Steele setting policy for the GOP again. The likes of John McCain and Lindsey Graham will be interested to hear that the Republican Party position is that we should walk away from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban without finishing the job. They’d also be interested to hear that the Chairman of the Republican Party thinks we have no business in Afghanistan notwithstanding the fact that we are there because we were attacked by terrorists on 9-11.

And, the American people will be interested to hear that the leader of the Republican Party thinks recent events related to the war are ‘comical’ and that he is betting against our troops and rooting for failure in Afghanistan. It’s simply unconscionable that Michael Steele would undermine the morale of our troops when what they need is our support and encouragement. Michael Steele would do well to remember that we are not in Afghanistan by our own choosing, that we were attacked and that his words have consequences.

Certainly, we can expect Harry Reid to join in the chorus, and demand that Steele step down for (allegedly) not supporting the troops and hoping for failure. Right?

After all, Michael Steele called for Reid to resign over Reid’s “Negro dialect” comment. There’s no love lost here.

Reid will seize the moral high ground and demand that Steele be held accountable for the Afghanistan war comments, and that the issue be publicly debated, right?

Wrong, because people in Nevada have not forgotten Reid’s “the [Iraq] war is lost” prognosis:

In 2007, Sen. Reid opposed the Iraq “surge” and questioned publicly the integrity of Bush’s general — David Petraeus.In 2010, Reid supports the Afghanistan “surge” and gushes public praise for Obama’s general — David Petraeus.

Sen. Reid owes the country an explanation. He can start with Nevadans, who must decide in November whether he’s fit to send back to Washington. But in the end, he must stand accountable to the soldiers who won his “lost” war.

There is a poster child for betting against our troops and rooting for failure. But it’s not Michael Steele.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Krugman blames Republicans, whom he terms “heartless”:

By the heartless, I mean Republicans who have made the cynical calculation that blocking anything President Obama tries to do — including, or perhaps especially, anything that might alleviate the nation’s economic pain — improves their chances in the midterm elections.

The only problem is that Krugman ignores that Republicans were in favor of extending benefits by taking the money from elsewhere in the budget, including unused stimulus funds. It was the Democrats who balked at this solution, insisting on running up more debt. So the entire premise of Krugman calling Republicans heartless amounts to nothing more than a fiscal policy dispute. Why aren’t Democrats heartless for not going along with the Republican proposal?

Next, Krugman terms “clueless” people like Sharron Angle who have mentioned that the welfare state, including unemployment benefits, can create a disincentive for people to take jobs they otherwise would not take. Krugman admits that this is a real phenomenon:

Do unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek work? Yes: workers receiving unemployment benefits aren’t quite as desperate as workers without benefits, and are likely to be slightly more choosy about accepting new jobs. The operative word here is “slightly”: recent economic research suggests that the effect of unemployment benefits on worker behavior is much weaker than was previously believed. Still, it’s a real effect when the economy is doing well.

Krugman says this phenomenon is irrelevant in a bad economy, but once again he ignores that Republicans were willing to extend benefits if the benefits were paid for in the budget, not paid for with more money borrowed from China. So who is the clueless one?

Last, Krugman views unemployment benefits as immediately stimulative in the economy, because the money will be spent. That’s a fair point, which is why it makes sense to use stimulus funds for this purpose, rather than propping up bloated state governments and union contracts. So Krugman’s point actually defeats his point.

Back to the title question. Is Paul Krugman heartless, clueless or confused?

Yes.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

That was bad enough for people looking to buy used cars.

But the market distortion caused by government intervention is hitting Rhode Islanders particularly hard.

Rhode Island taxes the value of automobiles (yeah, welcome to our nightmare). The value of the automobile for tax purposes is based on the fair market value at December 31 of the preceding calendar year.

So Rhode Islanders are being taxed this year based on the inflated value of used cars last year primarily as a result of the Cash for Clunkers program.

But it gets worse. Rhode Island used to exempt the first $6,000 of value, but in a revenue raising measure, is allowing municipalities to lower the exemption to $500.

The result is a nasty tax bite for Rhode Islanders who own used cars, as detailed in The Providence Journal:

If you own a car in Rhode Island, be prepared for a shock when you look at your property tax bill….

“My own vehicle went up,” said Linda L. Cwiek, chairwoman of the state Vehicle Value Commission, which sets uniform values for tax assessors statewide. She drives a 2007 Jeep Grand Cherokee.

Rhode Island sets the value of vehicles registered in the state based on used car prices at the end of December of the preceding year. Taxes are then calculated as a percentage of that value. That means Rhode Islanders’ car taxes are affected by the used-car market.

“There are less used vehicles out there for people to buy,” said Cwiek, who also is the tax assessor in North Kingstown.

She placed blame for the short supply of used cars on the federal “Cash-for-Clunkers” program.

To stimulate a sagging automotive economy and to aid the environment, the federal program offered financial incentives to turn in older vehicles in favor of buying more fuel-efficient models.

In all, the program removed 677,842 vehicles from the road and sent them to the shredder. That prevented them from entering the used-car market.

They never learn, do they? If you liked Cash for Clunkers, you’ll love Obamacare.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

“There is no federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage.”

This statement, which seems pretty clear to me on its face, kicked off criticism of me from Ann Althouse, Ed Whelan, Allahpundit, and others, that I was being naive, and Kagan was just playing word games. The argument went that Kagan was merely summarizing the current lack of a ruling by the Supreme Court on the issue, and that “is” referred to the past and possibly the present, but not the future.

We are entitled to know if Kagan meant what she said, and said what she meant. Or if not, what did she mean?

The issue is not strictly gay marriage. Before any vote is taken, we are entitled to know if we have a nominee who so carefully parses words that “is” doesn’t mean “is,” it means “was.”

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Now Reid admits that without additional spending, the legislation will create havoc:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had warned Thursday night of the “havoc” that would erupt in America if Medicare doctors got a pay cut.

Harry “Havoc” Reid. Not that’s a campaign slogan we can believe in.

And a fitting name, if ever there were one.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Put aside the ineptitude of the approval process and clean up response. For today, I’m focusing on the tentative settlement with BP. While many will cheer the fact that BP has committed $20 billion to compensate people in the Gulf region, no one should cheer very loudly.

Another Blow To The Due Process Clause

I am hard pressed to come up with a constitutionally more chilling presidential comment than the following statement made by Barack Obama Tuesday night (emphasis mine):

Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness.

Since when is a President’s wish our command? Under what legal authority did the “rule of law” President make the decision as to how much a private entity would pay and then “inform” the private party that it must obey or face the harsh retribution of the federal government?

This is similar to what happened to the bond holders in GM and Chrysler, whose private property rights were trampled in the name of Obama’s politics.

According to reports, BP also will pay compensation to people who lose their jobs not because of BP’s conduct, but because of the Obama administration’s policy decision to implement a drilling moratorium. We now have the specter of a private company being forced to pay for policy decisions.

Respect for the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment is what separates us from North Korea or Venezuela (emphasis mine):

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

It is beyond me how any person who claims to be a civil libertarian can support this administration. Put aside issues of Gitmo, rendition or other aspects of the war on terror.

When it comes to the foundation of our domestic freedom, Obama has trampled the Constitution with vigor and lack of concern.

One Week’s Worth of ObamaCare

The amount of money BP has committed over a multi-year period is roughly the equivalent of what the federal government will spend on ObamaCare in one week.

$20 billion is not chump change, by any means, and if actually paid promptly to people in the Gulf region will help ease some of the pain.

But don’t kid yourselves, this is not about money. If the federal government wanted to get aid to people right away, it could have used some of the unspent Stimulus Plan money, and then sought reimbursement from BP through the legal process.

How interesting that the President who cares not about running up trillion dollar deficits to fund his social vision now cares so deeply about saving the federal government what amounts to an ObamaCare rounding error.

This was a pure political power play, in which the President could create a demon, and deflect attention away from his own failing conduct with regard to the Gulf.

Hurry Up And Wait

If the Constitution means nothing to you, and all you want is retribution, you will be left very unsatisfied.

The claims procedures apparently have not yet been worked out in detail. But if the 9/11 claims process is any indication, the process will not be fast. And claimants will be limited to compensation for economic losses, which will require that individuals give up whatever other claims they may have.

End result is that I would be surprised to see much money put in anyone’s hands this calendar year.

A Nation of A Man, Not Laws

How often have you heard it said that we are a nation of laws, not men. But in the case of the Gulf claims process, we are a nation of one man, Kenneth Feinberg, who will determine all claims under $500,000.

No appeals, no second chances, not only for BP, but for individuals. The price of submitting to an arbitrary claims process is the loss of access to the judiciary and the legal process. That may be fine for many people, but it is a high price to pay as a nation supposedly of laws.

BP Will Be Happy

Many of you will think that I am defending BP, but that is not true. If anyone will be happy with the federalization of the claims process it will be BP. (Aside, BP is being represented by the ultimate Washington insider, Jamie Gorelick.)

BP is facing a financial death blow in the form of private lawsuits. Whether BP ultimately would succeed in defending those lawsuits based on federal liability caps is besides the point. The prospect of tens of thousands of lawsuits which might result in liability would haunt BP’s business and stock price for years.

And since BP made various federal and state filings with regard to its oil drilling, there is the prospect of criminal charges for fraud, filing false statements, and other crimes which, though a stretch, would put enormous pressure on BP.

This is similar to the situation faced by tobacco companies, which won almost all of the lawsuits taken to trial.

Investigations, and threatened criminal proceedings, combined with the mass tort lawsuits, led big tobacco to the conclusion that its survival as an industry depended upon coopting government through a slush fund. In the case of big tobacco, it was hundreds of billions of dollars, but it was a price worth paying because it ended the legal war and made government a partner, not an enemy.

You May Get What You Wished

This is a case where the imperial whim of the President, and the shrewd business acumen of BP, joined forces in the ultimate inside-the-beltway deal.

As they say, don’t wish too hard for something, you just got it.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

With salt under attack for its ill effects on the nation’s health, the food giant Cargill kicked off a campaign last November to spread its own message.

But read on, and it become clear that it’s really an easy sell.

People love salt. And industry really is just giving people what they want, and how they want it:

Now, the industry is blaming consumers for resisting efforts to reduce salt in all foods, pointing to, as Kellogg put it in a letter to a federal nutrition advisory committee, “the virtually intractable nature of the appetite for salt.” ….

In recent months, food companies, including Kellogg, have said they were redoubling efforts to reduce salt. But they say they can go only so far, so fast without compromising tastes consumers have come to relish or salt’s ability to preserve food. “We have to earn the consumer’s trust every day,” said George Dowdie, a senior vice president of Campbell Soup. “And if you disappoint the consumer, there is no guarantee they will come back.”

Needless to say, the food police want the government to force food companies to cut back salt in food, as I’ve mentioned before.

I think we need another SALT summit, where industry, consumers and the government can negotiate a salt reduction treaty, thereby moving us from the currently unacceptable MAS (Mutually Assured Satisfaction) to MAD (Mutually Assured Desalination) in our lifetimes.

No longer should we have to live with the Salt of Damocles hanging over our heads.

Repeat after me: No Más MAS! No Más MAS! Drive us MAD! Drive us MAD!

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

The Atlantic Magazine thought it would be able to speak poetic historical justice, by splashing the headline that the original reviled one, Kenneth Starr of Monica and Bill and Blue Dress and Impeachment fame, had been arrested for running a Ponzi Scheme.

Oh, the deep, deep satisfaction. They could feel it.  But it was premature.  And now The Atlantic editors have a mess on their hands.

Turns out that on the internet there is more than one Kenneth Starr, and the arrestee was not the tormentor of Bubba, but some guy with the name Kenneth Starr who ran a ponzi scheme. 

You see, even crackerjack journalists sometimes forget that in the billions of people in the universe, there is a chance that two such people have the same name.  And at Columbia School of Journalism, there is a special course on fact checking using Google and Yahoo.  But someone at The Atlantic didn’t take that course.

Here is The Atlantic’s original announcement and correction:

Somewhere, Bill Clinton is smiling. One-time special prosecutor who uncovered the dirty details of the former President’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky has been engaged in some bad behavior of his own, according to the Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission.

Correction (~3:18pm): Apparently there are two famous Kenneth Starrs. The one charged is an investment advisor to the stars, but not the former special prosecutor. Apologies to Bill Clinton if we got his hopes up — and to the other Kenneth Starr.

I hope The Atlantic has learned a lesson all victims of fraud must learn: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

Remember him? The DEMOCRATIC candidate for Senate whose multiple lies about serving in Vietnam over the course of multiple years dominated an entire 24 hour news cycle.

The guy whose dissembling of his own words was Clintonesque in the extreme, as in “it depends upon what the meaning of ‘in’ is.”

The guy around whom DEMOCRATS are rallying so strongly you’d think he had abused an intern.

The guy for whom it was not enough to be an academic and political superstar, he had to be a war hero as well.

The guy who was rescued when Rand Paul discussed, quite honestly, the dilemma of balancing individual freedom of association and speech with the need for racial equality and non-discrimination.

Can we please get back to talking about politicians who look you straight in the eye and lie?

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Eugene Robinson accuses almost everyone who opposes the Obama agenda — but particularly those active in the Tea Party movement — of being motivated by racism and prone to violence.

Jonathan Capehart, another WaPo columnist, does the same.

So low and behold, the WaPo news writers, citing a WaPo poll, announce that Tea party groups battling perceptions of racism (emphasis mine):

As several states with active “tea party” groups prepare to hold important primary elections this month, the movement is struggling to overcome accusations of racism that are tinting perceptions of this loose network of conservatives….

In a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, most Americans see the movement as motivated by distrust of government, opposition to the policies of Obama and the Democratic Party, and broad concern about the economy. But nearly three in 10 see racial prejudice as underlying the tea party.

First of all, the fact that “nearly three in ten” Americans perceive the Tea Parties as racist is amazingly low considering how much time WaPo and NY Times columnists, Democratic members of Congress, and left-wing blogs spend calling Tea Partiers racist.

But dig into the background data (Question 26), and you will see that of that “nearly three in ten” (actually, 28%, but who’s counting when perception is at stake), only 19% rate the racism factor strongly. By contrast, 43% say racism plays no factor whatsoever.

So what WaPo is doing is taking a poll which shows that a strong plurality of Americans do not believe that Tea Parties are motivated at all by racism, and spinning it into Tea Parties having a racism perception problem.

The news writers even cite the Obama Joker poster as contributing to the perception of Tea Party racism even though the poster was created by a liberal Democratic Party supporter.

WaPo stokes perceptions of Tea Party racism, and then spins the polling data to support the conclusion it wants in a headline.

This is how they do it.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

The transaction at issue in that case was between highly sophisticated investment firms, and had no more to do with the housing market collapsing than your office pool had to do with who won the NCAA basketball tournament.

The housing bubble was created by Washington policies which created cheap money and lax lending practices, and millions of individual home buyers, mortgage brokers, and lenders who were all too willing to go along. Each of these people bet in favor of the bubble not only continuing, but growing.

Wall Street helped grease the wheels by packaging mortgages for resale, sometimes in confusingly (and sometimes misleadingly) structured products, which mostly were resold to sophisticated institutional investors. But as I have pointed out before, the mortgages were the core problem; no bad mortgages, no bad mortgage-backed securities.

The housing bubble burst for the same reason economic bubbles always have burst, since time immemorial: There were no greater fools left to pay higher prices. Only then did the people who bet in favor of the housing bubble, including most politicians, realize they had bet wrong. And the entire economy paid the price.

Some people, however, saw that a bubble was a bubble was a bubble, and that it only was a matter of time before it burst. And that appears to be the political crime for which Goldman Sachs is being charged by the Congress and Democratic politicians.

Goldman Sachs hedged its bets, and took short positions with regard to mortgage-backed securities (meaning that Goldman Sachs would make money if the value of the securities dropped).

But none of these short positions caused a single homeowner not to meet a mortgage payment, or a single buyer to walk away from the inflated sales price on a home.

Goldman Sachs is being vilified by Carl Levin (D-Mich) and the Obama administration because Goldman Sachs put in e-mails that its short positions proved profitable in a dropping housing market:

In a Nov. 17, 2007, email, Goldman’s chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, wrote to his top lieutenants in response to an upcoming New York Times story about how the firm had profited off the souring subprime market: “Of course we didn’t dodge the mortgage mess. We lost money, then made more than we lost because of shorts.”

Blankfein is one of the top executives to be questioned Tuesday by Levin.

In an Oct. 11 email that year, one Goldman employee, reacting to news that Moody’s Investors Service had downgraded $32 billion in mortgage-related securities, wrote to a colleague: “Sounds like we will make some serious money.”

“Yes, we are well positioned,” the colleague responded.

Is this a crime? Is this even wrong?

All of the sudden, Democrats hate short sellers? Democrats don’t seem to mind taking money for their think tanks and media operations from George Soros, who made billions by betting against currencies.

And why shouldn’t Goldman Sachs have hedged its bets?

Should Goldman Sachs have been Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns or AIG and so mismanaged its risk exposure that it either went out of business or was bailed out by the government? (Goldman Sachs received TARP money, which it paid back, but was not one of the failed institutions which led to the credit crisis.)

Are we now punishing those who engaged in intelligent and honest assessments of the economy, and acted responsibly despite the irresponsibility of Washington politicians?

Now about those e-mails. How about releasing all the e-mails of each Senator and staffer on the committee which will interrogate Goldman Sachs’ executives? I would be willing to bet (long not short) that there would be far more scandalous material in the Congressional servers than anything said in the Goldman Sachs e-mails.

And while we’re at it, can we please see the Congressional e-mails in which Democrats bet against the surge working in Iraq?

We really have reached the “silly season” of which Barack Obama has warned time and again, but the silliness is being perpetrated by this administration in its zeal to instigate class warfare and create enemies against whom to campaign.

We now are rewarding corporate failures with government bailouts, and berating and belittling the successful companies which were smart and honest enough to see that a bubble was a bubble was a bubble.

If we had more companies run like Goldman Sachs, and fewer run like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, we would not be in the mess we are in.

If we had more traders who made non-political assessments of economic viability and creditworthiness, and fewer Barney Franks and Chris Dodds whose political demagoguery was the air which filled the housing bubble, we all would have been better off.

The war being waged by the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats against Wall Street is nothing more than psychological projection, whereby the irresponsibility and recklessness of Washington politicians are attributed to the people who were least irresponsible and least reckless.

Worse yet, the new diktat in Washington appears to be, “Thou Shall Not Bet Against A Bubble.”

Which is about the worst advice anyone could give, but not surprising considering that it comes from the same politicians who created the bubble in the first place.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog

Ramping up pressure for a financial overhaul, President Barack Obama is heading to the place where the economic meltdown began to argue for stronger government oversight of the industry and to urge Congress to finish a regulatory bill quickly. Otherwise, he says, we are doomed to repeat the past.

This is the narrative the administration wants, it all was Wall Street’s fault.

The economic meltdown, however, did not start on Wall Street any more than high health care costs were the result of evil pharmaceutical companies which sold you the expensive red pill rather than the less expensive blue pill; or the greedy doctors who performed unnecessary surgeries to make more money.

All these false Obama administration narratives have a commonality; they demonize an identifiable enemy and they avoid blame being placed on government policies.

The reality is that the economic meltdown began with federal government policies which kept interest rates artificially low and forced banks to abandon traditional lending practices in the name of home ownership for all. These policies started under the Clinton administration, and continued under the Bush administration.

Democrats, including people like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd, fought hard to avoid Bush administration attempts to reign in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

I have spend most of my professional life suing Wall Street firms, so I have no sympathy for the many bad practices which have ripped off investors. But just because Wall Street has engaged in some bad practices does not mean Wall Street is responsible for everything that goes wrong in the economy.

Wall Street was an accomplice in the housing bubble in the sense that the securitization of the mortgages provided a cash flow which allowed the bubble to grow. But honesty requires the acknowledgement that Wall Street did not create the housing bubble or cause it to burst.

No bad mortgage lending practices, no housing bubble. No bad mortgage lending practices, no economic meltdown. No bad mortgage lending practices, no bad bets on the housing markets. It was the bad mortgage lending practices, stupid.

The economic meltdown started with the people in government — including many of the Democrats who now are pushing for “reform” — who corrupted the credit practices of banks and other lenders in the name of progressive policies. The same policies which will cause our heath care system to collapse.

And that is a narrative this administration will do anything to avoid, hence the demonization of Goldman Sachs and others. Hence Obama taking the fight “to the place where the economic meltdown began.”

Except that it didn’t. The place where the economic meltdown began was in the offices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Reserve, the White House, and the halls of Congress.

If Obama wanted to visit the place where the economic meltdown began, he could have walked there in just a few minutes.

Cross-posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog.

Why this reaction? I bet a lot of the people having this reaction only had heard of Bibi Netanyahu in passing on the news.

Who would care if our President left a foreign leader to wait in the White House while the President supposedly went to have dinner with his family? Who would care if our President broke protocol by refusing to be photographed and hold a press conference with a foreign leader? Who would care if that foreign leader left tail tucked between his legs, humiliated at home at the treatment by the leader of the free world?

Part of it certainly is that the foreign leader in question was the leader of Israel, which is tremendously popular with Americans. In Israel the clear majority of Americans see a democratic nation surrounded by implacable enemies who also are our enemies, doing what it takes to survive and thrive. In so many historical, religious and political ways Israel is our kindred spirit, more than just one among many nations.

But that cannot explain the intensity of the reaction. Obama has shown disrespect for our British friends, with whom we share an even more intense historical relationship. There are very, very few countries in the world whose soldiers would die for us, and Britain is one of those countries. Yet the reaction to Obama’s treatment of Britain has been muted.

I think the reaction to Obama’s treatment of Bibi Netanyahu hits home because it was so personal in nature, and because it epitomized how the American people have been treated by Obama and the Democrats, with arrogance and disdain.

We have seen this attitude since the Inauguration, when Obama and the crowd treated George W. Bush with disrespect, in the smears by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other leading Democrats against health care protesters, in the daily attacks by the left-wing blogs and mainstream media against the Tea Party members, in the treatment of Sarah Palin and Trig Palin, in the bribes and budgetary chicanery used to pass a health care bill opposed by a significant majority of the population, and in the disgusting use of the race card to stifle legitimate political dissent.

In Bibi Netanyahu we see something we have lost in our leader, an unflinching sense of national destiny, an unapologetic pride in who we are and why we are, and a willingness to stand up to tyrants and neighborhood bullies regardless of the price.

To see a leader like Bibi Netanyahu treated so shabbily by someone who treats us the same way was too much to bear.

The story of how Obama treated Bibi Netanyahu at the White House was a familiar story, which is why it has caused such a strong reaction.

Cross-Posted with updates at Legal Insurrection Blog