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BatesLine was offline yesterday, Wednesday, January 18, 2012, in protest of two draconian bills that could be used to suppress free speech on the Internet. In the course of the day, in which major sites, like Wikipedia, and thousands of minor sites went dark, many members of Congress spoke for the first time about the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

Sen. Inhofe's statement in opposition to PIPA:

WASHINGTON, D.C. - On a day when many internet websites have blacked out their content in opposition to measures being considered by Congress, U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), joined the effort by announcing his opposition to those same bills. In the below statement, Inhofe outlines his opposition to S.968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (also called the PROTECT-IP Act or PIPA). PIPA's related bill in the House is H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA):

"While I believe that the intellectual property rights of American companies deserve substantial protection under the law, S. 968, the PROTECT-IP Act, is not the answer to the problem of online counterfeiting and piracy. I share the concerns of America's technology companies, industry leaders, and the many citizens who have voiced their concerns to my office. It is clear to me that this bill will inflict too heavy a burden on third-party non-infringing entities and could do serious harm to one of the last vestiges that is relatively free from government regulation, the Internet. When addressing intellectual property rights, Congress must be careful to also protect the freedom of speech and flow of information that the Internet provides. Additionally, I have concerns with creating yet another private right of action, which will be used by plaintiffs to stifle Internet innovation, and with requirements in the bill that could negatively impact the Internet's reliability and performance."

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Congressman John Sullivan statement on Facebook:

I appreciate the thousands of comments, emails and phone calls today on SOPA. Like my constituents, I also have significant concerns that this legislation, as currently written, limits our First Amendment right to free speech on the Internet. I do believe Congress should address legislation to protect intellectual property rights, BUT must be mindful that the bills intended to protect honest American innovators are not doing more harm than good.

Here's what I had posted as the sole accessible page on the site yesterday:

It's not hard to imagine a member of Tulsa's Cockroach Caucus using influence in Washington to turn a bogus charge of intellectual property violations into the Attorney General ordering a DNS blackout of BatesLine. To help you imagine what that might be like, BatesLine is going dark today. All attempts to access other BatesLine pages will lead back to this page.

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn is one of seven Protect IP Act (PIPA) co-sponsors who last Friday asked Majority Leader Harry Reid not to hold a vote on PIPA, because of the outcry against the bill. Jim Inhofe does not have a public position on the issue, according to OpenCongress.org, nor does Congressman John Sullivan. (UPDATE: Inhofe issued statement in opposition to PIPA, the Senate bill, today, and Sullivan posted a statement on Facebook. See below.)

From Wikipedia, a leader of the SOPA/PIPA blackout:

The Wikipedia community has blacked out the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours on January 18th to raise awareness about legislation being proposed by the U.S. Congress -- the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate -- and to encourage readers to speak out against it. This legislation, if passed, will harm the free and open Internet. If you are in the United States, let your congressional representative know what you think of the proposed legislation by clicking here....

SOPA and PIPA are real threats to the free and open Internet. Although recent media reports have suggested that the bills are losing support, they are not dead. On January 17th, SOPA's sponsor said the bill will be discussed and pushed forward in early February. PIPA could be debated in the U.S. Senate as soon as next week. There is a need to send a strong message that bills like SOPA and PIPA must not move forward: they will cause too much damage.

Although the bills have been amended since their introduction, they are still deeply problematic. Among other serious problems in the current draft of the bills, the requirement exists for US-based sites to actively police links to purported infringing sites. These kinds of self-policing activities are non-sustainable for large, global sites - including ones like Wikipedia. The legislative language is ambiguous and overly broad, even though it touches on protected speech. Congress says it's trying to protect the rights of copyright owners, but the "cure" that SOPA and PIPA represent is worse than the disease....

...in its current form, SOPA would require U.S. sites to take on the heavy burden of actively policing third-party links for infringing content. And even with the DNS provisions removed, the bill would give the U.S. government extraordinary and loosely-defined powers to take control over content and information on the free web. Taking one bad provision out doesn't make the bills okay, and regardless, Internet experts agree they won't even be effective in their main goal: halting copyright infringement.

I got some potpourri for Christmas, so here's some potpourri for you -- an assortment of interesting articles from the last couple of weeks.

Photo by Lathyrus on Flickr

Warner Todd Huston: The newspaper typo that began NORAD's tradition of tracking Santa on Christmas eve in 1955.

James Lileks invites you to peruse a collection of Christmas ads and other ephemera from the '50s and '60s.

During the run-up to Christmas, Tweets of Old featured Santa letters published by newspapers a century or so ago on its Facebook page. One of the sweetest:

Dear Santa Claus,

I am not going to ask for much this Xmas for there are so many little girls and boys I know it would be impossible to carry them all lots of presents. Then you are getting old and I know it must be hard for you to get about.

I have a beautiful doll so please bring me a little bed for it, a rubber ball and just anything you have left after visiting the other children.

With best wishes to you and Mrs. Santa Claus, I remain.

Clyde Butler, Starkville, Mississippi, 1921

Gawker: The endlessly quotable Vaclav Havel (1935-2011): Havel was a playwright, dissident under Communist rule of Czechoslovakia, and the first president of liberated Czechoslovakia. *He had the media misfortune of passing away on the same day as Christopher Hitchens and Kim Jong-Il.) My favorite of the quotes listed:

"You do not become a dissident just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society."

Havel wrote a 2004 column about Kim Jong-Il and North Korea under Communism, comparing the stories of North Korean refugees to the news from Auschwitz escapees that alerted the world to the reality of the Holocaust:

Today, the testimony of thousands of North Korean refugees, who have survived the miserable journey through Communist China to free South Korea, tell of the criminal nature of the North Korean dictatorship. Accounts of repression are supported and verified by modern satellite images, and clearly illustrate that North Korea has a functioning system of concentration camps. The Kwan-li-so, or the political penal-labour colony, holds as many as 200,000 prisoners who are barely surviving day-to-day or are dying in the same conditions as did the millions of prisoners in the Soviet gulag system in the past.

The Northern part of the Korean peninsula is governed by the world's worst totalitarian dictator, who is responsible for taking millions of human lives. Kim Jong-il inherited the extensive Communist regime following the death of his father Kim Il-sung, and has shamelessly continued to strengthen the cult of personality.

He sustains one of the largest armies in the world and is producing weapons of mass destruction. The centrally planned economy and the state ideology of juche have led the country into famine. The victims of the North Korean regime number in the millions....

Innocent North Koreans are dying of hunger or are closed in concentration camps, as Kim Jong-il continues to blackmail the world.

Now is the time for the democratic countries of the world - the European Union, the United States, Japan and, last but not least, South Korea - to unify under a common position. These countries must make it perfectly clear that they will not make concessions to a totalitarian dictator.

They must state that respect for basic human rights is an integral part of any future discussions with Pyongyang. Decisiveness, perseverance and negotiations from a position of strength are the only things that Kim Jong-il and those similar to him understand.

Let's hope that the world does not need any more horrifying testimony to realize this.

An Investors Business Daily editorial ponders the outpouring of grief by North Koreans at the death of Kim Jong-Il:

The world witnessed a grotesque spectacle Tuesday as millions of North Koreans mourned the death of the world's most odious dictator. It's a classic demonstration of the dehumanization of communism.

In the free world, tears would never be shed for a monster like Kim Jong Il, the megalomaniac who ruled North Korea with an iron fist for 17 years, leaving a legacy of man-made famine, a network of Gulag prison camps for free thinkers, and bone-grinding poverty for workers unlike any other place on earth.

But in a reminder of what totalitarianism does to human minds, thousands of North Koreans -- mostly soldiers -- loudly wailed at the death of the tyrant known as "dear leader." It's a reminder this nation remains an enemy state of highly damaged individuals who have no understanding of freedom, a worrisome thing in a nation of nuclear weapons and evil intentions.

National Review Online, Hans von Spakovsky: Yes, Virginia, there really is voter fraud, as demonstrated by recent convictions of city officials and Democrat operatives in Troy, N. Y., for forging absentee ballots:

As for the constant liberal claims that voter fraud does not occur, one of the Democratic operatives who pled guilty, Anthony DeFiglio, told New York State police investigators "that faking absentee ballots was a commonplace and accepted practice in political circles, all intended to swing an election." And whose votes do they steal? DeFiglio was very plain about that: "The people who are targeted live in low-income housing, and there is a sense that they are a lot less likely to ask any questions."

Heavy manufacturing is making a comeback in the US, writes Joel Kotkin, and Oklahoma City is 10th on the list of best cities for industrial job growth. (Tulsa didn't make the top 50.) And, by the way, we need more engineering majors to fuel this growth.

Maybe there's something to this notion of the Anglosphere: The five most charitable countries in the world in 2011, in terms of giving money, volunteering time, and helping strangers are the USA, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Last year's top five were Australia, New Zealand, Ireland/Canada (tie), USA/Switzerland (tie). The ranking by the Charities Aid Foundation is based on the percent of the population that acts charitably, rather than the amount of charity. (Via Ace of Spades HQ overnight thread.)

Michelle Malkin: The Year in Obama Scandals -- and scandal deniers: Fast and Furious / Gunwalker, Solyndra, LightSquared, Carol Browner, the drilling ban, Obamacare waivers to cronies, voter fraud, and more.

Another Investors Business Daily editorial explains the light bulb ban (suspended for now) as another example of how regulation helps the politically connected big business at the expense of small business. (Via Michael Chamberlain on Twitter.)

Margaret Thatcher in the Commons on European monetary union (video). According to the description for this video, this speech on October 30, 1990, sealed Thatcher's downfall, betrayed by Europhile members of the Conservative Party, including members of her own cabinet, who had decided she was an obstacle to their dream of a single European state. (Anyone familiar with the evolution of the European Union and particularly with the way the ruling class in each country, from every party, ignore the objections of their countrymen to the loss of national sovereignty will understand the origin of similar fears in the United States of America.)

The American Bar Association punished a law school applying for provisional accreditation because officials spoke to the New York Times for an article about how ABA accreditation drives up the cost of a law degree. Time to bust up this cartel.

Two similar bills targeting online piracy, the PROTECT IP Act (S. 968) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261), threaten free speech by putting unprecedented and unchecked power in the hands of the Attorney General, according to an analysis in Conservative Daily News. Under the current circumstances, with the Left in control of the Department of Justice, these bills, if passed into law, would be a particular threat to conservative blogs and websites:

The most catching part of SOPA, is that it allows the Department of Justice, run by Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder mind you, to pursue court orders for websites "outside" of US jurisdiction accused of enabling or hosting pirated content on their website.... Once a court order is obtained, the Attorney General could then direct a US web based companies to suspend business with the company or face the possibility of federal prosecution. The AG would also have the ability to direct search engines from blocking the IP in a search. The bill would also make it a felony to stream unauthorized copyrighted content.

...Can't you see it now? All the liberals will be scouring the Internet, with the music and movie industry's best interest at heart no doubt, looking at every conservative blog and website they can find regardless of importance with sole purpose of locating "pirated" content.... The Justice Department will request the court order to shut that blog down with the individual facing the potential of fines and restitution. Not a bad way to break the spirit. Lets not forget about all the new litigation that will ensue.

Blogs regularly make fair use of small excerpts of copyrighted material for the purpose of comment, and it would be easy enough for the DOJ to misconstrue that fair use as theft of intellectual property. Once shutdown, a website owner would have to go to great expense to reverse the DOJ block; in the meantime, his point of view is blocked from the internet.

The threat is bigger than the possibility of a leftist DOJ blocking conservative sites. Liberals should be concerned that some future administration could use PROTECT IP / SOPA to target their websites. It's not hard to imagine allies of Orrin Hatch, the Senator from Disney, using this law to shut down blogs promoting his conservative primary challenger. PROTECT IP / SOPA would be another tool in the tool box, along with SLAPP suits, for well-funded crony-capitalist cabals of both parties to shut down bloggers who oppose and expose them.

I'm happy to see that no Oklahoma legislators are sponsoring these bills; I hope they will oppose them vigorously. While most of the Senate sponsors are either Democrats or squishy RINOs (like Orrin Hatch, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain), I'm disappointed to see names of conservatives like Marco Rubio (R-FL) on the list. The support is somewhat understandable based on the stated intent of the bill -- to protect businesses that have invested in intellectual property from piracy -- but no amount of good intentions can make up for putting internet blacklisting power in the hands of one politically appointed official.

The best way for the music and movie industries to dampen down piracy is to make their content more easily and affordably available. If someone can watch episodes of a long-gone but favorite TV series on Netflix, or pay for and download MP3s of an out-of-print album from Amazon, they won't go hunting for pirated copies online.

Call your senators and congressman and urge them to oppose this threat to free speech. I consider these bills a key vote for determining my future support.

MORE: No article on online piracy is complete without "The IT Crowd" parody of anti-piracy warnings.

See the update below about what happened shortly before the hearing was to begin.

As the 12-member congressional debt commission flounders in its task to reduce the deficit by a trillion dollars, the Tea Party Debt Commission, a crowd-sourced, online initiative organized by FreedomWorks and Contract from America, has identified trillions in cuts. The results will be announced at a special hearing, broadcast on C-SPAN-3 and C-SPAN.org today, November 17, 2011, at 1:00 p.m. Tulsa time.

The hearing will be led by Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (OH-4), Senator Mike Lee (UT), Senator Rand Paul (KY), Congressman Jeff Flake (AZ-6), Congressman Paul Broun (GA-10), Congressman Joe Walsh (IL-8), Congressman Michael Burgess (TX-26) and Congressman Steve King (IA-5). Twelve Tea Party Debt Commissioners will testify, followed by Q&A from House and Senate members.

The New York Times covered the launch of the Tea Party Debt Commission back in June, outlining its goals and structure:

"If you look if you look at the landscape in Washington, D.C., there's a lot of Democrats who control two-thirds of the process who are now sitting on their hands, waiting to point fingers at Republicans who propose something, and there's too many Republicans who are afraid that the public won't understand a serious proposal to solve the budget deficit," said Matt Kibbe, [FreedomWorks] president.

"We think, like with the first days of the Tea Party movement, that the only way we will ever reduce the debt and balance the budget is if America beats Washington and Tea Party activists take over this process, take over the public debate and engage the American people in the hard work of making tough choices."...

The activists, along with FreedomWorks staff, came up with parameters for their budget proposals, declaring that they would have to balance the federal budget within 10 years, reduce federal spending to 18 percent of the gross domestic product, reduce the national debt to no more than 66 percent of the G.D.P., assume that revenue accounts for no more than 19 percent of the G.D.P., reduce federal spending by at least $300 billion in the first year and reduce federal spending by at least $9 trillion over 10 years.

UPDATE: Shortly before the Tea Party Debt Commission hearing was to begin, Senate staffers kicked them out. FreedomWorks New Media Director Tabitha Hale tells the story:

It has been 932 days since the Democrats have passed a budget. With the formation of the Super Committee, we saw an opportunity for Americans to tell Congress what they would be willing to cut, and offer suggestions to make the budgeting process easier for them. The Senate Rules Committee, headed up by Chuck Schumer, told us they were uncomfortable with the word "hearing", and locked the doors and took away our microphones minutes before the event was scheduled to start.

So basically, they have nearly three years to put a budget forth and fail. We finally act, they kick us out. Senator Mike Lee's office took the lead and quickly found a new location at Hillsdale College's Kirby Center, where the hearing took place not too far behind schedule.

We will be heard, Washington.

More from the New York Times:

But the Capitol police shut down the room where they planned to meet, after a suspicious package was found in the office of Senator Jeff Sessions, Republican of Alabama.

Tea Party activists who arrived at Hearing Room 325 in the Russell building at 2 p.m. discovered Capitol police there, removing microphones and locking the room.

Evicted from the Russell Building, they saw suspicious motives - big government strikes again! -- and issued another press release declaring the shutdown "outrageous."

"They're kicking us out of our own building because they're afraid we are going to do something crazy, like balance the budget," said Matt Kibbe, FreedomWorks president.

Capitol Police claimed that the removal was for security reasons, but why would you take the time to remove microphones from a hearing room if there was a suspicious package in the office next door? Wouldn't you clear the building? Utah Sen. Mike Lee thinks so:

"The Rules Committee was threatening to shut us down," he said in an interview. If there was a threat, he said, the building should have been evacuated. And he disputed the Senate rule. As a senator, he said, he can call a meeting with an outside group in a Senate office building. "Is the First Amendment so weak that someone calls it a 'hearing' and so we can't have it?" he said.

The Tea Party Debt Commission report has been released; click that link to read it online. Key features:

• "Cuts, caps, and balances" federal spending.
• Balances the budget in four years, and keeps it balanced, without tax hikes.
• Closes an historically large budget gap, equal to almost one-tenth of our economy.
• Reduces federal spending by $9.7 trillion over the next 10 years, as opposed to the President's plan to increase spending by $2.3 trillion.
• Shrinks the federal government from 24 percent of GDP -- a level exceeded only in World War II-- to about 16 percent, in line with the postwar norm.
• Stops the growth of the debt, and begins paying it down, with a goal of eliminating it within this generation.

A bit of unscheduled excitement this afternoon at BlogCon, the blogger conference sponsored by FreedomWorks. A couple of dozen protesters from OccupyDenver showed up in the hotel lobby and made as if they intended to Occupy the convention hall. They were not accompanied by Shelby, the border collie that was elected leader of OccupyDenver. (There's something fitting about an Occupy group being led by a dog whose breed is renowned for herding sheep.)

The thing about a bloggers' conference is that nearly everyone there has the means to record video, so the confrontation between "Cokeheads and Koch-heads" (as Warner Todd Huston put it) was well documented.

Here are links to a number of after-action reports, with photos and video, too:

John Hayward at HumanEvents.com:

I'm at BlogCon 11 in Denver today, and we had our much-anticipated visit from the Occupy movement at around 2 PM local time. About twenty of them stormed the lobby - shouting, chanting, and stinking to an astonishing degree. No exaggeration: the stench of these characters easily reached through closed doors. They were quickly surrounded by camera-wielding bloggers who outnumbered the Occupiers about five to one.

Why would the Occupy Denver crowd "protest" a group of people peacefully gathered at a hotel to practice their free-speech rights? Well, they were apparently under the impression that BlogCon organizer Freedom Works is part of the sinister Koch Brothers enterprise (it isn't.) It's so unlike the Occupiers to show up and start screaming when they don't know what they're talking about....

On balance, it was a disappointing appearance: no drum circles, no human microphone, no up twinkles, no celebrity dog, and no tuberculosis yet as far as we can tell.

Warner Todd Huston at Publius Forum:

It was all good fun, though, for we bloggers here at Blogcon. The Occupiers were silly, loud and rather pointless -- pretty much like they are everywhere else in the country. As the little disruption wound up the Occupiers went back to their tents and the rest of us got back to business at Blogcon 2011.

The topic after the Occupiers left? Wikipedia, a how to. That was preceded by such world-conquering and evil ideas such as a seminar on how to visualize data in pleasing ways, and how to better use WordPress and YouTbue features. Yeah. We're taking over the world with our Koch money!

... by the way... I've been waiting for a check from these guys for years.

Jeff Dunetz at The Yid with a Lid: Occupy Denver Fails in Attempt to Invade BlogCon:

The gentleman under the arrow was screaming that we were all getting money from the Koch brothers, that's when we began to chant "Where's the Dog?" referring to Shelby, the dog who was elected the leader of Occupy Denver.

Jeff has a photo of one protester with a Coors Light hat and a Guy Fawkes V-for-Vendetta mask. I guess he's not aware of the ideological leanings of the Coors family.

Ace's in-the-moment account:

Several of the BlogCon guys are barring the door to the conference room.

There's about 20 of them. They're fairly young and dirty and speak in a strange jargon like the Oasis Tribe in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome....

The BlogCon people continue chanting snarky things, like "I like spaghetti!" "Breitbart, Breitbart!" and "This is what losing looks like!" The cops are escroting the hoboes out to the rousing serenade of nah-nah-nah, hey-ey-ey, goodbye.

Here's Sunshine State Sarah's video of the confrontation (many more videos at the link):

Here's Weasel Zippers video of the arrest of one of the Occupods:

Tabitha Hale, FreedomWorks frequent-flying new media director, was confronted on Tuesday with an extremely unpleasant screening experience at at Houston's Bush Airport, the site of last November's "Don't Touch My Junk" rebellion.

Then she got to my waist band. I had on black tights under my dress, which I'm certain is not uncommon. She asked me to lift my dress so she could check the waistband of my tights.

I felt my stomach drop. I said "I'm not lifting my dress for you. No way." She was obviously irritated with me now and said that she would take me to the private screening area if I would like.

I said "No, absolutely not. If you can't do this in front of everyone, you should not be doing this to me."

She then called a manager over. The manager approached me and explained what they were going to do and that if I failed to comply, they would escort me from the airport. I told her I saw no reason that they should have to lift my dress to clear me to get on a plane. I would have, however, allowed them to escort me out of the airport before they got me to lift my skirt and stick their hands down my tights. I was bracing myself to spend another night in Texas.

They figured a way to check her waistband without lifting her skirt, but the resulting pat down "was so vigorous I had to readjust my clothes when she was finished."

Here's the thing. If anyone else had done this to me, I would have decked them and likely filed charges. The fact that the person has on a TSA uniform is supposed to make it okay? It isn't. Why should any person be subjected to this to get on an airplane? We're supposed to subject ourselves to inappropriate touch for teh sake of "safety"?

I fly for my job. I travel frequently. I take trains when I can, but most of the time it's just not practical. The fact that I have to endure this type of force just to do my job is horrifying. I don't really have another option. Most of us who travel for work don't have a choice.

I have to get on a plane to Denver tomorrow, and am honestly dreading the idea of going through the airport. TSA needs to go. This has gone so far beyond a security precaution, and is a clear violation of the rights of travelers. Showing my business to an airport full of people is not in the interests of safety. It is wrong.

Too bad for Tabitha that Republican legislative leaders in Texas blocked freshman State Rep. David Simpson's bill forbidding government employees from touching a person's private areas without probable cause. The bill passed both houses by wide margins, but fell short of passage on a procedural issue. In a personal privilege speech on the final day of the special session, Simpson explained the importance of the bill and what happened to it:

On Friday, after calling the Texas House of Representatives to order, declaring a quorum, and making a few brief announcements, the House was adjourned--without opportunity to lay before the House its scheduled business, specifically the legislation (HB 41) recently added by the Governor to the call for the special session that prohibits the intrusive touching of persons seeking access to public buildings and transportation. This is the same legislation requested by the Lt. Governor, the State Republican Executive Committee, and a deluge of grassroots activists to be added to the call. A nearly identical bill (HB 1937) was passed unanimously through the House during the regular session. The bill has had over 100 coauthors in the House; it was passed out of committee, and was placed again on the House Calendar by the leadership team the Speaker has chosen.

What is the objection of some? They object to the words used in the legislation to describe the private parts of the body. Specifically, the legislation prohibits the touching of the anus, the sexual organ, the breasts or the buttocks of an individual as part of a screening search without probable cause.

There is a specific reason those words are in the legislation. They happen to be those sensitive and private body parts of a traveler that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents are routinely groping, and sometimes in retaliation for simply opting out of a virtual naked body scan. The bill could prohibit the touching of your nose, or ear or kneecap, and those would be easier body parts to discuss in public, but it wouldn't solve the problem.

I fear the emperors in our state government, at least at times, are people who would rather allow despicable behavior to continue than speak out loud the necessary words to describe it.

In the name of security, travelers are being required to submit to a virtual naked strip by use of a scanner. Should one oppose the scanner based on modesty or for health reasons, then the result is a humiliating groping hand search which includes touching (and sometimes hitting or hard pressing) of the most private parts of an individual's body.

But will it stop here? The TSA claims in public records to have the authority to require a strip search as a condition of travel. In fulfillment of that belief, this last week the TSA forced a 95-year-old cancer stricken woman to remove her diaper in an extensive and extremely intrusive search.

Fifteen years ago, would you have believed that allowing a government agent to put their hand inside your underwear would ever be a condition of travel? If we do not stop now, what will our children be required to endure?

A delicate matter? Yes, certainly. But is it better to define what is indecent government behavior and to prohibit it by legislation, or to be "discreet" and allow the official oppression of travelers to continue?

Rarely in the history of this legislature has the State's leadership so masterfully worked against the will of its members and the people they represent. Leadership managed to arrange it so that every member could cast a vote in support of a bill which they ensured would not pass. No doubt, this deception will confound many Texans.

But, the people of Texas should not be confused. The explanation is simple and clear. The defeat of this bill can only be laid at the feet of the leadership of this state.

If you appreciate Rep. Simpson's stand for liberty and would like him to try again to pass this bill in the next legislature, he could use your help getting re-elected.

Gadsden Flag adaptation courtesy gulagbound.com, which notes that, like the original, this version omits the apostrophe.

Phil Kerpen, Vice President of Policy for Americans for Prosperity, has a new book out: Democracy Denied: How Obama Is Ignoring You and Bypassing Congress to Radically Transform America -- and How to Stop Him. I have a review copy, provided by AfP, and am reading it now with a review to come in a few days.

The book documents how President Obama is using czars and regulation to implement his left-wing agenda, bypassing Congress and overriding the will of the American people on issues like Internet regulation, cap and trade, union card check, Obamacare, and financial regulation. An interactive chart at ObamaChart.com illustrates these five areas and how to combat regulatory extremism.

Here's a brief trailer that will give you a sense of the book.

The theme of Kerpen's book continues to resonate, as earlier this week Obama announced an executive order to change the Federal Home Affordable Refinance Program. That link leads to a CBN News report which includes a brief interview with Phil Kerpen about the change and how it fits into the pattern described by his new book.

Daily Caller: CBS reporter: White House, DOJ reps 'yelled' and 'screamed' at her over 'Fast and Furious' scandal

Did the White House try to strong-arm a journalist in the wake of the Justice Department's "Operation Fast and Furious" scandal? CBS News correspondent Sharyl Attkisson says government leaders took a very aggressive tack following her revelations earlier this year.

On Tuesday's Laura Ingraham Show, Attkisson said DOJ spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler and White House associate communications director Eric Schultz yelled and screamed at her over the story.

"The DOJ woman was just yelling at me," Attkisson said. "The guy from the White House on Friday night literally screamed at me and cussed at me. Eric Schultz -- oh, the person screaming was Tracy Schmaler. She was yelling, not screaming. And the person who screamed at me was Eric Schultz at the White House."...

Attkisson also said the DOJ and White House representatives complained that CBS was "unfair and biased" because it didn't give the White House favorable coverage on the developing scandal.

"Is it sort of a drip, drip. And I'm certainly not the one to make the case for DOJ and White House about what I'm doing wrong," she added. "They will tell you that I'm the only reporter, as they told me, that is not reasonable. They say The Washington Post is reasonable, the LA Times is reasonable, The New York Times is reasonable -- I'm the only one who thinks this is a story, and they think I'm unfair and biased by pursuing it.

I imagine the Nixon administration thought that Woodward and Bernstein were being unreasonable, too. Sometimes the most important story is the one that only one reporter has the guts to pursue.

Mainstream media sources like Bloomberg News and the Washington Post have been digging deeper into the bankruptcy of federally-subsidized Solyndra, looking particularly at George Kaiser, whose venture capital companies were involved in Solyndra's financing, and his George Kaiser Family Foundation, which held a large stake in the failed company. A few brief links:

Bloomberg News: Obama-Backing Billionaire's Charity Sought Solyndra in Tulsa

Washington Post: Investment in failed solar firm Solyndra raises questions about nonprofit's purpose

Philanthropy Daily: The Other Solyndra Scandal

New York Times, April 25, 2005: A Tax Benefit for Big Donors Often Bypasses Idea of Charity

Michelle Malkin: Solyndra Watch

KGO: Roseanne says guilty bankers should be beheaded: I imagine generous fundraising for President Obama's re-election would qualify a banker for a pardon from this modern-day Madame Defarge.

Consider this a placeholder. Will come back and add excerpts and my own thoughts later. In the meantime, read these stories for yourself.

There's been some uproar on the web over a video clip from George Kaiser's speech to the Rotary Club of Tulsa on July 8, 2009. Here's the video and the text of the clip, as transcribed by Reason Hit and Run:

The last major initiative is the federal Stimulus package. Jim East and Bev Anderson are working with us full-time for a while to reflect the fact that there's never been more money shoved out of the government's door in world history and probably never will be again than in the last few months and the next 18 months. And our selfish parochial goal is to get as much of it for Tulsa and Oklahoma as we possibly can.

[Applause]

So we've helped a number of entities try to make effective grant requests for this funding. We've secured more than $40 million extra for Tulsa so far. We've made multiple trips to Washington to tell the story in education and health care and energy to the respective cabinet secretaries in each of those areas and almost all the key players in the west wing of the White House. So that will be a strong effort going forward.

We're trying to get Tulsa selected as a pilot project in various programs like Promise Neighborhoods, Race To the Top, innovation initiatives, challenge grants for early childhood education and so forth. And we have the almost unique advantage in that we can say, "Whatever you do we'll match with private funding and we'll watch over it, because we don't want to be embarrassed with the way our money is spent and so we won't make you be embarrassed with the way your money is spent either."

This is plenty disturbing, but it's not some sort of smoking gun for the Solyndra scandal. Kaiser is clearly referring to assisting local non-profits to apply for federal grants.

Wouldn't it have been wonderful to hear Kaiser say something like this: "I've spoken to my friend President Obama, and I've been successful in persuading him that a massive expansion of government pork barrel spending is the worst thing we can do for our economy. Instead, the President will be pushing for a free-market-oriented reform of our health care industry, relieving employers of their worries about impact of health care reform on the cost of hiring and keeping employees on the payroll." But that didn't happen.

The most disturbing aspect of this clip is that Tulsa's business leaders applauded and cheered at the idea of robbing future generations to fund Kaiser-favored projects.

John Sexton of Verum Serum writes:

Frankly I can think of no better condemnation of the corruption and utter futility of the Obama stimulus then the fact that here you have one of the wealthiest philanthropists in America, a man with nearly $10 billion in personal assets, openly stating his intention to grab as much stimulus money as he possibly could, like every other pig at the trough. Is this the proper role of government, to take hard-earned dollars from tax payers (and their children and grandchildren) to fund the vanity projects of multi-billionaires, well-intentioned or not, who just so happen to have the right political connections?

A whimsical, but nonetheless sophisticated, explanation of gerrymandering, including the flaws with several approaches to reform. It's a useful guide to what happened in Oklahoma with the legislature under Democrat control in the past and happened again this year under the Republicans, complete with weaselly consultant. Watch the right side of the screen carefully at about 3:30 to discover the fatal flaw in the "independent commission" approach, as it was implemented in Tulsa this year.

This is long, but worth reading, particularly if you're knowledgeable about the financial aspects of bankruptcy. There are some interesting twists and turns that seem to suggest that GKFF's investments have been protected to the detriment of federal taxpayers. If that's so, I'm torn: It's better for Tulsa if GKFF doesn't get soaked by the failure of Solyndra, but as a fiscal conservative I have a problem with a government guarantee, particularly one that has a strong whiff of political favoritism, that gives investors nothing but upside while taxpayers break even at best. But that's all my opinion and speculation, and it's certainly not my intent to suggest any wrongdoing on the part of anyone involved.

Solyndra's Fremont, California, facility, by Monica's Dad on Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

A few news stories and commentaries of interest, regarding Oklahoma's wealthiest man, George B. Kaiser, and the recently-bankrupt solar energy firm Solyndra, which failed despite $535 million in federal loan guarantees. The stories discuss Kaiser's fundraising for the Obama campaign, his visits to the Obama White House the week before the Solyndra guarantee was approved, the increasing level of his George Kaiser Family Foundation's investment vehicles in Solyndra, and Kaiser's Argonaut Ventures I moving first in line, ahead of the taxpayers, for repayment.

From the Daily Caller, an account of George Kaiser's four visits to the White House in the week before the Solyndra loan guarantee was approved:

According to White House visitor logs, between March 12, 2009, and April 14, 2011, Solyndra officials and investors made no fewer than 20 trips to the West Wing. In the week before the administration awarded Solyndra with the first-ever alternative energy loan guarantee on March 20, four separate visits were logged.

George Kaiser, who has in the past been labeled a major Solyndra investor as well as a Obama donor, made three visits to the White House on March 12, 2009, and one on March 13. Kaiser has denied any direct involvement in the Solyndra deal and through a statement from his foundation said he "did not participate in any discussions with the U.S. government regarding the loan."

But the countless meetings at the White House seem hardly coincidental. Kaiser, in fact, is responsible for 16 of the 20 meetings that showed up on the White House logs.

In the meetings on March 12, Kaiser met with former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors Austan Goolsbee at 11 a.m., Senior Advisor Pete Rouse at 3 p.m., and Deputy Director of the Domestic Policy Council Heather Higginbottom at 6:30 p.m. On the 13th, Kaiser met with Deputy Director of the National Economic Council Jason Furman at 9 a.m....

As TheDC previously reported, Solyndra officials, including Kaiser himself, donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Barack Obama.

Kaiser personally donated $53,500 to Obama's presidential campaign in 2008. Ben Bierman, executive vice president of operations donated $5,500 to Obama, and Karen Alter, senior vice president of marketing gave $23,000, just to name a few.

From Reuters' MuniLand blog on September 8, 2011: "The President's argonaut," a detailed look at the George Kaiser Family Foundation's investment in Solyndra:

Two of Solyndra's largest investors are Argonaut Ventures I, L.L.C. and the GKFF Investment Company, LLC. Both firms are represented on the Solyndra board of directors by Steven R. Mitchell (see Solyndra S-1 page 119). Both are investment vehicles of the George Kaiser Family Foundation of Tulsa, Oklahoma....

George Kaiser alleges that he didn't discuss Solyndra with any White House officials but his investment vehicles were very hot for Solyndra. I went back into Solyndra's IPO filing and totaled up the amount of funding Kaiser's investment businesses gave Solyndra. Over 9 rounds of financing it invested approximately $337 million, or 48% of all equity raised for the business. Although Kaiser, through Argonaut and GKFF Investment Company, LLC, did not participate in the initial two private financing rounds, they dominated the following funding rounds and were the major venture capital investors in the firm....

Like many bankruptcies there are a lot of creditors in line to be repaid by disposing of Solyndra's assets. What is unusual is the order of precedence of creditors. When the Solyndra loan was guaranteed by the Department of Energy and paid out by the U.S. Treasury according to US law 10 C.F.R. §609.10(d)(13), the government should have become first in line for repayment (page 2):

Any Guaranteed Obligation may not be subordinate to any other debt and must have a first lien position on all assets of the project and all additional collateral pledged as security for any project debt.

But when I read the bankrutpcy filing it turns out George Kaiser's investment firm is actually first in line, ahead of the U.S. government, for $69 million. Here is the ordering:

Tranche A: $69,302,901 - Argonaut Ventures I, L.L.C
Tranche B/D Term Loan Facility: $527,808,544 - U.S. Department of Energy
Tranche E Credit Documents: $186,481,645 - Argonaut Ventures I, L.L.C.

The financing documents were rewritten in February 2011 and gave priority to Argonaut for Tranche A. Several commentators have raised the question of why the Department of Energy would have allowed the government to become subordinate to Argonaut given the law.

Bruce Krasting on the Zero Hedge blog notes a curious omission on the list of witnesses at Wednesday's House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing:

Of interest to me is that there are no witnesses scheduled for the principal owner, Argonaut Ventures (George Kaiser family investment vehicle). One would think that it might be informative to talk with the investors. Ah, well.

Maybe a couple of Tuesday's Tulsa City Council primary winners could have flown up to DC to represent the investors -- GKFF trustee Phil Lakin and former GKFF lobbyist G. T. Bynum.

(Another Tulsa connection: Congressman John Sullivan is vice chairman of the Energy and Power Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and, as such, Sullivan is on the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.)

Krasting writes that Argonaut purchased Solyndra's inventory and accounts receivable in July. He speculates that Argonaut might be able to profit from the purchase of Solyndra as a company to be able to use its Net Operating Losses (NOLs) to offset income from other energy-related investments. (That's my attempt at a summary as a financial novice. Best to read Krasting's opinion for yourself.)

Bottom line. Only Argonaut has a chance of utilizing the tax benefits. Whether they are ultimately worth anything is not clear. But this fact does give Argonaut a potential leg up on other bidders. Keep in mind that Argonaut would not be paying cash for anything. They would just swap all of [Solyndra] (including the NOLs) for their otherwise worthless IOUs.

Krasting goes on to relate something he said on the Pat Campbell Show on Tulsa talk station KFAQ:

At one point it came up that Kaiser is a pillar of Tulsa. I used that chance to say: (Edited for stutters, run ons etc...(Link)

George Kaiser could step up in a bankruptcy court and offer to put $300mm into [Solyndra]. The proceeds would be used to substantially pay down the government IOU. The balance of the debt would be converted into common stock. If [Solyndra] were around in 5-7 years, the government might get the rest of its money back.

That's my challenge to George Kaiser. Step up and fix this problem.

Of course this would be the dumbest thing for Kaiser to do. I don't think he's dumb at all (and he has the best lawyers). I'm sure he doesn't like losing good money after bad. That said, this isn't one of those everyday stories. This one could swing an election. I wonder if he gave it a thought.

I wonder if Bruce Krasting has heard of Great Plains Airlines. The failed Tulsa-based airline defaulted on $7.1 million from George Kaiser's Bank of Oklahoma and burned up some $30 million in transferable tax credits. According to first-hand accounts, bank officials claimed city officials had made implicit guarantees that the city would cover any default, despite assurances from the same officials to the public that the city taxpayers were not on the hook if the airline failed.

When the FAA ruled that the collateral for the loan could not be used for that purpose (an illegal subsidy using FAA passenger service fees to favor one airline over others at the same airport), there was a lawsuit. The city government was added to the suit under the flimsy pretext of "unjust enrichment," then-Mayor Kathy Taylor, a Democrat, immediately waved the white flag, and the loan was repaid, just before the end of 2008Q2, out of Tulsa's sinking fund at the expense of city property taxpayers.

The list of Great Plains Airlines investors was a who's who of Tulsa insiders. (It should be noted that Kaiser was not an GPA investor.) Politically connected private investors would see nothing but upside for investments that often consisted of in-kind services, while the taxpayers would (and did) take it in the shorts if it failed and at best could hope for break-even.

(More about Great Plains Airlines, its failure, and the ongoing impact on Tulsa taxpayers in the BatesLine Great Plains Airlines archive.)

MORE: Bruce Krasting has a September 15, 2011, update, "Solyndra - A few new facts. A few new questions," in which he takes a closer look at the sale of Solyndra's inventory and accounts receivable by subsidiary Solyndra Financial to a day-old Delaware corporation called Solyndra Solar II, with a company called Argonaut Solar acting as agent. The sale is disclosed in the bankruptcy filing. Krasting asks some questions:

I have found no explanation/details for this transaction. It is clear that a purchase/sale took place. The question of how much was sold and at what price is not clear. It is also not clear what Argonaut Solar is doing in this deal. Argonaut is a name that George Kaiser uses. His family investment vehicle channeled money to SOL through a company called Argonaut Ventures. Why would a company controlled by GK have a role as Agent between the buyer and seller of SOL's assets? A question to ask is whether GK has (directly or indirectly) an interest (equity or debt) in SSII.

Krasting considers the impact to the taxpayers:

Argonaut (GK) has separately offered to provide a post bankruptcy loan of $4mm ("DIP"). There are many terms required by Argonaut. One requirement relates to the A/R sales. From the docs:

It is a condition to funding under the DIP Facility that the Inventory Accounts Receivable Trust Funds being held in the Inventory A/R Purchaser Trust Accounts are released to Argonaut Solar, LLC, as agent for the Inventory A/R Purchasers.

Argonaut's (very good) lawyers make their position very clear as to who owns the assets in the A/R accounts.

The Purchased Inventory (including any proceeds thereof) and the Inventory Accounts Receivable Trust Funds (including any proceeds thereof) are property of the Inventory AIR Purchasers and not property of the Debtors' estates.

In other words, Argonaut is willing to make a new $4mm loan, PROVIDED that the Judge releases (at least $3.86m) back to an entity that Argonaut is connected to (SSII). In addition, the Judge would be functionally sanctioning the A/R sale. The inventory (whatever it is worth) and the receivables (whatever they are worth) will be excluded from the Debtors Estate. That means that there is even less of a chance that Uncle Sam sees a penny of the money that he (we) are owed.

Krasting emphasizes that he is not suggesting wrongdoing on anyone's part. (Nor am I.) He is simply, as a taxpayer and blogger, looking for some clarity. (As am I.) Krasting has asked for insight from his readers. If you can shed any light on what all this means, please leave a comment or contact me via email. If someone from GKFF or one of the foundation's related investment vehicles wishes to provide some sort of rationale behind these items from the bankruptcy filing, as noted by Krasting, I'd be happy to publish it here.

MORE: If you've lost Jon Stewart... (via Brandon Dutcher on Twitter)

Stewart leads into a clip from an ABC News story about Kaiser's White House visits: "For this to truly become a weapons-grade political fodder, you're going to need incompetence with more than just a whiff of sinister cronyism."

American Majority is holding a campaign management training class for grassroots activists in Bixby (just south of Tulsa) this Saturday, September 17, 2011, sponsored by Tulsa Project 912, and part of American Majority's nationwide "training bomb."

What: American Majority campaign management training
When: Saturday, September 17, 2011, 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.
Where: Lord of Life Lutheran Church, 12802 S Memorial Drive in Bixby, OK
How much: $25

The class will include such topics as fundraising and budgets, using new media in campaigns, and get-out-the-vote (GOTV).

Yesterday's results should emphasize the need for serious conservative activists to get this kind of training. The Tulsa city primary was a disaster for conservative groups like the Tulsa Project 912, OK-SAFE, and Tulsa Area Republican Assembly, as the candidates they (we) endorsed, the candidates that gave good answers to their questions, almost all got beat and by candidates who in most cases didn't bother answering their questions.

You can't win policy battles without electing good people, and you can't elect good people without persuading the vast majority of voters who aren't activists and who may barely be paying attention.

And that's where this campaign management training class comes in. I am persuaded that it is impossible to earn an honest living as a campaign consultant (at least at the local level), so we need to train and develop the skills of honest amateurs to provide the support that honest candidates need to win.

I ran for city council twice, and I've helped many candidates over the years. Activists and candidates have great capacity for self-delusion. A tactic or slogan that appeals to us probably won't grab the majority of voters. I've seen all sorts of dumb moves that the candidate was sure would win the election. You cannot run a campaign by intuition any more than you can trust your sense of balance to keep a plane straight and level.

One of the most frequent and most frustrating failures is the failure to raise enough money. I hate raising money, but I managed to raise and spend about $17,000 back in 2002. I had no PAC money, only one really big donation, and I didn't spend more than an incidental amount of my own money. The contributions came from family members, co-workers, and fellow neighborhood activists and homeowners, people who knew me from my public involvement. I sent out requests and held two fundraisers, and I wasn't as aggressive about making fundraising calls as I should have been. Not complicated, time-consuming, or scary.

If you're for honest and transparent government, for free markets, for stable and safe neighborhoods, if you're against corporate welfare, against higher taxes, against eminent domain abuse, you need to get this training. You need enough humility to realize you don't know as much as you think you do about running a successful campaign and let the good folks at American Majority give you some training.

This last Thursday would have been the 111th birthday of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother. The Queen Mum died on Easter Saturday 2002, having lived through the entire 20th century and a year of the 21st.

Margaret Rhodes, daughter of the Queen Mother's older sister, has written a new book, The Final Curtsey, about life with her aunt and her cousin, Queen Elizabeth II. The Daily Mail has run several excerpts from the book along with photos of the royal family from Mrs. Rhodes' personal collection.

The Queen and I: Mrs. Rhodes' years as her aunt's lady-in-waiting. I was fascinated by the presence of Tupperware or some competing brand of plastic self-sealing container in the photos of the royals eating outdoors at Balmoral in the 1980s.

Mrs. Rhodes writes of her childhood: adventures with her cousins, growing up in a noble house, learning of "Uncle Bertie's" ascent to the throne, and sneaking out of Buckingham Palace with Princess Elizabeth on VE and VJ day.

I was 20 in 1945. VE Day was a euphoric moment. I was still at the Palace and that evening we had a huge party. My eldest brother, John, who had been a prisoner of war, was there and a gang of us, including the two Princesses, were given permission by the King and Queen to slip away anonymously and join the rejoicing crowds on the streets.

This sort of freedom was unheard of as far as my cousins were concerned.

There must have been about 16 of us and we had as escort the King's Equerry, a very correct Royal Navy captain in a pinstriped suit, bowler hat and umbrella. No one appeared less celebratory, perhaps because he took his guardian responsibilities too
seriously.

Princess Elizabeth was in uniform, as a subaltern in the Auxiliary Transport Service - the ATS. She pulled her peaked cap well down over her face to disguise her much-photographed image, but a Grenadier among the party refused to be seen in the company of another officer, however junior, who was improperly dressed.
My cousin didn't want to break King's Regulations and so reluctantly she agreed to put her cap on correctly, hoping that she would not be recognised. Miraculously she got away with it.

London had gone mad with joy. We could scarcely move; people were laughing and crying; screaming and shouting and perfect strangers were kissing and hugging each other. We danced the conga, a popular new import from Latin America; the Lambeth Walk and the hokey-cokey, and at last fought our way back to the Palace, where there was a vast crowd packed to the railings.

In the final installment, Mrs. Rhodes writes about her marriage and that of her cousin.

Press release from Sen. Coburn's office this morning:

U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) released the following statement after Standard & Poor's downgraded the United States' AAA credit rating.

"This announcement is probably long overdue. For decades, political careerism has trumped statesmanship in Washington. Both parties have done what is safe, not what is right. The dysfunction in Washington is the belief that we can live beyond our means forever. We can't. The moment to make the hard decisions we have long avoided has arrived. There is no where left to kick the can."

RELATED: Michael Carnuccio of OCPA explains why the debt ceiling deal doesn't add up:

After the Boehner plan (as it stood Thursday afternoon) failed to command enough votes to pass, the proposal was strengthened by adding back in to the bill a requirement that Congress pass a balanced budget amendment and send it to the states for ratification prior to any further increase in the debt ceiling. That was enough to get a few more Republican congressmen to support the plan, enough for passage, 218-210, on Friday. (22 GOP congressmen voted no. All four Oklahoma GOP congressmen voted yes; Dan Boren and the rest of the Democrats voted no.)

The addition of the balanced budget amendment is a very positive change, although I'm still uncomfortable with this select committee idea and the small amount of FY 2012 cuts.

Here's a July 29, 2011, email from Sullivan. It appears that he took heed of the negative feedback he received from 1st District constituents about the Boehner Plan and communicated it successfully to House leadership, who in turn took the negative feedback seriously. 

(That said, I think it was a strategic error on Boehner's part to put another debt reduction plan forward, given that Cut, Cap and Balance had already passed the House with bipartisan support. But having put the Boehner Plan forward, it would have been difficult to back down completely.)

Team,

I have some good news.  I told you yesterday I was not done fighting for a balanced budget amendment requirement, and I am pleased to report that its back on the table.

Following our calls yesterday, my conservative colleagues and I met with the House leadership team both last night and this morning.  I made it clear where my district stood as did my colleagues.  Speaker Boehner listened, even postponing the vote, and went back to the drawing board. 

Speaker Boehner agreed to strengthen the balanced budget amendment requirements of his budget control plan.  Now, instead of just requiring a vote on a BBA in both chambers,  the Boehner bill now requires a balanced budget amendment be passed by both the House and Senate and sent to the states for ratification before the President can get his second tranche of additional debt ceiling authority later this year. 

So now, before president Obama gets a second round of debt ceiling increase, we get both passage of a balanced budget amendment and $1.8 trillion in additional cuts (which are required to be produced by a select committee with legislative authority and passed by Congress prior to any debt ceiling increase).

I want to be clear, this is a big win for our country and a testament to the grassroots work each of you do.  Again, the Boehner bill is not perfect, but it is essential that we pass a Republican bill with spending cuts and reforms, or else we put Harry Reid in the driver seat and face a real possibility of no spending cuts at all.  Our great country cannot afford that. 

Think about where we started, President Obama demanding a clean debt ceiling increase with no spending cuts - essentially a blank check.  House Republicans are on the verge of passing a bill that completely offsets a short term debt ceiling increase with spending cuts, and  will require that a balanced budget amendment to our constitution must pass the House and the Senate and be sent to the states for ratification and Congress must approve an additional $1.8 trillion in cuts before President Obama  can ever raise the debt ceiling again.

Thank you for your time and advice.  God bless,

John Sullivan

Earlier today, I had the privilege of participating in a teleconference, along with a half-dozen other Tulsa area activists, with Oklahoma 1st District Congressman John Sullivan and Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan regarding House Speaker John Boehner's proposal (officially known as the Budget Control Act of 2011) for raising the debt ceiling and cutting and capping projected discretionary outlays over the next 10 years. While I disagree with the decision Ryan and Sullivan have made to support Boehner's "two-step" plan, I appreciate them taking the time to explain their reasons.

House Republicans had passed an earlier plan called "Cut, Cap, and Balance." The bill failed in the Senate on a party line vote. CC&B would have cut $111 billion in FY 2012, placed enforceable caps on future discretionary spending, and would have required passage of the Balanced Budget Amendment by Congress (sending it to the states for approval) prior to an increase in the debt ceiling. The Senate turned CC&B down on a party line vote.

The Boehner Plan doesn't include tax increases, but it's possible (some think likely) that the commission created by the plan would propose tax increases. Assume the six Democrats on the commission are all supportive of tax hikes; all it would take is one RINO squish to give tax hikers a majority, and it seems likely to me that Mitch McConnell would feel obliged to include at least one squishy GOP senator on the commission.

The Boehner Plan (version 1.0.1) cuts $22 billion in FY 2012 and a total of $915 billion over 10 years, raises the debt ceiling by $900 billion, and provides for a commission of 12 (six from each party, six from each House) to recommend further cuts of at least $1.8 trillion. The commission's proposal would be fast-tracked for votes and would be unamendable. The Balanced Budget Amendment would come up for a vote in each chamber, but wouldn't have to pass.

(By the way, we are speaking Intraviazonian here, so "cut" doesn't mean spending less money next year than we spent this year. It means not spending as much next year as the most recent budget plan had projected.)

My takeaway from the conversation with the congressmen is that, while the Boehner Plan does not do as much to cut spending, they believe it has a chance to pass the Senate. Although Senate Democrats have announced they won't vote for the Boehner Plan, supporters in the House think they're bluffing. If the Boehner Plan fails in the House, they believe Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's plan (almost certain to include tax hikes) will have enough momentum to pass the Senate and get enough squishy House Republicans to back it.

While the Boehner Plan would be better than a Reid or Obama alternative, I don't believe it will pass the Senate, and I don't believe that somehow the mainstream-media-informed public will attach the blame for the failure on the President or Senate Democrats. My guess is that the Reid plan will pass the Senate but won't prevail in the House, and the Boehner plan, if it passes the House, wlll get stuck in the Senate. In that stalemate, the Boehner plan, not the tougher CC&B, will become the starting point in negotiations.

Conservatives may as well be bold on the budget, because they'll be savaged by the media regardless.

Given all that, how does it help the cause of deficit reduction to concede so much before the other side has even brought a plan to the negotiating table? As I tweeted during the teleconference, the strategery escapes me.

What bothers me most about the Boehner Plan is that it doesn't cut spending in any way that you and I would understand the term. Discretionary spending remains and grows from its bloated stimulus levels.

They say it's the best deal we can get. I say it seems unlikely we can get the deal, so why not stick to a proposal like CC&B with bipartisan support in the House and widespread support around the country?

MORE: John Sullivan's detailed rationale for supporting the Boehner Plan.

Dean Clancy of Freedom Works provides the top 10 reasons to support Cut, Cap, and Balance over the Boehner Plan.

Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute shows how spending will continue to grow under the Boehner Plan

Americans for Prosperity is encouraging citizens concerned about the budget deficit to visit the district offices of key congressmen at noon on Thursday, July 13, 2011. A vote on a federal balanced budget amendment, H. J. Res. 1, is expected next week.

Here in Oklahoma AFP is focusing on persuading the state's lone Democrat, Dan Boren of the 2nd District, to support the amendment. Boren's four district offices:

• Muskogee Office, 431 W. Broadway, Muskogee, OK 74401, (918) 687-2533
• Claremore Office, 309 W. 1st Street, Claremore, OK 74017, (918) 341-9336
• McAlester Office, 25 East Carl Albert Parkway, Suite B, McAlester, OK 74501, (918) 423-5951
• Durant Office, 112 N. 12th Avenue, Durant, OK 74701, (580) 931-0333

From the press release:

Muskogee-- We Need Congressman Dan Boren to Support a Balanced Budget! Oklahoma families understand that they must balance their budgets. Politicians in Washington, DC don't. That's why AFP supports a Balanced Budget Amendment.

This Thursday, July 14th, we are asking you to visit Congressman Dan Boren's district offices and encourage him to support a Balanced Budget Amendment. Take 15 minutes out of your day and make a difference!

The Oklahoma chapter of the free market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity will join a huge coalition of conservative and tea party organizations in a nationwide effort to visit U.S. House Members' district offices. The grassroots message this coalition will carry is that representatives must support a balanced budget amendment to U.S. Constitution that has spending caps and a requirement for a supermajority vote to raise taxes.

"Our grassroots are really worked up about the need for this balanced budget amendment, with tough limits on spending and taxes. State and local governments all need to work each year to bring their books into order and it's long past time that the federal government take similar steps," said Oklahoma State Director Stuart Jolly. "We're going to visit Congressman Boren's district offices because he needs to know how important this amendment is to free market grassroots activists all across this country."

Key features of the proposed amendment:

• Outlays must match revenues unless three-fifths of each House of Congress votes otherwise.
• Spending is capped at 18 percent of GDP unless two-thirds of each House of Congress votes otherwise.
• No bill shall increase taxes unless two-thirds of each House of Congress votes otherwise.
• The debt limit cannot be raised unless three-fifths of each House of Congress votes otherwise.
• The President must propose a budget to Congress where outlays match revenues.
• This amendment may be waived during a military conflict if a majority of each House of Congress approves, and then only spending for that military conflict may exceed the amendment's requirement for balance.

The text of the proposed Balanced Budget Amendment:

Section 1. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed total receipts for that fiscal year, unless three-fifths of the whole number of each House of Congress shall provide by law for a specific excess of outlays over receipts by a rollcall vote.

Section 2. Total outlays for any fiscal year shall not exceed 18 percent of economic output of the United States, unless two-thirds of each House of Congress shall provide for a specific increase of outlays above this amount.

Section 3. The limit on the debt of the United States held by the public shall not be increased unless three-fifths of the whole number of each House shall provide by law for such an increase by a rollcall vote.

Section 4. Prior to each fiscal year, the President shall transmit to the Congress a proposed budget for the United States Government for that fiscal year in which total outlays do not exceed total receipts.

Section 5. A bill to increase revenue shall not become law unless two-thirds of the whole number of each House shall provide by law for such an increase by a rollcall vote.

Section 6. The Congress may waive the provisions of this article for any fiscal year in which a declaration of war is in effect. The provisions of this article may be waived for any fiscal year in which the United States is engaged in military conflict which causes an imminent and serious military threat to national security and is so declared by a joint resolution, adopted by a majority of the whole number of each House, which becomes law.

Section 7. The Congress shall enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation, which may rely on estimates of outlays and receipts.

Section 8. Total receipts shall include all receipts of the United States Government except those derived from borrowing. Total outlays shall include all outlays of the United States Government except for those for repayment of debt principal.

Section 9. This article shall take effect beginning with the later of the second fiscal year beginning after its ratification or the first fiscal year beginning after December 31, 2016.

Video of the main session speeches and the policy track panels for RightOnline 2011 have now been posted.

Available videos include:

• Opening general session: Congressman Marsha Blackburn (TN), Congressman John Kline (MN), Ann McElhinney of Not Evil Just Wrong, Melissa Clouthier @MelissaTweets, John Hinderaker of PowerLineBlog.com
• Grassroots Awards Dinner: Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity Foundation, Tracy Henke of Americans for Prosperity Foundation, and Erik Telford of Americans for Prosperity Foundation.
• Saturday general session: Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (MN), Congressman Tim Huelskamp (KS), Michelle Malkin, Commentator Jason Lewis, John Fund of The Wall Street Journal, Author and Conservative Commentator S.E. Cupp, Ed Morrissey of HotAir.com, Erick Erickson of RedState.com, Guy Benson of Townhall.com
• Special session with former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty
• Closing Session With Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli, Michigan Congressman Thad McCotter, and Herman Cain from AFPhq on Vimeo.

Many of the speeches are available as individual videos.

The public policy panel discussions available for viewing:

• Cutting Red Tape: Reining in Out-of-Control Regulators


• Healthcare: Obamacare vs. Patient Freedom


• Job Creation: Standing Up To Obama's Union Thugs


• Tax Reform: A Return to Economic Growth


• Internet Freedom: Washington's Internet Takeover


• Extreme Power Abuse: Global Warming & Energy Regulation

A quick update before dinner:

I went to two excellent presentations this afternoon:

Earl Glynn of Kansas Watchdog spoke on "Freedom of Information and How to Use It Effectively." He dealt not only with the federal FOIA, but also with using state and local open records laws to research and investigate.

Tom Steward and Jonathan Blake of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota spoke on "Exposing Crony Capitalism," focusing on a case involving President Obama's weatherization czar and the "green" replacement window company owned by the czar's husband.

Time for dinner and a speech by Andrew Breitbart. I'll add links and some more details relating to these talks later.

As many Americans avoided the news over the long holiday weekend, those watching the social networking site Twitter saw a fascinating story unfold involving a liberal congressman and a photo of a clothed but discernibly turgid body part that was broadcast publicly from his verified Twitter account and addressed to a young lady to whom he is not married.

In case you missed it, on Friday night a lewd photograph was sent from the Twitter account of U. S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) to an attractive female college student from Washington state. Weiner initially claimed that his account -- an account that has been verified by Twitter as genuinely belonging to Weiner -- was hacked. Despite this claim of identity theft, Weiner has not sought the assistance of law enforcement in finding the culprit.

The tweet in question contained the handle of a single Twitter user (known as a reply or mention) followed by a link to a photo on Weiner's yfrog account. (yfrog is a service that provides a simple way to upload a photo and share it onTwitter.)

I'd rather not describe it in detail, but the photo would qualify as a display of nudity under Oklahoma law, although the body part in question was somewhat clothed.

Blogger Ace of Spades took the lead in covering the story, on his own blog and on his Twitter account, pointing out the holes in Weiner's claim that the photo was the result of a hack, challenging Weiner to take the matter to the FBI or congressional computer security officials. As a "reward" for his persistence, Ace has seen the story brushed off and his own work dissed by conservative commentators in the mainstream press.

To my pleasant surprise, however, CNN has given the story some coverage. On Tuesday, Weiner, who is married to a former assistant to Hillary Clinton, finally deigned to be questioned by the press about the photo, but he didn't bother to answer any of the questions, as you'll see in the CNN video below. Kudos to CNN's Dana Bash for grilling Weiner and refusing to be satisfied with his lame non-answers.

To put this in context, last week there was a special election in New York's 26th Congressional District occasioned by the resignation of Christopher Lee, married Republican congressman who sent a shirtless photo of himself in response to a woman's Craigslist personals ad, evidently looking for an extramarital affair. When the picture came to public attention, Lee quit in disgrace.

(Someone will object that Republicans believe in family values, so Lee was a hypocrite and deserves more condemnation than a Democrat up to the same or worse. But I've never heard of a Democrat candidate for office defend extramarital affairs or sending lewd photos to strange women.)

For my Tulsa readers, Weiner's performance is the equivalent of Kathy Taylor's "That is crazy" response to evidence in computerized election board records of her double-voting in Florida and Oklahoma in the November 2000 general election. The denial didn't come for hours, during which time her team could have ascertained that the physical evidence linking her to double-voting no longer existed. Weiner's non-denial denial suggests that he believes evidence still exists that would finger him as the culprit.

Weiner has over 40,000 Twitter followers but followed only 91 Twitter accounts as recently as April. That's not an unusual ratio for a celebrity, as Peter Ingemi notes in a New York Post op-ed:

Coincidences all, but there's one more that millions of Twitter users will understand best: On Twitter, famous people tend to have tens of thousands to millions of followers -- but they themselves follow only a fraction of that amount. Rep. Weiner is a man of national prominence, a rising star in the Democratic Party, frequently on TV, a past and likely future candidate for mayor. He knows and is known by thousands of movers, shakers, members of the press and politicians on the city, state and national levels. Yet, as of yesterday, he was following fewer than 200 others -- and, with all those famous folks to choose from, one of the few he followed was Cordova, a 21-year-old college student who lives nearly 3,000 miles away in Bellingham,Wash.

The target of the lewd photo, an attractive female college student who tweeted a joking reference to Weiner as her "boyfriend", was one of those handful of follows. By following this young woman, Weiner made it possible for her to send him private direct messages (DMs) on Twitter. Karol Markowicz makes the case that it's likely Weiner intended to send his coed Twitter pal a DM but failed:

If you're not a twitter user, you may not be aware how easy it is to accidentally send a private message as a public broadcast. Here's my friend Iggy asking his 3614 followers if we're on for lunch tomorrow and here's his correction later. Here's reality star Lisa Vanderpump wishing someone well and her correction. These are just two examples in the last few days. It happens all the time. It's happened to the best of us.

That's why it was clear to most regular twitter users exactly what had happened. Congressman Weiner meant to send the photo privately but made the same mistake as Iggy and Lisa--with slightly worse-off consequences.

Back in February, Weiner promised to change his profile picture to his bar mitzvah photo when he had gained 10,000 followers. But he assured his Twitter followers at the time that he wouldn't go further than that.

Clearly the Jewfro is working. Nearly 10k followers. If i hit that ill post my Bar Mitzvah pic. #dontworrynobrispicsat20k

Despite that promise, it appears that on Friday Rep. Weiner provided his more than 40,000 followers evidence that the covenant ceremony had indeed been performed.

MORE: Blogger Doug Ross has put together a comprehensive timeline of the story and Weiner's intriguing Twitter connections.

STILL MORE: Stacy McCain boils it down -- one consequence or the other is true and either way the story matters:

CONSEQUENCE A: An influential member of Congress has been the target of a disgusting,criminal and perhaps politically motivate smear attempt, involving the illegal penetration of a government official's private communications; or

CONSEQUENCE B: An influential member of Congress, married to a key aide to the Secretary of State, has been engaged in surreptitious sex-messaging online and, when this sordid activity was exposed, has initiated what can only be called a "cover-up attempt."

Browsing through a copy of The Happiness Project at the airport bookshop, I encountered the phrase "aspirational clutter," the stuff you don't need but keep around because represents some project or plan you hope to accomplish (but very likely won't). Consider this a yard sale of blog entries and news articles that turned into aspirational clutter in the form of browser tabs; perhaps someone else will find them useful:

Michelle Malkin: Finding Marizela: The maddening quest for a missing young person's online/text info: People young and old, especially young, leave behind a long trail of digital tracks, but the trail isn't readily accessible when a young woman vanishes.

I have two tabs containing a friend's Facebook notes on political topics. Is it allowable to blog about someone's Facebook notes? Should what happens on Facebook stay on Facebook?

Ed Stetzer: FIRST-PERSON: The May 21 phenomenon & a lesson for all Christians: The forecast and fizzled apocalypse inspires a look back at May 19, 1780, when New England's skies turned dark from smoke and fog and many thought the end was at hand. What should a Christian do in light of the end? Be about his Father's business:

The Connecticut legislature was unsure if they should meet or go home with their families and face the end. They would have to bring in candles to conduct even the most basic business. But, Abraham Davenport (later made famous by a poem) stood up and expressed it clearly. He stood up and proclaimed:

"I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, No faithless servant frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the harvest calls; And therefore, with all reverence, I would say, Let God do His work, we will see to ours. Bring in the candles!"

Davenport was not embarrassed or ashamed that the King might suddenly return. He was waiting and ready -- if this was the moment, so be it. Yet, for many Christians and churches, they have been unengaged in Kingdom work, so the return of the King is bad news -- so, suddenly, they want to "look busy."

You don't need a billboard with a date. You need a passion to live for a soon-returning Savior. I'm not the model on this by any means, but I will be here, doing the same thing I had planned because that's what I think Jesus would have me do.

I want to live ready in light of the soon return of Jesus, not acting like a nut because someone said He is coming back tomorrow. Honestly, I think that is part of why Jesus says, "no man knows the day or the hour." It's because we don't have to think, "Jesus is coming! Look busy" because we have been living in light of His return.

Timothy Dalrymple: A Letter to Harold Camping and Those Who Expected Judgment Day: "Your heart was in the right place.... You were right to believe that God will, one day, gather his children unto himself and draw history as we know it to a close.... You were right to spread the warning.... Our faith is not placed in a person or in a prediction, but in the good news of Jesus Christ.... No one knows when the end will come-so we must always be ready. ... We should remember the difference between scripture and an interpretation of scripture.... We should always beware the power of charismatic leaders and groupthink to sway our beliefs.... Finally, we should never believe that we've got God figured out...."

Hot Air: Is the Rapture schadenfreude turning sinister?: "Despite Camping and his followers being an extremely small fringe group, the media has covered this story as if the entire Southern Baptist church made this prediction."

Christianity Today: Should Christians Care about Harold Camping, May 21, & Doomsday?: A round-up of more commentary on the end of the world

Volokh Conspiracy: Nine Puzzles of Space and Time: Brain teasers involving time and geography. For example:

"I am located in one of the 48 states in the Continental U.S. If I go 90 miles in a straight line, regardless of direction, I will have needed to move my watch one hour ahead to keep it set correctly." In what state was Art?

Mark Steyn: The unzippered princeling and the serving wench: Dominique Strauss-Kahn and the special dispensations reserved for the Great Men of the Permanent Governing Class. And here's Ace of Spades' commentary on the Rights and Privileges of the Ruling Class:

The New Aristocracy isn't made by blood but by credentials. The aristocracy is "born" in each countries two or three most elite schools, and the formal induction into the class occurs in key international/financial government bureaucracies.

And then?

Then you can stop paying taxes with no fear of the consequences the commoners face, and you can forcibly rape (or, actually, sodomize) the help and know that an entire nation's aristocrats will defend you and criticize those lowly prosecutors who charge you.

It has always been the case that the nobility in one country supported the nobility in other countries, even countries with whom they were at war, because national ambition is always well, well secondary to personal ambition. Perpetuating the rights and privileges of the new class is more important to the members of the new class than any transitory policy goal.

Don Surber: They don't want you to travel: Government energy and security policy seem designed to take away Americans' cherished mobility.

John Piper: Thoughts on the Minnesota Marriage Amendment: An irenic and solid case for upholding the definition of marriage, despite the reality of sin and brokenness in marriage. Point 2 puts homosexuality in the broader context of disordered sexuality. Point 3 address the relationship between God's law and human law: "Not all sins should be proscribed by human law, but some should be.... there are many sinful behaviors that should not be illegal." Point 4 addresses the legal significance of marriage, leading to the crux of the issue in point 5:

The issue is not whether same-sex unions are permitted, but whether they are institutionalized. The issue is not whether we tolerate same-sex relationships, but whether we build on them as a foundation for society. The issue is not whether we forbid a particular sin, but whether we mandate social approval of that sin. The issue is not whether we block a sinful behavior, but whether we imbed it in our laws.

That's a few tabs cleared away....

An op-ed by Sullivan appeared in the Sunday, May 8, 2011, Washington Examiner.

Sullivan addresses the connection between the price of gas and the obstacles placed in the path of domestic oil and gas exploration by the Obama Administration. He writes:

The best way to moderate gasoline prices is a consistent source of oil and gas -- and not from foreign countries but from our own backyard.

The offshore energy potential of the United States is about 44.4 billion barrels of oil and 183.2 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to government estimates. That's enough oil to power 60 million vehicles for almost 25 years and enough natural gas to heat 60 million American homes for 57 years. It is also more than enough to reduce our imports by more than one-third.

However, this administration's energy security policy is to increase the cost of energy for American consumers and to shut the door on new exploration. Officials reversed a 2010 decision to expand offshore energy explorations, and have instead proposed no new exploration in new areas of the Outer Continental Shelf until at least 2017....

Obama's proposal to help lower prices? Remove long-recognized business and operational deductions (similar to deductions for all business and individuals). This will not lower fuel prices, but will actually result in higher costs for consumers.

This kind of logic makes you wonder if the president will tax grocery store owners more because food prices are up. Increased taxes increase the cost of doing business, and when the cost of doing business increases in any industry, those costs are passed on to the consumer.

Sullivan doesn't address his NATGAS Act -- about which more, later -- except in passing and by implication. ("House Republicans will bring up several pieces of legislation to undo that damage caused by the Obama administration's anti-American energy agenda....")

He makes an important point about removing deductions. Deductions are not subsidies. We tax businesses based not on their revenues, but on their profits -- income minus expenses. The tax code defines (in excruciating detail) what constitutes a legitimate business expense and how certain special expenses are treated (acquisition of capital equipment, for example, which is depreciated over several years rather than written off as a one-time expense). How a given piece of capital equipment is categorized -- e.g. three-year depreciation vs. seven -- can have a big impact on a small company's tax bill.

President Obama vowed to find the evildoers who are driving up the cost of energy, which brings to mind O. J. Simpson's vows to find the real killer. (Both of them seem to expect to find the culprits on the golf course, judging from the amount of time they spend there.) Mr. Obama needs to look in the mirror. His energy, budget, and monetary policies are driving up the cost of food and the cost of going to work, a regressive tax on the low-to-middle-income families he says he most wants to help.

May 4, 2011: I'll be on the air with Angel Clark on WGMD 92.7 at 8 pm Eastern (7 pm Central) Listen online at wgmd.com.

Business had taken me to Dover, Delaware, and Friday morning on my way to work, I heard a news story about the upcoming Delaware Republican State Convention. I had been wondering what to do with my weekend, had considered a trip into DC or Philadelphia, but hadn't been in touch with friends there to make any plans. It's always interesting to me to see how politics are done in other places. And given the fuss over last year's GOP Senate primary (Mike Castle vs. Christine O'Donnell), I thought there might be fireworks between the party establishment and Tea Party activists. (I was wrong about that, as it turns out.)

So I looked up the GOP convention on the web, made a call to GOP headquarters (which is in Wilmington, the state's largest city, not Dover, the state capitol) to put my name on the list, and then got in touch with Angel Clark, talk radio host and the state's top political blogger -- I met her and her husband last fall at FreedomWorks' BlogCon -- to see if they planned to attend. (As it turned out, they did, and I enjoyed getting an expert local view on the political scene.)

Although the First State is tiny, and the GOP hasn't had much success there in recent years, its Republican organization has the same representation on the Republican National Committee and the quadrennial national convention rules and platform committees as bigger and more Republican states like Texas and Oklahoma. So what happens at this Delaware gathering has national impact.

Delaware Democrats hold a 26-15 majority in the State House and a 14-7 majority in the State Senate. All of the state's congressional delegation (2 senators, 1 representative) are Democrats, as are all but one of the statewide elected officials. Only 29% of voters are registered GOP. Democrats are as dominant in Delaware as Republicans are dominant in Oklahoma. Regarding redistricting, one convention speaker said, "Unfortunately, we're in the party that has absolutely no say."

I haven't commented previously about the Obama birth certificate issue. My problems with the president involve his policies, not his place of birth. My guess was that there was something embarrassing on the long-form birth certificate that didn't appear on the certification of live birth that he released earlier.

And now the White House has posted on its website a PDF containing what purports to be a scan of a certified copy of the birth certificate of Barack Hussein Obama, II.

I say "purports" because there are some weird things about it. It's not strange that it's a PDF, rather than an image file, like a JPEG, BMP, PNG, or TIFF. Many scanners generate a PDF by default.

A tweet from Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit alerted me to some oddities with the document. I downloaded a copy of the PDF directly from the White House website, at this URL:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/birth-certificate-long-form.pdf

The metadata in the file is strange: It indicates that it had been processed in some way by Adobe Illustrator.

I happen to have Illustrator, so I opened the birth certificate PDF in Illustrator and followed the process outlined by Mara Zebest, coauthor of a book on Photoshop:

1. Select the entire document (Ctrl-A)
2. Object | Clipping Mask | Release
3. Repeat step 2 until Release is no longer an option.

When I did it, I could only do step 2 once after which Release was grayed out. But the result was the same: Boxes outlining eight parts of the document as separate objects and one box surrounding it all.

Reopening the original file again, I found that all I had to do was open the file in Illustrator and click using the Selection tool, and I could see all the box elements. In the layers box, there is one layer, composed of one group, which in turn is composed of 9 groups and a clipping mask. Each of those 9 groups is composed of an image and a clipping mask.

After following the above steps 1 and 2, all the clipping masks were converted to paths and the layer was composed of 9 groups and a path, with no intermediate path. Each individual component image could then be made invisible, using the layer dialog.

The nine components:

1. Tiny fragments the same color as the safety paper pattern on the top edge just left of center
2. Tiny fragments the same color as the safety paper pattern on the top edge just above the certification date
3. The letters "Non" from the word None in box 17a.
4. "AUG - 8 196" - part of a stamped date in box 20.
5. "AUG - 8" and the digit 6 in 1961in box 22.
6. "APR 25 2011" at the bottom left of the page.
7. The certification stamp of the state registrar at the bottom right.
8. Most of the remaining typed letters on the form, the handwritten dates, and the last half of Ann Dunham Obama's name.
9. Everything else -- the safety paper pattern, with white ghosts or haloes around the letters were first half of Ann Stanley Obama's signature, the signature of the Physician, all but one letter of the original registrar's signature, the form grid, and scattered letters -- the R in Barack, the K in Kenya, the S in Stanley, the last digit of the sequence number in the upper left of the page, and the handwritten numbers (which look like coding for statistical purposes)

Here's the ninth image -- what's left after the top 8 images are turned off (click the half-size thumbnail to view 997 KB full-size PNG -- I exported it from Illustrator at the same 72dpi resolution as the White House PDF):

I have no idea whether this is evidence of tampering, but it certainly looks different than other scanned PDFs in my possession. For example, here's a scanof ethics filings by Tulsans for Better Government (earlier incarnation of the rule-or-ruin bunch now known as Save Our Tulsa). Like the birth certificate, it's a form -- a mixture of pre-printed text and handwritten text. Opening that file in Illustrator shows what you'd expect -- one image (the entire form) in one group in one layer. Metadata reveals the model of scanner that produced the image (Toshiba e-STUDIO 353).

There's one other odd thing about this birth certificate: There is a sequence number in the upper left corner, which appears to have been produced by a hand stamp, perhaps the sort that automatically advances. The number on Obama's certificate is 61 10641. The sequence number on the certificate of Susan Elizabeth Nordyke, born at the same hospital the following day, is 61 10637. Obama's certificate was accepted by the Registrar General on August 8; Nordyke's was accepted on August 11. How can a certificate processed three days later have a lower sequence number? I'm making an assumption that the sequence number was applied when the certificate was received by the registrar; that assumption could be incorrect.

Does this mean I think President Obama was born in Kenya or is ineligible to be president? No. But I don't understand why Obama would release an image that appears to have been edited or processed in some way, especially given the long-standing controversy over the document which began three years ago during his bitter primary struggle with Hillary Clinton.

MORE: KRMG reports that Tulsa IT professional Scott Grizzle notes that several aspects of the document "don't pass the smell test." KRMG has audio of a conversation with Grizzle and pictures of the various digital pieces of which the document appears to be composed. I've known Scott for several years, and he's as far from an extremist in temperament and ideology as you can get.

The US Air Force is looking for a supplier for Light Air Support aircraft, to be used by the Afghan Air Force and by the USAF to train other partner air forces. Award is expected this summer, and the question is whether the Air Force will pick a variant of an American-designed and -built aircraft it already uses, in the hundreds, or a Brazilian-designed aircraft that would be new to the fleet.

In 1994, the US Air Force and US Navy issued a request for proposals for a new aircraft to be used for primary pilot training to replace the T-34 and T-37 aircraft, along with the flight simulators for the new aircraft. One of the bidders was Beechcraft (then part of Raytheon); the company I worked for at the time, FlightSafety, was part of the Beechcraft team, would design and build the simulators.

To be frank, I didn't think our team stood a chance. The proposed aircraft was a modification of a Swiss-designed single-engine turboprop, and the RFP required the controls and performance of a jet aircraft. But Beechcraft was able to provide jet handling and performance at a turboprop price, using technology to conceal the peculiarities of a propeller-driven aircraft from the pilot, and they won the contract.

I was part of the FlightSafety design team for the simulators for the winning aircraft, dubbed the T-6 Texan II. My job was to develop an Ada 95 framework which would connect software models of flight dynamics, engine performance, radios, instruments, hydraulic, electrical, and fuel systems, and would do so in an object-oriented way without compromising real-time performance.

The T-6 Texan II is now being used by the air forces of seven different nations, and FlightSafety Simulation in Broken Arrow has built dozens of T-6 simulators for the USAF and for Greece's Air Force. (I have no idea if any of my work is still in the simulator, or if it has all been rewritten over the years. Ada 95 lost its DOD status as a "mandatory" programming language about the time we started developing the T-6 sim.) The aircraft itself is built at the Hawker Beechcraft factory on the east side of Wichita, Kansas. It's been a good thing for our region's aviation industry.

There's also an armed version of the T-6. The AT-6 has on-board avionics (based on the system in use on the A-10C) to support surveillance, attack, and reconnaissance. Now the Air Force is looking for an aircraft to fill a light aircraft support and counterinsurgency role for the Afghan Air Force and other military partners.

The only other declared bidder, according to Aviation Week, is Brazilian aircraft manufacturer Embraer. A U. S. company, Sierra Nevada Corp., is the prime contractor, but Embraer would supply the parts from Brazil for assembly in Jacksonville, Florida. The Light Air Support contract will be awarded this summer.

Embraer began as a government-owned aircraft manufacturer in 1969, was privatized in 1994, but the government has retained a "Golden Share" which gives the government of Brazil veto rights over:

• change of our name and corporate purpose;
• amendment and/or application of our logo;
• creation and/or alteration of military programs (whether or not involving Brazil);
• development of third party skills' in technology for military programs;
• discontinuance of the supply of spare parts and replacement parts for military aircraft;
• transfer of our control;
• any amendments to the list of corporate actions over which the golden share carries veto rights, including the right of the Brazilian government to appoint one member and alternate to our Board of Directors and the right of our employees to appoint two members and their respective alternates to our Board of Directors, and to the rights conferred to the golden share; and
• changes to certain provisions of our bylaws pertaining to voting restrictions, rights of the golden share and the mandatory tender offer requirements applicable to holders of 35% or more of our outstanding shares.

I would not want the DOD to be forced by protectionist policies to buy poorly designed and expensive equipment from American companies, but neither would I want our defense dependent on overseas companies who are subject to the whims of a sometimes-friendly, sometimes-not foreign government.

The US has a long history of taking an aircraft and creating variants to extend its use into new mission areas. (The C-130 is a great example.) Parts for one variant often can be used for other variants. A pilot or maintenance technician trained on one variant of an aircraft can quickly learn to fly or work on another.

And if that aircraft and its simulators are built by US companies, it means keeping our tax dollars in the US, supporting American high tech and manufacturing capabilities. I trust the Kansas and Oklahoma congressional delegations are aware that it would also mean high-tech and skilled manufacturing jobs for their constituents.

DISCLOSURE: I have no financial interest (direct or indirect) in the outcome of this procurement. Hat tip to John Hawkins of Right Wing News for calling the issue to my attention.

American Majority will hold a day-long citizen activist training session on Saturday, April 23, 2011, at Tulsa Technology Center, focused on training activists to be effectively engaged with state and local government. As part of the event, I'll be joining Jamison Faught of Muskogee Politico and Peter J. Rudy of Oklahoma Watchdog on a local blogger panel. It should be a great program -- hope you can join us.

Here are the details:

Our nation was founded by ordinary citizen activists desiring a government that was accountable to the people. Today, ordinary citizens in every citizen and in every community are tired of the status quo and are ready to get involved like they never have before to demand accountability.

American Majority's purpose is to address these passions by providing education and resources to help you reach your goals.

To that end, American Majority desires to challenge concerned citizens to turn their focus to state and local issues with the first annual Tulsa Battlefield Training.

This event will provide those in attendance with two things:

First, the Tulsa Battlefield Training will give those in attendance a clear picture of what is happening at both the state level and local level with government spending, waste, and clear explanation regarding how all levels of government got into this mess.

Secondly, the Tulsa Battlefield Training will also provide tool, resources, and specific ways that attendees can get involved in the local government structure - whether as informed citizen activists or candidates for local office.

Confirmed Presenters Include:

• Ned Ryun, President of American Majority
• Michael Carnuccio, President of Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs
• Matt Robbins, Executive Director of American Majority
• A Local Blogger Panel Consisting of Michael Bates of Batesline.com; Jamison Faught of MuskogeePolitico.com; and Peter J. Rudy of OklahomaWatchdog.org
• Plus Presentations by the American Majority Oklahoma Staff

The Tulsa Battlefield Training will take place on Saturday, April 23rd at Tulsa Technology Center located at 3420 S Memorial Dr. from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm. Doors open at 8:30 am.

Registration is $20 per person (which includes lunch and all materials) - space is limited.

If you have any questions or would like additional information, call Seth Brown at 405-639-8896 or email him at seth@americanmajority.org

You do not want to miss this event!

American Majority is a non-profit and non-partisan political training organization whose mission is to train and equip a national network of leaders committed to individual freedom through limited government and the free market.

So many people have a blog nowadays that you may stumble across a friend's blog before they let you know that they have one. Here are a few blogs of friends and associates that I've come across recently. They're worth reading, and I'm adding to the blogroll, so you'll see their latest posts show up over on the BatesLine blogroll headlines page and (as appropriate) the BatesLine Oklahoma headlines and BatesLine Tulsa headlines pages.

I've gotten to know Tulsa visionary and restaurateur Blake Ewing through his involvement in organizations like TulsaNow. He doesn't post on his blog often, but when he does post it's usually a blockbuster essay on our city's challenges and possible futures. There's been a lot of talk about his latest: "Grow up, Tulsa." (I disagree with him on a few points and may elaborate in coming days.)

English with Rae is a blog aimed at helping those learning English as a second language go beyond "This is a pen," providing examples of conversational English and American culture in context and presented in a way that makes them interesting even if English is your first language. Rae, a college friend of my wife's, spent many years in Japan and writes from her experience as a second-language learner of Japanese and with Japanese learners of English. A news item about a Honolulu restaurant adding a tip to the bills of non-English speaking guests is the starting point for her most visited article, Tipping Cows and Everyone Else, which covers three different kinds of tipping (restaurant, cow, and advice), introduces customary tipping practices, and provides examples of the Present Real Conditional form, all neatly interwoven.

Gina Conroy is an author based here in Tulsa. We know her through school, and she was my daughter's creative writing teacher. Her blog, Defying Gravity, is devoted to striking the balance in life as a wife and mom and in pursuit of her dream of novel writing. She is under contract to contribute a novella to an anthology, and a recent entry is devoted to the process and pain of cutting a 50,000-word work in progress down to 20,000. She often interviews other writing moms and dads. Many recent entries have been devoted to dreams and ambitions -- rekindling them, thwarting dream-killers, and balancing your dreams.

Urban Garden Goddess is a Philadelphia-based blogger just getting into home organic gardening. As a rookie gardener last year, Tania (a friend through blogging circles) won third prize in the individual vegetable garden category in the Philadelphia Horticultural Society's City Gardens Contest. She's also a runner, and a recent entry is about "solid eating for a solid race performance."

San Francisco architect Christine Boles and I were both active in Campus Crusade for Christ at MIT back when. Her blog illustrates some of the creative solutions she and her husband, partners in Beausoleil Architects, have devised to meet the needs of clients while respecting history and the environment. Her latest entry shows how they turned a ground floor room into a garage while preserving the bay window that makes up the historic facade. In an earlier post, she advocates for "deconstruction" and recycling of building materials over demolition and landfill. This was interesting, too: The importance of the oft-overlooked V in HVAC -- ventilation.

Texas State Representative David Simpson (R-Longview) is married to a high school classmate of mine. Last year he defeated an incumbent Republican in the primary and went on to election in November. His blog has only a few entries, but they provide some insight into the 2011 Texas legislative session and the budding conflict between fair-dealer and wheeler-dealer Republicans. He is an author of HB 1937, which would prohibit TSA groping in the absence of probable cause. His article -- Dividing the Apple -- about the tough budget decisions facing the legislature, is worth reading. An excerpt:

Civil government has nothing except that which it takes from We the People. Unlike God, the government cannot create value or substance out of nothing.

When the Federal Reserve with Congress' approval "prints more money," it simply increases the number of federal reserve notes ("dollars") that are being exchanged in our economy for goods and services. The increase in the number of federal reserve notes in circulation does not represent more wealth. It merely divides the same value of goods and services in the economy into smaller parts. If you divide an apple into 4 parts or 8 parts, it is still just one apple.

The Texas legislature cannot create wealth either. It has no money except that which it takes from We the People. It can divide the apple of wealth we enjoy and redistribute it, but it cannot create more apples.

Even so, we are running out of apple. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, the portion of the apple that our state government consumes has grown by 45% over the last decade (that number is 87% without any adjustments). As the state's portion has grown, Texas families and businesses have had to settle for a smaller portion to feed themselves.

As first steps to budget cutting, Simpson has called for cutting all corporate welfare from the budget and reducing administrative overhead in the common and higher educational systems. His name popped up in a recent AP story:

Rep. David Simpson, R-Longview, put together an odd-couple coalition of Democrats and Republicans to approve an amendment zeroing out funding for the Texas Commission on the Arts and redirecting it to services for the elderly and disabled.

Channeling tea-party-like, populist anger right back at his own leaders, Simpson also has railed against hundreds of millions of dollars in what he calls "corporate welfare." It happens to include Perry's job-luring initiatives, the Texas Enterprise Fund and Emerging Technology Fund.

"These parts of the budget are more protected than schools and the weak among us," Simpson said. He failed to redirect the money, but not before raising a stink among Republicans.

U. S. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) illustrates the United States's current headlong rush into a debt crisis in which the national debt would be three times the national economy.

Imagine if you had credit card debts of $150,000 with a $50,000 a year income. You wouldn't be able to afford the interest on that kind of debt, much less paying it off. That's where we're headed if we continue to defer hard decisions on spending.

To those who would complain about the Republican preference to cut spending rather than raise taxes: What percent of the nation's economy should pass through the Federal government? Republicans are aiming to get that number back down to 20%. That still seems too high to me.

Congressman John Sullivan was the lone House member from Oklahoma to vote against H.J.Res. 48, the latest short-term continuing resolution, designed to continue funding the government in the absence of an actual budget. Sullivan issued this statement:

Enough is enough, the American people didn't elect us to continue kicking the can down the road with week to week spending bills that pacify Senate Democrats and the White House - they elected us to end the spending spree in Washington. We cannot continue forcing our government to operate on week to week measures, when the problems we face require serious long-term solutions. No one wants to see a government shutdown, but President Obama has been completely absent from the debate, and his lack of leadership in finding common ground ultimately shows his actions don't match his rhetoric, and regaining fiscal sanity is not on the top of his priority list.

The Federal Government is now nearly halfway through the fiscal year without a budget. A budget should have been in place before the fiscal year began on October 1, 2010; at the time both houses of Congress had large Democrat majorities.

Meanwhile on the other side of the Capitol, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has proposed an additional $20 billion in cuts in S. 493, in the form of seven amendments to the small business appropriations bill. Coburn's cuts include duplications identified in the GAO report and subsidies for ethanol (an "alternative energy source" that consumes more energy than it produces and drives up world food prices by diverting corn from guts to gas tanks):

Coburn has posted on the web a 31-page, heavily footnoted, and detailed description (PDF) of the cuts Coburn proposes and the rationale behind each. A few selections from the section on ethanol subsidies:

Consumers pay $1.78 per gallon of subsidized ethanol-blended fuel. Meanwhile, U.S. biofuels consumption remains a small share of national transportation fuel use--7.5 percent in 2012 and 7.6 percent in 2030

Ethanol burns at two-thirds the efficiency of gasoline (68 percent of the energy content of gasoline), ultimately increasing fuel consumption nationally as drivers and boaters are forced to burn more fuel to travel the same distances.

Increases of corn used for fuel production puts pressure on corn prices, demand for cropland, and the price of animal feed. Those effects, in turn, have raised the price of many farm commodities (such as soybeans, meat, poultry, and dairy products) and, consequently, the retail price of food--USDA estimates 40 percent of last year's corn crop will be used for ethanol production....

According to CBO: The increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices between April 2007 and April 2008.

In turn, that increase will boost federal spending for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the Food Stamp program) and other child nutrition programs by an estimated $600 million to $900 million in FY 2009." These domestic nutrition programs comprise over 60 percent of the farm bill....

Emira Woods, Chairperson of Africa Action said, "In the midst of a global food crisis and rising hunger, the ethanol industry expropriates land in Africa and elsewhere to grow food that fuels cars. We applaud Senators Coburn and Cardin for introducing legislation to end this shameless subsidy."...

[According to a 2007 report from the National Academy of Sciences] "Fertilizer and pesticide runoffs from the U.S. Corn Belt are key contributors to 'dead zones' in the Gulf of Mexico and along the Atlantic Coast. A 2008 study by independent researchers, published in the academy's Proceedings journal, calculated that increasing corn production to meet the 2007 renewable fuels target would add to nitrogen pollution in the Gulf of Mexico by 10 to 34 percent."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) is upset about the Republican House budget plan, which would eliminate federal funding to the National Endowment for the Humanities, which funds the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering every January in Elko, Nevada.

"The mean-spirited bill, H.R. 1 ... eliminates the National Endowment of the Humanities, National Endowment of the Arts," said Reid. "These programs create jobs. The National Endowment of the Humanities is the reason we have in northern Nevada every January a cowboy poetry festival. Had that program not been around, the tens of thousands of people who come there every year would not exist."

Now, I can believe that some people may have been conceived at a National Cowboy Poetry Gathering (between sessions, presumably) who might not otherwise exist, there being little to do in Elko in the winter besides gambling and visiting the local cathouses (which Reid wants to shut down, despite the jobs they sustain). But I imagine the vast majority of attendees would nevertheless exist even if they didn't happen to visit Elko in January.

I like cowboy poetry and cowboy music (the kind that Riders in the Sky makes), and if federal money is going to be spent on culture, preserving the culture of the Old West is certainly more worthwhile than paying for crucifixes dunked in urine.

But given our country's dire fiscal situation, this is the time to strip the Federal government down to the bare necessities, the responsibilities spelled out in the Constitution, and leave the rest to local government and private initiative. I'm disappointed that House Republicans couldn't find more than $61 billion to cut from a budget that will overshoot revenues by about $1 trillion.

I doubt that losing NEH funding will cause the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering or the Western Folkways Museum to shut down. More likely it will mean that tasks currently handled by a paid staffer will fall to a volunteer instead.

(By the way, it's really hard to find out how much money each NEH grant recipient gets. Whatever happened to the Coburn/Obama plan to let us "Google the federal government"?)

Meanwhile, recently departed NPR Foundation head Ron Schiller has added to the reasons to eliminate federal funding for public radio and TV. Schiller told investigative reporters, posing as potential donors from a Muslim organization promoting the spread of sharia in America, that NPR would be better off in the long run without federal money and that it would survive, along with most of its stations, if it were defunded.

Finally, Bill Gates recently spoke on the fiscal crisis faced by state governments. Despite being required by their constitutions to balance the budget every year, they have dug a deep hole for themselves by underfunding pensions and medical insurance for state government retirees incurring future liabilities without setting aside sufficient funds to meet those commitments. States use gimmicks to hide the extent of their liabilities and to produce a balanced budget that isn't balanced at all. Gates is concerned because he believes funding for K-12 and higher education will suffer as a result. Click that link to watch his 10-minute-long presentation on the TED website.

Anything government touches gets more expensive, because the recipients of government funding have less incentive to control costs. In fact, higher costs result in calls to increase funding. When funding is handled privately or entirely by local government, when the beneficiaries are paying for the benefit directly, there's more incentive to economize, to find creative ways to accomplish more for less, to recycle and adapt materials and facilities rather than buying or building new.

The Service Employees International Union has sent an email calling members and sympathizers to rally at the Oklahoma State Capitol at noon today (Saturday, February 26, 2011).

Here's the email from SEIU president Mary Kay Henry. Note that the signup links are directed to moveon.org:

SEIU brothers and sisters, Join us at a solidarity rally in your state capitol this Saturday

Over 13,000 people signed up to attend a solidarity action this weekend. We've partnered with dozens of great organizations and it promises to be a day you won't soon forget. Sign-up to join today.

It's been almost two weeks since SEIU members in Wisconsin joined with other public employees, students and allies to fight back against Governor Walker's attempt to take away their rights.

And we're winning.

You've seen the scenes from Madison by now, tens of thousands in the streets and thousands more inside the capitol inspiring a nation that has had enough of attempts to slash public services and hurt workers for the profit of billionaire campaign contributors.

But this weekend we've joined with allies across the country to organize solidarity rallies in major cities - including every state capital - this Saturday at noon.

We'll speak out to demand an end to the attacks on workers' rights and public services across the country. We'll demand investment to create decent jobs. And we'll demand that the rich and powerful pay their fair share.

In short, we'll turn Oklahoma into Wisconsin.

Will you join us Saturday at noon? Sign up to join your local rally here:

http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?rc=rsad_seiu&action_id=238&search_distance=40

Did you see the big news this week?

The Wisconsin Legislature shut down its comment line after receiving too many calls against the attempt to take away workers' rights.

But when a blogger pretended to be Kansas oil magnate David Koch, Republican Governor Scott Walker took his call and stayed on the line for 20 minutes!

The two talked about how to use tricks to defeat Democratic State Senators, Walker's plans to tell thousands of workers they will lose their jobs, and even talked about the billionaire's "vested interest" in the outcome of this fight.

You may not have a billion dollars like David Koch, but it's time our legislators hear our voice.

Use the tool below to find an event taking place this Saturday at noon and RSVP to join the fight.

http://pol.moveon.org/event/events/index.html?rc=rsad_seiu&action_id=238&search_distance=40

The outpouring of support for our members has been overwhelming.

Over 20,000 people sent in messages supporting them and our website has seen record traffic over the past week.

Workers in Wisconsin are very well aware the nation stands with them and they look forward to hearing the news about our successful events across the country on Saturday.

In solidarity,

Mary Kay Henry
President, SEIU

The leftist meme is that the Koch brothers are pushing budget cuts for their own personal profit. It's hard to see how the Kochs could be harmed or helped by Wisconsin or Oklahoma tax policy. But it's easy to see how a currency trader (moveon.org sponsor and billionaire George Soros is a currency trader) could profit if America's currency collapses under the weight of massive amounts of debt and higher taxes. Someone with a history of betting against currencies and profiting from the economic collapse of other nations' currencies might have a strong motivation to incite pressure against getting America's fiscal house in order.

Voters in Oklahoma and in Wisconsin overwhelmingly elected conservative Republicans to office who promised to rein in spending, maintaining services without raising taxes. These newly elected officials are keeping their promises.

For decades, politicians, particularly Democrats, have bought the support of public employee unions by promising benefits somewhere off in the future (pensions with minimal employee contributions, retirement health coverage), while avoiding the tough fiscal choices to fully fund those promises. These politicians could make these future commitments without raising taxes, without cutting services in other areas, without ensuring that the state would have the means to fulfill IOUs that would conveniently come due long after they left office.

The day of reckoning is here. Massive public debt is devaluing our currency, driving energy prices through the roof, pushing food prices up as well. The higher prices and, if the public sector unions have their way, higher taxes fall on the family, friends, and neighbors of the same SEIU members who will gather on the capitol steps later today.

I hope that the vast majority of Oklahomans who want and need more efficient government services at a lower cost will show up at the Capitol today as well and make their voices heard.

Congratulations to Holly Richardson, aka Holly on the Hill, a conservative Utah political blogger, mom of 20, and political activist who was named by a special Republican convention to fill an unexpected vacancy in the Utah House of Representatives.

The vacancy occurred because the recently re-elected incumbent representative discovered, while using an online "find your legislator" address-lookup tool, that his state rep was someone other than himself.

State Rep. Craig Frank represented the district since 2003. In 2009 he planned to move from Pleasant Grove to Cedar Hills. County maps then showed that the new location was within the 57th. So he moved.

Early this month, however, he was fiddling with the House's new website, which has a useful feature. You can type in your address, and it tells you what district you live in. Frank did so, and up popped ... a picture of Rep. John Dougall. Uh-oh. Dougall represents House District 27.

Inquiries indicated that old county maps didn't jibe with the official state map of district boundaries. Frank apparently lived outside his district. To his credit, he immediately reported this. His seat was declared vacant.

The source of the problem: The district boundaries were defined in terms of city limits, which changed about the time the redistricting law was passed.

The law's text says the legislative boundary is the Cedar Hills city limit; but the accompanying map draws the boundary along outdated borders from before the time Frank's property was annexed, thus putting his property outside Cedar Hills.

So does "city limit" refer to the actual city boundary, or to the line labeled "city limit" on the map? One could argue either way. The first option puts Frank in District 57; the second seemingly puts him in the 27th.

Oklahoma redistricting is not likely to run afoul of the same problem, as redistricting legislation makes reference to census block numbers, which are defined prior to the decennial census by the U. S. Census Bureau and do not change.

But even Oklahoma's method opens the door to inconsistencies, gaps, and omissions, particularly as the legislative form of the redistricting bills doesn't lend itself to visualization.

That's why it's important, during the redistricting process, for legislators not only to publish the draft redistricting bills and their long lists of census block numbers, but also to publish the in-progress work product, in the form of a table with a record for each census block showing its current district and assigned district under the proposed plan. Members of the public with GIS and database skills will be able to link this information with Census Bureau population numbers and census block geography and detect problems so that they can be corrected before boundaries are set in stone.

Math, maps, and politics come together in the decennial effort to enumerate the population of the United States and apportion political representation in accordance with those numbers.

Today the Census Bureau released the official 2010 population for each state, with the calculated number of U. S. Representatives to be assigned to each, based on the longstanding "method of equal proportions."

Oklahoma doesn't lose any ground, retaining our current five seats, but neither have we grown fast enough to regain the seat we lost in 2000 (a seat we nearly lost in 1990). Our neighbor to the south picks up four new seats

The Census Bureau has a brief video explaining the apportionment process (with captions if you can't have your sound on).

Apportionment is an iterative process: Every state gets one seat, then a priority number is calculated for each state:

A = P / sqrt ( n * ( n + 1 ) )

where A is the priority number, P is the state's population, n is the number of seats currently assigned. The state with the highest priority number gets the next seat, and that state's priority number is recalculated based on the additional seat. The process repeats until 435 seats are assigned. Because the seats are assigned in order, you'll hear talk about a certain state receiving the 435th seat. The states that just miss getting that last seat -- 436th or 437th on the list -- may take legal action to try to adjust their numbers. The method used to assign of US citizens residing overseas (military, foreign service, missionaries) to a particular state for the purposes of apportionment has been the basis for such disputes in the past.

The detailed data needed by the states to redraw the lines for congressional districts and local districts -- known as Public Law 94-171 data -- will be released sometime before March 31, 2011. This will provide population down to the city block, with counts by race, by Hispanic ancestry, by total population, and by voting age population. The racial numbers are used to demonstrate that new district lines comply with the current incarnation of the Voting Rights Act.

The number of House seats has been a fixed number (except for two brief periods) for 100 years. In 1911, Congress set the number at 433, plus one each for Arizona and New Mexico upon their admission to the Union. The number went up by one each for Alaska and Hawaii, but reverted to 435 after the 1960 census. In the last 100 years the average number of constituents per seat has grown from 210,328 to 710,767. The largest congressional district will be the entire state of Montana: 994,416. That's nearly twice the average size of Rhode Island's two districts: 527,624 each.

A decade ago, when Oklahoma was just about to lose a seat, then-Congressman Ernest Istook proposed a hold-harmless approach to reapportionment: Set the number of seats a bit higher (by about 30) so that no state would lose a seat while fast-growing seats would still get their due. (Note that, while Istook's article on his House website lives on only intermittently in the Wayback Machine, the Dustbury piece linking to it is still there.)

Here are a few key paragraphs from Istook's essay. He points out that the country's population had tripled in the 90 years since the number of seats had been frozen.

After every Census until early this century, it was normal to adjust the size of the House, and also to prevent states from losing seats in Congress. But political disputes stopped this after 1911, and the House has been at 435 seats ever since, although the country has grown from 90-million people to almost 270-million today. Each Congressman has three times as many people to represent, making it tougher for folks to vie for attention from their Representative.

Nobody wants a bulky, unwieldy body, but after almost 90 years, we can solve many problems with a minor adjustment to the size of the House. Adding 30 seats after 90 years is only a 6.5% adjustment, but it would mean that Oklahoma would not lose a seat in the House, and neither would several other states that expect and fear that they will.

The adjustment avoids a ton of controversies already surfacing around the Year 2000 Census, minimizing the gerrymandering mischief that erupts when states' delegations are forced to shrink. Adding a handful of seats is less enlarging the House than it is shrinking Congressional districts. Rather than representing 660,000 folks, each Oklahoma Congressman would represent about 550,000. Rather than a national average of 630,000 constituents per seat, it would be about 590,000.

Thirty-Thousand.org points to the number of constituents per district found in the Constitution and argues that a larger House of Representatives with smaller districts would be more... representative. Certainly it would be easier to win a seat in Congress by personal candidate-to-voter contact if the districts were smaller than our City Council (about 43,000 after the 2000 census) and State House districts (about 33,000 after the last census). Smaller districts would make the average population per seat nearly equal across all the states, bringing us closer to one man, one vote: At 30K per, Montana would have 33 congressmen and Rhode Island would have 34. The resulting body would be harder to gerrymander and more representative of America's diversity.

The Founders -- George Washington, in particular -- were concerned that too few representatives would be "an insufficient security for the rights & interests of the people."

The 112th Congress could choose to increase the size of the 113th. It's worth considering.

LINKS on congressional apportionment:

• 2010 apportionment fact sheet
• Apportionment population and density by state, 1910-2010
• Apportionment and population per congressional seat by state, 1910-2010
• Apportionment population, with percent gain or loss, 1910-2010
• History of apportionment methods
• Dave's redistricting app (via Jamison Faught) (NOTE: This online app uses 2008 estimated data; 2010 data won't be available until March)
• Wikipedia: United States congressional apportionment
• National Atlas article on congressional apportionment

And finally: The apportionment machine:

This warms my heart:

Current House members who were not elected to the next Congress have had to vacate their office suites and move into small cubicles in a pair of dining rooms in the Rayburn House Office Building....

More than 90 departing House members from both parties have been assigned to cubicles set up in a banquet room and in the back section of a cafeteria dining room. Overflow space for aides has been set up in the Ways and Means and Homeland Security committee hearing rooms in the Longworth House Office Building.

Diane Watson of California said she and her staff are operating out of a cubicle furnished with a single computer, a desk and two chairs. "If they wanted to have a prolonged session, they should have thought about letting us stay in our offices," Watson said. "I chose to retire. I think it's harder on members that lost their race for re-election."

We say that congressmen should be subject to the same laws as the rest of us. We note that after too many years in Congress, they start to lose touch with the concerns and experiences of their constituents. Working in the noise and distraction of a cube farm ought to bring them back down to earth.

But perhaps we shouldn't reserve the Congressman Dilbert experience for lame ducks. Think of the money we could save if we could herd all 535 into a cube farm. We could sell off some of the House and Senate office buildings (I see them being converted to luxury hotels conveniently located on Capitol Hill). And perhaps, in less comfortable surroundings, they wouldn't be tempted to spend any more time than absolutely necessary inside the beltway.

Clearing out my browser tabs and clearing my conscience of failing to write a blog post about each one:

Gabriel Malor, co-blogger at Ace of Spades HQ, will be on 1170 KFAQ with Pat Campbell at about 6:30 to discuss the CAIR lawsuit to stop Oklahoma's anti-sharia amendment.

Joe Miller is just a hat shy of looking like Bogart as Fred C. Dobbs in Treasure of the Sierra Madre (or the parody of the character in a Bugs Bunny cartoon): "Say, pardon me, but could you help out a fellow American who's down on his luck?" The stubble probably cost him the election. Either shave it off or grow it out to a respectable length. "Miami Vice" has been off the air for 20 years.

Tulsa Public Schools to consider eliminating schools: KRMG news story says the Tulsa district has 90 schools, same as the 1960s, but we have only half the students today that we did 40 years ago. The student population stat sounds right, but the school count can't possibly be the same: TPS has closed plenty of schools since peak baby-boomer enrollment, including more than a dozen I can think of off the top of my head: Mason High School; Bates, Lynn Lane, Lincoln, Lowell, Longfellow, Pershing, Revere, Franklin, Riley, Ross, Whittier (or Kendall -- they merged) Elementary Schools; Horace Mann Jr. High, Wright Jr. High (repurposed as an elementary). Did I miss any? I can't think of the name of the old elementary school near 45th and Peoria that now serves as home of the Tulsa Ballet.

Brandon Dutcher at Choice Remarks links to a HuffPo entry by John Thompson about the projected low number of graduates for African-American males in Oklahoma City Public Schools neighborhood high schools. Thompson calls this a crisis, but he uses too many qualifiers to exclude too many students who are being educated successfully in OKC public schools (e.g. students at charters like Harding High School, magnet school students, students in inner-suburban districts), and he fails to give us numbers as bases of comparison (how many total African American male students in neighborhood high schools are there?). Oh, and he's wrong to equate neighborhood schools with non-selective schools. Charter schools can't select their students, either. There's probably a story here, and it may be jaw-dropping, but it needs a teller who'll be more careful handling the numbers.

Thompson links to this interesting map of the OKC metro area showing population as color-coded dots - whites are red, African-Americans are blue, Asians are green, and Hispanics are orange. Each dot represents 25 people. Thompson says it shows racial segregation, and while it's true that there's a predominantly African-American area between the Santa Fe tracks and I-35 as well as a rural African-American area in NE Oklahoma County, and undoubtedly this reflects the official and unofficial segregation of earlier decades. But a look at the big version of the map shows blue dots scattered through out, alongside red, green, and orange.

Here's the Tulsa race and ethnicity map from the same set. Note how colorful the ORU campus is.

Cassy Fiano writes that feminist blogger Jessica Valenti is a big ol' chicken for refusing to participate in a panel discussion that includes just one conservative woman.

Sarah Palin to freshman Republican congressmen-elect:

Remember that some in the media will love you when you stray from the time-tested truths that built America into the most exceptional nation on earth. When the Left in the media pat you on the back, quickly reassess where you are and readjust, for the liberals' praise is a warning bell you must heed. Trust me on that.

Ed Morrissey recounts a Clarence Thomas anecdote about justices reacting to social pressures and remarks:

With that in mind, the freshman class should steel themselves that getting the job done right will mean few plaudits in the media in the short run, even fewer speaking invitations, and no medals or plaques from lobbyists and Academia. Their reward will be a more secure, less indebted, and fiscally restored United States of America, and the gratitude of a nation in the long run for restoring sanity and accountability. And frankly, that should be enough.

Muslim extremists protest Armistice Day in London. And J. E. Dyer comments on the shifting of Britain's place in the world as the U. S. under Obama has distanced itself from the Special Relationship the two countries long enjoyed.

Tim Bayly writes about the new NIV's further slide away from scripture and toward political correctness.

"Zombie," a blogger known for documenting through photographs the nauseating obscenity of festivals and protests in the Bay Area, is documenting a political and geographical form of obscenity: The gerrymander, the deliberate drawing of district lines for political advantage.

The first of two recent posts -- Gerrymandering 101 -- explains what gerrymandering is, why it's done, and the different types of gerrymanders:

This essay explains in no uncertain terms how manipulating district boundaries can lead to a complete subversion of true representative government....

You may have wondered how America overall tends to prefer conservative policies (pollsters like to say "We're a center/right country") yet we often have a liberal or at least Democratic majority in the Congress. How can this be? Gerrymandering. It's so powerful that it has at times fundamentally altered the political slant of our government.

Zombie includes some simple but effective illustrations, explains how gerrymandering can backfire (as it did in the 2010 election), and notes an additional factor promoting the practice: the racial "packing" mandated by the Federal Voting Rights Act, which has created some of the most bizarre "map monsters," as Zombie calls them.

In part 2, we're given a look at the ten most gerrymandered U. S. House districts, with evocative names like "rabbit on a skateboard" and "water skier checking email on his Blackberry" plus a bonus set of 20 districts that shouldn't even be legal, as they are not contiguous (they use bizarre over-water boundaries to satisfy -- technically -- the contiguity requirement).

Zombie challenges Republicans, with the upper hand in the upcoming decennial redistricting, to do better than the Democrats in drawing compact, reasonable districts. In a representative government, voters choose their representatives. In gerrymander-land, elected officials choose their constituents. True representation begins with fairly drawn districts.

Oklahoma's congressional districts are pretty good by comparison, probably because they were a compromise between a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature. It's tough because the Oklahoma City and Tulsa's metro areas are each too big to fit in a single district, so some of each metro area has to be joined to more rural areas adjacent. The plan also took into consideration the location of Oklahoma's four principal military installations (Fort Sill, Vance, Tinker, and Altus AFBs) -- districts 3 and 4 each cover two of them. While the lines had to be drawn so that the districts had exactly the same population (+/- 1 person), they managed to stick close to county boundaries, which makes the districts simpler to understand.

What are your nominations for the most gerrymandered Oklahoma legislative districts? Leave a comment below.

My picks for the final congressional result:

House 276 R - 179 D (Republican net gain of 98.)

Senate 52 R - 48 D (Republican net gain of 11: Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin.)

Remember: You can still help be the wave. In Tulsa, you can be a sign waver or make get-out-the-vote (GOTV) phone calls. Call Jed at 580-239-2988 or Jason at 918-261-4309 to volunteer, or just stop by Tulsa County GOP HQ.

FreedomWorks would like your help making GOTV phone calls in key races across the country.

At the very least, you can personally contact 10 of your friends and encourage them to vote. It makes a difference.

Even though I'm in San Antonio on business for a bit, I still found one more thing to do to help. I went to Frederico Canseco HQ, along with about 50 other volunteers, and dialed almost 200 numbers this evening. It was fun, and it's always interesting (to me, at any rate) to learn about new campaign processes and technologies. Canseco is challenging a two-term Democrat incumbent, Ciro Rodriguez. You may remember the YouTube video of Rodriguez swatting a bunch of papers at a constituent. Canseco is favored to win.

So the other two volunteers from the Tulsa area had to cancel. The expected number of local Muskogee volunteers didn't materialize. I think there were about 7 by the time all was said and done, including me and my 10-year-old daughter. Only three of us had any of the four pizzas I bought (for the 16 hungry folk that were expected), and we barely cracked the four two-liter bottles of pop. (The awesome homemade peanut butter and chocolate-chip-oatmeal cookies eased the disappointment considerably.)

But it was still a day well worth while. On the ride down, my daughter read through the sample ballot I brought her from the election board. She read through all the state questions and peppered me with questions. We talked about the judicial selection process, the rainy day fund, and sharia law. Along the route I pointed out the TV towers, and we talked about how television signals get from the networks to the local studios to the local stations towers to the cable company to the TV set (and why the Weather Channel doesn't need a tower at all). I pointed out the KTUL tower, still one of the 100 tallest freestanding structures in the world.

At HQ, while waiting for other volunteers to arrive, we heard about the frequent sign vandalism that has plagued the Thompson campaign. Boren's supporters are showing indications of feeling threatened.

(Ever notice how it's always the insurgent, grassroots candidates' signs that get stolen, while the establishment candidates' signs stay put. By the way, someone stole a John Eagleton sign and a Molly McKay sign out of my front yard Thursday night, even though they were well back from the street. A couple of days earlier, I had found that same Eagleton sign flat on the ground.)

I was happy to learn that our efforts were coordinated with the state Republican GOTV effort. We had a "slate card" -- all GOP nominees for the precinct on a door hanger -- and a push card for Charles Thompson, and we had the state party's list of voters to target.

My daughter and I were originally given a sprawling (10 sq mi) suburban precinct to cover. I opted instead for a compact precinct in town, where distances were shorter and the street layout was somewhat Cartesian. Somewhat.

We began by parking and walking two or three blocks in each direction to cover nearby homes. That became irksome to my little girl, whose legs are much shorter and slower than mine. Also, the three pieces of pizza and Pepsi were not sitting well. After a pitstop, we changed methods. I would drive and hop out of the car to deliver flyers; she would mark up the list of houses to visit, advise me of the next place to stop, and hand me the flyers. It sped us up considerably; still, it took us about 4 hours (not counting the break) to cover about 100 households. It would have been quicker if I had known the neighborhood. (I certainly know it now!)

Here's what I learned about navigating the streets of Muskogee.

• Given a house with number n, the house next door may have house number n+2, n+20, or any value in between.
• Given a house with number n, the house directly across the street may have house number n+1, n+101, or any value in between.
• In other words, two house numbers that are numerically near-neighbors may be quite distant.
• House numbers on a street are not guaranteed to increase or decrease monotonically with a given direction of travel.

And regarding the display of house numbers: Folks, do you want to die while the ambulance driver tries to figure out which house is yours? The house number ought to be prominently near the door of your house, on your curb, and on your mailbox if you have one.

Also, if you care about political candidates and really want to help them campaign effectively, you will UPDATE YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION WITH YOUR CURRENT ADDRESS. Do you want your favorite candidate's volunteers dodging chained pitbulls and risking an ankle to the so-called "steps" -- the wood rot and carpenter ant damage has only left rungs, really -- to try to deliver to you a reminder to vote at the house where you haven't lived for 10 years and which has since passed through the hands of a series of rental owners with decreasing standards for upkeep and tenants and at which no likely voter lives because everyone in the house has a rap sheet as long as your arm? Do you, bub?

I generally left literature at the door, without knocking, but if someone had the front door open or was out in the yard, I'd stop to talk. We and our cause were well received. No one greeted me rudely. Many people volunteered that they had already planned to vote for Thompson and a straight ticket. They want Pelosi and posse gone, and they understand that getting rid of Dan Boren gets us one step closer to that goal. At one home, I was speaking to the lady of the house, when the husband came out. "I just wanted to make sure you wasn't no dam Democrat."

We finished a bit before sunset, turned in our leftover materials, then headed to My Place for barbecue before driving back to Tulsa. We played "I went to the beach and took" to pass the time on the ride home. (Each person in turn adds some oddball object to the list, in alphabetical order, after perfectly reciting the list of all previous items.) Our list: "I went to the beach and took an altimeter, a barometer, a chronometer, a denominator, an elevator, a fraction, a gummy bear, helium filled balloons, iodine, jack o' lanterns, a kilometer, a lamb, a microsecond, a nail, an oscilloscope, a porch light, a quadrangle, a rectangle, a square, a tenacious triangle, an umbrella, a volleyball, a w [can't remember w], a xylophone [natch], a yak, and a zebu."

Then we played the alphabet game. Did you know it's pretty easy to find a Q in Tulsa? A phrase in a Mother Nature's Pest Control billboard -- "sleeping with spiders?" -- inspired another alphabetical game: "Abiding with Ants?" "Bathing with Beetles?" "Cooking with Cockroaches?" "Eating with Earwigs?" "Fellowshipping with Fleas?" (We couldn't think of a good D.)

At home, I played Candy Land and the Wiggles Game with the four-year old. Next time I'm taking all the special cards out of the Candy Land deck. Do you know what it's like for a sleepy four year old to be on the verge of victory and then to draw the Plumpy card? And the Wiggles Game is fun, but it may not be the best way to wind down before bed. ("Tickle someone." "Walk like a pirate." "Dance like Dorothy the Dinosaur.")

(Big son was busy getting ready for the middle school musical -- Disney's Aladdin Jr.. He plays the main bad guy. Tickets are still available for next weekend's performances -- November 5, 6, and 7. Come experience a little private school that knows how to put on a big production. Many of the middle school actors are veterans of Spotlight Children's Theater and Encore! Playhouse.)

(Via Ace of Spades HQ.)

I originally had this challenge buried in the bottom of this article, but I want to be sure you see it:

Just do something, and let us know about it in the comments.

One of the delights of this election season has been watching Ace, of Ace of Spades HQ, develop an appreciation for the nuts-and-bolts of political campaigns as he has become personally involved in knocking doors and phoning voters on behalf of candidates.

It's easy to be the cynic on the sidelines, to pronounce anathemas on both parties and all politicians. It's easy, if you don't know what you're talking about, to talk about the Republican Party as if it were one big monolithic machine, rather than a complex system of interactions between party activists, national, state, and county officials, precinct chairmen, elected officials, volunteers, donors, and ordinary voters. It's easy to pooh-pooh corny, old-fashioned get-out-the-vote methods like knocking on doors, phoning voters, and putting out yard signs. (It's also a highly conveeeeeeenient excuse for not getting off your behind and making a difference.)

The average American voter, focused on family, faith, job, home, friends, and hobbies, prefers not to give much thought to politics and government and usually won't until one of those things is threatened. Ideally, a limited government would keep to its constitutionally-assigned tasks and otherwise leave us alone, so we wouldn't need to keep a constant, watchful eye on City Hall, the County Courthouse, the State Capitol, and Washington.

To a political junkie, of the sort that reads this site and Ace's site, it seems strange that a voter wouldn't already know by now who he's voting for or whether he's voting at all. This is not Planet Vulcan, and it may seem highly illogical, but corny campaign techniques effectively connect with the way most voters make their decisions.

(By the way, pollster Chris Wilson and his colleague Bryon Allen of Wilson Research Services has a list of five rules-of-thumb that late-deciding voters use at the precinct. And the two wrote a piece last year on how a given voter may use different heuristics -- cognitive shortcuts to simplify decision-making in the absence of perfect knowledge -- for picking a candidate, depending on the circumstances like the number of candidates or whether it's a primary or a general election. Must reading for candidates and consultants.)

But when you hit the streets and talk to voters one-on-one, as Ace has done, you begin to understand, and Ace does a fine job of explaining why the corny stuff matters. Yard signs, for example:

On signs -- even if you just call the office to pick up a sign and put it in your yard, it's important.

Remember, people don't like voting for a name they don't know. When they see the same name up a bunch of times, they become familiar with it. Particularly if their neighbors are endorsing that man. It gives them information -- not much information, but enough. It tells them that even though they haven't done their homework and decided which candidates are worth supporting, people they know have done that homework, and those people have decided that people like Bielat, Hudak, Perry and Golnik are serious guys worth voting for.

"Serious guys worth voting for" is a crucial message. It doesn't matter how bad the incumbent is, if a voter doesn't know that there is an opponent or that he's credible, the voter may stay home or even vote for the loathsome incumbent, who is at least an experienced and credible loathsome incumbent. It's why a loathsome incumbent will spend so much airtime and ink discrediting his challenger; it keeps people from turning out to vote him out.

So, do you have signs in your yard for your favorite candidates? Call your local party HQ and pick some up, or request a sign on the candidate's website. It matters. I'd hate to think a highly qualified candidate like Janet Barresi -- started two successful public charter schools -- would lose the State Superindent's race just because voters didn't know her name.

Referring to his experience campaigning for Sean Bielat in MA-4 (he's challenging Barney Frank), Ace writes:

The minute these people hear that they have a credible candidate, a Marine and engineer, who builds robots to protect our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, they'll go for him. It's just a question of letting people know. And getting out the vote.

We've got a credible guy running right here in eastern Oklahoma -- an Army veteran, a veterinarian, running against the Pelosi-enabling heir of our own little political dynasty. But people won't vote for Charles Thompson unless they get to know him.

Which is why I'm sponsoring and participating in a get-out-the-vote effort this Saturday in Muskogee, and I'm asking you to join me.

A couple of days ago, Ace linked to a Jim Geraghty piece on four election-night scenarios: the "fading GOP wave" (House stays D, only 3 or 4 Senate seats), the "okay wave" (we take the House, pick up 6 to 8 Senate seats), the "happy times wave" (enough to take both House and Senate), and the "superwave" (60 to 90 House seats or beyond, 3 or 4-seat majority in Senate).

Explaining why door-knocking and phone-calling works, Ace pointed out that as enthused as we (the political junkies) are, an indifferent vote counts as much as an enthusiastic vote, but...

There is one way that one person's high enthusiasm translates into more votes: If he can activate, convince, persuade, or cajole a non-voter or non-enthusiastic potential voter to cast his vote his way.

That's the way that high enthusiasm translates into higher vote tallies -- when the enthusiastic share their enthusiasm with the unenthusiastic, and get the unenthusiastic to cast votes, too.

Those votes count just the same as ours, of course. But now we've got more.

I don't know why anyone would say this, but someone objected that GOTV efforts don't matter. [B.S.] That is excuse-making on stilts. GOTV is the entire name of the game. That's how we won in 2004 -- the Democrat who noted that Republican voters just kept pouring into suburban Ohio polling places. "It was like Night of the Living Dead," he said, as the 2004 turn-out effort brought so many unlikely voters to the polls....

This is how it's won. By turning out the vote. By identifying unlikely voters who are likely to vote Republican, if they just get off their asses and go down to the polling place and are confronted with the choice they've been not bothering to think about.

And that's what GOTV is about. It's about lending our enthusiasm to the unenthuiastic, to let them know our candidate's name so that the name isn't completely new and alien to them when they see it on the ballot, but rather familiar and reassuring. Giving them a little bit of bio of the candidate, so they have a quick bullet-point read on him (again, so he seems familiar), and his policy positions.

An indifferent voter will usually not vote for an unknown. It's our job to make the unknowns known to them....

That's what it's all about, especially in midterms. If our marginal voters, our loose-identifying conservatives turn out, and theirs do not, we win. If a lot of our marginal voters turn out, and theirs do not, we win big....

This is what worries me. That we have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a truly historic Change but we're going to squander the opportunity for failure of translating our thoughts into actual actions, and thereby, actual votes.

The Democratic base is in fact finally thinking about the election. The fact that they are only thinking about it now doesn't make their votes count less. We've been fired up since summer of 2009 but our votes will count precisely the same.

We need more votes. That simple: We need more votes. We have to turn out everyone who leans Republican to the polls.

If you believe that America is at a crisis point, that we need a return to limited government and fiscal sanity, if you really mean it, then your belief needs to turn into action. You have a chance to make a difference.

Join me in Muskogee on Saturday for Charles Thompson. Volunteer for a Tulsa-area legislative candidate. Call Oklahoma GOP headquarters at 405-528-3501 to volunteer for the massive statewide GOTV effort. Help FreedomWorks make phone calls to voters in key districts around the country.

And if you do volunteer, encourage others to do the same by leaving a comment and letting us know about it.

That big, beautiful electoral wave we see building may be a mere ripple by the time it reaches shore on November 2. Some of my blogpals are worried, and rightly so.

Tabitha Hale of FreedomWorks issues a challenge:

Here's the thing: Republicans are undoubtedly going to win next Tuesday. We will pick up house seats and some Senate seats.

You control how many seats we will win.

Getting people to turn out has never been easy. The ground game is the hardest part of any campaign, which is why the party has just opted to not focus on it this go round. The failure of the party to push GOTV efforts is embarrassing. Ace laments the lack of motivation here. Melissa Clouthier blames the GOP. They're both right....

This election cycle is as much about beating the Republicans as it is about beating the Democrats. For the first time in a long time, we will have a freshman class full of Representatives and Senators that were elected only because the people wanted them there - not because they inherited a seat or were able to buy their way in. The party turned their back on many of them. There is a whole block of elected officials that owe their jobs to the people....

There is no better time to step away from your computer and put up some signs or make some phone calls than right now. November 2nd is it, people. We don't get a redo. What we do over the next eight days will impact our entire country for the next two years and beyond. This is the only shot we have at halting and reversing Obama's agenda. Right now. This week.

Ace now expects November 2 to be little more than a "pretty good night" for Republicans.

And the reason? A lot of people are sitting on their [posteriors] waiting for things to change instead of fulfilling their patriotic duties as American citizens and making the change happen.

Based on this analysis I am giving up on my big predictions and scaling back to something like 44 seats or so. We will lose all the close races (we always do), and people like Ruth McClung and Sean Bielat will lose. Only the lock seats will come through for us.

You know what the Democrats call a loss of 44 seats after they've socialized health care and blown up the budget to Greek levels? Acceptable losses. They'll take that, all day and twice on Sundays. Because they've now set the country on an inexorable path to socialism. They're playing the long game, while we're... well we're not playing any game at all.

A gain of 44 would be nice, but it wouldn't be the sound thrashing that sends the surviving Democrats scurrying in fear to make alternative career plans for 2013. A gain of 44 would not deliver the message that Americans repudiate the radical Obama-Reid-Pelosi agenda. It would be treated by the media as a failure to meet expectations.

I was very disappointed in the reaction from Ace's commenters: Effectively they told him to chill out, that the polls all looked great, that Republicans are motivated to vote, that knocking doors is beneath their dignity, and it doesn't do any good anyway.

Baloney.

The only poll that matters is held on November 2. The only people who will vote in that poll are the ones who remember to show up. Those of us who care about the future of the country need to motivate and remind the conservatives who only occasionally vote to show up.

In 2004, about 1.5 million Oklahoma voters showed up to elect Tom Coburn to the Senate and to give George W. Bush the majority in every single county. A massive turnout effort, organized under the leadership of then state GOP chairman Gary Jones, had volunteers contacting hundreds of thousands of conservative voters in the days leading up to the election.

Less than a million voters turned out in 2006. Gov. Brad Henry got about 100,000 votes more than John F. Kerry did in 2004, but his Republican challenger, Congressman Ernest Istook, got less than a third of the vote that George W. Bush received.

One-to-one, face-to-face contact is by far the most effective means of voter persuasion. A 2002 study by a couple of Yale political science professors found "that during a local election, each face-to-face contact with a voter increased his/her chance of voting by seven percent. Furthermore, their results suggest that every 12 face-to-face contacts garner one additional vote, even if that voter had never heard of the candidate beforehand."

It would certainly be more convenient for the candidates if robocalls, sign waving, and literature drops (the political equivalent of ring-and-run) were the most effective methods. Door-to-door campaigning is time-consuming, and it requires a lot of advance work by the campaign staff to prepare lists, maps, and literature and to recruit volunteers to do the work.

But, as Ace has discovered, retail politics is also a lot of fun. It's a chance to socialize with people who share your passion for politics, and you come back from a day knocking doors with stories of interesting encounters.

There is a great deal of dissatisfaction with government. Voters would like an alternative to the party in power, but they have to know there is a realistic hope of change for the better. There are Democratic House seats that should be competitive -- the district has voted for Republican candidates for other offices, the Republican challenger is a credible, articulate community leader -- but they won't be competitive because the challenger doesn't have the money or manpower to introduce himself to the voters.

Your effort can make the difference. Be the wave. I challenge each of you to volunteer at least two hours between now and election day for a conservative candidate. More on how to do that in the next post.

It's highly entertaining to watch the approach of what appears to be the biggest political wave in a generation. It's fun to watch once-safe incumbents blow a gasket, demonstrate general cluelessness, or show their complete insensitivity to the problems and concerns that face their constituents. A political junkie could easily while away the day scouring the blogs for the latest news from more than 100 competitive House and Senate races.

But a political wave isn't a force of nature like a hurricane or a tsunami, a power too great to be affected by human actions. In fact, a political wave is just an aggregate of individual voter responses to the actions of candidates, parties, media, volunteers, and other voters. To push the meteorological analogies a little further: Not every tornado watch turns into a tornado warning. Conditions may be favorable for tornadoes to form, but other factors have to be at work to cause a tornado to appear. In the case of a political wave, the factors that will make the difference between a fizzle and a flood are in our hands.

There are many congressional districts this year where a smart, accomplished Republican is challenging an arrogant incumbent Democrat who is out of sync with his district. Despite a massive generic ballot advantage, Republicans will not win each of those seats. A challenger needs funds and manpower in order to introduce himself to the voters, to establish himself as a credible candidate, and to connect his opponent to the mess in Washington. That means that you and I need to get involved. We need to invest our time and treasure in making the wave happen.

Ace, head ewok at Ace of Spades HQ, wasn't content with merely chronicling the 2010 Demplosion, so he has challenged his fellow bloggers to get out from behind the keyboard and to organize and lead get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts across the country. He understands that it's the ground game that makes it possible for an insurgent challenger to beat an incumbent. He's hoping that the social aspect.

To help organize the effort, FreedomWorks has created BeTheWave2010.com. Register (it's free) and you can look over the map for Be the Wave events across the country. Find one close to you, sign up, help a great candidate, and have fun getting to know your fellow activists.

As busy as I am with family, work, and blogging, it would be easy to justify staying behind the keyboard, but from years of volunteering, I know how much person-to-person contact matters. So I've set a date and a time -- Saturday, October 30, 12 noon to 6 pm -- for a BatesLine Be the Wave event. The place is still TBD, but it will be somewhere within a short drive of Tulsa. We'll gather at noon for a bite to eat, we'll get our marching orders and materials and hit the streets. At the end of the day, we'll report back in, then find someplace nearby to swap stories over a dutch-treat dinner.

I've set up an event on Eventbrite. If you're interested and available on October 30, please sign up, so I can get a sense of the level of interest. You'll get updates as details are firmed up.

(Are you already volunteering for a candidate? Tell us all about it in the comments below.)

Polling numbers, indications of voter enthusiasm, and the panicked reactions of Democratic incumbents all suggest that 2010 could be one of the greatest "wave elections" in decades. Could it be the greatest ever?

There have been a few major waves in recent history. The post-Watergate wave of 1974 -- a Dem pickup of 49 in the House and 5 in the Senate -- didn't change control of Congress, but it gave Democrats two-thirds of the House and a 61-seat cloture-proof majority in the Senate that lasted until the middle of Jimmy Carter's term. The 1980 wave not only elected Ronald Reagan, but gave the GOP a gain of 11 Senate seats and the majority in either house for the first time in a quarter-century.

1994 was the next big wave for the Republicans -- 9 Senate seats, 54 House seats. The next comparable Democrat wave took two cycles to complete, in 2006 and 2008, gaining 54 House seats and 13 Senate seats.

Information Please has a helpful chart of the composition of Congress by political party from the birth of the Republican Party in 1854 to the present. (It differs in places from the seat counts given in Wikipedia articles on specific elections.)

Other big shifts: 1874 (House: D+93, marking the end of Reconstruction?), 1882 (House; D+70), 1890 (House: D+75, R-85), 1910 (House: D+56), 1912 (House: D+62), 1914 (House: R+66), 1920 (Senate: R+9, House: R+63), 1922 (Senate: R-8, House: R-75).

The biggest House sweep of the 20th century was the 1932 election, headlined by Franklin Roosevelt vs. Herbert Hoover -- the GOP lost 101 seats in the House and 12 seats in the Senate. After two more elections (1934, 1936) there were only 88 House Republicans and 16 GOP senators. But 10 years later, after 1946, Republicans were back in control of both houses (1946, House: R+55, Senate: R+12); but the majority collapsed two years later (1948, House: D+75, Senate: D+9).

The biggest Senate switch I could find: In 1958 Democrats picked up 16 Senate seats, defeating 10 Republican incumbents. The Democrats also picked up 49 House seats. The Democrats came close to having a 2/3rds majority in both houses; by 1964, they had that 2/3rds, plus the presidency, and we still suffer from the resulting destruction of America's urban social and physical fabric.

The biggest House switch ever was in 1894, in the midst of a severe depression and labor unrest, including massive rail strike. The Republican Party picked up 130 seats, and the Democrats lost 125.

How big will the 2010 wave be? At the moment, conservative projections are on par with 1994. The latest Real Clear Politics House map has 37 D seats in the leans or likely GOP column, bringing them close to a majority, and another 40 D seats are rated tossups. Only 123 of 255 Democrat seats -- less than half -- are considered safe, while only 15 of the 178 Republican seats are even slightly in jeopardy. The Senate map looks better for the Democrats; Republicans would need all three likely or leaning seats (PA, WI, IN), plus all five toss-ups (CA, CO, IL, NV, WV), plus two more from the leaning or likely D columns.

Cook Political Report is predicting a Republican gain of at least 40 seats in the House, and 7 to 9 seats in the Senate. Rothenberg Political Report currently predicts a Senate gain of 6 to 8 seats. He puts 33 D seats in the likely, leans, or toss-up/tilts Republican columns, 16 D seats are "pure toss-ups." Rothenburg categorizes 91 D seats and 9 R seats "in play." Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball shows an 8-9 seat Senate shift and R+47 in the House. Of course, all of these predictions bear the qualification, "if the election were held today."

The analysts' number-crunching is fascinating in its way, but it doesn't give you a sense of excitement as the wave builds. It's the difference between a series of barometric pressure readings that shows a hurricane approaching and video of the high winds and heavy rain.

There are a few nationally-prominent blogs that will give you a sense of the building wave. These blogs are covering the specifics of hot House and Senate races from coast-to-coast, with clips of campaign commercials and key candidate confrontations. They're watching closely as the DNC, DCCC, and the DSCC move resources out of seats once considered salvageable and into seats once thought to be safe Democrat.

A fair warning: Some of these blogs are targeted to an adult audience and may contain inappropriate language and possibly creepy ewok photoshops. The links below mean that I find these sites entertaining and informative reading. The links do not constitute a blanket endorsement of everything the linked blogger has ever said, written, done, or thought. Here there be monsters. (Having met all of them at BlogCon or other events, I will vouch that they're nice monsters, and they're on the right side.)

Ace of Spades HQ has been profiling competitive races, showing awkward clips of arrogant, entrenched incumbents on the defensive (like this recent clip of Maurice Hinchey (D-NY-22)), and featuring some eye-popping scenario maps of the coming "Demplosion" (look for posts by/references to CAC).

Not only is Ace helping readers to see the wave, he's urging readers and fellow bloggers to be the wave -- provide conservative challengers with the manpower they need to beat the advantages of entrenched incumbency. He's leading by example, spending Saturday phone-banking for Sean Bielat, who is trying to beat Barney Frank in MA-4.

Stacy McCain is an old-school, shoe-leather reporter, currently traveling on a shoestring with Pete Da Tech Guy Ingemi to report on competitive races in the northeastern US. They started with MA-4, close to home for Da Tech Guy, and are currently passing through NY-22 and NY-25, interviewing candidates, talking to volunteers, and generally trying to get a sense of the state of play. Meanwhile, Stacy's co-blogger Smitty is keeping an eye on Jim Moran (D-VA-08), one of the most deserving retirees-to-be.

HotAir and The Right Scoop are great sources for the latest video clips from the campaign.

Jimmie Bise provides great analysis over at The Sundries Shack. Tulsa conservatives will appreciate a recent piece: The Chamber of Commerce Is Not Necessarily Our Friend:

More importantly, though, is the point that the Chamber of Commerce is pro-business, not pro-small government. That's an important distinction that many conservatives forget to make. The GOP has gotten itself into a world of hurt backing businesses with intrusive legislation that favors some businesses while throttling others, or favoring businesses over the rights and freedoms of individuals operating in a free market. Michelle Malkin is working off the very same page this morning, with a link-filled post that shows the distinction very clearly. I recommend her post, and the links she provides, as required reading this morning.

The approaching wave is an impressive sight, but unlike a literal wave, we have it in our power to make this wave bigger. Stay tuned.

Robert Dold
Cedric Richmond
Lisa Murkowski
Barbara Boxer
Michael Bennet
Alexi Giannoulias
Robin Carnahan
Paul Hodes
Lee Fisher
Joe Sestak
Harry Reid
Scott McAdams
Kendrick Meek
Charlie Crist
Jack Conway
Patty Murray
Russ Feingold
Richard Blumenthal
Joe Manchin
Chris Coons
Ron Wyden
Kirsten Gillibrand
Mike McMahon
Scott Murphy
Bill Owens
Heath Schuler
Charlie Wilson
Betty Sutton
Kurt Schrader
Mark Critz
Lincoln Davis
Rick Boucher
Gerry Connolly
Rick Larsen
Ann Kirkpatrick
Harry Mitchell
Jerry McNerney
John Salazar
Betsy Markey
Allen Boyd

Travis Childers
Dina Titus
Carol Shea-Porter
Ann Kuster
Harry Teague
John Hall
Michael Arcuri
Larry Kissell
Earl Pomeroy
Steve Driehaus
Mary Jo Kilroy
Zack Space
Kathy Dahlkemper
Bryan Lentz
Patrick Murphy
Chris Carney
Paul Kanjorski
John Spratt
Stephanie Herseth Sandlin
Roy Herron
Chet Edwards
Ciro Rodriguez
Glenn Nye
Tom Perriello
Denny Heck
Mike Oliviero
Julie Lassa
Steve Kagen
Steve Raby
Ami Bera
Joe Garcia
Trent Van Haaften
Stephene Ann Moore
John Callahan
Jon Hulburd
Jon Hurlburd
Stephen Pougnet
Lori Edwards
Ravi Sangisetty
Pat Miles
Tarryl Clark
Tom White
Matthew Zeller
Paula Brooks
Manan Trivedi
Brett Carter
Suzan Delbene
Colleen Hanabusa

While the Republican Party has a quadrennial convention, which not only conducts the official business of the party but provides a networking opportunity for activists, elected officials, bloggers, consultants and others connected with the conservative movement, many conservative non-profit groups hold events every year that allow the networking to continue between Republican National Conventions. CPAC is the oldest such conference, but many more have sprung up in recent years, each with its own focus and target audience, but with considerable overlap.

Last weekend, for the first time ever, I attended a national event targeting conservative activists -- BlogCon 2010, sponsored by FreedomWorks. It was wonderful to meet political bloggers from all over the country, the conference panels were full of interesting and valuable information, and the social events were great fun. I don't recall hearing a word of grumbling about the weekend from anyone.

Some of the bloggers at BlogCon have attended many of these other conservative conferences. Many of them were at Red State Gathering in Austin this weekend. Others stayed in Washington for Values Voter Summit or went to Chicago for Right Nation. Many were at Right Online in July and plan to be at CPAC next February.

As a way of keeping all these different events straight, I've put together a list of national conservative events that have occurred or are scheduled for 2010. Let me know if there are any that I've missed.

Each item in the list includes dates, conference name (with link if available), location, and sponsoring organization. Where appropriate, I may add a summary of the conference's target audience and emphasis.

• Feb. 18-20, 2010, CPAC, Washington, DC, American Conservative Union
• July 23-24, 2010, Right Online, Las Vegas, Nevada, Americans for Prosperity
• Aug. 27-28, 2010, Defending the American Dream Summit, Washington, DC, Americans for Prosperity
• Sept. 9-12, 2010, Blogcon, Washington, DC, FreedomWorks
• Sept. 12, 2010, 9/12 March on Washington, Washington, DC, FreedomWorks
• Sept. 17-18, 2010, Red State Gathering, Austin, TX, RedState.com
• Sept. 16-18, 2010, Values Voter Summit, Washington, DC, Family Research Council
• Sept. 18, 2010, Right Nation, Chicago, Ill., United Republican Fund
• Sept. 30 - Oct. 1, 2010, Smart Girl Summit, Washington, DC, Smart Girl Politics
• Oct. 15-16, 2010, Western CPAC, Newport Beach, CA,

More video from the 9/12 March on Washington, this time from the rally point at the beginning of the march, northeast of the Washington Monument.

Stand-up comic Stephen Kruiser is a blogger, has appeared on Fox News "Red Eye," has a show called "Kruiser Control" on PJTV.com, writes for Big Hollywood and Big Journalism, and performs in military outposts around the world with Armed Forces Entertainment. He's also a conservative activist, helping to organize Tea Party events in Los Angeles and participating in events like Right Online, BlogCon, and the 9/12 March. He's on Twitter, too, and he and Melissa Clouthier led a BlogCon session on how to make the best use of Twitter.

Here's Stephen Kruiser's talk to the Tea Party activists gathered to march in support of limited government, and his theme comes from a Thomas Jefferson quote: "I own that I am not a friend to an energetic government. It is always oppressive." Our job, he said, is to be the Government's Xanax. We're also here "to make sure the Federal behemoth doesn't get any fatter."

If you're a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, there's a bit you'll especially enjoy about 5 minutes in.

(NOTE: All the videos I've posted of the march were taken by me with a Flip camera. FreedomWorks loaned several out to BlogCon bloggers to help us cover the event. This was only the second video I took, and you can tell I'm still getting used to it.)

Thanks to FreedomWorks, I had a press pass to the 9/12 March on Washington and accordingly had access to the speakers' waiting area on the north side of the stage. I took the opportunity to talk to one of the people wearing a "Speaker" badge. His name is Bob MacGuffie, and he's a leader of the Tea Party movement in Connecticut, heading a group called Right Principles. He talked about the progress that they've already made -- Chris Dodd has been dumped -- and the ongoing project of making principled conservatism welcome again in the hierarchy of the Connecticut Republican Party.

To be effective in shaping the party you have to know the nuts and bolts of party organization. If you don't like the way the Republican Party is, you can, with diligence, help to shape what it will become.

As quickly as I can, I'll be posting the video I took at Sunday's 9/12 March on Washington. Here's the first.

I caught up with this lady, Gail Champion from Ohio, as we were about halfway along Pennsylvania Ave. What caught my attention in the first place -- and you can't see this in the video -- is that she was using a walker. That is dedication, and it makes her intention to delay retirement, in order to avoid adding to the unpayable burden of Social Security, all the more impressive.

She told me that she came to Washington "to restore the Constitution and to restore our country to the people." She has been involved in activism for only about a year, when she joined up with the 9/12 movement. I asked what motivated her to get involved:

The fact that as citizens we weren't being represented by our so called representative, that they are ignoring us and are more focused on staying in power than doing what's right for the country.

More of her comments:

For me it's not a party thing. I want to see term limits. I really want us to be represented again. We need to clean house, we need to face our debt, and that's going to be horrible....

We need to change Social Security. I'm 64 and unfortunately next year I have no option but to go on Medicare. My so-called retirement date is 67; I've already made a personal pledge not to retire until 70; later or never if I can manage it financially, because they lied to us, we know they lied to us, and at some point we need to suck it up and be like our parents and save our nation....

There's a very popular saying now. "Pull on your big girl panties and just deal with it." That's what we need to do.

Just a quick note to mention that I'll be at the 9/12 March on Washington this afternoon, along with many of the other BlogCon attendees. You can read live updates on the BatesLine Twitter feed and by searching for the hashtag #912dc. A number of us will be shooting video as well, but look for that later in the day.

The first ever BlogCon, sponsored by FreedomWorks, has been a huge success. FreedomWorks new media director Tabitha Hale put together an event that was fun and highly worthwhile. On Thursday, bloggers had a chance to get face to face with congressional staffers -- how they can do a better job of working with us, which begins with understanding how we differ from traditional media.

Friday was packed with excellent seminars, many of which were more technological than political -- for example, how to make more effective use of Twitter, the role of humor in blogging, and the amazing capabilities of WordPress and its many plugins. (I'm now very tempted to switch, and it appears there's a plugin that makes it possible to migrate without breaking old links.) Matt Kibbe delivered an informative lunchtime lecture on Austrian economics. The day was capped off with a left-right debate at the Newseum.

Saturday morning we got a bit of a respite, which I used to visit some nearby friends who have a brand new baby. In the afternoon, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey and FreedomWorks head Matt Kibbe held a book signing for their new book Give Us Liberty. That evening a bunch of us attended the premiere of a new movie by Citizens United and Newt Gingrich called "America at Risk: The War with No Name." All of us bloggers were badly underdressed for what turned out to be a gala occasion. The film was introduced by Citizens United head David Bossie and Newt Gingrich and his wife Callista.

Every evening has concluded with informal socializing, a great opportunity to connect faces and real-life personalities with Twitter handles. Among many memorable conversations, my favorite may be talking to Iowahawk, who digs Tulsa and mid-century modern architecture.

You can get a sense of the event by looking at the Twitter hashtag #blogcon.

In the current issue of National Review, the conservative magazine's editorial board sets out the case for marriage as it has traditionally been defined, a definition that has been reaffirmed repeatedly by Congress, legislatures, and the voting public from coast to coast.

If you are a conservative, you need to study this article and fully digest it. National Review has done a great service with this piece, equipping conservative elected officials, activists, writers, and voters with sound argument to back up the conservative intuition against proposals to alter radically the institution of marriage. One of the challenges of conservatism is that you are called upon to defend ideas and customs that are long-established and were once universally accepted. When a radical idea like same-sex marriage is no longer immediately derided as a crackpot notion, conservatives need to prepare themselves to argue from first principles.

We think that there is quite a bit to be said for [marriage]: that it is true, vitally true. But it is a truth so long accepted that it is no longer well understood. Both the fact that we are debating same-sex marriage and the way that debate has progressed suggest that many of us have lost sight of why marriage exists in the first place as a social institution and a matter of public policy.

The editorial sets out the reason government is involved in marriage at all:

So at the risk of awkwardness, we must talk about the facts of life. It is true that marriage is, in part, an emotional union, and it is also true that spouses often take care of each other and thereby reduce the caregiving burden on other people. But neither of these truths is the fundamental reason for marriage. The reason marriage exists is that the sexual intercourse of men and women regularly produces children. If it did not produce children, neither society nor the government would have much reason, let alone a valid reason, to regulate people's emotional unions. (The government does not regulate non-marital friendships, no matter how intense they are.) If mutual caregiving were the purpose of marriage, there would be no reason to exclude adult incestuous unions from marriage. What the institution and policy of marriage aims to regulate is sex, not love or commitment. These days, marriage regulates sex (to the extent it does regulate it) in a wholly non-coercive manner, sex outside of marriage no longer being a crime.

Marriage exists, in other words, to solve a problem that arises from sex between men and women but not from sex between partners of the same gender: what to do about its generativity. It has always been the union of a man and a woman (even in polygamous marriages in which a spouse has a marriage with each of two or more persons of the opposite sex) for the same reason that there are two sexes: It takes one of each type in our species to perform the act that produces children. That does not mean that marriage is worthwhile only insofar as it yields children. (The law has never taken that view.) But the institution is oriented toward child-rearing. (The law has taken exactly that view.) What a healthy marriage culture does is encourage adults to arrange their lives so that as many children as possible are raised and nurtured by their biological parents in a common household.

The article addresses the distinction between bans on interracial marriage and affirmations of the traditional definition of marriage, and it addresses the oft-stated objection that childless couples are allowed to marry:

Some couples that believe themselves to be infertile (or even intend not to have children) end up having children. Government could not filter out those marriage applicants who are certain not to be able to have children without extreme intrusiveness.

I appreciated this point, too, which echoes a discussion we had in the comments here:

Same-sex marriage would introduce a new, less justifiable distinction into the law. This new version of marriage would exclude pairs of people who qualify for it in every way except for their lack of a sexual relationship. Elderly brothers who take care of each other; two friends who share a house and bills and even help raise a child after one loses a spouse: Why shouldn't their relationships, too, be recognized by the government? The traditional conception of marriage holds that however valuable those relationships may be, the fact that they are not oriented toward procreation makes them non-marital. (Note that this is true even if those relationships involve caring for children: We do not treat a grandmother and widowed daughter raising a child together as married because their relationship is not part of an institution oriented toward procreation.) On what possible basis can the revisionists' conception of marriage justify discriminating against couples simply because they do not have sex?

Read the whole thing and arm yourself to make a stronger defense of the societal benefits and rationale behind the government recognition of marriage, as traditionally understood.

Many of my fellow conservative bloggers have been beating the drum loudly in opposition to proposals for "Net Neutrality." I can understand their skepticism -- truth-in-labeling laws don't apply to legislation and net neutrality is no more likely to be about neutral handling of internet data than NAFTA is a simple declaration of free trade between the U. S., Canada, and Mexico. Special provisions and sneaky codicils find their way into what should be a simple expression of a simple idea. I wouldn't be shocked if a Democrat net neutrality proposal in fact imposed net bias through some obscure amendment passed in the dead of night.

Nevertheless, the concept of net neutrality is not one that conservatives should dismiss out of hand. This concept is not a Fairness Doctrine for the internet that would require every website to provide equal time for every point of view. It is the simple notion that packets should be routed by the backbone and by ISPs without regard to the contents, source, or destination, in the same way that the phone company connects calls and the postal service delivers mail. Only in a case of abuse (e.g., denial-of-service attack) should the ISP care about what data is going where.

It's a mistake to think about this issue in terms of the free market. There are high barriers to entry to the ISP market; one of the biggest is getting local government permission to run your cables or build your towers on, over, or under their property. Where I live, we have two choices -- the phone company and the cable company. If both providers choose to allow their customers access only to a limited number of "partner" websites (imposing the cable TV tiering model on the internet), I wouldn't have any alternatives, and it might mean I could no longer read my favorite conservative bloggers and news sites.

An internet that routes data without discriminating based on content, source, or destination is what we have now, for the most part. There is now a low barrier to entry to publish your information and make it available for the world to see. If ISPs begin to discriminate in favor of certain sites, it may mean bloggers would have to pay a high fee to each ISP to gain access to those customers. You might also see ISPs pressured by the usual suspects on the left to cut off access to conservative websites.

(To the argument that ISPs aren't engaged in this kind of discrimination yet: I don't think they will until they feel comfortable that net neutrality is dead and buried. If they were to begin now, it would build popular support for net neutrality.)

The future of the internet as a medium for free speech and public accountability needs true net neutrality -- an internet infrastructure that passes data along without regard to content, source, or destination.

The BBC World Service has aired a two-part series, Useful Idiots, about Western intellectuals and journalists who were and are apologists for evil regimes. (The title is a phrase of Lenin's.) Part one focuses on the Soviet Union, Stalin, and his defenders, like George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and Walter Duranty, who won a Pulitzer Prize while withholding his knowledge of Stalin's murderous famine from his New York Times readers. Part two is about recent examples of useful idiots:

From Mao's China, General Pinochet's Chile, Apartheid-controlled South Africa, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, to President Ahmadinejad's Iran, why - and how - have so many supposedly intelligent people been manipulated by dictators into saying good things about bad regimes?

Via Ace of Spades HQ, which has direct links to downloadable MP3 files of the broadcasts. Ace notes that part 1 includes the quote "something so stupid only an intellectual could believe it."

NOTE: There's some question about the provenance of the document that was previously linked here, regarding the connection between the Democratic Socialists of America and the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I am looking into it and will let you know what I find out.

My periodic work-related travels to Wichita this spring and summer have given me the chance to watch another state's elections up close, and I was back in Kansas for last Tuesday's primary. While the process is essentially the same there as in Oklahoma, there are some interesting differences in the way Kansas does elections.

As in many states, Kansas elections are under the authority of their elected Secretary of State. (Oklahoma is a rare exception -- our election board is an independent agency, and secretary of state has been an appointive office since the Boren-era constitutional amendments that eliminated a raft of statewide elected officials.)

Kansas has an automated the process for putting results on the web. Every 15 minutes on election night, not only were the statewide vote totals updated, but so were results by county -- how many precincts reporting and how many votes for each candidate. And better still, a map for each statewide and congressional race was automatically updated. Counties were color coded to show which candidate was leading. No color at all meant no results reported yet, a lighter hue indicated the candidate leading the incomplete results, and a darker hue indicated the candidate who finished first where results were complete. It was easy to tell where the remaining votes were coming from, and when the Republican Senate primary narrowed to a few thousand votes, it was clear the race would widen when all the results were in, since the remaining precincts were in the leading candidate's home turf.

As it's Kansas, most of the action was in the Republican primary, as it has been since Kansas became a state in 1854. Sam Brownback is leaving the U. S. Senate to run for governor. Two long-time congressmen -- Jerry Moran, who has represented the northwestern two-thirds of the state's area since 1996, and Todd Tiahrt, who has represented Wichita and a few counties south and east since 1994 -- quit their safe seats to seek to move to the Senate.

Both are conservatives. Tiahrt -- his T♥ yard signs explained his name's pronunciation -- is known for his work to protect gun owners from unwarranted Federal intrusion.

Moran was seen as more of a deficit hawk -- he scored better on Club for Growth's "RePork Card" -- but not really a conviction politician on constitutional issues. Paul Moore, who quit his job as an assistant U. S. Attorney in January to manage Moran's campaign, left the campaign after two months and endorsed Tiahrt, using phrases that I suspect apply to many Republican politicians of the sort that Man of the West calls "laundry-list conservatives":

After more than two months of intense interactions with Jerry Moran, I came to believe that he was not instinctively conservative and that his willingness to actually lead against the tide of government intrusiveness into our lives and businesses was practically nonexistent.

I have worked with many politicians throughout the last two decades, including during my service as a Regional Political Director for the Republican National Committee. Yet, it was stunning to see a man with Jerry Moran's decades of government service be so seemingly unsure of himself and his beliefs. While he is a hard worker, I still cannot tell you with any certainty what he truly believes.

To my surprise, Jerry Moran winced at the frequent use of the words "conservative" or "pro-life" to portray himself out of fear he might offend moderate or pro-choice voters. He ultimately relented to the political realities and has thoroughly advertised himself as "pro-life" and "conservative" to describe who he needed to become to get elected.

Our country desperately needs men and women of backbone who don't have to consult political weather vanes to know what they stand for. Neither candidate is perfect, but Todd Tiahrt will instinctively stand up for the country's founding principles - without regard for the political winds. Jerry Moran would be reliable - so long as the winds are blowing in a conservative direction, as they are now.

Tiahrt had support from Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and the National Right to Life PAC (based on Tiahrt's track record as a leader on the abortion issue. Moran had twice as much money to spend, but Tiahrt got 45% and held Moran to just under 50%, with two minor candidates splitting the rest.

So when's the runoff? Kansas doesn't have them. In the race to replace Tiahrt in Congress, the winner, Mike Pompeo, received 39% of the vote. A two-candidate runoff wouldn't have clarified the situation much, as the second and third place candidates differed by only about 800 votes (about 24% each), and the 4th place candidate had 13%. This was a perfect situation of instant runoff voting.

At one point there were polls indicating that the sole pro-abortion candidate in the primary, State Sen. Jean Schodorf, had a strong enough core of support to finish first, as the pro-life majority split their support among the other four candidates. In the end, pro-lifers consolidated around Pompeo. That consolidation was helped by controversy over businessman Wink Hartman's claims to being a lifelong Kansan. Hartman, like Tulsa's former Mayor Kathy Taylor, had a homestead exemption in Florida and had been a registered and active voter there. (Unlike Taylor, there's no indication he was simultaneously registered and voting in two states.)

Without a runoff, and with less than 40% of the vote, Pompeo doesn't have much of a mandate to unite the party behind him, and there's no second round to encourage former rivals to back one or the other. In fact, the folks who were scolding Randy Brogdon for waiting a whole week to make a formal endorsement of Mary Fallin need to head to Wichita to give a good talking-to to three of Pompeo's four Republican opponents, who are so far refusing to endorse or campaign for him.

Two other Republican congressional primaries were won with less than 50% of the vote. The winner of the race to replace Moran in CD 1 was won with 35% of the vote, and the vote in CD 3 (suburban KC) was 45-37, with the remaining 18% split between 7 candidates in single digits.

Moran isn't the only (alleged) weather vane in Kansas politics. At the edges of farms, along the highways, big campaign signs are posted in a way that protects them from being destroyed by the constantly blowing Kansas wind. A typical rig involves an inverted, L-shaped section of PVC pipe, to which the top and one side of the sign is attached. The pipe holding the sign sits in another pipe attached to a fencepost, able to swing freely as the wind direction changes. Pretty smart.

Kansas allows write-ins. Primaries that drew no contestants or only one contender were still on the ballot, and voters could opt for another choice.

Party precinct officials in Kansas are elected at primaries. (Oklahoma parties hold caucuses.) Republicans and Democrats alike voted for a precinct committeeman and precinct committeewoman. Many of these elections drew only one candidate or no one at all. Here are the results from Sedgwick County, including all the primaries for precinct officials and township clerks.

It's happened twice this week. I've written long blog entries -- long essays with links -- and then hesitated to click the "publish" button. Ironically, the essay arose from a story about a sociologist reluctant to publish his findings because they may give aid and comfort to the politically incorrect.

Rather than leave you completely deprived, while I decide what to do with this latest piece, which is about immigration, here are some of the articles I read while writing it.

First, the item that got me started, by John Leo, on Robert Putnam's five-year study showing "that immigration and ethnic diversity have a devastating short- and medium-term influence on the social capital, fabric of associations, trust, and neighborliness that create and sustain communities." Leo reports that Putnam (best known for his book Bowling Alone) has expressed reluctance to publish his research:

Putnam's study reveals that immigration and diversity not only reduce social capital between ethnic groups, but also within the groups themselves. Trust, even for members of one's own race, is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friendships fewer. The problem isn't ethnic conflict or troubled racial relations, but withdrawal and isolation. Putnam writes: "In colloquial language, people living in ethnically diverse settings appear to 'hunker down'--that is, to pull in like a turtle."

That led me to Roger Axtell's collection of books on "Do's and Taboos around the World" and an essay on missionaries and culture stress.

And from there, I went looking for Francis Fukuyama's work on trust, social capital, and economic development:

Social Capital and Civil Society (1999)
Social Capital and Development (2001)

Then there's this McClatchy news story from January 2010 on the devastation wrought by Haiti's lack of construction codes:

Most buildings in Haiti go up without engineers, standards or inspections. The earthquake is only the latest, and worst, tragedy to expose the largely unregulated and slapdash construction long accepted on the island -- practices that structural engineers believe added to a staggering death toll that could reach 200,000....

It wasn't just humble shacks and turn-of-the-previous-century icons like the historic Roman Catholic Cathedral of Port-au-Prince, but new and newly renovated schools, police stations, bank branches, high-end hotels and hospitals. The U.S. Agency for International Development reported Thursday that 13 of 15 government ministry buildings had been destroyed.

"This was pseudo-engineering. It was terrible," said Eduardo Fierro, a California-based forensic and seismic engineer who was among the first experts to survey the damage....

Most Caribbean countries, Haiti included, have building laws based on the Caribbean Uniform Building Code, said Cletus Springs, director of the OAS' Department of Sustainable Development in Washington. But in many places, rules exist only on paper....

Haiti has taken stabs at beefing up building codes in the past. Ironically, said architect Magloire, one expert brought in recently to work on the code died in the collapse of the Hotel Montana.

You may recall Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino's remarks from March 2010 regarding "taco trucks" and zoning, health, and tax enforcement:

City Councilor Jim Mautino said he had received complaints from constituents regarding six mobile food trailers. He said he was concerned about food safety and the city's ability to collect sales taxes.

"This is Third World stuff," he said. "When people come here we assimilate them (new residents of the country) into our lifestyle and our politics; it's not the other way around.

"And it seems to me like what's happening is we're being assimilated."

Mautino expanded on those comments in an April 28 UTW story:

As for new residents assimilating to the U.S., Mautino said this statement stemmed from what he was taught as a child.

"My parents came from Italy and their opinion was when you're in Rome you do like the Romans, when you're in America you do like the Americans," he said. "You come to this country and you don't change this country. You can add things that come from your country, but you abide by our laws."

And here's another immigration-related item, although not part of my essay, on the topic of immigration enforcement, a report that U. S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have no confidence that the agency's leadership is committed to enforcing the laws:

On June 11, 2010, the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council and its constituent local representatives from around the nation, acting on behalf of approximately 7,000 ICE officers and employees from the ICE Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), cast a unanimous "Vote of No Confidence" in the Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), John Morton, and the Assistant Director of the ICE Office of Detention Policy and Planning, (ODPP), Phyllis Coven.

The letter from the president of the AFL-CIO-affiliated union that represents ICE agents explains that local law enforcement is really the only path to immigration enforcement at the moment:

• While ICE reports internally that more than 90 percent of ICE detainees are first encountered in jails after they are arrested by local police for criminal charges, ICE senior leadership misrepresents this information publicly in order to portray ICE detainees as being non-criminal in nature to support the Administration's position on amnesty and relaxed security at ICE detention facilities.
• The majority of ICE ERO Officers are prohibited from making street arrests or enforcing United States immigration laws outside of the institutional (jail) setting. This has effectively created "amnesty through policy" for anyone illegally in the United States who has not been arrested by another agency for a criminal violation.

White Castle employees, whose insurance is almost fully paid by their employer:

The Columbus-based family owned restaurant chain - known for serving small square hamburgers called "sliders" - says a single provision in the bill will eat up roughly 55 percent of its yearly net income after 2014.

Starting that year, the bill levies a $3,000-per-employee penalty on companies whose workers pay more than 9.5 percent of household income in premiums for company-provided insurance.

White Castle, which currently provides insurance to all of its full-time workers and picks up 70 to 89 percent of their premium costs, believes it will likely end up paying those penalties. The financial hit will make it hard for the company to maintain its 421 restaurants, let alone create new jobs, says company spokesman Jamie Richardson. White Castle employs more than 10,000 people nationwide, and more than 1,200 in Ohio.

Julie R. Neidlinger, who has been paying for her own high-deductible insurance; Obamacare is forcing her premiums up:

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the official name of the new healthcare reform bill, which is laughable when considering the last half of the title. The best analogy I can come up with in regards to Congress's attempt to make certain everyone had health insurance is preserving a glass menagerie by loosening the corners of the shelves and then adding more weight on top of them....

[To her elected representatives:] Thank you for your excellent work on passing the healthcare reform. Thanks to the new laws, my health insurance has been restructured and now costs $40 more per month. This means I can't afford it and will now, for the first time in a decade of paying for my own health insurance, have to drop health insurance and be uninsured. I understand there's even the possibility of being penalized for not having insurance. Thank you for covering all the bases! This is a fabulous Catch 22 you've provided for your constituents.

The good news: 60% of American voters favor repeal of Obamacare.

The bad news (from the same poll): Voters are skeptical that repeal will actually happen:

Part of the doubt about the likelihood of repeal may come from the fact that Democrats could still control Congress after November. Part of it also may come from skepticism that Republicans would be any different. Recent polling showed that just 42% think there would be a noticeable change if Republicans win control of Congress. Republican voters overwhelmingly believe that their party's representatives in Washington are out of touch with the party base. Just 21% believe that Republican officeholders have done a good job representing Republican values.

A blessed Independence Day to everyone. When the 4th of July falls on a Sunday, it's a rare opportunity to gather in our churches on our nation's birthday and give thanks for the blessings of liberty for which our forefathers fought and died. Not that we should worship or idolize our country with its imperfections, but we ought to acknowledge that America is uniquely blessed and that God has used America to bless people all over the world. As John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail following the approval of the Continental Congress of a resolution to declare independence:

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. -- I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. -- Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

Sadly, the occasion was scarcely acknowledged at our church this morning. Given what the music director later posted as his Facebook status, I shouldn't be surprised: "i cannot in good conscience sing or talk about what a wonderful country this is." What accounts for that kind of disdain, all too common among younger Americans? Perhaps the decline of civics education, as noted by The Anchoress, Elizabeth Scalia, in her Independence Day entry, which is accompanied by a Jay Leno "Jaywalking" segment asking random people on the street about the Revolutionary War:

Civics class taught you things like: when, how and why America was formed. What the Declaration of Independence was; what the Constitution said, and the origination of the Bill of Rights. We learned about Federalism, the separation of powers, the structure of our government and why it was thusly formed. Our history classes taught us about Minutemen, Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Dolly and James Madison, Marbury vs. Madison, Slavery, the Underground Railroad, the Civil War, the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Industrial Revolution and so forth. We learned the history of Europe, too, but American history had primacy....

45 years ago, we did not spend on education anything near what we spend, now. But as we see here, the people who were educated in the bad-old unenlightened, uncoddled days of rote memorization and unforgiving tests can actually answer a simple question like, "how many colonies were there, at the founding of the United States?"

Watch this; it's depressing, and it makes one wonder if our kids are purposely being shortchanged in schools.

Perhaps if you want to control a country's future, you must first insure that its citizenry are ignorant of its past, and distracted by its present.

Note that, at the end of the Jay Leno video, after a dad, a mom, and a teenage boy display their ignorance about the founding of our nation, the grandfather ticks off the correct answers without hesitation. I imagine he had a few years of civics in school.

And I'd bet that most legal immigrants to the US would fare better answering Leno's questions. They're required to answer a series of civics questions as part of the U. S. citizenship exam.

Daniel Hannan, a Conservative Member of the European Parliament from the United Kingdom, wishes the US a Happy Independence Day and writes of the inspiration he draws from the principles of the American Revolution, which, he argues, belong to the UK as well:

They saw themselves, not as revolutionaries, but as conservatives. All they were asking for, in their own minds, was the rights which they had always assumed to be theirs as freeborn Englishmen....

Thomas Jefferson, whose bust stares at me as I write this blog, had wanted to include a touching phrase in the Declaration, but his fellow authors excised it: "We might have been a great and free people together". Indeed. Everything I have done in politics has been an attempt to apply Jeffersonian principles to British political conditions. Decisions should be taken as closely as possible to those they affect, and decision-makers made accountable through the ballot box. Everything else - autonomous local councils, referendums, recall procedures, tax cuts, withdrawal from the EU, elected sheriffs, the Great Repeal Bill - follows from those two simple precepts.

It is time to bring back to the mother country the ideology that inspired the most sublime constitution devised by human intelligence. It is time, in short, to repatriate our revolution.

Given the extent to which Britain has subjugated itself to the European Union and has abridged its own citizens' rights (such as the right for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms), the USA serves the cause of British liberty by keeping the "rights of freeborn Englishmen" alive somewhere in the world.

R. C. Sproul, writing in 2008, recalled asking Francis Schaeffer what was the greatest threat to the church in America. Schaeffer's one word answer: "Statism."

Schaeffer's biggest concern at that point in his life was that the citizens of the United States were beginning to invest their country with supreme authority, such that the free nation of America would become one that would be dominated by a philosophy of the supremacy of the state.

In statism, we see the suffix "ism," which indicates a philosophy or worldview. A decline from statehood to statism happens when the government is perceived as or claims to be the ultimate reality. This reality then replaces God as the supreme entity upon which human existence depends....

Throughout the history of the Christian church, Christianity has always stood over against all forms of statism. Statism is the natural and ultimate enemy to Christianity because it involves a usurpation of the reign of God. If Francis Schaeffer was right -- and each year that passes makes his prognosis seem all the more accurate -- it means that the church and the nation face a serious crisis in our day. In the final analysis, if statism prevails in America, it will mean not only the death of our religious freedom, but also the death of the state itself. We face perilous times where Christians and all people need to be vigilant about the rapidly encroaching elevation of the state to supremacy.

What would our Founding Fathers have thought of a President of the United States nominating to the U. S. Supreme Court someone who believes that the State has the power to ban books and pamphlets that contain political advocacy:

[Solicitor General Elena] Kagan conceded that although the statute in question did cover "full length books" it would be subject to "quite good" challenges if it was ever so applied in practice. Moreover, she pointed out that the Federal Election Commission never enforced the law with respect to books, implying that citizens should not worry about being prosecuted. Chief Justice Roberts immediately seized on this, saying "We don't put our First Amendment rights in the hands of FEC bureaucrats." He then asked whether the statute could be used to ban a pamphlet. Such a publication, Kagan admitted, would be different; "a pamphlet is pretty classic electioneering" and could be constitutionally prohibited. She tried to reassure the justices that a book containing hundreds of pages could not be banned just because the last sentence endorsed a candidate, as her deputy had claimed a few months earlier. However, she strongly implied that if the book engaged in "express advocacy" as a whole, it could be banned. Her position would seem to require the FEC to define the differences between books and pamphlets and decide how many sentences in a book are necessary to qualify as "express advocacy." Kagan never addressed whether it was desirable for FEC staffers to become either book reviewers or a de facto national censorship committee. Ultimately, the Court ruled against Kagan by a 5-4 margin.

Finally, Twitter reader @CircleReader posted a link to Frederick Douglass's great 1852 oration, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" While Douglass sharply condemns the political and religious leaders of the day who twisted the principles of the Founders to the end of justifying slavery, the speech as a whole is a reaffirmation of those principles. A few excerpts:

Fellow-citizens, I shall not presume to dwell at length on the associations that cluster about this day. The simple story of it is that, 76 years ago, the people of this country were British subjects. The style and title of your "sovereign people" (in which you now glory) was not then born. You were under the British Crown . Your fathers esteemed the English Government as the home government; and England as the fatherland. This home government, you know, although a considerable distance from your home, did, in the exercise of its parental prerogatives, impose upon its colonial children, such restraints, burdens and limitations, as, in its mature judgment, it deemed wise, right and proper.

But, your fathers, who had not adopted the fashionable idea of this day, of the infallibility of government, and the absolute character of its acts, presumed to differ from the home government in respect to the wisdom and the justice of some of those burdens and restraints. They went so far in their excitement as to pronounce the measures of government unjust, unreasonable, and oppressive, and altogether such as ought not to be quietly submitted to. I scarcely need say, fellow-citizens, that my opinion of those measures fully accords with that of your fathers. Such a declaration of agreement on my part would not be worth much to anybody. It would, certainly, prove nothing, as to what part I might have taken, had I lived during the great controversy of 1776. To say now that America was right, and England wrong, is exceedingly easy. Everybody can say it; the dastard, not less than the noble brave, can flippantly discant on the tyranny of England towards the American Colonies. It is fashionable to do so; but there was a time when to pronounce against England, and in favor of the cause of the colonies, tried men's souls. They who did so were accounted in their day, plotters of mischief, agitators and rebels, dangerous men. To side with the right, against the wrong, with the weak against the strong, and with the oppressed against the oppressor! here lies the merit, and the one which, of all others, seems unfashionable in our day. The cause of liberty may be stabbed by the men who glory in the deeds of your fathers....

Oppression makes a wise man mad. Your fathers were wise men, and if they did not go mad, they became restive under this treatment. They felt themselves the victims of grievous wrongs, wholly incurable in their colonial capacity. With brave men there is always a remedy for oppression. Just here, the idea of a total separation of the colonies from the crown was born! It was a startling idea, much more so, than we, at this distance of time, regard it. The timid and the prudent (as has been intimated) of that day, were, of course, shocked and alarmed by it.

Such people lived then, had lived before, and will, probably, ever have a place on this planet; and their course, in respect to any great change, (no matter how great the good to be attained, or the wrong to be redressed by it), may be calculated with as much precision as can be the course of the stars. They hate all changes, but silver, gold and copper change! Of this sort of change they are always strongly in favor.

These people were called Tories in the days of your fathers; and the appellation, probably, conveyed the same idea that is meant by a more modern, though a somewhat less euphonious term, which we often find in our papers, applied to some of our old politicians.

Their opposition to the then dangerous thought was earnest and powerful; but, amid all their terror and affrighted vociferations against it, the alarming and revolutionary idea moved on, and the country with it....

Pride and patriotism, not less than gratitude, prompt you to celebrate and to hold it in perpetual remembrance. I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the ring-bolt to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost.

From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day - cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight....

Of the Founders, Douglass said:

They loved their country better than their own private interests; and, though this is not the highest form of human excellence, all will concede that it is a rare virtue, and that when it is exhibited, it ought to command respect. He who will, intelligently, lay down his life for his country, is a man whom it is not in human nature to despise. Your fathers staked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, on the cause of their country. In their admiration of liberty, they lost sight of all other interests.

They were peace men; but they preferred revolution to peaceful submission to bondage. They were quiet men; but they did not shrink from agitating against oppression. They showed forbearance; but that they knew its limits. They believed in order; but not in the order of tyranny. With them, nothing was "settled" that was not right. With them, justice, liberty and humanity were "final;" not slavery and oppression. You may well cherish the memory of such men. They were great in their day and generation. Their solid manhood stands out the more as we contrast it with these degenerate times.

How circumspect, exact and proportionate were all their movements! How unlike the politicians of an hour! Their statesmanship looked beyond the passing moment, and stretched away in strength into the distant future. They seized upon eternal principles, and set a glorious example in their defense. Mark them!

Fully appreciating the hardship to be encountered, firmly believing in the right of their cause, honorably inviting the scrutiny of an on-looking world, reverently appealing to heaven to attest their sincerity, soundly comprehending the solemn responsibility they were about to assume, wisely measuring the terrible odds against them, your fathers, the fathers of this republic, did, most deliberately, under the inspiration of a glorious patriotism, and with a sublime faith in the great principles of justice and freedom, lay deep the corner-stone of the national superstructure, which has risen and still rises in grandeur around you.

To the argument that the Constitution justifies slavery, Douglass replied:

In that instrument I hold there is neither warrant, license, nor sanction of the hateful thing; but, interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT. Read its preamble, consider its purposes. Is slavery among them? Is it at the gateway? or is it in the temple? It is neither. While I do not intend to argue this question on the present occasion, let me ask, if it be not somewhat singular that, if the Constitution were intended to be, by its framers and adopters, a slave-holding instrument, why neither slavery, slaveholding, nor slave can anywhere be found in it....

Now, take the constitution according to its plain reading, and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it. On the other hand it will be found to contain principles and purposes, entirely hostile to the existence of slavery.

His hopeful conclusion -- "the doom of slavery is certain" -- was grounded in Divine Providence and in the growth of international communication and commerce, a thought that should give us in the Internet Age even more hope for the defeat of oppression everywhere:

No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light.

A happy Independence Day to you and yours.

MORE: @AtlasObscura treats us to a plethory of Independence Day links, including one to the Declaration of Independence itself, urging us to "take a minute today to read the whole thing & realize how amazing & unlikely it is." And Terry Teachout provides us with four different performances of "the best of all possible marches" -- "The Stars and Stripes Forever" -- including a performance introduced by the composer, John Philip Sousa, and performed by his band.

Why not E. L. Wisty? He has just as much experience at the judgin' as Elena Kagan has, even if he doesn't have the Latin for it.

His uncontrollable whoopin' might be a problem during confirmation hearings but shouldn't interfere with the court's proceedings.

"The trouble with bein' a miner: as soon as you're too old and tired and ill and sick and stupid to do your job properly, you have to go, while the very opposite applies with the judges."

Man of the West looks at the Leftist track record and wonders why America's leftists "champion the same policies that have brought whole nations to their knees and criticize their opponents for their alleged insensitivity to the poor--the poor that leftist policies indisputably create in massive numbers!" He also offers the short and painful truth about taekwon-do.

Mikhail Gorbachev was just as callous a despot as his less-polished predecessors, according to once-secret Soviet documents. There's a treasure trove of documents about the USSR from the last years of the Cold War, smuggled out at great risk, but they've yet to find an English translator or publisher.

Ever read about a head of state's snub of Jesse Owens after his triumph at the 1936 Olympic Games? Owens said the snub wasn't from Hitler but FDR. (Via Kathy Shaidle.)

It's like Mystery Science Theater 3000 for the funny pages: The Comics Curmudgeon. (I had no idea how depressing Funky Winkerbean had become.)

C. Michael Patton (the theologian from Edmond, not the recycler from Tulsa) writes about the day he quit believing in God.

Brandon Dutcher offers a Father's Day anecdote from a recent Weekly Standard cover story about Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Lori Bongiorno, the Conscious Consumer, says it's wasteful to rinse your dishes before putting them in the dishwasher.

Brace Books -- a great independent bookstore in Ponca City (with a coffee bar, too) -- passes along a parent's recommendation of John Grisham's book for pre-teens: Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer.

I just visited with a customer, who is the mom of a 10-year-old son, about this book. She and her son have read it......and she said it's a good read, a page-turner like Grisham's courtroom books, and very appropriate for kids.

Barbara Hollingsworth, local opinion editor of the Washington Examiner, critiques plans for high-density, transit-oriented development in Tysons Corner, Virginia:

It will cost billions of dollars to transform Tysons Corner, but the fact is that the county simply doesn't have the money. Instead of asking the landowners to pick up the slack, county leaders are proposing a series of general countywide tax increases -- on meals, real estate sales, vehicle registration, rental cars, hotel rooms and car repairs.

This means that average Fairfax County residents and businesses, whose property taxes have doubled during the past decade, will be taxed even more to pay for redevelopment in Tysons Corner --over and above the estimated $100 million a year they will be charged for the Silver Line's operating costs. In the current economic climate, there's no guarantee taxpayers will get a return on their forced investment.

Gene Healy examines the structural damage done to federalism by the passage of the 17th Amendment:

"Let the state legislatures appoint the Senate," Virginia's George Mason urged at the Philadelphia Convention of 1787, lest a newly empowered federal government "swallow up the state legislatures." The motion carried unanimously after Mason's remarks.

So it's probably fitting that it's a George Mason University law professor, Todd Zywicki, who has done the best work on the 17th Amendment's pernicious effects.

Zywicki shows that selection by state legislatures was a key pillar of the Constitution's architecture, ensuring that the Senate would be a bulwark for decentralized government. It's "inconceivable," Zywicki writes, "that a Senator during the pre-17th Amendment era would vote for an 'unfunded federal mandate.' "

And finally, Mark Merrill offers a simple set of Rules of the House.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie:

Dale Peterson, candidate for Alabama Agriculture Commissioner

(Via Drew M. at Ace of Spades HQ.)

Tom Blumer, writing for Pajamas Media, points to statistics connecting Oklahoma's relatively good unemployment situation to implementation of HB 1804, the strict immigration enforcement bill approved in May 2007

Given the economic damage inflicted on us by the current administration and many state governments, most readers of this column would probably be quite happy to live in a state where:

• The official unemployment rate in March was 6.6%.
• The average unemployment rate in 2009 using the most comprehensive definition was 10.5%, the fourth-lowest in the nation (behind three much smaller states), and far lower than the national average of 16.2%.
• The number of people either working or looking for work has actually grown during the past twelve months (in most states, the labor force has contracted significantly).
• The economy grew in 2008, and probably did so again in 2009.

Unless you live in Oklahoma, you're not in that state.

Blumer goes on to cite statistics showing that, from 2008 to 2009, unemployment among black Oklahomans grew much more slowly (8.7% to 11.1%) than it did for white Oklahomans (almost doubled, 2.9% to 5%). Among Hispanic OKlahomans, unemployment dropped over that same period, from 9% to 7.4%.

In 2008, Oklahoma's economic growth outpaced the national economy, and its welfare and food stamp caseload fell as it was growing in the rest of the country.

Since 1804 passed, Oklahoma has not suffered nearly as much economically as most of the rest of the U.S. In fact, the state can fairly be described, especially on a relative basis, as prosperous. Even before considering the reductions in crime the citizens of Arizona are so desperately seeking in their state's new immigration enforcement measure, what the Sooner State has done seems well worth imitating elsewhere for pocketbook-related reasons alone.

RELATED: Mark Krikorian, posting on National Review's The Corner, links to a study showing the effects of immigration on summer jobs for teenagers:

Long before the current recession, the share of U.S.-born teenagers in the summer labor market had been declining, from 64 percent in 1994 to 48 percent in 2007 (and 45 percent last summer). Immigration is only one cause, but a significant one; in the top ten immigration states, only 45 percent of teens were in the summer labor force in 2007, as opposed to 58 percent in the bottom ten immigration states. What's more, a 10 percentage-point increase in the immigrant share of a state's work force from 1994 to 2007 reduced the labor force participation rate of U.S.-born teenagers by 7.9 percentage points.

The reasons are obvious -- immigrants do the jobs teenagers used to do, like cutting grass, flipping burgers, etc., and since they're almost all adults, employers prefer them to inexperienced teenagers.

Krikorian goes on quote a section pointing out that the teens who aren't working aren't learning the kind of work ethic that they'll need to succeed later in life:

Holding a job as a teenager seems to instill the habits and values that are helpful in finding or retaining gainful employment later in life. This may include showing up on time, following a supervisor's directions, completing tasks, dealing politely with customers, and working hard. Learning good work habits and values seems to become much less likely without holding a job at a young age. Once a person who has little or no work experience reaches full adulthood, learning these skills seems to become more difficult.

But not to worry, says Nancy Pelosi -- thanks to Obamacare, a good work ethic is optional. You can be an artiste and sponge off the rest of us. (Follow the link for video.) Ed Morrissey comments:

Pelosi tells an audience in DC that ObamaCare is an "entrepreneurial bill," because it will let people quit being productive and allow them to leech off of ... entrepreneurs:

We see it as an entrepreneurial bill, a bill that says to someone, if you want to be creative and be a musician or whatever, you can leave your work, focus on your talent, your skill, your passion, your aspirations because you will have health care.

In other words, we should all just join the circus and let Mom and Dad pick up the bill. That's not entrepreneurial; it's a welfare state. If anyone wants to see just what kind of innovation that produces, we only need to see the economies of the Western European nanny states.

While it's a good thing to move away from health insurance locking people to their jobs (which is why employer-funded health insurance was created in the first place -- to attract and retain employees while a government imposed wage freeze was in effect), there was a much simpler way, promoted by Republicans like Tom Coburn, that would have made delinked one's health coverage from one's job, preserved individual liberty and responsibility in health care choices, and helped to control costs.

A team of 11 officials from Third World countries observing last Thursday's British election called the UK's approach to voting "corruptible," too dependent on trust. The observers came from countries where election fraud has often been a problem, with methods that include ballot box stuffing, voter intimidation, voter impersonation, and ballot theft.

Ababu Namwamba, an MP from Kenya, said he found the system "almost casual" in the way the whole process was so calm and so civil. He said: "While it may not be corrupt, it has elements that could be regarded as corruptible."

The Kenyan said he was surprised that more checks were not carried out to check the identities of voters. Instead clerks in the polling booths trusted the person who is voting to tell the truth.

He said: "That little detail is susceptible to abuse. It [the system] is admirable but it is open to abuse. This country has opened up to many people coming in.

"While the culture of trust may have worked in the past, your culture is changing. These details need to be tightened up."

Sheikh Fazle Noor Taposh, an MP from Bangladesh, suggested that staff in polling stations should demand to see photographic identification from voters.

This would ensure that people do not impersonate someone else when they voted. "It should move to a more foolproof system," he said.

Note the obvious but politically incorrect point made by the Kenyan MP: Immigration brings in many people who don't share a nation's culture. If they come in large enough numbers and are not inculcated with the values of their new home, institutions that depend on those values will founder.

This even applies to different political cultures within the United States: There are big cities where election cheating is proverbial and there are rural areas where such a thing is unthinkable. Imagine a small North Dakota town invaded by a critical mass of folks accustomed to Chicago-style machine politics.

(It should be said that many immigrants come to a country like Britain or the United States precisely because they prefer their new country's cultural assumptions to those of their homelands.)

RightWingNews has published a poll of 50 conservative bloggers on Arizona's new immigration law, illegal immigration, legal immigration, and assimilation. The answers to two questions make for an interesting contrast, although I'm not surprised:

7) On the whole, which of these sentiments best describes your thoughts about illegal aliens?

They make America a better place to live: 4.1% (2 votes)
They make America a worse place to live: 95.9% (47 votes)

8) On the whole, which of these sentiments best describes your thoughts about legal immigrants?

They America a better place to live: 98% (49 votes)
They make America a worse place to live: 2% (1 votes)

Tulsans will remember G. W. Schulz as an excellent investigative reporter who wrote for Urban Tulsa Weekly a few years ago. He left UTW to go back to the San Francisco Bay Area where he now works for the Center for Investigative Reporting. CIR is launching Elevated Risk, a new blog devoted to shining a spotlight on the U. S. Department of Homeland Security. In the introductory post, Schulz asks some good, hard questions of DHS:

It's time, for example, to ask: Why did a Terrorist Screening Center, thousands of additional airport security officers, behavior detection specialists, ambitious technology investments and multiple intelligence-gathering operations not stop a young radical from nearly killing 290 people on Christmas Day in 2009?

Why are state and federal authorities still struggling to respond to natural disasters after the federal government handed out more than $30 billion in preparedness grants?

What happened to the high-tech surveillance system that was supposed to guard the country's southern border? The Obama Administration embraced the plan to line the border with fences, remote sensors and surveillance cameras at a cost of hundreds of millions. Then, just weeks ago, the administration showed signs that it was bailing out.

The litany of department missteps is an embarrassment.

- The $9 million spent on ice that FEMA allowed to melt on a Texas airfield.
- The $110 million in spending on conferences over a three-year stretch.
- The tens of millions spent on technology that sits unused in warehouses across the country.
- The inability to install a leader at the head of the Transportation Security Administration.

And it's time to ask if Americans are giving away too many freedoms central to their identities as U.S. citizens in exchange for costly and intrusive security programs that may not protect them.

Keep your eyes on Elevated Risk for answers.

Wilson Research Strategies, an Oklahoma-based national polling firm, polled paid attendees at this weekend's Southern Republican Leadership Conference and was the official tabulator for the SRLC presidential straw poll. The presidential straw poll results are online on the WRS blog. Watch the WRS blog for detailed analysis of the six-question survey.

WRS also just conducted a national survey on voters' inclinations and concerns as the 2010 and 2012 elections approach.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has called a general election for Thursday, May 6, 2010, just a few weeks shy of the fifth anniversary of the previous election. This will be the first election in which Brown will carry the Labour Party's banner; Labour won the 1997, 2001, and 2005 elections with Tony Blair as leader.

The Conservative Party, under David Cameron's leadership, has a good chance of winning a majority for the first time since 1992, a close victory for John Major who, like Brown, took over as PM in between elections and followed a charismatic long-serving leader -- Major succeeding Margaret Thatcher, Brown succeeding Blair. After floundering in opposition for many years, the Tories have performed very well in recent elections for local councils and the European Parliament, regaining ground in parts of the UK thought forever lost to Labour.

Complicating the picture are a number of other parties, including the Liberal Democrats, the product of a late 1980s merger of the historic Liberal Party and a dissident group of Labourites who had formed the Social Democratic Party. There are nationalist parties in Wales (Plaid Cymru) and Scotland (Scottish National Party). The UK Independence Party favors withdrawal from the European Union and has done well, ironically, in European Parliament elections (which are elected by proportional representation), but holds no seats in the House of Commons, where MPs are elected by plurality -- "first-past-the-post." In 2005, Labour won a solid majority of seats in the House of Commons with only about 36% of the national popular vote.

Northern Ireland is its own world politically, with parties representing the cause of ongoing union with Britain and reunion with the Republic of Ireland. It's been many years since one of the UK-wide parties has won a parliamentary seat in the province. The Democratic Unionist Party, founded by the Rev. Ian Paisley, has the fourth largest delegation at Westminster, with 8 seats.

A British general election is like a presidential and congressional election combined. Like a congressional election, control of the government depends on aggregate of the results in each constituency (district). But like a presidential election, national issues almost always outweigh local concerns; British voters are choosing a party as much as they are a Member of Parliament.

Some British election links:

• Wikipedia: United Kingdom general election, 2010
• Electoral Calculus: "predicts the next British General Election result using scientific analysis of opinion polls and electoral geography."
• Election Prediction Project: UK General Election 2010
• BBC News FAQ on the election and voting
• BBC News Election 2010 homepage
• Telegraph Election 2010 homepage
• ConservativeHome: "Comprehensive coverage of Britain's Conservative Party

I told a friend a few weeks ago, "I don't even like writing software anymore." That's a problematic sentiment, given that I'm a software engineer by trade. I'm happy to report, however, that in the heat of hardware/software integration and long hours of focused effort on Making Things Work, I'm back in flow and enjoying tinkering with code again.

That's not leaving me much time for blogging, so here's a selection of some really thoughty stuff from other bloggers

Erick Erickson of RedState: Slaves to Government: Constitutional Gnosticism will destroy a free republic":

Consequently, we have gone beyond a point where you can sit down and read the constitution and really understand what the heck Congress can and cannot do....

We have reached a point where we have to rely on men and women in black robes and lawyers to tell us what we can and cannot do. A society begins to breakdown when the average citizen can no longer understand what his government can and cannot do without relying on men and women in black robes and lawyers all of whom have as many opinions to that question as there are opinions.

Then you cross into the territory where we have already arrived. A Congress can pass a 2,700 page piece of legislation to do something Congress arguably cannot do by making states do it, which is arguably unconstitutional. The legislators who voted on this 2,700 page piece of legislation, when asked, have no clue what is in the legislation.

You cannot sustain a free republic when the citizens who are expected to comply with the law have no understanding of what the law is or how their government works without paying the gnostics to enlighten them and the people who write the law do not know what is in the law.

(Did you know you can't tell how many state senators and state representatives Oklahoma has and how they're apportioned by reading our state constitution? The number and method was fixed by court order in 1964 and reaffirmed in statute with every decennial reapportionment.)

RH Potfry of satirical news site The Nose on Your Face is "Quitting the Blog Thing":

That 2 guys with demanding day jobs and families could cobble together some of the work we've done, get linked by everyone from Mark Steyn to Ann Coulter, and even get featured on the Huckabee Show, says a lot about how the ambitious amateur can use the internet to chase a dream.

But that chase has its price. Over the past six months, I've been nagged by the realization that I'm watching my daughters grow up over the top edge of my laptop. That if not for my wife's bizarre appreciation of my oddness, she could divorce me for neglect....

All things considered and given the limited hours in a day, I need to choose the job that comes with a paycheck, and make sure I'm fully present in the lives of the people I love.

Will Republican leadership walk back from the call to repeal the Obamacare monstrosity? Iowahawk seems to think they've already started and predicts the future with a few words per month.

Ace: Letterman Interviews Tea Party Leader & Grand Unified Theory of Everything Political -- some brilliant analysis of how political appeal works at a sub-rational level, and why the left-stream media is working so hard to convince you Tea Party supporters are wackos:

Successful politicians are often -- almost always, really; one struggles to find a contrary example -- able to appeal to those who should be opposed to them, based on purely rational inputs (past voting history, stated positions, rhetorical priorities) to nevertheless support them based on non-rational or pre-rational inputs -- a general sense of a guy as one of your own.

Non-ideological independents are, well, non-ideological, and tend to be deeply suspicious of those who are strongly ideological. Partly due to their ideology of not having much of an ideology, and partly due to sub-rational reasons: People who are strongly ideological are "not like me" and therefore viewed with antipathy....

Newt Gingrich, back when he was Speaker, gave seminars to conservative candidates on how to win elections, and he highlighted the importance of describing one's opponent (or his ideas at least) as (and I quote) "bizarre," "weird," and alien. (Not sure if that last one was used, but that was the idea.) This is the flip-side of appealing to the "One of Us" feeling -- portraying your opponent as "Not One of You."

Now, of course, the media engages in similar political rhetoric on a daily basis in the service of its cherished liberal party. The media is heavily invested in the Weird, Dangerous, Alien narratives when discussing the Tea Party. That is the biggest reason for the constant denigration of Tea Partiers as racist, homophobic, ugly, uneducated, zombie-like, etc. The media is always trying to paint Tea Partiers as "Not One of You" to discourage people from joining in the cause or viewing their claims as legitimate.

Also remember how CNN described the Coffee Parties. Did they deploy their "Weird, Dangerous, Alien" storyline in describing this group of mutant Obama Zombies? Oh dearie me no. For groups CNN likes and wishes to promote, it employs the "One of Us" Narrative....

So that's the media's template -- the left is portrayed by using the most broadly inclusive nouns, expressing the most broadly palatable and vague ideology. (All the CNN pieces on the Coffee Party refuse to divulge the Coffee Party is leftist and insist it is a centrist group concerned only with non-ideological concerns such as fair process and clean politics.)

The right is portrayed by using the narrowest possible categorical nouns and their ideology is represented as specifically as possible (to discourage those who don't share those particular views) and the Weirdness Factor is highlighted-- just in case some of those specific positions are actually attractive to a lot of people, the Weirdness Factor ought to keep you away.

He has an extended example from CNN's coverage of the "Coffee Party" movement. He also has links to Letterman's interview with Pam Stout, a leader of a Tea Party group from Sandpoint, Idaho. It's notable because it runs counter to the narrative -- Mrs. Stout comes across as normal, likable, and sincere.

Try viewing the news through this lens for a few days. You've probably seen it done at a local level, too, with phrases like "Gang of Five" used to render the legitimate concerns of a group of city councilors unworthy of public discussion.

National Review's Jim Geraghty has a list of "The Complete List of Obama Statement Expiration Dates," including his opposition to individual health care mandates, his commitment to shut down Gitmo, etc. Some are campaign promises that have expired since he took office, some are statements made since Inauguration Day that are now inoperative, and some are campaign promises that expired during the campaign itself.

Ivy League graduate William Deresiewicz writes in the American Scholar (the journal of Phi Beta Kappa) on "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education." One of the disadvantages: It hinders intellectual activity.

Being an intellectual begins with thinking your way outside of your assumptions and the system that enforces them. But students who get into elite schools are precisely the ones who have best learned to work within the system, so it's almost impossible for them to see outside it, to see that it's even there. Long before they got to college, they turned themselves into world-class hoop-jumpers and teacher-pleasers, getting A's in every class no matter how boring they found the teacher or how pointless the subject, racking up eight or 10 extracurricular activities no matter what else they wanted to do with their time. Paradoxically, the situation may be better at second-tier schools and, in particular, again, at liberal arts colleges than at the most prestigious universities. Some students end up at second-tier schools because they're exactly like students at Harvard or Yale, only less gifted or driven. But others end up there because they have a more independent spirit. They didn't get straight A's because they couldn't be bothered to give everything in every class. They concentrated on the ones that meant the most to them or on a single strong extracurricular passion or on projects that had nothing to do with school or even with looking good on a college application. Maybe they just sat in their room, reading a lot and writing in their journal. These are the kinds of kids who are likely, once they get to college, to be more interested in the human spirit than in school spirit, and to think about leaving college bearing questions, not resumés.

That ought to keep you busy while I get some sleep.

WAIT: Almost forgot about this, by Richard Fernandez, which touches in different ways on the themes in Ace's post:

Who makes monsters? Mostly the Left: because of its huge presence in the media and the arts, the Left has traditionally manufactured the most hate-objects. They've done it for so long that it has become almost a birthright. The photographer Zombie has documented dozens of calls from the left, from demonstrators to celebrities, for the assassination and murder of President George W. Bush. But that's not a crime, is it? "Threats to the president aren't excusable now, and weren't excusable in the past -- and yet death threats against Bush at protests seem to have been routinely ignored for years (and readers who have any evidence showing that the threateners depicted below [in the Zombie post] were ever prosecuted for threatening the president, please tell me and I'll update this essay with the new info). Why the discrepancy?"

The discrepancy is probably because the Left has long appointed itself the guardian of the freak-minting industry. It is a prerogative that is jealously guarded. Thus Glenn Reynolds could receive this insulting email calling for civility without the slightest irony. "I cannot emphasize this enough: your brand of public discourse is hurting our country. It us poison. So f[***] you, you GOP utensil, and f[***] your mother for bringing you forth." Get it Glenn? So too could Ann Coulter be threatened by protesters at the University of Ottawa to prevent her from making a "hate speech." S**t flows downhill. There is no mystery to that. It's Leftist physics.

But the unintended consequence of uncontrolled and systematic distortion; the unforeseen effect of shipping funhouse mirrors everywhere is that sooner or later frustrated audiences put on corrective spectacles. The most sophisticated audiences eventually have a pair of corrective spectacles to suit every context. The term for this method of fixing distortions is adaptive optics. My grandfather had a simple rule of thumb for understanding the controlled news broadcasts in the last days of World War 2. Whatever the Japanese broadcasts claimed he believed the reverse. After listening to one strident description of a vast Japanese naval victory he concluded, "the IJN is no more."...

One might argue that the explosive growth of the blogosphere has been driven by its utility as an adaptive optical appliance through which to view the media. But it's a hell of a way to run a railroad. Since the reality "out there" is first distorted by the media to the point where the discerning members of the public must apply a further distortion to make the image sensible, we inflict a huge signal loss on the viewer. There is no guarantee that the applied corrections don't do more harm than good. Back in the days of the anti-Marcos underground I asked someone why he bothered to read either the government newspapers or the Communist Party propaganda sheet. He replied, "I buy it for date, my friend. It's still good for telling me what day it is."

A better situation would be one in which billions of independent sensors gathered an image and left the end user to process the information. The terrible memetic distortions of the 20th century are partly rooted in the ill-matched marriage between news gathering and meme-minting. The phrase the medium is the message was originally intended to convey the sense of absolute divorce between content and information. In an environment dominated by the formal medium, real information content actually declines. A point is reached where all news stories become variations of a few didactic themes.

This Wall Street Journal story left me scratching my head. A French politician, Dominique de Villepin, who served briefly as the final prime minister of Jacques Chirac's presidency, plans to split from President Nicholas Sarkozy's party and form a new "center-right" party with the aim of challenging Sarkozy when he's up for reelection in 2012.

Here's how the story contrasts de Villepin's views with those of Sarkozy:

A comeback by Mr. de Villepin could complicate the president's efforts to push through unpopular measures, such as raising France's retirement age, during the remaining two years of his mandate....

Mr. Sarkozy has reduced some taxes, hoping this would help energize France's economy. But Mr. de Villepin called Thursday for higher income and corporate taxes to help narrow the gap between rich and poor. While Mr. Sarkozy is cutting civil-service jobs, saying France needs to slim down its bulging state sector, Mr. de Villepin said the French need more state nurses, teachers and policemen....

Mr. Sarkozy has proposed anchoring France's secular values by banning the head-to-toe burqa worn by some Muslim women. Mr. de Villepin said it was dangerous to stigmatize a particular community....

His tenure as prime minister from 2005 to 2007 was marred by a failed attempt to pass a bill aimed at easing the entry of young people into the job market with a contract that would make it easier to hire and fire people. The proposal caused such a popular uproar that then-President Jacques Chirac dropped the bill.

But Mr. de Villepin said Thursday that he had changed his mind, and no longer believed loosening labor laws would help create jobs. "If we want French people to accept taking risks, we must provide them with guarantees," he said....

(Emphasis added.)

So, if I'm reading this correctly, this "center-right" politician wants to raise taxes, grow government, and surrender to political correctness and creeping sharia. He wants to make it harder for employers to get rid of dead-weight employees and hire young people. He wants to allow the ratio of retirees to productive workers to continue to grow as life expectancies grow. (The official retirement age in France is 60.) And he caps it all off with the nonsensical idea of providing citizens with guarantees so they feel safe in taking risks.

Granted that labels on the political spectrum are relative, but how does someone get labeled "center-right" when his economic program is indistinguishable from socialism?

Sen. Tom Coburn, at a news conference today of physician members of the House and Senate regarding Obamacare:

I want to send a couple of messages to my colleagues in the House.

If you voted no and you vote yes, and you lose your election, and you think any nomination to a federal position isn't going to be held in the Senate, I've got news for you. It's going to be held.

Number two is, if you get a deal, a parochial deal for you or your district, I've already instructed my staff and the staff of seven other senators that we will look at every appropriations bill, at every level, at every instance, and we will outline it by district, and we will associate that with the buying of your vote. So, if you think you can cut a deal now, and it not come out until after the election, I want to tell you that isn't going to happen. And be prepared to defend selling your vote in the House.

A bill dealing with such fundamental matters ought to be decided on the merits, not on the basis of special deals. It certainly shouldn't be voted in by "representatives" who have been promised a golden parachute job if they betray the wishes of their constituents and their constituents punish them at the polls in November. Coburn ought to extend his promise to block to include appropriations for non-profits that may hire such soon-to-be-ex-congressmen and bills that are pushed by lobbying firms and trade associations that may hire said poltroons.

Via KFAQ's Pat Campbell's blog, here are videos from YouTube user FreedomsLighthouse with the opening five minutes of the speeches of Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck at the Take Our Country Back event at the Tulsa Convention Center.

At yesterday's health care summit, Paul Ryan, a Republican congressman from Wisconsin, took six minutes to go point-by-point through the budgetary sleight of hand used to make the Democratic health care plan appear to reduce the deficit. The list includes double-counting, cuts to Medicare reimbursement (the kind of cuts that Congress always reverses) that likely won't happen, and the biggest trick of all -- ten-year budget scoring includes ten years of tax increases and ten years of Medicare cuts but only six years of new spending. An honest calculation, looking at the first ten years of spending, results in a cost of $2.3 trillion.

(Via Hot Air.)

On Tuesday, U. S. Sen. Jim Inhofe called for a Department of Justice investigation into possible scientific misconduct and criminal actions by scientists involved in misleading or fraudulent research into anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Over the last several months, key assertions by AGW advocates have been exposed as lacking sound scientific basis and some of these have been retracted by the International Panel on Climate Change. There is some indication that there was an effort to conceal accurate information from the public in general and policy-makers in particular. Inhofe calls the situation, popularly known as Climategate, "the greatest scientific scandal of our generation."

From a press release announcing an 84-page report by the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works (Inhofe serves as ranking Republican on the committee), "'Consensus' Exposed: The CRU Controversy":

The report covers the controversy surrounding emails and documents released from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU). It examines the extent to which those emails and documents affect the scientific work of the UN's IPCC, and how revelations of the IPCC's flawed science impacts the EPA's endangerment finding for greenhouse gases.

The report finds that some of the scientists involved in the CRU controversy violated ethical principles governing taxpayer-funded research and possibly federal laws. In addition, the Minority Staff believes the emails and accompanying documents seriously compromise the IPCC-based "consensus" and its central conclusion that anthropogenic emissions are inexorably leading to environmental catastrophes.

In its examination of the controversy, the Minority Staff found that the scientists:

- Obstructed release of damaging data and information;

- Manipulated data to reach preconceived conclusions;

- Colluded to pressure journal editors who published work questioning the climate science "consensus"; and

- Assumed activist roles to influence the political process.

"This EPW Minority Report shows that the CRU controversy is about far more than just scientists who lack interpersonal skills, or a little email squabble," said Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. "It's about unethical and potentially illegal behavior by some the world's leading climate scientists.

"The report also shows the world's leading climate scientists acting like political scientists, with an agenda disconnected from the principles of good science. And it shows that there is no consensus-except that there are significant gaps in what scientists know about the climate system. It's time for the Obama Administration to recognize this. Its endangerment finding for greenhouse gases rests on bad science. It should throw out that finding and abandon greenhouse gas regulation under the Clean Air Act-a policy that will mean fewer jobs, higher taxes and economic decline."

According to the report, several laws may have been violated by the scientists involved in Climategate:

• Freedom of Information Act: "The Minority Staff is examining emails to determine whether scientists deliberately withheld information to prevent FOIA release. It is worth noting that a federal employee who arbitrarily and capriciously withholds documents which are subject to FOIA release may be subject to disciplinary action."
• Shelby Amendment, which applies FOIA to data produced by government-funded research: "...failure to comply with an Agency request for raw data produced with federal funds could be deemed a breach of the funding agreement. Consequences of a breach could range from suspension to debarment."
• Office of Science and Technology Policy "Misconduct in Research" directive, issued during the final months of the Clinton Administration
• Pres. Obama's Transparency and Open Government Policy: "...as the data quality requirements define 'quality' to include 'objectivity' and 'objectivity' is defined to include unbiased information,85 the recent questions about the impartiality of the IPCC and EPA's TSD bring into question whether EPA has followed the President's Transparency and Open government policy."
• Federal False Statements Act: "...jurisdiction exists regardless of whether the defendant communicated the statement directly to the government, or knew that the government had jurisdiction over the false statement. Similarly, knowingly submitting false data, from whatever source, could be deemed a violation."
• Federal False Claims Act: "Creating a tampered data base and them making a claim for payment, e.g. for salaries and expenses, which will be paid, in whole or in part, with Federal funds can raise the prospect for a False Claims Act violation."
• Obstruction of Justice: Interference with Congressional Proceedings: "Federal statute 18 U.S.C. 1505 concerns obstruction of proceedings before departments, agencies, or committees, which includes Congressional hearings.Thus, providing false or misleading testimony could create liability under this provision."

The report includes a list of key figures in the controversy and a selection of the e-mails and files that exposed Climategate.

On the February 9, 2010, edition of CNBC's Mad Money with Jim Kramer, Oklahoma 1st District Congressman John Sullivan discussed the regulatory obstacles to using America's reserves of natural gas to move toward energy independence. Kramer called Sullivan one of the "good guys in Washington when it comes to the need to adopt natural gas" and mentioned Sullivan's authorship of HR 1622, funding for natural gas vehicle research, development, and demonstration projects -- the bill passed the House last year and is awaiting action by the Senate Energy Committee. Kramer also mentioned that Sullivan is one of the original cosponsors on HR 1835, the NAT GAS act (New Alternative Transportation to Give Americans Solutions), which would give tax credits to auto manufacturers for building natural gas-powered vehicles and to consumers for buying them. HR 1835 and companion bill S 1408 are both stuck in committee.

In the interview, Kramer and Sullivan discussed the possibility that the EPA could ban the principal method for reaching and extracting natural gas from rock formations, in the name of protecting drinking water. Sullivan said that there's never been a case of the hydraulic fracturing technique contaminating an aquifer.

Congressman Sullivan will hold a town hall meeting tonight, Thursday, February 18, 2010, at 5 pm, at the Central Center at Centennial Park, on 6th Street west of Peoria in Tulsa.

MORE: T. Boone Pickens (whom I may eventually forgive for his hostile takeover attempt on Cities Service back in the early '80s) comments on the Kramer/Sullivan interview:

When it comes to investing, natural gas is a "long-term theme," says Mad Money host Jim Cramer, who describes it as an energy source that's 40 percent cleaner than coal, 30 percent cleaner than oil, and much more realistic as a bridge fuel than wind or solar when it comes to combating climate change or ending America's addiction to foreign oil.

So what's Cramer's problem with natural gas? He thinks Washington doesn't get the picture, that's what. Cramer invited Rep. John Sullivan (OK-1) on his show Monday night to discuss the prospects for enhancing America's energy security with this inexpensive, clean-burning domestic fuel.

He couldn't have picked a better guest. For decades, Oklahoma's First Congressional District, which Sullivan represents, has been been a national leader in energy production. Sullivan is continuing this tradition as the lead Republican sponsor of the bipartisan NAT GAS Act in the House, which now has 130 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle.

Sullivan's take on natural gas is simple and straightforward. It is "the bridge fuel as we look at an all-of-the-above strategy," he told Cramer. Later, he added that "alternative energy sources aren't going to happen for a long time. We have 120 years' reserves of natural gas here in America."

American Majority's Tulsa candidate training seminar, originally scheduled for just before Christmas, will be held in two Saturdays, on February 20, 2010, from 8:30 to 4:00. It will be at the Tulsa Technology Center Lemley Campus, in the Career Services Center, at 3638 S Memorial. There is a registration fee (see below).

There will also be an American Majority activist training seminar in Tulsa this Tuesday night, February 9, 2010, 6:30 - 9 p.m., at St. James Methodist, 111th & Yale. This event is free of charge.

Here are the details for the activist training event:

American Majority Oklahoma together with OK for Tea is pleased to announce that an Activist Training will be held on Tuesday, February 9th in Tulsa, OK for citizens looking to make a difference in their community, state and nation.

The seminar will be held at St. James United Methodist Church located at 5050 E. 111th Street in Tulsa. Registration for the event will begin at 6:15 pm, with the first session beginning at 6:30 pm. The seminar will end at approximately 9:00 pm. This cost for this training is FREE and open to the public.

American Majority Activist Trainings are designed specifically to educate and unite liberty-minded activists from around the state by giving them practical ideas for successful activism and equipping them with creative ways to be more effective in their communities.

Topics for the seminars include: "Building Coalitions and Organizing Events", "Hitting the Campaign Trail", and "Holding Elected Officials Accountable through Effective Communication"

Upon completion of the seminar, participants will receive complimentary continuing education materials, communications curriculum, and a list of recommended reading materials to become better equipped and stronger activists in their communities.

To RSVP for the event or for more information, contact Trait Thompson with American Majority Oklahoma at 918-289-0159 (e-mail: trait@americanmajority.org).

Here are the details for the candidate training event:

Every elected official, from school board member to state legislator to the President of the United States plays a vital role in shaping the policies and direction of our communities, states, and nation. These offices deserve men and women who are grounded in the principles of liberty and individual freedom.

American Majority Oklahoma is hosting a Candidate Training on Saturday, February 20 at Tulsa Technology Center (Business and Career Development Training Center) located at 3638 S. Memorial in Tulsa. The training will run from 8:30am to 4:00pm with registration beginning at 8:00am.

Regardless of campaign experience, American Majority's Candidate Training Program makes running for office easier! American Majority Candidate Training Seminars are designed specifically to educate candidates on every level how to run effective and victorious campaigns and prepare them to become successful elected officials.

The Candidate Training Program includes:

• Lectures* from campaign veterans, including:
• "Your Campaign Plan to Win: Planning for the Time, People and Money to Win."
• "Dollars and Sense: Fundraising for What You Need, Not What You Can Get."
• "New Media Engagement: The New Ways to Talk to Voters and Engage Supporters."
• "Grassroots Action: How Ordinary People can get Extraordinary Results."
• "American Majority's Core Principles."
• Personalized communications training.
• Interaction with individuals thoroughly involved with the issues confronting your state.
• The opportunity to network with other liberty-minded candidates.
• A complimentary resource guidebook full of material designed to further assist candidates.

Upon completion of the seminar, candidates will receive continuing education materials, access to podcasts and other presentations, communications curriculum, and suggestions to help them utilize think-tank resources.

The cost is $50 per candidate/first attendee in advance or $75 per candidate/first attendee at the door, and $25 for each additional attendee (spouse, campaign staff, campaign volunteers, etc.) in advance or $40 for each additional attendee (spouse, campaign staff, campaign volunteers, etc.) at the door. Space is limited.

Please click here to use our online reservation system and secure your place now! If you have any questions, please contact Trait Thompson at Trait@americanmajority.org or call (918)-289-0159.

American Majority is a non-profit and non-partisan organization whose mission is to train and equip a national network of leaders committed to individual freedom through limited government and the free market.

*Lectures are subject to change

Oklahoma 1st District Congressman John Sullivan has introduced a resolution (H. Res. 1063) targeting the individual health insurance mandate, one of the components of the Democratic Party health insurance proposal that passed the U. S. Senate in December, according to a news release on Sullivan's House website, issued today:

"My resolution builds off the efforts of at least 36 state legislatures, including Oklahoma, that are looking to limit or oppose health mandates in the House and Senate passed health care reform bills that would require purchase of government approved health insurance. These state actions are in direct opposition to the draconian national health care reform measures that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are negotiating behind closed doors behind the backs of the American people"

"Throughout the healthcare debate, the Administration and this Congress have largely ignored the most fundamental question of all - whether or not the federal government is overstepping its constitutional bounds by taking over our healthcare system " Sullivan said. "Even back in 1994, the non partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) wrote that it would be an unprecedented form of federal action for Congress to mandate that all individuals are required to purchase health insurance. I introduced this resolution to send a strong message that the personal mandates in both the House and Senate passed healthcare bills are unprecedented and unconstitutional - nowhere in the Constitution is Congress given the power to force Americans to purchase a good or service or enter into a contract - which these bills would do. By forcing Americans to purchase government approved health insurance, President Obama and Democrat leaders in Congress are essentially saying that you don't have a right to choose what health insurance plan is best for you, your family or your business - I strongly disagree."

If you were paying attention to world news in 1980 and 1981, you know of Lech Wałęsa, the man who turned an illegal independent trade union into a force for freedom in communist Poland. Although his efforts directly resulted in his imprisonment and the imposition of martial law, in 1988 he and his allies pushed the communist government into allowing semi-free parliamentary elections, and by the following year, Poland had its first non-Communist prime minister since before World War II. He served a five-year term as President of Poland from 1990-1995.

This past week, Wałęsa came to Chicago to campaign on behalf of Adam Andrzejewski, a Republican candidate for Governor of Illinois. This eight-minute video features excerpts from his speech at a fundraiser for Andrzejewski and from an interview with FoundingBloggers.com. Worth noting:

1. Wałęsa's concern about the weakening of American leadership and what it means for the rest of the world:

The United States is the only superpower. Today they lead the world, nobody has any doubts about it, militarily. They also lead the economically, but they're getting weak. But they don't lead morally and politically any more.

The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort of hope for all other nations. This was the hope, that when ever something was going wrong, we could always count on the United States. Today we've lost that hope.

2. Wałęsa's concern about corruption and waste in government -- bureaucrats increasing governmental power for its own sake, wasting money, at the expense of entrepreneurs. He also expressed concern that the bank bailout showed a "little bit" of America moving toward socialism.

3. Andrzejewski's plan to use an executive order to put government spending online in real-time "from the appropriation to the subcontractor level, where the systemic corruption exists." Without knowing the specifics of Illinois' situation, this suggests a scheme where contracts would be awarded to companies with no apparent political connections, but those prime contractors would then award all the work and most of the contract value to politically connected subcontractors, where it would be harder to trace.

Andrzejewski's plan to issue an executive order for a forensic audit of Illinois state government's $55 billion budget. He calls it "a deep audit, an evidentiary audit. It actually follows the money. If you think about it, it's how we caught Al Capone." He estimates it would save taxpayers $3 to $5 billion.

He mentions that Kathleen Sebelius, as Governor of Kansas, ordered such an audit. Here's the mention on his website:

Good government relies on forensic auditing. The governor of Kansas- kept her promise to "perform a top-to-bottom audit of state government--an effort that to date has uncovered $159 million in wasteful government spending, and led to new efficiencies that produced over $1 billion in budget savings on behalf of Kansas taxpayers."

Adam Andrzejewski has an inspiring background. He and his brother saw a need -- phone books focused on small communities, so that local merchants could reach local customers -- a proceeded to build a successful nationwide business. Read more about Adam Andrzejewski at RedState. And here's a 2006 article from Success magazine about the Andrzejewski brothers. (The article is about balancing the long hours required to start a business with time for family -- worth reading even if you're not interested in the political angle.)

The election is Tuesday, and the latest Republican primary polls have Andrzejewski surging within 2 points of the leader, State Sen. Kirk Dillard, a political insider who endorsed Barack Obama for president. It's a crowded field of six candidates, and there is no runoff. Someone may very well win the primary with 20% of the vote.

Today is the March for Life, the annual event to protest Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that overturned abortion laws nationwide and that has resulted in the death of nearly 50 million innocent American children since that date. You may not be able to get to Washington today to join the march, but you can show your support by registering as a virtual marcher. So far over 65,000 Americans are participating virtually, including leaders like RNC Chairman Michael Steele, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio, Andrew Breitbart of BigGovernment.com, and Americans United for Life CEO Charmaine Yoest.

Not Evil Just Wrong, a documentary on the "true cost of global warming hysteria," will be screened tonight, January 21, 2010, at Oral Roberts University at 7 pm in Room 236 of the Learning Resource Center. The screening is free and open to the public, sponsored by Americans for Prosperity.

From the film's website:

Global warming alarmists want Americans to believe that humans are killing the planet. But Not Evil Just Wrong, a new documentary by Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney, proves that the only threats to America (and the rest of the world) are the flawed science and sky-is-falling rhetoric of Al Gore and his allies in environmental extremism.

The film drives home the realities of that extremism. "Turn off your lights. Turn off your heat when you get cold. Turn off your air when you get hot," one man on the street says. "And then think about that."

Not Evil Just Wrong warns Americans that their jobs, modest lifestyles and dreams for their children are at stake. Industries that rely on fossil fuels will be crippled if the government imposes job-killing regulations on an economy already mired in recession. Small towns in the heartland, like Vevay, Ind., will become bastions of unemployment and poverty. Breadwinners like Tim McElhany in Vevay will lose their jobs -- and will have to start borrowing money again just to buy bread for their families.

The damage that would be wrought is unjustified by the science. Not Evil Just Wrong exposes the deceptions that experts, politicians, educators and the media have been force-feeding the public for years. Man-made pollution is not melting the polar icecaps. The ocean will not rise 20 feet in a flash. And the only polar bears dying because of man are the ones who try to eat men.

McAleer and McElhinney debunk what for a time was the environmental movement's most powerful weapon of disinformation, the infamous "hockey stick" graph that attributed a supposedly unique burst of warming in the 20th century to humans. They also shatter the myth that the hottest years in the United States were 1998 and 2006. The hottest year was 1934, and the hottest decade was the 1930s -- when there were half as many people and no SUVs or jumbo jets.

A busy evening -- was with over 200 Tulsans at the PLANiTULSA public forum, then had to come home to entertain the four-year-old so he wouldn't distract big sister, who had a writing assignment to finish for tomorrow. Thankfully the four-year-old was content to sit on my lap as we watched Scott Brown's victory speech. Later, after the kids were finally in bed, I cracked open a victory bottle of Sam Adams Honey Porter, an appropriate way to celebrate a revolutionary victory.

This town-by-town map of Massachusetts election results is interesting. I was not surprised to see Democratic nominee Martha Coakley get 75% in my college hometown of Nuclear-Free Brookline or 85% in the People's Republic of Cambridge. I was surprised that Coakley won, and by big margins, in rural western Mass., which once upon a time sent Republicans to the U. S. House. I was pleased to see Brown won the town of Barnstable, which includes the village of Hyannisport, site of the Kennedy Compound. And while Coakley won Martha's Vineyard, her percentages varied inversely to proximity to Chappaquiddick; Edgartown gave her only 55%.

I tweeted the first part of the PLANiTULSA meeting, hope to write more about it tomorrow evening. In the meantime, you can visit PLANiTULSA.org to read the final version of the policy plan and see draft land use and transportation plan maps. There's even a KMZ version of the land use and "areas of stability" maps, so you can view them in Google Earth.

If you hadn't heard, there's a special election in Massachusetts tomorrow to fill the remainder of the late Ted Kennedy's term in the U. S. Senate. Attorney General Martha Coakley is the Democratic nominee, State Sen. Scott Brown is the Republican nominee. Polls show the race too close to call, an astounding situation given Massachusetts' political profile. But Coakley has run an inept campaign, and Brown has been helped by general discontent, which hurts the party in power, a more likable persona, and financial and volunteer support from conservatives nationwide who see Brown as the best hope for breaking the Democrats' 60-vote stranglehold on the U. S. Senate.

Sissy Willis, a Chelsea, Mass.-based blogger deserves much of the credit for bringing the Mass. special election and Scott Brown's campaign to the attention of conservatives across the country.

Robert Stacy McCain is in Massachusetts covering the final days of the campaign to replace Kennedy for the American Spectator and his own blog.

To conserve his shoe leather reporting fund, McCain is crashing on the couch of blogger DaTechguy, who is writing about the Brown-Coakley race from a local perspective.

RealClearPolitics has a daily round-up of news, poll results, and commentary. And the site's HorseRaceBlog, by political number-cruncher Jay Cost, is always worth reading.

And if you'd like to help turn out the vote for Scott Brown, he still needs volunteers and contributions.

UPDATE:

Pollster Chris Wilson is in Massachusetts and wonders about the effect of ice and snow on tomorrow's vote.

Fleming and Hayes is another Mass. based blog covering the special election. They have an exclusive interview with an American citizen, originally from Iran, who was excluded from a rally featuring Bill Clinton and detained by Secret Service because, the man says, he is on anti-depressants and anti-anxiety medication. He is a volunteer for the Coakley campaign from Springfield in western Mass.

'Tis the season for retrospectives.

You won't want to miss Dave Barry's 2009 month-by-month review.

John Hawkins at Right Wing News has put together a bunch of best-of lists for 2009, covering national politics from a conservative perspective:

• The 40 Best Political Quotes Of 2009
• The Top 40 Conservative Blogs For 2009 (Version 4.0)
• The Top 10 Conservatives of 2009
• The 25 Best Videos Of 2009 -- most of these are non-political

The Daily Telegraph offers its list of the top 10 conservative movies of the decade:

This is a list of the ten best films of the last decade that have advanced a conservative message, ranging from strong support for the military and love for country to the defence of capitalism and the free market. These are all brilliant movies that conservatives can be inspired by, and which are guaranteed to offend left-wing sensibilities in one way or another.

This is not intended as a list of films made only by conservative filmmakers, who are, it has to be said, few in number. Ironically, some of the best films of all time that have projected conservative values have been made by directors who are apolitical or even politically liberal. Steven Spielberg's magnificent Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List, Cy Enfield's Zulu, and Roland Joffe's The Killing Fields, are cases in point.

Closer to home, Irritated Tulsan offers several countdown posts:

• The Top 20 Posts of 2009 -- that is, most popular
• The 10 Worst Posts of 2009 -- least popular
• Awkward 2009 Moments

And he wants you to cast your vote for Tulsan of The Year 2009.

And following tradition, Urban Tulsa Weekly has its list of 2009's best and worst.

If you've found an interesting best-of-2009 post, leave a note in the comments below.