Archive for September, 2005

MICKEY KAUS: “Here is Harriett Miers’ bio … and here’s Michael McConnell’s. Assume they’re both fine people. If you had to make a snap decision, which one should be on the United States Supreme Court?”

GRAND ROUNDS is up!

TAMMY BRUCE, JAMES HUDNALL, AND EUGENE VOLOKH: Profiled over at the Pajamas Media site.

SECURITY PROBLEMS AT NUCLEAR WEAPONS LABS? The source is a union that’s crossways with the feds, but given the experience at Los Alamos this bears scrutiny.

UPDATE: More here.

JOHN ROBERTS has been confirmed, by a rather hefty margin.

JOHN TABIN thinks that Tom Delay’s departure is a promising development in terms of controlling spending. I think he’s right.

UPDATE: Read this post from the GOP stalwarts at AnklebitingPundits:

The GOP ran against lobbyists. Not specific lobbyists but rather the very idea that “K Street fat cats” (as we called them) were drafting legislation and deciding policy for a decrepit Democrat majority. We ran against corruption, such as Rostenkowski and all that. We were then an anti-Washington party, dismissing the “corridors or power” as a giant piggy bank for the highest bidding special interest groups. Hillarycare was just icing on the cake.

And yet somewhere along the line we became what we despised. . . . Clearly the Congressional GOP has lost much of its bearings, and is turning into the 1992-1993 version of the Congressional Democrats. And the question arises, what’s the point of having a majority if that majority doesn’t stand for anything useful?

The GOP is at serious risk of losing a decisive chunk of its voters to a Perot-style movement.

GREG DJEREJIAN: “The 7/7 bombings were all about the Iraq war, right? Ah, but alas the French don’t appear to get a pass as a result of their noble non-interventionist policies…”

TOM DELAY UPDATE: Howard Kurtz has a roundup, and so does Joe Gandelman, who observes: “Now, as DeLay becomes the first House leader to go on trial in a century, the GOP is at a perilous crossroads — and so are the Democrats.”

I think we’ll see more of this late-1990s-style ethics warfare come around again. It’s a pretty standard second-term phenomenon.

HEH: “I love the way Glenn Reynolds comes in for a gratuitous beating.”

Doesn’t everyone?

PORK UPDATE: Looks like we’re seeing signs of awakening sense:

The Senate was up to its old tricks Monday evening. It prepared to pass, without debate and under a procedure requiring unanimous consent, a federal infusion of $9 billion into state Medicaid programs under the pretext of Katrina relief. The bill, drafted in secret under bipartisan auspices, was stopped cold when Republican Sen. John Ensign voiced his objection. . . .

Fear has enveloped Republicans who see themselves handing the banner of fiscal integrity to the Democrats. The GOP is losing the rhetoric war, even though Democrats mostly push for higher domestic spending, because Republicans, while standing firm against tax increases, have also declined to cut spending. Fearing the worst in the 2006 and 2008 elections, Republican senators who would not be expected to do so are looking to McCain to lead the party back to fiscal responsibility. . . .

President Bush’s opposition to the Grassley-Baucus bill was meaningless. Bush could not kill the bill by objecting, but any senator could, and Ensign did. Ensign noted that Congress had appropriated an extra $62 billion in the wake of Katrina.

Read the whole thing.

BIRD FLU IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: Gateway Pundit has a roundup.

INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY has more thoughts on Louisiana:

As we’ve also noted, nine months before Katrina, three officials of Louisiana’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness were indicted for obstructing an audit of the use, or misuse, of federal funds for flood-mitigation activities.

Louisiana ranks third in the nation in the number of indicted officials per capita. Just the past generation has seen a governor, an attorney general, a federal judge, a state Senate president and a swarm of local officials convicted of assorted crimes.

Police Superintendent Eddie Compass didn’t say why he suddenly resigned. But it comes after his department announced that about 250 New Orleans police officers — 15% of the force — could face punishment for leaving their posts without permission during Katrina.

Before Katrina, New Orleans was a crime-ridden city with a murder rate 10 times the national average. Only one in four murders result in a conviction, largely because retaliation against potential witnesses is common. Yet New Orleans had only three cops per 1,000 residents, a ratio less than half that of Washington, D.C.

It’s a serious problem, and another reason why we shouldn’t just be throwing money at rebuilding efforts.

TENNESSEE REP. MARSHA BLACKBURN is blogging about pork over at RedState, and responding to criticisms from commenters. More here.

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: Several folks have heard back from their elected representatives. Here are some posts about the responses they got.

Dave Price was impressed with Barack Obama’s response.

Reader Julie Martin-Korb wrote Paul Sarbanes and reports: “Mr. Sarbanes is proud of his spending initiatives, and he is opposed to tax cuts for the wealthy ‘in this time of need,’ but the only sentence in his letter that is even remotely responsive to my request is this: ‘Simultaneously, Congress must continuously review federal spending in order to ensure that our Nation pursues a responsible economic course while providing needed recovery funds.'”

From Rochester, New York, Evan Dawson of 13 WHAM TV News emails:

I’m a reporter for the ABC News affiliate in Rochester, NY, and the pork-for-relief plan was our lead story on Monday, September 19th. Here are quotes and responses from two representatives:

From Rep. Randy Kuhl (R): “Are there some earmarks in the transportation bill that are key to economic development? In this area, with some of the earmarks that I was able to put in, they are. So I would be very hesitant to have them removed, because I think you have to have economic development in this country if you’re going to be able to support hurricane relief.” In other words, he’s not willing to trade in his pork, as it would undermine the country’s capacity to charitably support hurricane recovery efforts.

From Rep. Louise Slaughter (D), when asked about trasnportation bill pork: “A lot of it is frivolous.” However, when pressed regarding her own pork (Slaughter secured, among other things, $1.6 million for the Rochester Art Walk — an outdoor museum), she responded, “Well, we’ll look and see. That is indeed, as you point out — it’s in the transportation bill. We’ll look and see what can be postponed and what can be put off.” But she closed by saying that her first preference is to eliminate “Bush’s tax cuts for the extraordinarily wealthy.”

As a reporter, I take no position on the pork-for-relief proposal. I just wanted to help alert the public as to where their federal representatives stand.

I hope that lots of local media folks will do the same thing. Meanwhile, Matt Duffy continues his ongoing, though largely fruitless, dialogue with Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, and thinks that Price’s office is mostly interested in “slowing down my efforts at getting Price to answer these specific questions.” Gee, d’ya think?

Reader Robert Hahn shares this scintillating response from Rep. Donald Payne:

Thank you very much for your email. I always appreciate the chance to hear from constituents. Your issues are of concern to me; please be assured that I will take your views under consideration. If you haven’t already, please stop by my website at www.house.gov/payne.
Please feel free to email me again, and thank you very much for your letter.

Hahn adds: “I suppose if I get a non-form letter reponse in the next couple of days, I’ll forward that along.” We’ll be waiting!

Maybe for a while. Reader Jim Uren emails: “I emailed [Rep.] Anna Eshoo D-CA five days ago. No response.”

Zachary Rethorn notes that Sen. Mike Dewine is still reviewing proposals.

UPDATE: This column on PorkBusters gets it right: “It may be that only 30% of the items on the Porkbusters wishlist will be cut in, say, the first fiscal year after the Porkbusters campaign begins. That does not preclude another 30% or so being cut the next year. And the year after that as well. And so on. Changing the entitlement culture is an incremental process. But eventually, the small gains can add up and we can achieve a budgetary process that is more fiscally responsible than the one we are currently saddled with. Recognizing this fact will go a long way towards fashioning a successful anti-pork political strategy. And it is not like the political facts on the ground don’t make it easy to cut pork.” Indeed.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Here’s more, from Republican columnist Frank Cagle:

Bush may still be popular with the branch of the Republican Party that only cares about abortion, stem-cell research and displaying the Ten Commandments, but the fiscal-conservative small-government don’t-tread-on-me wing of the party has had enough.

He offers some advice on what the GOP needs to do to avoid disaster, which he sees as otherwise inevitable.

Meanwhile, Carroll Andrew Morse is worried that Katrina reconstruction will turn into pork. I’d say it’s a well-founded concern.

And reader C.J. Burch emails:

I have to admit, I’m surprised more of the fiscally responsible conservatives in the mainstream haven’t signed on to this idea. They certainly should. Why haven’t they? Where’s Robert Novak? Where’s George Will? Have you gotten any help from the folks over at the Corner? How about Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol?

How about ’em? My sense is that while complaining about corruption and waste and how they doom our society is considered acceptable punditry, attempting to do anything about the problem is seen as hopelessly naive.

MORE SERENITY REVIEWS: Here, here, here (“Where Sith was fast food that left you feeling nothing but gas, Serenity was a seven course meal.”)

Also here, here, and here, as well as here, here, here, and here.

Also here, and here.

UPDATE: Here’s another, from Will Collier.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Neil Gaiman and Joss Whedon talk about stuff, in Time.

MORE: Still more blog reviews, here, here (“Much better than anything Lucas has done in the last 10 years. Go see it.”), here, and here.