Politics Category

Tulsa County Republican Chairman Ronda Vuillemont-Smith is seeking a second two-year term in that office. During her first term, Ronda built a record of success in advancing Republican principles and Republican candidates.

I first met Ronda sometime around 2010, as she became active in local politics through the Tea Party movement, founding the Tulsa 9/12 Project to help promote the restoration of America's founding principles to government at every level. In 2012, Ronda and I were part of the coalition that defeated the county "Vision 2" tax increase. I proudly endorsed her in her first run for Tulsa County GOP chairman back in 2015, a race she lost by a slim margin.

In my 2015 endorsement, I wrote this, which I feel even more strongly today than I did then.

In a state where Republicans are overwhelmingly dominant, Democrats are not the chief threat to the implementation of Republican policies. The biggest threat comes from Republicans who wear the name but don't understand or adhere to the principles the party professes. They may simply be corrupt or self-dealing, or they may be liberals who have realized that registering Republican is their only hope of winning.

From Capitol Hill to City Hall, the actions and inactions of elected Republican officials have made the activists who helped them get elected wonder what, exactly, was the point of their exertions.

In such an environment, the role of party leadership must shift. When a party is a minority or just beginning to dream of majority status, you will gladly take any elected official who will bear the (R) after their name. But in our current environment, we need party leaders who will protect the Republican brand, who will be a voice for the grassroots party activists to counterbalance well-heeled lobbyists.

Ronda Vuillemont-Smith has shown herself willing to confront Republican elected officials when they need it. She's also shown herself to be a skilled and experienced organizer. That's why, if I were at this morning's Tulsa County GOP Convention, Ronda would have my vote.

Ronda has had numerous successes in her first term as chairman, but she knows that there is more to be done to build a party organization that successfully turns out the Republican vote and that builds our bench and at the same time improves local government by helping conservative Republicans win non-partisan races for city council and school board.

A leader, even a highly skilled organizer like Ronda, can only take on a handful of projects of reform and improvement at one time while still successfully executing the routine duties of the office -- running precinct meetings and county conventions three out of every four years, rallying volunteers for voter turnout, fielding questions from the media, providing resources to Republican candidates, keeping the office staffed, running county conventions, and raising money to keep all of these activities going. Tulsa County Republicans would serve themselves and their cause best by reelecting Ronda Vuillemont-Smith as Tulsa County GOP chairman.

Election Eve 2022: Notes

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An election eve assortment of thoughts:

Last week, I attended and live-tweeted the Tuesday, November 1, 2022, Red Wave rally in Oklahoma City featuring Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Kevin Stitt, and State Superintendent nominee Ryan Walters; the Wednesday Tulsa rally with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and a Wednesday lunch-time forum with Ryan Walters. In between the latter two events, I went for a walk in McClure Park.

On Saturday, I helped with a literature drop for Brad Banks, Republican nominee for the open House District 70 seat, going to almost every house. The area I covered was only 80 acres, an 1/8th of a square mile, but I walked 22,977 steps (10.8 miles), and it took me about 4 hours. It was a beautiful day for walking. I cheated a bit: We were supposed to hit every house, but I went home, downloaded the latest voter registration file, filtered down to the streets and blocks of the precinct section I volunteered to cover, did a unique sort on street and house number, put the list of house numbers in columns by street on a single workbook page, and used it to guide my walking. Making the list took me about 30 minutes. As it turned out, I probably didn't save much time, as this area had a registered voter at nearly every address. I didn't filter by frequency of past votes or party or change of address, which might have saved me a few steps.

More dark-money attacks in Monday's mail. One is from Imagine This Oklahoma (one of a raft of dark-money groups funded by Oklahoma Forward) targeting Stitt over inflation, complaining about the state's $3 billion rainy-day fund ("hoarding our tax dollars"), and subsidies that the legislature passed to try to attract Panasonic, Canoo, and Hollywood filmmakers. Of course, if Stitt had stopped any of these initiatives, they would have attacked him for killing job opportunities and smashing our state piggy bank.

The issues presented in the dark-money ads are never the real issues motivating the donors to attack their targets. If you knew who the donors were, you'd know their motivation, and you'd realize that the donors are seeking their own benefit at the expense of you, the taxpayer. So they stay hidden.

rino-768px.pngJunkets to exotic locations promoting the National Popular Vote (NPV) Interstate Compact to state legislators continue to make news, seven years after they first came to public notice in the wake of the Oklahoma Senate's surprising February 2014 vote to approve NPV, a plan that would have committed Oklahoma's presidential electors to the candidate receiving the most popular votes nationwide.

Sean Parnell of Save Our States, an organization designed to preserve the role of the states in electing the president through the Electoral College, recently wrote about a November 2020 debate about National Popular Vote on Nashville's NewsChannel 5 between Trent England of Save Our States and NPV lobbyist Ray Haynes. Haynes came to our notice in late 2014 when he lobbied grassroots activists, seeking to blunt their opposition for a second attempt at passage in 2015.

Faithful BatesLine readers will no doubt recall that Oklahoma's 2014 bill, SB 906, failed to advance in the House, and several senators who voted for it recanted their vote within days of casting it. NPV has been reintroduced in the Oklahoma Legislature since that time (Republican Rep. Lee Denney sponsored it in 2015, Democrat Rep. Jason Rosecrants in 2021), but it has failed to advance. The surprise passage in 2014 was greased in part by under-the-radar junkets that combined luxury and emotional manipulation -- the political equivalent of timeshare presentations. These junkets were documented at the time by Rep. Jason Murphey and a news story by Sean Murphy of the Associated Press.

During the NewsChannel 5 NPV debate, Haynes pointed to passage of NPV by the Oklahoma Senate in 2014 and the Arizona House in 2016 as evidence of Republican support for the anti-Electoral College measure. In reply, England recounted the tactics that were used to get NPV to pass in Oklahoma:

[In Oklahoma] the National Popular Vote lobbyists took a bunch of our state legislators, all Republicans, on a trip to a very expensive resort, and nobody knew this was going on, none of their constituents knew this was going on... and when these guys came back from this very expensive resort after only hearing one side of the story they introduced the legislation, they passed it, and when constituents found out about it, the capitol was flooded with angry calls and letters, the House refused to do anything with it, and they haven't been able to find a bill sponsor since then.

In the last five or six years, they can't find anybody in Oklahoma willing to sponsor their legislation. It's true it once passed in the Oklahoma State Senate, it once passed in the Arizona House, same thing in Arizona. ...[I]t passed when they had heard only one side of the story...

Haynes denied everything, but Parnell links to two BatesLine reports from 2014 to rebut Haynes's denial. Oklahoma legislators invited to electoral vote "seminars" in exotic locales and Legislators admit National Popular Vote junkets to Las Vegas, Miami.

While it's true that the organization NPV did not pay for the junkets, non-profits that advocate NPV, FairVote and the Institute for Research on Presidential Elections (IRPE), did, and NPV lobbyists informed and encouraged legislators to go on these trips. Parnell reports that Haynes is listed on IRS forms as IRPE's president.

Parnell cites a news story from 2018 about Republican Michigan legislators going on NPV-related junkets to Hawaii and Puerto Rico, prior to a surprising number of them co-sponsoring legislation. The story was originally broken by Brandon Hall at West Michigan Politics.

In 2019, Jamison Faught at Muskogee Politico found that Oklahoma legislators continued to attend junkets for NPV, paid for by IPRE, in 2017 and 2018.

This is likely to continue until NPV founder John Koza's money runs out. They can't reach the goal (enough states to total 270 electoral votes) without winning the support of Republican legislators, who have majorities in at least one house of many presidential swing states. Grassroots conservatives need to let their Republican legislators know that they will punish support for NPV at the ballot box.

MORE: Here's all of BatesLine's coverage of National Popular Vote, Muskogee Politico's coverage of NPV, and the Save Our States blog.

Nigel Farage in Tulsa, May 13, 2021Nigel Farage, described as the most consequential British politician of our time for his leadership of Brexit, the successful, 27-year effort to extricate the United Kingdom from the regulatory chains of the European Union, will be speaking in Tulsa on Thursday, May 13, 2021, at 6:30 p.m. The visit is part of America's Comeback Tour, a cross-country series of events organized by FreedomWorks. Farage's Tulsa appearance is being presented in conjunction with the Tulsa 912 Project, a grassroots group that grew out of the Tea Party movement. Tickets are free, but seats must be reserved in advance through Eventbrite.

Dercy Teixeira, grassroots coordinator for FreedomWorks, says that the group invited Farage to deliver a positive message that will re-energize the conservative grassroots across America. "A lot of conservatives are feeling disillusioned, thinking 'What's the point?' We're bringing on Nigel to tell them you can't give up now. Maybe we're down in the first half, but we have the second half still ahead of us, especially with the midterms coming, and then the 2024 presidential election." America's Comeback Tour draws on the sports analogy of rallying at half-time for a come-from-behind victory in the second half.

Teixeira sees similarities between America's Tea Party movement and the Brexit movement in the UK, each starting from little pockets of the grassroots frustrated with the political status quo. The British political establishment dismissed the Brexit movement and Farage, its most visible figure, as worthy only of ridicule, but through positive messages, Farage and his colleagues were able to keep activists motivated, pressuring the politicians toward the UK's formal departure from the EU on January 31, 2020.

As someone who closely followed the long march of Brexit and toasted its realization with a pint at our local English pub, I am delighted that Nigel Farage will be coming to speak here in Tulsa. His example of cheerful perseverance in the face of ridicule, attacks, and hostility from the political and media establishment to accomplish this nation-shaping goal is the encouragement that American conservatives need right now.

Nigel_Farage-Brexit_Got_Done.jpgThe Brexit story began when Conservative PM John Major signed the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which set what had been a free-trade community on a trajectory to become a centralized, bureaucratized European super-state that would extinguish British sovereignty and self-government. In response, Farage joined with others to found the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) to push for UK withdrawal from the EU. The party's presence and early successes pressured the major parties to keep Britain out of some of the worst aspects of European integration, like the Euro single currency and the borderless Schengen Area.

Farage led UKIP to victory in the 2014 European Parliament elections, the first time a new party had won a national election in over a century. The result that pushed the Conservative Party to promise in the 2015 General Election to give the British people a referendum on leaving the European Union. Although the political and media establishment were united in support of remaining in the EU, Farage's pro-Leave forces were victorious in the 2016 Brexit referendum. But it soon became clear that Teresa May's Conservative Party government intended to deliver a Brexit in name only that would forever shackle the UK to European regulation. In response, Farage founded the Brexit Party, which won the 2019 European Parliament election less than six months after its establishment, leading to May's resignation, an early general election, and a relatively clean break with the EU in January 2020.

Farage's Brexit Party succeeded by adopting new methods of grassroots organization, communication, and mobilization geared to the Digital Age. Rallies across the country, streamed over social media, drew growing crowds and amplified enthusiasm. The party reached across old party lines to unite around a common cause. I found the rallies compelling listening, as the party's candidates for Member of the European Parliament (MEP), most of whom had no political background, talked about why Brexit mattered to them, their professions, and their communities. Each rally was capped with a rousing speech from Farage that never failed to bring the crowd to its feet. (MORE: See the bottom of this entry for a couple of examples of Farage's rousing speeches in front of audiences both friendly and frosty.)

Teixeira described Farage as "a perfect ambassador" for FreedomWorks, an organization that empowers grassroots activists to impact politics. "Many world figures appear personable on screen, but Nigel actually likes interacting with people," going pub-to-pub during his campaigns to interact directly with voters.

In this video from the start of the tour in Florida, Nigel Farage explains what he hopes to accomplish as he travels across America:

Also speaking at the Tulsa event will be FreedomWorks Director of Policy Sarah Anderson, and John Tamny, FreedomWorks VP and Director of FreedomWorks' Center for Economic Freedom. Tamny is author of the recent book, When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason, about the economic devastation wrought not by COVID-19, but by the political overreaction to it.

In addition to his visit to Tulsa, Farage will speak in Perrysville, Ohio, Palm Beach, Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Jackson, Wyoming. Tulsa is the only Oklahoma stop on America's Comeback Tour.

MORE:

After the jump, some videos showing Farage's geniality and humor, both in the face of hostility (his final speech as an MEP before Britain's formal departure from the EU) and surrounded by supporters (at a Brexit Party rally).

In addition to all the usual federal, statewide, legislative, and county races on the Oklahoma ballot next Tuesday, June 30, 2020, this is also the school board general election, which was postponed from April due to the CCP Bat Virus. Two of Tulsa's seven school board offices are on the ballot -- Office 5 is an open seat, and Office 6 features a challenge to a 24-year-incumbent.

Map of Tulsa School Board election districts for Office 5 and Office 6

Last time I posted campaign contributions and expenditures for school board races, before the February primary, I had to go to the Education Service Center, to the school district clerk's office, and take photos of the reports. This time, that wasn't going to be possible or advisable, given everyone's desire to minimize contact, so I filed an open records request through the Tulsa Schools website and sent an email directly to district clerk Sarah Bozone. I have yet to receive a reply.

UPDATE 2020/06/29: At 9 a.m. the day before the election, TPS has responded to my open records request. I will not have time to turn these PDFs into a tabulated account of campaign contributions, so you will have to look at them yourselves. I have taken the files provided, given them more meaningful file names, and run them through OCR, but that's it. Each file contains all of the ethics reports filed by the candidate during this campaign.

*Pendleton finished third in the primary. He was the only candidate not advancing to the general who managed to raise and spend enough money to be required to file ethics reports.

I shouldn't even have to ask: When the clerk receives a report, it ought to be immediately scanned in and posted on the district website. Better yet, let's fix the law so that all candidates and campaign committees in the state use the Oklahoma Ethics Commissions's electronic filing system. Currently, county candidates file ethics reports with their county election board, school board candidates file with the district clerk, municipal candidates file with the city clerk. Having one system with a consistent interface and electronic records would serve everyone better -- except perhaps for candidates with something to hide.

Which brings me back to the topic. Knowing that I was unlikely to get a timely reply from the district clerk, I emailed the candidates directly on Tuesday, requesting their ethics reports, asking who had endorsed their campaigns, and asking for their opinion on the plan to extend Superintendent Deborah Gist's contract for an additional three years in a snap vote one week before new school board members would be elected.

All four candidates responded, but only two, Shane Saunders, candidate for Office 5, and Jerry Griffin, the Office 6 challenger, both Republicans, sent me their campaign contribution reports. Office 5 candidate John Croisant and 24-year Office 6 incumbent Ruth Ann Fate, both Democrats, said that they had filed their reports with the district clerks -- a very passive-aggressive response.

Three of the four objected to the school board voting to extend Gist's contract right before the election; Fate, the incumbent, wrote, "I will be making my decision tonight." Only two of the seven school board members, Jennettie Marshall and Stacey Woolley, voted against the contract extension. Next week that vote might have been 4-3 against extension.

Endorsements reported to me by the candidates:

  • Tulsa World: Croisant, Fate
  • Tulsa Regional Chamber: Saunders, Fate
  • Tulsa County Republican Party: Griffin
  • American Federation of Teachers: Griffin

Griffin has also been endorsed by John Remington, the third-place candidate in February's primary.

Notable contributors during this reporting period: Shane Saunders received contributions from his erstwhile boss, former Congressman John Sullivan (Saunders served as Sullivan's press secretary), and from former Tulsa Mayor Robert J. LaFortune. Jerry Griffin received a contribution from the Tulsa County Republican Party; parties are allowed to help candidates running in non-partisan elections. Griffin also received a donation from the American Federation of Teachers.

Please read my previous report on the pre-primary contributors to all of the Tulsa School Board candidates, including the two who are refusing to provide BatesLine with copies of their pre-general reports.

Contributors and vendors are from Tulsa unless otherwise noted. If you're reading this on the home page, the lists for each candidate are after the jump.

Trump Statue displayed in a truck at 3rd and Boulder in Tulsa

My family would like to have gone to the rally, but it was too soon to want to be around 18,000 people, or to stand outside for hours in the hot sun without a good chance of getting in. Hearing about hundreds of thousands of ticket requests reinforced the feeling that it would have been unpleasantly crowded and possibly futile.

We decided to drive downtown and have a look around. We got into the downtown area at about 2:20 pm. I drove us into downtown on 11th Street, up Boston Ave to 3rd, west to the barricade at Boulder, north and east through the Bob Wills District, north on Elgin through the OSU-Tulsa campus, south on Greenwood to 1st, through the Blue Dome district. I was surprised that there weren't that many cars downtown, especially with so many parking facilities blocked off. It was an early indication that the President might not be speaking to a full house, unless people were shuttled in from remote parking lots by bus. There weren't many people walking around either; I assumed it was because the attendees had already moved into the secured area, since it was nearly time for the doors to open at 3 pm.

DGX boarded up in downtown Tulsa

On the west side of Boston Avenue between 5th and 6th, the new DGX (Dollar General Express) store was boarded up, as was Farmer's Insurance, Decopolis, and Jimmy John's. Elote was closing at 4 pm, and Poke Love had a sign saying it would be closed Friday and Saturday. Shops on the east side of Boston weren't boarded up. The vast majority of downtown businesses we passed were not covered with plywood.

At the Greenwood Cultural Center, we noticed a small event involving a few hundred people that seemed to be ending. The Black Wall Street Memorial had been covered and wrapped tightly with a sign that read, "This is sacred ground, not a photo-op." Evidently those responsible didn't want to give Vice President Pence the chance to pay his respects and possibly seem compassionate and human (when they're certain that he isn't).

SX064203-4th_Street.jpg

We decided to park and walk around the perimeter to see what was going on. We found a space on 8th Street just east of Main, which was not too far away, and walked up Boulder to where everything seemed to be happening. There were lots of vendors selling buttons and flags, hats and T-shirts, some pro- and anti-Trump protesters and some street evangelists, but no one was blocking the gate at 4th and Cheyenne. Boulder was pedestrianized between 3rd and 5th, and 4th was closed to cars between Boulder and the entrance to the secured area at Cheyenne. We noticed Oklahoma National Guard members staging in the Arvest parking garage at 5th and Boulder. National Guard, Tulsa Police, and Tulsa County Sheriff's Office were visible.

SX064193-Coney_Island-Orphas_Lounge.jpg

Coney Island was boarded up, but Orpha's Lounge was open for business. There were a few small marquees along that block of 4th, including one belonging to Info Wars, and there seemed to be a broadcast in progress. Nearer to the gate at 4th and Cheyenne there were numerous empty lawnchairs (some folded, some deployed), coolers, and trash, the detritus of those who had arrived early to be first in line to get into the arena.

Lawn chairs left behind by Trump rally attendees, since they aren't allowed into the secured area, in front of the Adams Hotel at 4th and Cheyenne.

If we'd wanted to, we could have strolled right in at that point and joined the rally. (This was at roughly 3 pm.) There was no line at the gate. As we all have contact with people at particular risk for CCP Bat Virus, we opted not to go in. If we had known how many available seats there were in the upper tier, with room to spread out from other people, we might have chanced it. (If I'd known that Nigel Farage was in the house, I certainly would have gone in.) This was at about 3. We walked back to Main, and north to 3rd to see if we could get a better glimpse of the entrance to the BOK Center, but we couldn't see, as the street was blocked off to vehicles and pedestrians at Boulder, two blocks east. When we came back by 4th Street at about 3:30, it was still clear sailing to get into the gate.

No waiting at Trump Tulsa Rally gate at 4th and Cheyenne at 3 pm

I've heard reports of people being refused entrance, but there's some indication that this occurred around 6 pm. I'm trying to track down reports. My suspicion is that people watching the coverage realized that there was plenty of space available, made their way downtown, but got there after the gates were closed as the President was about to arrive at the BOK Center. Was this a planned closure for security purposes or, as some rumors suggest, because protesters jammed up security to keep more people from getting in? I have been sending messages to some of the people who say they tried to get in but could not, to get details and clarification. (UPDATE: My suspicion has been confirmed by one reply: They were attempting to get in, with tickets, between 6 pm and 7 pm, after their friends had texted with pictures to show that there was still plenty of room. Word was that there were "not enough screeners" and so the gates were closed. Trying to find out what that means and where that information originated.)

Gary Eubanks, who had made it into the secured area, noticed that around 5 o'clock that no one was manning the temperature screening station, and you couldn't go on to the Secret Service security checkpoint until you had been checked for a fever. He also said that every other seat in the arena had been blocked off initially, and that even after passing through the temperature and security checkpoints, attendees were being held outside the BOK Center entrance and only allowed into the building in groups of 100 at long intervals. I have reached out to BOK Center and ASM Global, which has the contract to manage the center, for their response to these reports and for a timeline of changes affecting those attempting to attend the rally.

Back to our journey: After we got back to our car, a little before 4 pm, we drove down Boston Ave. -- Mrs. DeHaven's Flower Shop and The Gadget Company were boarded up -- and noticed a Trump Baby balloon floating above 18th and Boston. When we got there, there were two balloons. A counter-event in Veterans' Park had a few marquees set up and a handful of people; this was at about 4 pm.

Looking south on Boston Ave, Trump Baby Balloon floats above 18th and Boston

Two Trump Baby Balloons float over The Venue Shrine, 18th and Boston, in Tulsa

My complete album of photos and videos from outside the Trump Tulsa rally is here on Flickr.

MORE: Tim Murtaugh, communications director of Trump 2020, tweeted video of an MSNBC report of protesters causing the 4th and Cheyenne gate to be closed not long after we left the area. Here's what the MSNBC reporter said; the time bug on screen indicates 4:03 to 4:04 pm CDT.

And again, one of these gates -- there are three places where you can enter to get to the BOK Center, three gates -- this one has now been shut, because there was some kind of incident, there were Black Lives Matter protesters who made their way here, and they had a very brief standoff, a very brief standoff with the police, who were backed by the National Guard, and they were slowly moved back. They're still slowly moving that line back. But again, it's forced the shut [sic] of one of those three entry points. You can hear we're now sorta being surrounded by Trump supporters who are trying to get their message out on our air. But the situation here is now a tense one because you have these three different groups that have all converged on this one street, and we're now seeing the National Guard trying to move that crowd back and get these gates open again. The gates at the actual BOK Center are scheduled to open right now. I don't know if that will be delayed, because this entryway, as I said, is now completely shut....

MORE: At 3:42pm, News on 6's Reagan Ledbetter posted video of the 4th and Cheyenne gate being blocked by protesters, with TPD lined up on the other side of the intersection and instructing protesters to back away from the gate. A 3:57pm video shows Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers instructing the crowd that they had to back up past the alley (about 160 feet away) before the troopers would allow the gate to be reopened.

STILL MORE: Citizen-journalist Drew Hernandez has video of altercations in downtown Tulsa before and after the Trump rally.

EVEN MORE: David Van Risseghem of Sooner Politics has some thoughts on the real reasons attendance was so low and includes his experience (twice) of the checkpoint process. (I'm inclined to agree with his thoughts.) He also captured video of an attack on a Trump supporter waiting outside the BOK Center on Thursday.

IVotedFraud.pngDemocrats in Congress and in state capitols are pushing for measures that would enable voter intimidation and undermine the secret ballot, under cover of facilitating voting during the CCP Bat Virus pandemic.

Earlier this week, the Daily Signal published a list of 15 election results that were tossed over fraudulent mail-in ballots. The article put a spotlight on the practice of "ballot harvesting" which figured in many of these cases:

"The problem with vote harvesting is that it destroys the secret ballot. It allows people to go into homes, pressure people," von Spakovsky, who also is a former Justice Department lawyer, member of the Federal Election Commission, and member of the 2017 Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity....

While working in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, J. Christian Adams helped bring successful cases against election fraudsters in Starr County, Texas and Noxubee County, Mississippi.

"With ballot harvesting, the politically connected visit the homes of people and vote the ballots for them. These are victims often afraid of consequences," Adams, now president of Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, told The Daily Signal.

In the fallout from the Mississippi case, judges overturned the results of several races.

"You can't overlook the importance of government jobs in the economically dependent areas," Adams said. "Vote harvesters, in some cases, don't have jobs and make more doing this than anything else in some parts of the country."

The Noxubee County, Mississippi, case involved political bosses paying notaries to take absentee ballots from the mail boxes of voters who had requested them, then voting and fraudulently notarizing the ballots.

A 2019 Daily Signal article links to an FBI news release about the 2014 conviction of Martin, Ky., mayor Ruth Thomasine Robinson:

Trial testimony established that the conspirators completed absentee ballots, marking their choice of candidates, and instructing the voters to sign the pre-marked ballots. Voters who complied by voting for Thomasine Robinson received promises of better living arrangements and other considerations. Voters who did not comply faced eviction or the loss of priority for public housing. In addition, the evidence established that the defendants offered to pay several voters to vote for Thomasine Robinson.

2019 Heritage Foundation report on ballot harvesting quotes a Miami-Dade County, Florida, grand jury report:

[O]nce that ballot is out of the hands of the elector, we have no idea what happens to it. The possibilities are numerous and scary....

If the ballot is complete and the return envelope is signed and not sealed, the boleteros/ballot brokers can remove the ballot from the secrecy envelope and see the private, confidential selections the elector made on the ballot. Similarly, if the ballot is not completely voted and the return envelope is signed and not sealed, the boletero/ballot broker can remove the ballot from the secrecy envelope...and then vote the rest of the ballot in lieu of the elector. If the boletero does not like the selections made by the elector, the boleteros can simply throw the ballot away and no one would ever know. All of these possibilities are present if an elector relinquishes, to a boletero, control of a fully or partially marked ballot contained in a signed but unsealed return mailing envelope.

The more unsettling issue for us is each of the above illegal actions can also take place with a boletero picking up a fully or partially marked ballot contained in a signed and sealed return mailing envelope. The boletero can either stealthily or surgically open the envelope, view the choices of the voter and then decide whether the un-voted portions of a partially completed ballot will be filled out by the boleteros or whether, depending on the elector's choices, the ballot will simply be discarded.

It wasn't mentioned in these stories, but I was reminded of an infamous 2010 municipal corruption case in Bell, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. The local cabal remained in power by means of ballot harvesting, which was illegal in California at that time. By holding special elections and by having harvesters visit city employees at home to "assist" them in voting their absentee ballots, corrupt city officials maintained their hold on power.

The city manager and assistant city manager managed to increase their salaries to six figures ($787,637 for the city manager), with city council members making $96,996 a year for a part-time position in a small (population 36,624 in 2000), working-class city with a median annual income of less than $35,000. A special election in which 390 ballots were cast, 239 (more than half) of them absentee, "cleared the way for City Council members to significantly increase their salaries."

Four voters said city officials walked door-to-door encouraging them to fill out absentee ballots. In one case, a woman said she signed papers she believed were election paperwork. She never filed an absentee ballot. But when she went to the polls on election day, records showed that she had voted absentee.

Two other voters said that two council members came to their homes urging them to fill out absentee ballots. The voters did -- and a few weeks later the council members collected the ballots, saying that they would personally submit them, according to the voters. ...

One Bell resident, who spoke on the condition that he not be identified, said he worked with Camacho in 2009 on the election.

The man said he and others were given lists of absentee voters, which are public records.

"Our objective was to retrieve [absentee ballots], and if they were not filled out, instruct them how to fill it out, and if not, fill it out for them," he said.

The group members were also supplied with blank ballots, he said. "If they didn't have [their absentee ballot], 'By the way, we have some you can fill out.' "

The man, who also has provided his account to a district attorney's investigator, said the group members would knock on doors and when people answered, they would announce, "We're here from the city of Bell. We're picking up ballots. If you haven't , we can help you fill it out." ...

An article on the Global Anticorruption Blog mentioning Bell notes, "In many states, municipal elections are overseen by the very officials running in those elections, providing a strong incentive to tamper with elections in the low cost, hard-to-detect way of falsifying absentee ballots." The article links to stories about federal election fraud convictions in Cudahy, California, and West Memphis, Arkansas.

The Cudahy, California, case from 2012, which resulted in a guilty plea from the former mayor and former acting city manager:

In his plea agreement, Perales, 43, who ran the Code Enforcement Division of the Cudahy Community Services Department, admits being a bag man for city officials who took bribes, including Silva and Conde. The Perales plea agreement also discusses election fraud during the 2007 municipal election when absentee ballot were diverted before reaching the City Clerk. Perales "and other city officials routinely and systematically opened the absentee ballots cast in the 2007 City Council election by mail," according to the statement of facts in Perales' plea agreement. "Ballots cast in favor of the incumbent candidates were resealed and returned to the mail to be counted. Ballots for non-incumbent candidates were discarded." Perales and other city officials did the same thing during the 2009 Cudahy City Council election, according to the court document.

The West Memphis case involved State Representative Hudson Hallum, his father, Kent Hallum, West Memphis City Councilman and County Juvenile Probation Officer Phillip Carter, and West Memphis Police Officer Sam Malone:

According to the felony information, Hudson Hallum and Kent Hallum tasked Carter, Malone, and others with identifying absentee ballot voters within District 54; obtaining and distributing absentee ballot applications to particular voters; determining when absentee ballots were mailed to absentee voters by the Crittenden County Clerk's Office; and making contact with recipients of absentee ballots to assist those voters in completing the ballots. Once such absentee ballots were completed, the absentee voters typically placed their ballots in unsealed envelopes, which were retrieved by Carter, Malone, and others and then subsequently delivered to either Hudson Hallum or Kent Hallum for inspection to ensure that the absentee ballot votes had been cast for Hudson Hallum. After inspection by Hudson Hallum or Kent Hallum, the absentee ballots that contained votes for Hudson Hallum were sealed and mailed to the Crittenden County Clerk's Office. If a ballot contained a vote for Hudson Hallum's opponent, it was destroyed.

Hans von Spakovsky, head of the Election Law Reform Initiative, says, regarding mail-in ballots generally:

Voting by mail is the single worst form of election possible. It moves the entire election beyond the oversight of election officials and into places where the most vulnerable can be exploited by political operatives.

The secret ballot (known as the Australian Ballot for its origins in the pre-commonwealth states of that continent) is a relatively new innovation in political history. It's instructive to review the abuses that led to election practices that we now take for granted. The first chapter of the 1917 University of Chicago dissertation The History of the Australian Ballot in the United States details the use of privately printed ballots, pre-marked and distributed by political operatives, marked in such a distinctive way that poll-watchers could easily tell which voter supported which ticket, and to distribute bribes or punishments accordingly.

No one is proposing to eliminate official printed ballots, but Democrats are pushing to expand absentee balloting beyond rare cases of necessity and to eliminate tight safeguards that ensure the ballot is kept secret from the voter's pen to the ballot box.

The secret ballot is the one place where Americans are free to express their true opinion without social pressure. Naturally, totalitarian leftists, who have succeeded in harnessing social media to shame people into self-censoring dissenting views and to ban and dox the bold few who persist, would like to eliminate this last redoubt of pure freedom. We can't allow it to happen.

MORE: The Public Interest Legal Foundation has compiled data from the Election Assistance Commission and calculates that over 28 million postal ballots went missing over the last four federal election cycles (2012-2018).

Between 2012 and 2018, 28.3 million mail-in ballots remain unaccounted for, according to data from the federal Election Assistance Commission. The missing ballots amount to nearly one in five of all absentee ballots and ballots mailed to voters residing in states that do elections exclusively by mail.

States and local authorities simply have no idea what happened to these ballots since they were mailed - and the figure of 28 million missing ballots is likely even higher because some areas in the country, notably Chicago, did not respond to the federal agency's survey questions. This figure does not include ballots that were spoiled, undeliverable, or came back for any reason.

A summary of the Public Interest Legal Foundation's findings is here (PDF).

In 2001, the Voting Technology Project, a joint MIT / Cal Tech study conducted in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election that hung by a chad, noted the fraud potential of absentee voting.

Fraud and security are social problems--people will commit fraud if they are willing to win by any means.Error is more of an engineering problem; we should make every effort to make machines, databases, and other aspects of the voting system more reliable. The social nature of security also means there are different solutions available. Penalties for electoral fraud and improved detection methods can act to deter individuals from conducting fraud. Judging by recent court cases, the greatest fraud problems may lie in absentee balloting (though registration also presents some problems), a part of the process that has less oversight than voting in precincts. ...

Indeed, the most prominent recent election fraud court cases involved absentee ballots -- Dodge County, Georgia in 1996 and Miami in 1997. Dodge County involved two competing candidates for the Democratic nomination for the county commission bidding against each other for absentee ballots inside the county courthouse. In Miami, fraud so pervaded the absentee ballots that an appellate court eventually threw out all absentee ballots and declared a winner based solely on the machine vote.

We have no systematic measures of fraud, but fraud appears to be especially difficult to regulate in absentee systems. In-precinct voting or "kiosk" voting is observable. Absentee voting is not. The prospect for coercion is increased with absentee voting on demand.

The report lists several absentee ballot negatives: coercion, fraud, security, accuracy, slowness of ballot processing, and the degradation of the civic and ceremonial aspect of everyone going to the polls on election day. The MIT / Cal Tech team recommended reverting to stronger limits on casting absentee ballots, offering in-person absentee as a more secure way to make voting convenient, and keeping separate election statistics based on method of voting:

First, restrict or abolish on-demand absentee voting in favor of in-person early voting. The convenience that on-demand absentees produces is bought at a significant cost to the real and perceived integrity of the voting process. On the face of it, early voting can provide nearly equal convenience with significantly greater controls against fraud and coercion. Traditional absentee procedures for cause are still valuable for the limited situations they were originally intended for. States should return to those practices.

Second, establish uniform reporting of absentee and precinct voting results. States should require that election jurisdictions report, in a uniform manner, data necessary to diagnose the accuracy and efficient administration of non-precinct ballots, as well as data necessary to ensure citizens that such procedures are no less accurate, error-prone, or fraud-prone than in-precinct methods. These data include (1) separate election returns by method of casting a ballot (e.g., in-precinct, absentee, early), (2) cost accounts associated with administering different modes of balloting, and (3) statistics concerning the number of challenges to ballots and the reasons for excluding ballots from counting. Clear reporting will allow states to assess the effectiveness of absentee and early voting and to identify potential problems and irregularities.

Postdated to remain at the top of the blog until the polls close at 7 p.m.

Polling_Place_Vote_Here.jpg

Today, March 3, 2020, is the Oklahoma presidential preference primary. Oklahoma is one of 14 states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia (Democrats only), and Vermont) holding a presidential primary on "Super Tuesday." American Samoa Democrats will also hold a territorial caucus on Tuesday.

Super Tuesday came into existence in 1988, driven by southern Democrats. After a win in the post-Watergate election of 1976, with a ticket headed by former Georgia governor Jimmy Carter, Democrats were wiped out in 1980, as Reagan beat Carter, and again in 1984, as Reagan won 49 states against former VP Walter Mondale. The worry was that the early states (Iowa and New Hampshire) tilted the playing field in the liberal direction, resulting in a liberal nominee.

The Democrats' practice of "superdelegates" was another reform aimed at the electability problem that traces back to the reforms prior to the 1972 convention. The idea was that Democrats who had actually been elected office would help shift the convention and the selected nominee in a more centrist direction than Democrat primary voters left to their own devices.

The hope was that a Southern regional primary early in the process would encourage the nomination of a Southern moderate who could win in November. Oklahoma's Democratic governor and legislative majorities went along with the plan; previously, both major parties used the caucus and convention system to elect national delegates from Oklahoma. As it happened, of the 13 Southern states voting, Jesse Jackson won the four Deep South states (LA, MS, AL, GA) plus Virginia, Al Gore won five border states (OK, AR, TN, KY, NC), Michael Dukakis won Florida and Texas, and Dick Gephardt won his home state of Missouri. Dukakis's wins in the south, plus success in his home region of New England, killed Gore's electability argument.

(Virginia Republicans will not hold a primary but will use the caucus and convention process: County and Independent City Republican parties will elect delegates to the Congressional District and State GOP Conventions, and the CD and State Conventions will elect delegates to the Republican National Convention. All of Virginia's 48 delegates will be pledged to the candidate winning the presidential preference vote of delegates at the Virginia State Republican Convention.)

In Oklahoma, each political party may opt to allow voters not registered with a party to vote in their primary. For 2020 the Oklahoma Democratic Party is allowing independents to vote in their primaries; the Republican and Libertarian party primaries will be open only to voters registered with the respective party.

Oklahoma Democrats will have 15 candidates to choose from, all mainstream enough to earn a spot on a debate stage at some point. They're shown below in the order in which they filed for the primary back in December.

  • Tulsi Gabbard
  • Amy Klobuchar
  • Elizabeth Warren
  • Bernie Sanders
  • Kamala Harris
  • Pete Buttigieg
  • Andrew Yang
  • Deval Patrick
  • Michael R. Bloomberg
  • Tom Steyer
  • Joseph R. Biden
  • Michael Bennet
  • Marianne Williamson
  • Julián Castro
  • Cory Booker

Only five are still actively campaigning: Gabbard, Warren, Sanders, Bloomberg, and Biden. (Klobuchar, Buttigieg, and Steyer dropped out after poor showings in South Carolina last Saturday.) All of the Democratic candidates take an extreme position in support of abortion. They all support greater intrusion of the federal government into every aspect of life. Each of the Democratic candidates wants Christians either to bow down before the gods of the Sexual Revolution, or have the Federal Government destroy their businesses, their professional careers, their schools, their churches, their private organizations. None of them are "moderate." Given the number of conservative rural Oklahomans who are still registered as Democrats, a candidate that, say, supported private spaces and protected athletic opportunities for women, opposed late term abortion, supported robust protections for religious liberty, and sensible policies on immigration and trade -- someone like Louisiana governor John Bel Edwards -- would do very well in the Oklahoma Democratic primary.

Although you can still vote for any of the candidates on the ballot, a candidate needs at least 15% of the vote in a congressional district or statewide to get any delegates at all. In South Carolina, Biden got 49% and Sanders 20%, but split all of the delegates between them because the rest of the candidates split the remaining 31% of the vote, with none of them topping the threshold. Steyer's 11.3% was the best of the rest. Very little polling has been done in Oklahoma. A Sooner Poll taken from 2/17 to 2/21 put Biden at 21.2%, Bloomberg at 19.8%, undecided at 19.3%. Buttigieg and Klobuchar, both now out of the race, combined for 17%.

For Oklahoma Democrats, each congressional district has a different number of delegates: CD 2 and CD 3 have four each, CD 1 and CD 4 have five each, and CD 5, with a Democrat congressman, has six. There are 13 seats pledged based on statewide results: 8 statewide at-large delegate seats and 5 seats belonging to Party Leader and Elected Officials (PLEOs). Five more PLEOs go as superdelegates -- the Oklahoma Democrat chairman and vice-chairman and the national committeeman and national committeewoman, plus Congressman Kendra Horn. The "superdelegates" aren't pledged to any candidate, but they won't be able to vote unless no candidate receives a majority of the delegate vote on the first ballot at the National Convention. (I am still trying to find out who the pledged PLEOs are and why we have five. In other states, the number of unpledged PLEOs is different from the number of pledged.)

Oklahoma will have 43 delegates to the Republican National Convention, three from each congressional district, plus 28 statewide, including the state party chairman, the national committeeman, and the national committeewoman. If a candidate wins more than 50% of the vote in a CD or statewide, he gets all the delegates for that jurisdiction, even if another candidate breaks 15%, which seems unlikely.

Five Republicans are challenging President Trump on the Oklahoma ballot.

Zoltan G. Istvan, 46, of Mill Valley, CA: Istvan is a transhumanist who wants Republicans to embrace the unfettered use of technology to modify humanity. He believes science and technology can solve all problems. He writes, "The fate of fiscally conservative Republicans rests in embracing transhumanism and become more open-minded to cultural and technological change--or the far-left will own the future, just like they already own the environmental movement. The GOP must embrace radical innovation in the human being and be the caretakers of humanity's brave future." Istvan also wants to "improv[e] the Constitution to make it more malleable and ready to adjust every few years to radically changing times and accelerating technology." Call him the "Brave New World" candidate.

Roque "Rocky" De La Fuente, 65, San Diego, CA: He ran as a Democrat on the 2016 Oklahoma ballot, and his son ran as a Democrat in New Hampshire this year, but he's on the GOP ballot in Oklahoma in 2020. In 2016, he was also the presidential nominee of the American Delta Party and the Reform Party, which was founded by Ross Perot. De La Fuente tends toward an open-borders view: "We need comprehensive immigration reform that views undocumented workers as assets rather than liabilities. It is not logical to suggest that we can deport 13 million immigrants in a way that would be deemed fair. It is just as illogical to suggest that we could deport the small percentage of undocumented immigrants who have committed felonies." He wants to raise the retirement age and the contributions cap to keep Social Security solvent.

Matthew John Matern, 54, Manhattan Beach, CA: Matern is an attorney. He wants to solve homelessness by giving people a $10,000 tax credit for taking in a homeless person. He wants to raise the threshold for taxable income to $50,000 for individuals and $100,000 for families. Matern wants to focus on the environment, including a tax credit for reducing carbon footprint and tariffs to penalize goods from major polluters like India and China. He wants a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

Bob Ely, 61, Vernon Hills, IL: Ely is running as a something of a tongue-in-cheek, satirical candidate, "your least-worst alternative." He calls himself partyfluid, says he has no experience and the charisma of a doorknob. His political pronouncements are the sort of thing your opinionated uncle might shout at the TV while watching the news after a few beers. Ely claims he would be a "better" (and scarier) Trump:

A federal judge I know decried how Trump was subverting the rule of law. I told him I could do much worse. He said that was impossible. How about this, I said:
  • In some random speech or tweet I would state: "A human virtue I admire most is loyalty. I am loyal to those who are loyal to me." An unimpeachable statement.
  • My sleezy [sic] friends would understand Omertà.
  • I would let those who cooperated with Mueller rot in prison; I would pardon those that stayed silent. My smarter sleezy friends would figure out that the easiest strategy would be say nothing; plead guilty; get pardoned.

The judge conceded that would be worse.

On foreign policy, Ely believes that sanctions against international bad guys are ineffective, and that instead, on a case by case basis, America should choose between resigned acceptance and putting a Tomahawk through a dictator's bedroom window, pour encourages les autres. On illegal immigration, Ely supports amnesty and guest worker visas for low-income jobs. Ely doesn't want you to follow him on Twitter or friend him on Facebook.

Joe Walsh, 57, Washington, D.C.: Walsh is a former congressman who suspended his campaign for the Republican nomination after a poor showing in Iowa and is now begging his supporters to vote for Democrats in order to unseat Trump. He won a seat in Congress by a slim margin in 2010, then lost it in 2012, after making light of the war injuries of his Democratic opponent, Tammy Duckworth. He spent much of his presidential campaign apologizing for outrageous things he said as a radio host.

Also on tomorrow's ballot: Seven counties in Oklahoma -- Creek, Cleveland, Kingfisher, Muskogee, Oklahoma, Tulsa, and Washington -- will vote whether to allow liquor stores to open on Sundays. Since supermarkets can now sell strong beer and wine, and they can sell on Sundays, and since people can buy liquor by the drink at bars and restaurants, it seems only fair that liquor stores should be able to compete on a somewhat level playing field. It seems to me that it's safer for everyone if people buy alcohol at the store and take it home to consume, rather than drinking at a bar or restaurant and then having to get home somehow.

Chris Medlock used to make the point that in America, coalitions are formed before the election, while in countries with proportional representation, they happen after the voters have had their say. Giles Fraser considers the UK's decisive December election alongside Israel's third election in a year and explains why this is an advantage for the American and British systems:

The two main parties -- Blue and White and Likud -- are virtually equal, and not terribly different ideologically, with a whole host of smaller parties making up the difference. In Israel, and because of Proportional Representation, politics is all about the coalitions, with the smaller parties having a disproportionate influence on the makeup of any future government. The names of these parties may change a lot, but no amount of reincarnation can shift the underlying stalemate. And no one is confident that after another electoral cycle that things can change this time either.

Back in the dark days of Autumn 2019, when Brexit was stuck, neither able to go forward or backwards, I flirted with proportional representation as a way to break the log jam. I should have known better. For it was First Past the Post that finally delivered a much needed verdict.

For all its various faults, FPTP has the virtue of forcing different political temperaments to enter into coalitions with each other before elections rather than after them. And this means two things: 1) that we have a clearer view of the alliances we are voting for and 2) that the winning side is more likely to have the freedom to take politics forward. Stuck politics is a ghost story, unable to achieve anything, neither alive nor dead.

Elizabeth Babade, a Brexit Party candidate, said at the Change Politics for Good conference on Saturday that she no longer supports proportional representation. She believes it produces weak parliamentary institutions that are dominated by the permanent bureaucracy. Instead, she says:

The focus should be replacing the present ineffective opposition with a more focused party that is ready to properly scrutinise the Tory government not spitefully, hatefully or maliciously but dispassionately & competently. @UKLabour is not up to the task at hand.

James Heartfield tweeted in reply:

Under FPTP parties have to convince a large body of voters their plan is good. Under PR they have to convince a minority to back them; and then they have to convince opponents to compromise. PR tends to encourage 1. Posturing in elections 2. Opportunism in coalitions.

There are problems with FPTP. It turns most elections into a binary choice between bad and worse. New voices struggle to gain a foothold. Tiny pluralities turn into massive majorities. Similar parties can split the vote and allow a despised minority to take office. The Alternative Vote (aka instant runoff voting) would preserve most of the advantages of FPTP, but ameliorate some of the problems.

OKGOP-logo.jpgThis Thursday night, January 30, 2020, starting at 6 pm, the Tulsa County Republican Party will hold precinct meetings, the first stage in the process for selecting delegates to the Republican National Convention and developing a party platform. The meetings are open to all registered Republicans.

To simplify the logistics, all but four precincts will gather at twelve regional meetings, mostly at public libraries. Here is the complete list of Tulsa County Republican Party 2020 precinct meeting locations.

The Oklahoma Republican Party hold precinct meetings in every odd-numbered year for the election of precinct party officials and as the first stage in the process for electing county and state party officials, but in presidential years, the focus is on the road to the Republican National Convention.

Precinct meetings have two main orders of business:

(1) Elect delegates to the 2020 Tulsa County Republican Convention. Each precinct is allocated a number of seats to the convention based on the vote for the Republican nominee for governor in the previous election. The county convention will elect delegates to the 1st Congressional District Republican Convention and the Oklahoma State Republican Convention. The Congressional District conventions each elect three delegates and three alternates to the national convention; the remainder of our delegation is elected by the state convention, which also elects a man and a woman to represent Oklahoma for the next four years on the Republican National Committee, the party's permanent governing body.

(2) Debate and approve resolutions for inclusion in the party platform. Interested Republicans can join the Tulsa County platform committee, which takes platform planks proposed by the precincts, crafts them into a county party platform which is then debated and voted on at the county convention. County platforms are used to develop a state platform, and state platforms are used as a basis for the development of the national platform.

A precinct meeting's duration depends on the number of people who show up for a particular precinct and how many issues they want to discuss, but typically you'll be done within an hour or so.

For more information, contact the Tulsa GOP headquarters at 918-627-5702.

New population estimates indicate that Texas may gain three seats and Florida two seats in the US House of Representatives after next year's US Census, while New York and California may lose a seat each. A handful of other states, mainly in the West and Sun Belt are projected to gain a seat, and a handful, mainly in the Rust Belt, are likely to lose a seat. Oklahoma is projected to keep its five congressional seats.

Shortly before New Year's Day, the US Census Bureau released their estimate of each state's population as of July 1, 2019. This is not the actual enumeration required by the Constitution every ten years for reapportionment of the House of Representatives -- that census will be taken on April 1 this year. This is an estimate based on birth and death statistics, and federal records (e.g., tax returns or Medicare enrollments showing a Social Security number in a different state than previously) which show internal migration. (A 14-page paper about the population estimate methodology may be found on the Census Bureau website.) The recent data release is only for population by state. Over the course of the first half of this year, 2019 population estimates will be released for counties, metropolitan areas, and cities and towns.

Sean Trende, senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics, has used a weighted average of the rate of growth across the 2017, 2018, and 2019 estimates to project a 2020 population for each state and then applied the Method of Equal Proportions, the method that the US has used since the 1930 census, to calculate congressional apportionment based on his 2020 population projection:

  • Gain 3: Texas
  • Gain 2: Florida
  • Gain 1: North Carolina, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, Oregon
  • Lose 1: Alabama, California, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, West Virginia

The allocation of seats under this method is something like dealing out an entire deck of 435 cards. Each state gets dealt a seat, then the remaining 385 seats are dealt in priority order. A state's priority is calculated as its population divided by the geometric mean of the number of seats it's been dealt and the number of seats if it's dealt one more. In C syntax: priority = population / sqrt ( current_seats * ( current_seats + 1 ) ). As soon as a state is dealt a seat, its priority is recalculated for the next seat. This method produces an ordered list of seat assignments, and so you'll hear analysts talk about which state will get the 435th seat, which states are "on the bubble" to gain or lose seats, depending on small changes in the final, official count. States that are shown by estimates to be in that 430th to 440th seat range have a strong incentive to push their people to respond to the Census.

The ordered nature of passing out seats also means you can estimate the effect of increasing the size of the House, which has been fixed at 435 for over a century (with a brief exception after Alaska and Hawaii joined the union in the late 1950s). Prior to the 2000 census, when Oklahoma was expected to lose a seat after barely keeping its 6th seat in 1990, Congressman Ernest Istook proposed increasing the House by about 30 seats, enough so that no state would lose a seat, but equal proportions would be maintained.

With the size of the US House fixed by law at 435, a state will keep its congressional seats if its population growth keeps pace with the rest of the country. Growing more slowly puts you at risk of losing a seat. Losing population, as Illinois, Vermont, and West Virginia have done, pretty much guarantees the loss of a seat, unless, like Vermont, you're already down to the constitutional minimum of one.

MORE:

Back in December 2010, after the official state counts were released, I wrote a piece about the 2010 reapportionment process, with numerous links to background material.

The website Thirty-Thousand.org advocates for a House of Representatives closer to the Constitutional number of one representative for every 30,000 people. Had the first article of the Bill of Rights been ratified (the other 11 have been), we'd have about 6,000 representatives. The site provides a deep dive on the history of apportionment methods.

Wikipedia has the numbers for apportionment of the US House of Representatives since 1789.

Tom Nichols, a prominent "Never Trumper," and author of The Death of Expertise, has written an op-ed for The Atlantic to explain why he's leaving the Republican Party.

It's hard to take Mr. Expert seriously when he uses the "GOP" as the subject of a sentence, as an entity with undivided volition. He betrays a misunderstanding of the nature of parties as they have been since the nominating process was democratized, and his threatened change in political registration will have the an effect on the party 180 degrees out from his desired direction.

There is no unitary Republican entity. There's the RNC, the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate and their respective campaign committees, state parties, legislative caucuses, all of which operate more or less independently of each other.

Republicanism is defined by the people who happened to show up at the primary and asked for a Republican ballot. It's defined by whoever wins an election with an R by their name.

Party organizations and conventions have no influence and few resources to offer candidates. (Utah is a rare exception -- GOP convention delegates can filter the candidates who appear on the primary ballot, or nominate outright.)

Instead, the RNC and state parties depend on the goodwill of elected officials to raise funds and stay alive. Many state parties have rules requiring neutrality in primaries or bias in favor of incumbents with an R after their name.

Because the party resources aren't available during the primary, candidates build their own teams of aides, volunteers, and donors. They may get some help from party-wide get-out-the-vote efforts on election day, but there's little the party is able to offer to make a candidate feel beholden to the organization.

It's different in other countries.

In the UK, candidates for the UK Parliament, European Parliament, and local councils are selected by party members. To participate in selection of Conservative Party nominees, you have to have been a party member for at least three months. Joining the costs 25 pounds per year (with discounts for military service members and students), and acceptance is not automatic -- party officials can deny your application if they think your membership is contrary to the party's best interests.

Joining the Liberal National Party -- the right-of-center party in the Australian state of Queensland -- will cost you AU$110 a year, but you can buy a lifetime membership for AU$2000. The membership application asks:

  • Do you believe in the values of the Liberal National Party - individual dignity, liberty, free enterprise, the family and personal and community responsibility?
  • Have you ever been a member of the LNP, Liberal Party or The Nationals?
  • Have you ever been a member of any other political party?
  • Have you ever applied for, and been refused membership of the LNP, Liberal Party or The Nationals?
  • Have you ever been expelled from either the LNP, Liberal Party or The Nationals?
  • Have you ever nominated as a candidate in an election where the LNP has had an endorsed candidate?

When party members control the nominating process, and joining a party requires financial commitment and adherence to a set of overarching principles, you have a political party organization that matters -- a group of people organizing to advance a particular political philosophy through public policy.

In America, becoming a Republican at most requires changing the letter on your record at the election board. In some states, you don't need to do anything that permanent; you need only ask for the Republican ballot when you show up to vote, and you can ask for a different ballot at the next primary election. This is the outcome of early 20th century reforms that aimed to open up the "smoke-filled rooms" and give ordinary people a role in choosing the candidates on the ballot from which they would choose elected officials.

While I love the idea of a party organization that advocates for certain policies, holds elected officials accountable to enact those policies, and recruits candidates based on their aptitude to advance those policies, the "reformed" nominating process makes that impossible. If you want to create an organization like that, you have to go outside official party structures: PACs and grassroots groops (FreedomWorks, Americans for Prosperity), special caucuses (e.g. the Freedom Caucus and the Republican Main Street Partnership in the U. S. House; the Platform Caucus in the Oklahoma Legislature), activist groups (Tulsa Area Republican Assembly, Oklahoma Conservative PAC).

It's possible that when Tom the Expert says he joined the Republican Party and is now leaving it, he means that he donated to the RNC, attended his precinct caucus, served as a delegate at county & state conventions, and made GOTV calls on election day, and now he won't anymore. But I suspect he just means that long ago he changed his voter registration to R and is now changing it to I.

If Expert Tom and those likeminded change their voter registration, it will not teach the stupid GOP a lesson and induce the party to repent and beg for them to come back (as if the party were possessed of a unitary volition). Instead, people who disagree with Expert Tom and his ilk will have more influence over the outcome of Republican primaries, the results of which collectively define the overall direction of this amorphous thing we call the Republican Party.

UPDATE: I addressed the same subject in a slightly different way back in 2012, responding to the frustration of many of my conservative blogging acquaintances: The anthropomorphization of the GOP.

Today Attorney General Jeff Sessions held a press conference announcing the Justice Department's religious liberty task force. The summary of Sessions's statement provided on Good Morning America's Facebook page did not seem at all alarming -- in fact it seemed welcome and overdue:

Sessions says the task force will "help the Department fully implement our religious liberty guidance," including "making sure our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith."

Nor was the 90-second snippet of a press conference that GMA posted anything that seemed controversial.

And yet a Facebook friend, not usually one to post about politics, posted the link with the comment, "I can't believe this is constitutional." This friend's post received four "angry face" reactions. On the original GMA post, there are nearly 3,000 angry reactions, about 700 thumbs-up, and just over 600 expressions of astonishment. Most of the comments on the GMA post appear to be some ranty variation of "Doesn't he know there's supposed to be separation of church and state!"

The Constitution does not require the Federal Government to be hostile to religion or religious people. In fact, it requires the government to avoid burdening the free exercise of religion. Our nation was founded and settled by people (mainly various sorts of Christians) who wanted a place where they could live out their religious beliefs without suffering the persecution and restrictions they faced back in Europe.

For example, in England and Ireland, under the Test Acts and Penal Laws, someone who was not an Anglican was banned from holding public office, serving as an attorney, graduating from Oxford or Cambridge, or even voting. Worship services of religious dissenters could not be held in cities and dissenting preachers might be thrown into prison.

It would be a betrayal of the Pilgrims, Quakers, Catholics, Scots-Irish Presbyterians, Baptists, Amish, and other religious people fleeing persecution to create this country if America turns into a country where once again the Government can impose fines, jail time, or discriminatory restrictions on living according to your religious beliefs.

Here is a link to the full text of Attorney General's speech. Sessions began by describing the importance of religious liberty to those who settled America and those who framed its government:

Freedom of religious is indeed our "first freedom"--being the first listed right of our First Amendment. This has been a core American principle from the beginning. It is one of the reasons that this country was settled in the first place.

The promise of freedom of conscience brought the Pilgrims to Plymouth, the Catholics to Maryland, the Quakers to Pennsylvania, the Scot-Presbyterians to the middle colonies, and Roger Williams to Rhode Island. Each one of these groups and others knew what it was like to be hated, persecuted, outnumbered, and discriminated against. Each one knew what it was like to have a majority try to force them to deny their natural right to practice the faith they held dear.

Our Founders gave religious expression a double protection in the First Amendment. Not only do we possess freedom to exercise our beliefs but we also enjoy the freedom of speech. Our Founders' understanding of and commitment to religious freedom was truly brilliant as well as historic. It arose in large part from the principals delineated in the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom--and its effective advocates: Madison and Jefferson. These guys were ferocious. This weekend, I was rereading Gary Wills' fabulous book, Head and Heart, in which he quotes extensively from Jefferson's Statute, as he refers to it. I commend all of it to you; but one line stood out in particular to me, "That almighty God hath created the mind free, and manifested His supreme will that free it shall remain, by making it altogether insusceptible of restraint."

Of course, this is entirely consistent with another of my favorite Jefferson quotes that you will find at his memorial just across the mall from where we are today: "For I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man." This is what our Founders believed. They clearly recognized that an individual's relationship to God is a natural right and precedes the existence of the state, and is not subject to state control.

These concepts were placed into our Constitution and laws and formed a national consensus that has greatly militated against religious hostility and violence--and has helped us to this day to be one of the world's most diverse religious people.

There can be no doubt that we are stronger as a nation because of the contribution of religious Americans. Every day across America, they feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, educate our young people, and care for the sick. They do so not because the government tells them to, but because they want to. They do these things because of their faith. Their faith provides something the state can never provide--meaning and purpose and joy in their life.

(NOTE: The transcript has a paragraph break after each sentence, arranged no doubt for convenience in delivering a speech. For the sake of readability I've provided paragraph breaks where they make sense.)

Sessions then described current threats to free exercise of religion and actions that the Department of Justice has taken to enforce the laws protecting them:

But in recent years, the cultural climate in this country--and in the West more generally--has become less hospitable to people of faith. Many Americans have felt that their freedom to practice their faith has been under attack. And it's easy to see why. We've seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives. We've seen U.S. Senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma--even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for public office. We've all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips.

Americans from a wide variety of backgrounds are concerned about what this changing cultural climate means for the future of religious liberty in this country....

The Department of Justice has settled 24 civil cases with 90 plaintiffs regarding the previous administration's wrong application of the contraception mandate to objecting religious employers. Last month, a district court in Colorado issued a permanent injunction in the case involving the Little Sisters of the Poor, a group of nuns who serve the elderly poor. This is a permanent injunction and a major victory for the Little Sisters of the Poor and religious freedom. The government has no business telling the Little Sisters that they must provide an insurance policy that violates their sincere religious beliefs....

Since January 2017, we have obtained 11 indictments and seven convictions in cases involving arson or other attacks or threats against houses of worship. Our Civil Rights Division has also obtained 12 indictments in other attacks or threats against people because of their religion.... Three weeks ago, we obtained a jury verdict against a man who set fire to a mosque in Texas and sentenced for a man from Missouri for threatening to kill members of a mosque....

In January, we filed a brief in a Montana court to defend parents who claim that the state barred their children from a private school scholarship program because they attend a religious school. We also filed an amicus brief on behalf of the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., which was refused advertising space for having a religious message--including "joy to the world" on Merry Christmas....

When I was in the Senate, we passed a law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA. Under RLUIPA, the Department of Justice can file a civil action in court when religious groups are discriminated against in zoning laws. Under my tenure as Attorney General, we have not hesitated to use this tool when necessary. In June, we filed suit against a town in New Jersey that had refused over and over again--for eight years--to let an Orthodox Jewish congregation buy land for a synagogue. And just last week we filed a brief in federal court supporting the case of a Hindu temple in Maryland that claimed to have suffered discrimination in its attempts to purchase land.

Sessions provided a brief description of the guidance memo issued earlier:

Soon after taking office, President Trump directed me to issue explicit legal guidance for all executive agencies on how to apply the religious liberty protections in federal law. Our team embraced that challenge. I issued that guidance in October, and it lays out 20 fundamental principles for the Executive Branch to follow. Those include the principle that free exercise means a right to act--or to abstain from action. They include the principle that government shouldn't impugn people's motives or beliefs.

We don't give up our rights when we go to work, start a business, talk about politics, or interact with the government. We don't give up our rights when we assemble or join together. We have religious freedom as individuals and as groups. In short, we have not only the freedom to worship--but the right to exercise our faith. The Constitution's protections don't end at the parish parking lot nor can our freedoms be confined to our basements.

Under this administration, the federal government is not just reacting--we are actively seeking, carefully, thoughtfully and lawfully, to accommodate people of faith. Religious Americans are no longer an afterthought. We will take potential burdens on one's conscience into consideration before we issue regulations or new policies. And this Department of Justice is going to court across America to defend the rights of people of faith.

Finally, he announced formation of a religious liberty task force within the DOJ to ensure that the laws which have already been approved by Congress and various presidents are enforced.

The Task Force will help the Department fully implement our religious liberty guidance by ensuring that all Justice Department components are upholding that guidance in the cases they bring and defend, the arguments they make in court, the policies and regulations they adopt, and how we conduct our operations. That includes making sure that our employees know their duties to accommodate people of faith.

As the people in this room know, you have to practice what you preach. We are also going to remain in contact with religious groups across America to ensure that their rights are being protected. We have been holding listening sessions and we will continue to host them in the coming weeks.

This administration is animated by that same American view that has led us for 242 years: that every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith in the public square. This approach has served this country well. We are perhaps the most religiously developed nation in the world and can take pride in respecting all people as they fully exercise their faiths. It is clear that these policies have furthered peace, prosperity, freedom, lawfulness, and clarity. As our nation grows older, we must not let it depart from this magnificent tradition.

Here is Sessions's 25-page memo, "Federal Law Protections for Religious Liberty". It begins with 20 principles, each with a paragraph of elaboration. There follows specific guidance for the various roles a federal agency may play: as an employer, as a rulemaker, as an enforcer of Federal law, as an issuer of contracts or grants. The last 17 pages are an appendix of technical legal details, reciting relevant Federal law and Supreme Court decisions that must govern Federal agencies.

An accompanying two-page directive explains how the DOJ officials who report to the Attorney General are to apply the principles set out in the guidance memo: To incorporate the principles into the DOJ's own employment, rulemaking, enforcement, contracting, and grant-issuing policies; to correct course in DOJ litigation where the previous administration acted contrary to these principles; to apply the principles when issuing legal guidance to other agencies of the Executive Branch; to ensure that new rules issued by other agencies and referred to the DOJ's Office of Legal Policy are consistent with Federal religious liberty laws; and to require all DOJ components, including U. S. Attorney offices, to confer with the Associate Attorney General on "all issues arising in litigation, operations, grants, or other aspects of the Department's work that appear to raise novel, material questions" regarding religious liberty law.

So why the hostile public reaction to what appears to be a firm commitment to upholding the Constitution and laws of the United States regarding religious liberty?

I suspect part of it is that those who have chosen a life of sexual immorality are worried that someday they may encounter someone who is less than enthusiastic about their moral choices. While religious liberty is enshrined in our Bill of Rights and Federal law, sexual license is not, and yet many Americans regard sexual activity as the only source of transcendence, and they consider universal approval of their sexual proclivities a fundamental right.

Their solution to this, articulated by former President Obama and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, is to reduce the robust protection for freedom of religion to a mere "freedom of worship." So you can think your thoughts privately or discuss them within the walls of your church, but you must set all your religious beliefs aside when you speak in public, when you go to work, when you run your business, when you interact with the Government. This is the sort of bare toleration that the settlers of America endured in the old country under the Test Acts and Penal Laws, not the robust freedom of religion that they sought when they crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the New World.

It should worry religious Americans that so many of our relatives, friends, and co-workers are angered that the Federal government intends to protect our long-standing religious liberties. But we ought to thank God that, at least for the next two-and-a-half years, the U. S. Department of Justice will be doing just that.

MORE: In 2015, Oklahoma Senator James Lankford expressed concerns about the Obama administration's emphasis on "freedom of worship" over "freedom of religion."

An interview with Swedish author Johan Norberg explores the reality behind the Left's fantasies about Nordic socialism. Read the whole thing, but notice below the historical context that preceded the Swedish welfare state and the effect it had on the Swedish work ethic. To borrow Ronald Reagan's phrase, the safety net has become a hammock.

First, Norberg describes the economic and political liberty that transformed Sweden in the late 19th century:

Q: In a speech before the Free Market Foundation, you outlined the rise, fall, and subsequent rise of Sweden's economic standing. Can you give an abridged version of that history lesson to our readers? Why and how did Sweden rise, then fall, then rise once again?

A: This is an incredibly important story because for some reason, the "Swedish model" got very famous for the way it appeared for about 15 or 20 years in the 1970s and 1980s. That was the moment in time when everybody looked at Sweden and thought, "something interesting is going on there," and for some reason, that perception froze in time, in that era -- but it's just a tiny bit of Swedish history, and also, I would say, a scary example of what could go wrong.

The short version of our long history is that in the middle of the 19th century, Sweden was one of the poorest countries in Europe. My ancestors in Northern Europe starved for lack of modern industry, railways, food trade, and agricultural productivity. However, at that time, in the 1850 and 1860s, we had a group of classical liberal Swedish politicians who really opened Sweden up. They democratized politics, deregulated markets and businesses, and turned Sweden into a free trade nation. Suddenly, we could make exports to richer countries, we could begin to mechanize the old trades, and increase productivity dramatically, and we had 100 years of growth that basically turned Sweden from one of the poorest counties in Europe into one of the world's richest countries.

This was the moment in time when the "Swedish model" was open markets, free trade, and a very limited government. During the period in which we grew the fastest, our government spending wasn't more that 10% of GDP, and as late as the early 1950s, our government was smaller, and our taxes were lower than in the rest of Europe and in the United States -- so that's really something people tend to forget when they tell people to look at the successful "Swedish model." We were one of the richest countries on the planet -- in 1970, the fourth richest -- before we built the welfare state, before we had this third way, semi-socialist model. So, we created that wealth first. But when you're rich, you want to spend it, and that's what they did.

As usual, ignorant people without a sense of history or cause and effect decided that because the system wasn't perfect, they would break it and substitute something new.

In the 1970s, the Social Democrats in charge began to redistribute big time, and they began to regulate businesses, and for a period of some 20 years, we doubled the size of public spending in Sweden. This is exactly the thing that people still think about when they talk about the "Swedish model" in the U.S. and other places. People said, "Look, this is a country that has begun to tax and spend and regulate much more than we do, and they're incredibly rich. Everything seems to be working quite well." Of course, we were rich because we had created all that wealth -- but it's like that old joke. How do you end up with a small fortune? You start with a big fortune! Then you just make some mistakes, and lose most of it -- and that's what we did.

The period in the 1970s and 1980s was the one period in Sweden's economic history where we really began to lag behind other countries, and mess up in a big way. It all ended in a terrible crisis after an inflation boom in the early 1990s, when we, for a period of time, had an interest rate of 500% to try and protect our currency. It all came tumbling down.

After that, we began to return to some of our roots. We began to deregulate markets again, began to liberalize and produce things like private providers in healthcare, a school voucher system on a national level, and partially privatize pension, and so on. Since then, Sweden has done much better again.

This is the whole irony of the story. When people like Bernie Sanders and others talk about the successful socialist "Swedish model," they talk about those 15 to 20 years of awful economic and social results when real wages didn't increase at all....

We see the usual Leftist ignorance of human nature, assuming that behavior will remain unchanged when the incentives change. (An important factor Norberg doesn't address is the undermining of Christianity by Socialists and liberals. How do you maintain a "strong Lutheran work ethic" when people are no longer strong Lutherans?)

...we had Social Democrats in Sweden who said that this is the best place in the world to experiment with socialism because we already had these great foundations to make it work. We had wide-spread social trust, so people trusted one another, and they trusted the government. A strong Lutheran work ethic means we would work even though taxes might make it less economically beneficial. People would never accept welfare if they could work. We had already built all this wealth. What some of them said is, "If it doesn't work in Sweden, it can't work anywhere."

What happened -- even in Sweden -- this began to undermine our foundations in various ways. Cultures don't exist in vacuums, and if there are no institutions, no incentives that encourage them, they begin to fall apart -- and that's what happened in many ways. Work ethic decreased; our tradition of not accepting government benefits if they weren't needed began to erode as well. It used to be that when we were asked something like, "under what circumstances is one justified in accepting government benefits to which one is not entitled," we were always ahead of everyone else, 80% to 90% would say, "never." That has begun to erode down to some 50% to 55%, which is higher than many other countries, but it tells you something about what has changed....

This definition of socialism is spot-on: "Authoritarianism applied to the economy."

[Socialism is] basically trying to reorganize society from above. It's really a way of not accepting the spontaneous outcome of millions of everyday choices regarding how to work, what to work with, whom to reward by paying them, by buying their goods and services. So, in a way, it's authoritarianism applied to the economy. As a result of that, it's the economic system that is the hardest failure of the 20th century. We've never seen a system be so totally discredited everywhere it's been tried. The basic reason is that one person at the top -- or a few politicians and bureaucrats -- if they are trying to guide the system of prices and economic rewards, as well as which businesses to benefit, it's a way of replacing millions of decisions every minute made by people in their local circumstances based on their local knowledge, and replacing it with only the knowledge of a few people at the top. They always have less knowledge; they can't try out the many experiments that millions of people can try over time, and that's why it fails again and again....

To the idea that socialism would be great, but it's never been implemented correctly:

If your system is dependent on it being run by the best of people, and anything else results in chaos and poverty and breadlines, it's probably not a good system. I think that's what we've learned from history. The best political theorists and economists have always said that we should always try to organize society and our laws and our politics to make sure that bad people can create as little damage as possible because we always end up with wrong people in certain places implementing stupid policies at the wrong moment. If you have a system that only works if that never happens, then you probably have the wrong system.

There's much more good stuff in the interview: Why young people are drawn to socialism, the real cause behind "failures" of capitalism, why you have to squeeze the lower and middle class to have socialism.

You'll find more of Johan Norberg's work at his website.

DISCLAIMER: I am neither an accountant nor a lawyer. This is just something I came across while calculating our own estimated taxes. I may not have understood it correctly. Your mileage may vary. Consult your own accountant.

Here's something to ponder before they pass the plate this morning in church.

If you currently itemize deductions, but your itemized total is less than the standard deduction recently enacted into law for 2018, it may make save you some money if you shift planned charitable giving from 2018 to 2017.

The standard deduction for 2017 is $12,700 for married filing jointly. For 2018, it jumps up to $24,000, but the standard per-person exemption goes away, and the marginal rates decrease. If you'd have been in the 15% bracket, your marginal rate will drop to 12%, and for the 25% bracket, the marginal rate will drop to 22%.

Let's say your combined property tax rate, mortgage interest, and charitable contributions comes to $20,000 and you're just over the threshold for the 25% bracket, and you expect next year to be about the same. This year, it makes sense to itemize deductions, since they total more than the $12,700 standard deduction. Next year, you'll take the standard deduction. Under these circumstances, it makes sense to shift giving you planned to do in 2018 into 2017. If you shift $100 in giving from 2018 to 2017, your 2017 itemized deductions would increase to $20,100, your taxable income would drop by $100, and your tax would drop by $25. Meanwhile, your itemized deductions for 2018 would drop from $20,000 to $19,900, which is still below the standard deduction of $24,000, so there would be no change to your 2018 taxable income. In this scenario, you could shift $4,000 in giving from 2018 to 2017 and reduce your combined federal tax burden by $1,000 from what it would be if you gave the same amount both years.

There are three key variables: Itemized deductions for 2017, expected deductions for 2018, and amount of giving shifted. If your itemized deductions for 2018 are likely to top $24,000, shifting a dollar of giving from next year to this only saves you 3 cents, the difference between old and new marginal rates. The maximum benefit from this approach, where the amount shifted would result in a tax savings equal to your current marginal rate times the amount, would be derived from shifting enough to bring your 2017 itemized deductions above $12,700, and bringing your expected 2018 deductions below $24,000. Shifting $7,300 in giving from next year to this year would save you that amount times your current marginal tax rate.

So where should that extra 2017 giving go? Many non-profits have matching gift challenges in effect, with donors pledging to match gifts, sometimes by multiples.

Consider benevolence ministries like John 3:16 in Tulsa that provide relief while helping people develop the skills and self-sufficiency to stay out of poverty. Pregnancy resource centers like MEND are essential to supporting young women who find themselves pregnant in less than ideal circumstances, ensuring that they and their babies get off to the best possible start. Ministries like Crossover Community Impact combine several missions to meet the spiritual, physical, and educational needs of their communities.

Nothing can be more important that having God's Word in the language you speak from the heart. Americans are blessed to have multiple translations available in English, but many languages have no Bible at all or only portions. Wycliffe Bible Translators are working to change that, and at the same time helping to document and preserve many minority languages under pressure from urbanization, globalization, and cultural homogenization.

Think-tanks like OCPA, AFP, and Heritage Foundation do the research that legislators need to produce good laws that protect our freedom and use our tax dollars wisely.

As the culture becomes increasingly hostile to Christianity, organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom and Home School Legal Defense Fund will play a growing role in protecting our ability to live our lives in accordance with the dictates of our consciences.

Other organizations are striving to influence the culture:

Christian education at any level (e.g. Augustine Christian Academy, Oklahoma Wesleyan University, Hillsdale College) is worth supporting, so that more children and college students can afford to benefit from an educational environment grounded in the truth. In Oklahoma, donations to qualified opportunity scholarship funds can qualify for tax credits and make K-12 Christian education affordable for more children.

Fellowship for Performing Arts produces award-winning theater productions designed to entertain and engage diverse audiences from a Christian worldview.

I could name many other excellent organizations, but these are a few that are worth your consideration, as you consider your year-end giving.

Liberty requires virtue

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From an essay in The Public Discourse by Robert R. Reilly, replying to an essay by Patrick Deneen, who claims that the Founders created a Hobbesian republic containing the individualistic, antinomian seeds of its own destruction.

However, he fails to mention that Madison, like almost all of the Founders, makes explicit that the principal condition for the success of the republic is virtue. In Federalist 55, he states:
As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust, so there are other qualities in human nature which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence. Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.

Without the exercise of those qualities, Madison said, "the inference would be that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another." Ironically, it is precisely the chains of despotism that Deneen suggests the Founders laid in creating a Hobbesian regime, the very thing Madison is rejecting here.

As Professor Thomas G. West points out in his superb new book, The Political Theory of the American Founding,

the founders' concern with natural rights and their concern with virtue did not belong to distinct categories of thought. Instead they thought of virtue as a condition of freedom and a requirement of the laws of nature. In the Virginia Bill of Rights, as elsewhere, we are told that "no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved . . . but by a firm adherence to . . . virtue."

The reason is that the key to republican government is not merely free choice. As we know from the Weimar Republic, people can freely choose anything, even Hitler. The key, as the Founding Fathers knew, is virtue.

Freedom is not divorced from nature; it is rooted in and limited by nature. Virtue is conformity with what is naturally good. That is why freedom, rightly understood, is freedom to choose the good. It is not license or licentiousness, which is unnatural, i.e., against nature. Only a virtuous person is capable of rational consent, because only a virtuous person's reason is unclouded by the habitual rationalizations of vice. Vice inevitably infects the faculty of judgment. No matter how democratic their institutions, morally enervated people cannot be free. And people who are enslaved to their passions inevitably become slaves to tyrants. Thus, the Founders predicated the success of democracy on the virtue of the American people. If there is any one thing on which the founders and the founding generation agreed, it was this. Without it, the republic would fail, and it is why it is failing now--not because of the Founding but despite it.

The TaxCutsNow bus tour is making a stop today, September 12, 2017, in Tulsa, from 12:50-1:20 pm at the Crowne Plaza Hotel north of 81st & Lewis, just west across the street from the Mabee Center, for a rally in support of tax relief for small business owners. The tour is starting the day at a rally in Oklahoma City, then continuing east. The tour will conclude with a rally Friday at the headquarters of the IRS in Washington, D.C.

Bernie Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot, Stephen Bonner, former CEO of Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and retired NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton are among the business leaders who have signed on with the Job Creators Network, which advocates for relief from taxes and regulations that inhibit the creation and growth of small businesses.

The Oklahoma bus stops and rallies are sponsored by Job Creators Network, Freedom Works, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and Americans for Prosperity-Oklahoma.

Preaching to the choir

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I was involved in a vigorous, in-person discussion the other night over the Nashville Statement. While everyone involved professed agreement with the historic Christian views of sexuality and sexual identity, some felt that the timing was poor, in the wake of the Hurricane Harvey catastrophe. Others couldn't see the point of a statement that would not persuade someone who was not already convinced of the Biblical position. I defended the statement, which I have signed, saying that Christian young people need to hear a clear restatement of Biblical truth on these issues, crafted to address the particular points of attack being used against Biblical truth, because otherwise young people are only hearing attacks on the Christian position with no responses. Sometimes, I said, the choir needs preaching to.

This entry isn't intended to get into the specifics of the Nashville Statement, but rather to defend the notion of speaking out when you have no reasonable expectation of swaying large numbers of people to your view.

Julia Galef posted four reasons to Twitter recently in response to those who ask why she bothers "arguing with people online, since I'm never going to get them to change their minds." It seems to me that the first and second are particularly applicable to the debate over the value of the Nashville Statement.

Reasons it can be worthwhile to argue with people on the internet, even if you have no hope of changing their minds:
  1. To change the minds of less-committed onlookers
  2. To give relief and comfort to onlookers who share your view and wish someone would stick up for it
  3. To set an example of "sharing one's opinion even if it's controversial," a value norm to reinforce even if you don't change anyone's mind on that particular issue
  4. To set an example of "polite and reasonable argumentation," again a valuable norm in its own right

I would add a fifth reason: To build toleration for your view. Friends of yours who disagree will learn that your view is held not just by strange people they see protesting on the news, but by someone they know and respect. Even if they still strongly disagree with your view, they will be less likely to cast someone who holds it beyond the pale of polite company, because they don't want to cast a friend -- you -- beyond the pale of polite company.

Now, this does not always work. I can think of a few "friends" I've lost because my views on social issues. But in general, it can help to shift the "Overton Window" in the direction of your perspective, which can encourage your allies to speak out, which ultimately can move your view from beyond the pale to controversial but tolerable to conventional wisdom.

I have some experience with this. When I got involved with city zoning issues almost 20 years ago, there weren't many people in Tulsa who thought about, much less supported, ideas like protecting walkability or neighborhood character with design guidelines or using small measures (Roberta Brandes Gratz's concept of "urban husbandry") to revitalize downtown. While these ideas still aren't universally applauded, they now have a significant and vocal constituency among civically engaged Tulsans.

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Pastor Steven Wedgeworth writes: "Beware the cool shame. It has unexpected power over people, even those you wouldn't expect. The only way to resist it is with guns blazing."

When friends are saying things that are true but unpopular, truths that could subject them to social penalties, I want to be cheering them on and encouraging others to do the same, not discouraging them from speaking out.

I'm in Denver this weekend to cover the 2017 Western Conservative Summit, one of the largest annual gatherings of conservatives outside the beltway. It's sponsored by the Centennial Institute, a think-tank affiliated with Colorado Christian University.

While the speaker lineup is not loaded with presidential candidates as it has been in years past, there are some big names on tap. Tonight we'll be hearing from former UN Ambassador John Bolton, Sen. Cory Gardner, Centennial Institute director Jeff Hunt, and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas. You can watch the plenary sessions live online on the Centennial Institute YouTube channel.

The weekend includes a broad selection of workshops. I just attended a session led by Pam Benigno and Ross Izard of the Education Policy Center of the Independence Institute on how to have an impact on your local school district, and in a few minutes I'll head to a session provicatively titled "Why Conservatives Should Be Christians; Why Christians Should be Conservatives" led by Prof. Doug Groothuis of Denver Seminary.

I'll be live-tweeting the sessions, so follow me @BatesLine on Twitter. The hashtag for the conference is #WCS17.

Republican presidential electors have been deluged with pleas to vote for someone other than Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is still unfit to be President of the United States (as is Hillary Clinton, as is Gary Johnson, each in their own way). I wish that, when the Electoral College meets tomorrow in state capitols across the nation, enough Republican electors would vote for a stable, principled conservative candidate to deprive Trump of an electoral college majority, and that the House would then choose said stable, principled conservative candidate to serve as president. But it is not going to happen.

It's true that Trump has announced some good choices for his cabinet. Scott Pruitt for EPA administrator is a particularly welcome choice; Pruitt will execute the EPA's responsibilities without going beyond the agency's authority in law. On the other hand, Trump's pick for Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, is a globalist who sees national borders as obstacles rather than protections and who pressured the Boy Scouts of America to back down its principled stand against the Sexual Revolution. Trump's choice of a Goldman Sachs executive as Secretary of Treasury suggests that Trump's campaign rhetoric was just him saying whatever he thought he needed to say to win.

I like some of Trump's announced policies, but many of the policies I like are contradicted by other announced policies. It did not bother me a bit for him to take a congratulatory call from the president of the Republic of China, a nation attempting to hold on to what little territory it has left after the Communist revolution drove them off the mainland. It bothers me that he seems to accept or ignore Russia's aggression-by-proxy against Ukraine.

Trump is impulsive, too lazy or impressed by his own instincts to consider implications before speaking or tweeting, too easily distracted by insults to his pride to be entrusted with the power of the American presidency. Republican electors would be acting as patriots if they voted to deny him the office.

I wish I could depend upon Republican majorities in the House and Senate or the leadership of the Republican Party to act as a check on his most dangerous impulses, but I see nothing in their actions since Trump clinched the nomination to persuade me that they're willing to resist him. They see his apparent popularity as a bandwagon to jump aboard or at least as a steamroller to get out of the way of.

Is there a legitimate reason for electors to deny the presidency to Trump? It was the intention of the Framers of the Constitution that the selection of a president should be insulated from popular passions. They intended that the people would only select trustworthy men who would in turn choose a Chief Executive. But the framers didn't reckon on the rise of political parties and the idea of electors already pledged to support a specific candidate. They certainly didn't foresee a future in which a major political party was reduced to a hollow shell, a mere mechanism devoid of principle or platform, taken over by a pop-culture celebrity.

The expectation for over a century has been that voters in each state are really voting for president and vice president and only incidentally for a slate of electors who are pledged to vote for the preferred presidential candidate. Despite this expectation, and despite the laws and oaths that seek to turn this expectation into a legally binding commitment, electors have the freedom to vote as they see fit.

It's been claimed that voters chose these electors because they wanted Donald Trump to be president. I'm sure that's true for many voters, particularly in the once-reliably Democrat Rust Belt states that voted Republican this year and who saw Trump as the first champion for their concerns (even though Rick Santorum ran on the same approach to trade in 2012). On the other hand, many voters voted Republican only because they didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president, and they would be relieved if a conservative wound up as president instead of Trump.

In any event, the Republicans who were nominated to be electors were elected knowing that they would be expected to vote for the party's nominee. In Oklahoma, five electors were nominated by congressional district conventions when the nomination was still in doubt, and the other two were nominated by the state executive committee and ratified by the state convention after Trump's rivals dropped out of the race. These people were chosen because they were known by their fellow activists as committed to the party and its principles. These electors signed notarized pledges to vote for the nominee, and many of them have cited those pledges as reason enough to vote for Trump, no matter their personal view of Trump's character or instability. They aren't going to vote for another Republican, much less a left-wing Democrat.

Democrat calls for electors to vote for Hillary Clinton because she "won" the popular vote are either naive or disingenuous. Does anyone believe that Democrats would be calling for elector independence if Hillary Clinton had won Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania?

The popular vote is an irrelevant metric. The rules, as set out by the Constitution and the state laws that govern the election of presidential electors, make the presidential election into 56 separate contests -- 50 statewide contests, one in the District of Columbia, plus separate contests in the three congressional districts of Nebraska and the two districts of Maine -- each of which awards a varying number of "points." If the game was scored differently, the strategy would be different. If the Big 12 football title was awarded based strictly on point differential instead of won-loss record, you'd keep the first string in against a weak team and run up the score rather than resting your starters once the game was well in hand. If the World Series title was awarded based on total runs, you'd burn up your bullpen to stop more runs being scored, even if you're already down by 10 in that game. If the presidential contest were a national popular vote, candidates would allocate their resources differently. Voter behavior would change as well. A conservative who felt free to vote third-party or not at all because either Trump or Hillary led by a wide margin in his state might have cast an anti-Hillary vote for Trump in a national popularity contest.

And don't trot out the argument that the electoral college gives too much power to small states. Any inequality in the number of citizens per electoral vote is just a reflection of the inequality in the number of citizens per seat in Congress, a product of Congress's unwillingness, under Democrat and Republican majorities alike, to expand its numbers with the population for the last 100 years. (UPDATE: But see below: While a larger House would even out population per electoral vote, it wouldn't have changed the outcome of this election, because California was entirely responsible for Hillary Clinton's popular-vote lead.)

If you want #HamiltonElectors -- electors who fulfill the role envisioned by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 68 -- you have to have a system for electing them. As long as electors are nominated by political parties and as long as political parties select presidential nominees before the electors go before the voters, the status quo will prevail. Make it easier in your state for citizens to run as independent, unpledged electors, and then vote for them, if you want things to change. Abolish the state party rules and state laws that require elector nominees to bind themselves to a presidential candidate. I'll believe that Democrats want #HamiltonElectors and indirect democracy when they start calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment and a return to indirect election of senators.

Even in its present desiccated state, the Electoral College still serves a couple of important purposes -- it acts as a firewall, restricting the effects of voter fraud in one state to that state's outcome, and it ensures that no one can be elected president without support from the breadth of the nation. Out-of-step, shrinking, but still-populous California cannot dictate to the rest of the nation who will be president.

But I still wish that Republican electors would vote for someone else -- perhaps Mike Pence -- instead of Donald Trump. (The choice of Pence would have some legitimacy, as he was nominated by the Republican Party, was on the ballot as the vice presidential nominee, and was not one of Trump's defeated rivals for the nomination.) I reject the argument that because a safety mechanism hasn't been used before, we can't use it now -- the same argument that was used against a delegate revolt at the Republican National Convention.

The electoral principles outlined by Hamilton in Federalist No. 68 are sound, but the system no longer produces the result Hamilton expected. The culture and its influencers will first have to regain respect for the value of indirect election, and states and parties will have to eliminate those practices which work against indirect election.

UPDATE: The electoral vote tally, according to reports from all 50 states and the District of Columbia: Trump 304, Clinton 227, Colin Powell 3 (Democrat electors in Washington state), Faith Spotted Eagle 1 (Democrat elector in Washington), Bernie Sanders 1 (Democrat elector in Hawaii), Ron Paul 1 (Republican elector in Texas), John Kasich 1 (Republican elector in Texas.) So a total of 2 Republican electors and 5 Democrat electors voted for a candidate other than the party nominee.

Four Texas Republican electors were no-shows, possibly because they did not want to vote for Trump, but felt bound by their pledges. The four vacancies were filled by a vote of the remaining 34 Texas electors. One Texas elector resigned following the November election rather than vote for Trump and was replaced by someone who would.

Three other Democrat electors tried to vote for someone else but were prevented: A Maine elector voted for Sanders but was forced to change vote to Clinton. A Minnesota elector submitted a blank ballot but was replaced by an alternate who voted for Clinton. A Colorado Democrat elector tried to vote for Kasich and was dismissed in favor of an alternate who voted for Clinton. A Fox 31 Denver news report has more on the intent behind the Colorado elector lawsuit.

MORE: Would a bigger House of Representatives have changed the outcome by reducing the small-state advantage in population per electoral vote? With 435 House members and 538 electoral votes, there are 3.6 times more people per electoral vote in California (677,345) than in Wyoming (187,875). If the House had 10,000 members -- getting us very close to the Article I minimum of 30,000 people per apportioned House seat -- there would be 10,103 members of the Electoral College, and the residents-to-electoral-vote ratio would be a maximum of 30,763 in California to a minimum of 28,025 in North Dakota, a difference of only 9.8%. Still, the result would be 5,699 votes for Trump to 4,404 for Clinton. That's assuming that all of Maine's 45 electoral votes went to Clinton and all of Nebraska's 63 electoral votes went to Trump, when voting by congressional district would likely have split off some of each state's vote for the other candidate.

Clinton's problem is that all of her national margin (2,864,974 more votes than Trump) came from her blowout win in California (4,269,978 more votes than Trump). Even if the entire nation chose electors by congressional district, Clinton likely would have lost, because her popular vote was highly concentrated. Her margins in Los Angeles County (1,694,621) and the five boroughs of New York City (1,670,027) are enough to account for her entire national lead. (If you're curious, the margin in Cook County, Illinois, was 1,158,659. Trump won Illinois minus Cook County. The three counties of Florida's Gold Coast -- Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach -- gave Clinton a 684,787 vote margin.)

IMAG0490.jpgA series of encounters led to an opportunity to appear on 612 ABC Brisbane (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's locally focused station) to talk about the aftermath of the U. S. presidential election.

In late October, I was walking in the Spring Hill neighborhood north of the Brisbane CBD, looking for an affordable alternative to the hotel's unaffordable laundry service. I came across two young men standing on a street corner with a small metal easel sign identifying one of them as Trevor Evans, the Member of Federal Parliament for Brisbane, who was holding a "mobile office" -- making himself available to any of his constituents who might want to bend his ear. I stopped and introduced myself, and we talked about the recent Australian elections, the looming US election, and the excitement I'd witnessed at Prime Minister's Question Time in Canberra the previous week. As the conversation wound down, I asked Mr. Evans if he knew where Brisbanites interested in American politics might gather to watch the returns. He had heard something about a gathering at the Norman Hotel -- thought it was being sponsored by AmCham, the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia -- but he'd be in Canberra on the day.

It wasn't AmCham -- I called, and they knew nothing about it -- but it took me until the day of the event to find out that the sponsor was the Australian American Association. The deadline had passed a week earlier. A phone call went to voice mail, but someone responded to a Facebook message and said come ahead.

As the results started to roll in, a 612 ABC reporter doing a live report from the party wanted comments from a Republican and a Democrat, so I volunteered. The Democrat was a woman who had moved to Australia 20 years or so previously but still voted back in the US. The reporter asked if Trump's apparent win was the last gasp of the white conservative Christian male.

A couple of days later, one of the AAA leaders phoned to say 612 ABC had contacted him in search of a Republican to participate in a studio discussion about the election. I was interested, so he connected me with Sunday morning host Rebecca Levingston, who filled me in on the topics she wanted to discuss. Rebecca told me that her go-to Republican had moved to Perth, and she likes to have guests in studio for these discussions.

Sunday morning I strolled across the Victoria Bridge to the 612 ABC studios in South Bank. Rebecca was at her desk in the bullpen, prepping for the show, and she showed me to the green room, where I was joined a few minutes later by my Democrat counterpart, Peter Axelrod, an aviation attorney originally from New York by way of San Francisco, who had settled in Brisbane about 15 years ago, and his wife, a native Aussie. We had a nice chat, and I was surprised to learn how small the general aviation sector is in Australia, given the vast distances that have to be covered. (This is a country where your doctor may make house calls by plane, and you might talk to your school teacher over the radio.) Regulation holds back the industry.

(Somewhat related: I met some Americans at the hotel who were private pilots and would be touring Australia by air -- this sort of thing. They had to do a checkride on their first day in country to qualify for the trip.)

We were led into the studio by the producer. Peter had come prepared with an article from NPR and some other material, which he had sent to Rebecca ahead of time, and which he let me look over. (It reminded me of the way I used to show up to my weekly slot on KFAQ with pages of background material.) Here's Peter and Rebecca in the studio:

IMAG0488.jpg

Rebecca was a very gracious host, who asked intelligent questions and was fair and balanced. If she had a political leaning, it wasn't apparent.

The conversation began with Rebecca asking for our reaction to the results. I said that I was relieved that Hillary Clinton would not be president, but apprehensive that Trump will be president. We also discussed prospective appointments (Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani were still possibilities in that first week after the election), presidential power and checks and balances on those powers, filibusters, Obamacare, the electoral college, election turnout, the National Popular Vote proposal, and the need for reform of the nominating process. The final section of the conversation was about the prospects for Trump's promises.

My favorite moment was using a cricket analogy to explain the electoral college and getting a laugh and a complement from Rebecca. The context: South Africa had beaten Australia in the first match of a three-match test series by 177 runs, the latest failure in a long string of Australian losses in international cricket. But if Australia would win the remaining two matches by one run each, they'd win the series, even though their run total would still be 175 less than South Africa's. That's because the series is won by winning a majority of matches, not by getting the highest run total. If the winning criteria were different, you'd use different strategy. (As it happened, Australia lost the second match, too, failing to score as many runs in two innings as South Africa managed in one. After a massive overhaul of the lineup, Australia won the third test handily by seven wickets.)

Here's the whole segment, which runs about 20 minutes.

612 ABC Brisbane was my preferred listening when driving around town or on excursions around southeast Queensland. I appreciated the conversational approach -- where guests had time to develop ideas -- and the variety of serious and silly topics. As I find them online, I hope to share some of the segments that I found particularly interesting.

You can listen to 612 ABC Brisbane on their website or via various apps. ABC Radio has an archive of interviews and conversations on Soundcloud, as does 612 ABC Brisbane.

My other favorite radio station was 1296 4RPH -- Reading for the Print Handicapped. Most of the station's schedule consists of volunteers reading articles from the local and national newspapers and a variety of magazines and books. The articles are often long-form essays, including political analysis, book reviews, and arts criticism. It was real food for thought while driving or taking care of routine tasks. They also carry BBC World Service during the overnight hours and daily broadcasts from two American evangelical broadcasters -- John MacArthur ("Grace to You") and Chuck Swindoll ("Insight for Living"). You can listen to 4RPH via the TuneIn radio app.

If you'd like to see where everything settled out after all the votes were counted, The Green Papers is the most meticulous online resource for detailed, nitty-gritty election information. There you will be able to see a comprehensive popular vote total, including every write-in vote tabulated across the nation. (David Limbaugh, a columnist and author, younger brother of the radio talk show host, received 6 write-in votes. Bernie Sanders received 1, in California.)

The proprietor of the site, Richard E. Berg-Andersson, wrote an analysis back in 2001 about possible approaches to reform or abolish the Electoral College.

Happy election day! Enjoy your freedom to vote now, before Hillary ships you to a concentration camp or Donald abolishes elections and renames himself Caligula II.

Polling_Place_Vote_Here.jpg

Polls in Oklahoma are open until 7:00 p.m. If you need help finding your polling place, if you'd like to study a sample ballot before you go, the Oklahoma State Election Board has a one-stop-shop online voter tool. Put in your name and date of birth, and they'll look you up in the database, find your polling place and show you a photo of it and a map, will let you see a printable sample ballot, and, if you're voting absentee, it will show you when your ballot arrived at your county election board.

OSEB will have live results available after 7 p.m. Keep in mind that absentee ballots are counted first at the county election board, and then individual precincts bring their scanning ballot boxes to the county election board for processing. Candidates and news outlets who send runners to the precincts to read results posted on the door will have results more quickly than OSEB.

OSEB also has this very handy list of every candidate and every proposition on the 2016 Oklahoma ballot, arranged by county.

Here's my printable cheat sheet for the election.

BatesLine_ballot_card-2016_general.pdf

My thoughts on specific races and questions:

Here's an archive of all of my articles about Election 2016.

Many thanks to the sponsors and supporters of BatesLine who made this year's election coverage possible.

All right, Bob, how 'bout a little music to keep the people happy! Take it away, Leon!

"There'll be cheerin' and hootin' and some friendly shootin' just to keep the spirit of this big occasion."

Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys perform "Election Day" by Cindy Walker in the movie Wyoming Hurricane, starring Russell Hayden. Leon McAuliffe on vocals; Cotton Thompson, Bob Wills, and Jesse Ashlock on fiddle, Junior Barnard on guitar, Luke Wills on bass. And from the same movie, here's Cotton Thompson to deliver Cindy Walker's message for many of our candidates:

I hear you talkin', yes, I do,
But your talk-talk-talkin' don't ring true,
I'm listenin' politely, too,
But I don't b'lieve a word you say.

I hear you talkin', tellin' lies,
I can see it in those great big eyes.
I hear you talkin' wise,
But I don't b'lieve a word you say.

You say that I'm your honey-love,
That I'm all you're thinkin' of,
I hear you talkin', dove,
But you ain't been foolin' me.

I almost left the top line of my ballot blank.

When I was filling out my absentee ballot, I left the presidential race until the last. Neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton nor Gary Johnson -- our only three choices in Oklahoma -- are fit to serve as president of the United States. Trump says some things that are pleasing to conservative ears, but his livelihood was built on saying one thing to close a deal and then doing another, leaving him sitting pretty and his business partners in the lurch. Clinton is utterly venal and corrupt, selling American foreign policy to the highest bidder, with the money laundered through the family's "foundation," and setting up a private email server, putting American secrets at risk, in order to hide her corruption from the reach of open-records laws. Johnson is a buffoon, a fake libertarian who sees no problem with the State punishing small-business owners who wish to run their businesses in accordance with the understanding of marriage that was near-universal just a decade ago. I'm frightened by how triumphant Trump or victorious Clinton might use their new power to punish their adversaries; both are vengeful and egotistical. I'm disturbed by the willingness of many conservatives to shift their positions and lower their standards in order to justify their support for Trump -- not merely holding their noses and voting for him, which is understandable, but enthusiastically embracing him.

I had pondered voting for Johnson anyway, as a protest vote, but Josh Lewis, writing at SavingElephantsBlog.com, talked me out of it, pointing out that giving the Libertarian Party, particularly in its current state, a permanent foothold in Oklahoma will only cause more problems for electing conservatives:

Suffice it to say for now, I am a conservative and recognize libertarianism as a competing ideology. A vote for Gary Johnson is a vote that will ultimately strengthen the libertarian brand. If you're an ideological libertarian this makes sense. But if you're only casting a "protest vote" it may have dangerous unintended consequences.

So I was going to leave the ballot bank, but as I stared at the space on the ballot, I looked at the three lists of seven names under the names of the presidential and vice presidential nominees:

  • Republican: David Oldham, Teresa Turner, Mark Thomas, Bobby Cleveland, Lauree Elizabeth Marshall, Charles W. Potts, George W. Wiland, Jr.
  • Libertarian: Erin Adams, Mikel Dillon, Joel Britt Dixon, Rex L Lawhorn, Ephriam Zachary Knight, Craig A. Dawkins, Mark C. DeShazo.
  • Democrat: Marq Lewis, Bill John Baker, Mark Hammons, Betty McElderry, W. A. Drew Edmondson, Jeannie McDaniel, Rhonda Walters.

These are the people we're voting for today: One set of seven who will meet in Oklahoma City in December and cast the only votes any Oklahoman will cast for President and Vice President of the United States.

I'm under no illusions: Each of these people were selected by district and state conventions because of their loyalty to their party. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, they will be voting for the names above theirs on the ballot, which will lead either to a Trump-flavored catastrophe or a Clinton-flavored catastrophe.

ayatollah_edmondson_small.jpgBut what if no candidate appears to have won a majority of electoral votes? What if Utah goes for Evan McMillan, enough to hold Clinton and Trump short of 270? What if there finally emerges a scandal serious enough to chase Donald or Hillary into exile in Irian Jaya? What if (heaven forbid) one or both of the aged main-party candidates suffers a debilitating accident or health emergency? Would it still make no difference which set of seven electors are chosen by Oklahoma voters?

Under those unlikely circumstances, it would make a great deal of difference. I know many of the people running for elector, and I would trust David Oldham, Bobby Cleveland, and George Wiland to make a decision in the best interest of the nation. I would not trust Craig Dawkins, or Jeannie McDaniel, or Drew Edmondson, the former Ayatollah General.

It's taken me more time to describe my thought process than it took me to come to that conclusion. I had to decide to leave the race blank or mark it, seal up the ballot, get the affidavit notarized, mail it, and get on with trip preparations. I voted for George, David, Bobby, Mark, Teresa, Lauree, and Charles.

As is usual about three weeks before an election, I've received several requests for a voters' guide. Already voters who plan to be out of town are getting ready to cast an absentee ballot. If the presidential race weren't perplexing enough, we also have to decide seven state questions and whether or not to retain State Supreme Court justices and criminal and civil appeals court judges.

Even before I had a blog, it was common for friends to ask my opinion in the run-up to election day. One of the reasons I started a blog was to be able to "refer the honorable gentleman [or lady] to the answer I gave some moments ago."

I'm happy to be of service, and I'm honored by the trust BatesLine readers place in my judgment. But it takes time to do the research and to turn that research into writing. Although I'd be doing some of that research anyway, for my own use in voting, it takes much less time to read and study enough to decide my own vote than it does to gather and organize and present an article capable of providing the BatesLine readership with not only my opinion but my reasons and research, too.

My family and my employer have dibs on my time, and it seems my free time is quickly eaten up with yard work and laundry, and I'm behind on both. There's money invested, too, in hosting and domain fees -- the basics to keep BatesLine online -- and there's often some expense in doing research.

So before I invest that time in gathering and presenting this information to you, let me ask you, dear reader. What's it worth to you?

If the information you get here on BatesLine, particularly during election season, is valuable to you, there are some tangible ways to show your support:

The first way is to hit the PayPal tip jar over on the right sidebar. You can use your PayPal account or a major credit card to make a contribution to BatesLine. I don't have any totebags to send you in return, but I'll publish your name and donation amount on a list of contributors which will be prominently linked through election season (unless you ask me to withhold either name or amount).

The second way is to buy an ad on BatesLine. BatesLine readership is always at its highest in the run-up to an election, so it's a great time for a candidate (or any business that wants the attention of politically active Oklahomans) to run an ad. Even if you're not a candidate, you could still run an ad in support of your favorite candidate. (You're responsible for reporting it as an in-kind donation to the campaign.) Ads start as low as $30 a week for a text-only spot, $50 a week for a small ad with text and an image. There are discounts for multiple weeks.

Finally, if you need a good webhosting company, click the ad for bluehost. I get a small commission for new clients who sign up via my link. I've used bluehost for years, and I highly recommend their service.

That's the soft sell. Here's the hard sell, in the spirit of the late, great Gene Scott: I'm not going to blog about the Oklahoma 2016 election until you people GIT ONNA PHONES PAYPAL and demonstrate the value of the teaching.

Play "I Wanna Know"!

To put it more plainly, I'll start posting stories about the state questions and judicial races once there's been a response that indicates genuine interest.

While donations are welcome, a BatesLine ad is a smart move, giving you, your company, or your visibility with the thousands of Oklahoma voters who'll be dropping by over the next few weeks.

(NOTE: I reserve the right to reject ads or contributions. Reasons for rejection may be arbitrary or capricious but more likely will be so I can avoid posting something on my blog that advocates for a cause or a candidate that's anathema to me.)

Brett Farley resigned his post Saturday as Director of Communications for the Oklahoma Republican Party after the party chairman refused to issue a statement calling on Donald Trump to withdraw from the presidential race.

Writing on his blog, Farley said that he sent a message Saturday morning urging OKGOP chairman Pam Pollard to release a statement along the following lines:

"The Republican Party was founded to promote certain principles, rights and values that befit a free and moral people and to advance candidates for office who will defend them. It has been demonstrated finally and without question by this most recent revelation of what Donald Trump has said and what he said he does that he is wholly unfit to continue as the Republican nominee for President of the United States. We, the Republican Party of Oklahoma, join the growing chorus of party leaders and elected officials around the country in demanding that Mr. Trump withdraw as a candidate for president in order that the Republican National Committee may begin the necessary process to select an alternate nominee who will more appropriately represent our party and its members."

Farley explains his strong objections to Trump's conduct in the context of his role as a father of daughters:

I am the father of three daughters with a fourth daughter due in February. One of my greatest joys of late has been teaching my oldest daughter of twelve years about the sort of character and Christian ethic that befits a man worthy to call himself one day her husband and my son-in-law. I cannot and I will not, then, through some twisted logic attempt in the same breath to justify a vote for a man who is the quintessential opposite of everything I am teaching her to expect in a man. To put a finer point on it, I cannot bring myself to place a mark next to the name of a man whom I cannot trust to be alone in a room with my daughters.

Once upon a time the word 'party' meant more than simply a letter after a candidate's name. Not so long ago, membership in a political party meant necessarily that one ascribed to a set of principles and policies that he or she believed along with fellow members would aid our republic in creating a brighter future for our posterity. That word now clearly rings hollow.

If many of my Republican colleagues are to be believed, we have some sort of unholy imperative to cast a vote for a man simply for the fact that the letter 'R' follows his name, despite that that man has publicly professed values and positions in recent years -- and in many cases within recent months -- that are diametrically opposed to the very platform passed by the same delegates who gave him our party's nomination.

Farley dismissed the "Trump because SCOTUS" argument:

Never before has our party so willingly turned a deaf ear to history and practical political reality until now. Even in our best days, Presidents Reagan and Bush, solidly conservative Republicans, managed to appoint justices to the Supreme Court who gave the deciding votes in some of the most egregious decisions in the Court's history. Yet these same colleagues argue that we can trust a man who has broken promises to customers, business partners, wives and God himself to uphold his tentative pledge to nominate conservative justices.

Farley contrasted the GOP's rejection of Bill Clinton's sleazy behavior with the party's embrace of the same sort of sleaziness with an (R) after it.

December 17, 1998, my 22nd birthday, is a date I will never forget. It was the date originally scheduled for the impeachment vote by the House of Representatives for President William Jefferson Clinton. I recall vividly watching the television two days later at a Pizza Hut just off the campus of the University of Oklahoma as Republican members of the House voted finally to impeach. They did so after having concluded that the unbecoming behavior and subsequent obstruction and perjury by Clinton met the threshold for 'high crimes and misdemeanors."

Not even 20 years hence a majority of the members of that same party have nominated a man who publicly brags about that same felonious behavior. Not only has he refused to repent of his transgressions, Donald Trump celebrates them in the worst instance and, at best, offers a token apology that "some may have been offended." Is this what our party stands for today? Is this the man we want our children and grandchildren to look to as the exemplar of that "shining city on a hill"? I pray not.

In a Monday Facebook update, Farley stated that he "declined numerous on-camera and in-studio interviews because the story isn't about me; it's about the future of our party, our state and our country."

I respect Farley's willingness to take a stand at the cost of his livelihood.

I am disappointed in many of my Oklahoma Republican friends -- specifically our state party leaders -- who did not use the power at their disposal to stop Trump from becoming the nominee. The Oklahoma GOP executive committee could have nominated a slate of delegates to fight against Trump's nomination at the National Convention. Instead, Oklahoma GOP leadership decided to pretend that this was a normal year. They cooperated with rule changes that make it harder, if not impossible, for future conventions to block unfit candidates from receiving the nomination, that put our party's future at the whim of primary voters swayed by mass media.

We didn't have to face this disgusting dilemma between two major-party candidates who are both morally and ethically unfit to serve as George Washington's successor as our nation's Chief Executive.

RELATED: Evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem has walked back his earlier statement that voting for Trump was a moral choice and is now calling on Trump to step aside.

There is no morally good presidential candidate in this election. I previously called Donald Trump a "good candidate with flaws" and a "flawed candidate" but I now regret that I did not more strongly condemn his moral character. I cannot commend Trump's moral character, and I strongly urge him to withdraw from the election.

His vulgar comments in 2005 about his sexual aggression and assaults against women were morally evil and revealed pride in conduct that violates God's command, "You shall not commit adultery" (Exodus 20:14). I have now read transcripts of some of his obscene interviews with Howard Stern, and they turned my stomach. His conduct was hateful in God's eyes and I urge him to repent and call out to God for forgiveness, and to seek forgiveness from those he harmed. God intends that men honor and respect women, not abuse them as sexual objects.

Some may criticize me for not discovering this material earlier, and I think they are right. I did not take the time to investigate earlier allegations in detail, and I now wish I had done so. If I had read or heard some of these materials earlier, I would not have written as positively as I did about Donald Trump. I am grateful that Townhall.com has agreed to remove my earlier statement.

Grudem goes on to explain his dilemma: He is "deeply reluctant to simply walk away from the process in disgust, or vote for a write-in candidate," he is sympathetic to the concern that "voting for either candidate will destroy our Christian witness for the future," and he is concerned about the implications of a Clinton victory:

What if we fail to vote against the liberal support for abortion rights, government imposition of gender confusion on our children, hate speech laws used to silence Christians, and government-sanctioned exclusion of thousands of Christians from their lifelong occupations because they won't bow to the homosexual agenda -- will our failure to oppose these evils also destroy our Christian witness for the future? Will our grandchildren ask us why we failed to stop the imminent triumph of anti-Christian liberal tyranny when we had the ability to do so?

As to how I will vote, I honestly don't know at this point. The election is still a month away. I have friends on both sides who are surprised that I do not find this an easy question to decide. But I do not find it an easy question. I continue to pray and seek God's wisdom, and ask that God will yet provide a better solution.

Grudem concludes by calling on Christians to turn their eyes to God's sovereignty:

Though we may be tempted to become fearful or despondent, this turmoil in our nation provides a wonderful opportunity to renew our faith in God each day, "for kingship belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations" (Psalm 22:28). We should continue to pray, mindful of what Daniel told King Nebuchadnezzar in Babylon long ago: "The Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom he will" (Daniel 4:17).

Bureaucrats in the tank for Hillary, Trump's policy wonks quitting, why Ron Paul isn't backing the Libertarian ticket -- after the jump.

This has been out for a few weeks, but I thought it deserved to be noted here. Retired U. S. Sen. Tom Coburn, renowned for his adherence to principle and his often-lonely fight for fiscal sanity in Washington, has endorsed Jarrin Jackson, who is challenging incumbent Markwayne Mullin in Coburn's old 2nd Congressional District, and Jim Bridenstine, who is seeking re-election in the 1st Congressional District.

Here is the press release about Coburn's endorsement of Jarrin Jackson:

May 31, 2016 (Oologah, OK) - Today, former U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn announced his endorsement of combat veteran Jarrin Jackson who is challenging Congressman Markwayne Mullin in Oklahoma's second district.

Dr. Coburn, who had endorsed Mullin in 2012, said, "I am proud to endorse Jarrin Jackson, a combat veteran who understands and has fought for our Constitution. He will stand up for us in Washington and not go along to get along. He also will honor a six year self imposed term limit."

Coburn's endorsement comes on the heel of recent comments Rep. Mullin made about a similar term limit pledge he made in 2012. Then, when running as a first-time candidate, Mullin pledged to serve no more than three two year terms in Congress. However, when asked recently if this would be the last time he ran for the office, Mullin said he is seeking the Lord's guidance and will instead do what he thinks is best for his family and District.

"Dr. Coburn's endorsement is important," Jackson said, "because it reinforces his reputation for integrity and courage. He not only served us with honor when he held office, but he continues to serve by insisting that other public officials do the same. It takes courage to speak truth to power, no matter the truth, no matter the power. I welcome his support, his example, and the opportunity to build upon his work."

Here is Coburn's endorsement of Bridenstine:

Jim Bridenstine is a man of his word. He faces unrelenting pressure from the political elite in Washington, yet he has never wavered in his commitment to the First District or our country. His courageous voting record is proof that he cares more about the long term health of our nation than his own political career. That kind of moral courage is rare in Washington today. I am proud of the work he does on our behalf and thankful for the sacrifices that he and his family make to serve. I wholeheartedly endorse Jim Bridenstine.

I agree with Tom Coburn. While I was very skeptical of Jim Bridenstine and his motives when he ran in 2012, he has proven to be as principled as he said he would be, working to remove unprincipled and cowardly leadership, fighting to defund Obamacare, Obama's executive amnesty, and Planned Parenthood, and at the same time building a relationship with his colleagues that has allowed him to advance our interests in the 1st District.

Mullin, elected the same year, has followed the opposite path, refusing to buck leadership, refusing to oppose funding for unconstitutional purposes, and now laying the groundwork to revoke his term-limits promise.

After 13 sessions representing south Tulsa's House District 67 and advancing the cause of the unborn, State Rep. Pam Peterson has reached her term limit. Several candidates are in the running for the strongly Republican seat. I'm proud to join former U. S. Sen. Tom Coburn, a resident of the district, in endorsing Scott McEachin for House District 67.

TULSA, OK - Former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn endorsed local small businessman Scott McEachin in the south Tulsa Republican primary for State House District 67 to be held on Tuesday, June 28th. The seat was formerly held by Rep. Pam Peterson (R) and is open this year due to term limits. Tulsa-HD67 spans from 111th street to the south to 81st street to the north and from Yale to Garnett.

"It takes a strong statesman to stop the encroaching federal government and address the major challenges facing our state. Scott McEachin has the knowledge of the Founders' intent and will always look to our founding documents as the final word on the limits of government authority" stated Coburn.

McEachin started a small business and has practiced oil and gas law in Oklahoma since the 80's. Scott and his wife Debbie have been active participants in the South Tulsa community for decades; their three boys attended Jenks public schools.

"Scott McEachin's experience in oil and gas has given him a critical understanding of the industry that is at the heart of our Oklahoma economy. Scott is uniquely qualified because he has a deep understanding of the issues and will prioritize our government operations to make Oklahoma a state that can lead the nation. I'm proud to say that I will cast my vote for Scott McEachin in the primary election on June 28 for our local state representative, and I encourage my friends and neighbors in House District 67 to do the same." - Dr. Tom A. Coburn, M.D.

Dr. Tom A. Coburn, M.D. represented Oklahoma's 2nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-2001 and represented Oklahoma in the United States Senate from 2005-2015. Coburn is a fiscal and social conservative, known for his opposition to deficit spending and for his opposition to abortion.

A general comment about legislative races: Much has been written about the embarrassment of the recently ended legislative session and the last-minute resolution of the budget crisis. The State Chamber of Commerce, Tulsa Regional Chamber, and Oklahoma City Chamber will try to convince you that it's the fault of social and fiscal conservatives for trying to advance their principles. In fact, the budget crisis is largely the fault of legislative leaders in thrall to the Chamberpots -- clinging to their corporate welfare tax credits, afraid to challenge administrative bloat and duplication in common and higher education. Had the Chamber encouraged their legislators to accept the end of ineffective corporate tax credits and to embrace the detailed savings ideas recommended by groups like Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA), we could have resolved the budget crisis early in the session.

Moral of the story: On June 28, look for the Chamber label and vote for the other guy.

I've known Scott McEachin for a few years now and have always known him to be on the knowledgeable about public policy, principled, friendly, easy to work with, and I believe that District 67 and Oklahoma would be blessed to have him as a member of the legislature.

You can see and hear Scott McEachin speaking about the issues and his reasons for running on the videos page of his website, McEachinForHouse.com.

A subdued mood prevailed Saturday as 857 delegates convened at FirstMoore Baptist Church for the 2016 Oklahoma Republican Convention. (The 2012 convention drew approximately 1,400 delegates.)

The state convention in a presidential year has a national focus, electing two members of the Republican National Committee, electing 25 at-large delegates and alternates to the Republican National Convention, nominating two electors (and alternates), considering amendments to permanent state party rules, and voting on a state platform, which will be forwarded to the national convention platform committee for their consideration. Once the state convention adjourns, the newly elected national convention delegates caucus to select a delegation chairman and two members each for the national convention platform, rules, credentials, and permanent organization committees.

The presumptive (and presumptuous) Republican presidential nominee scarcely rated a mention. Donald Trump might as well be called Lord Voldemort -- he who must not be named. In her farewell at the conclusion of the convention, State Chairman Pam Pollard urged the delegates to get involved to help defeat Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Bernie Sanders, but wisely omitted any mention of the candidate who presumably will be the victor if they are defeated.

Trump signs and stickers were not much in evidence. Those displaying support for the egotistical oompa-loompa were few and far between.

My report will necessarily be incomplete. I was part of the check-in team, which processed about 600 delegates in a two-hour period, and then stayed to help with wrap-up as a handful of credentials problems were cleaned up. Tulsa-area software developer David Byte put together a solid, almost fool-proof, credentialing front-end and back-end system. Delegates were never kept waiting for more than 5-10 minutes during rare rush periods. A handful of counties had delegates who were issued badges but hadn't been recorded as checked-in, evidently a user error that could easily be guarded against next time. Because I was working at check-in, I missed all of the political speeches, so I couldn't tell you who spoke or what was said. To be honest, when the check-in system was packed up and loaded, I was tempted to call it a day, hop in my car, and head home. But there was important business to be done. Here's a summary of what happened.

Republican National Committee:

Incumbent Carolyn McLarty was re-elected to a third term as National Committeewoman, defeating Linda Huggard by a 75%-25% vote. McLarty is a leader among conservatives on the RNC, a founding member of the Republican National Conservative Caucus, and serves as chairman of the RNC's Permanent Committee on Resolutions. She was an early and enthusiastic endorser of Ted Cruz.

Steve Curry was elected to succeed retiring National Committeeman Steve Fair, defeating Richard Engle by a 60%-40% vote. Curry is chairman of the Oklahoma State Election Board and a former chairman of the Oklahoma County Republican Party. While Curry could be regarded as more of an establishment type, at least in temperament, than his opponent, many grassroots delegates (including myself) regarded Curry as a more trustworthy guardian of party values during a possible Trumpist dark age. Curry was willing to oppose a Trump nomination for RNC chairman; Engle dismissed the idea. Engle's credibility with party regulars was damaged by his eager participation in the 2012 "parking lot convention" -- an attempt by Ron Paul supporters to delegitimize the state convention that had just adjourned, at which the Paulestinians were defeated by a 60-40 supermajority.

Delegates and alternates:

The slate of 25 at-large delegates and at-large alternates was approved by an overwhelming roll call vote. (Attempts to suspend the rules to approve the slate by acclamation were rebuffed by convention chairman Greg Treat. A roll call vote was not taken in 2012, which Ron Paul supporters used as a pretext to challenge the convention's validity.) For the first time since 2004, no alternative slate was put forward. At the 2008 and 2012 conventions, Ron Paul supporters attempted to defeat the executive committee slate in hopes of electing fellow Paulestinians to the National Convention.

The rules have changed to make alternative slates more difficult to accomplish. The slate must be complete, filled out with people who had submitted paperwork to the state party, and with people who gave their consent to be included. By contrast, North Dakota voted on individual delegates, and the Cruz campaign was able to circulate a slate that included some who were on the executive committee slate and some who were not.

Had the Indiana primary turned out differently, we likely would have seen a concerted effort by the Cruz campaign to nominate a slate of loyalists and to turn out their supporters to defeat the executive committee slate and elect their own. With an open convention no longer seen as a realistic possibility and with the Cruz campaign in shutdown mode, that didn't happen.

The executive committee slate was an assortment of party activists and donors, typical of years past, going to Cleveland to be the studio audience for a week-long infomercial -- except that there did seem to be the sense that the delegates need to be prepared to defend against attempts by the Trump insurgency to water down the platform and the grassroots role in the party. The slate included a few vocal Trump supporters and a few committed Cruz supporters, but many in the delegation had endorsed other candidates in the March 1 primary or were silent.

Party rules:

A number of substantial amendments to the permanent state party rules were considered and were defeated. (A few housekeeping amendments were approved.) Party rule amendments must be proposed by a county convention and then approved by the state committee before going to the state convention for approval. The general sense was that the problems the rules intended to solve were better handled by the judgment of party leaders than additional rules and regulations. (Here are the current Oklahoma Republican Party Rules.)

A couple of the proposed amendments addressed the problems created by Republican popularity. Contested primaries are becoming more frequent, with challengers seeking to unseat incumbent Republicans over policy differences. Should party resources, such as voter databases, be equally available to all candidates seeking the GOP nomination or to none at all until the primary is settled? Former Democrats are changing parties to run for office -- how to distinguish between genuine conversions and conversions for political convenience? Should party officials vet candidates based on their views on the issues, such as commitment to pro-life principles? Here are each of the proposals. Only the housekeeping amendments were approved.

From Cleveland County: Clarifying that state committee meetings may be called for a location other than Oklahoma City.
From Cleveland County: Cleaning up sex-specific language about filling vacancies in party offices. Sex-specific quotas in state party offices were removed several years ago.
From Cleveland County: More cleanup of moot sex-specific language.
From Cleveland County: Removal of sex-specific language regarding executive committee appointments.
From Cleveland County: Clarifying budget committee appointments.
From Cleveland County: Clarifying that the highest-ranking Republican in each house is a member of the executive committee, aligning the rule with actual practice. (The rule previously specified the "floor leader" in each house, which is not the highest-ranking member when the party is in the majority.)
From Muskogee County: Cleaning up sex-specific language in several rules, largely duplicating several of the Cleveland County proposals.
From Tulsa County: Cleaning up sex-specific language in several rules, largely duplicating several of the Cleveland County proposals.
From Wagoner County: Adding several causes for removal specific to the state chairman and vice chairman, relating to involvement in a Republican primary. (Defeated.)
From Cimarron and Kay Counties: Forbidding Oklahoma GOP conventions and meetings from being held in a gun-free zone. (Defeated.)
From Cimarron and Kay Counties: Creating a pro-life committee, made up of one member from each county, to vet candidates for pro-life views prior to providing them with funding or support from the party. (Defeated.)
From Cimarron County: Prohibiting political lobbyists from participating in the Oklahoma Republican Party State Convention Process. (Defeated. It was pointed out that Tony Lauinger, head of Oklahomans for Life and a tireless lobbyist on his own dime for pro-life legislation, would be banned from the convention under the rule.)

Platform:

This year's platform committee was dominated by delegates from Oklahoma County, and it proposed a one-page statement of principles, followed by a handful of specific resolutions. The platform approved in 2015 was 25 pages long, and while many delegates agreed that the platform needs to be cleaned up and pared down, the two-page proposal was a Procrustean solution. A clear statement of principles is a good thing, but grassroots Republicans want to speak as a body on specific issues, as evidenced by the many individual platform planks proposed by precinct caucuses. The 2016 state platform committee seemed to discard all of that passion and hard work. A majority of delegates voted viva voce to postpone the 2016 platform indefinitely, killing the proposal and leaving the 2015 platform in place. The 2015 platform will be forwarded for consideration by the national platform committee.

Delegation meeting:

The at-large and district delegates elected Cruz supporters to both slots on the national platform committee (a job that requires an additional week's stay in Cleveland before the convention), to both slots on the permanent organization committee (which selects the convention chairman, parliamentarian, and secretary and sets the order of business -- normally non-controversial but possibly contentious this year), and to one of the two slots on the rules committee.

After a rally in Indiana yesterday, Ted Cruz crossed the street to talk to some Trump protestors. As the Trumpkins threw insults, Cruz responded with patience, logic, facts, and calm.

This is one reason among many that I am proud to support Ted Cruz for President. You may not like his political views, but you have to respect his willingness to speak respectfully and respond point-by-point to someone on the other side.

William Jacobsen comments on the event at Legal Insurrection:

The Trump supporter is rude and verbally abusive -- spewing the one-liners and insults he hears from Trump. Listen to the guy. Is there anything he or the crowd says that you couldn't image Trump saying himself and in the same manner?

This guy is the pro-Trump equivalent of Code Pink - full of insults but lacking in understanding or the willingness to understand. A sucker who thinks he is part of a great movement, but is simply being played by a master player. And unfortunately, he embodies everything that has gone wrong this electoral season.

Cruz doesn't get angry at the insults, though. Instead, he confronts the Trump supporter with facts that show that much of what Trump supporters use to attack Cruz actually more accurately reflects Trump.

It's another Ted Cruz moment for me.

Jacobson quotes a tweet by Tom Nichols that sums up the encounter:

Cruz: Trump said this. Trumper: No he didn't. Cruz: It was on national television. Go Google the clip. Trumper: Trump Trump Trump

Jacobson reminds us of a similar encounter last summer, when Code Pink protesters disrupted Ted Cruz's rally against the Iran nuclear deal:

Cruz could have reacted many ways. He could have shouted down the people shouting him down. He could have insulted them. He could have had security push them away.

But instead, he engaged. That's what was important to me. The confidence to engage rather than avoid. Standing face to face with hostile protesters was very Andrew Breitbart-like.

When you watch this video, forget who won the argument, but focus on Cruz's willingness to debate the leader of Code Pink, someone used to grabbing the spotlight. Cruz reduced Benjamin to a sideshow rather than center stage. It's almost as if she was not there.

Just before the Wisconsin primary, Tom Chantry, a Reformed Baptist pastor, wrote a thorough and fun-to-read account of Wisconsin political history and culture, aimed at his mostly non-Wisconsin readership. Reading it again, three weeks after the primary, and reading his follow-up pieces, I see that it isn't just solid political journalism, but some useful insights into the conservative path forward, drawing lessons from the success of Gov. Scott Walker and his allies in the Legislature at getting elected and reforming government in a conservative mold in a state with a history of far-left progressivism.

In the first article, Chantry explains how Wisconsin's liberals and conservatives are different from their national counterparts, and he provides a good summary of the rise of Scott Walker and the battles of the last six years. Especially interesting: What makes Wisconsin talk radio different from everywhere else.

In the 1980s a media revolution was touched off with the establishment of the Rush Limbaugh program, which was picked up in Milwaukee within a few months of its inception. Conservatism having been driven completely out of television and print news, radio became its home. Conservatives found that they were given a voice by Limbaugh and others who followed.

But after the last year it has become evident that the "conservative" radio hosts have only given conservatism a voice; they have not actually been that voice. Truth be told, they said so all along. Limbaugh gloats that he does not create conservatism, he merely reflects and amplifies it. That's another way of saying that national talk radio is not conservative at all, but populist. As long as populism involved patriotism, values, fiscal responsibility, and smaller government, the hosts appeared conservative, but with the emergence of the Donald, populism has pulled the so-called "conservative" media into the gutter....

Quite frankly, it would never have been possible to do in Wisconsin what Limbaugh did on the national stage. Most conservatives were hiding (politely) in their homes, trying not to offend their neighbors. There was little true conservatism to reflect or amplify. For conservative media to be established here, it took a determined, opinionated loudmouth. [Mark] Belling was that loudmouth.

It's hard not to listen to Belling if you live in Milwaukee. Other media is dying. The local newspaper is now printed on a postcard (or so it seems). If anything of substance happens in the state, Belling is often the guy who knows the whole background, the principle players, and the implications. His show is aggressive in a way that Limbaugh's never was. Belling doesn't care to give his listeners a voice. He wants them to become conservatives, now! Amazingly, it has worked. He has carved out a space for himself, and he's transformed Wisconsin media in the meantime.

Chantry lists a number of other conservative local talk show hosts in Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay and concludes:

What ties these voices together is their conscientious advance of conservatism over the last few decades in Wisconsin, a state which, remember, was very, very Blue. The conservatism they advance is principled and philosophically disciplined, not mere gut-reaction conservatism. With the exception of Belling (and sometimes McKenna) it is delivered in the voice of Midwestern courtesy, but it is serious, militant conservatism nonetheless. It has begun to make a mark.

Chantry provides a detailed but fast-paced overview of Scott Walker's rise and the Left's descent into gibbering madness in response. Regarding Walker:

There are four types of governor in America: conservative governors in conservative states, liberal governors in liberal states, moderate governors in various states, and Scott Walker. I cannot think of any analogy to his governorship: he has governed as a consistent (some would say far-right) conservative in the ancient home of American Progressivism, and he's won.

Corrupt and incompetent Democrat officials opened the door for Walker to win election, and he used the opportunity to govern effectively and efficiently, which allowed him to rise to the governor's mansion.

Here's part 2: The GOP race in the last week before the primary, in which he discusses the talk radio buzzsaw that Trump complacently strolled right into:

Two differences from the national scene are worthy of note. First, Wisconsin simply has no passive conservative media. Limbaugh and Hannity would have flopped if they had started on this stage, for reasons I described yesterday. Wisconsin's conservative media is another breed, and they are heavily invested in keeping Trump's non-conservative movement from invading the state's Republican party.

But second, and equally important, Trump didn't seem to know anything about this. It is no surprise to any of us; the hosts have been railing against Trump for weeks now. When I heard that Sykes would be interviewing Trump, I thought, "He really is mad!" He wasn't mad, though, just ignorant. His campaign isn't apparently doing much state-by-state research, and Trump walked into the Wisconsin talk radio buzz-saw unprepared.

And Chantry discusses Trump's ill-advised attack on Scott Walker in retaliation for Walker's endorsement of Cruz:

Now Walker remains exhibit A for Wisconsin courtesy. He did not say that Trump is a blow-hard, a clown, an aging lecher, a corrupt insider, and an entire fraud. When asked if his endorsement was intended as an anti-Trump statement, he continued to talk about Cruz. It didn't matter; everyone knows what Walker is likely to think of Trump.

Trump himself, who apparently has never discussed Walker with anyone but his New York elite liberal buddies, apparently doesn't think that matters. Apparently his genius campaign staff never told him that Walker has an 80% approval rating among the Republicans whose votes he is trying to win, because Trump immediately decided to attack him....

Then came the Wednesday morning rally in Janesville, where he convinced his minions to boo favorite son Paul Ryan. This was also the rally in which the young woman among the far-left Trump protesters was assaulted and pepper-sprayed by Trump supporters. If only she and others like her had realized that inside the event, Trump was repeating all their favored attacks on Walker!

That afternoon Mark Belling promptly cancelled a vacation, stormed into his studio, sent his guest-host home, and went to war against Trump. If you ever thought Belling is a crass jerk, you should have heard Wednesday's show! (He actually called Trump a "butthead" on the air.) Belling is, however, influential, and he has been hammering away on Trump, insisting that the insurgent candidacy threatens to undo all the conservative advances of the last few years in this state.

And part 3: The Wisconsin results.

Voters would do well to recall the maxim that all that glitters is not gold. Miners who get excited over the glitter of iron pyrite are identified by the mineral's common name: fools' gold. It is not what it first appears. Experts, though, whether gold miners or jewelers, are not fooled. The reason is their familiarity with the real thing. If you know what gold really looks like, pyrite isn't much of a substitute.

And honestly, that is the basic reason for Trump's collapse in Wisconsin. Wisconsin has its angry conservatives, but if they've been paying any attention at all, they've seen the real deal. It is easy to focus on Scott Walker; the truth is that the Wisconsin Republican party has been disciplined and conservative in the last six years. Assemblymen and senators passed Act 10; there have been many courageous acts along the way. Our conservatives have been pure, 24-carat gold.

In spite of serving in his second term as governor, Walker is a true outsider. He seems genuinely unconcerned with what his colleagues and the media think of him. Wisconsin conservative politicians are not play-acting; they have consistently articulated conservative principles. "Reform" is not an empty battle-cry in this state; we have watched one reform after another enacted. Next to serious conservatism, the Donald Trump dog-and-pony show is rather sad.

Donald Trump has come this far by reflecting and amplifying the anger of the electorate.... But anger itself is not a policy. Years ago Republicans laughed at Bill Clinton for "feeling our pain." We wanted to know what exactly he was going to do about our pain. But now, when Trump feels our anger, how do we respond?

One of the most striking elements of the Trump phenomenon is the utter absence of prescription. Trump supporters love to call talk radio and yell about their grievances. When they call Limbaugh or Hannity, the host responds, "Yes, I sense how angry you are." Gee, thanks, Dr. Phil! But when the same [sup]porters called the actual conservative hosts in Wisconsin, something else entirely happened. The callers were asked what they wanted to see done about the anger, or what they thought Trump would change. The exchanges that followed were embarrassing to hear.

The callers were quick to say repeatedly how bad politicians are, and how much they've taken advantage of the country, but they couldn't think of anything to do about it....They have no actual interest in Trump's alleged policies (I say "alleged" because I don't believe he is a complete idiot, either), but instead are drawn to his tone.

This appeal is, however, rather limited in a state where policy prescriptions have born real fruit. Walker and the Republican leadership in Wisconsin have never appeared angry. (All the anger has been on the left. I say again, Trump's fury and that of his supporters looks radical and leftist to us.) Instead, they have actually done things. They have addressed the root of conservative anger rather than stoking the flame. This is a conservatism that leads somewhere, not a populism that leaves us panting when our tantrum is over. Once you've had the one, you've little desire for the other.

American politics has been reduced to mere symbolism.... The right in our country complains incessantly that the left only cares about symbolism and feelings, not substance and results. But in the wake of the Trump phenomenon, we have to ask how much of the right is also dominated by its feelings.

(As an aside, I have been one observer unsurprised by Trump's success among "evangelicals." Evangelicalism is not a movement concerned with truth and righteousness, but with how one feels. Trump's candidacy is pretty much identical to an evangelical worship service: light on substance, playing fast and loose with truth, but very emotionally satisfying. How was anyone surprised by his early successes? Trump is an evangelical!)

What is needed - not only by conservatism but by the country - is principled but practical leadership. Emotive conservatism, whether it is the "compassionate conservatism" of Bush or the angry populism of Trump, leads nowhere. We need less emphasis on our angst and more on policy; less on style and more on substance.

And to that end, I would suggest the number one change needed in the conservative movement: we need a radical revolution in conservative media. The era of Limbaugh and Hannity needs to end. I, for one, will not listen to either any more - not even in passing. We've had decades of reflection and amplification of our feelings, and where has it gotten us? Our federal government is more leftist than ever, the conservative electorate is angrier than ever, and now the therapeutic hosts are holding our hand sympathetically while we go about trying to nominate a B-list celebrity clown for the most powerful office in the world.

I can tell you from inside Wisconsin, it doesn't have to be this way. Conservative politicians don't need to be symbols of our anger, and conservative media doesn't need to be an empty sounding board. We can change this.

Yesterday, I saw a Politico story with this headline:

GOP rivals humble themselves before the party's elite

Cruz, Kasich and Trump team makes pitches as delegates dangle their support.

Knowing the three people who represent Oklahoma on the RNC, I can't accept the term "party elite." Oklahoma GOP chairman Pam Pollard, national committeeman Steve Fair, and national committeewoman Carolyn McLarty are long-time conservative grassroots volunteers who won the trust of a lot of other grassroots volunteers in order to be elected to their positions. They aren't wealthy, they aren't funded by special interest groups.

By profession, they're an accountant, a marketing director at a company that makes jellies and jams, and a retired small-town veterinarian, respectively.

Pam Pollard held a variety of low-level positions in the Oklahoma County Republican Party and the Oklahoma Federation of Republican Women, rising to higher levels of leadership on the strength of her faithful service. She was a unifying consensus choice to step in when Randy Brogdon resigned the chairmanship last year. She is known as a stickler for fairness and following the rules. She's also a dynamite networker. Here she is at the 2004 Republican National Convention, with a blazer full of pins that she traded with delegates from other states.

Pam Pollard at the 2004 Republican National Convention

Steve Fair served many years as a lonely advocate for conservatism and the Republican Party in southwestern Oklahoma, a rural region that stubborn in clinging to their long-time Democrat voting patterns. Fair slowly built up a strong Republican infrastructure, nurturing qualified candidates who could run for office, first as a leader in the Stephens County party, then as chairman of the 4th Congressional District organization. For years, Fair has written a weekly newspaper column called "Fair and Biased," making the case for conservative ideas to southwestern Oklahoma voters. Fair is not running for reelection as national committeeman, which disappoints me greatly. (I have qualms about the two candidates seeking to replace him.)

Carolyn McLarty is a long-time leader in our state's Eagle Forum chapter. She is a founding member of the Republican National Conservative Caucus, is Chairman of the RNC Resolutions Committee, and has served as the Chairman of the Conservative Steering Committee -- working to organize conservatives on the RNC to resist moves toward the mushy middle.

These three Oklahomans aren't elite in any way except for the hard work they've exerted on behalf of conservative principles in the Republican Party.

UPDATE 2016/04/30: This blog entry received an approving mention and an extended quote in today's editorial roundup in the Oklahoman:

This election cycle has been dominated by claims that the Republican "elite" are at war with the "grass roots" of the party. In a recent post, conservative Tulsa blogger Michael Bates highlights how ludicrous that characterization is....

Indeed, the "elite" label has been applied so broadly one wonders who isn't among that group's alleged members.

Also, I've added links to Steve Fair's blog, and to the profiles of Fair and McLarty on gop.com.

CORRECTION: BatesLine incorrectly identified Robert Ford as Creek County Republican Chairman. He is in fact Creek County 1st District Committeeman.

Supporters of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz swept today's Oklahoma 1st Congressional District Republican Convention, winning all three delegate seats and all three alternate slots by wide margins.

Tulsa 9/12 Project leader Ronda Vuillemont-Smith, State Rep. David Brumbaugh, and Wagoner County Assessor Sandy Hodges were elected as delegates, and State Sen. Nathan Dahm, Creek County District Committeeman Robert Ford, and Oklahomans for Life president Tony Lauinger were elected as alternates.

While there was a visible Trump contingent present, led by Paul Nosak, the vote totals indicate it amounted to only about a quarter of the convention. Cruz campaign staffer Hudson Talley had come up from Houston for the convention and was handing out delegate slates to Cruz supporters. There wasn't really a whip operation at work -- no signals or signs -- which shows in the fact that only one of the six positions was filled without a runoff, and that one was only by a slim margin. Cruz (or at least no-Trump) supporters scattered their votes on each initial ballot, but coalesced in each runoff. Nosak, wearing a large Trump button on his lapel, was the distant runner-up in five of the six elections, but lost handily in each runoff. His best result was 31% in the final vote for the 3rd alternate position, after about a third of the delegates had gone home.

Oklahoma Republican State Chairman Pam Pollard spoke at length about the upcoming state convention, the process of electing the 25 at-large delegates, and the matter of binding delegates at the national convention. Pollard emphasized that OK GOP party rules and state law are in alignment and that delegates are bound until their assigned candidate is no longer an officially nominated candidate, alluding to often-discussed rule 40(B), which requires that a candidate have support of a majority of delegates from at least eight states to have his name entered into nomination at the National Convention. Pollard said that if all three candidates who won delegates in the March 1 primary -- Cruz, Trump, and Rubio -- were officially nominated for the 1st ballot, she would simply announce the result from the primary, without polling the delegates. Only if one or more of those three candidates ceased to have the support for nomination would she poll the delegation.

During the morning session, while the credentials committee was tallying registrations, U. S. Sen. Jim Inhofe and U. S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine addressed the convention. Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr led the convention in the Pledge of Allegiance but did not deliver a speech.

All Republican candidates who were present were given an opportunity to speak. While votes were being counted, delegates heard from incumbent Republican National Commiteewoman Carolyn McLarty and her challenger, National Committeeman candidates Steve Curry and Richard Engle (incumbent Steve Fair is not seeking re-election), Tulsa County Sheriff Vic Regalado, recently elected to fill the remaining months of Stanley Glanz's unexpired term, and Luke Sherman, who is competing for the nomination for the next full four-year-term, Amanda Teegarden (Senate 39), Scott McEachin (House 67), Richard Grabel (Tulsa County Commission District 2), Michael Willis (Tulsa County Clerk), Allen Branch (City Council District 6).

Term-limited State Sen. Brian Crain and parliamentarian John Wright (former state representative) did a fine job of running the meeting efficiently and without controversy. The convention convened a little after 9 a.m. and adjourned shortly after 3 p.m.

By the numbers:

235 delegates registered at Tulsa's Renaissance Hotel for today's convention out of 419 allocated votes. Allocations are based on number of votes cast for the top-of-ticket Republican nominee in the last general election. Tulsa County had 181 delegates out of 320 votes allocated, Wagoner County had 34 delegates out of 46 votes allocated, Washington County had 18 delegates out of 38 votes allocated, and the portion of Creek County in CD 1 had 2 delegates out of 4 votes allocated. No one was present to represent the portion of Rogers County in CD 1, which had 11 allocated votes.

Fourteen candidates filed for the three delegate slots, which were filled in separate votes. Ballots were counted by county, reported in a roll call, then weighted based on the ratio of allocated votes to delegates voting for each county and summed. (Weighting is in accordance with long-standing state party rules. For example, each Tulsa County delegate's vote was worth 320 allocated / 181 actual or approximately 1.77 votes. Each Creek County delegate's vote was worth 4 allocated / 2 actual or 2 votes.) If no candidate had a majority of the vote, a runoff was held between the top two candidates, based on the weighted vote.

David Oldham was nominated to the Oklahoma Republican presidential elector slate, winning 48% on the first ballot over George Wiland and Peggy Dau. Wiland withdrew from the runoff because of the margin on the first ballot and in the interest of time. Dau was named Elector Alternate, who would replace Oldham on the ballot in the event of his death or ineligibility.

Delegate results:

1st Delegate: Cruz supporter Ronda Vuillemont-Smith finished first with 44% to 11% for Paul Nosak, who supports Donald Trump for president, with remaining votes scattered among the candidates. In the runoff, Vuillemont-Smith won with 76% to 24% of the weighted vote, 162-47 in the raw total.

2nd Delegate: Brumbaugh, state chairman for the Cruz campaign, received 43% on the first ballot to 17% for Nosak. In the runoff, Brumbaugh prevailed by 73% to 27% weighted, with a raw vote of 147-54.

3rd Delegate: Hodges finished first on the initial ballot with 42% to 20% for Nosak. In the runoff, Hodges won by 74% to 26% or a raw total of 153-50.

Alternate results:

1st Alternate: 1st ballot, Dahm 50.35%, Nosak 15.10%, Lauinger 14.99%. No runoff required. Dahm received 98 raw votes to 28 for Nosak and 28 for Lauinger with 36 scattered among other candidates.

2nd Alternate: 1st ballot, Lauinger 32.5%, Ford 26%, Nosak 22%. Raw vote was Lauinger 62, Ford 49, Nosak 41, other candidates 22. Runoff, Ford 50.22%, Lauinger 49.78%, 89-88 raw vote.

3rd Alternate: 1st ballot, Lauinger 48.3%, Nosak 18.8%, Debra Cook, state committeewoman for Washington County, 17.7%. Runoff, Lauinger 68.61%, Nosak 31.39%, 110-50 raw vote.

Donald J. Trump
‏@realDonaldTrump

How is it possible that the people of the great State of Colorado never got to vote in the Republican Primary? Great anger - totally unfair!

7:28 PM - 10 Apr 2016

Michael Bates ‏
@BatesLine

@realDonaldTrump Is it unfair to good kicking teams that field goals are only worth three points?

8:19 PM - 10 Apr 2016

Michael Bates ‏
@BatesLine

@realDonaldTrump Grassroots conventions like Colorado's were how a majority of delegates were selected when Reagan won.

8:18 PM - 10 Apr 2016
John Hawkins
‏@johnhawkinsrwn

What does the fact that Trump's official campaign apparatus is an unorganized, embarrassing train wreck tell you about how he'd govern?

11:13 PM - 7 Apr 2016

Ted Cruz swept the field in Colorado this last week, as Republican grassroots delegates at congressional district caucuses and state conventions elected delegates to the National Convention who are officially unbound, but who have all declared their intention to vote for Cruz.

Jim Geraghty has an accurate and detailed explanation of Colorado's process:

Colorado had primaries until 2003, when Gov. Bill Owens and bipartisan majority in the state legislature eliminated them in presidential contests, contending it was a waste of money and that state parties should pay for them, not taxpayers....

On March 1, Colorado Republicans gathered at 2,917 precinct caucuses to select delegates to the County Assemblies and District Conventions. If you're a Coloradan with a view on the Republican primary, this is when you got to vote. At the County Assemblies, those delegates elect delegates to the Congressional District and State Conventions. (Colorado Republicans pick three delegates and three alternates from each of the seven congressional districts, and then another 13 to represent statewide.)

This is the way representative democracy is supposed to work: Voters choose representatives whom they know and trust to exercise good judgment as they face circumstances that could not have been foreseen.

Geraghty explains that in years past, Colorado conducted a non-binding straw poll on precinct caucus night, but when the 2012 Republican National Convention voted that, for the 2016 race, any such poll would have to bind delegates in some way, Colorado Republicans opted out, voting last August that no presidential preference poll would be conducted at this year's caucuses:

Republican National Committee bylaws do not allow states to hold non-binding preference polls. Any straw poll conducted at the caucus in 2016 would bind delegates to the poll's results, even if a candidate ultimately decides to suspend or withdraw their campaign.

"Eliminating the straw poll means the delegates we send to the national convention in Cleveland will be free to choose the candidate they feel can best put America back on a path to prosperity and security," Chairman Steve House said. "No one wants to see their vote cast for an empty chair, especially not on a stage as big as the national convention's."

(It should be noted that Iowa's caucus-night straw poll was also non-binding in years past. This year it had binding effect, because of the rule change approved at the 2012 national convention. Likewise, Minnesota, DC, Maine, and other states that held caucuses. Most opted to continue the presidential preference vote this year and to allow the vote to bind their delegates. Colorado, North Dakota, and Wyoming are among the few exceptions.)

I suspect Colorado's decision was influenced by the large field of credible candidates. Colorado wanted to have maximum flexibility to respond to changes in the field over time. They didn't want to send delegates to Cleveland bound to a candidate who had dropped out but was refusing to release his delegates. They may also have considered that a state with uncommitted delegates would have more leverage at the convention.

The Republican Party (unlike the Democrats) operates on a federal model, with the national rules providing a broad framework within which state parties have great discretion for choosing their delegates.

The Colorado process is the same one that was used in many more states back when Ronald Reagan was running for the White House. In 1976 and in 1980, Reagan supporters were in the majority at the state's six congressional district conventions and the state convention, While the national delegates were not bound to vote for Reagan in any way, they were elected by their state and district delegate peers precisely because they were declared and credible Reagan fans.

In those days, many primaries were non-binding "beauty contests" -- tests of a candidate's popularity that might influence the choice of the delegates.

This weekend Donald Trump also claimed that Cruz was "stealing" his delegates in states where he won primaries but failed to manage the process of electing loyalists as national delegates. That happened this weekend in Missouri, as Cruz supporters were elected to attend the national convention, although many will be obliged to vote for Trump on the first ballot.

I win a state in votes and then get non-representative delegates because they are offered all sorts of goodies by Cruz campaign. Bad system!

8:47 AM - 10 Apr 2016

In most states, grassroots delegates to congressional district and state conventions pick the live human beings who will attend the National Convention, even if a primary binds those delegates to vote for a particular candidate on the first ballot. (Every state has different rules as to how long a delegate will be bound -- through one ballot, multiple ballots, until the candidate releases his delegates.) Even if a delegate is bound to vote for a particular presidential candidate, he is free in every other vote taken at the convention, including the adoption of rules and the selection of a vice presidential nominee.

No one is getting offered goodies by the Cruz campaign. Most of the people who showed up at the precinct caucuses, got elected to county, district, and state conventions are Cruz supporters, so they elected national convention delegates who also support Cruz.

These delegates to the district and state conventions are mostly long-time grassroots Republicans. Some got involved back when Reagan challenged Gerald Ford in '76. Some became involved in the late '80s at the urging of the Christian Coalition, because they were concerned about abortion and other social issues. Some were energized by listening to Rush and by the 1994 takeover of the House and Senate. Some were stirred to action in response to 9/11. Some were inspired by Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012. The Tea Party brought some into the party. They all got involved to fight for conservative values, individual liberty, and a strong America at home and abroad. They stayed involved, volunteering to knock doors, make phone calls, or man the party booth at the state fair.

These district and state delegates are not big donors. They give of their time and their energy to elect good candidates. They have an investment of time and love. They study the issues and the candidates and draw their own conclusions. They aren't swayed by expensive TV ad campaigns. The fact that this sort of person tends to support Ted Cruz over Donald Trump should tell you something.

Most of these grassroots Republicans who serve as district and state delegates are just as disgusted with Republican leadership in Washington as Trump supporters are. They see Trump as someone who has been part of the problem. They see Cruz as someone who has challenged the establishment, who understands the issues, and who has a practical plan to address them.

Trump supporters can get involved, too, but it requires some commitment.

The anger and confusion about Colorado's process is a consequence of lazy, sloppy reporting about the nominating process. In most years, the idea that delegates are mere points on a scoreboard is a reasonable approximation to reality. In most years, at some point a bandwagon effect kicks in, causing candidates to drop out and later states to back the front-runner by ever-widening margins. That simplified model broke down this year, because Republicans aren't jumping on the bandwagon, because a credible and crafty challenger remains in the race, because it's increasingly likely that no one will have the nomination sewn up before the convention,

When we learn that a process is more complicated than we were led to believe, our response ought to be one of wonder and humility. But in Trumpistan, finding out that your uninformed understanding is incorrect leads to childish rage and blame-shifting.

I like the caucus and convention system of choosing unbound delegates. It means that the nominating process is in the hands of Republicans who were paying attention to politics before yesterday. Primaries put the power of nomination into the hands of voters (many of them not even Republicans) who are swayed by massive TV ad buys and whose perception of the candidates is entirely shaped by mass media.

MORE:

Melanie Sturm, a conservative columnist who was elected as a national convention delegate at the Colorado Third District caucus, gives her perspective.

Back on February 27, 2016, before the precinct caucuses on March 1, Colorado Republican Chairman Steve House explained the reasons state party leaders opted against a binding presidential preference vote the previous August:

At no time prior to this year has a straw poll bound delegates to specific candidates. Many thought that the 2012 straw poll bound delegates to winner Rick Santorum. In fact it did not....

This year the Republican National Committee requires that if a party conducts a straw poll it must bind delegates to the results.

Some ask why the Colorado GOP doesn't just comply and bind all of our delegates proportionally to the result of a straw poll. There are a number of reasons the executive committee decided against the poll this year and I won't go into all of them.

However, I want to share my most pressing concern with doing a binding preference poll. There is no such thing as a binding preference poll because when you actually award delegates via a poll it's not a poll - it's an election. The results could affect the outcome of the presidential race because this year the race is likely to be very close if not unsettled at the national convention.

So what's wrong with an election? Nothing if you are actually going to run it with all the precautions and security measures of an actual election. In our case we have over 2000 precincts in 64 counties where there is no uniformity of ballots, no uniform credentialing training process, no clarity on who actually counts ballots, no clear answer to who controls the tally sheets, and no uniform transparent process with integrity in the event there needs to be a recount. The prospect of awarding delegates through a straw poll with so many systemic loopholes and fraud risks is an unacceptable gamble given the stakes of this presidential election.

Picking our delegates through a controlled and secure four step process that is open to all registered Republicans is far preferable than an opaque straw poll. Something needs to change going forward but election integrity is still more important to me than any other factor....

Ari Armstrong, a newly registered Republican voter, writes about his experience

A completely fair headline of what happened this year would have been, "Colorado Republicans Select Presidential Delegates the Same Way They Did Last Time." But the reality of the situation is so much more boring that the trumped up version of it.

To return to my experiences with the caucuses: The woman elected in my precinct as a delegate to the state convention ran on an explicitly anti-Trump platform. She made this very clear, and she was elected by the rest of us with this understanding. Claims that the rest of us were somehow "disenfranchised" are ridiculous; we all got to vote for delegates, and everyone in the room had a chance to run to become a delegate (most didn't want to). It truly was a grass-roots process. I was elected as the alternate delegate to the state convention, also on an explicitly anti-Trump platform.

The simple fact is that the Republicans at my precinct caucus mostly disfavored Trump, and evidently that is true of most other precincts as well. Trump lost in Colorado because he's just not very popular here....

Should Colorado give up the caucuses in the future? As noted, I'm not totally sure, but I'd like to rebut one reason for saying we should. The claim basically is that, because people have to attend a meeting and then select delegates to conventions, who then select national delegates, the caucuses are not sufficiently democratic.

It is true that, to participate in the caucuses, you have to do more than mark an "x" on a piece of paper. You actually have to (gasp!) go to a meeting. If you want to become a delegate to a congressional or state convention, where national delegates are picked, you actually have to stand up and make your case to your fellow Republican voters (and pay a convention fee). I'm not convinced this is a problem. Arguably, it is a feature, not a bug.

Here's a story from 2012 about the national rule change that required any caucus straw poll to be binding, which in turn prompted Colorado's decision to cancel their straw poll.

MORE: Here's a good explainer from Jay Cost about the delegate election process and Trump's whinging.

Party conventions are open processes. Delegates to these gatherings are not handpicked by party bosses. They are regular Republicans who participate because they have the time and interest to do so. The Cruz team put in the effort to organize regulars loyal to its candidate; the Trump campaign failed to do so. Consider, for instance, the Colorado convention held earlier this month. Delegates to that convention were chosen at precinct caucuses held on Super Tuesday--and any registered Republican was invited to attend. That the Trump campaign failed to get its supporters to those caucuses is not the fault of the Cruz campaign, the Colorado Republican party, or anybody else except the Trump campaign.

The Republican party does not belong to its presidential candidates in the way that Trump presumes. In important respects, it still belongs to the party regulars who attend these conventions. Starting in the 1970s, the party organization began sharing authority with voters to select the presidential nominee, but sovereignty was never handed over to the electorate lock, stock, and barrel. The delegates to the national convention, chosen mostly by these state and district conventions, have always retained a role--not only to act when the voters fail to reach a consensus, but to conduct regular party business.

This is hardly antidemocratic, by the way. Party organizations such as these are a vital, albeit overlooked part of our nation's democratic machinery. The party regulars at the district, state, and national conventions do the quotidian work of holding the party together between elections: They establish its rules, arbitrate disputes, formulate platforms to present to the voters, and so on. It would be impossible to have a party without these sorts of people doing work the average voter doesn't care about.

And these people are hardly the "establishment" in any meaningful sense of the word. Consider the process in Colorado.... But the process was open to any registered Republican, and more than a thousand people served as delegates at the state convention. There were some big political players involved, naturally, but by and large they were just average people. The same goes for the state conventions in places like Wyoming and North Dakota. These meetings in Cheyenne and Bismarck are in no way beholden to, or the equivalent of, the power players working on K Street.

MORE: Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli responded assertively to accusations that the Cruz campaign was bribing delegates or twisting arms:

"You know what the goodies we're promising people are?" Cuccinelli asked. Then almost whispering like it was a big secret while partially covering his mouth, Ken Cuccinelli answered his own question.

"They can have their Constitution back. And they can have economic growth and a plan to actually execute it. And a candidate who can go head-to-head and defend it. Donald Trump won't even debate this issues because he can't debate them.

Ted Cruz has a plan to expand freedom, to create opportunity across America with a tax plan that wipes out special interest power. He has a plan to return security to this country. And we have a president where that's desperately needed to be improved."

UPDATED: Added a new tab to the spreadsheet to game out an alternative scenario: Cruz 45, Trump 40, Kasich 15 in remaining contests.

Despite the near-sweep last night for Donald Trump, Ted Cruz still has a plausible path to arriving at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland with enough pledged delegates to win the nomination on the first ballot.

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I've seen many hasty, sloppy delegate-count projections that make faulty assumptions. They often assume that future delegate allocations will be roughly proportional to future popular vote totals. That's easier than analyzing the rules of the states yet to vote.

Twenty-one states and American Samoa have yet to vote. I've looked at each state's rules (thanks to the venerable and detail-obsessed website The Green Papers) and applied one assumption, as a starting point for discussion: That the anti-Trump forces coalesce behind Ted Cruz, who manages a 51% win in every remaining contest. That's 51% of the vote statewide, 51% in each congressional district (if delegates are allocated by CD), 51% in caucuses and conventions.

51% is not a tall order. Trump did not manage to win a majority of the vote in any jurisdiction on March 15, with the exception of the Northern Marianas. Florida -- Trump's second home -- is the only state that he plausibly could have won in a head-to-head match with Cruz.

Many states remaining are plurality-take-all. A few are proportional, except that a 50% winner gets the grand prize of all the delegates.

There are three remaining caucus-and-convention states: Wyoming has to elect its 14 statewide delegates. American Samoa will pledge 6 (its RNC members will remain unpledged). Colorado will elect 34 delegates at its state convention: 14 will be chosen by the convention as a whole, 3 by each congressional district caucusing separately, and the ballots will show the presidential candidate to whom each delegate candidate is pledging his or her support. (Colorado will also send its RNC members unpledged.)

What people who have never been involved in caucuses and conventions fail to understand is that a majority of the delegates to a CD or state convention pick ALL the national convention delegates. Back in 1976, a majority of delegates to the Oklahoma Republican convention were Reagan supporters, which meant that they elected a unanimous slate of 36 Reagan delegates to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City. Based on the Wyoming county convention results, it seems likely that Cruz supporters will control the state convention. I would expect the Colorado and American Samoa conventions will go the same way -- if anti-Trump has majority support, and if Trump opponents coalesce behind Cruz, Cruz would win all of those delegates.

I've uploaded a spreadsheet to Google Docs showing the math. If Cruz has a bare majority of support in the remaining contests, he enters Cleveland with 1289 bound delegates, enough to win the nomination on the first ballot. That doesn't depend on any of the unbound delegates voting for Cruz. Trump would enter Cleveland with 734 bound delegates.

Notice too that I haven't allocated the Pennsylvania congressional district delegates. According to The Green Papers:

Rule 8.4 of the Republican State Committee of Pennsylvania's Rules states that all delegates elected by Congressional District "...shall run at large within the Districts and shall not be officially committed to any particular candidate on the ballot.".

Conceivably, the Cruz and Trump camps would endorse slates of delegates in each congressional district, which would allow us to apply the winner-take-all rule by CD, adding 54 more delegates to Cruz's total. (This table from the state election board will show you all the candidates who have filed to run for delegate in Pennsylvania.)

Varying the scenario a bit, suppose that Trump wins, say, 20 congressional districts, while still losing every statewide total. (I could imagine Trump winning heavily Democrat CDs in New York City with low GOP turnout, without making a dent in a Cruz win fueled by heavy upstate support.) Switch 20 CDs and the total going into Cleveland is Cruz 1239, Trump 794. Cruz would still have a majority of delegates bound to support him.

Even if Kasich stays in and pulls 15% of the vote, Cruz could win remaining contests with 45 to Trump's 40 and go into Cleveland with 1214 delegates to Trump's 800, just shy of what he needs for a first ballot win, but close enough to get over the top easily and to dispel any Trump claim to victory. That's because in most of the remaining contests, a plurality is enough to win all the delegates. If Cruz marshals his forces to get his delegates elected in the Pennsylvania CD contests, he could still enter Cleveland with a bound 1st ballot majority.

Trump can be stopped on the first ballot in Cleveland, if the majority of Republicans, who want to stop Trump, coalesce now behind Ted Cruz. Cruz can win the nomination outright, fair and square, based on the votes cast in primaries and caucuses, without changing the convention rules, without the appearance or reality of backroom deals, without risking a Trump-voter revolt over perceived unfairness. All that is necessary is for the #NeverTrump forces to coalesce today behind Ted Cruz.

AND ANOTHER THING: The first-ballot nomination scenario would have been even stronger for Cruz had Rubio and Kasich dropped out as late as last weekend. (It's evident now that the poll showing Rubio winning early voters in Florida was way, way off. The subsample size was 72, which has an MOE of 11.55%.) Cruz still might not have won Florida -- it's Trump's second homestate -- but he likely would have won the remaining Ides of March states. Claims by Rubio and Kasich supporters that a contested convention was the only way to stop Trump was self-serving and wishful thinking.

ONE MORE THING: By my count, there are 906 delegates that will be bound to one candidate or another by upcoming contests. In which of the remaining states can Kasich win a plurality? He's only done well in his home state and two very small New England states where he spent a lot of time. I could imagine Kasich winning a state like Delaware , Connecticut, or Rhode Island. Maybe Kasich takes a CD or two in New York; he only won six CD delegates in Illinois. So that's 70 delegates or so he might win. The remaining 836 are going to wind up either in Cruz's pile or Trump's, and in large blocks. Each contest will either put Cruz closer to a majority or Trump. Only a very precise and improbably result would produce a situation where Cruz and Trump are both short of a majority and close enough to each other that neither can claim a mandate. Choose ye this day....

WHAT ABOUT KASICH? There aren't enough delegates remaining to win for Kasich to win the nomination on the first ballot. He would have to sweep all remaining delegates and win some of those released by ex-candidates or otherwise unbound delegates to get the majority. He would have to prevent Trump and Cruz from winning a combined 1237 delegates; they already have 1114. A nomination that involves last-minute rules changes or other convention chicanery would be seen as illegitimate by a big chunk of the GOP electorate, dooming not only the GOP's presidential hopes, but likely ending congressional majorities as well. Also, Kasich's decision to skip the Utah debate after Trump punted it tells me that Kasich is playing a game, positioning himself for a job in a Trump administration and not serious about winning.

LINKS:

Ace links and explains one of the media's confusing oversimplifications:

One important thing to keep in mind is that a lot of times the media tells you this or that primary is "proportional."

In fact, they're usually not. Illinois and Missouri were supposedly "proportional." That was shorthand for "Winner take all in the statewide race, then winner take all per Congressional District."

In fact, these "proportional" races turn out to be Winner Take Most, because the statewide winner usually wins almost all -- or just all -- of the Congressional Districts too.

Thus such races can quickly become de facto Winner Take All races, despite the media calling the "proportional."

If someone wins statewide, they might have a massive margin in one CD and lose the rest, but it's more likely that support will be evenly distributed across CDs, barring some special local circumstances. If the race is close, like Oklahoma's 2008 primary, which was then winner-take-all by state and CD, it's more likely that the CD victories will be split. In '08, McCain narrowly won statewide, beating Huckabee by 36.6% to 33.4%, but Huckabee won the two congressional districts nearest Arkansas.

Listening to the Glenn Beck team do their back-of-the-envelope calculation on the March 16, 2016, show, I noticed (with much consternation) that they treated "Winner-Take-Most" (really Winner-Take-All by state and by congressional district) as if they were proportionally allocated.

Ace speculates that Cruz might have better odds of reaching a number shy of 1237, but high enough to be nearly tied. If Cruz and Trump split all 906 remaining delegates, they'd be tied at 1010. (Any Kasich wins of a state or CD would reduce that number accordingly.) 181 are currently bound to ex-candidates for at least the first ballot, unless released. 271 would be uncommitted and up for grabs. Exit question: What will the RNC do to stop Trump from buying delegates?

Derryck Green, an African-American writer currently pursuing his doctorate in theology and ministry, has written several recent columns at JuicyEcumenism critical of the way certain evangelical groups are falling all over themselves to embrace #BlackLivesMatter. Back in December, Green wrote that Intervarsity had been "seduced by compartmentalized justice" when it invited #BlackLivesMatter member Michelle Higgins to be a plenary speaker at Urbana 15, Intervarsity's triennial missions conference.

Christian leaders have a tremendous responsibility to be voices and examples of reason. Christian credibility is at stake. So it's a cause for concern when Christians engage in negligent and questionable behavior. Here it involves using racial guilt to manipulate Christians into supporting a movement that perpetuates a secular social and political narrative that consists of lies and racial paranoia under the guise of fighting racial inequality....

Further, if the goal is to reduce the racial disparities in education, people should not only advocate that poor children receive better quality education, they should also encourage the redemption and reconciliation of the black family. Not only would that contribute to the mitigation of academic disparities suffered by blacks, increasing the number of intact black families would also mitigate the racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Blacks aren't locked up disproportionately simply and only because they're black. Blacks are imprisoned disproportionately because of the disintegration of the family and the collapse of the Christian moral value system.

Speaking of criminals, here's another fact: #BlackLivesMatter valorizes black criminality and sanctifies black criminals. The lives of everyday blacks don't matter to this movement, including the lives of blacks tormented by black criminals. This is why #BlackLivesMatter is a misnomer. The only black lives that matter to these social agitators are the ones killed by (white) cops, largely the result of the actions of the criminals themselves. Defending and honoring the lives of black criminals over the lives of blacks that aren't criminals, but in need of our attention, is despicable and unworthy of being called or legitimized by Christianity.

Green's most recent column looks at an article Mark Charles, a Native American activist, who wrote about his decision not to participate in communion at Urbana 15 and not to participate in a plenary session of prayer for persecuted Christians around the world. Green doesn't use the phrase "virtue signaling" but it fits the phenomenon that Green describes.

Moreover, supporting Black Lives Matter is lazy activism. Actually, it's not activism at all. It's a public display -- theater really -- to show the viewing public that you hold the socially acceptable view on this social/political trend to avoid being morally implicated or socially associated with the "problem" this organization claims to address.

To the point, I'm convinced that people don't really want to address racial discrimination and inequality -- where it actually exists. The waters are intentionally muddied so people can't see or think clearly about the issue -- in this case, directly addressing the "root causes" of racial disparities to lay blame on that which is responsible -- even if and when it means to do so implicates the suffering. Instead, this has become a cause without end -- for if it ends, people would no longer have the prospect of feeling good about themselves by marginalizing racism through public displays of fruitless, self-aggrandizing, abstract forms of "activism" that are nothing more than a therapeutic salve for our collective racial insecurities.

For whites -- Christian and non-Christian alike -- forthrightly addressing racial discrimination and inequality or the sake of the affected would mean no longer engaging in obligatory acts of charity that disempower minorities simply to absolve feelings of racial guilt. It would also mean rejecting the premise that the mere existence of racial disparities are themselves evidence of racism. In other words it means refusing the predetermined parameters of the current "conversation on race," which include being forced to acknowledge and admit white privilege and accepting blame for all that befalls racial minorities- and doing so knowing that baseless charges of racism will ensue. It will be difficult, but as Christians, in some respect, it's picking up your cross in pursuit and obedience of the one who died on it.

For blacks, again, Christian and non-Christian alike, candidly addressing racial discrimination and racial inequality means no longer willingly relishing racial victimization and helplessness, while using it as a form of power/social leverage to extract more white guilt in the form of continued and forced moral genuflections, and social reparation. Instead it means acknowledging responsibility and embracing the obligation to engage the same kind of self-determination our antecedents relied on for dignity and success in far more difficult circumstances than we face, in a country that was significantly more racist than it is today. This will be difficult as well -- very difficult actually -- because to choose self-determination over victimization and white guilt is considered racial betrayal, violating the unwritten rules of black racial solidarity that leads to racial excommunication. But, this too, is bearing one's cross in pursuit and obedience of the one who died on it.

Regarding that last point: After the 1921 Race Riot, the African-American residents of Tulsa's Greenwood District built it back better than it had been before, with much of the reconstruction complete within a year. Newspapers and other documents of the period (such as the 1921 Booker T. Washington High School yearbook) reveal the high standards the community had set for itself, in the face of tremendous government and private racial discrimination.

One more note: I was disheartened last year to see that an old friend of mine who works for a campus parachurch ministry was promoting Mark Charles and his revisionist view of Native American history. Campus ministries and many evangelical churches seem to believe that they must embrace the professional racism industry in order to earn a hearing among millennials.

On Monday, I walked over 17,760 steps, delivering flyers in support of Ted Cruz to my precinct and a neighboring precinct. Tuesday after work, my daughter and I stood with other Cruz supporters at 101st and Memorial, waving signs to remind homeward-bound commuters to vote.

You're welcome, Ted. You're welcome, America.

Cruz won statewide in Oklahoma and won four of five congressional districts. (Rubio won the 5th congressional district.) Because of proportional delegate allocation, Cruz won 16 delegates, Trump won 14, and Rubio won 13, of Oklahoma's 43 delegates. In Texas, Cruz won every congressional district, taking home 104 delegates, to 48 for Trump, and 3 for Rubio. In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, we learned that Cruz also won Alaska. Arkansas was close enough -- a 2.3% margin -- that had Carson withdrawn earlier, Cruz probably would have won.

Trump's best results were in Massachusetts, where voters can pick a primary on the day of the election, and were in the heart of the old Confederacy -- Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia. Trump topped 40% only in Massachusetts (49.3%) and Alabama (43.4%). Interestingly, Trump's best counties in Oklahoma were in the region once known as "Little Dixie."

Rubio got his first win of the campaign, with 36.5% of the vote in the Minnesota caucuses. (Cruz finished 2nd, Trump finished 3rd.)

The current delegate totals after Super Tuesday:

Trump 338
Cruz 236
Rubio 112
Kasich 27
Carson 8
Bush 4
Paul 1
Huckabee 1
Fiorina 1

(I rely on The Green Papers for accurate counts. The website has been paying scrupulous attention to delegate allocation rules since its inception in 1999, and I trust The Green Papers to stick to the facts.)

On the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in Oklahoma and Vermont and won caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota, came close in Massachusetts, but Hillary won everywhere else.

Vic Regalado won the GOP nomination for the unexpired term for sheriff. He will face Democrat Rex Berry on April 5. I am hearing that second place finisher Luke Sherman intends to file for the full four-year term regardless of the outcome of the special election.

MORE: On his Facebook page, Luke Sherman announced his intention to file and run for the full four-year term:

I am grateful for the overwhelming support so many of you have shown me last night and into this morning. Despite spending three times the amount of money that we did, our competitor still couldn't convince voters and win the majority.

Today is the first day of the next leg of my campaign. We are moving forward to the June 28th primary to fill the next full 4 year term. I still believe that with the right bold leadership, the TCSO can be one the best law enforcement agencies in the country. Thank you all for your prayers and support. Katie and I are committed to bringing Tulsa County together. ‪#‎ShermanForSheriff‬

Bumped to the top through Tuesday. Originally posted on February 27, 2016.

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Oklahoma's presidential preference primary is this coming Tuesday, March 1, 2016, and I urge my fellow Oklahoma Republicans to join me in voting for Sen. Ted Cruz for President.

I've voted in every Oklahoma presidential primary -- the first one was held in 1988 -- and usually most of the good candidates are gone by the time it's our turn to vote. Only rarely have I been able to vote for the candidate I felt was the best choice. This is one of those rare, good years.

I want a president who understands what made our country a peaceful, prosperous, and powerful nation, what factors have undermined that peace and prosperity, and what the President can do to get us back on the right track. (It's also important to have a president who understands what is beyond his authority to affect.) I want a president with a clear understanding of the goal, a sense of urgency to take action, the strategic sense to plan the steps needed to reach the goal, the ability to persuade with clarity and conviction, and the mental agility to respond to attacks and adjust to changing circumstances, without compromising his principles.

Ted Cruz has demonstrated all of those qualities during the course of a distinguished public career. As the Director of Public Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, Ted Cruz built bipartisan support for measures that removed regulatory barriers to e-commerce, expanding consumer choice and opening new global markets to American small businesses. (You like ordering contact lens refills and wine over the Internet? Thank Ted Cruz.)

As Solicitor General of Texas, Ted Cruz represented the rights of Texans and all Americans, arguing nine cases at the U. S. Supreme Court (8 as SG, 1 as a private attorney) and submitting amicus briefs in many others. In the Medellin v. Texas case, Cruz successfully defended Texas's right to put a brutal murderer to death, despite an attempt by the World Court, with the Bush administration's approval, to stay the execution because the murderer was a foreign national. Cruz's amicus brief in the D. C. v. Heller gun-rights case, filed on behalf of 31 states (including Oklahoma), helped to put the Supreme Court on record that the 2nd Amendment guarantees the individual's right to keep and bear arms.

As a U. S. Senator, Ted Cruz kept his promise to oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. Working with allies in the Senate and the House, Cruz used the amendment process to expose the the Gang of 8's assurances as hollow. When he offered to write their assurances into the bill as amendments, the open-borders bunch in the Senate showed their true colors and voted them down, which gave opponents the ammunition they needed to stop the bill in the House.

Cruz's push to defund Obamacare, using Congress's power of the purse as an effective check on the President's power, helped propel Republicans to a majority in the Senate at the 2014 election, even though it panicked Senate GOP leadership, who waved the white flag before the battle had even been engaged.

Cruz has shown political courage and an ability to persuade voters to look at issues from another point of view. While campaigning in Iowa, he held firm in his opposition to subsidies for corn ethanol, while also calling for removing bureaucratic limits on ethanol blends, and yet he still finished first in that corn-fixated state.

Among Texans who know him well, Cruz has been endorsed by his former boss (Texas Gov. Greg Abbott), his adversary in the 2012 Senate race (David Dewhurst), and his former competitor for the presidency (former Gov. Rick Perry).

Prof. Thomas Sowell, one of the intellectual giants of the conservative movement, has endorsed Ted Cruz for president, particularly in light of the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia:

Senator Ted Cruz has been criticized in this column before, and will undoubtedly be criticized here again. But we can only make our choices among those actually available, and Senator Cruz is the one who comes to mind when depth and steadfastness come to mind.

As someone who once clerked for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he will know how important choosing Justice Scalia's replacement will be. And he has the intellect to understand much more.

Cruz has received a couple of high-profile backhanded endorsements as well. The Left isn't afraid of Trump. The Left and the GOP establishment both know that Donald Trump can be shaped and moulded to serve their purposes. Former President Jimmy Carter said at a speech at Britain's House of Lords that he prefers Donald Trump to Ted Cruz, because Trump is "malleable" and Cruz is not.

"If I had a choice of Republican nominees -- let's just say, for instance, between Cruz and Trump -- I think I would choose Trump, which may surprise some of you. But the reason is that Trump has proven already that he's completely malleable. I don't think he has any fixed opinions that he would really go to the White House and fight for. On the other hand, Ted Cruz is not malleable. He has far-right-wing policies, in my opinion, that would be pursued aggressively if and when he might become president."

Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, is another left-winger frightened by the thought of Cruz as President. Lefty Reich's knocks against Cruz only make me like Ted Cruz even more. (Emphasis added below.) The first item is practically a recitation of the GOP platform.

4 Reasons Ted Cruz is Even More Dangerous than Donald Trump.

1. Cruz is more fanatical. Sure, Trump is a bully and bigot, but he doesn't hew to any sharp ideological line. Cruz is a fierce ideologue: He denies the existence of man-made climate change, rejects same-sex marriage, wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service, believes the 2nd amendment guarantees everyone a right to guns. He doesn't believe in a constitutional divide between church and state, favors the death penalty, rejects immigration reform, demands the repeal of Obamacare, and takes a strict "originalist" view of the meaning of the Constitution.

2. Cruz is a true believer. Trump has no firm principles except making money, getting attention, and gaining power. But Cruz has spent much of his life embracing radical right economic and political views.

3. Cruz is more disciplined and strategic. Trump is all over the place, often winging it, saying whatever pops into his mind. Cruz hews to a clear script and a carefully crafted strategy. He plays the long game (as he's shown in Iowa).

4. Cruz is a loner who's willing to destroy government institutions to get his way. Trump has spent his career using the federal government and making friends with big shots. Not Cruz. He has repeatedly led Republicans toward fiscal cliffs. In the Fall of 2013, his opposition to Obamacare led in a significant way to the shutdown of the federal government.

That all sounds pretty good to me. I especially like the fact that Cruz "plays the long game." Cruz has been the most successful fundraiser among the candidates, and he's done it with a massive number of relatively small donations. In the final quarter of 2015, Cruz received contributions from 300,000 donors, averaging $67 each.

Combine fundraising success with careful spending, and you have a campaign that can be there and be competitive all the way to the convention. One of my frustrations with Rick Santorum in 2012 was that he threw everything into winning Iowa, but didn't have the resources to continue momentum in other states. Ted Cruz is prepared to go the distance.

Here in Oklahoma, Ted Cruz has won the endorsement of the most consistently conservative of our elected officials, including Congressman Jim Bridenstine. I'm proud to add my name to that distinguished list, and I hope you'll join me at the polls on Tuesday to vote for Ted Cruz for President.


MORE:

John Stossel's report on the Cruz campaign's big-data-driven campaign, led by Oklahoma's own Chris Wilson.

UPDATE for the primary for the full-four year term: Luke Sherman has been endorsed by four of the other candidates in the special election primary, and he continues to have my support.

The race to fill the unexpired term of former Tulsa County Sheriff Stanley Glanz has been a strange one for me. It's one of the few local races where I knew none of the candidates before the election, and I've only met two of them during the course of the campaign.

It's a strange election for everyone. The election is only for the term ending at the end of this year. Within a couple of weeks after the general election results are in, it will be time to file to run for a complete four-year term.

Today, Tulsa County Republicans will pick one of nine candidates to face the lone Democratic candidate, Rex Berry, in the April 5, 2016 special election. After listening to Pat Campbell's interviews with the candidates on KFAQ, reading the Tulsa 9/12 Project's candidate questionnaire, and listening to most of KRMG's debate, I've decided to vote for Luke Sherman to be our next Tulsa County Sheriff.

I've thought for quite a while that we needed an experienced lawman from outside the TCSO and the culture that had been so damaged by Glanz's failed leadership. That eliminated a few of the candidates.

Because this primary is first-past-the-post with no runoff, campaign strength had to be a tie-breaker among similarly qualified candidates.

I eliminated Vic Regalado almost immediately. The large number of high-dollar contributions from high rollers and the mysterious cluster of max or near-max contributions from executives and employees from one company is worrisome. Why so much interest in this candidate? What are they expecting from him? At the KRMG debate, when asked about his executive/administrative experience, important for a position that oversees dozens of deputies, jail officers, and other employees, Regalado talked vaguely around the issue. He could cite no concrete qualifications in this area.

John Fitzpatrick has an impressive resume outside of law enforcement, but his service in law enforcement has been limited to the TPD reserve officers' program. I'm also concerned about a developer and a developer's attorney among his prominent donors and endorsers: Joe Westervelt and Lou Reynolds. Do you suppose that foreclosures and the sheriff's power to appoint appraisers have anything to do with this?

A number of my friends are supporting Tom Helm. What crossed him off my list was an answer he gave Pat Campbell (about 10 minutes in) about why it took Eric Harris's death to bring problems in the TCSO to light. Helm said that people in the organization raised concerns. He said he was told that he would "have to deal with it." Evidently that's what he did. He left the sheriff's office, but opted to say nothing publicly that might have exposed the rot. He seemed to be rationalizing the decision to protect his paycheck by keeping his mouth shut. Hardly a profile in courage.

I've been most impressed by Luke Sherman. From his website, here's a summary of his experience as a Tulsa Police officer:

He has served in many roles during his 23-year decorated career with the Tulsa Police Department. He joined the department in September of 1992 and has been an officer, field training officer, supervisor, field training supervisor, academy instructor and firearms instructor.

Luke_Sherman-Sheriff-2016.pngIn 1995, Luke was selected to join the department's SWAT team, where he served as a tactical operator, assistant team leader and finally as the assistant team commander. During over a decade on the team, he took part in many successful high-risk missions.

As a corporal (1998) among other assignments, he led a successful city-wide task force targeting the rise in methamphetamine production, usage and sales. As a sergeant (1999), he has supervised field units and specialty squads throughout the city.

Since 2008, he has led the department's very active Fugitive Warrant's Unit and also is one of the leaders of the U.S. Marshal's Violent Crimes Task Force. Both of these units are responsible for the arrest of thousands of violent criminals related to on-going high profile investigations, as well as fugitives from the Tulsa area and from other parts of the U.S. He led a multi-divisional police operational group during the Good Friday shootings (2012), the Best Buy shooting (2012) and a "Stranger Abduction" of a 8-year-old girl in east Tulsa (2014). Luke's unit was successful in identifying, locating and arresting the suspects in these three high profile cases.

Luke is a nationally recognized figure to law enforcement communities across the United States and in several other countries. As a director for the National Tactical Officer's Association (NTOA), Luke has played a pivotal role in assisting and providing subject matter expertise to members of both the U.S. Senate and U.S. Congress in topics such as the Ferguson riot incidents and the topic of the militarization of police forces. As an instructor for the NTOA, he has provided nearly 5000 hours of instruction in topics such as active shooter, hostage rescue, high-risk warrants, civil disturbance, barricaded gunman, legal considerations in policing and SWAT, civil disturbance, team leader and command-level decision making.

Sherman's answers to questionnaires and his interview responses indicate intelligence and thoughtfulness. His responses to the Tulsa 9/12 Project showed an awareness of the non-law-enforcement aspects of the job. I was pleased to see this in one of his replies: "I am also looking into partnerships with other local agencies and redirecting some excess earmarked ad valorem funds that are not being used by Tulsa Technology Center and Tulsa Community College." While this will require considerable political capital, there is no doubt that the earmarked millage levies enjoyed by TTC and TCC provide them with more than enough money; elected county officials should give voters the opportunity to reduce the TTC and TCC levies and find a way to shift that revenue stream to more productive uses.

An honorable mention goes to Jason Jackson, who has an impressive record of service of nearly 20 years with the Jenks Police Department, degrees in criminology and religious studies from Liberty University, and experience as a pastor. Jackson also has given solid answers in interviews and questionnaires.

I've endorsed Sherman over Jackson because I think Sherman is better placed to beat well-financed but less-desirable candidates in this first-past-the-post primary, and because I think service in leadership roles in the police department of the state's second largest city is better training for sheriff of the second largest county than leadership in a small city's police force.

I encourage you to join me in voting later today for Luke Sherman for the Republican nomination for Tulsa County Sheriff.

Ted Cruz returns to Tulsa

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Ted Cruz speaks to Tulsa rally (SX021020)


Texas Sen. Ted Cruz returned to Tulsa today for his third visit of the 2016 presidential campaign. Despite the short notice and the early starting time -- 12:30pm, barely after most churches end their Sunday services -- Cruz drew a crowd of about 3,000 to Tulsa's Central Park Hall. The stop was the first of three events in the state today ahead of Tuesday's primary.

Crowd at Tulsa Ted Cruz rally (SX020958)

In his 30-minute speech, Cruz said that his campaign was about three things: jobs, freedom, and security. His discussion of jobs included extensive mention of immigration policy -- the job-killing aspects of illegal immigration and excessive use of foreign guest workers. The immigration problem was also mentioned in the security section, in which Cruz reaffirmed his opposition to citizenship for anyone here illegally.

Citing the verse from Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun, Cruz drew a parallel with the economic and foreign policy challenges faced by the nation in the 1970s -- "same failed economic policies, same feckless and naive foreign policies," and even the same countries involved -- then as now, Russia and Iran are mocking our leaders. But Cruz found hope in the comparison: "We remember how that story ended," with Ronald Reagan's election, a revolution that came from the American people and turned the country around.

In his concluding paragraphs, Cruz told the crowd that Oklahoma is a battleground -- he's running neck and neck here with Trump. While 65% of Republicans nationally say that Trump is the wrong candidate to face Hillary Clinton, supporters of other candidates have to pull together to beat him. Cruz said that his was the only campaign in a position to beat Trump on Super Tuesday. He urged supporters to devote these last 48 hours to the campaign, to use social media and to pick up the phone to call friends and neighbors and urge them to vote for Cruz on Tuesday.

For a full 20 minutes after the speech, Cruz worked the crowd, shaking hands and posing for photos. A veteran political observer on hand pointed out that no other candidate makes himself as available to the public as Ted Cruz does.

Ted Cruz listens to voter following rally (SX021038.JPG)

Most of the speech was devoted to a substantive discussion of policy, organized around the three themes of jobs, freedom, and security.

To put Americans back to work, Cruz said, we need to lift off the jackboot of government from the necks of small business. As a replacement for the burdensome Obamacare regulation, Cruz called for health insurance that is personal and portable and that keeps government from getting between us and our doctors. Cruz called for a simple flat tax and the abolition of the IRS.

Cruz pointed out that immigration is also a jobs issue. When Arizona passed a tough immigration enforcement law, many illegal immigrants left the state on their own. As a result, the state had to spent hundreds of millions of dollars less, because it was no longer paying to educate and provide emergency room care for as many illegal immigrants. Arizona's unemployment rate dropped, and workers in the construction trades saw their wages go up.

Cruz said that both parties had failed us on immigration. Democrats see illegal immigrants as a source of new voters. Too many Republicans, listening to Wall Street and the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, see illegal immigrants as a source of cheap labor.

2013 was the time for choosing, when the "Gang of 8" bill -- which Cruz called the "Rubio Schumer Amnesty Bill" -- came before Congress. Rubio was sent out to evangelize for the bill to conservative media. (Trump was busy firing Dennis Rodman on Celebrity Apprentice at the time.)

Cruz reminded the audience of Trump's financial support for five members of the Gang of 8, part of a 40-year track record of funding open-borders Democrats, of the million-dollar court judgment against Trump for using illegal immigrant workers on the Trump Tower project, and of Trump's claim that he can't find Americans who want to work as waiters and waitresses.

Regarding security, Cruz said, "America has always been reluctant to use military force. We are slow to anger. But if and when military force is required, we should use overwhelming force, defeat the enemy, and get the heck out!"

Preceding the senator on the platform were State Rep. David Brumbaugh (R-Broken Arrow), Oklahoma Insurance Commissioner John Doak, Congressman Jim Bridenstine, and national radio talk show host Glenn Beck.

MP3 AUDIO:

MORE:

Ted Cruz this morning on Face the Nation:

no_more_trump_lies.jpg

Donald Trump's habit of using government to hound people from their homes to make way for his schemes isn't limited to the US. Ian Tuttle has documented Trump's efforts to make life miserable for neighbors of his grand Scottish golf resort -- a resort that has failed to live up to the ambitious claims made for it.

The story is like a replay of Local Hero, which was filmed just 35 miles to the north, but without the happy ending. In the movie, an American tycoon with Scottish roots wants to buy out a village on the North Sea coast and replace it with an oil refinery. The tycoon (played by Burt Lancaster) visits the site to close the deal with the lone holdout, a hermit who lives in a shack on the beach, to which he holds title. The tycoon falls in love with the seaside village and instead builds a marine research laboratory.

In the Trump version of the story, the tycoon bulldozes the dunes and blockades the "local heroes" who refuse to yield to his demands. A documentary about the ordeal, You've Been Trumped, was released in 2012 and is available for free online viewing on Hulu. (The photo above is a still from the follow-on film, A Dangerous Game, about the environmental and social impact of the golf resort industry around the world.)

In 2006, Trump proposed to build a golf resort on the North Sea coast in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. When local government denied his application to wreck a designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (a shifting dune-scape unique to Scotland) to build his course, he went over their heads to the Scottish Executive which overruled local government. Alex Salmond, the local member of the Scottish Parliament and later leader of the Scottish National Party, facilitated the deal, claiming the project would generate 6,000 jobs nationally, 1,400 locally, but those plans haven't materialized.

As local MSP, Mr Salmond personally rang Scotland's chief planning officer while he was with the Trump lawyer after the plan was rejected by the local infrastructure committee in his Aberdeenshire constituency.

The man leading Scotland's drive for independence has seen little political or economic reward for his efforts, however. Mr Trump's plans for the Menie estate should have created thousands of jobs by building two golf courses, a five-star 450-bed hotel, 500 homes and 950 short-term lets.

To date, Mr Trump's own representatives put the number at only 200 new jobs - and Panorama estimates on the basis of the latest accounts (to December 2011), that only £25m has been spent with just one golf course and a temporary clubhouse to show for it so far.

YBT-TRUMP-NEWS-CONFERENCE.jpg

Once Trump had pushed local government out of the way, he tried to use government muscle to shove his neighbors out of the way, pushing the local government to get Compulsory Purchase Orders (equivalent of eminent domain) to buy out neighbors whose properties were not as grand and glorious as Trump thought they ought to be. When local government deferred, Trump began harassing his neighbors in various alleged ways: Cutting off water with construction "accidents," ignoring property boundaries, and building berms that blocked their view of the ocean:

ybt_online_ab_110811_pm_crop.jpgDuring a visit to his Scotland project on an episode of Donald J. Trump's Fabulous World of Golf, a short-lived reality show that aired on the Golf Channel in 2010-11, Trump announced that "there are some houses quite far away from the course" that "I don't want to see." The camera panned to David Milne's home, high on its perch. Announced Donald: "We are berming some of the areas so that you don't see the houses." And sure enough, construction crews spent a week piling earth in a "bund," a large ridge, around Milne's home, removing it from view -- and cutting off his view of the sea. (Similar bunds were piled up around Forbes's house, and around Munro's.) "Nobody has a problem with it!" said Trump, on Trump's Fabulous World of Golf. He then conceded, with a shrug: "I guess maybe the people who live in the houses have a problem with it."

The Aberdeen Voice published an update last month, ten years after Trump announced his plans for the area. Quoting local councilor Martin Ford:

"Mr Trump's grandiose and extravagant promises of jobs, money and enhanced reputation for the region - parroted by First Minister Alex Salmond's Scottish Government - have failed to materialise. "At Menie, little of the proposed resort has been built. None of the 950 timeshares. A 19-bedroom hotel in an existing country house instead of a 450-bedroom new build. One golf course, not two. A much smaller clubhouse than originally proposed. Under 100 jobs, not 6000. Around £30 million spent instead of the £1 billion investment pledged.

"Meanwhile, the unique dune system at Menie, a protected Site of Special Scientific Interest, has been sacrificed - the justification being the economic benefits Mr Trump and the Scottish Government said would come from the resort that hasn't been built.

"Mr Trump's neighbours on the Menie estate have had their lives disrupted by bullying and intimidation for most of the last decade.

Tuttle's story concludes:

It would be an extraordinary irony if Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination riding a groundswell of working-class anger toward "elites." In Scotland, Trump teamed up with "elites" in the local and national government in an attempt to railroad working-class residents out of their homes. In Scotland, Donald Trump was not against "special interests." He was special interests. As Susan Munro told Anthony Baxter: "I've been here a long time, near on three decades, that's a long time. Most of my adult life's been spent in this house, brought my family up here, my family was born here. And then this man, this foreigner, because he's got a few pounds American in his pocket, a bit of a name, and we're just cast aside, we're in the way."

MORE:

Local opposition website Tripping Up Trump (archived). The site includes accounts of other problem-plagued Trump developments around the world.

Website for the Trump International Golf Links. There is a single 18-hole course, a small hotel, and a couple of restaurants.

London Review of Books review of You've Been Trumped

Carol Craig's review of You've Been Trumped:

What emerges is the story of ordinary basic humanity versus greed and hubris. The local people value their heritage, community and environment but are pitted against those who are enthralled to wealth, fame, and power. The locals act with integrity and decency; the best that can be said about Trump is that he is a man who cannot be trusted.

Watching this film, the ordinary people of Scotland (and some local artists) are a credit to the country. But institutional Scotland comes out of it very badly. It isn't simply Trump, and by extension, the politicians who supported him that are shown in a negative light: the local police, local university (who gave Trump an honorary degree), and Scottish arts organisations, who refused to fund or show the film, are also discredited. The mainstream Scottish media who failed to cover the story adequately are also shamed by this film.

Yesterday, on Twitter, Trump issued a veiled threat against the Ricketts family, which owns the Chicago Cubs, for donating to an anti-Trump super-PAC.

I hear the Rickets family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $'s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide! 8:42 AM - 22 Feb 2016

News reports note that the donation was not secret at all but has been disclosed in accordance with federal election laws.

UPDATE:

HBO Real Sports has done a segment about Trump's broken promises in Scotland:

Hat tip: The Right Scoop.

policememe.jpgTravis Yates, a Tulsa Police Department major, has written an editorial questioning President Obama's silence after a number of recent assassinations of police officers around the country. In just the past week, Yates says, seven police officers were killed, six of them "were gunned down by assailants."

Yates notes Obama's frequent practice of speaking to the nation about suspected cases of police abuse, which began early in his term, when a Cambridge, Mass., police officer arrested Harvard Prof. Henry Gates as he was trying to break into his own home. Obama addressed the matter at length in a White House press conference, saying, "the Cambridge police acted stupidly."

He was quick to speak out on local police matters when his friend, Henry Gates, was arrested and while the President eventually called the arresting officer to apologize to him, it was odd to see the President of the United States speak out on a local police matter when he did not know all of the facts.

Personally, I chalked it up to a rookie mistake and didn't think much of it. Others had immediate concerns. Law Officer Columnist William Gage was one of those and he stated "this was insight into the President's psyche and overall view of law enforcement." Arizona Sheriff Paul Babeu said "that's his lens on how he sees our heroes and our protectors."

Obama has also spoken out about police controversies in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, and elsewhere.

Yates praises the White House for sending Vice President Biden to the funeral of NYPD Detective Rafael Ramos, who was killed in an ambush shortly after the Ferguson riots, but that is the only law enforcement funeral to which the Obama White House has sent a representative. Yates echos questions raised by many other law enforcement officers about Obama's silence.

It has been a very tough time for law enforcement and while there is no doubt a sensitivity towards any perceived attack against the profession, we believe there is merit for the belief that President Obama has been silent when it comes to the violence heaped against the profession.

We see it as a balancing issue. Simply put, the President is unbalanced on the issue. He has repeatedly shown that he is quick to talk and act when he believes law enforcement has done something wrong but slow when law enforcement are the victims or need support for their mission.

President Obama still has time to regain his balance with law enforcement. As one officer said to us this week, "these are domestic threats killing your domestic troops, Mr. President. When will you hear our cries for help? Or will you continue to remain silent."

We say the President does not have to stay silent. We ask him to speak loudly in support of the men and women protecting the homeland.


Donald Trump in Tusla

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On Wednesday, I attended the Tulsa rally for presidential candidate Donald Trump with former Alaska Gov. and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, held at ORU's Mabee Center. I was there as a member of the news media; I received an email at 7 pm the night before the event saying that I was credentialed to attend.

Obviously, this isn't a breaking news report (five days later). You've read the stories and seen the clips, but I hope to tell you about things you missed by not being there.

After waiting in line for over 30 minutes in a cold lobby (during which I got to visit with Matthew Vermillion of Forty-Six News), we received our misprinted media badges ("Tusla" instead of "Tulsa"), got wanded by the Secret Service, and were finally allowed inside the arena.

Trump later tweeted a claim that 15,000 were in attendance and another 5,000 turned away. As the official Mabee Center seating charts indicate, the arena holds 8,400 in the stands in the expanded end arena configuration that was in use. There were no seats on the floor -- the back 1/4th was devoted to media, the other end was occupied by the stage, leaving the middle half for standees. A wedge of seats behind the stage was blocked off with curtains.

I was standing on the front rail of the media area, just to the right of the camera stand. At noon, the official starting time of the event, the standing area was perhaps 2/3 full; the lower bowl of the arena was 90% full, and the upper seating was perhaps half full. People continued to trickle in over the next hour, while we waited for the event to begin, with more upper level seats filling in and more standees, but there was still a significant amount of empty space at the back of the standee area. Based on that, I would have guessed about 8,000 in attendance. The Tulsa Fire Department said that 8,937 people were allowed into the building.

According to Tulsa Fire Department, which assisted in crowd control, 8,937 people were allotted seating. Event doors were closed once the crowd reached that number.

A fire official says additional supporters were not allowed inside the event to ensure safety.

(Why is the fire department interested in the size of a crowd? A public gathering place has to have adequate exit routes to evacuate everyone in the building safely within a certain window of time. Even if there were the space to squeeze more people in, the fire marshal would shut the doors to new arrivals once the facility's maximum permitted occupancy had been reached.)

I was in the building from 10:00 on, so I can't speak to how many were turned away, but people kept coming in right up until Trump was introduced at 1:07, and there were still empty seats and space available in the standee area. People might have been turned away because they couldn't be screened quickly enough, or perhaps because some emergency exits had to be closed for security reasons, requiring a lower fire-safety limit than the normal capacity.

It's hard to generalize about the people in attendance. A wide range of ages were represented (although many of the younger people I noticed in the standee area turned out to be protesters, holding up a banner reading "Trump makes America hate again"). Most appeared to be normal Oklahomans, with only a handful seeming to be fanatics. One young bearded man, stationed in the back of the standees, frequently shouted things like, "We love you, Sarah," as he waved his rally signs. He seemed to determined to attract attention. One lady in the press area had a dress papered over with pictures of Trump. Another standee was sporting a "Putin/Nugent 2016" t-shirt. The people I saw certainly didn't fit political consultant Rick Wilson's lurid characterization of Trump supporters.

Two things stood out to me about the crowd: It was almost all Caucasian (maybe one person out of 200 was not), and very few were people were GOP activists. I spotted four folks in the crowd that I knew from 25 years of local Republican Party involvement -- two activists who were big supporters of former Congressman John Sullivan, a consultant from Jim Bridenstine's first congressional campaign, and Dan Keating, brother of the former governor and Trump's state chairman.

While people filed in, we listened to loud bluegrass covers of U2 hits like "Pride (In the Name of Love)" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." At 11:45 Keating kicked things off with a few remarks. Word-Faith televangelist Cathy Mink of Len Mink Ministries gave the invocation. Before she got around to praying, Mrs. Mink called Trump "a David raised up to defeat Goliath" (Vera Coking would have begged to differ) and a "friend of Israel and a defender of Christians." She exclaimed, "Just think -- we will be able to shout Merry Christmas everywhere once he gets to the Oval Office." (What's keeping her from doing that now?) She concluded by claiming the "Prayer of Jabez" on Trump's behalf. The brief prayer for expanded influence and blessing, recorded in the midst of genealogies in 1st Chronicles 4:10, was a publishing sensation around the turn of the Millennium.

A group of three men (unidentified) led the Pledge of Allegiance. A young blonde woman sang the National Anthem in the Whitney Houston standard melismatic fashion, with some in the crowd singing along quietly). And then, as Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" began to play, this voice came over the sound system:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we all know that as President of the United States, Mr. Trump will continue his lifelong defense of the right to free speech in America. As a matter of fact, he supports the First Amendment just as much as he supports the Second Amendment. [Wild cheers.] However some people have taken advantge of Mr. Trump's hospitality by choosing to disturb his rallies by using them as an opportunity to promote their own political messages. [Boos.] While they certainly have the right to free speech, this is a private event paid for by Mr. Trump. We have provided a safe protest area outside the venue for all protesters.

"If a protester starts demonstrating in the area around you, please do not touch or harm the protester. This is a peaceful rally. In order to notify the law enforcement officers of the location of the protester, please hold a rally sign above your head and start chanting "Trump! Trump! Trump!" [Chanting.] Ask the people around you to do likewise until officers remove the protestors. Thank you for helping us to make America great again! [Wild cheers.]"

It was now about 11:50. And then we waited for 77 minutes, listening to an eclectic playlist, blasted at high volume that began with Adele's "Rolling in the Deep," followed by "Music of the Night" from Phantom of the Opera, the aria "Nessun dorma" from Puccini's Turandot (sounded like the Harry Secombe version), Elton John's "Tiny Dancer," Adele's "Skyfall."

Did the campaign pick "Music of the Night," or was it an ORU student or staffer making subtle commentary?

Close your eyes and surrender to your darkest dreams
Purge your thoughts of the life you knew before
Close your eyes, let your spirit start to soar
And you'll live as you've never lived before

Softly, deftly, music shall surround you
feel it, hear it, closing in around you
Open up your mind, let your fantasies unwind
In this darkness which you know you cannot fight
The darkness of the music of the night

At about 12:15, an aide came out to the podium, adjusting the microphone and checking for water bottles, giving some hope that things would be underway soon. As if taunting the audience, the sound man played the Rolling Stones "You Can't Always Get What You Want." (More commentary?) That was followed by "Memory" (from Cats), "Hey Jude," "Rocket Man," and then back through the rotation again. As we passed an hour after the scheduled start, many on the north side (nearer the public entrance) were standing in anticipation while those on the south side stayed seated.

When the sound man cut short "Rocket Man," the crowd cheered in anticipation, "Eye of the Tiger" started up, and the PA announced, "The next President of the United States, Donald! J! Trump!" Trump spoke briefly, introduced Palin, who spoke for about 20 minutes, and then Trump returned to the stage, speaking for about 35 minutes.

About halfway through Trump's speech, people started leaving the arena, a few here and there, and then a steady stream -- maybe students who had a class at 2:00 pm, maybe audience members whose curiosity to see Trump in person was sated and who were ready to move on with their day after investing three or four hours in this event.

I won't recap everything that Trump and Palin said -- there are plenty of sources for that information -- but I'll hit a couple of highlights.

Palin repeatedly referred to Trump as a commander: "Are you ready for a commander who will allow us to make America great?"

The strangest thing that came out of Palin's mouth was her implication that her son's Track's wartime experience -- and the failure of the Obama administration to properly appreciate the troops -- was to blame for his recent arrest on domestic violence charges. That didn't get much reaction.

She got the crowd going again with talk of the "complicity of both sides of the aisle" -- pushed by the donor class -- in open borders, crony capitalist budgets, and lousy trade deals. In response to charges from "the GOP machine" that "we're not conservative enough," Palin asked, "Is it conservative to watch safety nets turn to hammocks?" She asked similar questions about open borders, trillion-dollar blank checks to Obama, and trillions in added debt. She encapsulated the GOP's Trump problem: A failure by congressional leadership to keep faith with the people who returned them to majority status opened the door for someone, as Palin put it, "ballsy enough to put issues on the table." (Which line got a huge cheer.)

It was striking that, with one exception, the two did not criticize any of Trump's rivals for the nomination. Trump's shots at Cruz earlier in the week had brought criticism from conservative talk radio. He may also have held back because of Cruz's popularity with Oklahoma conservatives.

The one shot Trump took at a rival was aimed at Jeb Bush. Trump trumpeted the latest poll numbers from Florida, which showed Trump at 48, Cruz at 16, Rubio at 11, and Bush "down in the toilet." Bush, he said, "is a stiff, no question about it." Referring to recent TV appearances of conservative pundits, Trump said Karl Rove looked "like a boiler waiting to explode." "You take the glasses away from George Will, and he's a stupid-looking guy."

Trump also took potshots at the camera crews at the back of the room, calling them "disgusting" because they only showed the crowd when a protest erupted. KOTV News on 6 anchor Terry Hood took offense, responding on Facebook:

Ok, so I'm watching the Trump video and this part was upsetting to me. The "disgusting" photographer he was talking about from Channel 6 is one of my best friends. His job was to keep the camera on Trump because we were live streaming his speech. We had another photog shooting the crowd and still another covering his arrival and departure from the airport. None of them deserve to be called names by this man.

About halfway into Trump's speech, around 1:45, I noticed that people began leaving in twos or threes. The stream of departures grew as time went on. (Trump continued to speak until 2:06.) I imagine many people had expected to be done early enough to make it back to work or to class by 2:00 p.m.; perhaps others had had their curiosity satisfied and were ready to get on with the day.

As the speech entered its second half, a few more protests erupted. It seemed as if the protesters figured that time was running out to get the attention they wanted.

Trump concluded by repeating like a mantra "We're going to win!"

RELATED:

Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip "Dilbert," is also a trained hypnotist and is a student of the art of persuasion. In his blog, Adams has been analyzing Trump's methods of persuasion, and he has come to the conclusion that Trump is unbeatable. In his latest post, Adams says that National Review's latest issue warning its readers that Trump is not a conservative is in reality a capitulation. "You'll see a lot of debate on whether Trump is a true conservative or not. That is argument by definition. It is the linguistic equivalent of throwing your gun at a monster because the magazine is empty." Earlier, Adams explained why Palin's endorsement is "probably a home run":

Trump's biggest obstacle is his perceived lack of empathy, along with voter suspicions about his motives. Palin's endorsement says, in effect, that she doesn't see anything dark in his soul. You can dislike Palin's politics, but she is ridiculously likable on a personal level. And that likability probably translates into some sort of irrational trust about her people-judging skills.

Kurt Schlichter: Trump is Going to Break Your Heart

As a young man, I learned that sometimes that hot chick you're dating is also completely crazy and, as much fun as it is to go out with her, it's going to end badly. That's Donald Trump, the super hottie of the "I Hate the GOP Establishment with a Burning Passion That Has Rendered Me Insusceptible to Reason" crew. He's sexy, he likes to party, and he certainly puts out - in the sense that he fulfills your fantasies about giving it to the RINOs good and hard.

That intensely troubling metaphor aside, the point is still valid. Donald Trump is not a keeper, not the one you want to marry. He's never going to make you happy. For now, he's going to say what makes you happy, and for now he's going to make a lot of the right people go nuts, but if you get hitched he'll cheat on you with the liberals. At the end of the day, you'll walk out of the courtroom wearing a barrel while Trump and the pool boy jet off to Tahiti on your dime....

He's using you, and he's going to toss you away when he's done and never look back. Break it off before it's too late - this is just a fling, and if it keeps up one day you're going to find your wallet missing and probably your car too. And you'll wake up with a political rash.

Donald Trump is out for one thing, Donald Trump's personal aggrandizement. He cares nothing about you. He cares nothing about your aspirations and dreams. Don't misunderstand him when he pays attention to you. He's just trying to get what he wants from you, an earthshattering ego stroke....

You can do better. The failures of the Republican donor and consultant class created Donald Trump. They made you furious, and you have every right to be furious. They have treated you like dirt and it's no surprise you picked up The Donald on the rebound. But the answer to being treated like a doormat by a bunch of buttoned-down twits is not to embrace somebody who believes in exactly nothing of what you believe in. You can totally do better. There are plenty of fish in the sea, and they aren't all named Jeb.

Trump doesn't want to make America great. He doesn't want to make you great. He wants to make you tell him that he's great. He doesn't love you, any more than the stripper in the Champagne Room loves you when you've still got money in your wallet....

Derek Hunter: Trump or Get Off the Pot:

Everyone wants America to be great again, but it's going to take more than embroidery on a baseball cap to make it happen. It's going to require a deep respect for the Constitution and the limits it places not only on government, but specifically on the office of the president. I see nothing that leads me to believe Donald Trump respects or even is aware of that concept.

In his daily life he doesn't have to work with anyone - his word is law. He says jump, and his children and the team of lawyers he pays ask how high. It may be great for business, but it's the antithesis of what our government is supposed to be.

That's why I want specifics. I'm not looking for a dictator I agree with. I'm looking for a leader who can restore what Obama, and Bush before him, and Clinton before him, eroded. I'd love it if it were done quickly, but I demand it be done legally. For that to happen I need some specifics.

The example of Obama must be rejected, and it must be rejected the right way. The next president must get things done by leading Congress, resisting the urge to bypass Congress when it won't go along and using the bully pulpit to rally the people to support his initiatives. Persuade the people, and you persuade their representatives.

Caleb Howe: Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio Need To Take a Class In Trump Politics. Howe examines the defensive, lawyerly arguments Cruz and Rubio used to deal with challenges to their votes on immigration reform and concludes that they should follow Donald Trump's approach -- own your position and don't apologize. For example, here's how Howe thinks Trump would have dealt with Bret Baier's interrogation of Cruz:

That's right. He would have shrugged it off. He would have made a face and said "come on Bret. Look it's very simple. I was trying to get what I wanted from a negotiation. I wanted to stop what they were doing and I got news for you, I did it." And if Bret pressed him again, he would have waved his hands and said "I make deals. OK? That's what I do. I know deals. And I worked this deal, and I won this deal, and that's what Americans care about."

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas): Washington Establishment: Merry Christmas, Trump!

What do you give a billionaire who has everything and is running for president?

The Omnibus spending bill in Congress is over 2,000 pages and spends another $1.1 trillion we don't have. A handful of members of Congress and their staffs, the White House and insider lobbyists wrote it over the past six weeks, and outside this small circle, no one had seen it until Wednesday.

In other words, business-as-usual in Washington again. Merry Christmas, Donald Trump....

In 2014, Americans entrusted Republicans with Senate and House majorities to stop the Obama agenda, but Republicans refused to get in the driver's seat of Congress. Instead, they offer this back-room, bloated bill to hike spending by another $50 Billion. It is strongly supported by Obama, Pelosi, and Reid - and strongly opposed by nearly every major segment of the Republican Party....

So whether you care about life and liberty, about national security and our borders, jobs and even stopping ObamaCare, Washington has a message for you: Donald Trump is right.

On issue after issue, this Omnibus spending bill proves Donald Trump's point - Washington is not working for the American people, especially conservatives in the heart of the Republican Party. This country needs a strong leader who is not afraid of fighting against the status quo, business-as-usual, America-be-damned attitude in the Capitol.

The Washington Establishment wishes you a Merry Christmas, Donald Trump. May you have a blessed, successful New Year.

Fred Thompson, RIP

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Tribute image posted on Facebook by National Review

I was sad to hear of the passing, on Sunday, of actor, lawyer, and former U. S. Senator Fred Thompson, who was felled by lymphoma at the age of 73. My condolences to his family and friends, with my thanks for supporting him in his service to our country.

Writing for Commentary, John Podhoretz tells Fred Thompson's story through the lens of his research into a 1993 profile of Thompson, who was then preparing to leave acting and run for Senate. It is worth reading in full. Many other blogs have quoted the passage about Thompson's regrets over his prosecution of moonshiners while serving as an assistant U. S. Attorney. I was impressed by his account of Thompson's self-education in political philosophy and how it served him well as he entered electoral politics many years later:

I asked him what it was that had made him a Republican. He said that when he was working at nights behind a motel desk, he needed to stay awake, and he began to read National Review. Eventually that led him to William F. Buckley Jr.'s oeuvre, and to Hayek, and to Whittaker Chambers's Witness, and to Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences, and to other works that helped him develop a philosophy about the centrality of the individual and the dangers of an overreaching state -- the same overreaching state he would serve in prosecuting those moonshiners a few years later....

But it was philosophical conservatism that had captured his attention in his college and law-school years. His election in 1994 as part of the Gingrich Revolution was not only due to his attractiveness, his resume, and his literal star power, but because he was intellectually in tune with the changes being wrought to the GOP. The very qualities that made him a memorable performer and a good senator--that combination of amiability and steel--did not really include the consuming ambition to rise to the top.

I was impressed, too, at the easy way he wore stardom:

The thing about Thompson was, he continued to work as a lawyer throughout his career as an actor in The Hunt for Red October, No Way Out, Days of Thunder, Cape Fear, and other pictures. Among other things, he was one of the three trustees of the Teamsters pension fund, which had been seized by the government. So though he rose to the point where he was likely making close to half a million dollars per picture, he was not dependent on that work for his livelihood -- and there were things he did not wish to do.

That included cursing on the screen. He had a fight (I recall him saying it lasted several days) with the famously temperamental producer Joel Silver on the set of Die Hard 2 because the script called for him to use the F-word. His contract specifically said he would not use profanity. Silver didn't care and simply could not imagine Thompson would make trouble on this score. But unlike other Hollywood players, Thompson viewed acting as a lark, and was able to stand his ground.

Podhoretz noted the conflict between the demands of high-stakes politics and Thompson's temperament, a temperament better suited to observation than action:

Thompson was not suited to the task of running for the presidency, I think, because he had an essentially ironic view of the world and its workings. In the last years of his life became one of Twitter's best political tummlers, issuing forth perfectly crafted one-liners about the absurdities of the Age of Obama. On September 23, only five weeks before his untimely death yesterday at the age of 72, he offered this: "Obama at a school in Iowa: Students 'shouldn't silence' guest speakers who are 'too conservative.' Yes. That's what the IRS is for."

As longtime BatesLine readers will recall, I was an early and enthusiastic supporter of Thompson's 2008 run for president, as was much of the conservative blogosphere. Thompson was well-informed on the issues, well-grounded in principle, willing to speak politically-incorrect truths and not back down, but in a reassuring, avuncular manner and with a dry wit (which he continued to display after the campaign on his own radio show and his Twitter account).

Here he is from 2007, discussing amnesty and the border fence:

As blogger See-Dubya noted on the occasion of Paul Harvey's death:

One more thing: back when Fred Thompson was just flirting with running for President, one of the things that excited me the most about his candidacy was his ABC radio addresses he gave while sitting in for Paul Harvey. I thought that was a politically brilliant move that really showcased Fred's strengths-authentic, no-BS Heartland conservatism. I wasn't the only one-I kind of trace the groundswell of interest in Thompson back to his time broadcasting from Paul Harvey's chair, and likewise the deflation of the Thompson bubble to the time he left it.

Here in Oklahoma, Thompson managed to win the endorsement of Sen. Jim Inhofe, then-U. S. Rep. John Sullivan, local radio talk show hosts, and other prominent officials and activists.

Alas, Thompson's skills as a leader didn't match his skills as a communicator. Although he was accused of lacking "fire in the belly" (an accusation he ably rebutted), the real problem is that his campaign team was unable to organize and capitalize on the grassroots goodwill he enjoyed. His departure from the race brought forth numerous anecdotes about the disconnect between Fred 08 HQ and supporters. The Fred 08 letdown is why I feel compelled to look not only at policy positions but the fundraising skills and campaign logistics required to reach the finish line as I decide which of several good candidates will have my support for 2016. Perhaps a more ambitious, higher-strung Fred would have been better able to push and direct his campaign team, but would a more ambitious, higher-strung Fred still be Fred?

(No Fredhead was as enthusiastic as Jackie Broyles, fictional co-host of Red State Update. His response to Thompson's withdrawal involved gasoline and matches. The latest "Ole Timey Country Down Home Red State Update Podcast 'n' 'Em" remembers Fred Thompson by Dunlap reading some of his pithy recent tweets as Jackie laughs and sobs.)

After the campaign, Thompson began a syndicated radio talk show with his wife Jeri as his co-host. Many of his interviews with newsmakers are available on the Fred Thompson YouTube channel, which also has video from his 2008 campaign.

Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post reviews the career of "one of the most talented politicians of his generation":

Former senator Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.) died Sunday at 73. He will be remembered by most Americans as an actor who became a politician. But he also was one of the most gifted pols of his generation, possessing a natural ability that helped him win a Senate seat with ease but also led to his underwhelming 2008 bid for president....

The buzz around Thompson was considerable in those first few years in Washington, as many Republicans viewed him as the second coming of Ronald Reagan, another actor-turned-politician. Thompson was regularly picked by his party's leaders to deliver their message du jour and was seen as someone who was simply biding his time until he ran for president....

I've always thought of Fred Thompson in basketball terms -- and not just because he was 6-foot-6. He was like a tremendously gifted hoops player who played the game because he was good at it. But he never really LOVED the game. He could take it or leave it. Just like when a supremely talented basketball player either doesn't live up to his supposed potential or walks away from the game at a young age, Thompson's unwillingness to take full advantage of the tremendous natural political gifts he was given was met with exasperation by both less-talented politicians and the staffers who tried to get the best out of him.

But that was Thompson. He always had those abilities, so they didn't seem as amazing to him. And if he was "wasting" them, well it was his life. "I can live, I will be happy either way, you decide," he once said on the campaign trail in Iowa. "I'm not even trying to say that I'm better than everybody else. ... I am just saying that what you see is what you get. I'm doing it my way -- just like I have done everything else in my life."

While Thompson had every right to live life as he chose, and it's understandable that anyone would prioritize family (particularly young chlidren) over public life, what's missing from Thompson's quote here and Cilizza's analysis is a sense of stewardship of one's gifts and abilities. I can't help but think that, had Thompson put in the work to develop in his areas of weakness, his strengths would have made him the man of the hour in 2008. His grasp of conservative principle was both intuitive through his small-town Tennessee upbringing and grounded in his extracurricular law-school reading. His commanding and reassuring presence, familiar through his work in Hollywood, might have been able to sell conservative policies to low-information voters in a way that John McCain and Mitt Romney never could.

As we honor Thompson for his significant contributions to the public good as prosecutor, corruption-busting attorney, senator, presidential candidate, and commentator, the sense of unrealized potential should challenge us all to examine our own gifts and opportunities and ask what we should be doing to amplify our impact on a nation that desperately needs conservative influence and leadership (even if they don't know it yet).

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Cilizza links this ad from Thompson's 1994 campaign for Senate, which he says shows "Thompson at the height of his powers":

WSJ Editorial Board remembers Sen. Thompson's investigation of the Clinton campaign-finance scandals as "his finest role":

Younger readers who want to know what a second Clinton Presidency would be like could do worse than inspect the volumes of sleazy facts that Thompson and his investigators uncovered. There was Mr. Clinton's refusal to implement a Nafta trucking provision in return for Teamsters money; one-time Commerce official John Huang who midwifed illegal contributions from Lippo Group employees; fixer Harold Ickes's fantastic vanishing memory; the Lincoln Bedroom cash machine; Mr. Gore and the Buddhist Temple of money, and so much more.

Thompson's committee became the main source of public information about the scandal that played a crucial role in re-electing Bill Clinton because Mr. Clinton's Attorney General Janet Reno refused to appoint a special prosecutor and the Justice Department brought relatively few charges. Had the offenses been committed by Republicans, the press corps would have called for heads on pikes but the Clintons stonewalled their way to survival as usual.

Cilizza's colleague Justin William Moyer explains how a legal case Thompson took out of pity for a woman persecuted by the local political machine became his inadvertent ticket to Hollywood:

In 1976, Marie Ragghianti, a mother of three who put herself through Vanderbilt University, was appointed chairman of Tennessee's parole board by Gov. Ray Blanton (D). Yet she ran afoul of Blanton when, after learning the governor took cash in exchange for a convict's clemency, she started voting against his recommendations. In 1978, she was fired after what turned out to be a largely groundless investigation of her expense records. She was also put under state surveillance, set up for DUI charges and falsely alleged to have stolen credit cards.

So, Ragghianti went to see a Tennessee lawyer she had seen on TV during Watergate: Fred Thompson.

"I tried to talk her out of a lawsuit," Thompson wrote. "They could make her life miserable in ways that she could not understand." Another problem: "Marie had uttered the most terrifying words that a lawyer can ever hear: 'I am broke.'"

But Ragghianti's story tugged at his heartstrings.

"The more I thought about it, the more I knew she was right about one thing: What they had done to her was cruel and unfair," Thompson wrote. "... I never did like Blanton anyway. It would be fun to rattle his cage."

When Hollywood decided to make this David v. Goliath victory into a movie, and they couldn't find the right actor to play Fred, they asked Fred to play Fred, which turned into a career:

"When they needed some middle-aged guy who'd work cheap, they'd call me for a little part and I'd go out there two or three weeks and knock one out," he said in 1994.

Some said he was a natural -- or, at least, a natural for the parts he played.

"Literally, I don't think Fred ever acts," Tom Ingram, a longtime friend who worked on Thompson's Senate campaigns, said in 2007. "He played himself in 'Marie,' and he's been playing himself ever since."

WSJ quotes from Thompson's 2007 op-ed on the positive economic effect of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts:

In fact, Treasury statistics show that tax revenues have soared and the budget deficit has been shrinking faster than even the optimists projected. Since the first tax cuts were passed, when I was in the Senate, the budget deficit has been cut in half. . . .

Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this success story is where the increased revenues are coming from. Critics claimed that across-the-board tax cuts were some sort of gift to the rich but, on the contrary, the wealthy are paying a greater percentage of the national bill than ever before.

The richest 1% of Americans now pays 35% of all income taxes. The top 10% pay more taxes than the bottom 60%. ...

To face these challenges, and any others that we might encounter in a hazardous world, we need to maintain economic growth and healthy tax revenues. That is why we need to reject taxes that punish rather than reward success. Those who say they want a "more progressive" tax system should be asked one question:

Are you really interested in tax rates that benefit the economy and raise revenue--or are you interested in redistributing income for political reasons?

The Daily Signal has collected 31 of Fred Thompson's best quotes, including several of his recent Twitter aphorismata:

5. "After two years in Washington, I often long for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood," he said in a speech before the Commonwealth Club of California.

14. "Some of our folks went to Washington to drain the swamp and made partnership with the alligators instead."

23. "On ABC, Josh Earnest said that the economy is 'building momentum'. Well, Josh, things that are rapidly going downhill often do that."

29. "NYC reports it's struggling to keep booming population of stray cats under control. Tough one. Have they tried cat-free zone signs? "

Peter Suderman at Reason:

He went on to play numerous other roles in the following years, including a memorably grave Navy Admiral in The Hunt for Red October and a key supporting part as an air-traffic-control director forced to deal with a chaotic terrorist attack in 1990's Die Hard 2.

Neither of those roles were showy, and you can easily imagine lesser performers disappearing into the parts. But they played to Thompson's strengths; he projected authority, responsibility, and competency, even as everything went to hell around him. You could imagine Thompson--or at least the character he played--being in charge, and being good at it....

Thompson sought to capitalize on that same impression in his 2008 run for president, but he could never quite pull it off. In the debates, he never seemed quite well enough prepared, and the presidential persona he was obviously aiming for never quite stuck. At heart, Thompson was always a character actor, not a leading man.

At the same time, his unwillingness to dig too deep into the role was unexpectedly endearing. He wanted to be president, but he was not mad for the job or what it might bring. As George Mason Law Professor Ilya Somin said in a Facebook post last night, it may be that Thompson's "most admirable qualification for the presidency was that he clearly did not want the office nearly as much as most other candidates, and largely lacked their obvious lust for power."

Like all politicians, he was an actor playing a part. But unlike so many, he didn't let it consume him.

Andrew McCarthy, National Review:

He was one of the great gentlemen it has been my privilege to know. Fred would have been a great president because - and today's candidates could take a lesson from this - he cared more about America than about being president. He was not the best candidate, but he would have been the best incumbent.

John Fund, National Review:

In or out of office, Fred Thompson stayed true to the conservative principles he believed he had made America great. He always thought a major reason Republicans lost the presidency in 2008 was that they had aided and abetted runaway government spending. Republicans had to commit themselves to smaller government, he contended, because Democrats are incapable of following through on ever being fiscally prudent. "Their political coalition needs more revenue like a car requires gasoline," he told me as he ran for president. "Reagan showed what can be done if you have the will to push for tough choices and the ability to ask the people to accept them." Fred Thompson never made it to the White House, but he nonetheless showed a strength of character and a grounded belief in common sense that left his country a better place.

From the Left Coast:

Concerns raised over lack of diversity in SF school election results

There's a bit of controversy surrounding student elections at a San Francisco middle school after the results were immediately withheld by the principal because they weren't diverse enough.

The incident happened at Everett Middle School in San Francisco's Mission District. The voting was held Oct. 10, but the principal sent an email to parents on Oct. 14 saying the results would not be released because the candidates that were elected as a whole do not represents the diversity that exists at the school....

According to Principal Lena Van Haren, Everett Middle School has a diverse student body. She said 80 percent of students are students of color and 20 percent are white, but the election results did not represent the entire study body.

"That is concerning to me because as principal I want to make sure all voices are heard from all backgrounds," Van Haren said.

The story quotes the mother of a 7th grader who is unhappy about the principal's decision:

Parent Bianca Gutierrez said the experience has made her son, a 7th grader, rethink his run for class representative. She said he is discouraged and does not want to be a part of the process anymore.

"That should have been something [discussed] prior to elections and prior to the campaigning process," Gutierrez said.

I wonder what voting system they used. Were representatives elected by grade or by homeroom? Was it first-past-the-post or some form of runoff? When constituencies are geographic, a certain amount of diversity is built in, but grades or homerooms at a school are all likely to have about the same proportion of different groups as the overall population. With such a homogeneous population distribution, a voting system designed to produce a plurality or majority result will likely give the most popular faction in the school all the seats.

If geography isn't a factor, and you're trying to produce a result representative of the diversity of the electorate, the Single Transferable Vote method may be the best method. With STV, if the council has M members elected by V voters, a faction of V/(M+1) voters (a number known as the quota) is sufficient to elect a representative.

It sounds like Principal Van Haren would like to classify students by ethnicity and have each ethnicity elect a proportional number of representatives, an approach that brings the final years of apartheid South Africa to mind. What makes STV superior to other forms of proportional representation is that it allows each voter to decide what kind of diversity is most important to him or her, and it also allows the voter to decide which candidate will best represent his or her priorities. A voter could decide that she cares more about having a student council representative who shares her love of Tolkien than having a representative who shares her ethnic background or her year in school. Instead of being assigned a constituency by some bureaucrat, in STV each voter effectively selects his own constituency.

Like instant runoff, in the STV system each voter casts a preferential ballot, marking "1" next to his first choice, "2" next to his second and so on. In instant runoff voting, counting, elimination, and transferring continues until one candidate has a majority of the ballots cast, because the aim is to produce a single candidate acceptable to a majority of voters. In STV, candidates are elected as soon as they can reach the quota of ballots -- V/(M+1).

Ireland uses STV to elect members of parliament from multi-member districts (each with 3, 4, or 5 representatives), which provides a combination of local representation and proportionality. It's also used for European Parliament, Assembly, and local elections in Northern Ireland, where the system ensures that both Unionists and Nationalists are represented, along with a range of opinions within each broader group.

MORE:

CJP Grey has a "Politics in the Animal Kingdom" video which illustrates the process of STV in multi-member districts.

Politics is about change. If you don't believe change is possible, you're not an advocate for politics; you're simply a guy taking a check, discussing which other guys should get checks.

Ace posted this over a week ago, in reaction to John Boehner's resignation, but it's still worth your time and attention. He explains why Boehner's entire leadership team should be purged and urges Freedom Caucus members and other House Republican outsiders to block them from remaining in leadership.

...Under no circumstances should the Freedom Caucus permit McCarthy, Scalise, or Cathy McMorris Rogers -- all the Boehner Warriors who have brought GOP morale to all-time lows -- to serve in any leadership position. A purge is a purge. To permit any of this crew to profit from their disasters would show the GOP to be what many of us strongly suspect it is -- basically, the Teachers Union for RINOs, an organization devoted to protecting its members jobs and not to serving its alleged constituents.

4. And on that point, note that if McCarthy, Scalise, and McMorris Rogers merely advance one step each in the leadership, then the only person to have paid any price here is Boehner; the rest of them will actually benefit from the Freedom Caucus forcing them out.

They should not benefit. We keep saying, of Obama, that failure ought to have consequences; how can this team be characterized as anything other than complete failures?

Are we rewarding Republican failures while claiming Obama should be held accountable for his own?

At the heart of the GOP failure is the failure to offer Republican voters any hope that things can be better. Congressional Republican leaders offered a great deal of hope in 2014 that GOP majorities in both houses could block and reverse Obamacare and executive amnesty; voters responded enthusiastically, giving Congressional Republicans a clear mandate to block Obama's lawlessness, and the Congressional GOP leadership proceeded to let them down, offering one excuse after another and acting like we were fools to believe their promises of action and resistance.

The fecklessness, failures, and flat-out betrayals of the current GOP leadership has destroyed all hope in the GOP. And a political movement without hope is not a political movement at all; it is simply an advocacy organization for getting a very small number of people cush jobs in the federal government.

If there is to be any hope permitted to the rank and file of the Republican Party, then we need big changes that permit us the illusion and fantasy of hope, without which we are nothing at all, just dejected former Republican voters.

Hope requires a change -- Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and Cathy McMorris-Rogers are no change at all; they are simply John Boehner's less accomplished inferior employees.

Ace concludes:

I find it increasingly difficult to write about politics now, you may have noticed; it's because I can no longer even pretend to care which a[-----]e is in which federal sinecure.

I think many people feel the way I do.

And if you want to entice the alienated back into the fold, you have to at least let us dream of the possibility of actual change.

That requires allowing us hope -- and not simply doubling-down on the current crop of failures and fainthearts we are obligated, sourly, to call our "leadership."

Hope is a silly illusion, but it is a necessary, sustaining silly illusion.

Faint heart never won fair lady, fellas. Nor have fainthearts ever contributed anything to society, except cowardice and inertia.

Read the whole thing, which includes an analogy involving the Star Trek episode "Mirror, Mirror."

In recent years, social media has facilitated the rapid spread of outrage. A few representative cases:

In nearly every instance, a difference of opinion within a community becomes a topic of conversation for outsiders, who amplify the issue, creating a "shame storm" that pressures the community's leaders, unaccustomed to worldwide scrutiny, into acting precipitously. In some cases, the outrage has its origins entirely outside the community.

For example, the Deborah Brown School hair code case: The affected student was upset, because the code forbade wearing dreads. The parents backed the student rather than the school and called a local TV news, which was happy to have a juicy controversy to broadcast. The local news story was shared through social media, where posters vented, characterizing the African-American leadership of the school as a bunch of self-hating racists, insisting that the school's rules were unreasonable, and demanding that they be changed at once. Perhaps under pressure from donors or from the sponsoring university, the charter school caved and changed its rules.

Bloomberg columnist Megan McArdle wrote recently about the "shame storm" phenomenon:

Twitter makes it absurdly easy to shame someone. You barely have to take 30 seconds out of your day to make an outraged comment that will please your friends and hurt the person you've targeted. This means it is also absurdly easy to attack someone unfairly, without pausing to think about context -- or the effect you are having on another human being much like yourself. No matter what that person did, short of war crimes, you probably would not join a circle of thousands of people heaping abuse upon a lone target cowering in the center. But that is the real-world equivalent of what online shame-stormers do.

This sort of tactic may buy silence, though it is likely to be the most effective on people who already agree with you and simply said something infelicitous. What it cannot buy is community, beyond the bonds that build between people who are joined in collective hate. With the exception of Lehrer -- who clearly realized he'd done something wrong without needing to be told -- the people whom Ronson interviews do not think that they were the victims of perhaps excessively harsh justice; they think they were victims of abuse. They often recognize that they did something stupid, but they don't think they deserved to be fired after having their lives dissected and their character impugned by thousands of people who had never even met them.

Writing at The Federalist, Mark Fitch advises that the Internet amplifies the apparent size of the community of the outraged and that those claiming to be offended often are pretending -- what they really feel is a lust for power:

It is often quite easy to feel that you are greatly outnumbered and that the entire world is against you, particularly if you have the gall to air your beliefs in the public realm (or be caught in it, in this situation). Social media can seemingly explode with anger at your mention of a political or cultural position that goes against whatever the Video Music Awards are advocating this year. You are beset by Legion.

But are you, really? Two thousand people is a drop in the bucket of the overall population, but when they all turn and look at you it can feel overwhelming. While outrage is nothing new in cultural or political fights, the Internet's ability to allow individuals to reach people they have never met or places they have never been perpetrates an illusion. Memories Pizza was deluged with one-star ratings by people who had never been to the establishment or sampled its pizza.

It was recently revealed that nearly 70 percent of the criticism lobbed at Rush Limbaugh (which is ample) comes from a small group of activists that have devoted their lives to attempting to make his miserable. However, to view coverage of Limbaugh in television and Internet media, you would think that the entire country is listening and vastly offended at everything he says. You would see and hear what appear to be great swaths of civilization amassing against this radio host. But this is an illusion born of spirit, not of substance, and it is meant to influence the spirit of others. It is necessary to separate the corporeal reality from the illusory zeitgeist.

Few people have time to be so incensed, and those that do should not drive culture. Their offense is an illusion. Their feelings may matter to them, but need not drive discussions and certainly shouldn't attain such grandiose proportions. Ideas can be debated and talked through, and individuals who maintain a decorum of objective detachment can often find common ground. But fight with a spirit, with irrational rage, and there is no way to find commonality.

The anonymity of the Internet allows this illusion to truly reach its greatest power as a single individual can assume any number of Internet personas that can spew any amount of nonsense and vitriol with no accountability or personal reflection whatsoever. The pseudo-anger and the Internet's ability to instantaneously connect users can often give the impression of widespread outrage, when really hardly anyone has noticed.

We should treat the purveyors of social media outrage as the tantrum-throwing toddlers whose tactics they have adopted. The more they fuss, the longer it will be before their demands are considered (if ever).

Businesses and other organizations should proactively put in place policies that require an inviolable cooling-off period prior to action taken in response to public outcry. Leaders of organizations caught in the crosshairs of a social media frenzy need to insist calmly that any changes will be handled through the organization's normal processes, after the mandatory cooling-off period -- no sooner than 30 days after the frenzy has died down, which should be long enough that the mob gets distracted by the next outrage du jour and the organization can consider the matter carefully.

The organization should then calmly examine the consider the issue in terms of general principle. Is there a consistent principle or rule behind the demanded action? If we apply that rule consistently, what other actions would be required and what precedents would be set? If we take all those consistent actions, is the result really desirable, or should the rule be modified?

During the Brady Street / Brady District controversy, I suggested that the city appoint a commission to look at the history behind all of Tulsa's names, decide on criteria that make a name unacceptable, propose substitutes for unacceptable names (preserving, I hope, Tulsa's orderly street-naming and numbering system), and propose a means for covering the cost of renaming. The public would adopt or reject the renaming and its attendant costs by an up-or-down vote. I went through a catalog of names that, by the standards applied to Brady Street, would have to be changed.

Of course, the mob will resist any effort to generalize or take a deliberative approach to the outrage du jour. They are practicing Rule 13 of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:

Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'...any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments....

Local news editors can help dampen the effect of the mob by declining to "doorstep" the targets of these frenzies, pressuring them for a response. They should put themselves in the shoes of the business and organization leaders that have been targeted by the mob. Someday they may be targeted; wouldn't they want to be given space to respond after due deliberation?

One more thing: Most people who fly the Confederate flag nowadays do not do so to express hate. When the Confederate flag was painted on a car named "the General Lee" for a TV series it was not intended to express hatred toward anyone, but pride in Southern accents, Southern cooking, Southern folkways, and Southern hospitality. That an online mob can so quickly cow politicians and corporations into bowing to their will, based on the meaning they impose on this symbol, is a frightening thing, not a great day for America.

Who gets to decide what a symbol should mean? The Nazis used the Star of David as a symbol of shame and persecution. The Israelis took that star and fly it proudly on their national flag. The enemies of Israel consider that flag and that star to be symbols of racism and oppression. If the enemies of Israel demand the suppression of the Israeli flag and star, should retailers cooperate?

Happy Independence Day!

Take 10 minutes to listen to a reading of the Declaration of Independence, from the Monticello website, read by Thomas Jefferson Williamsburg re-enactor Bill Barker.

founding.com has an annotated version of the Declaration of Independence, with links to explanations of the the specific historical context behind the text.

As today's 239th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approached, I observed some ambivalence about the usual celebrations among conservative writers. In the last month, we have seen the rule of law turned on its head, with the judicial branch rewriting Obamacare to save it and inventing a new right while discarding precedent after precedent the legal basis upon which substantive due process claims were considered in the past. Like the Red Queen of Wonderland, the Court majority screamed "Sentence first, verdict after!" Having determined the desired outcome, they invented a tortured legal path to their destination. The ability of the people to decide their own laws was swept away. The people seem to have no recourse, no defense against this supra-legislature, this Washington oligarchy which not only fails to defend their rights but attacks them.

We may take a bit of comfort in the fact that this victory was achieved by deceiving the American people: Had the President been honest about his desire to redefine marriage, he would not have been nominated in 2008, much less elected, and would not have been in a position to advance to the Supreme Court lawyers who lied, under oath, about their opinions on the topic.

But there was deception on the other side, too. Americans kept electing Republicans who talked big about defending our liberties and reforming our runaway Federal government, but time and again they have demonstrated what might be generously called a lack of courage but what we fear is really intentional betrayal.

From Thomas Sowell:

When any branch of government can exercise powers not authorized by either statutes or the Constitution, "we the people" are no longer free citizens but subjects, and our "public servants" are really our public masters. And America is no longer America. The freedom for which whole generations of Americans have fought and died is gradually but increasingly being taken away from us with smooth and slippery words.

From law professor John Yoo:

Obergefell short-circuits the political process. Instead of campaigning to persuade majorities in each of the 50 states, as it had done in some states, gay-marriage advocates only had to convince five justices to impose a single rule on the nation. While many may welcome Obergefell's result, its method takes a fundamental question away from the realm of democratic self-government and transfers it into the hands of five men and women who never stand for election and hold their jobs for life....

But instead of allowing the political process to run its normal course, the Supreme Court decided to rewrite Obamacare. On behalf of a six-justice majority, Roberts concluded that Congress could not possibly have intended such a draconian limit on tax credits. It must have meant to give the subsidy to everyone, because that would have made for a more effective overhaul of the health-care system. In other words, the court ignored the plain text of the law passed by Congress to write a better one. The justices may have better legal talents than the average legislator, but our Constitution does not give them the responsibility to make the compromises and judgments reserved to the legislative process.

Sadly, Roberts penned the central dissent in Obergefell on the ground that the majority was rewriting the Constitution. "Under the Constitution," he wrote, "judges have power to say what the law is, not what it should be." But if he wonders where his colleagues got the idea to assume the power of a supra-legislature, he need only look at his own opinion in King v. Burwell. This fault, however, is not his own, or in our stars, but is common to a court that is slowly, but surely, taking away the right of our democracy to govern itself.

Even at the local level we see elected officials, the Fairfax County, Va., school board, in this case, acting like an oligarchy, insisting upon using the public schools to indoctrinate children in the mores of the Sexual Revolution, over the protests of the public that put them into office.

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Should we celebrate this 4th of July?

Luma Simms, who immigrated from Iraq as a child, says she's celebrating the 4th differently this year:

After the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision, I've been ruminating over my naturalized home and wondering if there's a way to give my children a better life, the way my parents assumed that coming to America would give me a better life. The morality of Obergefell is one issue. But beneath all that, what has deeply concerned me is the stark lawlessness of it all....

The fourth of July celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It was never just an excuse for a backyard barbecue for me. It was a day I observed with deep gratitude and a certain amount of solemnity. It was a celebration of what our predecessors in this land had done, the course they had set us on and the paths they had opened for us.

The Declaration of Independence says some truths are self-evident. Five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court say that we make up our own truths....

The Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights. Five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court overlook the real and true rights human beings possess and say that man gives man rights--worse, that they as the high court of this country are the ones which posit what is a right and what is not, as their reality changes faster than any written law they might be called upon to interpret....

The Declaration of Independence says that among the rights our Creator God gives us are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Five justices of the Supreme Court of these United States have said and continue to say that life is not a universal right. That women can end the life of a child in their wombs. They have upheld and continue to hold to decisions that undermine the life of the weak, the poor, and the outcast. They say: "At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life," yet they deny those being killed the right to even suggest they might have a concept of existence that includes themselves. In short, these five reduce the "pursuit of Happiness" to access to sex without boundaries.

The Declaration of Independence says government derives just power from the consent of the governed. Five justices of the U.S. Supreme Court have trod upon the people's voice and have usurped power for themselves.

So, as I read the Declaration this year, I boldly affirm its words. There has indeed been "a long train of abuses and usurpations" by this court. They have undermined and invalidated the legal and ethical foundations our Founders went to war to win for us, their posterity. And this makes my celebration this year more a focus on the inspired spirit of man that would stand and recite to the world not only the litany of injustices that its "leaders" exercise upon the people daily, but the logical conclusion of these injustices: that the people could suffer them no longer.

The blogger called "Weirddave," who has been writing a series on fundamental concepts at Ace of Spades HQ, acknowledges the problem:

There is really no argument about it, the fundamental principles upon which this nation was formed have been eroded or eclipsed to the point where the greatest Democratic Republic in history, a model for the world and a beacon for freedom, is now nothing more than another damned dirty Oligarchy, impoverished peons subservient to a greedy ruling class. In short, we've reverted to the norm. American exceptionalism is dead because America isn't exceptional anymore, we're just like all the rest of the countries in the world, just like all the rest of the countries throughout history. We are no longer sovereign citizens, we're are subjects of a ruling elite.

...The Fourth of July holiday celebrates the Declaration of Independence, the document where America declared it's freedom and boldly stated it's grievances against an out of touch ruling elite. We'll have fireworks, fellowship, celebration, and community. Flags will be raised, rockets shot, anthems sung and BBQ eaten. It's all one great big orgy of Americana, and although most people aren't even aware of it, they are celebrating a dead letter, an antiquated concept, an ideal that has been killed by an unelected cadre of black robed tyrants, cowardly legislators more interested in power than oaths and an executive drunk on the power to destroy everything that he is honor bound to safeguard. It's Independence Day! Time to celebrate our independence from the values that made us great! Who cares? It sure feels good, don't it?

You don't buy the idea that America is ruled by an oligarchy alienated from its people? How else would you describe a situation where five robed judges dismiss the opinion of the majority of the public, an opinion shared by nearly every age and society, as grounded in irrational animus, and use that contempt as a basis for invalidating laws passed by Congress and a majority of the states.

The writer calls on Americans to remember their birthright, as set out in the Declaration of Independence, and he urges his readers to Read the Whole Thing. After reprinting the text of the Declaration, he continues:

That document was written 239 years ago by an assembly of the brightest human minds ever joined for one purpose in the history of mankind. Those men accepted the challenge presented by an uncontrolled aristocracy seeking to rule over all people, as had been the case throughout history, and calmly and clearly destroyed the idea of an oligarchy. What a brilliant victory for mankind, for liberty, for freedom for self expression.

Unfortunately you and I are living in the era of Revolution 2: The Oligarchy Strikes Back. Make no mistake, the oligarchy has struck back, hard. Most of the freedoms guaranteed to We The People by the follow up document to the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, have been abandoned or overturned.... A small cadre of elites, both elected and unelected, has managed to almost completely gut the rights that we are born with. They have succeeded because we have been too busy to notice, or too lazy, or too afraid. The majority of us, Nock's "Mass Man" (what we call LIVs today), have been complicit in their own enslavement. All of this has already come to pass. It is done. Over. Finished.

He urges us to reread the catalog of tyrannies, the facts the Founders "submitted to a candid world" and to note how many apply to us today.Then he challenges us with the memory of the Founders and those who followed in the defense of liberty:

We stand metaphorically on a dusty battlefield of American history. Around us lie the tattered remains of various flags that other Americans have held high as they did their bit to establish or preserve the birthright; Gadsden. Goliad. Gonzalez. Culpeper. 1st Naval Jack. Appeal to Heaven. Behind us the dark eyes of those who came before us watch, in each eye a silent question burns: "What are you made of?". The time has come. We must answer that question with our Lives, our Fortune and our sacred Honor.

A reader asked columnist Matt Walsh to write something upbeat for Independence Day, something to remind everyone that America is still great. Walsh demurred:

I could write patronizing, pandering nonsense telling you everything is fine, this country is awesome, and the future will be bright and filled with lollipops and puppy dog farts. But what good would it do, besides win me some PR points? If you want hope, it needs to be planted firmly in truth, or else it's like administering morphine while you die of kidney failure. It'll make you feel better for a time, but it won't save you....

Walsh cites a long list of indicators of cultural decline and argues against any claim to national greatness based on the past or any hope for future greatness based on a vain belief in national destiny:

But it's a matter of historical record that America was a great country, and an exceptional one. And it's also a fact that the historical record is just that -- history. We have to stop resting on the laurels of our great-grandparents and pretending that somehow, because they came off the boat from wherever and persevered through the Depression, we get to mooch off their greatness for eternity. Frankly, our great-grandparents would be disgusted at our country now, and ashamed of it, and of us. Their greatness was their own. We don't deserve it and have not earned it....

Yesterday someone on Twitter told me that America will "always" be great, no matter what happens or what we do. Others have insisted it's divine destiny that America reclaim its greatness. But this kind of talk isn't patriotic; it's paganism. It paints this country like it's literally the Kingdom of God. As if, out of all the thousands of countries that have existed since the dawn of time, ours is the first that really will last forever. This is to make Americanism into a religion. It's idolatry. It's foolishness, especially considering the Romans and the Greeks felt exactly the same way yet even they were evidently wrong.

We have no guarantees, nor should we seek them. The Lord, in His wisdom, might see fit to smite America from the Earth, like Sodom and Gomorrah. Can't say I'd blame Him. Or maybe He will lead us through this dark age to true greatness. I don't know.

(Looking at the history of the 20th century, it's as if we suddenly decided, sometime after World War II, that civilization was nice and all, but it's hard work, so let's chuck it.)

We ought to celebrate Independence Day for the sake of honoring and being stirred to action by the memory of those who put everything at risk for the sake of liberty, while humbly and soberly acknowledging that we have fallen far short of preserving their legacy.

We ought to celebrate Independence Day, because the Declaration of Independence represents ideals worth celebrating, ideals that are opposed by the architects of our national decline.

A writer at Vox posted yesterday that we should regard American independence as a tragic mistake. The post was riddled with historical inaccuracies, but the gist of it was that this whole checks-and-balances thing gets in the way of Progress like restrictions on fossil fuels.

Yesterday, a friend who works in Christian campus ministry posted an approving link to a Native American activist who blogged about how he made a stink about a chain restaurant's display of the Declaration of Independence. He made a stink because the Declaration includes the words "Merciless Indian Savages," which he claims means that the "foundations of the United States of America are blatantly unjust."

When our server, who was also Native, came to the table, I asked if I could show him something. I stood up and pointed out that 30 lines below the famous quote "All men are created equal," the Declaration of Independence refers to Natives as "merciless Indian savages."

The irony was that the restaurant was filled with Native American customers and employees. And there in plain sight, a poster hanging on the wall was literally calling all of us "savages."

That's literally untrue, and it's telling that he chooses not to quote the entire sentence containing that phrase:

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

It is the last item in the Declaration's list of grievances against King George III, and from "has endeavoured" to the end of the sentence, the words are straight out of Thomas Jefferson's "rough draught."

George III had, through his agents in America, stirred up rebellions among slaves and attacks against the colonists by certain Indian tribes. This was not out of any British love for slaves or Indians; these groups were convenient proxies to harass the colonists. This statement is an indictment aimed at George III, not Indians. (Ignore the commas, which were not applied in 1776 with the same rules used today.) The phrase "merciless Indian savages" is qualified by the restrictive clause "whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

This sentence tells us what the Continental Congress thought of the particular Indian nations who were incited by the British against the settlers; it says nothing about what the Congress thought of other Indian groups or about Indians generally. The same American founder who wrote the phrase in question wrote the following in his first State of the Union:

Among our Indian neighbors also a spirit of peace and friendship generally prevails, and I am happy to inform you that the continued efforts to introduce among them the implements and the practice of husbandry and of the household arts have not been without success; that they are becoming more and more sensible of the superiority of this dependence for clothing and subsistence over the precarious resources of hunting and fishing, and already we are able to announce that instead of that constant diminution of their numbers produced by their wars and their wants, some of them begin to experience an increase of population.

Those are not the words of a bigot or a racist.

And yet the activist in question stretches a specific phrase referring to specific people who had attacked innocent settlers so that he can conclude that the "Declaration of Independence is a systemically racist document" along with the rest of our founding documents, and therefore of course the whole system must be overthrown.

The institutions of this nation may be systemically racist, but I do not believe a majority of the citizens are. However, in a nation that is systemically racist, anti-racism is less about personal racist attitudes and more about a willingness to change the system.

(He also misreads the apportionment clause of the Constitution to bolster his case. But Indians weren't counted toward apportionment not because they weren't seen as human, as he claims, but because they were citizens of other sovereign nations and therefore not taxed. And he claims that American settlers, including the Protestant dissenters who settled Plymouth Colony, were really carrying out a 15th century papal bull to subjugate the pagans.)

It is sad that a manipulative misreader of American history with a radical political agenda can gain a hearing among goodhearted people like my friend. Does this also indicate a problem with modern American evangelicalism -- having internalized the Leftist guilt trip and anxious not to seem wedded to political conservativism for the sake of reaching Millenials, must they credulously accept whatever Leftist grievance-mongers claim?

The only antidote is for Americans to understand our history -- not the malevolent caricature concocted by the Left, but the original documents and context -- and to be unafraid to correct the misconceptions being promoted by professional ax-grinders.

In a similar context in 2007, Michael Medved wrote:

The notion that unique viciousness to Native Americans represents our "original sin" fails to put European contact with these struggling Stone Age societies in any context whatever, and only serves the purposes of those who want to foster inappropriate guilt, uncertainty and shame in young Americans.

One of the most urgent needs in culture and education for the United States of America is discarding the stupid, groundless and anti-American lies that characterize contemporary political correctness.

Rush Limbaugh, Jr., father of the radio talk show host, wrote an essay on the men who signed the Declaration of Independence, "The Americans Who Risked Everything":

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact.

It is reasonable to be disappointed in the direction of our national culture, but we should rekindle the Spirit of '76 in our own hearts. We should reacquaint ourselves with the words of the Declaration of Independence and the brave men who signed their names to it, pledging their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, and we should resolve to be as bold in the defense of our liberties as they were.

James Madison, writing to George Turberville, 2 November 1788, about the prospect of another Constitutional Convention before the ink was dry on the 1787 Constitution:

"You wish to know my sentiments on the project of another general Convention as suggested by New York. I shall give them to you with great frankness . . .

3. If a General Convention were to take place for the avowed and sole purpose of revising the Constitution, it would naturally consider itself as having a greater latitude than the Congress appointed to administer and support as well as to amend the system; it would consequently give greater agitation to the public mind; an election into it would be courted by the most violent partizans on both sides; it wd. probably consist of the most heterogeneous characters; would be the very focus of that flame which has already too much heated men of all parties; would no doubt contain individuals of insidious views, who under the mask of seeking alterations popular in some parts but inadmissible in other parts of the Union might have a dangerous opportunity of sapping the very foundations of the fabric. Under all these circumstances it seems scarcely to be presumeable that the deliberations of the body could be conducted in harmony, or terminate in the general good. Having witnessed the difficulties and dangers experienced by the first Convention which assembled under every propitious circumstance, I should tremble for the result of a Second, meeting in the present temper of America, and under all the disadvantages I have mentioned. . . .

Retired Chief Justice Warren Burger, writing in 1988, during his service as chairman of the Commission of the Bicentennial of the U. S. Constitution:

I have repeatedly given my opinion that there is no effective way to limit or muzzle the actions of a Constitutional Convention. The Convention could make its own rules and set its own agenda. Congress might try to limit the Convention to one amendment or to one issue, but there is no way to assure that the Convention would obey. After a Convention is convened, it would be too late to stop the Convention if we don't like its agenda...Our 1787 Constitution was referred by several of its authors as a 'miracle.' Whatever gain might be hoped for from a new Constitutional Convention could not be worth the risks involved....

Eagle Forum has a section of its website devoted to the problems with a proposed Article V Convention (sometimes called a "Convention of the States").

Our 1787 Convention was developed by men who were classically educated and immersed in a culture suffused with the teaching of Scripture. The Great Awakening had produced a revival of religion and a reformation of manners throughout the American States. The Framers of the Constitution understood the innate dignity of man and his innate depravity. They read the ancient historians on the strengths and weaknesses of Athenian democracy. They read histories and contemporaneous accounts of the rise of the Roman Republic and its decline into dictatorship and empire. The evolution of Britain's constitutional monarchy and her brief experiment with republicanism was in the not-too-distant past.

Anyone seriously believe that a new Constitutional convention would be populated by delegates with the same depth of education and capacity for complex thought?

We have judges who are quite happy to twist constitutional language to suit the social and political aims of the Cultural Revolution. How will more words stop them? We have senators who won't block judges of the aforementioned type, out of fear of being thought judgmental and obstructionist. We have citizens who twice elected a President who had described his purpose as "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." What kind of men and women will they elect to a Constitutional Convention?

Tulsa Community College has for several years offered a program to Tulsa County high school graduates called Tulsa Achieves: Free tuition and fees for up to 63 credit hours or three years, which ever comes first. To qualify, you have to have a C average or better in high school and enroll in TCC for the fall after you graduate.

These scholarships are primarily funded by the property taxpayers of Tulsa County and the sales and income taxpayers of Oklahoma out of the TCC budget:

The FY 14 budget includes the following components: approximately 34.4 percent from local appropriations; 32 percent from state appropriations; 31.6 percent from tuition and fees; and 2 percent from grants and other sources.

So the same families that send their young adults to TCC on a Tulsa Achieves scholarship are paying the property taxes (either directly as owners or indirectly as renters) and sales taxes to fund the scholarship. The same board of directors that pays for the scholarships are also in control of institutional costs. If the board were to allow spending to spiral out of control, the same people would have to decide whether to make up the difference by cutting the number or scope of Tulsa Achieves scholarships, raising tuition, or seeking outside funding. Raise tuition or cut scholarships too much, and students drop out. There's no disconnect between funding and spending, and that creates an incentive to keep costs under control.

President Obama has proposed federal funding to cover all community college tuition. I haven't seen a description of the funding formula, but the effect is almost certain to be the same as any situation in which a third party is paying the bill.

Right now TCC tuition plus fees is about $130 per credit hour, not counting flat fees on top of that. 30 credit hours per year is roughly what you'd need to take in order to graduate in two years with an associate's degree. So for the sake of example let's round it off to an even $4000 per academic year in tuition and fees.

So the federal government comes along and says we'll cover community college tuition and fees for qualified high school graduates. TCC would realize that they could phase out the Tulsa Achieves program or end it altogether. They wouldn't lose any students because the net cost to the student will remain the same, but now TCC would have an extra $4000 a year per student to play with. They could raise salaries, increase administrative perks, pay for more conference travel, build fancier facilities.

Then, suppose TCC should raise tuition and fees from $4000 to $5000 -- a 20% jump and far faster than the rate of inflation. A few adult learners may yelp, but not much, since they're only taking a course or two, not a full load. The students who qualify for free tuition from the federal government won't feel it at all. And now TCC would have even more money to spend on salaries, perks, travel, and facilities. They would regard it as "other people's money," even though it's really money ultimately but indirectly coming from Tulsa taxpayers and from the grandchildren who will have to repay the money the feds borrowed to fund "free" community college.

With a federal guarantee of free community college, would there be any pressure on TCC to control costs? No. If the federal government tried to limit reimbursement under the program to the original tuition baseline, there would be protests that the government is going back on its promise of free tuition.

I don't know how many Tulsa Achieves students have attained two-year degrees or gone on to four-year degrees. I don't know how many of those students would not have received a degree without the help of Tulsa Achieves. But I do know that Tulsa County residents are getting more educational opportunity for their tax dollars because the same board that determines the scope and size of the grants also has to account for the cost that those grants have to cover.

MORE: The New York Times' David Brooks points out that retention is a much bigger problem than tuition cost for underprivileged students trying to get an education:

The problem is that getting students to enroll is neither hard nor important. The important task is to help students graduate. Community college drop out rates now hover somewhere between 66 percent and 80 percent.

Spending $60 billion over 10 years to make community college free will do little to reduce that. In the first place, community college is already free for most poor and working-class students who qualify for Pell grants and other aid. In 2012, 38 percent of community-college students had their tuition covered entirely by grant aid and an additional 33 percent had fees of less than $1,000.

The Obama plan would largely be a subsidy for the middle- and upper-middle-class students who are now paying tuition and who could afford to pay it in the years ahead....

In short, you wouldn't write government checks for tuition. You'd strengthen structures around the schools. You'd focus on the lived environment of actual students and create relationships and cushions to help them thrive.

We've had two generations of human capital policies. Human Capital 1.0 was designed to give people access to schools and other facilities. It was based on the 1970s liberal orthodoxy that poor people just need more money, that the government could write checks and mobility will improve.

Human Capital 2.0 is designed to help people not just enroll but to complete school and thrive. Its based on a much more sophisticated understanding of how people actually live, on the importance of social capital, on the difficulty of living in disorganized circumstances. The new research emphasizes noncognitive skills -- motivation, grit and attachment -- and how to use policy levers to boost these things.

The tuition piece of the Obama proposal is Human Capital 1.0. It is locked in 1970s liberal orthodoxy. Congress should take the proposal, scrap it and rededicate the money toward programs that will actually boost completion, that will surround colleges, students and their families with supporting structures. We don't need another program that will lure students into colleges only to have them struggle and drop out.

Brooks mentions several specific challenges:

Community colleges are not sticky places. Many students don't have intimate relationships with anyone who can guide them through the maze of registration, who might help bond them to campus....

A quarter of college students nationwide have dependent children. Even more students at community colleges do. Less than half of community colleges now have any day-care facilities. Many students drop out because something happens at home and there's no one to take care of the kids.

My late mother-in-law, Marjorie Marugg-Wolfe, saw this need many years ago when she began working with "displaced homemakers" -- women who found themselves suddenly widowed or divorced and in need of a job. She founded the Benton County, Arkansas, Single Parent Scholarship Fund and helped begin similar funds statewide and nationwide. The fund helps with costs beyond tuition -- it may be books, childcare, or car repairs -- anything that might otherwise force a student to drop out. The aid is provided in the context of relationships with mentors and peers. Because the funds are raised and distributed by a private organization, funds are distributed according to compassionate judgment rather than rigid rules. Thousands of students in Benton County have been helped since the program's inception.

Rather than spend money our federal government would have to borrow and establish another federal bureaucracy, it would be better for state and local higher education officials to encourage more of these private scholarship funds to be established.

From the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire blog:

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman James Inhofe (R., Okla.), who just took the reins of the panel, said he is open to considering raising the gas tax as a way to help pay for the dwindling Highway Trust Fund that keeps up the nation's roads and other transportation infrastructure.

"Everything is on the table," Mr. Inhofe said in a Wednesday briefing with reporters to preview his committee agenda. He said his top priority is passing a long-term transportation bill, whose spending runs out at the end of May.

With gasoline prices at lows not seen since 2009, some political observers and business executives say now is the ideal time to raise the 18.4 cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline and the 24.4 cent-a-gallon tax on diesel fuel, which haven't increased since 1993. The taxes are the main source of revenue for the highway trust fund.

Mr. Inhofe didn't say he supports raising the gas tax, and he refutes referring to it as such. "It's not a tax," Mr. Inhofe said. "It's a user fee."

He also said this period of cheap gas isn't really a window of opportunity given it could close sooner than Congress is going to act. "You don't know what's going to happen to the price of gas," Mr. Inhofe said.

It doesn't sound like Sen. Inhofe is gung-ho for boosting the Federal gas tax, but he's more open to the idea than he should be. If the gas tax is collected as a "user fee" for those who travel our interstate highway system, then the money collected should be spent only on the interstate highway system. If lower gas prices create an opportunity to raise gas taxes, leave that to state and local governments, who can then prioritize spending among local needs -- widening local highways, rebuilding bridges, installing sidewalks, building bike lanes, funding mass transit.

Sending locally-collected money to Washington just so congressmen and senators can send it back home is a ridiculous game. The money comes back with strings attached, is often politically directed, and often gets spent on wasteful projects that are only pursued because the money is "federal" and treated like a windfall. (I-40 relocation in Oklahoma City is a prime example.)

I'd love to see our new Republican majorities reduce the federal gas tax and federal diesel tax to what is required to fund upkeep on the two-digit interstates -- the trunk roads that are the backbone for shipment of goods around the US. Then states can choose -- or not -- to raise local fuel taxes to match the cut in federal taxes.

Oklahoma 1st District Congressman Jim Bridenstine has reversed himself and announced his opposition to John Boehner's re-election as Speaker. But other Republicans are sticking with Bridenstine's earlier analysis that Boehner cannot be beat.

But critics of the anti-Boehner rebellion who say the announced challengers -- Louis Gohmert of Texas and Ted Yoho of Florida -- cannot win the speakership themselves are missing some historical perspective. Gohmert, Yoho and company can get what they seek -- someone besides Boehner as speaker -- without becoming speaker themselves. They don't have to be viable alternatives. They are stalking horses.

The most famous example in recent history of this scenario was in the 1990 ouster of UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Despite leading the Conservatives to a landslide third general election victory in 1987, she was losing popularity over the "community charge" (the so-called "poll tax"), and pro-European-integration Tories saw an opportunity to take her down. Thatcher had handily defeated a challenge the previous year by a back-bench MP, but enough votes were cast against her to reveal some weakness.

In 1990, former cabinet member and rabid Europhile Michael Heseltine had no chance of being elected party leader, but he challenged Thatcher for the leadership as a stalking horse. Thatcher won a majority on the first round of balloting, but missed outright election under the rules by four votes, forcing a second round. Wounded by the sizeable minority opposed to her continuing as leader, Thatcher was persuaded by allies to withdraw, which opened the door for John Major to enter the race and win. Heseltine finished a distant second behind Major. Although Major was an ally of Thatcher, he was considered more conciliatory and more open to bringing Britain (disastrously) into the European exchange-rate mechanism. Thatcher's enemies got their way, even though their initial challenger did not become prime minister.

The same scenario would likely play out if Boehner failed to get the majority on the first ballot. Unable to win a majority of the vote, he would have to withdraw, and the Republican caucus would have to find a candidate that everyone, especially the anti-Boehner rebels, would be willing to support. The resulting compromise candidate would likely be someone who supported Boehner in the first round but is seen by his colleagues as a stronger leader and negotiator.

BACKGROUND:

The Washington Post is keeping a whip count.

The Daily Signal reports on the last time a Speaker election went beyond the first round and lists other notable challenges to official party nominees for Speaker:

The last time Congress failed to immediately elect a speaker of the House was 1923. Still chafing from the heavy-handed speakership of Joe Cannon, the progressive wing of the Republican Party forced nine ballots before allowing Frederick Gillet to become speaker in exchange for policy compromises.

Freedom Works explains why House Republicans should replace Boehner and lists Boehner's 10 worst votes as speaker.

Challenger Louis Gohmert gives Breitbart Texas a list of John Boehner's broken promises to conservative congressmen.

Erick Erickson says Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan is the man who could rally opposition and block Boehner. Will he be Horatius at the bridge? And Erickson calls out Republican freshmen who are backing away from their campaign pledges to oppose Boehner:

First, in the whirlwind of Washington you will often be pressured to just do something. That something is always constructed in a way to act as opposed to refrain from acting. Sometimes, however, not acting is a more powerful thing to do.

Second, remember that you are accountable to your constituents. You work for them, not the other way around. You are their employee and your job review comes up on a two year schedule in the House and a six year schedule in the Senate.

Third, and above all else, remember that there is a God and one day you will stand before Him. Long after the voters ceased assesses you, you will stand in judgment. This world will pass away, but what you do here will be measured on that last day. Eternal things matter most and selling your soul to Washington at the expense of God or your family will eventually catch up to you.

Pollster Pat Caddell says that his polling shows 60% of Republicans want a new Speaker and a third of Republicans are ready to bolt from the party, believing that the party leadership does not share their views and values.

Matt K. Lewis says you have to trade favors and build loyalty over a long period of time to be successful as an "insurgent." He points to the groundwork that Newt Gingrich laid for his rise to Minority Whip and then Speaker.

What is more, Gingrich began working with the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) in 1979 as part of an effort to take the majority, and later took over GOPAC. Both organizations were focused on helping elect new Members to Congress. This means that newly-elected Republicans would be indebted (and thus loyal) to Gingrich. Aside from his brilliance as a visionary thinker, Gingrich spent years assiduously cultivating support and planning for a majority.

Now ask yourself this: Is there a serious conservative House Member today who does so many favors for Republican candidates that they will be loyal to him when they are elected? By definition, the people interested in accumulating power -- and capable of pulling off this sort of logistical feat -- tend to be establishment types. It's tempting to say this is a Catch-22, but it doesn't have to be this way. As Morton Blackwell says, "You owe it to your philosophy to study how to win."

Nevertheless, there seems to be an inverse relationship between the ability to win a leadership position -- and one's commitment to ideological purity. Some of this is probably structural and self selecting, but I can't help lamenting the fact that the most charismatic and inspirational conservatives also tend to be among the least organized.

As a newly-sworn-in freshman in 2013, Bridenstine voted against Boehner and for then-Majority Leader, now ex-Congressman, Eric Cantor instead, one of 12 Republicans to vote for another candidate. Had four more Republicans joined them, Boehner would have been denied re-election on the first ballot.

But as recently as November 15, 2014, Bridenstine, who won re-election without any opposition from either party, announced in an op-ed that he would support Boehner for a third term as Speaker, seeing no practical way to stop his re-election after the caucus renominated him:

An effort to replace Speaker Boehner would require several steps, each offering very little chance of success. The first step would be to rally enough Republican dissenting votes to block a 50-percent-plus-l vote on the floor. The Republicans have a historically high 60-seat majority in the newly elected 114th Congress, possibly higher as midterm election vote counts continue. With this large of a majority, the probability of securing enough dissenting votes is remote, especially after a private nomination meeting.

If 30 or more Republicans voted for someone else and Speaker Boehner did not get a 50-percent-plus-l vote, a second private meeting of the Republican Conference would occur. At that meeting the dissenting members would have to withstand pressure from the balance of the Republican conference. The minority of Republicans would have to offer an alternative candidate who the majority of Republicans would accept. The probability that there would be 30 or more dissenters is virtually zero, and likewise the chance that the majority of Republicans would capitulate to the minority is near zero.

If the minority of the conference somehow prevailed, there would be another vote on the floor, again requiring a 50-percent-plus-1 majority. This time, members of the original majority would vote against the new Republican nominee to block the minority. The process would be in shambles, the public would be outraged, and Democrats would be strengthened. If this impossible scenario happened, it would be the worst outcome for those of us who have been fighting for the conservative movement.

My goal has always been to do what is right for our country, regardless of the political consequences. In my first term, with a smaller Republican majority, I voted against Speaker Boehner on the floor believing that we could deny him a 50-percent-plus-l majority. However, Rep. Boehner was elected as several potential dissenters succumbed to pressure. While that effort may have been the right move under a smaller Republican majority, it is not the right move under a larger majority.

In his January 2, 2015, press release, Bridenstine explains that Boehner's support for the CR/Omnibus cost him Bridenstine's vote:

Like President Obama, Speaker Boehner must have heard voices that didn't vote. Together they crafted the CR/Omnibus, a $1.1 trillion spending bill which funded the government for 10 months and blocked our newest elected Republicans from advancing conservative policy and delivering on campaign promises. With this vote, Republicans gave away the best tool available to rein in our liberal activist President: the power of the purse. The power of the purse is Congress' Constitutional strength.

For the next 10 months, the CR/Omnibus will fulfill Obama's ambition of creating an even larger constituency of dependency on Obamacare. The President's goal has always been to create as much dependency as possible before enforcing the destructive employer mandate. The CR/Omnibus hands the liberals that victory. This is unconscionable after watching the campaign rhetoric that won such decisive victories for the GOP....

The Constitution requires the President to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. He has refused to enforce the laws on border security, Obamacare, illicit drugs, and the release of detained terrorists. His activism in his last two years has accelerated to include executive amnesty, initiating international climate deals without a treaty, and establishing an embassy in Cuba without consulting Congress. When our Constitution is under assault and House Republicans give away our Constitutional power of the purse, they share the guilt of abandoning our founding principles.

(Bridenstine actually could have stopped the CR/Omnibus by voting against the rule to bring it to the floor, but rejected that tactic, thinking it unlikely to succeed. As it happened, one more vote against would have been sufficient to stop the bill.)

THE AFTERMATH:

Louis Gohmert's statement:

This was always about one thing -trying to have a Speaker who was sensitive to the will of the American voters. As I repeatedly made clear, this was never about one person.

We knew that if everyone were present, we needed 29 votes for anyone other than the current Speaker. If we achieved that, then either after the first ballot or second, we would have a conference of only Republican members of Congress to likely agree on a compromise candidate. The goal was to have a new Speaker with wisdom and honesty to lead the Congress. The fight does not end today. ...

After being told that we should now all come together and work together, we have been told late today that two of our Congressmen are being taken off of the committee they were on, simply for voting like their voters wanted. So, it appears before we can work together, we are now going to have another fight. It would be a shame if the Speaker of the House who has so much power is a sore winner."

Erick Erickson, a leading voice calling for Boehner's ouster urges grace toward those who voted for Boehner's re-election.

Leon H. Wolf urges conservatives to take heart:

The simple fact is that what happened today in the Speaker election is unprecedented in modern politics. Speakers of the House who gain seats do not face defections on this order, or anything even remotely like it. The fact that Boehner had 25 (at least) defections despite the absence of a credible challenger speaks volumes about the fact that the culture in the GOP Caucus is changing - even if it is changing slower than some would like to see it change.

I got some flak for pointing out that Bridenstine could have blocked the CR/Omnibus by voting against the rule to bring it to the floor -- he would have been the one-more-vote the opposition needed. It was suggested that noticing this is nitpicking his tactics when I should be applauding without reservation. But at the time, Erick Erickson and others believed the key vote was the vote against the rule. If the CR/Omnibus reached the floor it would pass, because it would receive enough Democrat votes to make up for any Republican defections. A Politico article about the revenge planned by Boehner and his lieutenants against GOP dissidents appears to confirm the substantive importance of the vote on the rule:

The House Republican leadership is carefully reviewing the list of members who voted against the speaker and those who opposed a procedural motion in December on the so-called "crominibus," the $1.1 trillion spending package to keep the government open through to September. Top Republican sources suggested that the process could take months to unfold.

While I applaud Bridenstine's leadership in the attempt to defeat Boehner, his decision not to use the power in his hand to block CR/Omnibus was a surprising move toward pragmatism over principle, as was his decision back in November to support Boehner as the GOP caucus's nominee for speaker. When a planet wobbles, astronomers look for an object exerting gravitational pull. Whose pull made Jim Bridenstine wobble?

Law professor Josh Blackman has done a detailed analysis of the legal advice given to President Obama regarding his executive order effectively granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants. The White House's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) drew some very fine distinctions that have escaped the attention of the popular press.

The gist of it is this: No, a president can't simply decide not to enforce a law on the books. Prosecutorial discretion has to be exercised on a case-by-case basis. The administration may adopt guidelines that prosecutors should consider when deciding whether or not to prosecute, but a policy that precludes automatic application to an entire class. Some relevant quotes from the OLC memo:

We advised that it was critical that, like past policies that made deferred action available to certain classes of aliens, the DACA program require immigration officials to evaluate each application for deferred action on a case-by-case basis, rather than granting deferred action automatically to all applicants who satisfied the threshold eligibility criteria....

Finally, lower courts, following Chaney, have indicated that non-enforcement decisions are most comfortably characterized as judicially unreviewable exercises of enforcement discretion when they are made on a case-by-case basis.... Individual enforcement decisions made on the basis of case-specific factors are also unlikely to constitute "general polic[ies] that [are] so extreme as to amount to an abdication of [the agency's] statutory responsibilities." Id. at 677 (quoting Chaney, 477 U.S. at 833 n.4). That does not mean that all "general policies" respecting non-enforcement are categorically forbidden: Some "general policies" may, for example, merely provide a framework for making individualized, discretionary assessments about whether to initiate enforcement actions in particular cases. Cf. Reno v. Flores, 507 U.S. 292, 313 (1993) (explaining that an agency's use of "reasonable presumptions and generic rules" is not incompatible with a requirement to make individualized determinations). But a general policy of non-enforcement that forecloses the exercise of case-by-case discretion poses "special risks" that the agency has exceeded the bounds of its enforcement discretion. Crowley Caribbean Transp., 37 F.3d at 677....

Further, although the proposed policy is not a "single-shot non-enforcement decision," neither does it amount to an abdication of DHS's statutory responsibilities, or constitute a legislative rule overriding the commands of the substantive statute. Crowley Caribbean Transp., 37 F.3d at 676-77. The proposed policy provides a general framework for exercising enforcement discretion in individual cases, rather than establishing an absolute, inflexible policy of not enforcing the immigration laws in certain categories of cases.

In another entry, Blackman imagines President Rick Perry issuing an executive order to "to defer all prosecutions for any tax payer that pays at least 17% of their flat tax, even if the old brackets suggest they owe more" among other discretionary steps.

MORE: This week's "cold open" on Saturday Night Live featured a new Schoolhouse Rock video: Who needs a bill when you can issue an executive order?

Last last week, NRO's Charles C. W. Cooke traced the transformation of Barack Obama from the 2008 senator who wanted to rein in the executive branch to the 2014 president who has gone well beyond the actions which he had condemned in his predecessor's administration:

Noting in 2008 that he "taught constitutional law for ten years," and in consequence took "the Constitution very seriously," Obama determined that "the biggest problems that we're facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all." "That," the candidate assured his audience, is "what I intend to reverse when I'm president of the United States of America."...

And yet, just one short year after he had told students that he was hamstrung by the rules, the president did precisely what he said he could not, refusing to "enforce and implement" those "very clear" laws and abdicating disgracefully his "appropriate role as president." Obama called this maneuver "DACA," although one imagines that James Madison would have come up with a somewhat less polite term.

Evidently, the new approach suited the president. Soon thereafter, he began to make extra-legislative changes to Obamacare, without offering any earnest legal justifications whatsoever; he responded to Congress's refusal to raise the minimum wage by rewriting the Service Contract Act of 1965; and, as a matter of routine, he took to threatening, cajoling, and mocking Congress, and to informing the country's lawmakers that by declining to consent to his will they were refusing to do "their jobs." In Obama's post-2011 world, it seems, legislators are not free agents but parliamentary subordinates possessed of two choices: either they do what he wants, or they watch him do what he wants. Refusing assent seems to be regarded as an entirely illegitimate option. This, it should be perfectly obvious, is the attitude not of the statesman, but of the mugger. "Give me your wallet," the ruffian says, "or I will take it by force." That progressives who once championed the man for his calm and his virtue have taken to twisting themselves into knots in his defense should tell us all we need to know about their broader sincerity -- and his.

At The Daily Signal, Hans von Spakovsky explains how Obama's amnesty differs from Reagan and Bush 41 executive orders related to immigration:

In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA), which provided a general amnesty to almost three million illegal immigrants. According to the Associated Press, Reagan acted unilaterally when his Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner "announced that minor children of parents granted amnesty by [IRCA] would get protection from deportation." In fact, in 1987 former Attorney General Ed Meese issued a memorandum allowing the INS to defer deportation where "compelling or humanitarian factors existed" for children of illegal immigrants who had been granted amnesty and, in essence, given green cards and put on a path towards being "naturalized" as citizens. In announcing this policy, Reagan was not defying Congress, but rather carrying out the general intent of Congress which had just passed a blanket amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants....

The Bush administration relaxed these technical requirements under a "Family Fairness" policy to defer deportation of the spouses and children of illegal immigrants who were allowed to stay in this country and seek naturalization through the IRCA amnesty. Shortly thereafter, Bush worked with Congress to pass the Immigration Act of 1990, which made these protections permanent. Significantly, the Bush policy and the 1990 Act affected only a small number of immigrants-about 180,000 people-in comparison to Obama's past (his 2012 implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program) and anticipated unilateral actions that will affect millions of immigrants.

Congressman Raul Labrador said on MSNBC that House Republicans and Democrats were close to a bipartisan deal on immigration, but the White House put a stick in the spokes:

"[The House bill] was something that would be acceptable to the House, would include all of the areas of immigration we needed to do. It was going to include border security, interior security, and the more the White House heard about what the House was doing, the more they interfered. His chief of staff, the president's chief of staff at the time, decided to call House Democrats and tell them that they needed to stop negotiating with House Republicans because they wanted the only vehicle for immigration reform, they want it to be the Senate bill. The president is in essence telling the American people it is only the Senate bill that is the only vehicle for immigration reform and that nothing else is acceptable."

Jonathan Gruber is the MIT economics professor, often called the "architect of Obamacare," who has said publicly that Obamacare's passage owed much to the "stupidity of the American people" and that its authors necessarily obfuscated the impacts on taxpayers in order to get the bill passed.

"Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage," Gruber said. "Call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever. But basically, that was really, really critical to getting the thing to pass."

Gruber added that he wished "we could make it all transparent," but said the bill would not have passed if not for the administration's art of deception on key features of the law.

"This bill was written in a tortured way to make sure CBO did not score the mandate as taxes," Gruber said. "If you had a law that made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money, it would not have passed."

The University of Pennsylvania deleted the video but restored it after public outcry. Three additional videos have surfaced of Gruber making the same argument in different appearances.

On MSNBC's Morning Joe, former Vermont Governor and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean expressed outrage at Gruber's comments:

"The problem is not that he said it-the problem is that he thinks it," Dean said. "The core problem under the damn law is it was put together by a bunch of elitists who don't fundamentally understand the American people. That's what the problem is."

You may recall that Gruber was cited earlier this year as stating on at least seven occasions that Obamacare subsidies were intended as an incentive for states to set up their own Obamacare exchanges. If a state refused to set up their own exchanges, the subsidies would be denied to the citizens of that state, who would, Gruber hoped, pressure their state politicians to establish a state exchange. Now Gruber calls that provision of the law a "typo," but it is the central issue in Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt's challenge to the Obamacare law.

House Democrat Leader Nancy Pelosi, Speaker when the bill passed, is now claiming never to have heard of Gruber. But Hot Air has a screen grab from Pelosi's website and a video clip showing that Nancy Pelosi cited Jon Gruber as an authority in arguing for Obamacare's passage.

Here's Pelosi on November 5, 2009, citing Gruber's analysis of the Democrats' Obamacare bill.

MORE:

Gruber is also described as the architect of Romneycare, the Massachusetts socialized medicine program on which Obamacare is based. Mitt Romney should have been smart enough to know that if you want a reform grounded in economic reality, you go to the University of Chicago or George Mason U. You don't go to the statists and socialists that define the economic department at my alma mater.

Keith Hennessey writes that Obamacare is far from the only government program that has been enacted by hiding subsidies and costs. Hennessey has a long list that only scratches the surface. Hennessey writes:

Apparently Dr. Gruber thinks it's OK to lie to American voters when his allies are in power to enact policies that he wants but the voters wouldn't. He then says American voters are "stupid" both for not agreeing with his value choices and for not figuring out the deception.

I disagree.

When you strip away all the complexity, economic policy is ultimately an expression of elected officials making difficult value choices. If over time these officials make value choices that do not reflect the values of the people whom they represent, they can, should, and will be replaced.

When these same elected officials, and those who advise them, deliberately construct policies to hide value choices that would be unpopular were they transparent and explicit, we end up with two terrible outcomes. We get policies that do not reflect our values, and we re-elect representatives who are lying to us.

The National Journal's Ron Fournier, who emphatically identifies himself as "not 'on the right,'" objects to efforts to spin the story as one in which only conservatives are outraged:

[Gruber] called you stupid. He admitted that the White House lied to you. Its officials lied to all of us--Republicans, Democrats, and independents; rich and poor; white and brown; men and women.

Liberals should be the angriest. Not only were they personally deceived, but the administration's dishonest approach to health care reform has helped make Obamacare unpopular while undermining the public's faith in an activist government. A double blow to progressives....

Last year, The Post helped document how Obama and his advisers knowingly misled the public during his 2012 reelection campaign by repeatedly saying that, under Obamacare, people could keep their doctors and keep their health plans. To knowingly mislead is to lie.

"It's hard to know what might have happened if the truth had won the day," writes Post columnist Kathleen Parker. "But we do know that truth squandered is trust lost."

And so even I have to admit, as a supporter, that Obamacare was built and sold on a foundation of lies. No way around it, unless you're willing to accept a political system that colors its lies--the reds, the whites, and the blues.

STILL MORE: In a June 2012 interview with PBS Frontline, Gruber tells us that the decision to mislead on employer-provided medical insurance went all the way to the top.

Here's what Gruber says in the video:

Now, the problem is, it's a political nightmare, ... and people say, "No, you can't tax my benefits." So what we did a lot in that room was talk about, well, how could we make this work? And Obama was like, "Well, you know" -- I mean, he is really a realistic guy. He is like, "Look, I can't just do this." He said: "It is just not going to happen politically. The bill will not pass. How do we manage to get there through phases and other things?" And we talked about it. And he was just very interested in that topic.

That ultimately became the genesis of what's called the "Cadillac tax" in the healthcare bill which I think is one of the most important and bravest parts of the health care law and, um, doesn't get nearly enough credit.

In that same PBS Frontline episode, Gruber explains the three key elements that made Romneycare in Massachusetts "work": A relatively low number of uninsured, an insurance market "destroyed" (Gruber's word) by a previously-adopted requirement to ignore pre-existing conditions, and most of all, $400 million a year in Other People's Money:

Third, we had a major source of financing in place, which we had formerly had a pretty powerful senator named Ted Kennedy who had been delivering about $400 million a year in slush funds to our safety-net hospitals that the Bush administration was threatening to take away.

The Romney administration, to their credit, went to Washington and said, "Can we keep this money if we use it to cover the uninsured?" And the Bush administration, to their credit, said yes.

So those pieces pulled together made a really interesting opportunity to actually cover the uninsured and fix a broken, non-group market on the federal dime. And that was a really unique opportunity, which I think Romney as a kind of management consultant was excited to take advantage of.

EVEN MORE:

Long-time Boston Herald political columnist Howie Carr says that Gruber (MIT '87, Harvard Ph.D. '92) is just another goober from Cambridge.

Do you realize that every last one of the many disasters that has befallen this nation in the last half-century can be traced right back here to the banks of the Charles River?

C'mon down, Jonathan Gruber, economics professor at MIT. He's the moonbat who, after engineering the ongoing fiasco that is Obamacare, then took a nationwide victory lap in which he repeatedly described the American people as "too stupid" to realize the Democrats were destroying their health care.

Maybe he's right about our stupidity. After all, he cashed in $392,000 worth of federal no-bid contracts to wreck the best health care system in the world, plus another $1.6 million or so in various state wrecking-ball contracts.

This goober, I mean Gruber, now says that when he sneered about how stupid Americans are, he made a mistake. Oddly, he made the same "mistake" five times (and counting). When you say something publicly five times, it's part of your stump speech.

Nice Deb is compiling all the Gruber videos and links to stories and transcripts.

The Conservative Voices blog is self-hosting the Gruber videos, just in case they get taken down on other sites. The Gruber category has entries with individual videos as well. (Gruber's speech to the University of Rhode Island Fall 2012 Honors Colloqium has been deleted from URI's YouTube account, for example, even though they had submitted it to amara.org to crowdsource the transcription of the video.)

NRO's Rich Lowry wants to thank Jonathan Gruber:

He has done us all a favor by affording us an unvarnished look into the progressive mind, which values complexity over simplicity, favors indirect taxes and impositions on the American public so their costs can be hidden, and has a dim view of the average American.

Complexity is a staple of liberal policymaking. It is a product of its scale and reach, but also of the imperative to hide the ball. Taxing and spending and redistributive schemes tend to be unpopular, so clever ways have to be found to deny that they are happening. This is what Gruber was getting at. One reason Obamacare was so convoluted is that its supporters didn't want to straightforwardly admit how much the law was raising taxes and using the young and healthy to subsidize everyone else.

Gruber crowed about the exertions undertaken to make an unpopular tax on expensive health-insurance plans, the so-called Cadillac tax, more palatable. It was levied on employers instead of employees. No one realized, Gruber explained, that the tax would be functionally the same even if not directly imposed on workers. This wasn't a one-off deception. This kind of sleight of hand is crucial to the progressive project, which always involves imposing taxes, regulations, and mandates at one remove from the average person so he or she won't realize that the costs are passed down regardless.

Most liberals would never come out and call Americans stupid in a public forum, as Gruber did. But the debate between conservatives and liberals on health-care policy and much else comes down to how much average Americans can be trusted to make decisions on their own without the guiding, correcting hand of government. An assumption that Americans are incompetent is woven into the Left's worldview. It is reluctant to entrust individuals with free choice for fear they will exercise it poorly and irresponsibly.

It was a good day, a better day that anyone expected, a real wave election.

The reaction of my local liberal friends on Facebook reveal their contempt for the state where they live, their bigoted opinions of conservatives, and their disconnect from political reality. One wrote a very apt "chin-up" post -- the sort of things I've seen conservatives write to console each other after a loss -- but she ended it with this weird attempt at a barb: "And to those of you gleeful over the election results, I just want to remind you that our President is STILL BLACK." I imagine she imagined people like me shaking our fists and gritting our teeth at those words. (Never mind that the first African-American was just elected to the Senate from a Southern state since reconstruction -- and he's a Republican. Never mind that her party never elected an African-American to statewide office or congress during almost a century of dominance in Oklahoma -- but the GOP has.) Now if she'd said "STILL A SOCIALIST" or "STILL A MISERABLE FAILURE AT HOME AND ABROAD" -- that would have spoiled my gloating a bit. But if she thinks the president's ethnic background is the source of conservative dislike, she and her pals are going to continue to lose elections. So much for the soi-disant "reality-based" community.

I spent part of my Tuesday in a library in Hialeah, Florida. I was in the area on business, free during the day but working during the night. The library was in a large city park where I'd hoped to attend a rally with Gov. Rick Scott and former Gov. Jeb Bush that I'd read about online, but I had misread the date. (I think it had been two days before.)

When I arrived and pulled into the parking lot, I found two teams of electioneers, one Democrat and one Republican, handling out pamphlets and ballot cards. An older couple with the Democrat group stopped the car in front of me to chat with the driver and give her some literature. Another Democrat electioneer waved me around the blockade.

Once parked, I walked toward the library and heard an older man calling out to me. He was with a group of a half-dozen volunteers -- both young and old -- holding signs for Republican candidates. He handed me a card for Gov. Scott, a card for the GOP county assessor candidate, and a card listing all the GOP candidates in Miami-Dade County. All three cards were in English on on side and Spanish on the other. The man said to me, "Please vote for Gov. Scott. It's important!" I gave him a thumbs-up and walked on.

This must have been a key precinct, because near the entrance was a reporter in a suit holding a microphone and talking to a camera, occasionally interviewing voters.

Inside the library, I had a view through interior picture windows to the polling station set up in the library's meeting room. I pondered the possibility of pulling a reverse Kathy Taylor -- voting in-person in Florida and absentee in Oklahoma -- but I could see that I'd be thwarted by Florida's racist voter suppression laws. Florida does not have election day registration, and with photo ID required, I couldn't very well pretend to be someone else.

I was pleased to see that Florida, like Oklahoma, uses scanned paper ballots. Voters are given a big green folder to carry their ballots privately from the voting carrels to the ballot box scanners. I watched as several waves of voters came and went. Election workers walked the floor, directing incoming voters to the sign-in desk and helping voters with finished ballots feed them into the machines.

That evening I spent an hour after the polls closed at the Miami-Dade Republican watch party at a Cuban restaurant on the western edge of the city. We ate fried plantain chips, carnitas, empanadas, and tequeños while cheering the results. The crowd of about 60 -- but this only one of many GOP watch parties around Miami, I learned -- were especially pleased that the local Democrat congressman, Joe Garcia, had conceded defeat to Republican school baord member Carlos Curbelos. We all held our breath as Gov. Scott maintained his narrow lead over the oompa-loompa-colored flip-flopping former governor, Charlie Crist.

More analysis will have to wait, but here are a few post-mortems worth your time:

The New York Post's Michael Goodwin called for a repudiation of Obamaism ("a quasi-socialist commitment to a more powerful government at home and an abdication of American leadership around the world") and the voters delivered.

Via Ace, a good Washington Post story on how the GOP national apparatus upped their game to win the Senate this year.

The finger-pointing begins: Chris "Tingle Up My Leg" Matthews says Obama lost the midterms because he's surrounded by yes-men.

Pro-immigration-law-enforcement Democrat Mickey Kaus notes that Democrat supporters of amnesty lost their seats.

Philip Klein notes that almost half of the Democrat Senators who voted for Obamacare are gone -- four more lost on Tuesday and one more is likely to lose in December.

MORE:

Some Republicans are saying that, since this was Pres. Obama's attitude toward Republicans in 2009, this should be our newly elected Republicans' attitude toward the Democrats:

(For the record, I liked the Depp version better than the Wilder version and this scene is one of the reasons why, but it works for the current purpose.)

On October 27, 1964, Ronald Reagan gave this televised speech in support of Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater.

Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, "We don't know how lucky we are." And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to." And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there's no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.

And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man.

This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I'd like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There's only an up or down--[up] man's old--old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. And regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course....

Meanwhile, back in the city, under urban renewal the assault on freedom carries on. Private property rights [are] so diluted that public interest is almost anything a few government planners decide it should be. In a program that takes from the needy and gives to the greedy, we see such spectacles as in Cleveland, Ohio, a million-and-a-half-dollar building completed only three years ago must be destroyed to make way for what government officials call a "more compatible use of the land." The President tells us he's now going to start building public housing units in the thousands, where heretofore we've only built them in the hundreds. But FHA [Federal Housing Authority] and the Veterans Administration tell us they have 120,000 housing units they've taken back through mortgage foreclosure. For three decades, we've sought to solve the problems of unemployment through government planning, and the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan.

Read the whole thing. It's as relevant as it ever was.

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An alumnus of Tulsa's Holland Hall School may hold the key to control of the U. S. Senate. Sean Haugh, Holland Hall Class of 1979, is the Libertarian nominee for Senate in North Carolina. He is on the ballot with Democrat incumbent Kay Hagan and Republican State House Speaker Thom Tillis.

While Hagan is consistently polling below 50%, she still leads Tillis by 3.4% percentage points in the latest RCP average. In the latest Rasmussen poll, Hagan leads Tillis 48% to 46%, with 2% preferring "another candidate." A month ago, the gap was 45 to 39 with 6% preferring another candidate. The latest USA Today poll has a 0.4% lead for Hagan, with 4% preferring Haugh. NBC News' latest, from a week ago, had Hagan up by 4%, with 7% preferring Haugh.

Republicans are concerned that Haugh may act as a spoiler; if he were out of the race, the theory goes, most of his voters would prefer the Republican to the Democrat. The third-party spoiler effect has been claimed in the 1992 presidential election, with Ross Perot drawing disaffected Republicans; the 2000 presidential election, with Green Party nominee Ralph Nader accused of taking votes from Al Gore; the 2002 Oklahoma governor's race between Brad Henry, Steve Largent, and Gary Richardson; and last year's Virginia governor's race. The counterargument is that third-party candidates attract many voters who would otherwise stay home.

The Third Party candidate may not be drawing support in the way observers assume. In that USA Today poll, 9 of the 22 respondents who preferred Haugh said they would vote for Hagan if Haugh were out of the race, while only 4 would move their vote to Tillis; the other 9 were undecided or refused to answer. That's an exceedingly small subsample with a very high margin of error, but it suggests that Haugh may be helping to keep the race close rather than helping to protect the Democrat incumbent.

Sean Haugh graduated from Tufts in 1983 and spent much of his post-college life working as a Libertarian Party organizer and activist. He served as the executive director of the North Carolina Libertarian Party and the political director of the national party. He was the party's Senate nominee for this seat in North Carolina in 2002. He retired from politics in 2010 and now delivers pizza for a living.

Haugh's campaign manager is Rachel Mills, who served for six years as Ron Paul's communications director in his Washington office and worked on his presidential campaigns. In a blog entry, Mills explains that she offered her skills to Republican Greg Brannon, who lost to Tillis in the primary, and then offered to help Tillis, but both campaigns ignored her:

I met with (Republican Senate primary candidate) Greg Brannon first in January of 2013 and detailed my experience, and let him know I was available to him in any capacity he needed. Anything at all. He seemed really enthused, thankful - blessed, even - to have someone like me available for his team. But as soon as he brought on an official campaign manager, I got the old "We'll call you." treatment. I never heard back. When I finally said heck with it and volunteered to help with a mailing, it was made very clear to me that I was not welcome to even do that. Perhaps I'll never know why I was good enough to work side by side with Ron Paul for 5 years, but not good enough to lick envelopes for Brannon. Greg Brannon lost.

After it was clear Brannon wasn't having me, I approached Tillis. Told him I'd like to help him reach out to the liberty folks and bring the party together. I'm a pragmatic type and see this as a great approach. If you want them, let me help you understand them and figure out how to appeal to them. Let's ask for their vote. "That sounds great. We'll call you." I waited a long time. I even went to his primary victory party and met all the key people in person. I was sincere in my offers to help. I understand though, that he had a ton of resumes flying around his head, of course, and by no means was I a shoe-in or entitled there either. I do think I would have been a smart hire. Fine to disagree.

Then Sean called. Together we developed a very simple way to spread a tangible, common sense liberty message, straight to the people, non-focus grouped, what you see is what you get, delivered by an everyman, not a politician. Sean and I together have the political experience to know the rules enough to properly break them - hence the beer on camera, the casual demeanor, etc. We are also on a shoestring so we have to consider what Sean can do well - and that is to just be himself.

Sean might not win, but look what we've accomplished together! A Washington Post reporter flew down JUST to interview Sean in my toy-strewn basement! And that was just the beginning. He's had lots of national attention on all the major networks and is polling much stronger than expected. He's even included in a debate! It's been very professionally, though not financially, gratifying.

Mills concludes that the Republican establishment may have to learn the hard way, through some lost elections, that they can't take libertarian-oriented voters for granted.

Sean Haugh's YouTube channel is the heart of his voter outreach efforts.

About the title of this blog post: Sean was two years ahead of me at Holland Hall. It's impressive to see how little he seems to have aged. A few grey hairs, deeper lines on the face, perhaps, but otherwise much as I remember him. It looks like the haircut and glasses are pretty much the same style. We reconnected some years ago when he was back in Oklahoma on behalf of an initiative petition to improve ballot access for Libertarians and other third parties. More recently I've been keeping up with his opinions on Facebook and Twitter (@EmperorSean).

When we were both in school, a freestanding chalkboard was left in the Commons, next to the southeast stairwell, after a school-wide lecture, students began to use it as a kind of graffiti wall. Jim Ringold began writing short, upbeat commentaries on the board, signing his essays with "The Friendly Philosopher." Sean Haugh responded with a cynical take on school life, signing his screeds with "The Unfriendly Philosopher." At some point, I began writing on the board, becoming "The Unfriendly Philosopher's Apprentice" and inheriting the title when Sean graduated.

Toward the end of sophomore year, I had decided to run for student council vice president. The vice president was in charge of stocking and maintaining the school's pop machine. (I don't remember if it was Coke or Pepsi or a mixture of the two, but the families who owned the rival bottling plants each had children at HH.) Sean agreed to support me, but he insisted that, if I won, he'd be able to load the machine with Foster's Australian Lager, as a sort of final, pre-graduation act of defiance. I didn't win (Stacy Schusterman and Pam Bloodgood did), and even if I had, as a teetotaler in a teetotaling Baptist family, I wasn't likely to let that happen.

MORE:

Haugh, Hagan, and Tillis were part of a televised Senate debate tonight -- watch it online here. Tillis seems to say, "Sean is exactly right," as part of every answer.

Rebecca Berg of the Washington Examiner has a sympathetic profile of Sean Haugh. Berg confirms my impression of the non-evolution of Sean's style from his days at HH.

On Wednesday, Sean Haugh had just finished a live interview with Fox News when he headed to breakfast at a Waffle House outside of downtown Raleigh.

"I'm pretty sure I know exactly what I want," Haugh said, glancing quickly through his 1970s-relic glasses at the laminated menu....

Haugh is a perplexing and interesting political oddity. He dresses like he hasn't shopped for new clothes for decades. His campaign has consisted mostly of YouTube videos in which he drinks beer in his campaign manager's basement and chats about politics. He recently berated one commenter on his Facebook as an "ignorant moron."

And, in recent public polling, he has been winning as much as seven percent of the vote.

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Michael Ramirez, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning and senior editor at Investor's Business Daily, will give a free public lecture on Thursday, September 18, 2014, at 7 p.m., at Oral Roberts University in Zoppelt Auditiorium. Ramirez's lecture, "Editorial Cartooning, Journalism and a Citizen's Responsibility," is presented by three ORU departments: History, Humanities and Government; Communication, Arts and Media; English and Modern Languages.

Ramirez has been honored four times (2006, 2008, 2011, and 2014) as editorial cartoonist of the year by the National Cartoonists Society.

At noon on Friday, BatesLine is proud to host a small luncheon with Michael Ramirez. Seats are extremely limited; cost is dutch-treat. If you're interested, please email me using mailbox 'blog' at this domain.

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Scott_Pruitt_AFP_Dream14.JPGFriday, at Americans for Prosperity's Defending the American Dream Summit in Dallas, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt sat down with the BatesLine team for a wide-ranging conversation about the issues that his office is pursuing on behalf of Oklahomans. Pruitt discussed the EPA's proposed expansion of the definition of "waters of the United States" which would put vast new territories under EPA regulation, the role and responsibilities of a state attorney general, and recent events affecting school choice and curriculum in Oklahoma. Pruitt also spoke at a panel discussion on the legal status of Obamacare and addressed a dinner for Oklahoma's 200 conferees, in which he also discussed the IRS's settlement of a lawsuit with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, affecting church tax exemptions and freedom of religion.

This entry is the first in a series. Many thanks to Americans for Prosperity Oklahoma and AFPOK Executive Director John Tidwell for the opportunity to attend and for arranging the interview with Attorney General Pruitt.

Earlier in the day, Pruitt addressed a well-attended panel session on Obamacare, its effects, and its legal status. His fellow panel members included Avik Roy of the Manhattan Institute, Christina Herrera of the Foundation for Government Accountability, and Simon Conway, British refugee and talk show host at WHO in Des Moines, who told us how the UK's National Health Service killed his father.

Pruitt spoke about Oklahoma's lawsuit, Oklahoma v. Burwell and Lew, which George Will has called the most consequential Obamacare case still pending. Oklahoma contends that the Affordable Care Act does not authorize IRS and HHS to grant subsidies or impose mandates in states that have not set up an exchange. Pruitt reviewed the timeline of Obamacare's passage and the importance of the "four little words" in Section 1311 -- "established by the state" -- to corralling the votes necessary to get Obamacare through the U. S. Senate. The four words were intended to give states the incentive to set up exchanges, but 34 states have refused.

Pruitt noted that, because Oklahoma's challenge was still at the District Court level when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling in NFIB v. Sibelius, Oklahoma was able to amend its suit. The focus of Oklahoma's case is not constitutional, but rather that the Federal Government's implementation of the law is in violation of the law passed by Congress and signed by the President.

At the moment, the case sits in the Eastern District of Oklahoma before Judge Ronald A. White. Asked by OCPAC's Charlie Meadows about the delay, Pruitt said it may be because the judge was waiting to see what the District of Columbia Circuit Court would do with Halbig v. Burwell. A panel of three judges in the DC Circuit Court ruled 2-1 that the plain language of the law authorized the subsidies and mandates only in states that established exchanges, in accord with Oklahoma's arguments. The ruling is stayed pending further appeals.

If Oklahoma's case is successful, Pruitt said that the very fines that Hobby Lobby had been facing had it lost its case ($1.2 million a day) would be overturned. The employer mandate is invalid in Oklahoma because Oklahoma has not set up an exchange.

MORE from my notes: During his morning presentation, Pruitt harked back to his service as a policymaker in the State Senate and pointed out that "health insurance does not equate to health care." Politicians like to brag about expanding coverage and eligibility, but "at the end of the day, you have to have a physician... willing to be paid for the service to deliver the care that's needed for that patient." Politicians can expand eligibility, but if reimbursement rates are too low, you have the kind of access problems we see in the UK. "We as conservatives need to remind the left that just by expanding health insurance doesn't mean that you've actually solved health outcomes." Pruitt said we also need to keep in mind that when the payor primarily becomes the government, medical inflation skyrockets.

During our interview, Pruitt elaborated on that point: The more government has become involved as payor, the system has become more bureaucratic, more costly, with a lower quality of care. He recalled Oklahoma's expansion of Medicaid eligibility under the Federal SCHIP program for families up to 200% of the poverty level, but at that time, as he remembers it, only two pediatricians in Tulsa were providing care under that program's reimbursement rates. More kids were eligible, but they couldn't get into see the doctor.

Pruitt asked why, if we had a system covering 85% of the public, we had to remake the system for 100%, rather than find a way that met the needs of the remaining 15%. The Obamacare system is moving us toward a two-tier system like that of the UK where your mandatory taxes and premiums pay for an insufficient service that limits access, but those who can afford to pay more can access higher-quality health care in a timely fashion. I pointed out that that's not unlike our two-tier education system, where parents who want better for their children pay twice -- tuition on top of the taxes they're forced to pay. That led into a discussion of Arne Duncan's revocation of Oklahoma's No Child Left Behind waiver and the court ruling against provisions of the Lindsey Nicole Henry Scholarship Act -- more about that in a future installment.

Just a quick update between sessions at Americans for Prosperity's Defending the American Dream 2014 Summit in Dallas.

Yesterday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Dr. Ben Carson, and Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn addressed the conference. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Jeb Hensarling are on tap for this afternoon.

Last night, Oklahoma's 200-strong delegation heard from Attorney General Scott Pruitt and Labor Commissoiner Mark Costello. Both spoke about federal incursions upon state and private action in violation of federal law and the Constitution. Pruitt discussed the work of his office's federalism unit, particularly as it applies to Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's decision to revoke Oklahoma's "No Child Left Behind" waiver because the state repealed Common Core and the IRS's settlement with the Freedom from Religion Foundation, which may change the way the IRS evaluates whether a pastor's speech violates a church's tax-exempt status. Costello spoke of the US Department of Labor's push to criminalize family farmworkers and force privately-held companies to publish safety records online, and the EPA's regional haze regulations.

Time to head to another meeting. More later.

afp_dad14_logo.jpgIn a few hours, Americans for Prosperity's 2014 Defending the American Dream Summit will be underway. Over the next two days, attendees will be hearing from headline speakers like Gov. Rick Perry, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul, and Dr. Ben Carson. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt will be on a panel discussing the legal status of Obamacare -- the differences between the law Congress passed and the deviation the Obama administration is implementing.

The summit is sold out, but you can watch the general sessions online between 1:30 pm and 4:30 pm Central each day. Twitter is the best place to follow events as they unfold; keep an eye on the #Dream14 hashtag.

The Left has a tendency to suppress facts either because they believe it will embolden their ideological enemies, or they are concerned that the facts will lead people to unauthorized conclusions.

Here are a couple of recent examples. I will add more as I come across them.

The National Post reported recently on a study by neuroscientists that shows rote memorization lays an important foundation for higher-order reasoning in children:

In effect, as young math students memorize the basics, their brains reorganize to accommodate the greater demands of more complex math. It is a gradual process, like "overlapping waves," the researchers write, but it clearly shows that, for the growing child's brain, rote memorization is a key step along the way to efficient mathematical reasoning.

The news story's writer framed this as a finding that was "sure to inflame the math wars" between "fundamentalists" and their "popular and progressive" opponents.

As a scientific justification of rote learning, the study seems likely to further polarize the controversy over math teaching styles, in which arithmetical fundamentalists are squared off against the popular and progressive forces of "discovery-based" learning, in which students are encouraged to find their own ways to the right answer.

By illustrating the benefit of repetition and memory, and showing how it serves as a stepping stone to mature calculation, the research is likely to embolden the fundamentalists, who have only recently started to win back lost ground.

Jenks middle school principal Rob Miller has a popular blog where he evangelizes for the idea that the billions we spend on education shouldn't go to teaching actual content. Here he is talking about the Howe school district in LeFlore County, which got a failing grade from the State Department of Education because of its students' poor test scores, despite having all sorts of cool classroom technology:

But what happens if bringing back more traditional teaching strategies actually brings their scores up? This will simply empower the naysayers and it will be very difficult to return to the district's original vision for 21st century teaching and learning-processes that create globally competent critical thinkers instead of just good test takers.

God forbid we should empower the naysayers! You can't be a "globally competent critical thinker" unless you've mastered fundamental facts about math, geography, history, grammar, and logic. Those are the building blocks for competent critical thinking, but Principal Miller and the Howe school leadership seem to want to skip right by the "boring" basics in favor of gee-whiz technology.

Whoever wins the August 26 runoff for District Attorney in Tulsa County, I'm pretty sure we'll be better off than Austin, Texas, which is stuck with Democratic DA Rosemary Lehmberg, who was arrested in April 2013 for Driving While Intoxicated with a .239 blood alcohol level. Lehmberg disgracefully treated the law enforcement personnel who arrested and processed her. Sentenced to 45 days in jail, Lehmberg refused to step down, displaying a Clintonesque "brazen it out" approach to the consequences of her disregard for the law. Lehmberg identifies herself as a homosexual.

The night of her arrest, Lehmberg was driving in a bike lane, braking erratically, and swerving into the oncoming traffic lane, prompting a driver to call 9-1-1. Lehmberg pulled into a church parking lot, where a sheriff's deputy was parked and writing reports.

He described Lehmberg as "disheveled" and "disorganized," testifying that she grabbed at him and his flashlight. Malinger said Lehmberg told him she had not been drinking.

The DA had a bottle of vodka under her purse in the passenger seat, Malinger said.

Surveillance footage from the church parking lot showed Lehmberg fail field sobriety tests and put into handcuffs.

Deputy John Ribsam was in the patrol unit that took Lehmberg to central booking at Travis County Jail. Lehmbeg told him from the back seat she had two vodka sodas, he said. Ribsam testified Lehmberg "ordered him" to take off her hand cuffs because she was the DA, cussing at him to remove them.

As the District Attorney for the county that contains the state capitol, Lehmberg oversees the state's Public Integrity Unit, handling the prosecution of elected officials accused of corruption. After Lehmberg refused to resign, Texas Gov. Rick Perry used his line item veto to deny funding for the unit, on the grounds that someone publicly displaying such a lack of integrity should not be prosecuting other officials on public integrity charges. For this veto, Perry has now been indicted by a grand jury for abuse of his office.

Here are several videos showing Lehmberg's behavior when she was arrested and booked for DWI.

During her ride to jail, she told the driver, "You have just ruined my career.... My career is over." She's still in office and still empowered to go after Rick Perry and other Republicans. I guess she underestimated the willingness of Austinites to stand by a lesbian Democratic elected official, no matter how badly behaved.

When they meet next year, Texas legislators may want to consider whether they should continue to give the voters of Texas's most left-wing county the power to wage political war by prosecution against the conservatives their constitutents elect to serve in the State Capitol.

MORE:

Andrew McCarthy says the Perry indictment is "politics as combat," similar to what was done to Tom DeLay (whose conviction was ultimately tossed out by a higher court), but Democrats no longer feel compelled to accuse a Republican official of an actual crime. Exercising legitimate executive authority -- vetoing a bill -- becomes a crime.

In the American Spectator, Dallas-based columnist William Murchison writes about the criminalization of political disagreement:

We may imagine if we like that a grand jury in one of America's most liberal counties concluded, without bias or rancor, that one of America's best-known conservative politicians illegally vetoed funding for that same county's "public integrity" unit, presided over by a DA convicted of drunk driving. It was illegal for the governor to use his legal power? That seems essentially the narrative the jury bought from [Special Prosecutor] McCrum.

Austin, where conservatives feel like Southern Baptist missionaries in western Iraq, doesn't cotton to a Republican governor who doesn't cotton to the hand-tooled, leather-bound liberal agenda. Nor can the capital city be described as grateful to Perry for his part over the last decade in keeping Texas safe from liberal policies. Democrats hold not one single statewide office in Texas. You can see from any political perspective how the very mention of Perry's name in Austin might bring on dyspepsia, if not angina.

New York political blogger Rusty Weiss has an item about Poughkeepsie Mayor John Tkazyik's announcement that he has quit Mayors Against Illegal Guns, the group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Tkazyik stated his reason:

It did not take long to realize that MAIG's agenda was much more than ridding felons of illegal guns; that under the guise of helping mayors facing a crime and drug epidemic, MAIG intended to promote confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens. I don't believe, never have believed and never will believe that public safety is enhanced by encroaching on our right to bear arms, and I will not be a part of any organization that does.

As Mayor of Tulsa, Kathy Taylor was a charter member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a signatory to the group's initial statement of principles. She participated in the initial summit of 15 mayors in New York, a Midwest MAIG summit in Milwaukee, and joined other MAIG members in Washington to urge Congress to repeal the Tiahrt Amendment. During her 2013 campaign to regain the mayor's office, she minimized the significance of her participation in the group.

While supporters of 2nd Amendment rights will welcome Mayor Tkazyik to the club, we may wonder why it took him so long to get here. I am unable to find his name or his city's name on MAIG rosters prior to 2009. He shows up as a MAIG member in this NRA-ILA list from 2010. But by 2009, a dozen mayors had quit MAIG, several explicitly denouncing the group as "attempting to erode all gun ownership, not just illegal guns." He also signed this MAIG letter from 2012 following the Sandy Hook attack.

I've noticed that when a politician resigns from or denounces politically inconvenient organizations, it's often right before a run for a higher office.

RELATED: Someone linked to this on Facebook. An engineer has been pondering the problem -- How do you keep a handgun out of the reach of children, but readily available when needed for home defense? -- and has developed a product that seems to meet the need, called The Gun Box:

The video is a little out of date: The FAQ page on the website says that the project is fully-funded and they are in full-scale production. The Gun Box sells for $279 and initial delivery is slated for March 2014.

Patrick Hruby, writing in Politico Magazine, calls the NFL the "National Freeloader League," in an open letter to the infatuated congressmen who let the NFL make billions and still claim non-profit status:

So: Your relationship with the National Football League. It's toxic. Not for you, of course. You seem happy, like a bunch of starstruck fans. And we understand--we're fans, too. Professional football is fun, and no doubt a far better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than rushing around to grovel for cash at half a dozen fundraisers. The league throws a terrific Super Bowl party, too, and given the choice, who wouldn't prefer Denver-Seattle and a tub of guacamole over voting to repeal Obamacare for the 5,000th time?

But we digress. Back to the toxic part. While you're enjoying the epic Richard Sherman vs. Peyton Manning matchup this weekend, the NFL is pulling a fast one on us. Dodging taxes. Pocketing government handouts. Passing the buck on workplace injuries. Mooching harder than one of Ronald Reagan's welfare queens. Adding insult to injury--come to think it of it, it's probably the other way around--the league also is peddling a potentially dangerous product to our children with almost no oversight.

The mention of "starstruck fans" reminds me of the normally fiscally sober Oklahoma Republican legislators who fell all over themselves to include professional basketball teams in Oklahoma's "Quality Jobs Act," so that the new NBA owners could claim a tax credit.

How does an organization with $9 billion in revenue manage to claim non-profit status?

Your predecessors modified the law to specifically exempt "business leagues, chambers of commerce, real-estate boards, boards of trade and professional football leagues." (Somewhere in heaven, an NFL lobbyist just got his wings.) As Senator Coburn has repeatedly noted, the letter of the reworded 501(c)6 law violates its spirit. Lumping pro football in with boards of trade makes no sense. "It's a ruse," he says of the filing status that also applies to the PGA Tour and the National Hockey League. "Compare the NFL to other trade associations. They don't qualify at all. They're not promoting a trade. They're promoting themselves."

There's more, and you'll want to read the whole thing.

Last September, Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn introduced legislation to strip the tax-exempt status from professional sports organizations with annual revenues greater than $10 million:

Today, U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK) introduced the PRO Sports Act, S.1524, which would amend the tax code to prohibit professional sports organizations with annual revenues over $10 million from enjoying the same tax-exempt, 501(c)(6) status as industry trade associations and public interest groups.

"Tax earmarks are essentially tax increases for everyone who doesn't receive the benefit. In this case, working Americans are paying artificially high rates in order to subsidize special breaks for sports leagues. This is hardly fair," Dr. Coburn said. "This bill would require major professional sports leagues to be prohibited from qualifying as non-profit organizations under the tax code. This would help give all Americans, not just athletes and owners, a break and pave the way for the kind of tax reform and job creation our economy desperately needs."

Currently, a number of professional sports leagues have central offices registered as 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organizations allowing for the opportunity for their revenue to be tax-free. Leagues qualify for the tax-exempt status by stating their purpose is to help promote their respective sports and membership instead of themselves. The PRO Sports Act will not impact leagues' 501(C)(3) charitable organizations.

A backgrounder on the bill points out that other "public interest groups" have been stripped of 501(c)(6) status because they exist mainly to secure benefits for their members rather than serve the general public interest. AAA is one such example listed in the piece.

At this point, Coburn's bill has been referred to the Senate Finance Committee, and no further action has been taken. No wonder he's discouraged and ready to pack it in.

Here's the latest in a long series of the Obama Administration's spiteful shutdown of private businesses and open-air monuments.

The Cliff House, a landmark San Francisco restaurant and tourist attraction overlooking the Pacific Ocean, privately owned and operated without federal tax dollars and accessible by city streets, has been forced by National Park Service brownshirts to shut its doors, putting Americans out of work and depriving the Federal government of lease revenues paid by the restaurant and which help to preserve the historic site. The restaurant had decided to reopen to staunch an estimated $10,000 daily loss for each day the restaurant was closed, but the NPS, under orders from Washington, forced them to close once again.

Here is the full statement from the Cliff House ownership:

News Alert from Cliff House October 8, 2013 Cliff House closes doors (again)

In response to the Federal Government shutdown the Cliff House had decided to reopen its doors, Monday, October 7, 2013. While this bold move challenged the shut down order, the Cliff House, a privately owned business that does not depend on any tax dollars or federal funding, must have income in order to survive and meet its obligations to the public visitors, its employees, and the Park Service.

As of tonight, end of business day, Cliff House will once again shut its doors due to a mandate by the Federal Government. While the local Park Service officials have been sympathetic and helpful in relaying the Cliff House's concerns to Park Service Headquarters in Washington, D.C., the decisions are driven by D.C. which instructed that the facility must close.

So, despite its efforts to remain open and constant communication with the Park Service, the Cliff House had no choice but to close or face severe consequences which would have impacted the entire operation which the local operators of The Cliff House have worked so hard to maintain over the past 40 years.

The Cliff House operates 365 days a year and employs 170 staff most of whom are furloughed. Even though the Cliff House is not open for business there are daily operating costs, which include maintenance of the iconic Cliff House building, ironically for the benefit of the Park Service in addition to the visiting public.

Having been shut down for four days the Cliff House has already assumed considerable financial loss and will continue to incur losses of approximately $10,000 per day for so long as the shutdown order remains in force. Outreach has been done to donate unused food to local charities that would have otherwise gone to waste.

The Cliff House recently celebrated 150 years, is loved by the locals and is a
world-wide destination.

Cliff House
1090 Point Lobos
San Francisco, CA 94121

Oklahoma First District Congressman Jim Bridenstine will be the featured speaker at the August meeting of the Tulsa Area Republican Assembly (TARA) on Tuesday, August 20, 2013.

TARA meets at the Golden Corral, 71st and Mingo, just west of US 169. The group gathers at 6 for dinner, announcements at 6:45 and the featured speaker at 7:00. You're encouraged to arrive early to get a seat; a large crowd is expected. Dinner prices are $10.49 for adults, $9.89 for seniors, not including tax and tip.

TARA is the local affiliate of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies (NFRA). Calling itself the "GOP wing of the Republican Party," the organization and its affiliates seek to hold Republican elected officials to the conservative principles on which they run.

A few thoughts:

I'm disheartened by the outraged reaction from my liberal friends, who are certain that justice was denied, and that a racist murderer has been set free. NBC, CNN, President Obama, and other public figures and opinionators did race relations and common sense in America a grave disservice in the way they depicted the event, distorted the available evidence, and framed it as a racially motivated killing. If you stopped listening and made up your mind at that point, I can understand why you'd be outraged by Zimmerman's acquittal.

But the testimony in the trial, from both prosecution and defense witnesses, paints a very different picture. Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain in an gated townhome community that had experienced several recent burglaries, noticed an unfamiliar man, dressed to match the description of suspects in those crimes. He called 911, described the person, tried to keep him under observation, and requested that the police check out the situation. Meanwhile, Trayvon Martin was on the phone with a friend, complaining that he was being followed by a "creepy-ass cracker." Rather than call 911 and report a stalker, rather than get back to the townhome where he was staying as soon as possible, it appears that Martin chose to confront Zimmerman, wrestling him to the ground and beating Zimmerman's head against the pavement. One witness said it looked like a mixed-martial arts move called "ground and pound." Zimmerman, pinned to the ground, had no means escape, feared for his life, and shot.

Zimmerman is from a mixed-race family and was an outspoken supporter and organizer on behalf of a black homeless man who had been mistreated by local police. He supported President Obama's election. Yet he has been portrayed as a racist who stalked and killed Martin because of his race.

An NBC edit of the 911 call gave the impression that Zimmerman volunteered the race of the person he was watching. In fact, Zimmerman only identified race in response to a question from the dispatcher. NBC retracted the edited version and fired those responsible.

CNN transcribed a comment on the 911 call, putting an old-fashioned, seldom-heard, four-letter racial epithet in Zimmerman's mouth. Monosyllables can be easy to mishear, particularly on distorted low-bandwidth recordings, and once an authoritative source like CNN asserts the identification of an authoritative word, it's hard to hear it as anything else. But CNN later retracted their transcript, and concluded that Zimmerman had said, "It's f***ing cold." Others believe he said, "F***ing punks." But by the time the correction was made, many had already pegged Zimmerman as a racist vigilante and were beyond persuasion.

The use of years-old photos of Zimmerman and Martin also shaped public opinion in a way that framed Zimmerman as a hateful, racist thug who should have had no reason to see baby-faced Martin as a suspicious character.

However the confrontation began, once it advanced to Martin straddling and beating Zimmerman (as corroborated by eyewitnesses and Zimmerman's injuries), it became a matter of self-defense for Zimmerman. All the preliminaries became irrelevant at that point to Zimmerman's guilt or innocence. Zimmerman said he believed his life was in danger, believed Martin would grab Zimmerman's gun and use it against him, so Zimmerman grabbed the gun and shot.

Wikipedia has a detailed, heavily footnoted, and dispassionate summary of the evidence and varying accounts of the incident. Will Saletan at Slate describes the case as a tragedy of misperception and overreaction by both Zimmerman and Martin. The New York Times has a series of aerial photos showing the progression and location of events leading to the shooting.

This case has been portrayed as being about race in America, but there's no evidence that racial animus drove Zimmerman's actions. But if Martin did in fact confront Zimmerman and initiate the struggle that led to the shooting, I have to wonder if Martin's response to Zimmerman's surveillance was conditioned by the racial grievance industry and a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude that he owed no one an explanation of who he was and why he belonged there.

Some may say that, as a white man, I am blind to the realities of race in America, and the suspicion that surrounds blacks, particularly young black men. But as a man, particularly as a man who wears a beard, I am continually aware that my presence in an unfamiliar place could be a source of worry to others, and that my expression, gait, demeanor, and dress can either reassure or stoke fears.

My favorite form of exercise is walking, and I would much rather walk through a historic neighborhood admiring homes than perambulate an oval indoor track. I'm interested in cities and neighborhoods and development, and when I travel I like to walk or drive through interesting areas and take pictures. I know that my strolling and staring and picture-taking may trigger worries, and that I need to be ready to give a calm and confident answer to anyone who questions what I'm up to.

In 2008, I was driving back from visiting relatives near Lawrence, Kansas, at night. As I passed through downtown Ottawa, I was taken by the beautiful neon of the Plaza Theater and stopped (no one behind me) to roll down the window to take a photo. A police officer spotted me and pulled me over. He asked me what I was drinking (Diet Coke) and why I was taking pictures. He thought I might be casing the jewelry store next door to the theater. I was tired and a bit shaken up, but I answered him calmly, and my calm demeanor, along with the sleeping toddler in the back seat in his car seat, set the officer at ease, and I proceeded onward to my destination. What if, instead, I had been incensed at his unwarranted inference, and had responded with hostility?

I recall another occasion many years earlier, when I worked at Burtek. I would sometimes pick up some lunch at a drive-thru (usually Lee's Chicken, Arby's, or Burger Street) and drive to McClure Park, about a half-mile from work, find a shady spot to park the car, and I'd eat, read the paper, and listen to Paul Harvey on KRMG (or if I was late getting away to lunch, KGGF's later broadcast) on the car radio. Once I parked under a tree along the south side of 7th Street, the northern boundary of the park. I noticed a woman who appeared to be from a nearby house striding with determination toward my car. She shot me a nasty look, walked around behind my car, and made a show of writing down my license plate number. I don't recall how I reacted, but I think I asked in a loud voice if there was a problem. She simply walked away. It was odd, but I figured out later that there must have been a burglary or some other suspicious activity nearby, and my presence marked me as a suspect. I think I avoided parking on 7th for a time after that, even though I had every right to park there and there were some very nice shade trees to park under. I didn't want to give anyone a reason to suspect me of wrongdoing.

If I find myself walking down a street with just one person ahead of me, particularly if the other person is female, I will adjust my pace or even cross the street to make it clear to the other person that I'm not going to approach. It's a matter of being considerate and thoughtful of the way my actions will be viewed by others.

Trayvon Martin didn't deserve to die for seeming to be suspicious and that wasn't why he died. He died because of a fight in which he physically beat another person and put the other person in fear for his life. A simple "can I help you?" followed by a gentle explanation would have avoided the confrontation, the fight, and the shooting.

MORE: Robert Stacy McCain reports that Martin's possession of stolen goods and marijuana were treated as disciplinary incidents rather than juvenile crime, in an effort by school police officials to reduce the Miami school district's crime stats:

Both of Trayvon's suspensions during his junior year at Krop High involved crimes that could have led to his prosecution as a juvenile offender. However, Chief Charles Hurley of the Miami-Dade School Police Department (MDSPD) in 2010 had implemented a policy that reduced the number of criiminal reports, manipulating statistics to create the appearance of a reduction in crime within the school system. Less than two weeks before Martin's death, the school system commended Chief Hurley for "decreasing school-related juvenile delinquency by an impressive 60 percent for the last six months of 2011." What was actually happening was that crimes were not being reported as crimes, but instead treated as disciplinary infractions.

McCain says that, had Martin been taken into custody as a juvenile offender in Miami, he would not have been in Sanford, Florida. Instead, he was suspended from school, and he was sent to stay with his father's girlfriend in Sanford.

Breitbart.com reports that Obama's Department of Justice provided logistical support for anti-Zimmerman protests in Florida.

STILL MORE:

I missed this, but Detective Christopher Serino testified that George Zimmerman responded with relief when told Serino mentioned that the altercation may have been captured on video:

Defense attorney Mark O'Mara questioned Serino about Zimmerman's fourth interview with police, when Serino teamed up with Officer Doris Singleton for a more aggressive line of questioning.

Serino stated that, during that interview, he suggested to Zimmerman there were surveillance cameras in the area of the shooting that could have captured the attack.

Zimmerman responded, "Thank God, I was hoping somebody videotaped it."

Singleton, also present during the interview, testified that she did not find any significant differences between Zimmerman's oral and written statements, and found no evidence Zimmerman had any ill will, spite or hatred toward Martin. Singleton added that Zimmerman appeared to be in shock when he learned that Martin was dead.

This YouTube video has the relevant section of Serino's testimony beginning at 30:38. And Legal Insurrection has a detailed account of Serino's testimony.

A year ago, Jack Cashill published a detailed timeline of Trayvon Martin's last hour, based on the 7-11 surveillance camera and phone records.

Miss_Anne_Elk.jpgDr. Wendy Sullivan, acting administrator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (the parent agency for the National Weather Service), questioned the value of earlier warnings for those in the path of a tornado, suggesting that the early warning might lull residents into a sense of complacency.

Sullivan was testifying before the Technology Subcommittee of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, responding to a question from U. S. Rep. Jim Bridenstine. Bridenstine asked whether increasing tornado warning lead times to as much as an hour was a priority for NOAA. Dr. Sullivan's response was surprising:

There's a significant response question as to what people would do with one hour.... What do we need to understand about how to present and communicate that so that it doesn't become something someone heard and got busy with some thing else and by the time the hour came they were immersed in... a video game and the tornado ran right over them.

Sure, you have to be concerned about how to communicate urgency and move people to action, but the point of early warning is to prompt people to take action right then. For a sufficiently powerful storm, with an hour's warning you would have hope of getting out of the path of the storm or getting to a neighbor's storm shelter or to the big shelter that your neighborhood school may have some day. An hour would give emergency planners time to evaluate the best course of action for citizens in the path of the storm, time to redirect traffic that might be passing through the danger zone.

I have my doubts about whether we'll ever be able to know an hour in advance that a tornado is coming or where it's headed, but if we could know, wouldn't we want to pass along the information to the public, rather than withhold it for fear they might misuse it. Dr. Sullivan's answer amounts to saying, "We won't warn the provident and wise because the foolish and impulsive will ignore us."

noaa_wendy_sullivan.PNGThe photo above is not Dr. Wendy Sullivan. It is Anne Elk [Miss], a paleontologist with a new theory about the brontosaurus. Actually, it's John Cleese in a dress and a wig, in the 31st episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. That's Dr. Sullivan to the left.

okgop2013.pngConservative political pundit Fred Barnes will be the keynote speaker at the Oklahoma Republican Party's pre-convention gala dinner, Friday, April 19, 2013. Gov. Mary Fallin and former Gov. Frank Keating will also speak, and Keating will serve as emcee.

Tickets start at $50 per person, with proceeds going to support the ongoing work of the Oklahoma Republican Party. For $125 per person ($225 per couple), you can attend the reception and have a photo-op with Fred Barnes.

Fred Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard, co-founding the magazine in 1995. He has been a Fox News contributor since 1996. You may have first encountered him along with Mort Kondracke as regular panelists on "The McLaughlin Group" in the 1990s; the two then co-hosted Fox News's "The Beltway Boys."

I predict that Mr. Barnes will be warmly welcomed by Oklahoma Republicans, and not merely as a fellow conservative, but also (for perhaps the majority of us) as a fellow follower of Christ. He lives out his faith in often-hostile territory -- both in the DC metro area and in the realm of mass media. He understands first-hand, in a way that many of his right-of-center media colleagues do not, the aspects of the Christian faith that have motivated so many Oklahoma Christians to be involved politically, but also that one's Christian faith is much, much more than one's political involvement.

Barnes is an evangelical Anglican, a long-time member of The Falls Church, which withdrew from the Episcopal Church USA for the mainline denomination's radical departures from God's Word and which was recently evicted by the mainline denomination and the courts from its historic home. In 2007, Barnes and his wife Barbara left The Falls Church to help launch a new evangelical Anglican church being planted in Alexandria by The Falls Church. Barnes wrote about the experience of being involved in church planting in the Wall Street Journal.

Many thanks to the Oklahoma Republican Party for sponsoring BatesLine.

MORE:

Fred Barnes archive at The Weekly Standard: His latest column asks why the Republican Party gave up our best issue and stopped talking about growth.

And here's Barnes, along with Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli and others, speaking in support of Birthmothers, a ministry that connects women in unplanned pregnancies with a supportive friend and the emotional and physical resources they need to bring their children into the world.

In 2008, I encountered Fred Barnes in a St. Paul elevator on the way to hear a talk by Fred Thompson.

U. S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TexasFreshman U. S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has been unjustly trashed by two left-wing political websites, Politico and Wonkette, over his request to remove a resolution declaring Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week from a group of resolutions to be approved by unanimous consent, so that he could honor a request from a staffer of his who suffers from MS to review and offer revisions to the language of the resolution.

Politico, at least, posted Cruz's side of the story, albeit under the false and misleading headline, "Cruz opposes MS resolution."

"The Senator, like many of his colleagues, will not grant consent to call up and pass a resolution or bill at the last minute without time for review," spokesman Sean Rushton said in a statement. "The Texans who sent him to Washington expect nothing less."

After the story was posted about Cruz's opposition to the resolution, his office pushed back harder.

"Senator Cruz does not oppose the substance of the MS resolution, and he never did," his spokesman said. "Unfortunately, the sponsors of this resolution circulated their request for unanimous consent less than 48 hours before they wanted it passed. A member of Sen. Cruz's staff--who herself suffers from MS--asked for time to review the language, and to perhaps suggest revisions to the language, as is typical. It appears that Senate Democratic staff, instead of working to ensure unanimous consent, instead decided to leak this story to try to malign Senator Cruz."

I know this must shock a lot of people, but there are elected officials who believe they have an obligation to their constituents to read legislation, even routine legislation, before they vote on it. It's a hallmark of the Tea Party movement.

The Wonkette headline went further: "Hero Senator Ted Cruz Will Death Panel Everyone With M.S." Blogger Rebecca Schoenkopf called Cruz a "total Anchor Babby" [sic] and speculated that Cruz objected to the phrase "expanding access to medical treatment," ignoring the statement from Cruz's office that he "does not oppose the substance of the resolution, and he never did."

The Wonkette blog entry refers to House Resolution 95. They assume this is the resolution which Cruz held up, but that doesn't even seem possible. According to thomas.loc.gov, the Library of Congress's online bill tracker, it hasn't even been passed out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, to which it had been referred the day it was introduced, on March 4, 2013, and it hasn't been passed by the House or sent on to the Senate. It does not appear that any similar legislation has been introduced in the Senate. So the resolution which Cruz held may not bear any resemblance to H.Res.95. Even if it were, if the resolution was obviously worthy of passage, why hasn't there even been a committee vote on H.Res.95? Wonkette's report doesn't add up.

Looks to me like the Left will stop at nothing to tear down conservatives with political charisma, particularly those like Ted Cruz who belong to an ethnic minority group which the Left believes it owns.

MORE:

Debra Heine, blogging at The Conversation, writes about Ted Cruz and the MS Awareness Week resolution:

The left-wing media complex has found its new bete noir for the 2013/2014 political news cycle, and that dubious honor goes to Republican rising star, Ted Cruz. Note that the left always targets those they perceive to be the greatest threat to its Statist goals, and even though Cruz is only a freshman Senator, he's been off to a rip-roaring start.

Because he dared to ask hard questions about the President, Benghazi, Chuck Hagel, and Feinstein's gun bill, Ted Cruz earned himself the top spot as the left-wing media's favorite whipping boy.


DaTechGuy writes that Cruz is a target because he's effective, and he backs up the statement with videos and links, pointing particularly to his confrontation with Sen. Dianne Feinstein over her proposed assault weapons ban and Sen. Harry Reid's apparent capitulation on the issue a few days later.

Happy Pi Day! This evening at 6:28 Eastern time, applicants to MIT will learn whether or not they've been admitted. For those hopefuls and anyone else in need of worthwhiling away a little time, some links of interest:

Tyson Wynn, who runs local news site WelchOK.com, has been bombarded with complaints from Canadian animal rights activists and their allies about a nearby event that he knew nothing about and has nothing to do with. Among other things, these people have threatened never to vacation in Welch (pop. 619). Tyson offers some advice on how not to advocate for your cause.

Aerogramme Writers' Studio: Pixar's 22 Rules of Storytelling: From some of the most compelling storytellers of our time. Rule 9 begins, "When you're stuck, make a list of what WOULDN'T happen next."

Somewhat related: Ace ponders the Mystification/Revelation Model of Teaching. First you puzzle and frustrate your student, then you relieve his frustration with a solution. You're going to be much more interested in information if it answers a question that's bothering or intriguing you. Ace sees this technique used in good movie storytelling. Seems to me that Jesus' parables fit the same pattern.

My Tulsa friend Erin Patrick gets a mention in a Wall Street Journal article about grown kids who stay on their parents' family plans for phone and digital entertainment. Erin's daughter is on the family phone plan; her 16-year-old son is paying for some of his own subscriptions out of the money he earns.

TiffanyTranscriptions.com: "Ole Buttermilk Sky": A song-by-song description of a British CD collection of mid-1940s recordings by Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys, mainly songs from the Tiffany Transcriptions that were not included in Kaleidoscope's LPs. The article by Tom Diamant includes some interesting info on the Crosley Transcriptions (aka Presto Transcriptions) and how to tell a sloppy re-issue from a careful dubbing.

Did you know that Southern Hills Country Club is in a low-income "food desert"? The U. S. Department of Agriculture has an interactive food desert map. That SHCC is in a low-income food desert is an example of the hazards of aggregation. I guess the number of households in the apartments on the east side of Lewis north of 71st outnumber the households in the massive homes backing up to the golf course, but they're all in the same census tract.

StateImpact has a Google Map of municipal water rates in Oklahoma. It's not close to complete, but interesting nevertheless.

Rex Brown says in-home filters may be the cause of your slow DSL internet and offers a solution -- an outdoor splitter where your phone service comes into the house.

Warren Buffett praises John Maynard Keynes, but his father Howard Buffett was a friend of libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, who sent a copy of his Panic of 1819 to Howard for Warren. Thinking that Warren must have lost that copy, economist Mark Thornton sent him another.

Finally, the Wall Street Journal documents the rising popularity of home-brewing among Christians. One of the churches mentioned appears to be part of the conservative Presbyterian Church in America (although they take pains to hide their affiliation on their website; I deduced it from where their pastoral staff went to college and seminary); there's an elder at our local PCA congregation who makes some very nice beers. (An unanswered question: Why do home brewers and craft brewers feel obligated to go overboard with hops?)

If you feel squeezed there's a reason -- 13 federal tax increases hitting the middle class so far this year. This video from the Heritage Foundation spells it out:

Two foolish Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature have succeed in moving forward a bill that would subject Oklahoma's electoral college votes to the results of the national popular vote. State Sen. Rob Johnson and State Rep. Don Armes are the sponsors of SB 906, and on Thursday, February 20, 2013, the Senate Rules Committee moved the bill forward with a "do pass" recommendation. Republican Senators Don Barrington, Cliff Branan, Rob Johnson, Rob Standridge, Ann Griffin, Ron Justice, and Bryce Marlatt and Democrat Senators Constance Johnson, Jabar Shumate, Al McAffrey, and John Sparks voted in favor; Republicans Rick Brinkley, Kim David, Eddie Fields, John Ford, Jim Halligan, Clark Jolley, and Gary Stanislawski, and Democrat Charles Wyrick voted against.

Two of the "aye" Republican votes are assistant majority floor leaders and one is the Rules Committee chairman. All seven Republican bozoes who voted for this should be removed by their caucus from any positions of responsibility. They have voted to make Oklahoma's electoral votes hostage to the depredations of the legendary vote fraudsters who reign over places like Chicago, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.

Among the many advantages of the Electoral College system is that it creates a firewall against fraud. We don't have one election for president but 51 separate elections. No matter how many fraudulent votes are manufactured in Chicago, it can only affect Illinois' electoral votes; it won't have any effect on the outcome in Florida or even neighboring Indiana. In fact, we'd be well-served to have even more firewalls, with each congressional district choosing an elector, as is already done in Nebraska and Maine, so that Chicago fraud would only affect Chicago congressional districts. Electoral vote by congressional district would give urban areas influence in predominantly rural states (e.g. Lawrence/Kansas City, Kansas) and would give rural and suburban areas influence in states with large urban concentrations (e.g. upstate New York, Orange County, California, downstate Illinois).

Thanks to Brandon Dutcher for the Twitter tip on this story.

carson_benjamin.jpgDr. Benjamin S. Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital, was the featured speaker at this morning's National Prayer Breakfast, and he delivered a powerful, inspiring, and wide-ranging 25-minute message which touched on the self-discipline and education necessary for self-government, the urgent need to avoid the moral decay and fiscal irresponsibility that led to the fall of ancient Rome, the dangers of political correctness, and the need to give as much honor to academic achievement as we do to athletic achievement.

Regarding that last point, Carson spoke of his Carson Scholars Fund, which is designed to treat academic high achievers as the stars that they are, with trophies and recognition and college scholarships. The fund also sponsors reading rooms in elementary schools, where children have access to a wide range of books to help them develop their reading skills in a welcoming environment.

Carson spoke about how reading transformed his own life. He and his brother would not apply themselves to their school work, but his mother prayed that God would give her wisdom to help her sons learn. She then restricted their TV viewing to a minimal amount and required them to read two books each week from the library and to write a book report about each. She dealt with complaints from her sons and resistance from other mothers, who told her that keeping her boys inside and reading would make them hate her, but she stuck to her plan. Eventually, he came to love reading, and his reading taught him that he could control his own destiny, and that the poverty he hated need be only temporary.

In the course of the speech, Carson compared Alexis de Tocqueville's account of education and literacy in 19th century America to the state of education today; he cited the Biblical tithe, with its standard percentage for all, as a model of the fairest and simplest approach to taxation; and he commended individual Health Savings Accounts as a means to provide access to care for all while controlling costs and encouraging people to take responsibility for their own health. Carson suggested that the government could fund HSAs for those who cannot afford to fund their own.

Carson presented all of his thoughts as mere common sense informed by history, without wading into the usual terminology of ideological or partisan debate.

Hat tip to fellow blogger Nice Deb, who has video of Dr. Ben Carson's speech and links to reporting and commentary on the speech.

Photo of Dr. Ben Carson courtesy carsonscholars.org.

A friend posted tonight on Facebook that it was embarrassing that U. S. Sen. Jim Inhofe voted against the confirmation of his former Senate colleague, John Kerry (D-Mass.), as Secretary of State. Comments in reply generally agreed with this sentiment, casting aspersions on Oklahoma and Oklahomans in general. The embarrassed friend stated further in the comments, "It is astounding to me that I don't know anyone who will admit to voting for him, but he keeps winning."

I've voted for Jim Inhofe at every opportunity since his last run for mayor. One commenter made a subtle point, referring to Inhofe: "Perhaps he recalls Winter Soldier. And Kerry throwing somebody else's medals over the White House fence. And referring to Bashar Assad as a 'reformer.'"

Here's an essay from 2004, when Kerry was the Democratic nominee for president, about John Kerry's decades of flirtation with corrupt and vicious left-wing dictators. The essay quotes then Sen. Zell Miller, a Democrat who spoke at the 2004 Republican National Convention:

For more than twenty years, on every one of the great issues of freedom and security, John Kerry has been more wrong, more weak and more wobbly than any other national figure.

I don't always agree with Jim Inhofe. Some of his interventions in local politics have been particularly irksome to me, but I'm proud to vote for a senator who believes that a lifelong apologist for thugs and dictators should not represent America to the rest of the world.

Blog roundup 2013/01/28

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Notes hither and thither:

If you're a fan of beautiful cartoon art, you should make at least a weekly visit to Whirled of Kelly, which features the art work of Walt Kelly, most famous for the comic strip Pogo. Blogger Thomas Haller Buchanan has been running a series of Sunday strips from 1952, scanned in color from the newspaper. The sequence involves Albert telling a fractured fairy tale called Handle and Gristle. The January 2013 archive also includes scans of Story Book Records from 1946: The discs were illustrated by Walt Kelly, and he's the reader on the recordings.

Nice Deb's Sunday tradition is a hymn, and this week it's a metrical setting of Psalm 23: The King of Love My Shepherd Is.

Maggie's Notebook has a bizarre story: The State of Delaware is stripping its county sheriff's departments (all three of them) of the power to make arrests and enforce the law. This despite a constitutional provision that says that "the Sheriffs shall be conservators of the peace within the counties respectively in which they reside." Only one of the three sheriffs, from Sussex County, is objecting to the change.

Route 66 News reports on a new Route 66 Dining and Lodging Guide, handy for finding comfortable, historic, and locally owned along Route 66. (I love Jack Rittenhouse's guidebook, but it's old enough to collect Social Security, and Michael Wallis's book is old enough to drink.)

Yesterday was Gun Appreciation Day, with huge rallies at state capitols across the nation to remind officials that millions of Americans are determined to protect their right to keep and bear arms, a right with roots in the English Common Law long before the passage of the 2nd Amendment that enshrines it. (Hat tip to Ace of Spades HQ.)

Did you know that Martin Luther King, Jr., applied for a concealed carry permit? Did you know that white officials in Alabama abused their discretion to deny him that permit? King and his team owned "an arsenal" of weapons to protect him against the forces that sought to harm him.

An interesting related quote from King about tyrants and oppressors:

Martin Luther King Jr. once said of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the martyred World War II pastor, "if your opponent has a conscience, then follow Gandhi. But if you enemy has no conscience, like Hitler, then follow Bonhoeffer."

Bonhoeffer, a German pastor, theologian, and pacifist, joined a conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but was captured and executed when the plot failed.

WikiQuote has a long list of quotations from America's Founding Fathers and others regarding the right to keep and bear arms. George Mason, in 1788, in Virginia's debate on ratifying the Constitution of the United States:

Forty years ago, when the resolution of enslaving America was formed in Great Britain, the British Parliament was advised by an artful man, who was governor of Pennsylvania, to disarm the people; that it was the best and most effectual way to enslave them; but that they should not do it openly, but weaken them, and let them sink gradually, by totally disusing and neglecting the militia.

Patrick Henry, during the same debates, arguing against adopting the Constitution in the absence of a bill of rights:

Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined....

Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism! Most of the human race are now in this deplorable condition; and those nations who have gone in search of grandeur, power, and splendor, have also fallen a sacrifice, and been the victims of their own folly. While they acquired those visionary blessings, they lost their freedom. My great objection to this government is, that it does not leave us the means of defending our rights, or of waging war against tyrants. It is urged by some gentlemen, that this new plan will bring us an acquisition of strength--an army, and the militia of the states. This is an idea extremely ridiculous: gentlemen cannot be earnest. This acquisition will trample on our fallen liberty. Let my beloved Americans guard against that fatal lethargy that has pervaded the universe. Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence, the militia, is put into the hands of Congress?

Noah Webster, arguing in support of the Constitution in the pamphlet An Examination into the Leading Principles of the Federal Constitution (1787):

But what is tyranny? Or how can a free people be deprived of their liberties? Tyranny is the exercise of some power over a man, which is not warranted by law, or necessary for the public safety. A people can never be deprived of their liberties, whlie they retain in their own hands a power superior to any other power in the state....

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom of Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any bands of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force at the command of Congress can execute no laws but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive. In spite of all the nominal powers vested in Congress by the constitution. were the system once adopted in its fullest latitude, still the actual exercise of them would be frequently interrupted by popular jealousy. I am bold to say that ten just and constitutional measures would be resisted, where one unjust or oppressive law would be enforced. The powers vested in Congress are little more than nominal; nay real power cannot be vested in them nor in any body but in the people. The source of power is in the people of this country and cannot for ages, and probably never will, be removed.

Meanwhile, at the New York State Legislature, Assemblyman Steve McLaughlin was asked not to share a list of gun control measures floated by Democrats in the legislature as "it really has the capacity to dampen the enthusiasm to compromise." (Video at the link.) The list included a statewide database for all guns, a seemingly reasonable measure that has been used in other countries to lay the groundwork for later confiscation.

MORE: Susanna Gratia Hupp, a survivor of the Luby's massacre, explains why the number of bullets in a clip doesn't matter, and how the rules that discourage keeping a gun on your person at all times cost her parents their lives.

STILL MORE: Newly elected Oklahoma State Sen. Nathan Dahm has authored three bills to protect the rights of Oklahomans to keep and bear arms. One bill would treat our vehicles as an extension of our homes, allowing a firearm to be in the car without the need of a special license to carry.

Maggie's Notebook quotes extensively a column by Larry Elder, a Chicago native. It's not the gun culture that results in hundreds of murders every year in places like Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia; it's the fatherless culture.

Have seen only one press release so far from our congressmen and senators on the "compromise" they approved yesterday. Both Oklahoma senators and four out of five congressmen voted in favor of the Senate version of the bill, which raises income taxes on individuals and small businesses, does not extend the payroll tax cut, and does not cut spending, instead adding $4 trillion more to our national debt. Only one Oklahoma congressman, James Lankford, voted with the majority of House Republicans against the bill; Sullivan, Boren, Lucas, and Cole voted in favor. This appears to be the final roll call for Sullivan and Boren.

Here's the statement from Tom Coburn's office:

While this bill is far from perfect, it does prevent massive tax increases while making tax cuts permanent for 99 percent of Americans. Congress and the president, however, have a lot of work to do to address our long-tern spending problem. Our debt - which is 120 percent of our economy if you count federal, state and local debt - is still the greatest threat to our national security. We will never address that threat until Congress and the president acknowledge that the only way to save entitlement programs is to change them.

MORE: Jim Inhofe defended the bill on KRMG, describing it as a choice between the compromise with its flaws and the cost of doing nothing.

Has anyone heard any comment from the two incoming Oklahoma congressmen, Jim Bridenstine and Markwayne Mullin?

UPDATE 2013/01/03: Jim Inhofe tells Human Events that he's now Mitch McConnell's biggest fan:

"Why any conservative could not look at this bill and rejoice is beyond me," the senator told Human Events--in fact, phoning us early Thursday morning from a Midas muffler shop in Tulsa where he was having work done on his car. Inhofe had just finished with more than a dozen interviews on Sooner State talk radio on the bill and, as he told us, "one of our popular talk show hosts here in Tulsa, Pat Campbell, had been a vigorous opponent of the measure but I think I turned him around."

"When 99 percent of the taxpayers get a very large reduction in their taxes, you can't say it's not a conservative victory," he explained. "I think that many were upset because the bill didn't have spending cuts. Well, this was a tax bill and cutting spending is the next step, along with dealing with sequestration, so we don't disarm America. We'll deal with that shortly."

Inhofe cited the high income threshold on the capital gains rate, the limitations on the imposition of the death tax, and the fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax as far better than the alternative with the expiration of the George W. Bush era tax cuts.

For his part, Pat Campbell, host of the morning show on 1170 KFAQ, wrote on Facebook about Inhofe's comments: "Now this takes balls!" Campbell also wrote, "I still think this deal is a disaster!"

Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn issued this statement Sunday evening, December 30, 2012, regarding negotiations over the renewal of expiring tax cuts approved during the George W. Bush Administration. Emphasis added:

No agreement has been reached because too many politicians in Washington want to raise taxes in order to grow the government rather than decrease the deficit. If politicians want to raise taxes and stop spending cuts without offering alternative cuts, which is precisely where we are now, they should have the courage to be transparent and make that case publicly, not in secret.

We're stuck because many in Congress want to move toward Clinton-era tax rates but not Clinton-era spending. According to numbers provided by the White House, total federal spending is more than twice what it was during Bill Clinton's final year in office. As a percent of GDP, federal spending was 18 percent then compared to 24 percent now. If Congress wants to turn off sequestration we should replace those cuts with smart, targeted cuts. Our government throws away at least $350 billion every year through waste, fraud and duplication. Replacing across-the-board cuts with targeted cuts would not be difficult if Congress had the courage and political will to act.

In the final few hours before the fiscal cliff, Senate Majority Leader Reid should offer the American people an open, transparent and unlimited floor debate in the United States Senate. I have no doubt that if a balanced plan was brought to the floor in this fashion it would pass by an overwhelming margin.

The news release reminds that Coburn issued his own $9 trillion deficit reduction plan, Back to Black, in July 2011.

SOMEWHAT RELATED: Dave Barry's 2012 in review:

Speaking of troubled, in ...

December

... there is much fiscal-cliff drama in Washington as Congress and the White House -- after months of engaging in cynical posturing and political gamesmanship while putting off hard decisions about a dangerous crisis that everyone knew was coming -- finally get serious about working together to come up with a way to appear to take decisive action without actually solving anything.

MORE: Sen. Coburn appeared on CBS Face the Nation Sunday, December 30, 2012, with Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)

Mother Jones, a left wing magazine, has been reporting on a feud at FreedomWorks between former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the chairman of FreedomWorks, and his allies on one side, and FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe and his supporters on the other. Kibbe and Armey co-wrote Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto in 2010. Armey's resignation from FreedomWorks was announced in early December. Stacy McCain has the story and the links.

Reports say that Armey attempted to get Kibbe removed but that the board encouraged Armey to leave with a reported payout of $8 million.

Dick Armey at the March on Washington, September 12, 2010, S3016625

FreedomWorks was arguing for Tea Party ideals for many years before the Tea Party came into existence in 2008. The group has positioned itself as a servant to the Tea Party movement, providing training, research, and networking to help Americans turn their concern about Washington's fiscal insanity into effective grassroots action.

FreedomWorks has been an effective watchdog, helping to vet candidates by digging deep into their records on fiscal issues, calling attention to the Romney campaign's power grab at the 2012 Republican National Convention rules committee, critiquing the Boehner debt plan and facilitating the grassroots development of an alternative. FreedomWorks VP for health care policy Dean Clancy provided the rationale for states to exercise their prerogative not to set up an Obamacare state exchange.

Matt Kibbe at BlogCon 2012, S3016535

I have gotten to know FreedomWorks mainly through a series of BlogCons -- informative workshops for bloggers. I marched with Dick Armey at the 2010 March on Washington and enjoyed the hospitality of the Kibbes at a post-march gathering at their home. I've had the pleasure of getting to know some of their great staffers, analysts like Dean Clancy, and organizers like Tabitha Hale (now with the Franklin Center), Sarah Desprat (now with Twitchy), and Kristina Ribali. FreedomWorks has made it possible for me to meet and get to know fellow bloggers from coast to coast. So it's worrisome to hear reports of turmoil.

The dispute, as I understand it, centers around this question: Should FreedomWorks judge every politician by their free-market principles, praising when possible, castigating when necessary, without regard to the politician's party affiliation or political connections? Or should FreedomWorks be pragmatic, take it a bit easier on old friends who wield power at the Capitol, even when they oppose us on our key issues? The former view seems to be held by Kibbe and his allies; the latter by Armey and his supporters.

A few reactions:

1. Why aren't the two factions working with their friends in the blogosphere and legacy media to get their side of the story out? Why is Dick Armey telling his story to a far-left magazine, rather than American Spectator? Why haven't Matt Kibbe and FreedomWorks communicated with the many bloggers who attended one or more BlogCons?

2. Back in 2010, I was surprised to learn that Armey was involved with FreedomWorks, particularly with their emphasis on holding elected officials accountable, even the Republicans. Armey won a seat in Congress in 1984 as an economics professor and came to Washington as a reformer and an outsider, but a decade in Washington changed him. Armey gets much of the blame for the failure of the 1997 attempt by Tom Coburn, Steve Largent, and others to oust Newt Gingrich as speaker. The coup and Armey's double-cross is described in detail by Coburn in his book Breach of Trust. In light of that history, I found many of Armey's statements in Give Us Liberty highly ironic. If the reported reasons behind the FreedomWorks dispute are true, I can't say I'm surprised about Armey's departure.

3. If someone can come up with $8 million to pay someone to go away, why doesn't there seem to be money in the conservative movement to sustain the conservative voice in new media and legacy media?

MORE: Since writing this, I've found a couple of right-of-center sources that covered this dispute back at the beginning of December: The Blaze had a story on December 4, mainly regarding the nature of the payment to Armey -- from a private party, not from FreedomWorks or its affiliates. A search for blog entries about this dispute mainly turns up items on left-wing blogs. The same day, Ace of Spades HQ had an item linking to the initial story in Mother Jones.

Roll Call had an item about two other senior resignations from FreedomWorks following Armey's departure, as did Outside the Beltway. Dave Weigel kicked himself for getting scooped.

Erick Erickson wrote about the story today at Red State:

Armey was willing to go in and try to take charge, but was willing to give up the fight for money and then run off to a left-wing publication to tell his side of the story.

If Dick Armey and his friends are concerned about "harm" "done to the movement," perhaps they should not be willingly talking to a left-wing publication that has been pretty clearly looking to harm the conservative movement and bring down conservative groups.

UPDATE 2013/01/03: Blogger Rusty Weiss notes the attempted intervention of Armey and his allies on the board in support of establishment GOP candidates -- for example, Orrin Hatch, whom FreedomWorks attempted to defeat in the nomination process. Weiss notes the irony that Armey had, in April 2012, signed a letter with Kibbe and Armey ally C. Boyden Gray opposing David and Charles Koch's efforts to gain control over the Cato Institute, as it would harm Cato's credibility and "undermine our community's intellectual defenses."

UPDATE 2013/01/09: Dick Armey tells the Daily Caller he thought he was talking to Media Resource Center (a conservative group that documents left-wing bias in media, headed by L. Brent Bozell), not Media Matters (a left-wing, George Soros-funded group headed by David Brock).

And here's the leaked packet from FreedomWorks December 2012 board meeting, containing budget and financial reports and other statistics, shows a tremendous growth both in donations and in number of people engaged with FreedomWorks in some way. By every measure, 2012 was a wildly successful year for FreedomWorks.

On Monday in Oklahoma City, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Oklahoma's free-market policy think-tank, hosted a forum on health care, highlighting the value of transparency and direct payment in medical pricing, and the accomplishments of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma in Oklahoma City in providing high-quality health care for reasonable prices.

The Surgery Center, founded in 1997, began posting its prices online a few years ago. The prices only apply to those paying up front (either on their own behalf, or covered by a self-insuring employer), but not to those who have the Surgery Center file an insurance claim for payment. The flat fee covers fees for the surgeon, anaesthesiologist, and facility, initial consultation, and uncomplicated follow-up care. Any hardware and implants needed are quoted in advance and priced at cost -- no markups. The center's website sets out the rationale behind their approach:

It is no secret to anyone that the pricing of surgical services is at the top of the list of problems in our dysfunctional healthcare system. Bureaucracy at the insurance and hospital levels, cost shifting and the absence of free market principles are among the culprits for what has caused surgical care in the United States to be cost prohibitive. As more and more patients find themselves paying more and more out of pocket, it is clear that something must change. We believe that a very different approach is necessary, one involving transparent and direct pricing.

Transparent, direct, package pricing means the patient knows exactly what the cost of the service will be upfront. Fees for the surgeon, anesthesiologist and facility are all included in one low price. There are no hidden costs, charges or surprises.

The pricing outlined on this website is not a teaser, nor is it a bait-and-switch ploy. It is the actual price you will pay. We can offer these prices because we are completely physician-owned and managed. We control every aspect of the facility from real estate costs, to the most efficient use of staff, to the elimination of wasteful operating room practices that non-profit hospitals have no incentive to curb. We are truly committed to providing the best quality care at the lowest possible price.

The forum began with a screening of a short Reason.TV story about the Surgery Center.

It's remarkable that the chairman of the ear, nose, and throat department at Integris Baptist Medical Center, but "prefers to do his procedures at the Surgery Center of Oklahoma."

Some companies have found they can provide better employee surgical care more cost effectively by paying places like Surgery Center directly (and in some cases also paying for travel costs and lodging) rather than paying for conventional insurance.

The forum was broadcast on Ustream and is archived for watching at your leisure. The session starts at 4:40 into the video, introduced by OCPA vice president for policy Brandon Dutcher. You can find it embedded on the OCPA blog or directly on the Surgery Center of Oklahoma's Ustream channel.

(Note to the cameraman: Next time don't be so shy -- get up close!)

Pat McGuigan's story on Oklahoma Watchdog about the forum includes a note on how the center deals with people who can't afford the published price (even though it's typically far more affordable than the same procedure at a non-profit hospital).

In dialogue with CapitolBeatOK, [Surgery Center founder] Dr. [Keith] Smith said the center's approach is helping to restore an old-fashioned medical ethic for provision of charity care. Many referrals to the hospital come from churches and other groups helping the poor. Patients are encouraged in those cases to pay what they can, while physicians and anesthesiologists can (and often do) waive their fees for individuals in need.

Surgery Center does work with insurance companies, but that triggers a separate pricing structure. Dr. Smith explained, "We take on a lot of risks when we file with insurance companies, so we have to charge for that risk."

MORE: Dr. Smith has a frequently updated Tumblr blog commenting on health costs and policy.

Forbes staffer William Baldwin has a list of 11 states in a "fiscal death spiral" because the number of takers exceeds the number of makers and because of high levels of debt and unfunded pension liabilities. For those 11 states, Baldwin says, if you have to live there, fine, but don't buy a house and don't buy municipal bonds in those states.

New Mexico has the worst taker to maker ratio, followed by Mississippi, California, Alabama, Maine, New York, South Carolina, Kentucky, Illinois, Hawaii, and Ohio. Here's the complete list. Note that Federal employees are excluded from the total, as state spending is the issue.

UPDATE: I removed the video as Forbes seems to have changed it to start automatically.

Illinois Governor Mark Quinn offers a clear and creative explanation of the crisis faced by his state as a result of decades of underfunding contributions to public pensions:

Quinn avoids casting blame on the public employees or their unions, putting the blame instead on politicians who didn't worry about making the public pension funds actuarially sound. What goes unsaid is that the politicians were buying public employee union support (volunteers, endorsements, campaign funds) with more generous pensions and retirement benefits, while not paying the political price of asking taxpayers to pay enough additional taxes to cover the additional costs of those expanded pensions and benefits.

Other pages on thisismyillinois.com go into a bit more detail about the depth of the crisis and its causes. One interesting stat: There are now more people drawing from Illinois state pension funds as retirees than contributing as current employees. That situation is likely to worsen as pension liabilities force cuts in headcount for current operations. As with Social Security, Illinois politicians assumed, wrongly, that they'd always have more people paying in than taking out. But lifespans have grown and government employees have retired at earlier ages.

This is not an Illinois problem. I'm reminded of a Reuters story that I linked last week about the crisis in the City of San Bernardino, California -- the result of "a vicious circle of self-interest":

Yet on close examination, the city's decades-long journey from prosperous, middle-class community to bankrupt, crime-ridden, foreclosure-blighted basket case is straightforward -- and alarmingly similar to the path traveled by many municipalities around America's largest state. San Bernardino succumbed to a vicious circle of self-interests among city workers, local politicians and state pension overseers.

Little by little, over many years, the salaries and retirement benefits of San Bernardino's city workers -- and especially its police and firemen -- grew richer and richer, even as the city lost its major employers and gradually got poorer and poorer.

Unions poured money into city council elections, and the city council poured money into union pay and pensions. The California Public Employees' Retirement System (Calpers), which manages pension plans for San Bernardino and many other cities, encouraged ever-sweeter benefits. Investment bankers sold clever bond deals to pay for them. Meanwhile, state law made it impossible to raise local property taxes and difficult to boost any other kind....

A couple of weeks ago, I was showing my six-year-old son the maps of past presidential election results on 270towin.com. We scrolled through the years, as the nation's early parties came and went, noticed odd split-state results, and then looked at the projected map for this year, with red, blue, and beige states.

He wanted to figure out which way the beige swing states would go, so he had me scroll back and forth through the 2000, 2004, and 2008 maps, and for each state he picked the party that had won a state most often of the last three elections. (Not sure why he didn't want to go further back; maybe years that begin with 1 just seem too weird to him.)

Here's his map: Romney 285, Obama 253. Romney takes FL, VA, NC, OH, CO, NV, NH; Obama takes PA, MI, WI, IA.

2012_Electoral_Prediction_MAFB.PNG

My own guess? I think Obama wins NV, Romney wins WI and IA, plus one of the Maine congressional districts. Philadelphia voter intimidation keeps PA in Obama's column. Romney 296, Obama 242.

Comedian Steven Crowder is at the church trunk-or-treat, and he's only trying to be fair. The kids don't think its fair.

"I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." -- candidate Barack Obama to Joe "the Plumber" Wurzelbach, 2008.

Brak for President!

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"A vote for Brak is a vote for beans everyday!"

The original ad from 1952:

"We don't want John or Dean or Harry.
Let's do the big job right.
Let's get in step with the guy that's hep.
Get in step with Ike."

Many more presidential TV commercials here from 1952 to the present : "The Living Room Candidate."

Interesting story from Reuters earlier this week: The IRS has filed an objection to the bankruptcy plan of Solyndra, the failed solar panel manufacturer that had been backed by Federal loan guarantees and the investment arm of the George Kaiser Family Foundation:

Solyndra's bankruptcy plan could prove a further embarrassment to the administration if it is seen rewarding risk-driven venture capitalists ahead of unsecured creditors such as suppliers and laid-off staff.

In its court filing on Wednesday, the IRS opposed Solyndra's plan. If approved by creditors, a holding company would emerge from bankruptcy with no employees or business operations - but as much as $350 million in tax breaks that could be used by Solyndra's investors, including Argonaut Ventures.

Argonaut is the investment arm of a foundation tied to the Democratic fundraiser, Oklahoma billionaire George Kaiser. Most of the tax breaks would come in the form of Net Operating Losses (NOLs) which could be used to offset future taxable income.

Meanwhile, under the bankruptcy plan Solyndra's creditors would receive pennies on the dollar, the IRS said, adding that the principal purpose of the plan is "tax avoidance."...

The IRS cited emails from Kaiser to one of the venture firm's managing directors.

"I would go a long way to preserve the NOLs," Kaiser wrote in December 2010.

As Argonaut, Solyndra and its tax professionals worked to determine the amount of tax breaks available to Solyndra, the company's chief financial officer was advised to delay a particular transaction which would have reduced the available NOLs by $100 million, the court filing said.

Thumbnail image for IVoted.jpgToday, October 12, 2012, is the last day for Oklahoma residents to register to vote for the November 6, 2012, election. You can download a voter registration application and print it, but you have to sign it (swearing an oath that you are eligible to vote -- in general, 18 years old, a U. S. Citizen, and a resident of Oklahoma, not a felon, not incapacitated) and submit it to the election board for processing and approval.

The Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., will be open until midnight tonight to register voters. Other counties may also have extended hours; here's a list of county election board locations and phone numbers and county election board email addresses.

I'm really not trying to encroach on Tasha Does Tulsa's territory -- she has the definitive guide to Tulsa area pumpkin patches, by the way -- but there are so many interesting things to do in and around Tulsa this week that I decided to put a bunch of events into one big entry.

artur_davis_ocpa.jpgOn Wednesday, October 10, 2012, the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs will hold its annual Liberty Gala at the Downtown Doubletree Hotel. Featured speakers are former Congressman Artur Davis and political analyst and author John Fund.

Also on Wednesday, from 6:15 to 8:00 pm at the Schusterman-Benson Library, 3333 E. 32nd Place, the League of Women Voters will conduct a Senate District 39 forum between the incumbent, Senator Brian Crain, and the challenger, neighborhood leader Julie Hall.

Also on Wednesday, and only on Wednesday, October 10, 2012, Cinemark Tulsa, 10802 E 71st St, will show Gone with the Wind, at 2 pm and 7 pm. It's part of a series of landmark films -- next Wednesday they'll show Mary Poppins.

Trinity Episcopal Church, 501 S. Cincinnati Ave. in downtown Tulsa, is hosting Gloriae Dei Cantores (Singers to the Glory of God). Tonight, Tuesday, October 9, 2012, they will present a workshop on Gregorian chant at 7:30 pm, followed by a sung service of Compline (prayers at the close of day) at 9:00 pm in Trinity's beautiful Gothic Revival sanctuary. Both events are free and open to the public.

Then on Thursday, October 11, 2012, at 7:30 pm at Trinity, the Gloriae Dei Cantores will present the annual Thomas Matthews Memorial Concert. Matthews was the long-time organist and choirmaster of Trinity and a renowned composer of choral anthems. The concert will be followed by a gala reception. The event is free and childcare will be available.

The Tulsa Hackathon begins Friday night, October 12, 2012, at 6 pm and runs all night long and all day Saturday until 9 pm, at the Tulsa Fab Lab, 710 S. Lewis Ave. App developers will gather for a 24-hour marathon design and coding session, fueled by pizza and beer, to develop new apps for Tulsa's benefit.

Thumbnail image for Johnnie-Lee-Wills-Rompin'-FrontUG.jpgSaturday night, October 13, 2012, 7 pm to 9 pm, music historian John Wooley will present his weekly western swing broadcast on Public Radio 89.5 KWGS, "Swing on This," live from Cain's Ballroom, with a dance in honor of bandleader Johnnie Lee Wills' 100th birthday. The Tulsa Playboys will be joined by Cowbop, a California western swing band. It's a benefit for KWGS, and reserved table seats are $40, available at Cain's box office, Ida Red, Reasor's, and Starship, or by calling 866-977-6849.

20120127-Coburn-Levin-PSIhearing.jpgA Senate subcommittee staff report just released says that state and local fusion centers, backed by "somewhere between $289 million and $1.4 billion" in federal funds, "have been unable to meaningfully contribute to federal counterterrorism efforts" and that the U. S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) "does not adequately oversee its financial support for fusion centers." Many centers, the report states, "didn't consider counterterrorism an explicit part of their mission, and federal officials said some were simply not concerned with doing counterterrorism work."

The report is the result of a two-year-long bipartisan probe into federally-funded fusion centers instigated by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, prepared jointly by the majority and minority staff of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The report will be released Wednesday morning, October 3, 2012, on the subcommittee's website.

The investigation looked at "more than a year's worth of intelligence reporting from centers, conducting a nationwide survey of fusion centers, and examining thousands of pages of financial records and grant documentation." Despite combing through 13 months of fusion center reporting, the "Subcommittee investigation could identify no reporting which uncovered a terrorist threat, nor could it identify a contribution such fusion center reporting made to disrupt an active terrorist plot.

The report cites money wasted on SUVs, televisions, and surveillance equipment unnecessary to the mission, non-existent fusion centers that nonetheless are funded by DHS, and worthless "intelligence reports" that waste the time of DHS counterterrorism analysts, including some that, contrary to law, reported on U. S. citizens lawfully exercising their 1st Amendment rights.

Worse yet, "senior DHS officials were aware of the problems... but did not always inform Congress of the issues, nor ensure the problems were fixed in a timely manner." DHS conducted two assessments of fusion centers, in 2010 and 2011, finding "widespread deficiencies" and "ongoing weaknesses." When the Senate subcommittee requested a copy of the 2010 assessment, "DHS at first denied it existed, then disputed whether it could be shared with Congress, before ultimately providing a copy."

Fusion centers are funded by DHS through Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) grant programs and provides support services through its State and Local Program Office (DLPO). While fusion centers may be useful for state, local, and tribal governments to pursue traditional criminal investigations, the purpose behind federal support for fusion centers was because of their potential value in supporting DHS's counterterrorism efforts, by spotting threat information to be shared with and analyzed by DHS.

MORE: G. W. Schulz of the Center for Investigative Reporting has been covering stories of wasteful Homeland Security spending for years. Schulz and fellow CIR reporter Andrew Becker have an analysis of the Senate report on fusion centers.

The nation's vast network of anti-terrorism "fusion centers" for law enforcement have produced shoddy, untimely and often useless intelligence reports that have done little to keep the U.S. safer, a scathing U.S. Senate report concludes.

The 141-page report, a copy of which was obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting, identified problems with nearly every significant aspect of the Department of Homeland Security's more than 70 fusion centers, which were designed for law enforcement to coordinate their intelligence gathering.

The report marks one of the most blistering indictments to date of the Department of Homeland Security's domestic intelligence operation. The department, investigators conclude, "has not attempted to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the value federal taxpayers have received for that investment."

(Tulsa readers will no doubt recall the very thorough features and investigative stories that Schulz produced for Urban Tulsa Weekly as the paper's city reporter about seven years ago.)

pray_campaign_button.jpegAuthor Eric Metaxas, who has written biographies of two men whose fervent Christian faith impelled them to act decisively and sacrificially in the realm of politics -- William Wilberforce of England and Dietrich Bonhoeffer of Germany -- calls Christians in America to fast and pray for the 40 days leading up to our general election. That means starting this Thursday, September 27, 2012 (links added):

We often worry and/or complain about what's happening in our nation, but can we doubt that God wants us to pray about it in a concerted way? Can there be a time more conducive to focusing our attentions than the 40 days before this extremely important election? Exactly how we do this is up to each of us -- perhaps you could fast one day per week, or gather with friends to pray once per week -- but won't you join me in this, believing and knowing that God longs for His people to take their concerns to Him -- to be anxious "for nothing" and to pray boldly and with faith and trust Him with the results? So many people wonder: "What can I do?" We can do this. If the church has forgotten that God answers prayers, there really is no hope. Jesus said: "Ask and it will be given unto you." So won't you join me in asking? And please tell your pastors and friends about this. God bless you. And may God bless America for His purposes -- so that we can be a blessing to the rest of the world.

If you plan to be part of a concerted season of prayer and fasting leading up to the election, let us know about it in the comments below or send me an email.

In case you missed it, here's the video of Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, serving as Democratic National Convention chairman last week, presiding over a vote to amend the Democratic national platform on two controversial points -- the restoration of a reference to God and to Jerusalem as Israel's capitol -- that had been removed by the Platform Committee:

It seems fairly clear that there were not two-thirds in the affirmative on any of the three attempts at a vote.

It's not clear to me what the woman next to Villaraigosa -- the parliamentarian, I assume -- meant by "gotta let them what they're gonna do." It could be taken as, "All you can do is call for the vote; it's their decision." Or it could be taken as, "Let them holler, but the ruling is there to be read off of the teleprompter."

Two things are striking about the wide shots of the crowd -- how empty the convention hall was and how small it was. At the Republican National Convention, all the delegates were on the arena floor, with guests and media in the stadium seats. The Democrats used the stadium seats to accommodate the delegates.

When the mainstream media were too busy lining up to service Slick Willie for old time's sake (metaphorically speaking), blogger Jeff Dunetz did the heavy lifting we used to expect reporters to do. Dunetz compared this year's platform with 2008's and uncovered the dropping of the reference to God and the reference to Jerusalem as Israel's capital, along with three other key pro-Israel points in the 2008 platform regarding Hamas, the status of Palestinian refugees, and the pre-1967 borders. For his efforts, Dunetz was called a troll by Dave Weigel, a member by his own admission of the mainstream media herd too busy enjoying the show to dig into the substance of the convention.

There were, reportedly, 15,000 members of the media in Charlotte, of whom maybe 14,980 could have given a damn about the party platform. On Tuesday night, when the Obama campaign and the DNC released its platform, none of the bigfoot media outlets in town spent time on the text.

Shame on them for missing the meat of the story.

But Tuesday morning, Jeff Dunetz already had the story, and by Wednesday it had caught fire, forcing the Obama campaign to go into damage control mode. Not paying close attention to the DNC, I was tipped to the scandal by a Jewish friend who announced on Facebook that, despite his dislike for Romney's economic policies, he could not bring himself to vote for Obama, because of these platform changes.

It amazes me that President Obama's team wasn't watching the platform committee deliberations closely enough to squelch these changes in committee. This last minute fix suggests that the Obama campaign was happy with the changes, until they were frightened by the public outcry from many of their supporters, or that the campaign simply doesn't have its act together.

By the way, although the reference to Jerusalem was restored, the other three pro-Israel points were not restored. It will be interesting to see whether the platform change (and its obvious rejection by rank-and-file Democrats) will be sufficient to win back the pro-Israel voters who announced plans to drop Obama over these changes.

P. S. I'd like to say the Republicans were better than the Democrats, but something very similar happened at the Republican National Convention the week before, with Speaker John Boehner appearing not to hear accurately the delegates objecting to a radical change to the Republican party rules pushed by a Romney ally.

Somehow tonight around the dinner table we got to talking about the Electoral College -- the 538 people who really get to vote for President of the United States. I talked about the two groups of seven Oklahomans that will be on our November 6 ballot -- seven pledged to vote for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, seven pledged to vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden -- about how Oklahomans will vote for one group or another, and the group with the most votes will gather in Oklahoma City in December to cast their ballots for president and vice president. Those ballots will be sent to Congress, where they will be opened in early January and counted in a joint session of Congress, and if a candidate gets at least 270 electoral votes, he will become president.

As I describe how electors vote, my 12-year-old daughter came up with a great question: What if an elector doesn't vote for the candidate he's pledged to vote for? I told her about faithless electors in the past, like the fellow in 1976 who voted for Ronald Reagan instead of Gerald Ford, but that they had never swayed an election. I told her about the year she was born, 2000, when it was close enough that as few as two faithless electors would have changed the result, and there was talk of Democratic efforts to pry loose a few Bush electors by threatening electors with exposure of embarrassing personal information. A faithless elector might be subject to fines, but it wouldn't change the effect of his vote.

2004_Oklahoma_Electors_Ballot.PNG

My daughter's response to all this was that it would be important for the Republican Party not to choose Ron Paul supporters as electors. I told her that Oklahoma's Republican elector candidates had already been picked and explained how one was chosen at each congressional district convention, and two were chosen at the state convention. Larry Williamson, a long-time party volunteer who had supported Santorum in the primary, was nominated from our district. He spoke about the history and importance of the electoral college and pledged to support the party nominee. He won over a handful of other candidates, including our nominee from 2008 -- she'd already had a turn. I explained that we try to pick people with a long history of party involvement and loyalty, rather than someone who is new and whose loyalties aren't yet proven.

She also asked about what would happen if Ron Paul supporters broke off to form a third party -- another great question. After the dinner dishes were cleared away, I opened the laptop and showed her the map of the 1992 presidential election, and how Bill Clinton won the presidency with only 43% of the vote nationwide and a majority only in his home state of Arkansas and the District of Columbia. I told her about George H. W. Bush's broken promise on taxes, Ross Perot's candidacy and how it siphoned off enough votes from Bush in enough states to allow Clinton to win a plurality and the electoral votes.

We looked at the 2000 vote, too, when the Green Party took enough votes in New Hampshire alone to have flipped the state and the election to Al Gore. I showed the kids the 1968 map -- the last time a third-party candidate (George Wallace) won electors by finishing first in a state. In many states that Nixon won, it's plausible that Wallace pulled enough votes to keep Humphrey from winning -- enough votes might have changed to give Humphrey the win in a head-to-head battle.

That led to a conversation about runoffs. We looked at the 1992 Georgia Senate election, when the Democrat incumbent, Wyche Fowler, finished just ahead of Republican Paul Coverdell, but with a Libertarian in the race, no one had a majority. Three weeks later, the Republican won the head-to-head runoff with the Democrat. Then we looked at the 1991 Louisiana governor's race, when incumbent governor Buddy Roemer, whom polls showed beating each of the other candidates in a head-to-head matchup, finished a close third, leaving Louisiana voters a distasteful choice in the runoff between "the crook" (Edwin Edwards) and "the Klansman" (David Duke).

One way to avoid that sort of problem is multiple runoffs, removing one candidate each round, which my daughter observed would take forever. The alternative vote (instant runoff voting) is another way to solve the problem, and we looked at the seven-candidate 2011 Irish presidential election, which went through four counts, to see how that system works.

We looked one year's results in California, which featured a long list of odd parties, including Communist candidate Guy Hall. Yes, there's a Communist Party in the U. S., and they used to run their own presidential candidates. Nowadays they just encourage their members to vote for Democrats.

The six-year-old boy was mainly interested in the meaning of the different colors on the maps. My daughter wanted to know why the Democrats were red and the Republicans blue, contrary to what she usually sees. I told her that it made more sense for Democrats to be red, since red symbolizes socialism and communism all over the world, while blue is the color of Britain's Conservative Party. Dave Leip of U. S. Election Atlas says his color scheme has nothing to do with ideology or symbolism; he picked a scheme when he started his site circa 1996, before the famous 2000 USA Today map of results by county which brought about a standardization on Republican red and Democrat blue.

MORE: Great comment from pollster "Blue Pat" McFerron, who also remembers when red was reserved for communism & socialism and blue was for capitalism.

The last three evenings were occupied with an election night watch party (disappointing results, but some good conversation late into the night that only confirmed my conviction that Oklahoma is much the poorer that someone as principled, intelligent, and sincere as Shane Saunders won't be serving in the state legislature next year), dinner with visiting customers, and grading Greek papers.

There's a lot I'd like to say about the rules changes that Romney's forces pushed through the Republican National Convention Rules Committee last week and the convention as a whole on Tuesday, but no time to say much now, so I'll point you to four articles that cover the important details and correctly comprehend the significance of what came to be tagged on Twitter as #goppowergrab.

First, just a few points from me:

1. This wasn't about Ron Paul and his supporters. It was about shutting down grassroots conservatives of all stripes -- old timers and newcomers alike -- in favor of the wheeler-dealers and K Street insiders.

2. It wasn't about 2012. It was about 2016 -- protecting Romney from a conservative challenger if he turns out to be a RINO in office -- and 2020 -- letting the next establishment candidate sew up the nomination as quickly as McCain did in 2008. The rules don't just govern this convention; they govern the party until the next convention, and they set precedent for future rules.

3. Too many conservatives want to know why we wind up with candidates like Dole, McCain, Romney, but then they dismiss rules disputes as "inside baseball," not worth noticing, not worth fighting about. Folks, it all starts here. Rules shape the race. Rules shape the structure of the party and the distribution of power. If you want to debug the system, you have to analyze the source code.

4. I had been trying for some time, without much success, to get conservative bloggers to pay attention to this issue. Back in January I'd suggested to a conference planner that the "inner workings of the Republican Party" should be a panel topic at the next conservative bloggers conference, with a panel made up of bloggers who, like myself, had been involved in Republican Party politics:

I see a lot of frustrated commentary from conservative bloggers about the GOP, often anthropomorphizing the party as a monolithic entity, when it's really a complex system of individuals, forces, rules, and institutions. Rather than blame the party as a whole and attack the symptoms with no lasting impact, conservatives need to identify and target the causes of the problems we see, and conservative bloggers can play an important role in providing context and directing activist energy in productive ways.

More recently I suggested that any bloggers who could be in Tampa before the convention began should report on the Rules Committee meeting, as I had done in 2004 and 2008, specifically mentioning the possibility of an effort to undo the primary calendar reforms that governed the 2012 primary cycle, reforms that this time around prevented a super-frontloaded national primary. As far as I know, no conservative bloggers reported from the meeting itself, and there weren't any conservative-leaning news outlets there either. Live tweets (which I captured with the GOP 2012 Rules Twitter list) were coming from reporters with Buzzfeed, CNN, Huffington Post, and Politico.

If more conservative bloggers and reporters had been paying attention from the beginning, and if Team Romney and the Rules Committee knew we were paying attention, perhaps some of the Romney changes would not have been put forward by the Romney people or won the Rules Committee's approval.

All that said, here are four well-done articles on the controversy and its aftermath:

Washington Examiner's Tim Carney: Republican leaders trample their grass roots in Tampa

Michelle Malkin: RNC Power Grab: The Aftermath

FreedomWorks' Dean Clancy: Romney's "RNC Power Grab": What Really Happened

Mark America: Becoming a Top-Down Party of Nothing

I hate to have to miss the Republican National Convention this year, but it's especially tough to miss the convention's Rules Committee proceedings the week before the convention. I was one of a handful of reporters and bloggers covering the 2004 and 2008 Rules Committee proceedings, and I suspect I was the only one covering them that had served on GOP rules committees at the county, congressional district, and state level.

So I had half an eye on my Twitter stream on Friday as the 2012 Republican National Convention Rules Committee was in session. A handful of new and old media reporters, occasionally joined by actual rules committee members, were live-tweeting the event: Zeke Miller of Buzzfeed, Jon Ward of the Huffington Post, Peter Hamby of CNN, James Hohmann of Politico; Chris Brown, rules committee member from Alabama, Iowa State Chairman A. J. Spiker, and Oklahoma rules committee member Stuart Jolly, head of Americans for Prosperity Oklahoma.

At the meeting, Mitt Romney's forces, spearheaded by former Bush 41 chief of staff John Sununu as committee chairman and Bush 43 / Romney lawyer and lobbyist Ben Ginsberg, pushed a bushel basket full of significant changes to the way the Republican Party selects its presidential nominee and elects delegates to the national convention. While the GOP's presumptive nominee is expected to have some influence over the conduct of the convention, I've never seen such a extreme attempt by a nominee to subvert the fundamental structure of the party. It reminds me of Tony Blair taking a metaphorical ax to the House of Lords after his election in 1997.

Some background: At each quadrennial Republican National Convention, the delegates to the convention approve a set of rules to govern the convention itself and the party until the next convention four years later. That includes defining the nominating process and the formula for delegate allocation to be used four years hence. The vote on the floor of the convention is usually a formality, a voice vote, over in a minute with no debate. The full body of convention delegates are voting on the recommendation of the convention rules committee, a group consisting of two delegates (one male, one female) selected by each state delegation. The convention rules committee meets the week before the convention. The committee chairman is appointed by the RNC Chairman, usually in accordance with the wishes of the presumptive nominee. There is typically one committee member who is there specifically to push the nominee's preferred rules.

Taken as a whole, the Romney "reforms" are designed to undo the reforms approved between the 2008 and 2012 convention, which slowed down the nominating process and subjected the eventual nominee to a great deal of scrutiny. The Romney rules would compress and front-load the calendar once again to protect any future establishment-backed candidate from enduring a similar level of scrutiny, favoring the next-in-line Republican with the biggest fundraising and name recognition advantage and hindering any insurgent campaign from building on a surprise win in a small, early state. The Romney "reforms" would also put control of delegate selection in the hands of the presidential campaigns and increase the threshold for putting a candidate's name in nomination from a plurality of five state delegations to a majority of eight state delegations.

The Romney rules would also allow the Republican National Committee to amend party rules in between conventions. This would be a radical departure from Republican Party practice; the GOP passes rules at the national convention and they remain in force for four years. In 2008, however, a precedent was set to allow a one-time, limited-purpose amendment: A commission was established to recommend new rules and a new calendar for the 2012 presidential nominating process, with an up-or-down RNC vote on adopting the report as a whole.

This time around the Romneyites got rules committee approval for most of their proposals, but some were altered and one failed outright: An attempt to raise the threshold for a minority committee report from 25% to 40%. Opposition to the Romney coup was led by Virginia national committeeman Morton C. Blackwell, the Republican National Committee's institutional memory and founder of the Leadership Institute. From live tweets of reporters on the scene, it appeared that most of the support for the Romney Revolution came from northern, small state, unsuccessful parties, while successful, large, southern state parties opposed the rules changes.

Since convention delegates are apportioned to each state by population with bonuses for Republican electoral success, a win for RINOs in the rules committee, where Massachusetts has as much power as Texas, is no guarantee of a win on the convention floor.

Following adjournment, minority reports were circulated and appear to have received signatures from enough rules committee members (at least 25%) to move forward. The current rule requires a signed petition to be presented to the chairman, vice chairman, or secretary of the rules committee within an hour of the approval of the majority report in order to come before the convention as a minority report. I have not heard whether or not this was accomplished, but there was one report that John Sununu went into hiding to avoid being served with the report by the deadline.

According to a letter from RNC member Morton Blackwell of Virginia to state delegation chairmen, even if the minority report moves forward, the support of at least six state delegations will be required to force a roll call vote. Blackwell states that tremendous pressure is being applied to rules committee members to get them to retract their signatures on the minority reports.

Romney's heavyhanded efforts, by way of Sununu and Ginsberg, to reshape the party in a top-down direction will undo months of fence-mending with the grassroots conservatives whose enthusiasm he needs to win in November. Whether a minority report comes before the convention or not, there's a good chance for some effort to defeat the proposed rules. Even if the challenge to Romney's rules fails, he will have provoked exactly the kind of prime-time conflict presumptive nominees usually seek to avoid, all in an effort to insulate himself and future establishment candidates from grassroots influence and accountability.

Supporters of Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul should join together to oppose Romney's rules coup.

If you happen to know someone in Tampa as a delegate to the convention, drop them an email or Facebook message and encourage them to vote against the Romney majority report and to support the minority report. It may also help to contact your state Republican Party headquarters to register your concerns. The phone number for Oklahoma Republican HQ is (405) 528-3501. Email addresses for the state chairman and vice chairman, national committeeman and national committeewoman are on the Oklahoma GOP's contact page.

I will consider the actions (or failures to act) of our state party leaders and delegates on these matters a litmus test that will influence my support for their future ambitions and initiatives.

LINKS:

The Republican Party rules approved in 2008, as amended by RNC adoption of the commission report in 2010.

My GOP 2012 Rules Committee Twitter list.

Shane Vander Hart, Caffeinated Thoughts, Mitt Romney's Assault on the Grassroots at the RNC:

Mitt Romney's legal advisor, Ben Ginsburg, has been attacking grassroots activism within the Republican Party during the Convention of the Rules Committee that met Friday prior to the Republican National Convention in Tampa, FL. I was told late yesterday that one of the amendments that he offered and was passed by the committee changes the RNC rules so that the presumptive nominee and the state party can decide who the delegates are that can go to the national convention. The language of the rule states that the presidential nominee and state party can disavow any delegate.

These are essentially the people who write the platform. Think about the implications of this: If the nominee is anti-life, he or she, can essential disavow any pro-life delegate. If he is in favor of same-sex marriage, he can disavow those delegates. This gives the nominee too much influence over the party and it diminishes the grassroots who choose the delegates to send. It is a top-down approach which favors the establishment.

Letter from Dave Nalle of Republican Liberty Caucus opposing the Romney power grab:

The presidential nomination, which was supposed to be the focus [of the convention], is taking a backseat to a growing controversy over an attempt by a small group of elite party insiders and the Romney campaign to fundamentally change the rules and structure of the party to disenfranchise grassroots Republicans activists and turn the GOP from a party of the people into a party of top-down governance from a select class of professional political organizers.

Buzzfeed: Romney Executes Republican Party Power-Grab:

The Republican National Convention Rules Committee voted 63-38 to approve a new rule allowing granting the Republican National Committee -- and Mitt Romney -- sweeping new powers to amend the governing document of the GOP.

The move came at the encouragement of Mitt Romney supporters on the committee, including Romney's top lawyer Ben Ginsberg, who stressed that it would grant "flexibility" to Romney and the committee to adapt to changing political environments. The rule allows the RNC to amend the party's rules without a vote by the full Republican National Convention. And it offers the Republican Establishment a new tool to keep at by Tea Party initiatives that threaten to embarrass or contradict party leadership and stray from a planned message....

Virginia delegate and RNC member Morton Blackwell strenuously objected to the proposed rule change, calling it "the most awful proposed amendments I've seen presented to this committee."

"This is dangerous, it amounts to a power grab," he said. "We are abandoning the historic process by which are rules are adopted."

The Romney allies waited until Friday to propose the amendment, choosing to avoid giving the opposition time to organize by proposing it at the preliminary Rules meeting on Wednesday or during more than three years of RNC Rules Committee discussions.

Business Insider: There Was Major Drama At The GOP Convention Friday, And It Ended With John Sununu Fleeing The Building:

The drama Friday centered around a contentious meeting of the powerful Rules Committee, where Romney's campaign lieutenants, led by his legal counsel Ben Ginsberg, pushed through several changes that would give Romney broad authority over the Republican nominating process.

According to one source who was at the meeting, the saga ended with former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu, the committee chair, hightailing it out of the building before committee members could submit dissenting minority opinions, or "minority reports."...

"The rules say that you have an hour after the meeting, but within 15 minutes, we couldn't find [Chairman Sununu] anywhere," Ryan, a Ron Paul supporter and member of Maine's delegation, said. "Finally, we asked an RNC official if they had seen former New Hampshire Governor John Sununu. He said, 'John Sununu! Everyone's looking for him! But he left the building.'"

Buzzfeed: Grassroots Backlash Against Romney Campaign's Rules Changes

The Republican National Convention Rules Committee revolted against the Romney campaign on Friday, after more than six hours of domination by top Romney lawyer Ben Ginsberg.

Ginsberg, who had forced through a series of amendments to make it more difficult for an insurgent candidate to earn delegates to the national convention and earn a spot on the convention ballot, tried to raise the threshold for obtaining "minority reports."...

Drew McKissick, a delegate from South Carolina objected, noting that the rules change could also apply to that same contentious rules committee meeting if approved.

"He is systematically trying to prevent minorities from having even any remote opportunity of being heard," followed Virginia delegate Morton Blackwell to rave applause from the committee. "This is wrong, it's gonna hurt us, it's gonna hurt our presidential candidate."

After being publicly rebuked, Ginsberg withdrew his amendment, prompting further cheers from the committee.

Michael Duncan, FreedomWorks: Stop the Establishment from Rewriting the RNC Rules:

As you may know the Romney camp is pushing new rules that would strip grassroots activists of any meaningful ability to participate in presidential politics. The process has always been bottom-up, but Romney officials have rewritten the rules so that the nominee can stifle any dissent on the platform committee and even unseat delegates. Make no mistake, this will weaken the process by which Republicans chose their candidate for president and push the grassroots out of the party process....

Please locate the phone number of your State Republican Party Headquarters below, call them immediately, and tell them to oppose Romney's new rules that strip grassroots activists of the ability to participate in the Republican platform process.

I was encouraged to come across a new poll showing conservative former state Solicitor General Ted Cruz pulling ahead of establishment moderate Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the race to be the Republican nominee for Texas's open U. S. Senate seat. Dewhurst finished first in the May 29 primary, but fell short of the required majority, with 45% to Cruz's 34%, so Dewhurst and Cruz will be on the July 31, 2012, runoff ballot.

The new PPP poll, taken on July 10 and 11, has Cruz at 49% and Dewhurst at 44%. This is a dramatic reversal from the same pollster's final pre-primary poll, which gave Dewhurst a commanding 59%-34% lead in a runoff with Cruz.

This reversal has happened despite Dewhurst's strong political pull and establishment support. The Lieutenant Governor is said by many to be the most powerful office in Texas, and anyone with interests at the State Capitol would be foolish not to endorse Dewhurst, as he would be in a position to punish them should he lose this election and remain as Lt. Governor. As http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301055/will-fear-decide-texas-senate-race-katrina-trinkoNational Review's Katrina Trinko wrote back in May:

In Texas, the lieutenant governorship is a hugely powerful position. Its occupant is the leader of the state senate, meaning he appoints committee chairmen and members, determines the order in which bills are taken up, and decides which committees get to handle specific pieces of legislation.

At the very least, everyone has to be aware of the sway Dewhurst will have if he remains lieutenant governor. And according to state insiders backing Dewhurst's most prominent rival, former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, it goes beyond that: They say the Dewhurst campaign has made it clear that those who want to see their legislation pass if Dewhurst remains lieutenant governor had better back Dewhurst for senate. The Dewhurst campaign denies this categorically.

One source familiar with Texas politics who supports Cruz says that he knows "a number of significant donors" who also have business interests in the state and have been "told by their lobbyists in Austin, 'Don't dare give money to Ted, don't endorse Ted . . . because if you do you'll never get anything else through in Austin.'"

So despite the leverage for arm-twisting and the list of endorsers that "reads like the Chamber of Commerce directory for the State of Texas" and includes public employees organizations/unions, Dewhurst's star is falling fast. Cruz, meanwhile, has donations from a broader array of Texans, plus endorsements from national conservative leaders and organizations, the troops on the front lines of the fight in Washington for fiscal sanity, traditional values, the sanctity of human life, 2nd Amendment rights, and a strong national defense.

Cruz's endorsers include FreedomWorks for America PAC, Club for Growth PAC, Eagle Forum PAC, Dr. James Dobson, Sen. Jim DeMint, Sen. Tom Coburn, Sen. Mike Lee, Sen. Pat Toomey, Sen. Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Sarah Palin, former U. S. Attorney General Ed Meese, Phyllis Schlafly, Mark Levin, and Sean Hannity. When Dewhurst supporters said that Cruz was backed by Washington "insiders," Cruz replied, "I've got to say that if Sarah Palin, Mark Levin, James Dobson are DC insiders...hallelujah, we have truly turned this country around."

Cruz's big turnaround gives me hope in the Oklahoma 2nd Congressional District runoff. As in Texas, we have a big-money candidate, Markwayne Mullin, with backing from establishment, corporate-welfare types, versus a grassroots candidate, George Faught, who has the support of grassroots Oklahoma conservatives and national conservative leaders who want a principled, knowledgeable leader to help fight for the conservative cause in Washington.

Faught has endorsements from Mike Huckabee, Gary Jones, Phyllis Schlafly, Citizens United Political Victory Fund, Gun Owners of America Political Victory Fund, Family Research Council's Action PAC, Concerned Women for America PAC, David Barton of Wall Builders, and Mike Farris, head of the Home School Legal Defense Fund.

Last week Mullin was touting an endorsement from Doug Cox, arguably the most liberal Republican in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. Cox frequently votes against pro-life legislation, supports government funding for Planned Parenthood, and was a leading advocate for a bill that would allow someone with a gender identity disorder to rewrite history by changing his birth certificate to match his delusions. What does it tell you that Doug Cox would rather have Mullin in Congress than George Faught, who helped to expose and defeat Cox's gender-bender bill?

Mullin's campaign is promoting an internal poll showing their man ahead by a margin similar to the lead Dewhurst held six weeks ago. Those numbers should change as conservative 2nd District voters take a closer look at Mullin's associations and backers. If Ted Cruz can turn those numbers around in six weeks, so can George Faught.

A group of 75 U. S. Senators and U. S. House members, led by Sen. Jim DeMint, Rep. Michelle Bachmann, and Rep. Jim Jordan, have written a letter to the National Governors Association urging against the implementation of state health care exchanges. Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn and Rep. James Lankford are among the 12 senators and 63 congressmen to sign the letter to the governors, which was released today, July 2, 2012.

The letter provides more backup for the assertion that the ObamaCare employer mandate cannot be enforced in states without a health care exchange. The letter makes a strong case that states with an exchange will spend more tax dollars establishing and running it and will make it more expensive to do business in those states.

The full text of the letter, followed by a list of signatories:

Dear Governors:

The Supreme Court has ruled significant parts of the Medicaid expansion of the President's health care law unconstitutional as well as ruling that the individual mandate violated the Commerce Clause and will therefore be implemented as a punitive tax on the middle class. This presents us with a critical choice: Do we allow this reprehensible law to move forward or do we fully repeal it and start over with commonsense solutions? The American people have made it clear that they want us to throw this law out in its entirety.

As members of the U.S. Congress, we are dedicated to the full repeal of this government takeover of healthcare and we ask you to join us to oppose its implementation.

Most importantly, we encourage you to oppose any creation of a state health care exchange mandated under the President's discredited health care law.

These expensive, complex, and intrusive exchanges impose a threat to the financial stability of our already-fragile state economies with no certainty of a limit to total enrollment numbers. Resisting the implementation of exchanges is good for hiring and investment. The law's employer mandate assesses penalties - up to $3,000 per employee - only to businesses who don't satisfy federally-approved health insurance standards and whose employees receive "premium assistance" through the exchanges. The clear language of the statute only permits federal premium assistance to citizens of states who create a state-based exchange. However, the IRS recently finalized a regulation that contradicts the law by allowing the federal government to provide premium assistance to citizens in those states that have not created exchanges. The IRS had no authority to finalize such a regulation. By refusing to create an exchange, you will assist us in Congress to repeal this violation which will help lower the costs of doing business in your state, relative to other states that keep these financially draining exchanges in place.

State-run exchanges are subject to all of the same coverage mandates and rules as the federally-run exchange. Clearing the hurdles of crafting an exchange that complies with the 600 plus pages of federal exchange regulations will only result in wasted state resources and higher premiums for your constituents.

Implementation of this law is not inevitable and without the unconstitutional individual mandate it is improbable. Join us in resisting a centralized government approach to health care reform and instead focus on solutions that make health care more affordable and accessible for every American. Let's work to create a health care system of, for, and by the people, not government or special interests.

Sincerely,


Here is the complete list of signatories:

House

Bachmann, Jordan, Paul, Roe, Wilson, Duncan, Akin, Hensarling, Garrett, Mulvaney, Walsh, Walberg, Stearns, Ross, Gowdy, Emerson, Franks, Buchson, Rokita, Broun, Boustany, Huelskamp, Scalise, Amash, Olson, Canseco, Price, Blackburn, King (IA), Adams, DesJarlais, Landry, Gingrey, Lankford, Miller (FL), Guthrie, Manzullo, Bono Mack, Ellmers, Pitts, Benishek, Calvert, McClintock, Jenkins, Gohmert, Flores, Bilbray, Ryan, Sensenbrenner, Buerkle, Denham, Lungren, Harris, West, Long, Westmoreland, Fleischmann, Aderholt, Poe, Labrador, Neugebauer, Pompeo

Senate

DeMint, Lee, Johnson (WI), Coburn, Graham, Vitter, Paul, Cornyn, Sessions, Rubio, Toomey and Shelby

MEANWHILE: The Daily Disappointment urges immediate implementation of an Oklahoma health-care exchange.

My inbox is filling with responses from Oklahoma officials and policy influencers to the ObamaCare ruling.

From the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs:

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision to uphold the vast majority of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) reemphasizes the need for action at the ballot box and the need for Oklahoma policymakers to protect patients and taxpayers from the law's harmful side effects, according to researchers at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA). "While it is difficult not to be disappointed by the Court's decision," says law professor Andrew Spiropoulos, OCPA's Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow, "there is a silver lining to the black cloud of state intrusion that hangs over us. The fate of the President's scheme and our liberty now rest where they should -- in our own hands and ballots. No constitution or court can save us if we are unwilling to save ourselves." "Now that the Court has upheld key parts of this unaffordable, irresponsible, and wasteful law, it is more important than ever for Oklahoma's political leaders to advance state-led and patient-centered reforms that help the poor, the sick, and the taxpayers," adds Jonathan Small, fiscal policy director at OCPA. Mr. Small, who formerly served as director of government affairs for Commissioner Kim Holland at the Oklahoma Insurance Department, says state policymakers must advance genuine reform. Specifically:
  • Oklahoma lawmakers should move immediately to limit spending and should not expand the state's budget-busting Medicaid program (expansion is allowed by ACA but not required).
  • Lawmakers should stop raiding the InsureOklahoma program (to the tune of more than $120 million to date) and instead should shift the emphasis in Medicaid toward getting participants onto private health insurance. "We need to empower people to escape from the Medicaid ghetto," says Mr. Small, "and give them the dignity of having their own health insurance."
  • Lawmakers and the private sector must build state-based firewalls -- such as a state-based, almost exclusively private-sector-operated insurance marketplace -- to minimize the intrusion of the federal government into the insurance market in Oklahoma.
  • Given the penalties for employers not providing coverage -- which are more desirable than the mandate-heavy high-cost ACA plans -- state lawmakers should plan to cease offering state-employee health coverage if ACA is not repealed. The penalty for not providing the coverage will be significantly less than continuing the state's current high-cost plans.
  • Policymakers should encourage transparency in medical pricing, of the sort practiced by the Surgery Center of Oklahoma.
  • Policymakers should equalize the tax treatment of individually purchased insurance and employer-provided insurance.

"I can attest firsthand that when politicians in Washington try to take over health care, the side effects are painful," says Mr. Small [see video below]. "This new middle-class tax increase -- possibly the largest in American history -- will only serve to do more harm to families."

From John Hart, spokesman for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn:

Dr. Coburn will be reviewing the ruling and will respond with an updated plan to repeal and replace this unworkable law. The Court affirmed Congress' power to tax people if they don't eat their broccoli. Now it's up to the American people to decide whether they will tolerate this obscene abuse of individual liberty.

Hart reminds that in 2009 Coburn authored a conservative alternative health care reform law, the Patients' Choice Act, with Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC), Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA).

From 1st District Congressman John Sullivan:

I strongly disagree with the courts decision to uphold the individual mandate - I fear this ruling will forever change the relationship between the federal government and the people in this country.

Nowhere in the U.S. constitution is Congress given the power to force Americans to purchase a good or a service or to enter into a contract. By signing Obamacare into law, the President and Democrat leaders told the American people they don't have a right to choose what health insurance plan best meets their needs - I strongly disagree. Regardless of the Supreme Courts ruling, Obamacare is still a bad law and must be repealed - it is hurting our economy, spending trillions of dollars we don't have to spend, killing American jobs and putting the federal government between doctors and their patients. I will continue fighting to repeal the law in Congress, however I am also confident the American people will vote to repeal this law at the ballot box in November by making Barack Obama a one term President.

From Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin:

Oklahomans have voiced their opposition to the federal health care bill from the very beginning, having approved a constitutional amendment to block the implementation of this bill in our state. We believe that, rather than Big Government bureaucracy and one-size-fits-all solutions, the free-market principles of choice and competition are the best tools at our disposal to increase access to health care and reduce costs.

I'm extremely disappointed and frustrated by the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the federal health care law. President Obama's health care policies will limit patients' health care choices, reduce the quality of health care in the United States, and will cost the state of Oklahoma more than a half billion dollars in the process.

Today's decision highlights the importance of electing leaders who will work to repeal the federal health care law and replace it with meaningful reform focused on commonsense, market based changes.

From State Rep. George Faught (R-Muskogee), candidate for Congress:

"I am extremely disappointed in the Supreme Court's ruling on ObamaCare, but as I did before in Oklahoma City I am ready to fight again in Washington for our precious freedoms. This ruling allows another huge expansion of federal bureaucracy and intrusion into the lives of individuals. The Court this morning in essence gave the American people two choices: either get used to health control and rationing as the huge federal bureaucracy chokes off our liberties, or completely repeal this outrageous overreach that has already spawned 18,000 pages of new job-killing federal regulations. Repeal can only be accomplished by electing proven conservatives who have demonstrated that they understand the issues and will take the fight to preserve our liberties to Washington.

"The people of Oklahoma spoke loud and clear in 2010 that they did not want ObamaCare in Oklahoma. I took their voice and their fight to the state capital and stopped it in its tracks, when others wanted to give in and take federal money to start implementing ObamaCare. I understand the issues and recognize the assault on our freedom that this represents.

"Send me to Washington D.C. and I will not rest until ObamaCare is repealed and our liberty is restored. What the Supreme Court failed to do for the country today by declaring this law unconstitutional, I will work alongside other conservatives in Congress to accomplish legislatively--its complete repeal--beginning on my first day as a representative of the people of Oklahoma in Congress."

This weekend I was invited to Providence, Rhode Island for the Future of Journalism Summit, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. Heritage is a well established national policy think-tank, while the Franklin Center is only about three years old, founded in response to a "falling standards in the media as well as a steep falloff in reporting on state government." Franklin supports state capitol news organizations in 39 states, often partnering with state policy think tanks. There are two Franklin-affiliated state capitol reporters in Oklahoma: Peter J. Rudy at Oklahoma Watchdog and Patrick McGuigan at CapitolBeatOK.

The event was designed to bring together New Media bloggers and Old Media journalists. I shared a cab from the airport with Andrew Malcolm, a veteran national and foreign reporter and now a columnist for Investors Business Daily. Last night, after the sessions were finished, I was in a group that wandered over to downtown Providence to watch their WaterFire event, a group that included Jim Geraghty, political reporter for National Review, Rob Port of Say Anything, North Dakota's authoritative state politics blog, David Guenthner of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and several Franklin Center staffers from around the country.

SD005292

The days were taken up with informative sessions. Here are just a few examples:

We heard about efforts to combat vote fraud (and efforts to thwart efforts to combat vote fraud) from National Review's John Fund, who has written a book on the subject, and Quin Hillyer of the American Spectator, who was a an aide to Louisiana Congressman Bob Livingston when Livingston successfully fought to add a voter roll cleanup provision to Bill Clinton's Moter Voter law.

Bill Beach, director of the Heritage Foundation's Center for Data Analysis, gave us an overview of the wide range of federal data available online. He also told us about the early days of his career, when processing government data for analysis involved hours of data entry work and going to the lab in the wee hours of the morning to process stacks of punch cards.

It was encouraging to hear Mark Morano, a former Senate Energy and Commerce Committee aide under Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe, explain how thoroughly and completely the anthropogenic global warming scare has been debunked, despite the institutional weight behind the discredited theory.

SD005189Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch told us the ins and outs of Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and how to pry loose information the government doesn't want to release. He also treated us to an example of unnecessarily redacted information: A field report on Ted Kennedy's 1961 visit to Latin America, a credentials-building trip for his run to take his big brother Jack's vacant U. S.Senate seat. The document was unredacted in bits and pieces in response to a series of requests, revealing Kennedy's desire to hobnob with Lauchlin Currie, a Soviet intelligence source during his time in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, and Kennedy's all-night rental of a brothel in Chile.

After Friday's session we attended the first-ever Breitbart Awards, honoring Duane Lester of All-American Blogger as blogger of the year (that's me with Duane in the photo below), Philip Klein, senior editorial writer of the Washington Examiner as professional journalist of the year, and Andrew Marcus, as citizen journalist of the year. Political journalist John Fund delivered a challenging keynote speech, and several friends and associates of the late Andrew Breitbart paid tribute to the many occasions when he encourage them to be bold in the face of adversities. I was especially moved by a speech by Brietbart.com writer Dana Loesch. Loesch spoke of intimidation attempts she endured after she wrote about a confrontation involving SEIU members and a Tea Party member -- people showed up on her doorstep, tailed her as she drove to and from the grocery store -- and she was ready to quit and retreat to normalcy, out of the spotlight. A phone call from Breitbart fired her up and kept her in the fight.

Many thanks to the Franklin Center and the Heritage Foundation for the opportunity to be a part of this conference.

Michael Bates with Duane Lester, All-American Blogger, at the Future of Journalism Summit, June 8, 2012, Providence, RI

Here's Merle Haggard, singing lead and doing his best imitation of Bob Wills' hollers, with three Texas Playboys: Johnny Gimble playing fiddle, Tiny Moore (next to Merle, holding a fiddle) and Eldon Shamblin (playing his Stratocaster) singing harmony.

Let's send this one out to Elizabeth "Fauxcahontas" Warren in Massachusetts.

Tiny Moore was best known as a virtuoso mandolin picker, but he was also a terrific vocalist. Tiny was only given the chance to sing lead on a few Texas Playboys recordings, but he shared lead vocal duties with Bob's youngest brother Billy Jack Wills in Billy Jack's Sacramento based western swing band (1952-1954). Eldon Shamblin, a brilliant and creative rhythm guitarist, also served as arranger and band manager for the Texas Playboys, and sang on trios and quartets from time to time. Tiny and Eldon, teamed up with steel guitarist Herb Remington on the triple guitar arrangements of big band tunes on the Tiffany Transcriptions recordings. Tiny, Eldon, and Johnny had all performed, along with Joe Holley, Alex Brashear, and Johnnie Lee Wills on Merle Haggard's 1970 album A Tribute to the Best Damn Fiddle Player in the World (Or, My Salute to Bob Wills), and Tiny and Eldon toured with Merle Haggard for a few years.

Many thanks to See-Dubya for the tip.

Nancy_C_Newman.jpgWilliam_Basil_Newman.jpgI am exactly as Cherokee as Ms. Warren: Family lore says that my great-great-grandmother Nancy Catherine Boyd was a half-blood Cherokee. (Note the high cheekbones.) She was born in Ohio, but the story is that there was a community of Cherokee in Ohio who had moved there to get out of the way of white expansion into Cherokee lands in the South; many then, it is said, moved to Indian Territory to rejoin their relocated people in their "permanent" home. Nancy married William Basil Newman, who refused to let Nancy enroll with the Dawes Commission, because he didn't want his wife owning land (an allotment) in her own name; and thus old Basil deprived all his descendants of the benefits of Cherokee citizenship, or so the story goes.

Ali_Rashad_Richey-Mugshot-20050920.jpgGeorgia Politcs Unfiltered has several updates regarding Georgia Democratic Party political director Ali Rashad Richey, the topic of an entry here late last week. (The link texts below are the titles of the posts at Georgia Politics Unfiltered.)

The second item includes a scan and partial transcript of the police report from Richey's 2007 arrest.

The third item has a scan of a letter written by State Sen. Gail Buckner, owner of the property whose address matches that on Richey's 2010 jail booking record, in which she offers to a DeKalb County judge to "take supervision over Ali Richey to see that he completes all of the requirements of the court and to help prevent him from getting into any other issues that would bring him before the court."

Blogger Andre Walker asks a speculative question, in reaction to this information about Buckner's letter: "What does Ali Rashad Richey have on you people? What kind of dirt does Richey, the political director for Georgia Democrats, have on the party leadership? Rashad Richey must have a proverbial smoking gun under lock and key in a safe deposit box somewhere. How else does one explain the fact that Democrat Party leaders keep saving Rashad Richey's [posterior]?"

The last item in the list above links to a news report about Richey by WSB-TV in Atlanta. While the WSB report frames the story as a dispute between bloggers and the Democratic Party of Georgia, the story shows what appears to be copies of the arrest records and a list of charges are shown on screen, which would suggest that the station did its own research on Richey's interactions with law enforcement.

WSB interviewed Mike Berlon, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Georgia. Berlon said Richey was "probably one of the best political directors in the country" and had a "very bright political future." That's interesting in light of the fact that Democrats hold only about 35% of the seats in each house of the Georgia legislature, Democrats did not win any statewide elections in 2010, and Democrats won only 5 of 13 seats in Congress. As recently as the 1970s, Georgia was practically a one-party state, dominated by the Democrats. I suppose it could be worse for Georgia Democrats, but not by much.

Berlon said that he got a copy of the arrest record, "just to make sure we hadn't missed something. Mr. Richey's never been convicted of a felony.... There's nothing out there that rises even close to the level of a felony."

The WSB story shows YouTube videos that they say show Richey speaking on behalf of the Democratic Party. "He also has a radio talk show, but Berlon says he doesn't consider Richey a public figure and said they're considering legal action against the bloggers who are hinting he's a convicted felon and calling for his firing."

Note the phrase "they're considering" -- not "Berlon is considering" or "Richie is considering." Now, it's possible that WSB misquoted Berlon, but if the quote is accurate, it indicates that Berlon is speaking here on behalf of the Democratic Party of Georgia. If that's not the case, Mr. Berlon needs to clarify the point.

The significance of "public figure" status is that it can be libel, in a technical sense, to publicize the truth or express an opinion about someone if it would cause people to think badly of them. The First Amendment trumps such laws, and the U. S. Supreme Court has established that it's not even libelous to make a statement that is false about a public figure, as long as it was done without actual malice. Here, of course, we are talking about facts in the public record about a public figure.

I haven't read any bloggers hinting that Richey is a convicted felon, and nor have any bloggers called for his firing, as far as I'm aware, but there have been comments on what Richey's employment with the Democratic Party of Georgia says about the organization's leadership and about Democratic Party politics in America generally.

Ali Rashad Richey is clearly a public figure. You can't have a "very bright political future" if you're not a public figure. You can't be a political party spokesman or official if you're not a public figure. You can't be a radio talk show host without wanting people to know who you are and what you think and therefore being a public figure. You certainly aren't going to have the state chairman of a major political party talking on TV about the party prosecuting lawsuits on your behalf if you aren't a person of public significance and interest.

I've never met Ali Rashad Richey. I've never met blogger Andre Walker. I've never communicated with either one of them. I became interested in this story because it was already a matter of public interest and bore at least some superficial similarities to stories involving the Oklahoma and North Carolina Democratic Party organizations. If Ali Rashad Richey isn't a public figure, then why would bloggers outside Georgia think it worth their time to write about him?

MORE: Here's my March 25, 2009, column on SLAPPs -- Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation -- the abuse of legal process to shut up a political critic.

And here is a blog entry about then-Tulsa City Councilor Eric Gomez's threat to sue neighborhood activist Julie Hall in 2009 and Gomez's answer at a candidate forum to a question about suing his constituents.

Among other steps, AfP is calling on President Obama to stop playing politics with American energy and approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.

The ad makes multiple references to a September 9, 2010, story in the Washington Times, which establishes that the funds created more jobs abroad than at home.

Only about $20 billion of the allotted funds have been spent - the slowest disbursement rate for any category of stimulus spending. Private analysts are skeptical of White House estimates that the green funding created 190,700 jobs.

The Department of Energy estimated that 82,000 jobs have been created and has acknowledged that as much as 80 percent of some green programs, including $2.3 billion of manufacturing tax credits, went to foreign firms that employed workers primarily in countries including China, South Korea and Spain, rather than in the United States.

Peter Morici, a business professor at the University of Maryland, said much of the green stimulus funding was "squandered."

"Large grants to build green buildings don't generate many new jobs, except for a few architects," he said. "Subsidies for windmills and solar panels created lots of jobs in China," but few at home....

Mr. Sherraden said the problem with job leakage overseas promised only to get worse, because governments in Europe and Japan - which in years past spent lavishly on renewable energy - now are drastically cutting back their green subsidies as they try to pare enormous budget deficits.

With the United States left as the only major developed country still flooding the market with government funding, competition from overseas suppliers promised to be more fierce than ever, Mr. Sherraden said.

"It is impossible to guarantee that clean-energy stimulus is not leaked abroad," he said. "We have to recognize that we are funding job-creation programs in Germany, Spain, Japan and China."

Ali_Rashad_Richey-Mugshot-20050920.jpgNormally, I wouldn't post about Democrat Party politics in Georgia, but there are some interesting similarities to the recent allegations about former Oklahoma Democrat Party chairman and former North Carolina Democrat Party executive director Jay Parmley.

Consider this as a possible pattern: A senior Democrat state party staffer gets caught in some sort of particularly nasty legal trouble, something that reflects very negatively on his character, on the party, and on the judgment of the party leaders who hired him, but instead of giving him the heave-ho, party leaders and donors help with the cover up, including spreading a bit of money around. Maybe they even find him a nice gig somewhere else. The parallels aren't perfect in each of these cases, but there seem to be some resemblances. And it raises the question: Why would party leaders and donors find it worthwhile to spend money and take the risk to protect such a malefactor?

The latest situation: It appears to be the case that the political director of the Georgia Democratic Party, Ali Rashad Richey, has a long history of arrests and jail time, as recently as 2010, when it appears that he spent nearly a month in the DeKalb County Jail, the result of a probation violation from an earlier offence. At the same time, Richey was being paid $4,000 a month by the Gail Buckner for Georgia Secretary of State campaign. Buckner was a long-time state representative, was the Democrat nominee for Secretary of State in 2006 but lost the general election, won a state senate seat in 2008, and ran for Secretary of State again in 2010, losing the nomination in a runoff.

Andre Walker Georgia Politics Unfiltered began writing about this story about a week ago, reporting that Richey had been arrested 12 times in Fulton and DeKalb County, going back to 1998. But Walker provided no links or specifics to back up the claims he was making.

Blogger Nice Deb began doing some digging and came up with the specifics, which she documents in her story about Georgia Democratic Party Political Director Rashad Richey.

I did some digging, too, and found a positive link between Rashad Richey the political operative and the Ali Rashad Richey named in these court records. (*See NOTE at end of this entry regarding the word "recidivist.") The address listed on that 2010 jail booking record is a house at 1834 Carla Drive, Morrow, Clayton County, Georgia.

The house is owned by Gail Buckner (go here to search the county land records), and it's the same address listed on the Buckner campaign's 1st quarter 2010 expenditure report, as the address of "Raschad Richey," paid $4,000 on January 29, February 26, and March 26, 2010, for "campaign work." It was also listed as her "district office" during her stint as state senator.

(Note: A free login here is required to view DeKalb County arrest records, such as the above link.)

The same address was used by Richey to register Democracy In, LLC on March 3, 2010, just two days after the release date in the above-mentioned DeKalb County arrest record.

Thinking through the long list of Oklahoma Republican Party chairmen, vice chairmen, and staffers I've dealt with over the years, I don't think any of them had more than a speeding ticket, much less a long rap sheet. And I can't think of any candidate who'd have been willing to pay a political consultant for cooling his heels for a month in the pokey.

MORE: Warner Todd Huston comments:

For some unknown reason, the state Democrat Party of Georgia's Political Director, one Ali Rashad Richey, is a man with a long arrest record and no one seems the last bit worried about it in the Peach State -- neither politicians nor the media. This man's arrests are for such offenses as burglary, assault, battery, driving offenses, and violation of probation. In fact he's been arrested at least 12 times in the last decade.

Are Georgia Democrats so used to convicted criminals in their midst that no one cares about this?

Photo at top from the DeKalb County website

NOTE: In the original version of this entry, I used the phrase "Ali Rashad Richey the recidivist" as an alliterative allusion to the fact that Richey had been arrested numerous times, as documented by DeKalb County jail records noted above. I am led to understand that in certain jurisdictions the term "recidivist" has a technical meaning that applies only to those convicted of felonies. This was NOT my understanding of the word when I used it, and it was NOT my intention to imply that Richey had been convicted of or charged with any felony offense. The term "recidivism" is not defined in Oklahoma law as far as I have been able to determine, and it is mentioned a few times in Oklahoma statutes as an undesirable phenomenon to be measured and deterred, referring generically to violating the law after some previous violation. To avoid any misunderstanding, I have replaced the word "recidivist" with a phrase less likely to cause confusion.

BatesLine is pleased to welcome a new advertiser: John Sullivan for Congress. First elected to replace Steve Largent in a 2002 special election, Congressman Sullivan is seeking re-election to his sixth full term. His ads highlight his consistent conservative record, as evidenced by ratings by conservative watchdog groups like Numbers USA (enforcement of immigration laws), Club for Growth, Citizens against Government Waste, and National Taxpayers Union (fiscal conservative, tax and budget), National Right to Life (sanctity of human life), National Rifle Association (Second Amendment rights), and the American Conservative Union (full range of conservative issues).

I've known John Sullivan since long before I started blogging, before I became any sort of public figure. I first met him sometime in the 1990s, during his time as a state representative, when, as a member of the small Republican minority in the State House, he championed the effort to eliminate the sales tax on groceries. I encouraged him to run for State Senate when the seat opened up in 1996, but for family reasons he opted to stay in the House. When Steve Largent resigned his congressional seat in 2001 to run for governor, John phoned me, a precinct chairman, to let me know that he was running.

John Sullivan, Michael Bates, 2006At the beginning of that special election, John Sullivan was running a distant third in the polls. First Lady Cathy Keating was the best known candidate and the odds-on favorite. But conservative grassroots activists liked what they saw in Sullivan and rallied around him, and I joined them in putting my name on his hundreds-long list of endorsements. A month or so later, I got a call from one of his campaign volunteers, someone I'd worked with on Sue Tibbs's campaigns, asking if I could pick up the campaign's data processing work. Thanks to the hard work of the candidate, his campaign team, and his team of volunteers knocking doors and making phone calls, John Sullivan came from a distant third to finish first in the primary, close enough to an outright majority that Cathy Keating opted to withdraw rather than continue on to a runoff. Sullivan won the general election handily over his Democratic opponent and hasn't faced a significant primary or general election challenge since then.

When I ran for City Council in 2002, newly elected Congressman Sullivan was the guest of honor at a fundraiser. I'm proud to consider John a friend and to continue to be a part of his team. We have had a small number of disagreements -- it was a mistake for him and Sen. Coburn to vote for the revised version of TARP in 2008 -- but we've been in agreement on nearly every controversial congressional issue, including some issues, like strict immigration enforcement, that put him at odds with Chamber of Commerce types.

His primary opponent has an impressive resume and is a likable person. But it strikes me that it's much easier to oppose something like TARP in hindsight, years after the frightening global financial circumstances that led to its adoption, than to speak out against it at the time. For all the years I've been involved in local politics, I can't recall any occasion when this gentleman has taken a controversial public stand on any issue, prior to his decision to run for Congress. He seems to be the latest victim of a group of Republican political consultants who have been trying unsuccessfully for years to find someone to unseat Sullivan.

Those who have known me for a long time know that I haven't hesitated to drop support for an incumbent Republican and back a primary challenger when circumstances warrant. But in John Sullivan we have a consistent, across-the-board Oklahoma conservative with growing seniority and influence in House leadership. I'm pleased to support his re-election and to have his support as an advertiser on BatesLine.

rino-768px.pngThis post has been percolating in my brain for a couple of months, and the topic for even longer, but other business has prevented its completion until now.

As I read conservative blogs, I see a great deal of understandable frustration with different aspects of Republican Party politics: The National Republican Senatorial Committee's support (later withdrawn) for Charlie Crist over Marco Rubio. Dede Scozzafava getting the Republican nomination in NY-23 and then withdrawing in favor of a Democrat to stop a conservative from winning. Some bloggers are upset that Christine O'Donnell and Sharon Angle won Senate nominations, some are upset about the lack of general election support for Angle and O'Donnell. Bloggers are bummed by the candidates remaining in the presidential race, the candidates who dropped out, and the candidates who never got in.

The common thread in all this discontent is that at some point, someone will blame "the Republican Party" for the problem. Back in mid-February, when I started writing this post, I gathered a few examples. It was that point between the first few primaries and Santorum's early February caucus sweep and Super Tuesday, by which time the presidential field had boiled down to four candidates, each unacceptable in some way, and none of them fully reflective of the zeitgeist that produced the Republican congressional landslide of 2010.

For example, here's a tweet from Jimmie Bise, Jr.:

*We* will fix the godforsaken mess they have made of our country. The Republican Party has one option -- do what we say, or pay. Hard.

From a February 16, 2012, blog entry by Melissa Clouthier:

The Republican party has consistently chosen big money candidates....

The Republican party continues to cling to big government ways and means.

The Republican party leaders cannot articulate conservative values...

Before the Tea Party came along, the Republican Party was a hot mess. The New York, California, Nevada, Ohio, and Colorado GOP (just to five states off the top of my head) stunk. Calcified, self-protective, hierarchical, detached, and consumed by infighting, it's rich that people want to blame the Tea Party for failure when the Tea Party new blood is coming in and attempting to right the sinking ship.

Two years ago, I wrote that Mitt Romney was a weak candidate and that the GOP leadership should be looking, and intently, for better alternatives. They chose to travel the path of least resistance.

As for me, I'm not particularly attached to any of the candidates. It would be nice for a GOP complainer to make an affirmative conservative, or even Republican (read the party planks) case for Mitt Romney. I have yet to see it. But I do see a lot of pre-emptive blaming of the Tea Party.

Sorry, the GOP needs to look for another scapegoat. Looking in the mirror would be a good start.

Stacy McCain responded:

The GOP (with a break for Ronald Reagan) has been just as sold out to Progress as the Democrats for the last century. The party planks had become a joke. The GOP has gerrymandered our culture with the Democrats in exchange for creating a Ruling Class. One can nearly see where the Democrats had a point, calling the GOP hypocritical for showing affinity with the Tea Parties.

And more from Melissa a few days later:

That might have been true if the Republican party hadn't already burned every bridge with the base. They didn't just burn them though, they torched them and put conservative heads on spikes along the way. (Not sure about that? What happened to Sarah Palin couldn't have happened if the Republican hierarchy, lead by John McCain hadn't sat on their hands.)

The Republicans have been pushing back at the conservative base. They insulted them with No Child Left Behind and creating loads of agencies in a post-9/11 world and sealed the deal with government bailouts of banks, Wall Street, GM, and every sort of shifting money from taxpayers to irresponsible institutions and people.

Dan Riehl painted with a slightly narrower brush with his use of the "establishment" modifier:

After significant Tea Party-fueled gains in 2010, for all practical purposes, the establishment GOP has ignored and even tried to mitigate that force with little more than lip service as repayment for their support. Now, they want to kick out the Christian asses that sit in their phone banks and the Christian soldiers that do the grunt work for their campaigns.

It's as if two significant constituencies are begging the GOP to man up and, if you'll pardon the phrase, win one for the Gipper, while a feckless D.C. bedridden GOP sinks its head into the pillow and whimpers, we're not up to the task.

These are signs of a very sick party. We may soon find out whether, or not, it's terminal. At present, the prognosis is already not very good.

Again from February, Jen Kuznicki asked, "Am I To Understand That Value Voters Are Being Rejected By The Republican Party?"

Does the Republican Party think that without touching on the cultural decay of our country, all at the hands of liberals, they will be able to win in November? Perhaps. I have seen the friendliness of local Republicans toward liberal Democrats who have said, "I used to be a Republican, until they started in with the social issues." It is as if the Republican Party would rather have liberals in the party to replace the value voters.

It seems to me that they attack Rick Santorum for actually naming the culprits. He is being thrown overboard for the Republican Party's asinine attempt to bring liberals and neo-liberals, (Ron Paul types) into the party with seats at the table and notebooks in hand.

At about the same time, Ace fretted that the Republican Party wasn't really serious about winning and was more interested in being a protest party obsessed with ideological purity

I believe the party wants to lose.

I believe the party has decided the problems facing us are so big that they cannot be overcome.

I believe the party has decided, maybe subconsciously, maybe consciously, that we are not up to the task, and the best thing to do is just duck out and Blame the Other Guys. Let them Own Their Problems.

If that's the plan, let me know. We don't have to contend very hard at all if our goal is to lose.

Easiest thing in the world, losing. Even easier when you've gotten practice at it.

I believe the party does not think it is capable of working positive good in policy. If so, I take it as knowing itself best, and perhaps it's time for a new party.

Now, many of you are nodding your head in agreement, and I share the frustration expressed by these conservative bloggers with the current political situation. But I respectfully disagree with their assignment of blame to this entity called the Republican Party. That's not because I think that this entity called the Republican Party is blameless, but because I think it doesn't exist.

OKGOP-logo.jpgTo put it into terms a software engineer might understand, "Republican Party" is not a useful abstraction. It encompasses too wide a range of people and institutions and forces. There are party officials at the precinct, county, state, and national levels. There are the elected officials: legislators and county commissioners and mayors and congressmen and senators. There are the consultants and fundraisers and strategists. At the federal level, there's the RNC, the NRCC, and the NRSC, and there are parallel organizations in every state.

There are the big-dollar donors, and there are the phone callers, door-knockers, and envelope stuffers. There are the party auxiliary groups -- National Federation of Republican Women, Republican men's clubs, National Federation of Republican Assemblies, Young Republicans, College Republicans. There are those focused on getting the language in the county platform just so, and those who manage the logistics for the county convention. And then there are the millions of voters who register as Republicans or who take the Republican ballot or who vote Republican in the general election but otherwise have no connection to party matters or political campaigns.

All these individuals and groups have their own motivations and interests often in conflict with one another. All of them can be said to be "the Republican Party" in the sense that my blogpals use the term, but none of them can be said to be "the Republican Party" to the exclusion of the other groups.

To anthropomorphize the GOP, to treat it as a person with volition, emotion, and intellect, is to fail to think things all the way through. It's a sign of not digging deeply enough to find the real actors and the motives that drive the problems we all observe. A political party in America is a playing field over which interests compete. It's an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

I write as someone who has been involved in the nuts and bolts of Republican Party politics as an active participant or an observer since I was 12. I've been a precinct chairman, a state committeeman, a delegate to county, congressional district, state, and national conventions, a member of the county and state party executive committees. I've been picked by the state executive committee to be on the official at-large delegate slate, and I've been on the executive committee interviewing and voting on those at-large delegates. I've chaired platform and rules committees at the county and state levels and sat in as an observer at the last two Republican National Convention rules committee hearings. I've been the Republican nominee for a city council seat. I've provided technical support to more campaigns than I can count. I was around for the last big wave of newcomers in the late 1980s; those newcomers are the folks in charge of the party nowadays.

On the other hand, I'm not on good terms with Tulsa's current Republican mayor, I backed the second-place candidate for governor, and I often find myself at odds with big Republican donors when it comes to local issues. I worry that our massive majorities in the State Legislature will be taken captive by crony capitalism, the same hubris that led to our 2006 downfall in Washington. I can hardly be said to be part of the Republican establishment.

I am a Republican for one reason: It is where American conservatives make their political home. Conservatives of any sort -- social, fiscal, defense and foreign policy -- are no longer welcome at all in the Democrat Party.

I'll be going to BlogConCLT this coming weekend in Charlotte, N. C., and I'm looking forward to the opportunity, outside the official sessions, to visit with my fellow conservative bloggers -- both party insiders and outside observers -- about the forces behind the problems identified above and what practical steps can be taken to give conservative principles the best chance of prevailing at the ballot box and on Capitol Hill.

A member of the Project Veritas investigative journalism team went into a District of Columbia polling place last Tuesday and was offered a ballot by a poll worker who assumed he was U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Man: "Do you have an Eric Holder, 50th Street?

Poll worker: "Let me see here."

Man: Xxxx 50th Street.

Poll Worker: Let's see, Holder, Hol-t-e-r, or Hold-d-e-r?

Man: H-o-l-d-e-r.

Poll Worker: D-e-r. Okay.

Man: That's the name.

Poll Worker: I do. Xxxx 50th Street NW. Okay. [Puts check next to name, indicating someone has shown up to vote.] Will you sign there . . .

Man: I actually forgot my ID.

Poll Worker: You don't need it; it's all right.

Man: I left it in the car.

Poll Worker: As long as you're in here, and you're on our list and that's who you say you are, we're okay.

Man: I would feel more comfortable if I go get my ID, is it all right if I go get it?

Poll Worker: Sure, go ahead.

Man: I'll be back faster than you can say furious!

Poll Worker: We're not going anywhere.

Holder is seeking to block implementation of Texas's voter ID law and has denied that there is a problem with in-person voter fraud.

IVotedFraud.pngThe Department of Justice calls this video a "manufactured example" of voter fraud, but had this been a real voter fraud effort, there would be no evidence at all that it had occurred. Holder might have shown up later in the day to vote for his boss in the DC presidential primary and been turned away as having already voted, which would reveal that a fraudulent vote had been cast. The only hope for catching the culprit would have relied upon whether the poll worker had a sharp enough memory to recall the appearance of one among thousands who had asked for a ballot that day. An organized fraud effort would use publicly available voter records to identify infrequent voters unlikely to show up on the day of the targeted election.

Opponents of voter ID laws claim that there's little to no evidence that this sort of fraud exists, but that's usually because the sorts of tests you might do to uncover it are either against the law or are not pursued by authorities. What Project Veritas is doing here is probing the system, the way TSA might try to send someone through airport security with contraband, to see if the screening process is adequate and is being correctly carried out by the agents. Perhaps fear of being embarrassed by an independent investigation will spur election boards to be conducting such probes themselves. If they really cared about election integrity, they'd be probing the system already.

The problem here is not with the poll workers but with the rules they have to follow. John Fund notes:

There is something surreal about the voter-ID issue. As James O'Keefe demonstrates, it is comically easy to commit voter fraud in person, and, unless someone confesses, it's very difficult to ever detect. With absentee balloting, there is a paper trail that makes it easier to uncover fraud, making it a problem that even some critics of photo ID will admit.

Voter ID support usually breaks along partisan lines, but Fund tells of one Democratic legislator who has bucked his party for getting a voter ID law passed:

State Senator Harold Metts of Rhode Island got a photo-ID law put on the books in his state last year after he was told by several constituents of a pattern of voter fraud in his home town of Providence. Indeed, his own state representative and her daughter had their votes stolen by someone voting in their names in one election. "The old system was not set up to readily weed out fraud, and it would be very hard to prove," he told the Woonsocket Patch newspaper. Metts, the state senate's only African-American member, says that he took a lot of heat from national Democrats for getting the ID law approved by an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature. But he says party loyalty only takes him so far. "It's time to stop crying wolf and make the voter-ID law work for those on both sides of this issue who want to ensure the integrity of the system, while guarding against disenfranchisement."

I'm thankful that Oklahoma, at long last, has a voter ID law, thanks to the tireless efforts of State Rep. Sue Tibbs.

I received word from Chris Medlock that Ron Paul supporters won all three national delegate slots and all three alternate slots at the Saturday, March 31, 2012, Oklahoma 5th Congressional District Republican Convention. Medlock reports that turnout was light (only about 200 delegates), and that runoffs for each delegate slot favored the Ron Paul supporter by about a 52% to 48% margin, meaning that higher turnout by the non-Pauls could have meant a complete shutout of the Ron Paul fans.

In the March 6, 2012, Oklahoma primary, Ron Paul finished fourth in the 5th Congressional District with 10.4% of the votes cast.

Although the three delegates are bound by state party rules and the results of the March 6 primary to cast one vote each for Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich, if no presidential candidate gains a majority of delegates on the 1st or 2nd ballots at the Republican National Convention, or if their candidate releases his delegates, the delegates would then be free to vote their personal preference. It is possible that if enough Ron Paul supporters are elected to go to Tampa, they could pass party rules that would free all delegates from any binding commitments.

I am hoping to get specific numbers -- ballots cast, voting by round -- to analyze what happened. I am told that the 5th CD used a different runoff method than we've used since 2000 here in the 1st CD, and it's possible that their runoff method would allow the will of the majority of delegates to be thwarted, depending on the number of candidates in the race. The 1991 Louisiana governor's election is a classic example of a two-person runoff for a large field resulting in two finalists who are each loathed by a majority of the electorate.

MORE: What happened at the CD 5 convention is a continuation of the Ron Paul campaign strategy I wrote about in 2008

If the government seized all the mansions in Beverly Hills, the cost of every Super Bowl ad and the salaries and winnings of every major league athlete, the wealth of the Forbes 400 and the global profits of the Fortune 500, how long would it finance federal spending? Blogger Iowahawk took pencil to paper and figured it out last year, reporting his results as "Feed Your Family on $10 billion a Day."

Motivational guru Tony Robbins took Iowahawk's post, updated the numbers for this year, excised some of the "inflammatory" turns of phrase that might offend moderates and liberals, and turned it into an effective data visualization.

To his credit, Robbins not only mentions his source but puts Iowahawk's web address on screen.

The cool thing about the Internet is that, if you do something brilliant, people will find it.

Thumbnail image for rino-768px.pngThere's a theory being circulated among conservative bloggers and Tea Party activists that we shouldn't worry about the likelihood of bailout-backing, mandate-loving, flip-flopping Mitt Romney winning the nomination. Anyone can beat Obama, the theory goes -- even with Romney unable to run against Obama on Obamacare -- and if we focus on electing more solid conservatives to Congress they'll be able to keep Romney in check and push him to be more conservative.

But that's wishful thinking, divorced from political dynamics in the real world. Far from being shaped by conservative activists and legislators, a Republican executive tends to reshape the party in his own image. This is true at every level of government, but especially true when there's a Republican president. Republicans have a tendency to defer to the executive of their own party. They find it much easier to resist and block bad ideas from a Democrat executive than from a leader of their own party.

Even before winning the presidency, the nominee begins to shape the party in his own image. His team has a great deal of influence over the platform, the convention rules, the party rules for the next four years, and who gets to speak at the convention. Delegates on the convention committees are under a great deal of pressure to conform to the presumptive nominee's wishes. (That's another reason why a convention without a presumptive nominee would be a good thing.)

A Republican President of the United States is titular head of the GOP. He gets to pick the chairman of the Republican National Committee, who in turn has a great deal of influence over who staffs the party and which consultants are hired. The president has political appointments in the executive branch, ambassadorships, and federal judgeships to hand out. The president has superstar fundraising power: His blessing and support can open the floodgates for a candidate, and his disfavor can cause funding to slow to a trickle. And heaven help a Republican legislator if the Republican president, governor, or mayor opts to back your primary opponent.

But I think the tendency to defer to the executive goes deeper in the Republican mindset than mere access to money and power. Perhaps it's rooted in the long decades when we could elect Republican presidents, but we were in the minority in Congress.

When a Republican is the executive, many legislators and party officials see their job as defending and upholding the Republican executive, rather than holding them to account. It's much easier for GOP party leaders and legislators to oppose a bad idea if a Democrat proposes it. If a Republican official proposes a bad idea, the best you can hope for from Republican party leaders and legislators is silence.

I've seen this at work here in Tulsa. In 1997, a Democrat mayor proposed a 3.5 year, 1/2 penny sales tax and increases in hotel/motel and car rental taxes to fund a new downtown arena, stadium, and natatorium and expansion of the convention center -- $140 million in local tax increases. The county Republican Executive Committee unequivocally opposed the measure, and it failed at the polls.

In 2000, the same Democrat mayor proposed a rehash of the previous project, with some minor differences and funded entirely by sales tax -- 7.5 years, 1/2 cent, to raise $263 million. The county Republican Executive Committee unequivocally opposed the measure, and it failed at the polls.

In 2003, a Republican mayor and a Republican county commission chairman backed a sales tax hike to fund an arena that was about four times bigger and porkier than the plans the Democrat mayor had proposed. 13 years and a full-penny, county-wide sales tax increase for a total of $887 million. This time the Republican Executive Committee fell silent. Many members of the Executive Committee were now political appointees at City Hall and the County Courthouse, and they wouldn't wish to embarrass their bosses. Other Republicans were simply worried that opposing the initiative of Republican elected officials would divide the party. (Never mind that these officials were dividing the party by betraying fiscal conservatism.) Major Republican donors backed the plan and made it clear that there would be consequences if the party or elected officials opposed it. One Republican activist who led the effort against the Democrat mayor's initiatives became outspoken in support; after the election he wound up with a job funded by the new tax. The tax passed.

More recently, in 2009, Tulsa elected a Republican mayor. This gentleman had endorsed the Democrat incumbent for re-election before she opted not to run, despite her embrace of global warming and anti-gun hoohah and the runaway budget growth under her watch that left the city in fiscal peril in 2009. Many Republican leaders ignored the apparent lack of conservative convictions in this candidate and lined up behind him because he was the son of a former governor and senator and had money to self-finance a campaign. (Sound familiar?)

He won the primary and the general election. Tulsa's new Republican mayor then set about demonizing and alienating the Republican supermajority on the City Council. Rather than defend the Republican councilors or at least try to make peace, leading Republican funders and their allies attacked the councilors as bickerers, sued them, and created a redistricting plan that cut them off from their core constituencies, completely drawing the Council's strongest fiscal conservative out of his own district.

Any Republican Tea Party senator or congressman that dares to oppose President Romney's big new entitlement program is likely to meet a similar fate.

The same calls we are hearing now to unite behind our leader will only become more strident and carry more weight with a Republican in the White House and the power that comes with incumbency.

The same arguments being deployed today to get conservatives to fall in line behind Romney's candidacy were used to get conservatives to back Dubya's expansions of government (think No Child Left Behind, Medicare Part D, and of course, the TARP Bank Bailout), and the same arguments will be used to rope conservatives into backing any big-government policy President Romney wants to pursue. We'll be told that opposing the president will damage his presidency, will weaken the Republican Party, and will strengthen the liberals. We'll be told that Romney's policy may be awful, but it's a much better option than what the liberals propose, and those are the only choices on the table.

I'm saddened by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio's decision yesterday to endorse Romney and to call for an end to the competition for the presidential nomination. Does Sen. Rubio not remember when the National Republican Senatorial Committee called for everyone to line up behind Gov. Charlie Crist, because Crist's nomination was inevitable, and it was important to avoid a messy primary that would damage the party's chances in November? Isn't Sen. Rubio glad that activists and donors didn't take that rotten advice?

MORE: The best hope for conservative policy at the federal level is to stop Mitt Romney from winning the Republican nomination. The only way to do that is to keep him from getting enough delegates, and the only way to stop him from accruing delegates is to support the candidate running closest to him in the polls.

Romney can't get enough bound delegates to have a majority until June 2. If Santorum can win 365 more bound delegates -- and there are more than enough delegates still to be bound in the south, border states, and midwest to make that possible -- Romney mathematically can't lock up 1144 before the convention.

Rick Santorum is the only man standing in the way of Romney's nomination. A Santorum win in Wisconsin is crucial; you can help by making calls from home now through Tuesday.

STILL MORE: A friend remarked recently that Romney seemed Reaganesque, and noted that both Reagan and Romney changed their minds about abortion rights. There's a crucial difference: Reagan's change of heart against abortion put him at odds with mainstream GOP thinking of the time and hindered his candidacy in 1976. Romney's changes of position always coincide with whatever will help him win.

OKGOP-logo.jpgThe following Statement of Principles was adopted as part of the 2012 Tulsa County Republican Platform at the Tulsa County Republican Convention on Saturday, March 24, 2012. It is identical to the Statement of Principles section in the 2011 platform and is nearly identical to the Statement of Principles in the 2003 platform, differing by only 20 words or so. The 2003 statement is not original to that year, but constitutes a consolidation of the preamble to the platform as a whole and preambles to individual sections as found in the 2001 platform. Much of the text almost certainly predates 2001. It is the work of many people over many years.

STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES

"God who gave us life gave us liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

The United States has attained its position as a world leader and champion of freedom by protecting our God-given liberties.

We believe our rights come from our Creator. We believe in the unalienable rights of the individual. It is a government's first duty to protect these God-given rights: to life; to liberty; to property; to the pursuit of happiness.

Government is but one institution among many that exist to serve the common good. Families, religious communities, businesses, the press, and a host of voluntary societies have their roles to play in meeting the needs of society. As Republicans, we seek to reform government so that it performs its proper role with excellence and efficiency, while leaving room for the other institutions of society to thrive.

We believe that today's government is too large and intrusive, exceeding its proper scope, doing things for which individuals and private organizations are best equipped. We believe families, communities, and institutions of faith can best teach the American values of honesty, responsibility, accountability, hard work, compassion, and mutual respect.

We believe that the functions of government should be handled at the level nearest and most accountable to the people. The Tulsa County Republican Party seeks to apply these time-honored principles at all levels of government:

  • Faithful adherence to the U.S. Constitution as originally intended;
  • The sanctity of human life, from the moment of conception to its natural end;
  • The equality of all people before the Law - that individuals should be judged without regard to race, gender, creed, disability or age;
  • Public integrity - enforcing and administering the laws justly, in the fear of God;
  • Restoring and preserving Judeo-Christian morality in our culture;
  • Respecting the dignity of each individual and the integrity of families;
  • Fiscal responsibility and restraint;
  • Defense of property rights;
  • Promotion of free markets, free trade and freedom throughout the world.

At the Federal level, we call for maintenance of a strong national defense, protection of our freedom of religious expression, and protection of our rights as law-abiding individuals to keep and bear arms.

We support the right of Americans to retain their hard earned wages through the substantial reduction of the federal income tax rate and the establishment of a fair system of taxation.

We believe in personal responsibility and individual accountability. We desire to limit government involvement in the lives of families and individuals. We believe that a sound, traditional family unit is essential to the strength, stability, and success of our nation. We will defend the institution of the family against those who seek to use the levers of government to undermine or redefine it.

We believe inefficient government programs have displaced individual responsibility, compassion, and involvement in our communities. We will work to reform or eliminate impersonal, inefficient and redundant programs, while encouraging individuals, families, and private organizations to exercise their civic responsibilities, act with genuine compassion and offer assistance and care to people in need.

We believe it is the right and responsibility of parents or legal guardians to direct the upbringing and education of their children, without interference, regulation, or penalty from the government.

We therefore support the right of parents or legal guardians to choose the method of schooling for their children, whether public, private, charter, home schooling, or other means of education, without interference from the government at any level.

In our public schools, we seek to restore academic excellence. We believe the primary goal of our educational system should be to teach proficiency in the essential subjects, not to indoctrinate children in a worldview at odds with our nation's heritage.

We believe the best choices are not always the easiest, and that decisions which take commitment, sacrifice and perseverance result in more honorable, longer-lasting solutions. We believe the Republican Party provides the best opportunity to translate these ideals into positive and successful principles of government.

The intent of this section is to set out the timeless principles that motivate our involvement in the political process as Tulsa County Republicans. The remaining pages of the platform consist of detailed platform planks, applying these principles to current concerns.

This year's platform committee approved a draft containing a preamble which replaced the statement of principles. Gone from this preamble were any references to the sanctity of human life, the importance of marriage and the family (as traditionally understood), religious institutions, and other mediating institutions to the health of our society. There were no mentions of public integrity, education, parental rights, or morality.

Eleven members of the Platform Committee, led by Steven Roemerman, signed a minority report, proposing to replace this new preamble with the Statement of Principles from previous years, which you see above. Here is the text of the motion:

Whereas conservative social values such as the sanctity of human life, marriage, and the family and public integrity are core values of Tulsa County Republicans and therefore warrant prominence in our party's platform,

Whereas social issues have had prominence in the Statement of Principles for our Tulsa County Republican Platform for many years, but have been omitted from the Preamble submitted in this year's proposed platform,

We, the undersigned members of the Platform Committee to the 2012 Tulsa County Republican Convention, offer this minority report to the Convention, to wit, amending the Platform Committee's report to substitute the Statement of Principles from the 2011 Tulsa County Republican Platform (attached) in place of the committee's proposed Preamble.

After debate, the motion was approved by the convention by an overwhelming margin. The resulting platform consists of the above Statement of Principles and the individual platform planks that had been approved by the 2012 Platform Committee.

During my remarks (which, like Roemerman's, focused on the issue at hand and did not cast aspersions at any individual or question anyone's motives), I quoted Congressman Mike Pence, who was quoted in a recent column by Mark Steyn (well worth reading in full):

To those who say we should simply focus on fiscal issues, I say you would not be able to print enough money in a thousand years to pay for the government you would need if the traditional family collapses.

(In a similar vein, Phyllis Schlafly's latest column is titled "Phony Divide Between Fiscal & Social Issues.")

I will have more to say about this in the next day or two, but for now I wanted to get the substance on the record.

MORE: Here is the Tulsa County platform committee majority report (1 MB PDF), with the Preamble (the section that was replaced) highlighted.

Tulsa County Republican activists gathered today at the Union High School Performing Arts Center to decide on delegates to the congressional district and state Republican conventions and to adopt a platform that will inform the work of platform committees at the state and national conventions. The only dispute in the peaceful and surprisingly brief convention involved restoring the long-time "bold colors" Statement of Principles to lead off the county platform, in place of the watered-down "pale pastels" preamble that had been approved by this year's committee. (I'll detail that dispute in a separate entry, but thanks to Steven Roemerman and several other members of the platform committee for their willingness to present a minority report.)

After the chaos at many Missouri county caucuses last Saturday (see first-time attendee Duane Lester's account of the Nodaway County caucus) and reports of strife at the Oklahoma County convention earlier in the month, there was some nervousness about a conflict in Tulsa between newcomers supporting Ron Paul and long-time conservative activists at our convention.

As it happened, the convention went very smoothly, starting with the final gathering of the rules committee before the gavel this morning. The rules committee, made up of supporters of a variety of presidential candidates, unanimously approved a couple of final tweaks to the rules. And although a SNAFU resulted in an earlier version being printed distributed to delegates, only one delegate, a Ron Paul supporter, got upset by the lack of an accurate printed copy, and the upset didn't last long. The platform dispute I mentioned didn't break along lines of presidential preference, but boiled down to an old-timer who has been trying for years to water down the platform and got farther this time than ever before.

The need to hear and resolve 30 credentials appeals delayed the start of official business by nearly an hour and a half. The appeals panel of five heard from people who tried to attend their caucus, but it wasn't held at the advertised time and place, people who were elected as county delegates but whose name was left off of the precinct's delegate list, and a couple of people who just registered to vote and thought they should be able to participate.

While waiting for the credentials committee to complete their work, we heard from Congressman John Sullivan on his energy-independence efforts, Corporation Commission chairman Dana Murphy and Commissioner Bob Anthony, Oklahoma's longest-serving statewide official, State Auditor and Inspector (and former GOP state chairman) Gary Jones, state chairman Matt Pinnell, Tulsa County Commission chairman John Smaligo, Insurance Commissioner John Doak, and State Senator Rick Brinkley, among others.

The oddest moment of the day: After concluding his speech and starting up the aisle away from the stage, Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr stopped at my row, extended his hand to me for a handshake, waited for me to look up -- I was typing on my laptop and wasn't paying close attention -- and said, "Where'd you get all that gray hair? What happened?" I shook his hand and gave him a puzzled look in return. (I've had all this gray hair for about seven years. I don't dye it.)

But once started, things rolled quickly, with adjournment coming at 2:45 pm, more than an hour before the expected close of business. The reports of the credentials (who's qualified to vote in this convention), rules (how we conduct business in this convention), and delegates (who will we send to the next level of conventions) committees were adopted with near unanimity.

Four proposed changes to the state party rules were approved for recommendation by wide margins -- these will be brought before the state convention in May. The proposed rule changes would:

  • eliminate any gender quotas on members of state and district committees,
  • remove the right to seats at the county convention for precincts with no voters and for precincts that fail to hold caucuses by the state deadline,
  • require that only elected county convention delegates and elected officials can be delegates for their counties at the district and state conventions, and
  • require Republican candidates to declare their areas of disagreement with the state party platform.

In their pre-convention session, the rules committee adopted two last-minute changes. One of the changes was to allow candidates wishing to address the convention (including some candidates challenging incumbent Republicans) a few minutes to speak during the lunch break.

The other change simplified the process of determining who would go as Tulsa County's delegation to the state and congressional conventions, where national convention delegates are selected. If the county voted to send an "open" delegation to both higher-level conventions, those delegations would consist of every delegate elected by their precinct to the county convention, rather than requiring delegates to sign up. While it is theoretically possible that a thousand or so delegates would show up to share Tulsa County's 331 votes, the usual situation is that a fraction of the total will show up, particularly to the state convention. This approach to filling the delegate list broadens the possible pool of Tulsa County delegates, improving the likelihood that we'll be able to claim all of our votes. And, at my instigation, we made this form of open delegation the default, in the event that delays or disruptions prevented the convention from electing delegates before adjournment. (This topic deserves an entry of its own for a full explanation.)

County Chairman J. B. Alexander, Vice Chairman Mike McCutchin, convention chairman State Sen. Dan Newberry, convention parliamentarian former State Rep. John Wright, convention secretary Melinda Voss, and credentials committee chairman Ted Darr deserve much credit for the smooth convention. Following state rules strictly and developing and following strict guidelines to cover ambiguities in the state rules may be the difference between a peaceful convention and a contentious convention.

standupbanner.pngAmericans will rally in 140 cities across the nation at noon tomorrow, Friday, March 23, 2012, to protest the Obamacare HHS mandate requiring nearly all private health insurance plans to cover "all FDA-approved prescription contraceptive drugs and devices, surgical sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs," overriding an employer's moral convictions.

Tulsa's rally will be held at LaFortune Park, 5801 S. Yale Ave. Speakers will include Tulsa constitutional attorney Leah Farish. In 2005, Farish received Marshall-Brennan Constitutional Law Project's Mary Beth Tinker Award for her successful defense of the right of a Muslim high school student in Muskogee to wear a headscarf at a public school.

Dozens of pro-life and religious liberty organizations have joined forces to organize this nationwide event, including the Pro-Life Action League, Concerned Women for America, and the Becket Fund for Religous Liberty.

Social liberals often complain that social conservatives want to use government power to impose their views on everyone else. As the Obamacare HHS mandate demonstrates, it's the other way around: Lefties want to use government to force everyone to conform to their moral judgments. We need to stand up for religious liberty if we want to preserve it.

Pipeline monument, Cushing OK
As President Obama visits Cushing, Oklahoma, tomorrow, conservative Oklahomans will gather tomorrow morning in Cushing to voice their support for a common-sense energy policy that allows exploration and development of America's energy resources.

The Obama administration has been blocking the development of the Keystone XL pipeline from the tar sands of Canada to Oklahoma and the development of oil reserves under the Gulf of Mexico and on Federal lands in Alaska. As a candidate, he announced that under his energy plan, electricity prices would necessarily skyrocket.

This morning on TV, CNN prominently displayed the headline "Obama to fast-track Keystone XL pipeline." In fact, Obama's denial of the necessary permit to build the pipeline from Canada to the US still stands. TransCanada decided to go ahead with the pipeline from Cushing to the Gulf (which doesn't require the President's permission), and now it appears that the president wants to stage a photo op to take credit for that.

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner balked at the idea that President Obama could claim credit for speeding up the approval process of the southern segment of the pipeline. "This is like a governor personally issuing a fishing license," Brendan Buck said. "There is only a minor, routine permit needed for this leg of the project. Only a desperate administration would inject the President of the United States into this trivial matter. The President's attempt to take credit for a pipeline he blocked and personally lobbied Congress against is staggering in its dis-ingenuousness. This portion of the pipeline is being built in spite of the President, not because of him."

Here is the email blast from Americans for Prosperity about Obama's visit to Oklahoma and tomorrow's rally:

It's not enough that President Obama refused to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, denying thousands of jobs and lower gas prices at the pump. Now he's coming to Cushing, Oklahoma to grandstand credit for a private sector energy success - and he hopes you aren't paying attention.

Prove him wrong.

Join Americans for Prosperity tomorrow morning when President Obama visits Cushing.

Click here to register for our rally!

Let's show the President that we are paying attention and we aren't going to let him off the hook. AFP will show up with a simple message: stop playing politics with America's energy.

What:We Can't Wait Rally in Cushing
When:Thursday, March 22nd @ 8:30 a.m.
Where:  Fechner Pump and Supply, 1402 North Little Street in Cushing, OK
Who:You and your fellow Americans for Prosperity activists

Just a few weeks ago Obama said that oil is a "fuel of the past." Now he's talking out of the other side of his mouth and thinks no one will call him on it.

Economists have found that the Keystone XL pipeline that Obama is halting could create over 100,000 jobs, increase refining capacity by 700,000 barrels, lower prices at the pump, and bring millions in tax revenues to Oklahoma and the surrounding region.

America needs commonsense energy policy - not political grandstanding.

Help AFP call out the President and demand real energy solutions.

Photo credit: Pipeline monument, Cushing OK by roy.luck, on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons license

MORE:

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin didn't cancel her spring break vacation plans to rush back to welcome Pres. Obama to the state, and some are complaining that she's being disrespectful and even racist by not doing so. I used Storify to capture a Twitter conversation between myself, Jennifer James, Steve Lackmeyer of the Oklahoman, Joe Fairbanks, with a few others.

Gov. Fallin issued a statement about the president's visit:

"I am pleased that President Obama is able to make his first visit to the great state of Oklahoma this week and to personally see the good work going on in Cushing. The TransCanada pipeline to be built there will connect Oklahoma to oil markets on the Gulf Coast, resulting in the creation of more than 1,000 Oklahoma jobs. This project will help to bolster our energy industry and security for years to come.

"I am glad the president supports the construction of the pipeline connecting Cushing to the Gulf. Impeding the progress of something which is so obviously beneficial to both the economy and the energy security of the United States would have been nothing short of irresponsible.

"Unfortunately, President Obama and his administration are practicing exactly this kind of obstructionism on the northern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would have carried oil from the Canadian oil sands and several U.S. markets to Cushing. As a result, the United States must go without the hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment that would have otherwise been available to stimulate our economy. Just as importantly, the administration's decision undermines U.S. energy security and alienates our closest trading partner, Canada.

"I hope that while President Obama is in Oklahoma he takes some time to listen to our citizens, many of whom work for the energy industry which he claims to support. I think they will tell him that - far from supporting the responsible domestic production of American-made energy - his administration has undermined it at every turn. Rather than embracing the truly remarkable technological breakthroughs that have resulted in the discovery of an additional 100-year supply of natural gas, the president and the EPA continue their hostility to basic and time-tested practices like hydraulic fracturing. The president and his party in Washington continue to support an aggressively anti-energy agenda that will severely hamper the American economy and put the United States at a competitive disadvantage to the rest of the world.

"In Oklahoma, we recognize that the energy industry is an important ally in job creation and economic development. We believe that American energy is a resource, not a hazardous waste. My great hope is that some of that attitude will rub off on our president, who has lost his way on energy policy and so many other issues."

MORE: U. S. Rep. John Sullivan talks about the Keystone XL pipeline and Obama's visit on Fox and Friends this morning. Sullivan calls Obama's about-face on part of the pipeline a "con job," comparing it to Al Gore taking credit for inventing the internet. Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy notes that the absence of the northern part of the pipeline would require oil from the Canadian tar sands to be shipped by other means, such as the Warren Buffett / Berkshire Hathaway-owned BNSF railroad.

ricksantorumlogo.jpgAlthough the Oklahoma primary is behind us, Oklahomans who support Rick Santorum can still make a difference, through the miracle of modern technology. The Santorum HQ at 6969 E. 71st St. in Tulsa will be open for volunteers to make calls to voters in Tuesday's primary states. Alabama and Mississippi are both considered too close to call, with a danger that conservative votes split between Santorum and Gingrich would allow Romney to finish first. For more information on helping call from Tulsa, phone 918-928-7776.

You can also make phone calls from home into primary states via callfromhome.ricksantorum.com.

Here is a spreadsheet with the results by congressional district, as reported on the Oklahoma State Election Board election night results website. I've combined the results into a workbook with two tabs, one for Republicans, one for Democrats.

Final Republian delegate tally appears to be Santorum 14, Romney 13, Gingrich 13. In the Democrat primary, the delegate result is Barack Obama 35, Randall Terry 7, Jim Rogers 3.

Turnout was way off from 2008 in both primaries. This wasn't unexpected in the Democrat primary with an incumbent president on the ballot, but Republican turnout dropped from 335,054 in 2008 to 286,523 in 2012 -- about a 15% drop in a more exciting primary. Perhaps it was the barrage of negative ads, mainly from Romney and Paul attacking Santorum, and from Gingrich attacking Romney. (I never saw a Santorum ad in Oklahoma.)

Originally published March 5, 2012. Bumped to the top on March 9.

The presidential election is at the forefront for anyone who pays attention to politics, but what happens with state and local elections has as much of an impact on your daily life as the current Occupier of the White House. Filing for this fall's elections in Oklahoma is only about one month away.

One week after the presidential primary, American Majority will hold a candidate training seminar at Reasor's in Jenks, Tuesday evening, March 13, 2012, from 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm.

Details and registration info after the jump.

First Love, a local band featuring the singing and songwriting talents of Camille and Haley Harris, wrote a fight song for the Rick Santorum campaign. The song "Game On!" came together in the wee hours of this past Sunday night / Monday morning, after they heard Rick Santorum speak and met him at Grace Church in Broken Arrow on Sunday evening. It's a catchy song, and the girls have great pop voices with a bit of a folk edge.

The song has received some national attention, earning a thanks from Rick Santorum on his campaign blog:

What a great anthem for our campaign -- I haven't been able to get the song out of my head! I feel so blessed to have such ardent supporters of our vision for America's future, and am grateful to the entire Harris family for their continued faith in our campaign.

The song has been mentioned by bloggers for Time, The Hill, the Houston Chronicle, Buzzfeed.

I met the Harris girls and their parents Tuesday night at the Santorum watch party. They were being interviewed on an online radio talk show as I sat nearby uploading the latest results by congressional district to the Santorum national campaign team. I thought I remembered seeing another video by First Love, a western swing song.

Sure enough, Haley and Camille sang "Blue Bonnet Lane" (one of my favorite Bob Wills tunes) with the Tulsa Playboys back in January:


IVoted.jpgTimestamp set to keep this post at the top until the polls close at 7 p.m.

It's presidential primary election day in Oklahoma, with polls open across the state from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Both parties have a primary today. Click here to see the full list of candidates. Republicans have a choice of seven candidates: Santorum, Gingrich, Romney, Paul, Bachmann, Huntsman, and Perry. Democrats have five options, including President Obama, anti-abortion activist Randall Terry, and Midwest City resident Jim Rogers, who was the 2010 Democratic nominee for U. S. Senate.

Click "Continue reading" for details on today's municipal elections, how to find your polling place, showing ID at the polls, how delegates will be bound, and where to find up-to-the-minute election results.

ricksantorumlogo.jpgI had decided some time ago that when Oklahoma's turn to vote came around, I would cast my vote as necessary to block Mitt Romney's progress toward the Republican nomination. Whoever was ahead of Romney in the polls or the closest to beating him would get my vote.

(Dan McLaughlin, aka Baseball Crank, in his recent entry "Mitt Romney, the Unconvincing Convert," details four of the problems with Romney -- "the unconvincing nature of his political conversion, the hazards of becoming enamored with candidates whose primary rationale for running is their money, the unprecedented difficulty of winning with a moderate Republican who lacks significant national security credentials as a war hero or other prominent foreign policy figure, and Romney's vulnerability arising from his dependence on his biography" -- and at that blog entry, you'll find links to McLaughlin's 2007 series on Romney's electoral liabilities.)

But as the presidential field narrowed and the Oklahoma primary approached, I've come to the conclusion that the last remaining conservative alternative, Rick Santorum, is not merely the best tactical vote, but the candidate closest to my views on economic, social, and defense and foreign policy issues and the best candidate to fight and win the general election against the incumbent.

On economics, Rick Santorum supports bold entitlement reform and immediate action to address the climbing national debt, not kicking the can down the road for another decade as some have proposed. He rightly identifies the importance of manufacturing to economic recovery, particularly for the middle class, and his corporate tax plan, combined with regulatory reform, would make it easier for manufacturers to bring jobs back to the US. His personal income tax plan is a significant simplification over the current complicated tax code -- two brackets, five deductions -- but it has the advantage of being politically plausible. It's not the sort of shocking departure that would be easy to demagogue. It retains the deductions that most taxpayers use and expect.

As a senator, Rick Santorum was a leader on the issue of welfare reform, understanding the moral and economic imperative of helping Americans by helping them move from dependency into self-sufficiency.

Energy is a major focus of Santorum's speeches. He sees the controversy over hydraulic fracturing, a practice that dates back to World War II, as nothing more than the Green Left's latest fundraising gimmick, now that manmade global warming has run out of gas. Santorum rightly identifies the political agenda behind the Obama administration's restrictions on energy exploration, production, and transportation. To Obama and his allies, higher prices are a feature of the Obama energy policy, not a bug.

On foreign policy, Santorum understands the essence of the threat faced by western civilization and is willing to give it its proper name. Santorum says the "Global War on Terror" is a misnomer. Terror isn't an enemy; it's a tactic used by the enemy, which he correctly identifies as radical Islamism. A President Santorum will not bow to foreign potentates.

When asked by an ORU student to contrast his foreign policy with that of Ron Paul, Santorum said, "I believe in peace through strength; he believes... well, maybe I'll just say, he doesn't. I believe that America is the source of stability in the world.... If we do what Congressman Paul has suggested.... there are forces in the world that would replace us, that would not have our best interests in mind. There wouldn't be a vacuum." He noted that radical Islamists, China, and Russia are poised to move in in response to American disengagement from the world.

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The media has made Santorum out to be the social issues candidate, but social issues haven't been the focus of his campaign materials or his speeches. His thoughts on social issues line up perfectly with the majority of Oklahomans, and while other candidates (including President Obama) pay lip service to these issues but shrink back apologetically when challenged by the liberal media, Rick Santorum patiently defends his views, which are grounded in first principles. Santorum was a leader in the fight against the barbaric practice of partial birth abortion and in the effort, inspired by the plight of Terri Schindler Schiavo, to protect the incapacitated from being starved and dehydrated to death.

Yes, Rick Santorum has made some disappointing compromises during his 16 years in Congress. But so have the Oklahoma politicians who have endorsed Romney, a man whose entire political career has been about morphing his political positions for political expediency.

(When a planet wobbles from its predicted orbit, astronomers know to look for a hidden force pulling on the planet. It's how we discovered Neptune and Pluto.)

Some Republicans are laundry-list conservatives -- they can check all the right boxes on the candidate survey, but they miss the heart of the matter. As I wrote about the 2010 governor's race:

In my years of involvement in conservative and Republican politics, I've noticed that there are those politicians who profess support for the laundry list of conservative positions on the current list of hot issues and then there are those who understand the issues of the day in terms of the bigger picture -- a coherent philosophy of government, society, and human nature and a view of the long-term consequences of today's decisions. Elected officials in the latter group seem less likely to be led astray; when a new issue comes along, they have a philosophical compass to guide their decisions, while members of the former group are susceptible to lobbyist suasion.

I'd rather have a laundry-list conservative in office than the left-wing equivalent, but I'd much rather have a leader who sees today's issues in terms of our future liberty and prosperity, guided by a coherent conservative philosophy.

Rick Santorum is that kind of leader. It shows in his personal life and in the politically costly stands he has taken, common-sense stands that sent the nasty, radical Left into conniptions.

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Like Ann Coulter used to believe, before she drank the Jim Jones powdered drink mix, I believe that Romney would be a disaster as the GOP's general election candidate. He doesn't provide enough of a contrast to Obama on the big issue that drove the big Republican gains in 2010: Obamacare and the need to repeal it before it comes into full effect. Back on September 7, 2011, the Wall Street Journal editorial board called Romney's economic plan "surprisingly timid and tactical."

The attempt by Romney fans to end things quickly and create a bandwagon through endorsements underscored his inability to withstand scrutiny. The best hope of the Romney camp was to dishearten conservatives, to crush their hope of a conservative alternative, to convince them to surrender early on to the inevitability of the Romney nomination and not waste their contributions and volunteer time on another candidate.

Romney is this year's "it's his turn" candidate, the latest representative of a 24 year pattern in which Mr. Second Place becomes front runner for the next go-around, attracting endorsements and cash from bandwagon-jumpers who like to bet on a sure thing. States leapfrogged each other on the primary calendar in hopes of having some voice in the process, but the plurality-takes-all delegate allocation rules in most states made an early win essential for all but the most well funded candidate. In 2008, the race was all but over by Valentine's Day. Romney threw in the towel the day after Tsunami Tuesday. Republicans then spent the next 10 months with a bad case of buyer's remorse, mitigated only for a week or two after McCain's vice presidential pick.

Despite brazen violations by a few states, the new GOP rules for 2012 have had the desired effect of slowing down the process, allowing for more states and more Republicans to have a meaningful say in the choice of a nominee, providing time for voters to take a close look at potential nominees before they have the nomination practically sewn up.

Back in December, when Rick Santorum was barely polling above Jon Huntsman and Buddy Roemer, I dismissed him as an also-ran, handicapped by the 2006 loss of his Senate seat and his unwise endorsement of Arlen Specter.

But as I wrote that, Santorum, accompanied by his wife Karen and their children, was working harder than any other candidate, campaigning in every county in Iowa. His persistence paid with a first-place finish on Iowa caucus night, a shoestring campaign finishing just ahead of the candidate with all the money in the world.

Unlike the other not-Romneys who emerged and faded under scrutiny, Santorum has shown staying power. I believe it's because his positions on the issues are really what he believes. They aren't calculated for the sake of political expediency. Santorum has thought through the big issues that challenge our nation.

Even if I haven't persuaded you to support Santorum on his own merits, I hope you'll consider the tactical case for a Santorum vote in Oklahoma.

If you're an Oklahoma conservative who doesn't want a nominee who has flip-flopped on all the big issues, who has rejected and embraced Reagan and the conservative movement on an as-needed basis, voting for Rick Santorum is the best way to block Romney's momentum and keep the Republican Party's options open. If you're an Oklahoma fan of Gingrich or Paul, voting for Santorum is the best thing you can do to block Romney and keep your man's candidacy viable.

Tactical voters have to begin from the starting point of the latest polls. Who is in a position to finish first? Who is in a position to win delegates? The number of tactical voters is small enough that you can only hope to tilt a closely balanced race. In a recent poll, Santorum was leading statewide and in each congressional district. Right now, what's in the balance is a win for Santorum big enough to deny Romney any Oklahoma delegates under Oklahoma's proportional delegate allocation rules. It's an important step toward knocking out Romney and opening up the race.

In Georgia there's a different answer to that question, and if I lived in Georgia, I'd cast a tactical vote for Newt. If I lived in Virginia, where only Romney and Paul are on the ballot, I'd vote for Ron Paul. But in every other Super Tuesday state, including Oklahoma, Ohio, and Tennessee, Santorum is the best tactical choice.

But I think that if conservative Oklahoma voters will listen to his speeches and compare his record to the other candidates, you'll come to the same conclusion that I've reached: Rick Santorum is the best candidate to carry our conservative Oklahoma values into the general election and on to the White House.

EARLIER BatesLine ARTICLES:

This is a preliminary report, mainly so I can get the audio and some photos online. I plan to transcribe additional quotes as I have opportunity.

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Sen. Rick Santorum spoke to a standing-room only crowd of about 1000 people at Grace Church last night, March 4, 2012, focusing attention on his energy and tax plans and the importance of Republicans nominating a candidate who presents voters with a clear choice in November.

The backdrop for the event were big video displays with the slogan, "The courage to fight for American jobs." At the heart of the speech was Santorum's emphasis on promoting job growth by supporting the development of domestic energy resources and a simpler tax system.

Santorum called for throwing out the tax code and replacing it with two rates, 10% and 28%, and retaining only five deductions: children, charities, pensions, healthcare, and housing. "Maybe I'm for a simple tax code for a selfish reason.... Unlike everyone else in the race, I actually do my own taxes."

Corporations would be a simple net profit tax with a single rate of 17.5%, half the current maximum rate. (The US maximum rate will be the highest in the world as of April 1 when Japan is set to cut their rate.) In order to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, Santorum proposes a rate of 0 for manufacturing and processing.

He noted that the complex tax code puts small businesses at a disadvantage to larger rivals, as it's harder for a small business to find the loopholes that big companies use.

On energy, Santorum focused on Obama administration obstruction of energy exploration. He mentioned a visit to a shale oil well-head Tioga, N. D., and the hindrance caused by the lack of a pipeline that could bring that oil more efficiently to market.

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Santorum, accompanied by his wife and three of his children, expressed his appreciation for the warm welcome they've received in Oklahoma. Noting that Gingrich and Romney both have home states with primaries on Super Tuesday, while his home state of Pennsylvania won't be voting, "if I feel like I have any home state up on Super Tuesday, it's here in Oklahoma."

After the speech, Santorum worked the rope line taking pictures with everyone who wanted one. Later, he and his family posed with Jim Bob Duggar and family, here from Arkansas to campaign for Santorum.

Shortly after Santorum began to speak, he was interrupted by a heckler, who, I was told, was an Occupod. (I mistakenly tweeted that the heckler was a Paulbot, which was not the case.) The heckler was shown the door. From my side of the auditorium it was impossible to make out what the heckler was shouting.

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1170 KFAQ morning show host Pat Campbell kicked off the event by explaining his break with usual practice in endorsing Santorum, rather than revealing his choice after the election. (Co-host Eddie Huff has also endorsed Santorum.) Campbell was a new talk show host in Erie, Pa., in 1994, when Santorum ran against an appointed incumbent Democrat to win a seat in the Senate. Campbell said Santorum is the only politician he's ever endorsed.

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Campbell spoke about the mockery being directed by the mainstream media at Santorum's faith, specifically comments he made in a 2008 speech at Ave Maria University:

But the reality is those things that Rick Santorum talked about at Ave Maria -- I believe them, you believe them. When they laugh at Rick Santorum, they're laughing at us. They don't get us. We're flyover country.... If Rick Santorum, his wife Karen, and their children were to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, tomorrow, they'd fit right in, because he is one of us. He gets it. All of the things that we cherish and hold true and sacred, Rick Santorum holds true and sacred.

Campbell stated that Santorum presents the strongest contrast in the general election to Barack Obama, noted the endorsement Santorum received from Jim Inhofe, and called on the audience to volunteer, explaining the importance of getting Santorum over the 50% mark to win all of Oklahoma's 40 delegates.

In her introduction, Rep. Peterson called Santorum "the real deal... the most authentic conservative that is running today... a sincere, authentic, genuine conservative, and he's been that way for years, and he hasn't changed."

Peterson recalled meeting Ronald Reagan in Tulsa in 1976, when the conventional wisdom said that Ronald Reagan was too conservative to be elected, and Gerald Ford was nominated because he would be electable. Ford went on to lose to Jimmy Carter. "We had to wait four years for a real conservative" to be the Republican nominee in 1980. This time around, Peterson said, "we do not have four years to wait for a real conservative to run for president." She concluded by calling on the audience to "stand to your feet, cheer, shout, and welcome the best choice for president of the United States, Rick Santorum." The audience complied enthusiastically.

AUDIO:

I started recording in the middle of Pat Campbell's introduction -- sorry, forgot to start the recorder before the meeting began. For the sake of completeness, I have my recording of Santorum's speech below, but KFAQ has much better audio at this link. (Unfortunately, they don't have the introductory material.)

20120304_A_Pat_Campbell_Intro.mp3

20120304_B_Pam_Peterson_Intro.mp3

20120304_C_Santorum_Speech.mp3

MORE COVERAGE:

Pat McGuigan reports for Capitol Beat OK on Santorum's visit to the State Capitol earlier in the day.

State Rep. Mike Reynolds, an Oklahoma City Republican, introduced the former Pennsylvania senator at the rally, at one point recalling Santorum's vigor in defending the U.S. against "radical Islam" in an appearance at the University of Oklahoma in Norman several years ago. Santorum remembered, "Mike Reynolds was talking about that event I did in Norman some five or six years ago I think it was. Gosh, here were all sorts of protestors. It was very hostile. I never expected that in Oklahoma."

The Occupods were in OKC, too, but they were harder to budge there:

A group of a dozen demonstrators disrupted the first half of Santorum's speech with a "mic check" -- the prelude to a verbal attack on the candidate. The group tore Santorum signs, screamed at him as he gave his speech, and denounced his views repeatedly. After about 20 minutes, Capitol police met quietly with the demonstrators and encouraged them to leave, which they did.

KOTV News on 6's Emily Baucum has a good video synopsis of Santorum's Tulsa speech. You may be able to spot me snapping some of the pictures you see above. (Hat tip to reader Art Fern.)

OKGOP-logo.jpgIn the wake of the Michigan Republican presidential primary, in which Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney won an equal number of congressional districts, each worth two delegates, there was a dispute over whether the two at-large delegates should be divided between Romney and Santorum (since no candidate received a majority of the statewide vote) or both given to the candidate who received the plurality. Had the Michigan Republican Party published its delegate allocation rules in advance of the primary, the dispute and the consequent accusations of bad faith could have been avoided.

In doing my own research on delegate allocation in each state, I have noticed that state party websites rarely have updated information about anything, and they're especially bad about not posting rules, resolutions, and other "party business" documents.

In light of that problem, and in order to avoid a repeat of the Michigan mishegoss, I urged Oklahoma Republican Party leadership to publicize Oklahoma's allocation rules in advance of Tuesday's primary. This evening, Oklahoma GOP vice chairman Pam Pollard sent me the official 2012 National Delegate Award Methodology (PDF). This methodology was approved last year by the Oklahoma Republican State Committee, which is the governing body of the state party, consisting of the County Chairman, Vice Chairman, State Committeeman and State Committeewoman from each county, and all Republican state and federal elected officials.

Some key points (my paraphrase of the official rules):


  • The three Republican National Committee members (Chairman Matt Pinnell, National Committeeman James Dunn, National Committeewoman Carolyn McLarty) will not be bound by the primary result.

  • It takes a majority (50% + one vote) to win all the delegates in each congressional district (3 each) and statewide to win all 25 at-large delegates.

  • If no one has a statewide majority, the 25 delegates will be split among all candidates with at least 15% of the statewide vote in proportion to their share of the vote among the candidates with at least 15%. If rounding results in an unallocated delegate, it will go to the top vote-getter.

  • In any congressional district, if three or more candidates get 15% of the vote, the top three candidates get one delegate each. If only two get 15% of the vote or more, the top candidate gets two and the second-place candidate gets one. If only one candidate breaks 15% or if a candidate gets 50% or more, he will get all three delegates

After the jump, the full text of the document:

Fellow Rick Santorum supporters, your help is needed today. From Oklahoma Santorum HQ:

The Duggars Are Coming Back To Tulsa

Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar want your help.

The stars of TLC's reality television series invite you to come help this Sunday afternoon. We will be reaching out to Oklahomans, to get out to vote this Tuesday for Rick.

Teams all across Green Country are organizing to impact the state with sign-waves from 3-5pm. Others are manning the phone banks in our headquarters from 2-5pm.

The many volunteers of the Santorum Oklahoma campaign are thrilled to see so many great people coming to Rick Santorum's side during this important election for the future of our nation.

Tulsa area volunteers; please meet at the headquarters at 2pm.

Santorum Tulsa HQ is at 6969 E 71st Street, just east of Mai's Tailor Shop and behind Señor Tequila's Restaurant.

You may be thinking that because the polls show Santorum with a big lead in Oklahoma, you don't need to help, but you'd be wrong. If Santorum can win 50% statewide and 50% in each congressional district, he gets all of Oklahoma's 40 delegates at stake. Less than 50% only wins a share. And a shellacking of his rivals -- winning by large margins -- would help him win big in the next round of primaries.

This just in from Santorum Oklahoma HQ.

Sen. Rick Santorum will return to Oklahoma for two campaign stops on Sunday, March 4, 2012.

Oklahoma City: 3:30 p.m., north steps of the State Capitol.

Tulsa: 6:30 p.m., Grace Church, 9610 S. Garnett Road.

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Santorum at ORU (portrait crop) (MDB20765)
Some friends of mine, long-time local conservative activists, have endorsed Rick Santorum in next Tuesday's Oklahoma presidential preference primary. They've notified their friends of their endorsement, but for their own reasons can't make the endorsement public. They are however willing to share their rationale, and I think it's worth your time to read.

They also remind that early voting ("absentee in person") is available at your county's election board at the following times.

Friday, March 2, 2012: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Saturday, March 3, 2012: 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Monday, March 5, 2012: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Whether you vote early at the county election board or on election day at your precinct's polling place, you must bring a government-issued form of identification -- either your voter ID card or some government issued ID with your photo and an expiration date after the date of the election. The state election board explains what kind of ID is allowed by law.

The Santorum campaign in Oklahoma could use your help. They are making personal phone calls to Oklahoma voters and need more workers to reach all the people they hope to reach. Phone the Oklahoma HQ at 918-928-7776 to find out what you can do. There are opportunities all over the state. A team of Texas volunteers is coming up to work along the southern tier of Oklahoma. (Texas's primary has been delayed until May 29, the result of a court battle over congressional redistricting.)

If you're a homeschooler, by volunteering for Santorum you'd be supporting the first homeschool dad to serve as president since perhapsTeddy Roosevelt. And what better way to teach the importance of civic involvement and how our election process works than to spend a few hours as a campaign volunteer.

I've put the full text of the activists' endorsement after the jump, but here are some of the key points:

  • Santorum has signed the Americans for Tax Reform's Taxpayer Protection Pledge
  • Santorum's endorsement by the Susan B. Anthony List, a political action committee devoted to promoting pro-life candidates: "Among the field of strong pro-life candidates in the GOP primary, one stands out as a proven leader in this great human and civil rights cause of our time. Rick Santorum communicates the vision and has exhibited the strategic and tactical prowess the pro-life movement must have in order to succeed. Women and children deserve his leadership, grounded as it is in affirming the dignity of every person. At this inflection point in the primary process and a tipping point in history on the abortion issue, the Susan B. Anthony List endorses Rick Santorum for the Republican nomination for President."
  • Santorum's A+ lifetime NRA rating and strong career ratings from many other conservative organizations.
  • In line with the mainstream of conservative activists on 2nd Amendment rights, energy production (a major theme of his Tulsa speech), illegal immigration, national defense and foreign policy, and cultural issues in military policy.
  • My friends weren't sure about Santorum's position with regard to Israel, since he didn't address it in his ORU speech, but here's an oped he wrote for National Review in May 2011: Israel in Peril. His concluding paragraph:

    Israel has long enjoyed the support of the United States. Our mutual ties have been historical, cultural, religious, and strategic. Today those ties have been put in more doubt than at any other time in the history of our relationship. Israel hasn't changed, the United States has. But the United States, a large and powerful country, is not in danger of disappearing. The same cannot be said of Israel and it is to our shame that we have increased that risk for the Jewish state. One can only hope this dangerous turn in our foreign policy will change. In the meantime, it is the duty of each and every American citizen who abhors terrorism and supports freedom to stand up and say, "I support Israel."

    Now here's the full endorsement from my activist friends:

    Pioneer new media entrepreneur Andrew Breitbart died today, age 43. He is survived by his wife and four young children.

    Breitbart began his online career working for Matt Drudge at the Drudge Report, then launched his own network of news and commentary websites: breitbart.com, breitbart.tv, Big Hollywood, Big Government, Big Journalism, Big Peace.

    Active on Twitter, Breitbart was fond of retweeting unhinged leftist attacks against him.

    His final tweet, at 11:25 pm Pacific time last night, says a lot about him -- willing to be bold in confrontation, willing to back off from a misstep.

    I called you a putz cause I thought you werebeing intentionally disingenuous. If not I apologize. @CenLamar @dust92

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    BatesLine photo: Rev. C. L. Bryant interviews Andrew Breitbart for Bryant's film "A Runaway Slave," on the west lawn of the Capitol at the 2010 9/12 March on Washington.

    I met him only once and briefly, although I had the pleasure of hearing him in person at a couple of conferences, most recently at RightOnline 2011. The Right Scoop has video of the full speech, in which he describes his journey from reflexive Los Angeles liberal to conservative warrior.

    I say to my wife, "Do your remember when I was a waiter, I was light-hearted, and I went to movies. I don't do that anymore." My goal now is to take down the institutional Left.

    Fellow bloggers talked about how approachable he was and how happy to help conservative new media activists expand their reach. Kerry Picket of the Washington Times remembers:

    Andrew was willing to take shots that were considered strategically risky and dealt with any blowback that came his way as a result of some of those risks. Budding citizen journalists found it amazing that Andrew would not only give out his e-mail address to strangers he met at conferences but also his personal cell phone number.

    At RightOnline, he walked with a small group of people over to Netroots Nation, the hard-left activist conference which was being held at the same time in Minneapolis. (Netroots Nation types had already crashed RightOnline and were causing a headache for hotel staff as they tried to provoke a confrontation.) In this video, as he's en route, he does a bit of satire of leftist attitudes, then explains to a questioner his role in the conservative movement.

    At the time, Kerry Picket of the Washington Times posted a series of videos of Breitbart's reception by Netroots Nation, which featured a rabid Daily Kos blogger claiming that one of Breitbart's employees was responsible for an alleged racial incident.

    Breitbart lived intensely, accomplished much, gave a platform to an army of conservative activists, confronted the Left relentlessly, and was under constant attack in return. Give thanks for his life and work, and pray for his bereft family.

    MORE REACTION:

    Josh Treviño has a tribute at the Grauniad, recalling the driving philosophy behind Breitbart's network of sites:

    [The cultural left] trafficked in self-assured righteousness, a vibrant network of transmitters and supporters, and a belief in the moral inferiority of their opposites.

    With these things, they crafted and pushed narratives that crushed conservatives every time. Andrew Breitbart was going to bring those methods, and more important, that aesthetic to the right - and see which side won when it was main force on main force.

    On Fox News this morning, Breitbart's fellow conservative web pioneer, Jonah Goldberg, who was starting National Review Online when Breitbart was working for the Drudge Report, reacts to news of the death of his friend and compatriot.

    AP aggregation of tributes to Breitbart.

    MORE: A very thorough bio of Breitbart, which includes how he met his wife, the odd interest they had in common, and how his father-in-law got him listening to Rush Limbaugh:

    Breitbart first met Susie Bean at a karaoke bar in 1988. He'd heard about her from their mutual friend, Mike, who phoned Breitbart at Tulane to tell him that he'd met Breitbart's future wife. When he and Susie landed back in Los Angeles four years later, they bonded over their shared appreciation of Chris Elliott's genius. Breitbart was nearly as smitten with Susie's father, the actor Orson Bean, as he was with Susie. And vice versa. "I was very taken with him," said Bean. A former liberal who had been blacklisted as a Communist in the 1950s, Bean was also the person who introduced Breitbart to Rush Limbaugh. Breitbart spotted a copy of The Way Things Ought To Be on the coffee table. "I said, 'Did you read this for giggles?' " Breitbart said. "He said, 'Have you listened to Rush?' I said, 'Yeah, he's a Nazi or something.' He goes, 'Are you sure you've listened to him?' " When Breitbart's favorite radio station started playing grunge--which he despised--he flipped to talk radio instead. "At first it was like a foreign language to me. But over time, it started to make sense."

    STILL MORE:

    Sarah Rumpf has a compendium of links to dozens of Breitbart tributes by conservative bloggers.

    On Twitter, Jimmie Bise, Jr. (@jimmiebjr), reflected on his opportunity to spend time with Breitbart at CPAC just a couple of weeks ago, an opportunity he passed up because his "bitter and wicked inner critic" told him he wasn't worthy. (I used Storify to capture those tweets in sequence and in a more permanently accessible form.)

    The nice thing about running your own website is you get to decide which ads run alongside your words.

    This morning I received notification from BlogAds of an ad submission "paid for by the Ron Paul Presidential Campaign Committee, Inc." (Saber Communications submitted the ad.) They wanted to run the "Rick Santorum is a Conservative Fake" ad on BatesLine through the primary. It would have been worth $200. I turned it down. I'm not going to run Ayatollah Ron Paul's garbage on this website, not for $200,000.

    Ron Paul is in no position to judge anyone's conservatism. Although he is pro-life, he's a liberal on most social issues and an appeaser on foreign policy. I believe the culture of a campaign is a reflection on the candidate, and his followers' practice of taqiyya (lying for the sake of advancing the cause) and their messianic devotion to him says much, none of it good, about the man.

    The modern conservative movement has been described as a three-legged stool -- social, fiscal, and defense. Santorum and Gingrich are the only candidates who are consistently conservative in all three areas, and Santorum is the most conservative candidate in the race with a chance of winning the nomination and beating Obama.

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    Here's the only Ron Paul ad you'll ever see on BatesLine.

    Oral Roberts University has posted video of their recent town hall events, sponsored by the ORU College Republicans, with Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich:

    Rick Santorum speaks at Oral Roberts University, February 9, 2012

    Newt Gingrich speaks at Oral Roberts University, February 20, 2012

    Santorum at ORU (MDB20793)SoonerPoll.com has released a poll of 300 likely Oklahoma Republican presidential primary voters (deemed likely because of voting history). 278 said they planned to vote in the March 6 Super Tuesday primary. Margin of error is +/- 5.66%. The survey occurred over a nine-day period (February 8 - February 16).

    The result:Santorum 38.5%, Romney 23.0%, Gingrich 18.0%, and Paul 7.6%, with 12.9% Don't Know / Refused.

    Because Oklahoma's primary is in March, the new national Republican rules require allocation to be proportional. 25 delegates will be allocated based on the statewide result, and 3 delegates will be allocated based on the result in each congressional district. You must have at least 15% to get any delegates, and if you break 50% you get all the delegates. Based on the results of this poll (and with the understanding that the congressional district subsamples are so small the margin of error is enormous), Santorum would get 12 statewide delegates, Romney 7, Gingrich 6. Santorum would win all the delegates in the 1st and 2nd CDs and two of three in CDs 3, 4, and 5. Romney would win one delegate each in CD 3 and CD 4; Gingrich would win one delegate in CD 5. The grand total would be Santorum 24, Romney 9, Gingrich 7.

    If Santorum could get key endorsements in central and western Oklahoma (paging James Lankford), he would have a shot at sweeping all the delegates.

    You may recall that in 2008, Mike Huckabee won the 1st and 2nd CDs, while McCain won the other three plus the statewide vote by a narrow margin.

    Question 4 has got to be a typo. I hope the callers didn't read the question like this, but here's how it's presented in the poll result:

    4. As you know, the Republican Presidential preferential primary election is February 5, 2008, do you plan to vote in that election?

    planned_parenthood_mammograms.jpgThe Washington, D.C., based blog Alexa Shrugged weighs into the debate over the Obamacare mandate that would force church-owned institutions to fund insurance coverage for contraception, abortifacients, and abortion even if such funding violates the principles of the owners. Alexa has posted three installments in this series, marshaling facts, figures, and reason to counter some of the wild claims made by the left.

    This issue is a gut check for conservatives: Will we acquiesce in the Left's framing of the issue (aided and abetted by the mainstream media) as a question of banning contraception or endangering women's health, and shrink away from any further debate in hopes the issue will go away? Or will we stay in the debate, defending religious liberty, keeping the focus on the egregious attempt by the Obama administration to force its values on religious Americans and the institutions they've built and funded with their own money? Precisely because this is a liberty issue, it ought to win the support of libertarians and social liberals and moderates. If you're an Obama fan, you may think government power will only be used to coerce conservatives to do what you want, but once that power is there, once the precedent is set, it could be used to coerce you to violate your own conscience.

    Here are links and excerpts for the articles in Alexa's series so far:

    Part 1: Controlling the Birth Control Debate

    Hey liberals: You know that if the Obamacare law has the power to mandate the right to free birth control, it also has the power to ban it, right? As Rush Limbaugh said, "Obamacare could ban contraception. Once Obamacare is implemented, the government can make any change unilaterally it wants." As in, the next president, (oh, let's REALLY give them chills!) maybe Santorum, can not only change that mandate, but replace it with whatever other mandate he wants because the law gives him that power. As they say, "A government big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away."

    If the government can force insurers to cover birth control for free, and can force you to buy health care, what CAN'T it force companies and citizens to do? I am very afraid that if the Supreme Court does not declare Obamacare unconstitutional we will find out.

    Part 2: Debunking the Myth that 99% of Women Are Using Birth Control

    First of all, if this is true, clearly there is no crisis of accessibility or cost - 99% is as universal for coverage as you'll ever get. And if 99% of women already have a way of getting or paying for birth control, then why in the world do we need to make it free through an Obamacare mandate?? ....

    #5: The fact sheet says "only 7% of women aged 15-44 are at risk for unintended pregnancy but are not using contraceptives." This does not address WHY these women are not using contraceptives - maybe they don't care either way if they get pregnant - but Democrats seem to assume it is because they're not handed out for free. So, we're forcing EVERYONE to subsidize ALL women's birth control for Obamacare - including those who can pay, those who already get it free or at a discount - because up to 7% of women "at risk" are not using it???

    Part 3: No, Planned Parenthood, Birth Control is NOT "Basic Health Care"

    Unlike abortion, which stops a beating heart and ends a life, I am pro-choice when it comes to contraception. However, contraceptives are, on the whole, not a health care need, but a lifestyle want. The vast majority of women don't use contraception because they need to prevent pregnancy for their health but because they don't want children at that particular point in time in their lives, for whatever reason, that's fine to me...

    Alexa lists a number of cancers and other dire side effects linked to hormonal contraceptives:

    Even Planned Parenthood lists the serious and potentially fatal side effects for contraceptives with estrogen like the pill, the patch and the NuvaRing as heart attack, stroke, having a blood clot in the legs, lungs, heart, or brain, or developing high blood pressure, liver tumors, gallstones, or yellowing of the skin or eyes (jaundice). (Interesting aside - Planned Parenthood lists these risks under the section labeled "What are the Disadvantages of xxx" and not under "How safe is xxx." Seems like it should be the opposite. Or both.)...

    I encourage you to click through and read all three articles. I've just added Alexa Shrugged to the BatesLine blogroll, so you'll see new items in the series as they're posted.

    MORE: The Heritage Foundation's blog has excerpts from the testimony of two women, Oklahoma Christian University senior vice president Allison Dabbs Garrett and Calvin College medical director and physician Dr. Laura Champion, who testified last week at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on the Obamacare anti-conscience mandate. A key quote from Garrett:

    There is a vast difference between the right to make a purchase for oneself and requiring someone else to pay for it.

    And another pithy quote on the topic, from Frank J. Fleming (@IMAO_) on Twitter:

    If you want contraceptives to be a personal matter, you probably shouldn't force other people to pay for it.

    There have been many comments on problems with the count in the straw presidential poll taken at the Maine Republican municipal caucuses. Results from certain caucuses were excluded because the caucus was held outside the dates specified by the state party rules. In one case, a caucus was delayed because of bad weather, but the state party opted to announce the straw poll results on the date expected by the media, even though not all caucuses had been held.

    Some supporters of a certain presidential candidate are convinced that the problems were deliberately designed to favor the former governor of a nearby state and deprive their candidate of the opportunity to claim a win. Many seem to believe that a caucus straw poll is just another way to have a primary, and they're upset that the results can't be certified like a real primary election.

    The way Maine selects its delegates is like nearly every other state Republican party -- a series of caucuses and conventions beginning at the local level and working up to the congressional district and state level where delegates and alternates to the national convention are elected. What makes Maine, Iowa, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri and other states different is that their elected national convention delegates may vote as they please. In Oklahoma and most other primary states, the national convention delegates elected at state and congressional district conventions are bound by the result of the presidential preference primary. (There are a few states, like Illinois and New York, where voters vote directly for delegates, who may be pledged to a specific presidential candidate.)

    Before 1988, Oklahoma's delegates were unbound, as in Maine, but they were elected based on their allegiance to the candidate preferred by most state and district convention delegates. My recollection is that all of our delegates in 1976 and 1980 went to Reagan, despite a strong minority in 1976 that preferred Ford. (I was at the 1st Congressional District convention in 1976 at Nathan Hale High School Auditorium. Dad was the lone Wagoner County delegate and convention secretary that year, and in the minority as a Ford fan. In 1980 I attended both 1st District and state conventions.)

    In the days when most delegates were unbound by primaries, it was important for caucus-goers to elect people they trusted, who shared their values, to be delegates at the county convention, and so on up the chain to the national convention. Someone running to be a national delegate might pledge to back a particular presidential candidate, but it was important to pick someone whose values you trusted, as the delegate always had the option of changing his mind at the convention. In the weeks leading up to the 1976 convention, Ford and Reagan targeted their campaigns at the 2,259 delegates, trying to hold on to their own and pry some loose from the other side. (The final tally was Ford 1,187, Reagan 1,070, Elliot Richardson 1, with 1 abstention. Here's the 1976 Republican roll call, as it appeared in the St. Petersburg Times, on Aug 20, 1976. All of Oklahoma's 36 delegates went to Reagan.)

    In a state like Maine that doesn't bind its delegates, the straw poll is just an extra -- a way to check the mood of the state's Republican grassroots activists, using the excitement of the presidential campaign to boost caucus turnout, and fodder for a press release and national attention.

    Here's a comment I posted at Maggie's Notebook and, in a slightly different form, in response to Slublog's post at Ace of Spades HQ:

    I don't think this was by design at all. Precinct, county, and state Republican Parties are largely run by volunteers. In a year with less attention focused on every caucus, a sloppily tallied straw poll or a county convention rescheduled for weather would be no big deal.

    It's important to distinguish between the caucuses and the straw poll taken at the caucuses. They're two different things. Even if there were no straw poll, even if there were a primary, there would still have to be caucuses as part of the process of electing Maine's delegates to the Republican National Convention. Municipal and county caucuses elect delegates to the state convention who, in turn, elect delegates to the national convention.

    So if you're going to have all these Republicans gathering anyway, why not take a straw poll? And why not use the straw poll to drive up caucus participation?

    What went wrong in Maine is that the national media, hungry for any numbers at all in a month without primaries, made a big deal out of the results, and the Maine party was unprepared for the onslaught of attention and the media's expectation of a rigorous result.

    The only poll that really matters is a poll of Maine's elected delegation to the Republican National Convention. That won't be determined until May 6.

    RELATED:

    The Green Papers on the history of the formulas used to apportion national convention delegates to the states, and the origins of bonus delegates and super delegates.

    St. Joseph (Mo.) News-Press - Aug 19, 1976: 6th District Delegates Held Tight for Reagan: Describes a delegate who was a Ford backer but won his seat by pledging to vote for Reagan; he held to his pledge despite pressure to flip.

    Spokane Daily Chronicle - Aug 19, 1976: State Delegate Gets Revenge: Anida Pithoud, National Committeewoman from Washington state, ousted from her post by conservatives at the state convention, delivered a seconding speech for Ford and was happy to see the Reagan majority the the Washington delegation disappointed. She complained that conservatives had been trying to take over the state party's central committee for 10 years and complained about the Reagan-bots in familiar terms:

    She was one of only seven Ford delegates in the 38-member delegation. She maintained Reagan was able to capture the other 31 because of the participation of many people who "came in only on account of Reagan and will disappear now."

    The (Pomeroy-Middleport, Oh.) Daily Sentinel - Jul 22, 1976: Reagan Raiding Ohio Delegates: Reports that Reagan had sent operative Jeff Bell to Ohio to lure away some of Ford's 91 delegates, while the Ford team went after Reagan's six Ohio delegates, arguing "that the President has a better chance of beating Jimmy Carter in November."

    Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich will be speaking at ORU's Mabee Center next Monday, February 20, 2012, and in Oklahoma City as well. Here are the details from an email from the Oklahoma Republican Party:

    Tulsa - 2:00 pm
    Mabee Center, Oral Roberts University
    7777 S Lewis Avenue
    Tulsa, OK 74136

    Oklahoma City - 6:30 pm
    Jim Thorpe Museum
    4040 N Lincoln Boulevard
    Oklahoma City, OK 73105

    This event is free to listeners of a certain talk radio station -- and everyone else.

    Newt Gingrich and Callista Gingrich, September 11, 2010, S3016602

    BatesLine photo: Newt Gingrich and Callista Gingrich introduce the premier of America at Risk: The War with No Name, at the Newseum in Washington, D. C., September 11, 2010.

    Rick Santorum at ORU audio

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    Here is the complete audio in MP3 format of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's speech at Oral Roberts University's Mabee Center in Tulsa on February 9, 2012. The links lead directly to MP3 files. This audio came from my personal audio recorder, so the quality could be better. I'm posting it because no one else seems to have recorded or posted the intros, the Q&A, Santorum's closing remarks, or the final ORU disclaimer.

    Rick Santorum listens to a question from ORU College Democrats president Jonathan Townsend (MDB20781) by Michael Bates, on Flickr

    And if you prefer to download it all at once, here's the entire Rick Santorum at ORU program, from Kara Evans' first introduction to her final disclaimer.

    Permission is granted to use excerpts of this audio, under the following conditions: (1) Provide a link to this entry; (2) cite www.batesline.com as the source of the audio; (3) email me at blog at batesline dot com with a link to where you've posted it.

    ORU College Republicans president Kara Evans, State Rep. Pam Peterson applaud Rick Santorum as he prepares to speak at ORU Mabee Center (MDB20761) by Michael Bates, on Flickr

    ORU College Republicans president Kara Evans, State Rep. Pam Peterson applaud Rick Santorum as he prepares to speak at ORU Mabee Center

    Photos Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Bates. All rights reserved.

    MORE: Don't miss Katherine Bates' guest opinion on Rick Santorum's visit.

    I'm still working on my comprehensive report of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum's speech at Oral Roberts University. In the meantime, I'm pleased to introduce a new contributor to BatesLine, who provides her own concise and insightful perspective on Santorum's visit to Tulsa. (I'm especially pleased to have a contributor who needs no editing whatsoever.)

    Santorum sincere, straightforward
    by Katherine Bates, apprentice pundit
    Special to BatesLine

    Katherine-20120207-250px.jpgAuthentic. Sincere. Straightforward. People who heard Rick Santorum speak at the Mabee Center on February 9, 2012 used all of these words. During his short speech, he captivated listeners, and received over ten standing ovations. He could hardly get more than a sentence out without the audience applauding. He spoke clearly, and he conveyed his points very well. Santorum is an amazing speaker, and doesn't avoid talking about certain issues or topics like most candidates.

    One thing that stood out was his speech on equality, and that our rights are endowed by our CREATOR, and not by the government. So should the government be able to take away our right to choose our doctors, and our health insurance, and our medications? His answer? No, absolutely not!

    Another topic Santorum spoke about was Affordable Energy. With gas prices today, this topic appealed to everyone.

    At the end of his speech, he answered questions for ORU students. He delivered his answers well, and was patient with each of them. Though other candidates might have cowered away from these topics, Santorum had an immediate and firm answer as each question was thrown at him. In my opinion, we need someone like Santorum, who had his values straight from the beginning, for the next president of the United States.

    Katherine Bates, 11, is a Tulsa-based writer, the author and illustrator of The Toads' Spring Fling, a children's story book, and Katrina, a science fiction short story. She has studied writing with Tulsa-based author Gina Conroy at Augustine Christian Academy and the Institute for Excellence in Writing through the Classical Conversations homeschool program. She is a member of the Tulsa County Impact 4-H Club.


    Photo by Bland Bridenstine

    UPDATE: Because of expected crowds, the Tulsa event has been moved to the "Baby Mabee", the TV production studio just to the east of the Mabee Center on the ORU campus, and the Oklahoma City event has been moved to the Magnuson Hotel and Meridian Conference Center, just south of I-40 on Meridian (this is several miles west of downtown OKC; Republicans will recognize it as the frequent location for state conventions).

    santorum3.jpgRepublican presidential candidate Rick Santorum will be in Oklahoma this Thursday, February 9, 2012, for Oklahoma Republican Party "Victory 2012" events in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Here are the details:

    Oklahoma City - 9:00 am
    Magnuson Hotel and Meridian Conference Center
    737 S Meridian Ave
    Oklahoma City, OK 73108

    Tulsa - 1:30 pm
    "Baby Mabee", east of the Mabee Center, Oral Roberts University
    7777 S Lewis Avenue
    Tulsa, OK 74136

    Oklahoma GOP chairman Matt Pinnell writes:

    We are thrilled to welcome another Presidential candidate to the Reddest State in the Country! If you can win Oklahoma, you can win the conservative vote nationwide. We welcome our Republican candidates to Oklahoma over the coming weeks as they compete to win our "Reddest State" primary.

    The state party hopes to see all the GOP presidential candidates appear at Victory 2012 events in the weeks leading up to the March 6 Oklahoma primary.

    The Oklahoma Republican Party is asking for you to RSVP if you plan to attend either event.

    Oklahoma has such a strong homeschool community (today is Home Educators' Day at the State Capitol), that I'd hope for a big turnout by homeschooling families for their fellow homeschooling dad.

    Some links of interest regarding the presidential campaign:

    Newt Gingrich had to know that he was not going to finish first in Florida and Nevada, so why not be prepared with statement that puts a positive spin on the results in preparation for likelier victories in the south on Super Tuesday? Stacy McCain chalks it up to Newt's narcissism:

    The characteristic trait of the narcissist is his inability to accept responsibility for his own failures. Everybody likes to believe that they deserve credit for their successes, but no one wants to believe that they are at fault when they screw up. This is normal. Yet the damaged ego of the narcissist makes it impossible for him to acknowledge his own contribution to his failures. He cannot even admit to himself that he is at fault, which is why he attempts to focus blame on scapegoats.

    And so when Newt starts pointing the finger, blaming others for his failures, portraying himself as the victim -- of Goldman Sachs, "money power," George Soros, "the elite media," Mormons (!) and a "blatantly dishonest" opponent -- even his supporters ought to recognize these unseemly eruptions as symptomatic of Gingrich's narcissistic tendencies.

    Why do you think I warned you against jumping onto his bandwagon?

    Victor Davis Hanson thinks Newt should have stuck with what was working for him:

    Newt Gingrich's post-Nevada caucus speech included about three minutes of inspired moments about issues and ideas in his usual imaginative and intellectually robust style. So why does he not just stay with that -- given that he often seems more dynamic and glib than Romney in his attacks on Obama, and not long ago gained ground despite the attacks against him? Instead, he now turns ad nauseam to the tired reasons why he loses -- yes, including lots of Mormons in Nevada -- and ends up as Richard Nixon not going to get kicked around any more.

    Hanson offers Newt a history lesson for perspective:

    I don't understand why he thinks now losing to Romney in 2012 is solely due to Romney's innate deviousness in a way McCain beating Romney in 2008 was not -- given that Romney was about the same in both 2008 and 2012. Gingrich seems oblivious to the fact that McCain's style and history gave him advantages over Romney's money and hardball in ways Gingrich's own proven liabilities apparently do not.

    Of course, it was McCain's Turn in 2008, and in 2012, it's Romney's Turn. The "It's His Turn" phenomenon partly reflects, on the part of Republican state and local leaders in places like New Hampshire and Florida, a preference for the familiar and a desire to get on the winning team early, but it also reflects four years of political capital building -- attending fundraisers for state and local parties and candidates, and collecting IOUs to be redeemed when the primaries roll around. Newt could have been doing that for the last 14 years, as the man who led the first Republican takeover of the House in 40 years, but I suspect he hasn't done much of it.

    The Nevada Republican Party finally has all the results in from its 1800 precincts, and Romney, as expected, finished first without about 50% of 32,961 votes cast. Turnout in this binding caucus poll fell far short of 2008, when Romney won 51% of 44,315 votes cast in a non-binding caucus poll (for entertainment purposes only, as they say when they publish sports book odds in the paper). Unsurprisingly, Ron Paul's best showing was in the Kingdom of Nye, Art Bell's home county, home to Area 51.

    According to the Green Papers, Nevada's delegates will be bound proportionally to the poll result, with no minimum threshold. They calculate the result to be Romney 14, Gingrich 6, Paul 5, and Santorum 3. The BatesLine delegate count:

    Romney 73
    Gingrich 29
    Paul 8
    Santorum 3
    Uncommitted 2 (Huntsman's NH delegates)

    Romney still needs 971 delegates for the nomination, and no one can clinch the nomination before April 24.

    MORE:

    Buzzflash asks, "Why didn't Ron Paul's caucus strategy work in Nevada?" Likely answer: You can't win unless you have more supporters than everyone else, no matter how stealthy or strategic you are:

    The Paul and Romney campaigns were the only ones to have a legitimate ground game in Nevada. The fact that Paul didn't easily outstrip Gingrich, who lacked Paul's months of preparation, doesn't bode well for his long-term strategy.

    This news is likely to shock a few Ron Paul supporters: A Bilderberger is the biggest donor to Ron Paul's associated super PAC.

    The largest donor to a SuperPAC supporting Ron Paul is Peter Thiel, the sort of ultra-wealthy, super-national figure Paul and his supporters love to hate.

    Thiel -- who gave $900,000 to the pro-Paul group Endorse Liberty -- made his fortune as the co-founder of PayPal; he was also an early investor in Facebook, and is now a major player in the world of high-tech venture capital. He's also a devoted libertarian and devoted Republican: He hosted a fundraiser for the confrontational gay conservative group GOProud at his grand apartment off Union Square in 2010.

    Thiel is also a member of the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, the elite, invitation-only conference that's the frequent subject of conspiracy theories.

    Your opportunity to shape the Republican Party's principles, personality, and personnel begins with tomorrow's Republican precinct caucuses.

    Republican caucuses for most Tulsa County precincts will be held tomorrow morning, Saturday, February 4, 2012, at 10 a.m. Most of the rest of Oklahoma will hold precinct caucuses on Monday evening, February 6, 2012.

    For the sake of convenience and efficiency, most Tulsa County precincts will be gathering at central meetings grouped by State House district. Some, however, will be held in individual homes, as was the tradition in years past.

    Here is the current list of Tulsa County GOP precinct caucus locations and precinct officers.

    This is not a comprehensive list, but here are the default locations for the House District central meetings. There are many, many exceptions. Saturday at 10 a.m. is the default time, but again, there are many exceptions. Consult the link in the previous paragraph or contact Tulsa County GOP headquarters at 918-627-5702 for definitive information about a specific precinct:

    HD 11: New Life Assembly of God, 12215 N. Garnett, Collinsville
    HD 23: Martin Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett, Tulsa
    HD 29: Crossroads Church, 2525 W. Main, Jenks
    HD 36: New Life Assembly of God, 12215 N. Garnett, Collinsville
    HD 66: Charles Page Library, 551 E. 4th St, Sand Springs
    HD 67: Hardesty Regional Library, 8316 E. 93rd St, Tulsa
    HD 68: Crossroads Church, 2525 W. Main, Jenks
    HD 69: St James Presbyterian Church, 11970 S Elm, Jenks (at 1:00 pm Saturday)
    HD 70: Kaiser Library, 5202 S. Hudson Ave., Tulsa
    HD 71: Brookside Baptist Church, 3615 S. Peoria Ave, Tulsa (at 2:00 pm Saturday)
    HD 72: Kendall-Whittier Library, 21 S. Lewis, Tulsa
    HD 73: Kendall-Whittier Library, 21 S. Lewis, Tulsa
    HD 74: New Life Assembly of God, 12215 N. Garnett, Collinsville
    HD 75: Southpark Community Church, 10811 E. 41st St, Tulsa
    HD 76: Arrow Heights Baptist Church, 3201 S. Elm Pl, Broken Arrow
    HD 77: Kendall-Whittier Library, 21 S. Lewis, Tulsa
    HD 78: McKay Law Office, 2301 S. Sheridan, Tulsa
    HD 79: Memorial High School, 5840 S. Hudson, Tulsa
    HD 80: Arrow Heights Baptist Church, 3201 S. Elm Pl, Broken Arrow
    HD 98: Southpark Community Church, 10811 E. 41st St, Tulsa

    In Oklahoma, the main job of a Republican precinct caucus in a presidential year is to elect delegates to the county convention and to consider issues to include in the party platform. You can also put your name forward for consideration to serve on the county convention's platform, rules, and credentials committees.

    On March 24, the county convention will elect delegates to the 1st congressional district and state conventions, and will approve a county platform. The 1st congressional district convention (on April 14) and state convention (on May 12) will elect delegates to the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa.

    There will also be, at least in Tulsa County, a presidential straw poll that has as much weight and significance as the Iowa caucus presidential straw poll in January -- which is to say, it's non-binding. (Oklahoma delegates to the national convention will be bound by the results of the March 6 primary.)

    Although precinct officials are scheduled to be elected only in odd numbered years, this year many precincts will also be filling vacant precinct officer positions, as the redrawing of precinct lines has moved some officers out of their old precincts and left some precincts without officials.

    I'm hopeful that grassroots conservatives will show up to these caucuses to ensure that the Republican platform stands firm on conservative principles at all levels of government, rejecting on the one hand a squishy, apologetic, and barely conservative party and rejecting on the other hand a party in thrall to wacky conspiracy theories.

    Newt Gingrich is challenging the plurality-takes-all allocation of Florida's 50 delegates to the Republican National Convention. Mitt Romney finished first in the January 31st primary with 46% of the vote, which means, according to rules adopted by the Florida state party rules, Romney gets all 50.

    Republicans in Florida and from other states were complaining about the rule violation long before last Tuesday's primary. From January 25, in the Tampa Bay Times:

    All it takes is a registered Florida Republican to file a protest with the RNC, and the party's contest committee would have to consider the issue when it meets in August just before the convention.

    "August is going to be a very tense month for those of us on the committee on contests. We could be the group that everybody loves or everybody hates," said Fredi Simpson, an RNC member from Washington state who sits on that committee and also helped write the rules.

    Like other RNC members, Simpson thinks the rules clearly bar Florida from being winner-take-all. At an RNC meeting in August, members of the Presidential Nominating and Selection Committee passed a resolution calling for the RNC to enforce its rules for proportional delegates on states like Florida that set primaries earlier than April.

    "Florida ought to be proportional, and it is up to the RNC legal office to figure out how they do that. That was absolutely the intention when we wrote that rule," said Pete Ricketts, an RNC member from Nebraska who served on the RNC committee appointed in 2008 to draw up delegate selection rules for 2012....

    Marc Cross, a GOP state committeeman from Osceola County, has already written to the RNC, urging it to review the matter, but the RNC has taken no action.

    If Florida were allocated proportionally, Gingrich would be leading in delegates, by a big margin, and that lead would be guaranteed all the way to February 28, even if Romney got every single delegate in Nevada.

    What's more likely to happen is a big mess that won't get cleaned up until right before the national convention in Tampa, and maybe not even then. The rules adopted by the RNC for the 2012 presidential primary process have succeeded in slowing down and lengthening the primary season, but the new rules failed to cover a number of scenarios, and the result could be a pre-convention mess involving a key swing state.

    So let's explain the numbers first and then the rules mess.

    In a statewide proportional allocation, Romney would have 30 Florida delegates, Gingrich would have 20, as Romney received roughly 60% of the combined Romney-Gingrich total. I'm assuming here the use of the typical 15% threshold, which a candidate would have to exceed in order to receive any delegates at all. Under that scenario, Santorum, Paul, et al., would not receive any delegates.

    It should be noted that RNC rules don't mandate a maximum threshold to be considered proportional. Democratic Party rules mandate 15%, and many state Republican parties (including Oklahoma) have followed suit. New Hampshire uses 10%. Theoretically, Florida could've set 40% as the threshold; Romney would have received all the delegates under that scenario.

    The two states combined, under the Florida GOP's existing rule: Romney 52, Gingrich 23. (Romney won 2 South Carolina delegates by winning a single congressional district.)

    The two states combined, under a proportional rule for Florida: Gingrich 53, Romney 22.

    Add in the New Hampshire results, and the revised total would be Gingrich 53, Romney 29, Paul 3, Huntsman 2.

    (A combination of proportional allocation statewide and proportional allocation by congressional district would give yet a different total, but without results by congressional district, it's impossible to calculate.)

    Florida has already been penalized for holding a primary prior to March 1. According to the rules of the Republican National Committee that govern the 2012 presidential nomination process, a state that binds delegates in any way prior to the March 1 loses half their allotted delegates, and their RNC members (state chairman, national committeeman, national committeewoman) won't be seated at the convention.

    Florida's rules originally called for some of its delegation to be allocated winner-take-all by congressional district, and the remaining delegates winner-take-all based on the statewide primary result. But they also approved a rule that said, essentially, that if the RNC takes away half our delegation because of our early primary, we'll treat the remaining delegates as "at large" and will give them all to the statewide winner.

    But there's also a rule requiring any state (except the four "carve-out" states) binding delegates prior to April 1 to allocate delegates proportionally. The rule doesn't specify how that should be done.

    The four "carve-out" states are Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada. They're allowed to bind delegates as early as February 1, and they're not subject to the proportionality rule. That's why Newt's challenge to the Florida allocation won't cost him any delegates in South Carolina, which was allocated winner-take-all statewide and by congressional district. Two of the carve-out states, New Hampshire and South Carolina, lost half of their delegates by going before February 1. (Iowa lost nothing, because they didn't allocate any delegates as a result of the caucus night straw poll. The real Iowa delegate decisions are made at the June state convention.)

    The response by the RNC's general counsel to the question about Florida says, in effect, there's not much more we can do to them:

    By holding its primary on January 31, Florida has violated Rule 15(b). Like the other states in violation, Florida is suffering the mandatory penalties under Rule 16: loss of fifty percent of its delegates and alternates, and the RNC members from Florida cannot serve as delegates. In addition, the RNC Rules Committee imposed every available discretionary penalty - penalties related to convention seating, guest privileges and hotel location. Thus, all of the penalties authorized under the Rules have been imposed on Florida.

    The rules governing the 2012 process were the product of a committee appointed after the 2008 convention. Rather than have a fight at the 2008 convention over a new primary calendar, the convention rules committee rejected the recommended plan by the RNC rules committee, approved a rule creating a special committee to present a proposal for an up-or-down vote by the Republican National Committee.

    Here is the rule change recommended by the Temporary Delegate Selection Committee in June 2010 and approved by the RNC in August 2010:

    Rule No. 15: Election, Selection, Allocation, or Binding of Delegates and Alternate Delegates

    (b) Timing.

    (1) No primary, caucus, or convention to elect, select, allocate, or bind delegates to the national convention shall occur prior to the first Tuesday in March in the year in which a national convention is held. Except Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada may begin their processes at any time on or after February 1 in the year in which a national convention is held and shall not be subject to the provisions of paragraph (b)(2) of this rule.

    (2) Any presidential primary, caucus, convention, or other meeting held for the purpose of selecting delegates to the national convention which occurs prior to the first day of April in the year in which the national convention is held, shall provide for the allocation of the delegates selected on a proportional basis.

    (3) If the Democratic National Committee fails to adopt a presidential primary schedule with the dates set forth in Rule 15(b)(1) of these Rules (February 1 and first Tuesday in March) by December 31, 2010, then the dates in Rule 15(b) shall revert to the dates set forth in the Rules as adopted by the 2008 Republican National Convention.

    You'll notice that they don't define the term "proportional basis."

    The enforcement clause is Rule 16, which calls for the 50% penalty, loss of automatic seats for RNC members, and other potential penalties to be imposed by the RNC's standing committee on rules. That rule doesn't negate the "proportional basis" rule, but it also doesn't provide for additional penalties in the event a state violates both the proportional basis and calendar rules.

    (You can read the complete Rules of the Republican Party here.)

    Newt Gingrich is right to say that Florida has violated the proportionality rule. We'll see whether the Committee on Contests has the guts to enforce it.

    Florida turned out as expected, but as I wrote right after South Carolina, there's no need for anyone of the remaining candidates to head for the exits. Mitt Romney's campaign is restarting the inevitability bandwagon. Pundits are falling over each other to be the first to declare that it's all over, that there's no path to victory for anyone else. (Haven't the pundits ever heard of suspense? That people stay interested only until they know the final outcome?)

    Those of us who bother to read the rules by which the game is played know that the 2012 campaign has just begun. Only 87 of a possible 2286 delegates have been bound to a candidate at this point. 59 delegates -- 7 in New Hampshire, 2 in South Carolina, and 50 in Florida -- have been bound to Mitt Romney. He needs 1,085 more to clinch the nomination, and the earliest possible date he can mathematically accomplish that (assuming all other candidates drop out now) is April 24. More likely, because of many proportionally allocated states, it would be late May or possibly June 5 before anyone could cross the finish line. (Click the graph to see it full-size.)

    BatesLine-2012-GOP-Cumulative-Delegates.PNG

    The Associated Press includes Iowa in its count, but Iowa doesn't elect delegates until June, and, as I noted before the caucus, there's no necessary or mechanical connection between the caucus straw poll results and whom the delegates will support at the Republican National Convention.

    The AP count also includes certain "super-delegates" as pledged to candidates, presumably based on public declarations of support. The members of the Republican National Committee -- state party chairman, national committeeman, and national committeewoman from each state and territory -- are ex-officio convention delegates. A few states require their RNC members to be bound by the result of the primary, but most send their RNC members unbound. RNC members from states that have been penalized for holding a primary too early -- New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, Michigan -- won't have a vote at the convention.

    The basis for the above chart is in the BatesLine GOP Delegate Count spreadsheet. I've followed the comprehensive information on delegate allocation found at the Green Papers website, differing only in treating any delegates elected based on their declared presidential preference as bindable delegates. For example, the Green Papers treats all 66 Ohio delegates as unpledged because they aren't legally bound to vote for a particular presidential candidate at the national convention. My count treats all the Ohio delegates (except the three RNC members) as bindable delegates, since the delegates are nominated by a presidential campaign and would have a significant personal stake in voting for the candidate who made it possible for them to attend the national convention.

    The Wall Street Journal has a fascinating interactive graphic, with stair-steps showing how allocated Republican delegates accumulate over time in 2000, 2004, 2008, and 2012. It's striking to see how far to the right everything has moved this year. The massive step up on Tsunami Tuesday (February 3, 2008) has moved a month to the right for 2012 and is not nearly as tall. (It's even shorter now that Texas's primary has been moved from Super Tuesday to April, delayed by a redistricting lawsuit.)

    What's especially striking is how flat February is. From February 1 to February 27, only 119 delegates will be allocated, according to the WSJ's graphic. But they're including, incorrectly, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, and Nevada in that total. Those states hold precinct caucuses to elect delegates to county or state legislative district conventions. A presidential straw poll will be held, but, as in Iowa, it won't be binding.

    2012-GOP-Delegates-WSJ.PNG

    The Green Papers uncharacteristically gets one wrong, stating that Nevada's delegates will be bound, proportionally by the results of the presidential preference poll. (That appears to be based on this Republican National Committee summary of all allocation rules, which also gets Nevada wrong.) But the FAQ page on the official Nevada GOP caucus website makes it clear that the final result is contingent on the multi-stage process of electing delegates to the county, district, and state conventions:

    All Delegates and alternate delegates elected at the precinct caucus will meet in March at their county conventions. The county convention will then elect delegates to represent them at the State Convention on May 5-6th. And it's at the State Convention where the delegates and alternates get elected to the Republican National Convention on August 27-30th.

    Since delegates generally vote for other delegates who support the same candidate as they do, it's advantageous for a candidate to elect as many people as possible as delegates at the precinct caucuses. The more delegates a candidate has after the precinct caucuses in February, the greater the chance they will have the most delegates from Nevada to the National Convention on August 27-30th.

    (UPDATE 2012/01/23: In the comments, Nevada blogger Michael P. Chamberlain mentions that he spoke to a state party official about the allocation rule:

    I received confirmation today from the [Nevada Republican Party]'s Caucus Director that Nevada's delegates to the National Convention will be allocated (and bound for the first ballot) by the state-wide results of the Presidential Preference Poll that is part of the caucus on February 4.

    I've asked Michael to see if he can get some additional details: The text of the basis (rule, resolution) that defines how delegates will be allocated, whether there will be a threshold, and how rounding is handled.)

    So where does that leave the race?

    Romney still has a poll lead in Florida, and money matters because of the ten media markets that a candidate must cover, so let's figure that he wins. Given that, what will the pledged delegate count be on February 28, going into Arizona and Michigan?

    Romney 59
    Gingrich 23
    Paul 3
    Huntsman 2

    In this scenario, Romney will have only 59 of the 1,144 delegates needed to win the nomination.

    Remember that Iowa's delegates are not pledged. New Hampshire's were allocated proportionally. It appears that Romney won a single South Carolina congressional district, and with it, two delegates.

    On to February 28:

    Michigan's 30 delegates would have been allocated by congressional district (3 each, winner take all) and statewide (proportionally with a 15% threshhold), but it has lost half of its delegates for jumping the gun, and it's unclear how that will affect allocation. Arizona, in the same boat, opted to shift to Winner-Take-All statewide. Romney's father George was governor of Michigan and an auto executive, so he's likely to win nearly all the delegates either way.

    I've already seen a couple of tweets suggesting that Santorum may as well get out of the race now. That would be silly. As former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer tweeted on Saturday night:

    Santorum's thought bubble: I can win this because Newt will blow up Romney, & Newt will also blow up Newt. That leaves me.

    Were I in Rick Santorum's inner circle, I'd suggest he spend most of February raising money and focused on winning Arizona and preparing for a few Super Tuesday states (like Ohio, Oklahoma, and Tennessee). A good showing in some of the February non-binding caucuses would be a good thing, too.

    Santorum has an entire month to promote his recent endorsements by evangelical leaders. They came too late to affect the Stop-Romney tactical move to Gingrich in South Carolina, and they haven't yet arrived in a way that connects with the targeted voters. An email in a homeschooling mom's inbox about an endorsement by a particular leader she admires, forwarded by another mom in the homeschool co-op, will have far more impact than the 10-second generic mention of "evangelical leaders" on CNN a week earlier.

    February also gives Santorum plenty of time to position himself as the most electable candidate remaining in the race. Romney doesn't excite the party's core voters. Democrats and Independents already think they know Newt, from the 1990s, and they don't like him. The phrase "First Lady Callista Gingrich" may begin to sink in and worry Republican voters, too.

    If Santorum were to win Arizona and Romney win Michigan, Santorum would pass Gingrich for second place in the delegate count going into Super Tuesday:

    Romney 89
    Santorum 29
    Gingrich 23
    Paul 3
    Huntsman 2

    By my count, 420 bound delegates will be allocated on Super Tuesday, March 6, and by GOP rules it has to be done by some proportional method. It would be mathematically impossible for anyone to reach a majority of bound delegates until after the April 24th primaries, and that's only if someone sweeps the board. Since many of the April states also use proportional allocation, that's unlikely.

    The good news for those of us not in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, or Florida is that we'll still have a meaningful choice to make when it's our turn to vote. If nothing else, we can keep voting to frustrate the front runner of the moment, to ensure no one locks up the nomination before Tampa.

    And if it turns out that we're still not happy with our choices in a month's time, there are some interesting scenarios. I haven't checked, but I suspect there are still many late-season primaries for which the filing deadline has not yet passed, meaning someone new could get in, take a bunch of delegates, and be in a strong position to contend for unpledged delegates leading up to the national convention. Many early states will still have dropped-out candidates on the ballot; one of them could revive their campaign, or people could use one of the ex-candidates as a place for none-of-the-above supporters to vote their preferences.

    Thanks to Sarah Palin, Not Romney won South Carolina by giving Newt Gingrich a plurality of the vote.

    Newt Gingrich's 1st place finish in South Carolina halted Mitt Romney's winning streak of one and deflated the notion that Romney is inevitably going to be the nominee.

    Romney's best assets in this race were his inevitability, his money, and his hair. He's still got the last two, but the first one is badly depleted. There's a certain sort of Republican: They're looking for the front-runner, ready to jump aboard his bandwagon. It's important to them to be on the winning team as soon as possible. Some may be hoping for federal appointments, anything from White House intern to federal district judge.

    It appears that Romney pushed hard right before and after Iowa to lock in as many endorsers as he could, pointing to his money and organization, already in place in key states. Santorum may have finished first by a few votes, but Santorum had put everything he had into Iowa. Gingrich didn't seem to be thinking beyond the next state. Romney will win South Carolina, the pitch went, by a big margin, and if everyone else but Ron Paul didn't drop out then, they would yield to the inevitable after Florida 10 days later.

    What disrupted that momentum was the fact that most conservative Republicans don't trust Romney, and they wanted to stop him. The turning point for South Carolina may have been Tuesday, January 17, 2012, on the Hannity show when Sarah Palin identified how they could do that:

    If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I'd vote for Newt, and I would want this to continue, more debates, more vetting of candidates, because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago was having a candidate that was not vetted, to the degree that he should have been so that we knew what his associations and his pals represented and what went into his thinking, the shaping of who our president today is.

    (When I first heard this clip, I thought Palin had begun to criticize the process that led to the nomination of her running mate, John McCain, and maybe she was headed there and caught herself. Barack Obama got plenty of vetting -- his nomination battle didn't end until June; McCain had his nomination clinched in March, thanks to winner-take-all primaries in which he won slim pluralities, and buyers' remorse quickly set in.)

    You'll recall that in 2008 some national talk show hosts tried to get Republicans to vote strategically on Tsunami Tuesday to stop John McCain. The mistake they made was pushing Romney based on national polling showing him in second, ignoring the individual state polls, which had Huckabee a close second to McCain in Oklahoma and several other states.

    This time around, only one state was voting, and there was a clear second place candidate, Gingrich, who was close enough to have a chance to pass Romney. If you run your mouse along the RealClearPolitics graph of South Carolina polls, there's an inflection point: Beginning on January 18, the day after Palin's comments aired, Newt's numbers began to rise. Rasmussen had Gingrich at 21% on Monday and at 33% on Wednesday.

    The shift to Newt began well before his Thursday evening confrontation with CNN's John King over Mrs. Newt II's comments on ABC. Despite the wishful thinking of the adultery-based community, Newt's win in South Carolina is not a rebuke to his aggrieved second wife. I'm surprised no pollster thought to ask if their support for Newt was mainly a vote to stop Romney.

    stopsopa.jpgBatesLine 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."

    ###

    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.

    Clear Lake, Iowa, 2008, IMG_0685

    BatesLine photo of a front porch with bunting in Clear Lake, Iowa, September, 2008

    Smitty at The Other McCain links to a Buzzfeed story about Ron Paul's strategy to dominate caucus states:

    Paul is following the roadmap set by Barack Obama's 2008 strategy: Start early, learn the rules, and use superior organization and devoted young supporters to dominate the arcane but crucial party procedures in states your rivals are ignoring -- states where caucuses and conventions that elect the delegates who will ultimately choose the Republican candidate. The plan begins in places like Minnetonka, Minnesota, a Minneapolis suburb where Paul has based his state headquarters, and where staffers have already begun running "mock-auses" -- practice runs for Minnesota's February 7 caucuses....

    Paul has, says his campaign chairman Jesse Benton, "offices, staff and strong organization" in ten caucus states besides Iowa: Colorado, Washington, Maine, Idaho, Minnesota, Nevada, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri and North Dakota. (Alaska and Hawaii are also a caucus states and prime Paul territory.)

    Those states together will award 419 of the 2,286 delegates who will choose a nominee in Tampa in August. They operate under complex, individual rules that favor the prepared....

    In Iowa, Paul's devoted cadres are up against activists supporting other Republicans. In the next ten caucuses, they're virtually all alone.

    The article goes on to note that Paul backers have been working within the local party organizations in many of these states, volunteering to work at headquarters, working for candidates in local races, and forming alliances with non-Paul backers. Being personally liked and being viewed as a valuable volunteer, not a monomaniacal Paulbot, would help a Paul backer advance through the levels in a caucus/convention state with the support of non-Paul activists.

    Smitty's reaction to the linked Buzzfeed story:

    This is really an argument against "Arcane Rules". We all love to hate on professional politicians, but it is truly a full-time job just to understand the basics of how the sausage is made. Complexity favors the insiders....The two things we have to do, going down the road, are: involve more people, and stamp out complexity. Systems need to be as simple as possible, but no simpler.

    My response to Smitty is that the rules are only arcane to those who don't bother to read them. Iowa's rules are simple: precinct caucuses elect county convention delegates, county conventions elect state convention delegates, state conventions elect national convention delegates and alternates (three each by the delegates from each congressional district, the remainder by the full convention).

    When the mainstream media oversimplifies the process or tries to fit caucus rules into their primary-oriented framework, they make it all look much more confusing than it is.

    What confuses the ninnies in the mainstream media -- the guys who trot out words like "arcane" and "complex" -- is that Tuesday night's "vote" is a non-binding straw poll, so there's no correlation between straw poll percentage and the presidential preference of Iowa's delegation to Tampa, which won't be chosen until June. As I explained recently, Ron Paul could easily "win" Iowa but wind up with zero Iowa delegates.

    Different rules in each state is a reflection of federalism and the freedom each state Republican Party retains to decide how to apportion its allotted number of delegates. On the other side of the aisle, the Democratic National Committee imposes certain rules on all state parties, requiring proportional representation for caucuses as well as primaries.

    Every Republican presidential campaign should have at least one supporter in each state with enough state party experience to understand how the system works and what the rules are. If a candidate can't muster a single savvy activist in a state, probably best to skip it.

    It should be pointed out that every state has complicated aspects to the process of selecting delegates and binding them (or not) to presidential candidates. Oklahoma awards delegates by congressional district and statewide results in the presidential preference primary, but the people who will serve as delegates are selected by a separate sequence of precinct caucuses and county, district, and state conventions. I won't explain open delegation vs. closed delegation and fractional voting, but they're in our rules for a reason.

    Idaho was cited in the Buzzfeed story as an example of arcane rules, but from the participant's point of view, it's simple -- you show up and vote for your favorite presidential candidate, and if he's eliminated for lack of support, you vote for your next favorite. What's complex is the counting method, which seems to be designed to help grassroots conservative candidates against the establishment default and well-organized fringe candidates.

    Here are the Idaho Republican Party rules for their caucus process, and here are answers to frequently asked questions about the Idaho caucus process.

    What's different about Idaho is that the delegates are bound by the caucus presidential preference vote, and the voting process is designed to ensure that the winner of the delegates is acceptable to a majority of caucus participants, not just a bare plurality. Idaho GOP leaders apparently want to avoid giving all the delegates to someone who barely finishes first in a divided field -- the sort of thing that happened in many states in 2008, when "stop McCain" forces were split between Romney, Huckabee, and a few other candidates, and McCain won winner-take-all states with two-thirds of voters preferring some other candidate, and thus quickly rolled up an insurmountable lead in delegates.

    At the Idaho county caucus, you'd be free to vote for your favorite in the first round, knowing that if your favorite doesn't have much support, you'll still be able, in the subsequent runoffs, to help one of the candidates you find acceptable get your county's delegates and block the candidates you find unacceptable from winning anything. The system enables mainstream fiscal, social, and foreign policy conservatives to coalesce around one candidate and thwarts hurts the Bob Dole / John McCain / Mitt Romney "It's my turn"-type candidate, and the Ron Paul-small-but-dedicated-following type from using divide-and-conquer to win with a small plurality. I like the approach. It looks like a good plan. It will be interesting to see how it works in practice.

    MORE about tonight's Iowa caucuses:

    Iowa Caucus Characters

    Flickr montage of caricatures of Republican presidential candidates by DonkeyHotey (CreativeCommons attribution)

    Stacy McCain talks to 13-year-old Sarah Santorum, who says, "Our prayers are paying off," and remembers her as an 8-year-old in tears at her dad's 2006 concession speech. (Stacy also gives a valuable reporting tip -- "You get the best quotes when you just talk to people, instead of interrogating them in a confrontational manner. Be informal and friendly, put people at ease and listen to what they say.")

    For The American Spectator, McCain has a piece on the Santorum surge in terms of voters, donors, and media interest, and Jeffrey Lord looks back at Santorum's defeat for reelection to the U. S. Senate in 2006.

    Don Surber looks at the electability argument and says Santorum would bring more electoral votes to the GOP than any other candidate.

    Pete Ingemi, DaTechGuy, looks to U. S. Naval History to note that nothing succeeds like success. A surprising finish by Santorum in Iowa will raise the money and volunteer support he needs in later states.

    Jeff Dunetz has more from former Ron Paul aide Eric Dondero about Ron Paul's reaction to the 9/11 attacks.

    John G. Geer says don't blame attack ads; Newt's history is the reason for Gingrich's slide.

    Todd Seavey ponders just plain libertarians, paleo-libertarians and paleo-conservatives, thickness, Catholicism, and political changes that have made a fusionist libertarian like himself, less willing to compromise with conservatives this time around. Also, he posts a photo of Ron Paul in a 1970s Houston Astros uniform (the one with the red and orange color bands and the groovy font).

    Shane Vander Hart speculates about attacks launched by groups with untraceable names or misappropriating the names of genuine organizations. These groups tend to go after which ever conservative is rising in the polls

    Vander Hart predicts that tonight's winner in Iowa will have under 25% of the vote and thinks Santorum will win narrowly. With a high number of undecideds, Vander Hart says to watch for the effect of neighborly persuasion at caucus meetings:

    In the last Des Moines Register poll it indicated that 41% of voters could still change their minds. That's pretty significant. Which leads me to one of the things to watch for tonight - don't underestimate the significance of a neighbor or friend speaking on behalf of their candidate of choice. At each caucus site every candidate will will have the opportunity to have somebody speak on their behalf. You literally have people who are undecided, and you also have those whose support is soft. Hearing a neighbor or a friend speak may be a tipping point for some voters. Who speaks could make a difference - a respected member of the community or a college student who is a first-time caucus goer? It matters.

    That leads me to this MRC video posted by Pat Dollard -- a radio discussion of how leaders in the Iowa Republican party could block a Ron Paul victory. The discussion makes it sound sinister, but it's natural to think that grassroots conventional conservatives will do their best to prevent dividing their vote among four different candidates so that neither Ron Paul nor Mitt Romney will finish first and claim a win with a tiny minority of the vote. At a conventional election, a voter deciding among similar candidates has to guess about his fellow voters and decided which of the acceptable choices has the best shot at winning. At tonight's caucuses, it will be apparent from signs and stickers which candidate among Bachmann, Santorum, Gingrich, and Perry is closest to the front of the pack. I could imagine county chairmen comparing notes by text message to see if these four candidates each have areas of strength or if one is much stronger than the other three across the state. In the latter case, the smart thing for party leaders to do would be to push the leaners and undecideds to support the potential breakout non-Romney, non-Paul candidate.

    RESULTS tonight:

    Des Moines Register has an interactive map with a county-by-county break down, raw vote totals, and precincts reporting by county.

    The Gazette (Cedar Rapids) has a Google map overlay for Iowa caucuses results, so you can see counties with respect to major highways and cities.

    WaPo's Chris Cilizza has a scorecard of Romney targets by county, based on the 2008 results, assuming Romney needs a 10% improvement to win.

    Here's The Fix's list of six counties to watch tonight.

    Stacy McCain arrived in Iowa early last week, wearing out tires and shoe leather in search of underreported stories. (His archive of coverage is tagged "Fear and Loathing in Iowa.") McCain anticipated the Santorum surge, which seems to be peaking at just the right moment for tomorrow night's straw poll.

    A Stacy McCain question prompted one of the more interesting candidate answers in recent days, with Santorum calling out Ann Coulter, pointing out that the bill he opposed that included the eVerify system was the McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill, which conservatives on immigration opposed.

    Stacy McCain is also writing about Iowa for The American Spectator.

    As always, RealClearPolitics has the latest poll numbers from Iowa. PPP has Paul at 20, Romney at 19, and Santorum with 18, but Santorum has the "Big Mo":

    The momentum in the race is completely on Santorum's side. He's moved up 8 points since a PPP poll earlier in the week, while no one else has seen more than a one point gain in their support. Among voters who say they decided who to vote for in the last seven days he leads Romney 29-17 with Paul and Gingrich both at 13. Santorum's net favorability of 60/30 makes him easily the most popular candidate in the field. No one else's favorability exceeds 52%. He may also have more room to grow in the final 48 hours of the campaign than the other front runners: 14% of voters say he's their second choice to 11% for Romney and only 8% for Paul.

    It's not hard to imagine Bachmann supporters shifting to Santorum as they see an opportunity to hand a victory to a fellow social and fiscal conservative. Gingrich and Perry supporters who are more anti-Romney and anti-Paul than pro-their-guy may switch to Santorum as well.

    Caffeinated Thoughts has already been on the ground in Iowa. The Iowa-based blog has been covering the candidates and the activists involved in the Iowa caucuses from a local perspective:

    Caffeinated Thoughts' Shane Vander Hart points out an interesting factoid from the Des Moines Register's final pre-caucuses poll, quoting this passage from the DMR report::

    But the four-day results don't reflect just how quickly momentum is shifting in a race that has remained highly fluid for months. If the final two days of polling are considered separately, Santorum rises to second place, with 21 percent, pushing Paul to third, at 18 percent. Romney remains the same, at 24 percent.

    iowa.gif

    Several recent poll results suggest that Texas Congressman Ron Paul could be in for a good result this coming Tuesday, the night that Iowa voters gather for Republican precinct caucuses, the first step in a series of conventions that will lead to the selection of delegates and alternates to the Republican National Convention in Tampa. Paul is running 1st or 2nd in the most recent five polls tabulated by Real Clear Politics, with anywhere between 17% and 24% support.

    Regardless of the outcome of Tuesday night's straw poll of precinct caucus attendees, Iowa's delegates and alternates will not be bound to a presidential candidate, and there's at least one scenario in which the "winner" of Tuesday's straw poll won't have any representation at all in Iowa's RNC delegation.

    Journalists who don't have the patience to read party rules or the intelligence to appreciate careful distinctions will wrongly assume that Iowa's RNC delegation will be allocated proportionately to the straw poll result (because that's how the Democrats do it) or that all the delegates will be awarded to the first-place finisher (because so many Republican primaries are winner-take-all).

    This isn't a primary. It's a non-binding straw poll of those who show up for the precinct meetings. It's more representative of grassroots opinion than the Ames straw poll, because people don't have to be bussed in or pay a significant fee to vote. For the Iowa caucus straw poll, Republicans will vote near their homes, all over the state, for free. Turnout will be higher than Ames by an order of magnitude -- about 17,000 votes were cast at Ames, about 120,000 were cast on caucus night four years ago. Media interest in the outcome is reasonable, especially with no previous hard numbers from any state to indicate candidate strength, but media attempts to estimate delegate count based on Tuesday's GOP result are baloney. The true count of bound delegates on Wednesday morning will be goose-eggs across the board.

    Oklahoma Republicans will have caucuses just like Iowa, only four weeks later. On February 1, we'll gather in homes, churches, and cafes, elect delegates to the county convention, vote on potential party platform planks, and conduct a straw poll. Turnout won't be as high, and there won't be any media attention, but functionally, there's no difference between the Oklahoma caucuses and the Iowa caucuses. Unlike Iowa, however, Oklahoma's delegates will be bound to vote for the statewide winner and congressional district winners in our presidential preference primary in March.

    That's not to say that Tuesday's caucuses accomplish nothing beyond manipulating public opinion about the GOP horserace. Real decisions are made that will affect what happens in Tampa.

    Each precinct will elect delegates to the county convention. The county conventions, held on March 10, will each elect delegates to the state convention.

    At the state convention on June 16, state delegates will caucus by congressional district to elect three delegates and three alternates each to the national convention. The state convention as a whole will elect 13 delegates. Three ex officio delegates, Iowa's members of the Republican National Committee, complete the total of 28 delegates -- the State Chairman, the National Committeeman and the National Committeewoman.

    At that June convention, a majority of delegates might decide to elect a slate of national delegates who are inclined to support a particular candidate. That could happen if no candidate has a majority of national delegates sewn up at that point.

    More likely, by June the nomination will already be decided, and the privilege of being a national delegate will be bestowed on hardworking volunteers and generous donors to the state and county parties, for the most part without regard to their presidential preference. In 2008, John McCain finished 4th in the Iowa caucus straw poll with 13.7% of the vote, but at the national convention, all 40 Iowa delegates voted for John McCain. By the time the state convention was held in July (delayed a month due to massive flooding), John McCain was the only candidate who hadn't withdrawn from contention. Thompson and Guiliani dropped out in January, Romney dropped out in February, Huckabee in March, and Paul in June.

    So back to the situation I suggest in the headline to this post. Let's say Paul's support holds and he finishes first in a close race, with about 25% of the statewide caucus vote. That vote won't be evenly distributed. Some precincts will have a majority of Ron Paul supporters in attendance, and I would expect those precincts to elect Ron Paul supporters as their delegates to the county convention and to pass platform resolutions reflecting Ron Paul's distinctive opinions.

    But in this scenario, in the vast majority of precincts, Paul's support will be far below 50%. In these precincts, I would expect supporters of "Non-Paul" candidates to band together and ensure that no Ron Paul supporters represent them at the county convention. There will be exceptions -- a Paulistinian who is a long-time party activist or a community leader might be advanced to the next level.

    At the county level, there may be a few counties with a concentration of Paul supporters where the majority of county delegates will be Paul fans and will elect their own to the state convention. But at most county conventions, Paul's support will be less than 25%, and "Non-Paul" delegates will band together to keep Paul supporters away from the state convention.

    If Paul is to have any backers at all at the state convention, it will only happen if the campaign successfully mobilizes its supporters to constitute a majority of the caucusers at a majority of the precincts in at least one county. If Paul's 25% support is spread evenly across the state, he will have no delegates at the Iowa state convention and no delegates from Iowa in Tampa.

    This outcome would not be the result of a grand establishment conspiracy against Ron Paul. It would be a reflection of how Paul polarizes the Republican electorate. While Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, and Gingrich supporters may disagree about the relative merits of their candidates, they are all likely to agree with each other and differ strongly with Paul supporters on issues like Iran, Israel, drug legalization, and whether 9/11 was an "inside job."

    The supporters of these four candidates may likewise band together to prevent Romney supporters from advancing to the county convention, so that, if there's still an active contest in June, the convention would pick national delegates who will back the non-Romney and non-Paul candidate still in the race.

    This sort of thing happened in Oklahoma in 2008. Ron Paul supporters dominated some county conventions and attempted to get their people elected as national delegates and placed on the statewide slate nominated by the state executive committee. A certain amount of stealth was used -- they didn't identify themselves as Paul backers when campaigning for delegate slots and they stayed away from his distinctive issues. They succeeded in capturing two delegate slots in the 2nd Congressional District, which was the first of the five district conventions. At the the 1st district convention, "Non-Paul" supporters circulated lists of Ron Paul backers seeking delegate slots.

    Since the majority of delegates at Oklahoma's district and state conventions were conventionally conservative Republicans who backed Huckabee, McCain, Romney, and Thompson, they voted for their fellow conventional conservatives for delegate, and Paul backers were shut out. Although all the Oklahoma delegates were bound to vote for the primary winner (6 for Huckabee, 32 for McCain), the worry was that several state delegations full of Paul backers would have created a lot of upset at the national convention, reshaping the platform in disturbing ways and possibly overthrowing rules that bound them to vote for other candidates. In the end, the two Ron Paul supporters in the Oklahoma delegation, bound to vote for Huckabee, were released when he dropped out of the race, and they voted for Paul in the roll call, two of Paul's 23 delegates.

    Ron Paul may "win" the Iowa caucuses straw poll by a narrow margin with a tiny plurality, and that result may boost fundraising and volunteer activity, but it won't boost his delegate count at all.

    RESOURCES: The Green Papers website does a great job of getting the details right on the American political process. Some pages that served as information sources for this entry:

    MORE perspective on Ron Paul:

    Eric Dondero, long time Ron Paul aide, speaks out about the Ron Paul newsletters

    David Bahnsen: The Undiscerning and Dangerous Appreciation of Ron Paul: "Ron Paul knows full well that his closest connections are a mixed bag of the most extremist sort of anarcho-capitalists...."

    I spent several hours speaking with Ron Paul shortly after 9/11. He informed me that the Islamicist threat was a made up one, just as the Communist threat of the 1950's and 1960's was. He told me, to my face, in his own words, that Lew Rockwell and his people were the only ones calling a spade a spade: America did deserve what the Islamicists were trying to do to us, and if we simply learned to leave them alone, they would in turn leave us alone. It was among the most despicable and disappointing conversations I have ever had with another adult....

    My concern is not Ron Paul's errors on this subject. My concern is that he has used the freedom movement to generate name recognition and fame, and then through sleight of hand converted the popularity over his limited government rhetoric to promote an agenda of anti-Americanism and military isolationism.

    HotAir: Paul: I did write parts of the newsletters but not the bad parts. In a radio interview with WHO, Paul changes his story about his newsletters, and effectively disavows only a "total of eight or ten sentences" from his newsletter output, while claiming that he didn't see the edited newsletters and didn't know about the objectionable sentences for years. When I was writing a weekly column that someone else edited, you can bet that I read the published version of the story as soon as it hit the streets and squawked when an edit put something even mildly objectionable in my mouth. As I wrote on one such occasion in 2007:

    When words appear under my byline, they are identified with me, and they speak for me, whether I wrote them or not. I don't appreciate having my name associated with opinions or attitudes I don't share....

    I appreciate what copy editors do. I'm grateful when they fix my typos, add transitional sentences when I lurch too quickly from one idea to another, and make me look smarter, Charlotte's Web style, by putting brilliant headlines over my words. And when they get carried away, I'll handle it as I did this time -- let the readers know of the discrepancy and mend fences with the individuals who might have been offended by what someone else wrote under my name.

    (Here's another example from my farewell to Michael DelGiorno;I protested the editor's gratuitous aside backhanding author Michael Wallis, whom I greatly admire.)

    Roundup 2011/12/28

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

    nov. 2004 006_edited
    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.

    Not Mitt, not Newt

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    The Daily Oklahoman used Sunday morning's editorial to shout at Oklahoma Republicans to rally 'round Mitt Romney. In a nutshell, the editorialists said we need to stop wasting time flirting with other possibilities. We need to forgo the frivolous notion of a competitive primary season. Instead, ve musst alles goosestep in lockstep in support of the Only Candidate Who Can Restore America's Greatness. "Now!" they shouted. Heil Romney!

    HeilRomney.jpg

    Yes, that is the wire-service photo that the Oklahoman used to illustrate their online endorsement. My copy appears to have a rectangular smudge.

    We in the Heartland wait and watch as the Republican debates rage on -- as if we will all text in our votes and pick a winner to stay on the island. This must stop! It is maddening to those of us with strong conservative convictions in the middle of the country. It is enabling Obama to fatten what is already the plumpest campaign war chest in history while the Republicans drain their resources battling each other.

    We believe in the primary system, but even a good system can be detrimental when carried too far. To unseat the incumbent, we need total focus on November, not sideshow politics that will dilute the Republican efforts.

    Hear that, Republican grassroots volunteers, contributors, and voters? Your deliberating about the best candidate for our party's nomination is mere "sideshow politics." Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!

    Good people do the right thing at the right time regardless of party politics. They don't wait for others. The time to unite behind Romney is now, not after Iowa or New Hampshire or the Oklahoma primary in early March. Now!

    "Dad-blast it! I said, now! now! now! you cretinous mob!"

    I was fascinated to see that there was a joint editorial meeting involving Romney and the Oklahoman and the Washington Examiner. Were Oklahoman editorial writers summoned to Washington for an audience? Or were they conferenced in on speakerphone? Did Oklahoma not even rate a visit for an endorsement?

    There has been a steady stream of Romney endorsements in recent days. It's almost as if a desperate candidate, conscious that he is no longer regarded as inevitable, conscious that a majority of Republican voters want someone besides him to win the nomination, is trying to restart the bandwagon. What do you suppose he is saying behind the scenes to these editorial boards and elected officials to get them to jump to his side?

    Even columnist Ann Coulter has gone from saying Romney would lead us to sure defeat against Obama to saying he's the most conservative candidate in the race and the best one to beat Obama, while insulting conservative Tea Party voters in the process.

    Romney's fluidity in moving from one position to its near opposite on social and fiscal issues makes it hard for me to trust him. In 2007, Joan Venocchi of the Boston Globe documented Romney's extreme flip-flops on abortion.

    Paul Rahe says Romney a chameleon and documents even more statements of the earlier version of Romney which contradict the current Romney's views on a wide range of issues. Rahe's conclusion is that he can't be trusted and that he's not that hot a candidate anyway.

    I cannot see how any conservative can support Mitt Romney. I can see how conservatives might vote for him - certainly, if he is the only alternative to Barack Obama, and also if there is no other plausible Republican candidate, as Ramesh Ponnuru argues on National Review Online. But if we do vote for him, we should not lie to ourselves about what we are doing, and we should keep the heat on him if he is elected.

    I should perhaps add that I do not regard Mitt Romney as a shoo-in. He is not an especially accomplished politician. He is a man who won one election. When he ran for Senate, he lost. When he considered running for re-election as Governor, he chose not to do so because he knew that he would lose. When he ran for the Republican nomination in 2008, he lost. If you watch his debate with Ted Kennedy and his interview with Bret Baier and consider the manner in which he misrepresented Romneycare in the Las Vegas debates, you can see why he lost. His responses, when he is not mouthing boilerplate that he has memorized, seem contrived. He is evasive and sometimes petulant. One can see him calculating with regard to what would best play with the general public, and what he says and does is often inept. He often looks like what he is: a man with no political principles who is pandering, and he is actually pretty bad at pandering. He is not quick in discerning which way the wind is blowing. He spent the last four years preparing for the 2011/12 campaign, and he blundered and blundered badly in the manner in which he positioned himself for the race. It is perfectly possible that Barack Obama will make mincemeat of him in a televised debate. Ted Kennedy did.

    Michael Barone, who went to high school with Romney, relates a quote from a Romney colleague:

    Asked by friends what Romney was really like, one Bain Capital veteran responded, "Which four or five of the Romneys do you mean?"

    Flexibility of strategy and tactics are fine; flexibility of principle is not.

    Rahe writes that Newt Gingrich is no better than Romney -- the two are "peas in a pod":

    In short, Gingrich is a lot like Romney. Neither man recognizes that the source of our problems is government meddling and the distortion that this produces in what would otherwise be a free and relatively efficient market. What they think of as a cure is, in fact, the disease. Fannie and Freddie, with the help of a Federal Reserve Board that kept interest rates artificially low for a very long time, produced the subprime mortgage bubble and the subsequent economic crash. If healthcare is outrageously expensive and health insurance can be hard to get, it is because of the manner in which the federal and state governments structure and regulate the market. What these managerial progressives in their desperation to manage the lives of the rest of us fail to understand is that the intellectual presumption underpinning the aspiration to "rational administration" that they embrace is the principal cause of our woes....

    It is a scandal that the Republican Party cannot do better than these two at a time of opportunity like the one in which we live.

    The last word goes to Mark Steyn, who believes that neither Romney nor Gingrich is capable of the kind of leadership we need in these perilous times:

    So, for me, it's not enough merely to replace Obama: He's a symptom of the problem, rather than the underlying cause. The ship of state has become encrusted with barnacles upon barnacles, and, if the next guy isn't committed to getting rid of them, we're still going to sink....

    This next term is critical for America, not just because (if the IMF is correct) it may mark the end of America's long run as the world's leading economy but because, if Obamacare is not repealed in the next four years, it will never be repealed.... Once the Obamacare goodies kick in, getting back across the Rubicon will be a tough job. Nothing in Mitt's past suggests he's got either the stomach for that fight or the savvy to win it....

    So, if these are "crazy and extraordinary times," go with the crazy, right? Newt certainly thinks bigger than Mitt, but unfortunately he thinks in the same direction of unbounded micro-managerial faux-technocracy.

    Steyn's concluding paragraph sums up the reason behind my futile attempt to get Tom Coburn to file for the Oklahoma primary. It seems we're stuck with two mediocre choices before the voting begins (and it has nothing to do with Mitt's Mormonism or Newt's adultery):

    It's a tragedy that the Republican nomination has dwindled down to a choice not worth making. Yet not a single real vote has yet been cast. Iowa and New Hampshire will do us all a favor if they look beyond the frontrunners and keep genuinely conservative candidates in the game.

    Me? I'm pulling for Santorum.

    CoburnPresidentYardSign.pngDear Sen. Coburn,

    Today, Monday, December 5, 2011, marks the opening of the three-day filing period for school board seats in Oklahoma. It's also the filing period for Oklahoma's March 6, 2012, presidential preference primary. I am writing to urge you to file, to put your name on the Oklahoma ballot as a "favorite son" candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.

    In 40 years of watching presidential politics, I've never seen so many credible candidates leave the race (Pawlenty, Cain) or rule themselves out (Daniels, Ryan, Christie, Palin, Giuliani, Jindal, Jeb Bush, etc.) so early in the process, before a single real vote has been cast. At the same time, I've never seen Republican activists so reluctant to commit to a candidate. We're wary of investing our time, our money, and our hearts in a candidate that won't stay in the race for long. Here in Oklahoma, we're used to having our choices severely narrowed before our turn to vote; in 2012, Iowa and New Hampshire may know the same experience.

    The remaining options are less than attractive. Mitt Romney is not a reliable conservative on any issue. Rick Santorum couldn't win re-election in his own state, and he endorsed RINO Arlen Specter for reelection over a solid fiscal conservative primary challenger, Pat Toomey, in 2004. Rick Perry can't seem to think on his feet, and there are some trouble things in his record as governor, as recent as his obstruction, subtle but effective, of Rep. David Simpson's anti-TSA-groping bill. Michele Bachmann says all the right words but doesn't display much depth of thought. Jon Huntsman seems to be more interested in impressing the mainstream media than connecting with the Republican base.

    Ron "Free Bananas!" Paul's foreign policy views are naive and dangerous. In every interview I've heard of Gary Johnson, he seems to have a terminal case of the giggles. As incumbent governor of Louisiana, Buddy Roemer finished third to a crook (Edwin Edwards) and a Klansman (David Duke), and finished fourth in a comeback try four years later. Roemer naively believes that limiting campaign contributions will limit the influence of money in politics, but as long as politics has so much power to influence results in the private sector, money will find a way to flow into politics.

    Coburn-BreachOfTrust.jpgNewt Gingrich is the leading anti-Romney of the moment. Gingrich has serious character problems, of which his serial polygyny is a mere symptom. (Isn't it ironic that the Mormon in the race, not the Baptist-turned-Cathoic, is the husband of one wife?) As you documented in your book Breach of Trust (and Bob Novak in his autobiography), Gingrich's character flaws extended to his leadership of the House of Representatives. For all his brilliance in the 1994 campaign to retake the House, his failures as speaker turned the Republican caucus from principled reform to careerism for the sake of power, laying the groundwork for the moral collapse of the Republican majority, the Pelosi speakership, the Obama presidency, and our current fiscal crisis.

    Beyond his failures as a husband and as a congressional leader, Gingrich is a big-government conservative in an era where government must shrink to make space for private sector can grow. Being a visionary is a fine thing in the private sector, but as a self-proclaimed "Teddy Roosevelt Republican," Newt offers big ideas that depend upon massive government investment and intervention.

    Sen. Coburn, you expressed your worries about Gingrich as recently as Sunday morning:

    "The thing is there are all type of leaders. Leaders that instill confidence, leaders that are somewhat abrupt and brisk, leaders that have one standard for the people they are leading and different standard for themselves," Coburn said on Fox News Sunday. "I found his leadership lacking."

    The best hope for across-the-board (fiscal, social, and defense) conservatives is for another candidate to emerge, but it's too late (believe it or not) for another candidate to enter and compete effectively in the primaries. Filing deadlines have already passed for New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, and Missouri. Oklahoma, Ohio, Louisiana, and Michigan close filing this week. By the time we know the result in New Hampshire, even more deadlines will have passed. Although Iowa has no filing deadline (the caucus straw poll is not binding), a win there would require creating a grassroots GOTV organization ex nihilo in less than a month.

    Tom Coburn speaking on health care fraud, by Medill DC, on FlickrBut there is still a way for a "player to be named later" to become the Republican nominee. "Favorite son" candidates could file in each state, giving Republican voters a way to vote for "None of the Above" and to deny a majority of delegates to any of the currently active candidates, none of whom seem to have the right stuff to win the nomination, win the general election, and then steer the country decisively away from the fiscal Niagara Falls just around the next bend in the river.

    I'm asking you, Sen. Coburn, to run in Oklahoma's primary as our favorite son.

    Sure, any random Republican with the intention of serving as a placeholder for "None of the Above" could cut a check for $2,500 to put his name on the ballot. But Joe Random would have to raise huge amounts of money to publicize his reasons for running and to convince Oklahoma voters that he could be trusted with their votes.

    You wouldn't have that problem, Sen. Coburn. The media, both local and national, would give a Coburn favorite son candidacy significant coverage. Oklahoma Republican voters already know and trust you (your TARP vote notwithstanding -- an error, but well-intentioned), and they know you are not driven by a lust for power. And if a win in Oklahoma turned into a national groundswell for a Coburn nomination, the vast majority of Oklahoma Republicans and fiscal conservatives nationwide would be very, very pleased.

    If you should win the Oklahoma primary, as I expect you would, Oklahoma's 43 delegates would give you a seat at the table in deciding the outcome of a deadlocked national convention, helping to ensure that the Republican nominee is someone who understands the fiscal crisis that looms over our nation and who is prepared to act decisively to deal with it.

    Please think it over, Sen. Coburn. Talk to your wife, your children, your closest advisers. Pray about it. Then get someone to the State Capitol, Room B-6, by Wednesday at 5 with a notarized form and a cashier's check for $2,500 -- for Oklahoma's sake, for America's sake.

    Sincerely,

    Michael D. Bates

    P. S. Cole Hargrave Snodgrass and Associates has a poll (311 Republican primary voters, Nov. 29 - Dec. 1, 2011, margin of error: +/- 4.3%) showing Gingrich with a commanding lead in Oklahoma -- 39% for Gingrich, everyone else in single digits, and 21% undecided. In August, Gingrich was at 5%. If you don't want Gingrich's lacking leadership at the top of the Republican ticket next fall, Sen. Coburn, you need to give voters a better alternative now.

    Newt Gingrich 39%
    Undecided (volunteered) 21%
    Herman Cain 9%
    Mitt Romney 9%
    Rick Perry 8%
    Ron Paul 7%
    Michele Bachmann 5%
    Rick Santorum 2%
    John Huntsman 1%

    Photo of Tom Coburn by Flickr user Medill DC, used under Creative Commons license.

    BatesLine is pleased to welcome an ad from the Oklahoma Republican Party for the 2012 Oklahoma Straw Poll:

    As we recently announced, the Oklahoma Republican Party is holding our inaugural Oklahoma Straw Poll. Many states hold presidential straw polls every four years creating national publicity and financial support for their respective state, but we thought it was about time the reddest state in the country had one of its own!

    Straw polls are important because many times they serve as the first indicator of the strength of a candidate's organization and message.

    We want to give Republicans from all across Oklahoma an opportunity to make their voice heard.

    From November 21st until December 5th, donate $5 to the OKGOP to vote in the Oklahoma Straw Poll. Many Straw Poll voters can end up paying hundreds with travel costs, etc in order to vote in their states' poll, but we are making a way for you to support your candidate and do it from the comfort of your own living room!

    The deadline for voting in the Oklahoma Straw Poll is Monday, December 5, 2011, at 5:00 pm. Click the ad at the top of the page to vote.


    OK_Straw_Poll_Banner-485.png

    This is a great opportunity for Oklahoma Republicans to have a voice, and the money goes to a good cause. Whatever you may or may not like about the national party, the Oklahoma Republican Party is a low-overhead, grassroots-run organization that has produced amazing results.

    There's a reason that the Republican nominee won all 77 counties in 2004 and 2008, that Republicans swept all statewide offices in 2010, and controls supermajorities of both houses of the legislature, after decades in the minority. Yes, Oklahoma voters are conservative, but a voter's views make no difference unless that voter turns out on Election Day. After a disheartening defeat in 2002, Oklahoma Republicans elected Gary Jones (now our State Auditor) as chairman, and Jones instituted a massive turnout effort for 2004, involving hundreds, perhaps, thousands, of local volunteers dropping voter information packets on the doorstep and making calls to remind people to vote. Matt Pinnell ran that successful program, and he's now chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party.

    Beyond turnout efforts, the state party provides training for potential candidates and their helpers and runs the state and district conventions that will elect Oklahoma's delegates to next year's Republican National Convention. You can vote in the Oklahoma Straw Poll and contribute your $5 (or more) knowing that the money will be used effectively.

    Vote now!

    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.

    From Rusty Weiss at Newsbusters:

    Bill Randall is a candidate for Congress, running in North Carolina's 13th Congressional District. Mr. Randall also happens to be an African-American. In early October, Randall had a campaign billboard vandalized with a spray-painted, vulgar phallic symbol, accompanied by the letters "KKK". It was the kind of message that would normally launch the media into full-blown racial apoplexy.

    One small problem. Bill Randall is a Tea Party Conservative Republican.

    Randall filed a complaint over a month ago with the local sheriff, issued a news release, but the local daily, the Raleigh News & Observer, has ignored the story, despite having covered similar acts of political vandalism in the past, according to Weiss's research, including one incident that occurred just 10 days after Randall's sign was vandalized.

    One TV news station, albeit not in the same market, did cover the story, showing part of the graffiti (the KKK) and obscuring the obscene part. (Via breitbart.tv.)

    Randall grew up in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans and served 27 years in the Navy, rising to the rank of Command Master Chief.

    Randall was the Republican nominee in NC-13 in 2010, when the district was heavily Democratic, receiving 44.5% of the vote against a four-term Democratic incumbent. This time around the legislature has redrawn the district to be predominantly Republican (and drawn the incumbent into a different district).

    The aforementioned News & Observer scolded the Randall campaign in an October 28, 2010, editorial (Tulsa Library NewsBank link) about the campaign's "overzealous" poll monitors, watching early voting to ensure against voter fraud. Early voting would make it possible for someone to show up and vote in one person's name at the early voting location (no ID was required in NC), then show up again on Election Day and vote in your own name at your usual polling place. The N&O editorial pooh-poohs the risks of this sort of fraud, but Tulsans have heard of this sort of thing happening.

    MORE:

    Here's a link to the Bill Randall for Congress website.

    Publius Forum has a video from the Randall campaign, spoofing the media double-standard and lack of interest in this case of hateful vandalism. (The video shows the graffiti uncensored.)

    Thurber's Thoughts has more about Randall and notes the broader problem with the liberal backlash against the growing number of African-American conservatives who are running for office or are otherwise active in the political sphere. She mentions two speakers at last week's BlogCon '11: Deneen Borelli of the National Center for Public Policy Research and PJTV video humorist Alfonzo Rachel -- both conservatives who happen to be African-American and who spoke at BlogCon about the hostility directed at that combination of characteristics.

    The challenges facing African-Americans who move from left to right is documented in an upcoming film, which was previewed at Blogcon. A Runaway Slave focuses on the Reverend C. L. Bryant, a Baptist minister who served as president of an NAACP chapter and is now active in the Tea Party movement in Shreveport. The slavery Bryant calls all Americans to escape is an enervating dependency on government. Here's a preview:

    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.

    freedomworksforamerica.pngIt's been an exciting two days here at BlogCon11, FreedomWorks' 2nd annual conference for conservative bloggers. The sessions have covered policy, politics, and technology. Beyond the formal sessions, I've been renewing old acquaintances and building new friendships with bloggers, think-tankers, columnists, and activists from all over America.

    I hope to do a summary of the event later, but one particular session pleased me no end, and I want to pass it along.

    FreedomWorks for America is the FreedomWorks-affiliated Super PAC, and they're in the process of vetting candidates for the 2012 federal election.

    FreedomWorks for America is trying to ensure that the new president is backed by (or faced with) a tough-minded majority of senators and congressmen who will do what we need to do to solve our fiscal crisis before we wind up like Greece. They want to make fiscal conservatives the majority of the majority party, controlling the agenda in both houses of Congress. This effort can't wait for the general election. It has to start well before the primary, helping solid fiscal conservatives to prevail over conservatives-of-convenience in Republican primaries.

    This PAC won't be buying TV time. Instead, it will work to connect fiscally conservative Tea Party-type activists and donors with candidates who are worthy of their support, a "force multiplier for the Tea Party," as FreedomWorks political director Russ Walker put it. The website will help connect activists with any campaign in the country.

    "You have to get your own house in order before you can get out there and start taking on the Democrats," commented Dick Armey, Chairman of FreedomWorks. "Our Super PAC is not about buying television ads, it's about engaging the American public, and getting them outside talking to their neighbors and putting up yard signs. We want to build a grassroots army of active volunteers that will work to retire Democrats in the House and Senate, but also hold Republicans accountable to the principles upon which they got elected."

    Features on the website include candidate profile pages, official endorsements, interactive ranking systems for candidates on the issues, links to pledge time towards community organizing efforts, links to pledge money to a specific campaign, phone banking, grassroots training videos, and downloadable activist toolkits and door-to-door Get Out The Vote (GOTV) materials. It also features a "grassroots lab" where politically-minded volunteers can submit ideas on how to defeat President Obama in 2012, and rank the ideas already submitted.

    "The website is designed to empower the leaderless, decentralized community of the tea party movement. There is no leader, no community organizing Czar. It's simply a political toolkit for individuals across the country to use as they see fit, with unique knowledge of their community and circumstances," commented Matt Kibbe, President of FreedomWorks.

    It's a tough job to find candidates who will remain faithful to conservative principles once they get to Washington. Executive director Max Pappas noted that, with the popularity of the Tea Party movement, every candidate knows the right words to say, so FreedomWorks for America dives deep into the candidate's record and philosophy to find the candidate's fundamental beliefs. Without strong roots in the philosophical and economic basis for limited government, a public official is easily swayed by the prevailing winds of lobbyist pressure and Washington conventional wisdom.

    Checking a candidate's roots means digging back through a candidate's complete public record, going all the way back to earliest part of a candidate's career, votes taken, endorsements made, and contributions given. If a politician endorsed, say, a city sales tax increase or a crony-capitalist state tax credit, it's going to count against him when he tries to move up to federal office.

    In addition to the abundant amount of searchable online data (e.g., news stories, minutes of public meetings), FreedomWorks for America looks to local free-market, limited-government activists and bloggers to dig up information on candidates and to provide context. Local grass-roots opinion matters.

    PACs connected with groups like FreedomWorks and Club for Growth played an important role in the election of strong conservative freshman senators like Mike Lee (UT), who defeated an squishy incumbent Republican, Marco Rubio (FL), who won over an ex-Republican governor who showed his true colors, and Rand Paul (KY). In each case, the national free-market PACs influence helped a consistent fiscal conservative prevail over a wishy-washy or weak Republican.

    Having this kind of scrutiny from influential national conservative organizations will give local activists leverage in keeping Republicans from turning into RINOs on local issues. At the same time, it places a burden on us to ensure that key pieces of the record don't disappear into the ether. Campaign websites (and endorsements) often vanish from the web quickly after election day. In some cases, they never show up online. Local activists can help by scanning and posting candidate mailers and key documents and recording public meetings and political ads, tagging video and audio with the names of those involved, so that later searchers can find the information.

    The FreedomWorks for America candidate browser lets you see the list of all announced and incumbent candidates and 2012 candidates already endorsed. Registered users of FreedomConnector can rate and leave comments on the candidates.

    So far FWA has endorsed five Senate candidates Ted Cruz in Texas, Jeff Flake in Arizona, Adam Hasner in Florida, Richard Mourdock in Indiana, and Don Stenberg in Nebraska. I got to meet Mourdock and Stenberg at a reception Saturday night. Both serve as treasurers of their respective states, making real budget cuts to their departments (not just cuts from the previous rate of growth).

    FWA isn't the only group taking this approach. Sen. Mike Lee has set up a leadership PAC called the Constitutional Conservative Fund, using similar criteria to identify candidates worthy of support. So far they've endorsed Cruz, Flake, Stenberg, and Dan Bongino in Maryland.

    Stay tuned for more blog entries in coming days about more force multipliers that FreedomWorks and its affiliates will be making available to conservative activists for this important 2012 election cycle.

    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.

    GulagBound-DTMJ.png

    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.

    The Tulsa County Republican Party is holding a fundraising estate sale this Friday and Saturday, November 4-5, 2011, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days, at 3635 S. Louisville, Tulsa, OK, 74135.

    For a $5 donation, you can attend a come-and-go preview party on Thursday night, 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

    Proceeds will go to cover the county party's operating expenses, which include running a headquarters office, which provides the party an ongoing presence and point of contact for voters and candidates, and holding next year's Tulsa County Republican Convention, at which delegates to congressional district and state conventions will be elected and a county platform will be considered, the planks of which may ultimately wind up in state and national party platforms.

    It's important to keep in mind that the Tulsa County Republican Party is a grassroots organization The county party's officials are elected by Republican voters who attend precinct caucuses and the county convention, and they receive no compensation. The national and state party organizations provide absolutely no funding for the county party.

    They're still looking for large items to sell, such as furniture. They also need volunteers:

    WE NEED VOLUNTEERS TO HELP SETUP, WORK ON SALE DAYS, TRUCK DRIVERS TO PICK UP ITEMS, AND TELEPHONE CALLERS

    To donate items or arrange for special pickup of larger items, call Rich Fiedler (918-742-4503); To volunteer to make calls, setup or run the sale, call Alana Duvall (918-294-3780) or GOP Headquarters (918-627-5702)

    MOST OF ALL WE NEED GOOD ITEMS TO SELL

    If you can help, please call the numbers above. Otherwise, please plan to stop by and purchase some items in support of a good cause.

    S3018770

    Some links and notes about presidential candidate Herman Cain, related to Politico's thinly-sourced barely-a-story about decades-old sexual harassment allegations.

    I got to know Karol Markowicz at the 2004 Republican National Convention. She had just served as a staffer on Cain's 2004 bid for U. S. Senate in Georgia. (Cain lost the July 2004 primary to Johnny Isakson.) I remember her speaking with glowing admiration for Cain, for his intelligence, character, and political views. Here's what she said about Herman Cain back on July 25, 2004, in her post-mortem of the Cain campaign (interesting reading in its own right):

    If you work or volunteer in politics, I hope you will someday have the opportunity to work for someone that you admire as much as I admire Herman Cain. He is a breath of the freshest air, he is honest, direct, engaging, brilliant, funny and very, very real. He will never forget your name after meeting you. He will never try to pretend to be something he isn't. It takes guts that I can barely understand to do what he did down here in Georgia. He shaped the debate, his opponents ended up using his language and positions as their own. He is a force, if you ever have the opportunity to hear him speak, go do it. You will never forget it. You will not be the same when it's over. I know he will do great things and I will be watching closely.

    In April 12, 2006, she asked for prayers for Cain, undergoing treatment for colon cancer:

    Whenever I'm disenchanted with politics and politicians, whenever I think they're all the same and nothing matters, thinking of Herman Cain makes me remember that there are very real exceptions.

    Powerline blog links to a Minneapolis Star-Tribune story about Herman Cain's years as an executive at Pillsbury

    "My career spans 38 years and I've worked for 26 different managers," said Frank Taylor, a recently retired Burger King financial executive whom Cain hired as his regional controller in 1983. "Herman was far and away the best I've worked for in terms of getting a team together, sharing a vision and accomplishing the goals. And nothing diverted him."

    Cain also shared the wealth. When Burger King distributed $50,000 apiece to the regional vice presidents as reward for good performance in 1985, most of the regional bosses spent it on a trip to a posh resort for themselves and other managers and spouses. The enlisted troops got a dinner. Cain took everybody in his office, including administrative staff, on the same three-day reward cruise, Taylor recalled....

    "I worked with him fairly closely at Burger King," recalled George Mileusnic, a former Pillsbury executive, now a Twin Cities consultant. "He was good strategically and good with people, including working long hours in Burger King stores to get that bottom-up experience. He had about 500 stores in that Philadelphia region and he did a great job."...

    Along with his analytical skills, Cain brought an entrepreneurial fervor to the hurried turnaround at Godfather's in 1986-87. He listened, asked questions and acted, including closing stores, shifting people and even cooking and testing new products in the company's kitchen.

    "I'm Herman Cain and this ain't no April Fool's joke," he told Godfather's employees when he arrived on April 1, 1986. "We are not dead. Our objective is to prove to Pillsbury and everybody else that we will survive."

    An accomplished singer and pianist, Cain occasionally led the headquarters crew in after-hours song, and performed charitable gigs in Omaha, backed by a chorus of managers. He also demanded that senior managers know every employee working for them on a first-name basis and occasionally quizzed executives on that and other personnel issues.

    "That was pretty unique," Mileusnic said. "Those stories got around Pillsbury. Herman was very quantitative and analytical, but he demanded that everybody be engaged and every employee must be appreciated and respected."

    Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard spoke to aides and assistants to Herman Cain, including Karol Markowicz, longtime executive assistant Sibby Wolfson, and 2004 campaign political director Matt Carrothers -- none of whom currently work for Cain:

    "It's just not Herman," says Sibby Wolfson, who was Cain's executive assistant from 1997 through his first campaign for office in 2004, in a phone interview. "He's got a lovely wife, a lovely family."

    Did Wolfson ever see Cain act in a way that could be construed as sexual harassment? "No, God, no," she says. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, I think Herman was careful to act in the opposite way."...

    "Never once have I ever seen anything but professional behavior" from Cain, says Matt Carrothers, who was Cain's political director from December 2003 to July 2004. "I find [the allegations] extremely hard to believe," Carrothers says in a phone interview....

    "This is a man of incredible character," Carrothers says. "He has nothing but respect for women."

    Other veterans of the 2004 campaign agree. "The allegations seem completely unbelievable to me," says Karol Markowicz, who was Cain's assistant press secretary in '04. "He was never anything but a completely perfect gentleman." She says many who worked on that campaign have the same assessment.

    "Sometimes someone is nice or good to you personally but you know they behave a different way toward other people," Markowicz says. "Herman is not like that. I never saw one moment where he wavered from being an upstanding, solid person."

    Karol called into last night's Mark Levin show, starting at 31:25 for about 3 minutes. And she has a column standing up for Herman Cain in today's New York Post:

    With Cain, however, his electricity comes from his authenticity. People fall for him because he is so unpolished and real. He is a serious, solid man who speaks often of the importance of family and faith. He never seems as if he is selling a line or covering up his true self.

    MORE: I'm impressed that Herman Cain is willing to speak the truth about Planned Parenthood's racist roots, and not backing down an inch when challenged:

    "Here's why I support de-funding Planned Parenthood, because you don't hear a lot of people talking about this: When Margaret Sanger--check my history--started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world," Cain responded.

    "You don't see that talked that much about," Cain said. "It's not Planned Parenthood. No, it's planned genocide. You can quote me on that."...

    "It's carrying out its original mission," said Cain. "I've talked to young girls who go in there and they don't talk about how you plan parenthood. They don't talk about adoption as an option. They don't say bring your parents in so you we can talk to you before you make this decision.

    "Talk to some young lady who has gone into some of these centers to see what kind of conversation takes place," said Cain. "They have basically carried out their original mission. There's not any planning other than to abort the baby.

    "When they have an objective to put 75 percent [Planned Parenthood facilities] in African American communities, says to me they are targeting blacks," Cain said....

    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.

    IMG_9747

    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.

    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:

    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.

    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.

    Former Utah Gov. and Obama Administration Ambassador to China Jon Huntsman has hired two campaign consultants with ties to Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe to handle the candidate's video and digital presence.

    Ryan Cassin is Huntsman's digital strategist, according to a CNN story about the Huntsman campaign website. Cassin served as political director of Inhofe's 2008 reelection campaign, GOTV/grassroots coordinator for the Oklahoma Republican State House Committee in 2006, and deputy campaign manager for Mick Cornett's unsuccessful 2006 run for Oklahoma's 5th Congressional District. Earlier this year Cassin and former Inhofe campaign manager Josh Kivett founded Connect Strategic Communications.

    Fred Davis, Inhofe's nephew, is Huntsman's media strategist, creating web video ads which have received notice in political circles for being rather odd:

    Needless to say, the ads are a bit of a head-scratcher if you don't already know about Huntsman. It's all very puzzling.

    "Exactly right. On purpose. Correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, but is the election today? I can't remember," said Fred Davis, the man responsible for the video series. " ... The goal today is to say, 'huh, you know I'm not really excited about anybody on the Republican side running for president. Look, here's somebody's whose fresh and different. That's all you can ask for today."

    Davis is a very affable man on quite a hot streak. He was behind the viral Carla Fiorina "Demon Sheep" ad in the 2010 midterms and is accustomed to making a splash with his off-beat videos. It's perfect and "will eventually make sense," he said of Huntsman's unconventional campaign, which he's joining in an official capacity.

    You'll recall that Davis was also behind Christine O'Donnell's "I'm Not a Witch" ad from 2010 and Bob Sullivan's campaign ads attacking Ernest Istook during the 2006 Oklahoma Republican governor's primary. (Those ads involved Gailard Sartain, a pig mask, and an Istook mask.)

    (I started looking into this because I was surprised to see exuberantly positive mentions of Huntsman on my Facebook home page from Cassin. I didn't expect to see any of my Facebook friends -- mostly Tulsans, Oklahomans, and national bloggers -- excited about a Huntsman candidacy.)

    MORE on Jon Huntsman:

    Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks dismisses Huntsman:

    "To be honest with you...we haven't really taken a look at him [Huntsman] because I don't consider him a serious candidate," said Kibbe. "If he starts to emerge as somebody- I mean, I've been told by people that he's not terribly good on our issues."...

    "He [Huntsman] had some pretty glorifying things to say about the stimulus," Kibbe continued. "And apparently...there's a lot of rumors that's he's signed some really glowing letter about Obama as soon as he was an ambassador," he added jokingly.

    Michelle Malkin: "Jon Huntsman: McCain on Wheels"

    Huntsman is the latest no-labels flavor of the month, a straw man of the same people who have spent the past year smearing entitlement reformers as senior-citizen killers, budget hawks as Hitler's spawn, border-security activists as racists, and leading GOP women as sluts, nuts, and bimbos.

    While politely paying lip service to principles of tea-party fiscal restraint, Huntsman hopes no one remembers how 2,000 Utah tea-party activists booed him in April 2009 so corrosively it could have stripped the paint off a fleet of Harleys.

    Utah conservatives raised their voices at the seminal tea-party rally against Huntsman for championing $1.6 billion in Obama stimulus funds (Huntsman wanted even more money than that) -- and against GOP senator Orrin Hatch and then-GOP senator Bob Bennett for backing the Bush-Obama TARP bailout. The grassroots message: "Send them home!" A year later, voters ousted Bennett from the GOP primary after four profligate terms in office. And Hatch is in for the fight of his entrenched incumbent life.

    Malkin points out several similarities between McCain and Huntsman with regard to global warming, illegal immigration, and government control of health care.

    In an interview with Politico, Huntsman says he plans to win the nomination by appealing to non-Republicans who will be able, in many states, to cross over and vote in the Republican primary.

    Given that an incumbent president is a prohibitive favorite to win renomination, many Democrat voters will take the lack of a competitive primary for their own party to influence the outcome of the Republican nomination process.

    The former Utah governor's strategy is an attempt to make a virtue out of necessity. His moderate positions on the environment, immigration and civil unions --and his time as Barack Obama's ambassador to China--are formidable obstacles to victory in a party where the energy is concentrated in the conservative core.

    Huntsman plans to skip the Iowa caucuses. Huntsman's wealth and past political favors may win him political allies that might otherwise reject him on policy grounds:

    A litany of establishment South Carolina Republicans who have already signed up to support him were at his side: former state party executive director Joel Sawyer, who is running his effort in the state; Mike Campbell, son of the late Gov. Carroll Campbell, a revered Republican figure here; and former state Attorney General Henry McMaster.

    McMaster is returning the support he got from Huntsman several years ago, when the ex-governor held a fundraiser out out west that netted $60,000 for McMaster's 2010 gubernatorial campaign. The fundraiser was held before Huntsman departed to become ambassador to China.

    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):

    birth-certificate-long-form-image9.png

    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.

    T6TexanII.jpgTo 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.

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    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):

    1. Eliminate funding for the ethanol subsidy$6 billion
    2. Eliminate funds for leftover earmarks$7.3 billion
    3. Eliminate program duplications identified by GAO$5 billion
    4. Eliminate unemployment payments to millionaires$20 million
    5. Reduce new car purchases by the government$900 million
    6. Eliminate funds for 'covered bridges' program$8.5 million
    7. Eliminate taxpayer subsidies for public broadcasting$550 million

    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:

    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.
    Warner Todd Huston reports that mainstream media's coverage of a crooked Maryland county politician has (once again) neglected to identify the crook's party affiliation.

    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.)


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

    Are any of you volunteering your time for a candidate between now and Tuesday? You can join me in Muskogee on Saturday campaigning for Charles Thompson, volunteer for a Tulsa-area legislative candidate, volunteer (405-528-3501) to phone or distribute literature for the Oklahoma statewide GOP get-out-the-vote effort, or call voters in key districts around the country.

    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.

    Be the wave!

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    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.)

    See the wave...

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    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.

    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.

    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:

    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.

    PLANiTULSA, Mass. senate

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    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.

    Best-of-2009 lists

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    '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 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:

    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.

    Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Ray Stevens, whose work spans a half century and ranges from the sublime to the ridiculous, has a topical new song with a straightforward message for our representatives in Washington:

    Why on earth does anyone, left-wing or right-wing, think this is a good idea?

    In its real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), the CBO says that the bill would cost $1.8 trillion -- for insurance coverage expansions alone. Other parts of the bill would cost approximately $700 billion more, bringing the bill's full 10-year tab to approximately $2.5 trillion -- according to the CBO.

    In those real first 10 years (2014 to 2023), Americans would have to pay over $1 trillion in additional taxes, over $1 trillion would be siphoned out of Medicare (over $200 billion out of Medicare Advantage alone) and spent on Obamacare, and deficits would rise by over $200 billion. They would rise, that is, unless Congress follows through on the bill's pledge to cut doctors' payments under Medicare by 21 percent next year and never raise them back up -- which would reduce doctors' enthusiasm for seeing Medicare patients dramatically.

    And what would Americans get in return for this staggering sum? Well, the CBO says that health care premiums would rise, and the Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that the percentage of the Gross Domestic Product spent on health care would rise from 17 percent today to 21 percent by the end of 2019. Nationwide health care costs would be $234 billion higher than under current law. How's that for "reform"?

    Sen. Tom Coburn, M. D., doesn't think it's a good idea. From his Wall Street Journal op-ed:

    My 25 years as a practicing physician have shown me what happens when government attempts to practice medicine: Doctors respond to government coercion instead of patient cues, and patients die prematurely. Even if the public option is eliminated from the bill, these onerous rationing provisions will remain intact.

    For instance, the Reid bill (in sections 3403 and 2021) explicitly empowers Medicare to deny treatment based on cost. An Independent Medicare Advisory Board created by the bill--composed of permanent, unelected and, therefore, unaccountable members--will greatly expand the rationing practices that already occur in the program. Medicare, for example, has limited cancer patients' access to Epogen, a costly but vital drug that stimulates red blood cell production. It has limited the use of virtual, and safer, colonoscopies due to cost concerns. And Medicare refuses medical claims at twice the rate of the largest private insurers....

    But the most fundamental flaw of the Reid bill is best captured by the story of one my patients I'll call Sheila. When Sheila came to me at the age of 33 with a lump in her breast, traditional tests like a mammogram under the standard of care indicated she had a cyst and nothing more. Because I knew her medical history, I wasn't convinced. I aspirated the cyst and discovered she had a highly malignant form of breast cancer. Sheila fought a heroic battle against breast cancer and enjoyed 12 good years with her family before succumbing to the disease.

    If I had been practicing under the Reid bill, the government would have likely told me I couldn't have done the test that discovered Sheila's cancer because it wasn't approved under CER. Under the Reid bill, Sheila may have lived another year instead of 12, and her daughters would have missed a decade with their mom.

    I was "chasing a rabbit," looking for info on how Oklahoma apportioned seats in the State Legislature among counties prior to a 1964 Federal court mandate (which to this day overrules the text of our State Constitution).

    What I found was a set of newsletters on the University of Arizona website by Democratic U. S. Rep. Morris K. Udall. These newsletters -- essays on various hot topics of the day -- were sent over the course of his thirty-year congressional career to a mailing list of his constituents (a 1967 letter mentions about 20,000 of them who had opted in to the list at some point).

    The first letter I found had to do with three landmark U. S. Supreme Court decisions that together forced states to apportion both houses of the legislature into districts of roughly equal population: Baker v. Carr (1962), Wesberry v. Sanders (1963), and Reynolds v. Sims and Lucas v. Colorado General Assembly (1964):

    Congressman's Report: October 14, 1964 -- Reapportionment--I: One Man, One Vote . . . That's All She Wrote!

    A second letter on the same topic outlined the impasse in Congress between those who supported the states complying with these decisions and those who felt the Warren Court had overreached, particularly in the third decision, and a constitutional amendment was in order to allow states the right to consider other factors in apportioning legislative seats, just as the U. S. Constitutional Convention had done in seeking to balance the concerns of large and small states.

    Congressman's Report: December 11, 1964 -- Reapportionment--II: Where Do We Go From Here?

    Udall presents the reasonable arguments put forward by those who objected to the Court's rulings, explains why their proposed constitutional amendment won't get anywhere, and proposes a compromise that he hopes will satisfy both sides.

    Another report of note, this time on the Electoral College:

    Congressman's Report, Vol. VII, No. 2: August 28, 1968 -- The Electoral College Is Flunking Out

    Udall looks ahead to the close three-way race developing between Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace (the last third-party candidate to have some of his electors elected by popular vote). Udall outlines a nightmare scenario in which no candidate wins a majority of the electoral vote and then the House, voting by state, doesn't give a majority to any candidate. Udall proposes that candidates for Congress pledge to the voters that, should the election end up in the House, they will vote for whichever candidate wins the largest national popular vote, regardless of party. In the end, Nixon managed an electoral vote majority, despite only a narrow plurality of the popular vote.  (It could be said that, contrary to Udall's fears, the electoral vote saved us from an uncertain conclusion resulting from no candidate having a majority of the popular vote.)

    Reading these letters, it's easy to understand Udall's appeal to many voters. He wrote clearly, took his readers' intelligence for granted, injected a bit of humor from time to time, explained both sides of an issue, and often offered a compromise that he hoped would satisfy the concerns of both sides. In 1976, when he was one of about  a dozen candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, my pun- and Pogo-loving grandma supported Udall in the Arkansas primary. The title of his autobiography was Too Funny to Be President.

    Here's the best I've read so far, and the one with the most enduring value even in the age of e-mail:

    Congressman's Report, Vol. VI, No. 1: January 20, 1967 -- The Right to Write: Some Suggestions on Writing Your Congressman

    Some of the best suggestions are some that are still often violated today:

    ** Write your own views -- not someone else's. A personal letter is far better than a form letter or signature on a petition. Many people will sign a petition without reading it just to avoid offending the circulator; form letters are readily recognizable -- they usually arrive in batches -- and usually register the sentiments of the person or lobbying group preparing the form. I regret to report that form letters often receive form replies. Anyway, I usually know what the major lobbying groups are saying, but I don't often know of your experiences and observations, or what the proposed bill will do to and for you. And I often am not fully aware of new conditions and developments in Arizona. A sincere, well-thought-out letter from you can help fill this gap.

    ** Give your reasons for taking a stand. Statements like "Vote against H.R. 100; I'm bitterly opposed" don't help me much. But a letter which says "I'm a small hardware dealer, and H.R. 100 will put me out of business for the following reasons ... " tells me a lot more. Maybe I didn't know all the effects of the bill, and your letter will help me understand what it means to an important segment of my constituency.

    ** Don't make threats or promises. Congressmen usually want to do the popular thing, but this is not their only motivation; nearly all the Members I know want, most of all, to do what is best for the country. Occasionally a letter will conclude by saying, "If you vote for this monstrous bill, I'll do everything in my power to defeat you in the next election." A writer has the privilege of making such assertions, of course, but they rarely intimidate a conscientious Member, and they may generate an adverse reaction. He would rather know why you feel so strongly. The reasons may change his mind; the threat probably won't.

    ** Don't berate your congressman. You can't hope to persuade him of your position by calling him names. If you disagree with him, give reasons for your disagreement. Try to keep the dialogue open.

    ** Don't pretend to wield vast political influence. Write your congressman as an individual -- not as a self-appointed spokesman for your neighborhood, community or industry. Unsupported claims to political influence will only cast doubt upon the views you express.

    ** Don't become a constant "pen pal." In a newsletter appealing for more constituent mail I don't want to discourage letters, but quality, rather than quantity, is what counts. Write again and again if you feel like it, but don't try to instruct your congressman on every issue that comes up. And don't nag at him if his votes do not match your precise thinking every time. Remember, he has to consider all his constituents and all points of view. Also, keep in mind that one of the pet peeves on Capitol Hill is the "pen pal" who weights the mail down every few days with long tomes on every conceivable subject. 

    I'm certain there are dozens of issues of the day on which I would have disagreed with Mo Udall -- his vote for Speaker, for a start -- but you have to admire a writer and thinker of his caliber.

    Too tired and on the verge of getting sick, so no actual writing tonight, but here are a few links of interest from hither and yon:

    Steve Lackmeyer raises a concern for "Lost Bricktown," the part of Oklahoma City's warehouse district west of the Santa Fe tracks that escaped 1960s urban renewal. These surviving buildings may be doomed by Core to Shore, and these most vulnerable buildings are slated to be the last to be covered by a historical survey of downtown architecture and may be gone by the time the survey gets around to them. Pictures here.

    Chicago-based blogger Anne Leary, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at last year's RNC, had an interesting encounter with Bill Ayers, the unrepentant terrorist and pal of Barack Obama, at the Starbucks at Reagan National Airport. Apparently prompted by Anne's statement that she was a conservative blogger, Ayers told her that he wrote Dreams of My Father, Barack Obama's autobiography, at Michelle Obama's request. In a more recent post she rounds up some of the reaction. Was he pulling her leg? Christopher Andersen's new book on the Obamas' marriage reports that Ayers took Obama's notes and tapes and turned them into the book.

    Tulsa Chigger offers a platform for public education reform in Tulsa and salutes the announcement that charter school founder Janet Barresi is running for State Superintendent.

    Ephemeral Isle has a birthday salute to Le Corbusier. And there's a link to this interesting BBC story on how central heating has changed family life, not necessarily for the better.

    Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, has a mayor named Peter Davies who ran on an anti-political-correctness platform. He is canceling funding for the gay rights parade ("I don't see why council taxpayers should pay to celebrate anyone's sexuality"), ended the town's sister cities relationships ("just for people to fly off and have a binge at the council's expense"), asked to reduce the number of councilors from 63 to 21, saving £800,000 a year, got rid of the mayoral limousine, cut his own salary by more than half, and cut council tax by 3 percent. All that in his first week in office. (The Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster has just under 300,000 residents, somewhat smaller than the City of Tulsa.) By the way, Doncaster uses a limited form of instant runoff voting that has voters mark their second preference. If no candidate receives a majority all but the top two candidates are eliminated and their votes redistributed according to second preference. Not the ideal, but better than no runoff at all. Telegraph blogger Gerald Warner writes of Davies:

    Davies, the father of Tory MP Philip Davies, is one of just 11 directly elected mayors and he is enjoying increasing media exposure because of his outrageous agenda which, against all the tenets of consensual British politics, consists of doing what the public wants.

    You may be feeling disorientated, overcome by a surreal sensation, on hearing such extraordinary, unprecedented views. They are the almost forgotten, forcibly extinguished voice of sanity which most people had thought forever excised from British politics. These policies are common sense, which is something we have not experienced in any council chamber, still less the House of Commons, in decades. The establishment is moving heaven and earth to discredit and obstruct Davies. He is that ultimate embarrassment: the boy who reveals that the Emperor has no clothes.

    Oklahoma 1st District Congressman John Sullivan will conduct two town halls tomorrow, Monday, August 31, 2009. At 2 p.m. Sullivan will meet with constituents at the NSU-BA Auditorium. At 4 p.m., there will be a town hall in the TCC PACE on the TCC southeast campus at 81st and US 169. For more information, contact the congressman's office at 918-749-0014.

    Remembering Bob Novak

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    Robert Novak of the Evans and Novak Political Report, who spent over a half-century covering Washington politics and became a star of television debate shows like the McLaughlin Group, Crossfire, and Capitol Gang, died yesterday after a year-long battle with brain cancer.

    Novak was a fascinating character. He was not a standard-issue conservative Republican. He moved rightward on social and economic issues, but he never was a party loyalist. He was friendly enough with Washington pols that they fed him all sorts of insider information, but he never succumbed to the Beltway mentality.

    I almost met him once. He was sitting several chairs to my right at the 2004 Republican platform committee meeting. I wrote at the time, "I thought about asking for an autograph or taking a picture, but there's something unseemly about treating a working journalist like a celeb."

    Here are several profiles and tributes worth reading:

    In his September 5, 2008, column, Novak wrote about the accident that led to the discovery of the tumor, his surgery and treatment, and the many political friends and adversaries who provided advice, aid, and encouragement.

    Excerpts from several tributes about only-childhood as a source of confidence, his political heroes, his impact on Cold War politics, and his character, after the jump.

    A humorous illustration of the one-size-slow-go-rationed health care plan being proposed by Barack Obama and the Democrats:

    (Via Chris Medlock.)

    If you follow BatesLine on Twitter (and you should), you'll have seen my tweet yesterday about Americans United for Life live-blogging the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. AUL has a legal focus, researching state and federal legislation, court cases, and court nominations that affect issues like abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia.

    As soon as the nomination was announced AUL launched Sotomayor411, which provides the paper trail to show that, as bad as Justice David Souter has been on life issues, Sotomayor would be far worse. Another site, AskSotomayor.com, listed AUL's top ten questions for senators to ask the nominee and asked readers to vote for their favorite.

    Veteran pro-life blogger Dawn Eden, AUL's Senior Fellow for Publications and New Media Outreach, is providing the Judiciary Committee play-by-play, with commentary from AUL president Charmaine Yoest. Eden is well-known for her thorough research on pro-life issues and for her knack for brevity, honed by years of headline writing for New York tabloids.

    Here are a couple of updates from Okla. Sen. Tom Coburn's questioning of Sotomayor:

    12:24 p.m. - Coburn continues critiquing Sotomayor's past statements. "You've taken the oath already twice, and if confirmed, will take it again." Reminds her of what the oath says -- "I will faithfully and impartially discharge all the duties ..." Notes that it doesn't reference foreign law, whereas Sotomayor has said we should take foreign law into consideration.

    12:23 p.m. - Coburn says concerns over Sotomayor's past statements will guide his questioning. Is "deeply concerned" by Sotomayor's saying the law is "uncertain" and her praise for an "unpredictable" system of justice. We want justice to be predictable, he says.

    Even if you aren't concerned about the sanctity of human life, a Supreme Court nominee who looks beyond the written Constitution and laws to "empathy" and foreign precedents as a basis for her rulings is a threat to the life, liberty, and property of every American, whether born or unborn.

    Beyond the life-and-death issues at stake in these hearings, what AUL is doing should be of interest to organizations looking for social media best practices. Just as food needs to digested down into nutrients to get into circulation and reach all parts of the body, a complex news story needs to be digested into pieces that can easily be circulated via blogs and Twitter. There are sympathetic bloggers and Twitter users willing to spread the word, but they don't have time to do the digesting themselves.

    Many organizations blast out detailed press releases to bloggers by e-mail (too often accompanied by unsolicited high-res publicity photos). These releases often sit unread and unblogged because they require too much time and effort to digest and turn into a blog post. They can't be turned into a tweet because the press releases exist only in e-mail and so can't be linked. Brief highlights that can be passed along with a couple of mouse-clicks, accompanied by pointers to more detailed analysis and documentation, are far more useful to a blogger/tweeter and more likely to circulate widely.

    As James Lileks tweeted, "You want to be quoted? Speak in Lego pieces, not bolts of cloth."

    I have only one suggestion for AUL: Post some of the live-blog updates to Twitter (@AUL) in real-time, with appropriate hashtags (#sotomayor and #sotoshow seem to be the most popular) with a shortened link back to the AUL's Sotomayor hearing live-blog.

    KarlMalden-OnTheWaterfront.jpg

    Alisa Harris posted a clip from the movie On the Waterfront on the World Magazine Blog in memory of Karl Malden. It's a powerful speech in which Malden, as Father Barry, gives last rites to a longshoreman who was ready to testify against the Mob and paid for his courage with his life. Father Barry finds in Christ the courage to take his own stand in the face of a hostile crowd. It had me in tears.

    I came down here to keep a promise. I gave Kayo my word that if he stood up to the mob I'd stand up with him -- all the way. And now Kayo Dugan is dead. He was one of those fellows who had the gift of standing up....

    Now what does Christ think of the easy money boys who do none of the work and take all of the gravy? And how does He feel about the fellas who wear $150 suits -- and diamond rings! -- on your union dues and your kickback money? And how does He, who spoke up without fear against every evil, feel about your silence?

    You want to know what's wrong with our waterfront? It's the love of a lousy buck. It's making the love of the lousy buck - the cushy job - more important than the love of man. It's forgetting that every fellow down here is your brother in Christ. But remember, Christ is always with you - Christ is in the shape up. He's in the hatch. He's in the union hall. He's kneeling right here beside Dugan. And He's saying with all of you, if you do it to the least of mine, you do it to me!

    And what they did to Joey and what they did to Dugan, they're doing to you -- and you -- you -- all of you! And only you -- only you with God's help have the power to knock 'em out for good!

    (If you're reading this on the home page, you can watch the clip in the extended entry. Otherwise, scroll down.)

    Less eloquently, I tried to make a similar point in my November 2, 2005, column in Urban Tulsa Weekly on faith and political courage:

    But faith is more than reciting a creed or performing certain rituals. Faith involves confidence and trust. During a worship service you profess certain things to be true about God's nature and character. During the rest of the week, your true faith--what you really believe about God and his dealings with you and the rest of the humanity--becomes apparent in the way you live your life, and particularly in the way you deal with adversity.

    For that reason, what an elected official really believes about God's nature and character affects how he conducts himself in office. Someone who has genuine confidence and trust in God as He is revealed in the Bible will have courage and persistence in the face of discouragement, danger, hostility, oppression, and injustice....

    The usual pressure tactics won't succeed with the politician who reads and believes the Epistle to the Philippians. He turns his anxieties into prayers to his all-sufficient Father. You can threaten his job or his wife's job, but he reads that God will supply all his needs. You can threaten him with removal from office, but he is learning, with Paul, to be content in any situation.

    You can threaten his reputation and position, but he is a follower and servant of Christ, who forsook his heavenly throne, "made himself of no reputation, and took upon [himself] the form of a servant." You can threaten his life, but he knows that "to die is gain"--the worst you can do is send him on to his heavenly home earlier than he expected. He expects to share in the sufferings of his Lord, but also in his Lord's resurrection.

    If you're a Councilor steeped in Scripture you aren't going to be deterred when a big donor threatens to fund your opponent; when someone from the Chamber or the Home Builders corners you to cuss you out over a vote, or when the morning paper does another front-page hatchet job on you....

    If we want elected officials who are fearless to do what is right, we ought to look for men and women whose character has been shaped by confidence in a God who is bigger than any adversary they may face.

    MORE:

    From 2005, some reactions to that column, including this from Councilor Rick Westcott, then a first-time candidate:

    I also think that a person's faith gives them a sense of identity which helps ground them in times of trouble. Because I know who I am in Christ, who God made me, because I know He has a plan for me, it gives me a sense of identity that isn't shaken by those who might attack me. I don't need the external validation that some seek from others.

    Jim Geraghty notes an interesting omission in the resume of Merrick Alpert, a Democratic primary challenger to U. S. Sen. Chris "Countrywide" Dodd. From the resume:

    In 1993, he went to work for the National Health Care Campaign, organizing the State of Oklahoma. While in Oklahoma, he was hired as a policy advisor to the governor of that state.

    Why not mention the Gov. by name? Geraghty finds a reason for the omission in the Wikipedia entry for David Walters:

    ...Walters term was controversial as numerous former campaign aides testified to illegal activities in his campaign organization. While in office he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor election violation as opposed to felony charges. He did not run for re-election in 1994.

    As I reported last September, David Walters had sufficiently rehabilitated his reputation within the party to be appointed co-chair of the Democratic National Convention rules committee, so I'm surprised that a Democratic primary candidate in the northeast would feel the need to obscure a connection to him.

    NotOneRedCentBlogAdLarge.jpgConservative Republican activists have long been wary of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), a political organization controlled by the Republican caucus in the U. S. Senate. The NRSC's official purpose is to help the Republican Party gain and maintain a majority in the Senate.

    In Pennsylvania in 2004 and in Rhode Island in 2006, the NRSC invested resources to prop up liberal Republicans against conservative challengers. U. S. Rep Pat Toomey lost the 2004 Pennsylvania Republican primary to incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter by less than 2% of the vote. While Specter won re-election, he switched parties a few weeks ago and will be running for re-election this year as a Democrat. Rhode Island Sen. Lincoln Chafee won renomination in 2006 over Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey by a 53-47 margin. Chafee lost the general and left the Republican Party. (Laffey has written a book about the experience: Primary Mistake.)

    You could make a case for the NRSC supporting incumbent Republicans, although it's a weak case if those incumbents oppose conservative Republican stances on nearly every issue.

    But now the NRSC has gone one step beyond: The NRSC has endorsed Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a moderate, against former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, a conservative, in an open primary to replace retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez. No one has a problem with Crist entering the race, but the NRSC ought to let Florida Republicans make the decision rather than intervening on behalf of one candidate, and the least conservative of the two at that. Crist recently signed an anti-tax pledge as a Senate candidate, just as he's getting ready to break his pledge to Americans for Tax Reform not to raise taxes as governor.

    Leading conservative voices in the blogosphere have responded vigorously. Erick Erickson of RedState has launched a Facebook group: Not one penny to the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC). Robert Stacy McCain has set up a special blog to track the NRSC boycott called Not One Red Cent.

    The only thing these committees understand is money. If the money dries up, they'll have some incentive to change their ways.

    UPDATE: Erickson says he's getting pressured to shut down the "Not one penny" group.

    From homeschooling mom's Susie Dutcher's testimony to the U. S. Senate Finance Committee in 1999:

    I would love to put more dollars into our retirement account, for example, but I'm forced to put them into your Social Security trust fund, which I don't trust. I'd like to buy more books for Lincoln, Elizabeth, and Mary Margaret, and put more money in their college fund, but you've already seen fit to use that money funding closed-captioning for the Jerry Springer show. I'd love to get ballet lessons for Elizabeth, but my money is tied up buying food stamps for the deceased. I'd love to give more money to support our church's missionary in Albania, or the free medical clinic in Oklahoma City, but instead I'm forced to fund fish farming in Arkansas and Social Security disability payments for escaped convicts. Call us greedy, but my husband and I would like for the most part to make our own choices concerning the fruit of our labor. But naturally, under threat of imprisonment, we defer to your choices.

    It's worth reading the whole thing.

    arugulance.jpgI seem to have started something.

    I made up a punny word for the headline of a 2007 blog post on Barack Obama's lament, at an Iowa campaign appearance, about the high price of arugula at Whole Foods Market. A few other bloggers, including Michelle Malkin and see-dubya, picked up on it. (The graphic at right is by michellemalkin.com reader Tennyson.)

    The word in question -- "arugulance" -- appears to have gained some degree of popular acceptance. Barry Popik, the pop-culture etymologist who searched out the origins of New York City's "Big Apple" nickname, has traced the term from its origins to the present. It appeared in a headline over Maureen Dowd's April 18, 2009, column: "The Aura of Arugulance." The copy editor appears to have pulled it from San Francisco restaurateur Alice Palmer's quote in the story about being derided as a food snob: "I'm just put into that arugulance place. I own a fancy restaurant. I own an expensive restaurant. I never thought of it as fancy. People don't know we're supporting 85 farms and ranches and all of that." It's interesting that she uses the term without defining it, suggesting that she doesn't perceive "arugulance" as an obscure word.

    A day later, Josh Friedland at The Food Section offered a definition of "arugulance":

    a·ru·gu·lance (noun): a (perceived) attitude of superiority and snobbery manifested in an appetite for pricey -- yet delicious -- peppery greens.

    On April 20, an alternative definition was offered by Isaac Seliger at Grant Writing Confidential:

    Ordinarily, I don't read [Maureen Dowd's] column, as she is usually even too cynical for a inherently cynical and grizzled grant writer like me. This time, however, the headline caught my eye because it used the term "arugulance," which I learned is shorthand for the arrogance of the grow local/buy local/shop at Whole Paycheck movement.

    The next day, Urban Mennonite called "arugulance" "one of five words with which I am newly in love."

    An October 2008 entry on Target Rich Environment about Philadelphia talk radio host Michael Smerconish takes Smerconish's unfamiliarity with "arugulance" as an indicator of the host's lack of contact with conservative thought:

    He's embraced the Huffington Post and other left-of-center sources for some time, and seemingly ignores all voices on the right (for example, when a caller a few months ago brought up Obama's "arrugulance," Smercommie had no idea what he was talking about).

    The blogger takes it for granted that by sometime in early 2008, arugulance is already in common use on the conservative side of the blogosphere. michellemalkin.com's link in April 2008 seems to have launched the term's currency among conservatives.

    It would be interesting to know the path the word took to get from Michelle Malkin and her readers to Alice Palmer. Like an underground stream, it disappeared for some distance before re-emerging. At some point it must have crossed the conservative-liberal linguistic divide. Or it may be that a lover of wordplay in Palmer's circle of acquaintances independently coined the term.

    "Arugulance" won't have the impact of "blogosphere," but it fills a niche.

    Tea Party notes

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    I didn't make it to any of the Tulsa Tea Parties. I had a quick lunch so I could get home in time to have a nice dinner out with my wife on her birthday -- just the two of us. (We went to Bangkok at 33rd and Harvard. It's a Thai buffet. Wonderful, spicy, tasty food and a wide variety of choices. No MSG, everything is clearly labeled, they put small portions of each dish out at a time so it stays fresh.)

    Here are reports from the various Tea Parties around Oklahoma, Tulsa first and in chronological order:

    Chris Medlock on the 11-1 downtown event with talk radio host John Gibson (with photos):

    Reasonable estimates for the event place the peak attendance at between 750 to 1000.

    Chris has also posted a Washington Post graphic that explains at a glance why Obama's budget has engendered so much more grassroots unrest than Bush's budgets.

    KFAQ's website has photos of the downtown event. Bland Bridenstine has more photos here, including photos of the 5 - 7 pm event at Veterans Park.

    The Tulsa Tea Party blog has a thorough report with photos.

    Joe Kelley on the 12-2 LaFortune Park event with Congressman John Sullivan (with video):

    The Tulsa Police put the crowd size at 3200 and a petition that was passed gathered in excess of 3000 signatures.

    Joe Kelley has also posted some helpful links about the Tea Party movement and resources for taking further constructive action, including the After the Tea Party website.

    Here's Jenn Sierra's report and photos of the Veterans' Park event.

    Muskogee Politico says there were 220 at that city's event (video and photos to come).

    Tyson Wynn has audio of the Claremore rally (and explains the cool way he was able to post it live using his iPhone).

    The Red Dirt Reporter was at the State Capitol for the Oklahoma City event:

    Well over 5,000 people crowded onto the south plaza of the Oklahoma State Capitol Wednesday, taking part in the Tax Day Tea Party movement that has swept America, with 2,500 Tea Parties reportedly taking place nationwide.

    This grassroots gathering was amazing in that it drew people from all walks of life and political backgrounds. All agreed that the federal government has taken things too far in regards to taxing the American people and bailing out Wall Street and the banks.

    NewsOK.com has video and photos and quotes an Oklahoma Highway Patrol estimate of between 4,000 and 5,000. (Via dustbury.com.)

    Kick the Anthill has more photos of the Oklahoma City event. Videos are here on the OKC Tea Party website.

    RELATED: Randy Brogdon, who may have been the only prospective candidate for Governor at any of the Tea Parties, succeeded in raising $15,000 in a single day today for his exploratory committee.

    MORE: CNN reporter Susan Roesgen drops any pretense of objectivity in her coverage of the Chicago Tea Party. Michelle Malkin compares Roesgen's reporting today to Roesgen's coverage of an anti-Bush rally.

    And to those who claim that Tea Party-goers are just out to attack Democrats, Michelle Malkin reports that the Sacramento Tea Party organizer acknowledged the California GOP chairman, who was present at the event, then denounced him for "waffling on massive tax hike ballot measures."

    Will this make the MSM coverage? It doesn't fit the narrative. But it's yet another demonstration that this movement is not partisan and equal opportunity when it comes to holding politicians' feet to the fire for fiscal irresponsibility and fecklessness.

    As one of his assignments for his homeschooling program, Classical Conversations, my son Joseph wrote a biographical essay about Samuel Adams. I learned many new facts from it, and on Tax Day, on Tea Party Day, I thought it deserved a wider audience. So, without further ado, meet "the most dangerous man in Massachusetts," the original rabble-rousing, naysaying tax protester.

    As we begin, it's April 18, 1775, and a battalion of around 700 British soldiers are marching to Lexington to capture Sam Adams and John Hancock:

    "I have a bad feeling about this, Crumshaw. Sending a whole battalion to capture two rebel leaders in Lexington--what was the Colonel thinking? The rebels are bound to notice something's up."

    "Ah, James, you worry too much. Besides how are they going to alert those two rebels we're coming when they would have to pass by us, and we haven't seen a single horseman all night, not even not even so much as a coach. I still don't understand what all this 'most dangerous man in Massachusetts' rubbish is all about. How dangerous can a single politician be?" As the two men were talking a shout came from the front of the line, "Ah! What was that?!" It was Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith. He had heard a noise in the brush on the side of the road. Suddenly a large group of men jumped out of their hiding places on either side of the road.

    "We're under attack, sir. A bunch of rebel farmers, we should be able to take them!" Then there was a gunshot. "I didn't ask for your opinion! Just the facts, now FIRE!"


    Not many people have heard of Samuel Adams, let alone the fact that he was the one that instigated the Boston Tea Party. He was also called by many important revolutionary figures the father of the American Revolution. He preferred not to be recognized by people for his works, in fact preferred to let others take credit for his actions.

    Samuel Adams was one of the most influential yet forgotten figures of the revolutionary war. He was born at noon on Sunday, September 27, 1722, to Samuel "Deacon" Adams and Mary Fifield Adams as their tenth child. His father, who was deeply involved in politics, started the Caucus Club when Sam was a young boy of three or four, and Sam would sit and listen to the men talk about politics. His father, as his nickname implies, was an accomplished clergyman. Sam also found church engaging. His favorite part of the three to four hour service was the singing. He had a fair voice, and he found the simple hymns engaging. At the age of four or five he was sent off to a "dame school" where he was taught the basics of reading writing and arithmetic. At the age of seven he attended the Boston Latin School and completed his primary education.

    At the age of fourteen he left to study theology at Harvard University. Their days began at 5 am. Breakfast at 6 was bread and ale. Lunch was the same, and the only thing that was any different about dinner was that the boys were allowed meat. Saturdays were spent studying theology and Sundays were spent attending church services. Some of the subjects Sam studied were Latin, Greek, Hebrew, philosophy, natural philosophy, writing and speaking.

    During this time Samuel was greatly influenced by the writings of John Locke. According to Locke's writing, all men were born with natural rights like "life, health, liberty, or possessions." The government was there to protect these rights for the people. So enthralled by the political theory of Locke and others, Adams wrote his master's thesis on "whether it be lawful to resist the Supreme Magistrate, if the Commonwealth cannot otherwise be preserved." Sam graduated with a Master of Arts degree.

    Sam Adams was not what you would call a tenacious employee. Oh, he was a tenacious person, but he preferred to spend his work hours discussing local and national politics with his fellow workers. Rather than employing his own son as was custom, Deacon Adams had Samuel hired at Thomas Cushing's counting house. The one thing Sam liked about working there was the one hour lunch break. He would spend it in the local pub or tavern trying to talk political sense into some stubborn farmer who cared about nothing but his crop. The downside to this was that even though Sam was able to do what he liked best, discuss politics, he always managed to get back to work at least half an hour late. The owner was soon forced to fire Sam. Sam was not angry nor did he beg for second chances. In fact he was almost happy that he was out of a job. After this, Sam's father gave him $2000 to start a new business. he ended up lending half of it to a friend who never paid it back and he spent the other half on this and that and once again he was broke. In a way, Sam's financial downfall led to him meeting one of his closest and richest friends. John Hancock was of the same mind as Sam and even helped fund the Boston Tea Party.

    Sam was a politician so naturally he objected to the Townsend Acts, and he opposed every other tax no matter how small. He did not oppose the taxes because they made things expensive -- the tea tax was so inexpensive that it made British tea half as expensive as the smuggled Dutch tea -- he opposed them because they were a symbol of Parliament's ability to tax them without the colonies having any say in it. He knew it was only a matter of time before they used their power over the colonies to tax them as much as they wanted -- not just one or two taxes but if this continued everything would be taxed and outrageously so. Slowly but surely, he gathered followers who agreed with him, and formed an organization called the Sons of Liberty. They gathered under an old elm called the Liberty Tree and held meetings and protests. At some of the protests they burned effigies of important British statesmen and sometimes they even raided stamp officials homes. Sam even organized the Sons of Liberty to throw the tea from three British ships into the bay.

    Another way he protested the British taxes was to write pseudonymous letters to dominant American newspapers, calling for independence. He was such an influential figure of the revolution that he was called by Parliament "the most dangerous man in Massachusetts" and by the colonists, "the Grand Incendiary." Not many people are aware of this, but Samuel Adams was one of the triggers of the battle of Lexington. The British troops marched on Lexington in an attempt to capture Sam Adams and John Hancock. Luckily Paul revere rode to warn them and they escaped. John Hancock wanted to stay but Sam managed persuade him that they were not warriors but writers and politicians.

    In 1776 Sam was elected to the 2nd Continental Congress. As soon as his friends found out they cornered him and forced him to be measured for a new suit replace his extremely shabby raiment. He was one of the first men to sign the Declaration, and he was also one of the drafters of the Articles of Confederation which governed the US until the Constitution was written. He went on to become governor of Massachusetts after John Hancock and also drafted the Massachusetts Constitution. He died in 1803 at the ripe old age of 81. After his death he slowly faded into the shadows, the forgotten father of the revolution.

    Again, no time to comment much, just to note the situation.

    Tulsa has three Taxpayer Tea Party events scheduled for April 15:

    • Civic Center Plaza, 5th and Denver, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
    • LaFortune Stadium, on Hudson north of 61st St., between 12 noon and 2 p.m.
    • Veterans' Park, 18th and Boulder, between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

    From the tulsateaparty.org press release:

    A group of citizens in Tulsa, OK, the Tulsa Tea Party, are organizing two Tax Day TEA (Taxed Enough Already) Party protest rallies on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009, the day tax returns are to be mailed, in the downtown Tulsa area....

    The TEA Party is part of a national movement formed to protest the spending of trillions of dollars, which will leave our great-grandchildren a debt they must pay, and to restore the basic free market principals upon which our country was founded. This is a grassroots, collaborative volunteer organization made up of everyday American citizens. This is not about Democrats and Republicans. It's about the defending the Constitution and loving America.

    Tax day rallies are being held in over a thousand cities across the nation and are being promoted by Americans for Prosperity, American Family Association, 912 Project and several national radio and television programs, among others.

    While the multiple events at different times and locales will allow more people to participate, there's also some talk radio tug-of-war going on as KFAQ hosts are emceeing the Civic Center and Veterans' Park tea parties, and KRMG is promoting the LaFortune Stadium tea party.

    Chris Medlock, who "no longer [has] a dog in this fight," has an interesting analysis of the Tulsa Tea Party situation (and a great graphic -- rockem-sockem radio stations) and how it could work in the protest movement's favor. The post has already generated 17 comments, including one from "joe.kelley," although I have trouble believing it was really written by the KRMG morning host -- the tone is way out of character.

    Jai Blevins, who organized the February Tea Party at Veterans' Park and is organizing the Civic Center and Veterans' Park events for next Wednesday, seems to have found the whole experience eye-opening.

    I've been around grassroots organizing for a long time -- neighborhood organizations, political parties, campaigns, and other causes. I've seen many people like Jai, who get passionate about an issue, get motivated, and seemingly come out of nowhere to get something going. We need people like Jai, who haven't yet become worn down, jaded, and cynical, who still believe that it's possible to make a difference.

    These freshly-minted grassroots leaders often learn, to their shock and displeasure, that the biggest challenge to their movement's success may not be from outside opposition but from internal dissension, as some people seek to use the movement to promote their own agenda. Sometimes that agenda is hidden, sometimes it's right out in the open -- as it is with the radio stations and their understandable desire to use the tax party movement to promote their own business prospects.

    But from the perspective of someone like Jai Blevins, this isn't a time to jockey for advantage, but a national emergency that demands patriotic cooperation from people who might otherwise be at odds. To call him a whiner or to say that he's insincere and doesn't believe in free-market competition is to misunderstand his motives.

    Eventually, an activist learns how to deal with individuals and companies that are trying to use his movement. He learns to use them to promote his movement's agenda. They achieve a kind of symbiosis, but there's an understanding that the relationship is one of convenience, not permanent and grounded in principle. In the process of coming to terms with that reality, you lose some of your idealism.

    Like Chris, I don't have a dog in this fight either. I haven't been invited on either station for months, and I don't expect that I'll ever be invited on either one again. I hope all three events draw big, enthusiastic crowds and get plenty of media coverage.

    As for which one I'm attending -- it's also my wife's birthday, so I doubt I'll be able to get to any of them.

    MORE: American Majority, which provides training for prospective political candidates and activists, is offering to help you learn how to make an ongoing difference after the tea parties are over.

    The Wall Street Journal reports that the economic downturn is hurting corporate sources of revenue for sports teams and venues, including luxury boxes, club seats, naming rights, and other forms of sponsorship:

    In a case of monumentally bad timing, this year three of the biggest names in pro sports -- the Yankees, New York Mets and Dallas Cowboys -- are opening three of the most expensive stadiums ever built, filled with premium-priced seats and luxury amenities. At a combined cost of more than $3.5 billion, the stadiums were conceived and financed in a vastly different environment, a time when corporations and municipalities were flush with cash. Now they're opening just as corporate America is going through a massive belt-tightening -- and trying to avoid the appearance of extravagance at all costs.

    "Let's face it, if you're taking TARP funds, it's really hard to justify getting a [luxury] box," says Neal Sroka, a luxury real estate agent hired by the Yankees to help sell the team's premium seats, referring to the funds distributed to banks under the Troubled Asset Relief Program.

    With just weeks before their new $1.1 billion stadium opens, the Cowboys still have 2,000 premium seats and about 50 of their 300 luxury suites left to sell. The Yankees have hired Mr. Sroka to drum up buyers for the hundreds of premium seats still in their inventory. The Mets, who once had deals for all 49 of their luxury suites, say they've had to go back to the market after one customer, whom they declined to name, backed out.

    (Via Field of Schemes.)

    We've already seen an aspect of this here in Tulsa: Before SemGroup went bankrupt, the company was expected to be a $7.5 million donor to the new downtown Tulsa Drillers ballpark. It's worse for the Mets: They sold their naming rights to a company that's getting billions in federal aid.

    Citigroup, which has received billions of dollars of federal aid, has been forced to defend its $400 million marketing deal with the Mets that includes the right to name the park Citi Field. The Mets have endured weeks of jokes about renaming their field "Taxpayer Stadium" or "Bailout Park," but the deal with Citigroup looks safe for now. A Citigroup spokesman says no taxpayer money will be used for the marketing deal.

    You'd think a bank spokesman would be aware of the fungibility of money.

    I was trying to find out who came up with the threefold classification of American political cultures as moralistic, individualistic, and traditionalistic. (For moralistic, think English Puritans and Norwegian Lutherans -- think Minnesota and the upper Midwest. For individualistic, think Scotch-Irish, frontiersmen, and the Southwest. For traditionalistic, think big cities in the Northeast with their machine politics and small towns in the South with their good ol' boy networks.)

    It seems to have originated with Daniel Judah Elazar, in his 1966 book, American Federalism: A View from the States. Elazar, who passed away in 1999, wrote a number of books on the cultural, religious, and ethnic influences on American political institutions, as well as explorations of federalism in its various manifestations worldwide. It's an interesting mix of topics. Here are a few links, as much for my benefit as yours.

    This is collection of Daniel J. Elazar's writings on Federalism, on the website of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. One of the articles describes Minnesota as the epitome of the moralistic political culture.

    From Google Books:

    And there's this: The first two chapters of his memoir of his father, who was born in Jerusalem during Ottoman rule and lived through the British mandate and the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. The excerpt includes a description of Elazar's Sephardic heritage and life in turn-of-the-20th century Jerusalem -- fascinating stuff.

    I couldn't be at Veterans Park myself for yesterday's Tea Party -- too much to do at work -- but plenty of people were and have posted stuff on the web to tell you all about it.

    Jenn Sierra has posted photos of the Tulsa Tea Party. You'll find a few more on Chris Medlock's blog (here and here). Joe Kelley has video. Here's KOTV's report.

    Here were some of the signs on display:


    • Government is not your mommy!

    • Repeal porkulus!

    • 220 years to build the republic -- one month to destroy it.

    • Give me back my 401K -- you can keep the "change."

    • Crisis? You bet -- too much government.

    • Pay your own mortgage! No freeloaders!

    • Grow the economy -- not the government!

    You can find writeups about the Oklahoma City Tea Party at Red Dirt Report and on Wizbang, where OKC-based blogger Michael Laprarie is now a regular contributor. (Congrats!)

    Tax protesters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, who are also protesting a local sales tax increase, wanted to dump tea in the Cedar River, but they were barred by state officials, who consider tea a pollutant because it would discolor the water (via Michelle Malkin):

    Tea, although natural and quite tasty, is considered a pollutant that can't go into a body of water without a permit, said Mike Wade, a senior environmental specialist at the DNR's Manchester field office.

    "Discoloration is considered a violation," Wade said.

    Although not as steeped in history, the Cedar Rapids Tea Party will dump dechlorinated tap water or riverwater from buckets labeled "tea," said Tim Pugh, the group's founder.

    "We don't want to hurt the river," said Pugh, 32, of Cedar Rapids.

    I thought the whole point of the original tea party was to defy government authority.

    Elsewhere in Iowa, David Burge (aka Iowahawk) has a message from the subprime borrower community for "America's Irresponsible Tea Party Whiners":

    But through all of it, some of us persevered. We made the hard economic choices.... We spent countless hours applying for the credit cards that would see us through. We made the wise economic decision to stop paying our stupid mortgages -- because we calculated that when the rainy day came, Washington would come to its senses and clear up the tab....

    I wish I could take credit for it, but it took the collective effort of hundreds of thousands of us in the subprime community, working with the financial industry and public sector officials. Unfortunately, there is another group out there who is working to kill important financial bailout reforms just as they are sparking a renaissance in the American housing market. I'm speaking, of course, of the so-called "Tea Party" tax protesters.

    I'm sure you've heard of them or read their emails: "Wah, I paid my mortgage." "Wah, I didn't use my house for an ATM." "Wah, Dave I need that hundred back I lent you at Christmas." Now, I'm as sympathetic to a good sob story as anybody, but these whiners have nobody to blame but themselves for their predicament. Anyone who kept track of the Gallup presidential polls last year should have known what was coming, so don't blame me if you decided to waste your money paying your stupid mortgage. But, in the six-dimensional bizarro world of these noisy tax gripes, they expect me to give up my bailout to pay for their irresponsible lack of foresight! Helloooo?! Beam me up, Scotty!

    There's a lot more to running for office than you might imagine. Tulsa's city elections are coming up this fall, followed by school board elections early next year, and then races for state legislature and county commission the year after that. If you think you might ever want to run for local office or want to be an effective helper to a candidate, consider signing up for American Majority's candidate training seminar to be held in Tulsa on Saturday, Feb. 28.

    The event will be held at the Tulsa Radisson Hotel, on 41st west of Garnett. To RSVP, call Pam Pettyjohn at 405-605-6338 or e-mail ok@americanmajority.org.

    American Majority would like to cordially invite you to the DO NOT MISS Municipal Candidate Training Seminar of 2009!

    American Majority Candidate Training Seminars are day-long events with both 1-on-1 media training and lectures covering topics such as:

    "How to Communicate Effectively"
    "Your Campaign Plan to Win: Planning for the Time, People and Money to Win"
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    "New Media Engagement: The New Ways to Talk to Voters and Engage Supporters"
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    The cost for this all-inclusive training is $40 per candidate and $20 for each additional staff or family member.

    Breakfast and lunch is included.


    More about the sponsoring organization
    :

    American Majority Incorporated is a non-profit, non-partisan political training institute whose mission is to train and equip a national network of leadership committed to individual freedom through limited government and the free market. Advocating true federalism, American Majority believes that national change begins at the state and local level. Toward that end, American Majority will build a national network of leaders and grassroots advocates who aspire to increase freedom for individuals, families, the marketplace, and our nation.

    No, not me.

    For over 20 years, Michael M. Bates wrote a weekly column for The Reporter, a weekly paper based in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. As for his political philosophy, this other Michael Bates outflanks me: "As a lad, Mike distributed Goldwater campaign literature and since then has steadily moved further to the Right."

    Bates quit in protest over the headline placed over his January 22 column. He gave the column, a counterpoint to the inauguration-induced Obamamania, the title, "Include Me Out." At the end of the piece, he excluded himself from the company of those wishing the new president success:

    The "We Are One" theme comes at a remarkable time. After eight years of liberals bashing President Bush and other Republicans, it's expected that magically all Americans will suddenly, joyously unify as one big happy family under Obama.

    That ain't gonna happen. Some Republicans are wishing Obama success. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is one, saying that "We need to get behind our new president and our new Congress," and "support them."

    Support them in driving this country into the ground? If Obama delivers on his campaign promises, it'll be an unmitigated disaster. Good luck for him means bad luck for the United States .

    Other conservatives may wish the new president success. That's their prerogative. As movie producer Samuel Goldwyn said, include me out.

    The Reporter put this headline and subhed over Bates's column:

    Success for Obama would be disaster
    Bitter conservative can't wish U.S. well

    Michael M. didn't mind being called a bitter conservative. It was the last half of that subhed that stuck in his craw:

    No, the objectionable portion was [the editor's] claiming I can't wish my own country well. It implies I'm unpatriotic. That isn't accurate. Well, he went on, if Obama doesn't succeed, then America will fail. How can you not wish Obama well if you love your country?

    I replied that Obama is most emphatically not the United States, even though his admirers habitually think so. His "success" in imposing his radical agenda means America loses. National victory requires a vigorous rejection of most of Obama's schemes.

    Michael M. Bates will continue to post columns on his website, michaelmbates.com, and on his blog at Townhall. From one opinionated Michael Bates to another, all the best.

    An interesting appreciation of soon-to-be-former President George W. Bush, from Dawn Summers, who doesn't "agree with the President on *anything*," but she's grateful to him for two things:

    The Homeland. No, I don't think the idea of this juggernaut department or its infinite surveillance powers were a good idea, but I love the term. I love this country, but too often we're expected to trade the unpopular "nationalism" for a wishy washy "global citizen" viewpoint where we're all about Darfur and Gaza and nation building.... President Bush went a long ways to bringing the Homeland to the forefront of our conversation. We may be children or grandchildren of immigrants, or immigrants ourselves, but now we are all Americans.

    Second, I loved watching the President as a father.... President Bush, on the other hand, seemed to cherish his role as father and husband in a way that has brought a dignity to the White House and American *men* in general, that I hope President-Elect Obama can, at the very least, meet, if not exceed. A good American and a great father, not too shabby for eight years work.

    Jim Inhofe has a YouTube channel, and he's using it to mobilize support for S. 64, his bill that would require an affirmative congressional vote to release any more of the remaining $350 billion in bailout funds.

    Here's the text of Inhofe's message.

    For the first time since the Clinton administration, the 168 members of the Republican National Committee will be picking a new chairman without simply deferring to the wishes of the president. Traditionally, if there's a Republican in the White House, he makes the call, and the RNC members merely ratify the decision.

    The RNC is composed of 3 members -- the state chairman, a national committeeman, and a national committeewoman -- from each state plus DC, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, US Virgin Islands, Northern Marianas, and Guam. (Yep, Guam and Texas have the same amount of pull on the reins of the GOP.) Oklahoma is represented by State Chairman Gary Jones, National Committeeman James Dunn, and National Committeewoman Carolyn McLarty. Dunn and McLarty are new to the RNC, succeeding long-time members Lynn Windel and Bunny Chambers.

    Six candidates are seeking the job, including incumbent Mike Duncan. According to Politico, Jones has endorsed Ken Blackwell, former Ohio Secretary of State. The other candidates are Chip Saltsman (Mike Huckabee's campaign manager and former Tennessee GOP chairman), former Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele, and two current state chairmen, Saul Anuzis from Michigan and Katon Dawson from South Carolina.

    Morton Blackwell, a long-time national committeeman from Virginia and someone who has inspired and mobilized two generations of grassroots conservative activists through his Leadership Institute, put together a list of 37 characteristically thoughtful questions for the candidates and received thoughtful answers in reply.

    In response to the first question, about how to overcome the Democrats' superior ground game, I like the fact that Anuzis and Ken Blackwell (no relation to Morton) both identified the problem behind the problem. Anuzis called it the "passion deficit":

    The articulation of good ideas breeds passion; Passion breeds excitement; excitement breeds volunteers, and volunteers are the life's blood of a political ground game. So our first task is to be the party that is effectively communicating conservative ideas, so that we can once again stir the passions of our nation.

    Ken Blackwell elaborates:

    However, to have an exceptional ground game, our Party must first inspire thousands of people who can then be activated to work for our shared values during the election cycle. Lately, our party has become overly focused on mechanics while failing to articulate a clear, concise, positive and practical message. To inspire enough prospective Republican volunteers to be a part of a new "ground game," we must stand firm for our core beliefs: Limited government, traditional values and a strong national defense. If we become the "Obama-lite" party, we will not be able to recruit the substantial number of volunteers needed for such a massive effort.

    As chairman of the Republican Party, I will lead by articulating a clear conservative vision that paints in bold strokes, not pale pastels. Doing so will rally a dispirited Republican base and present a vision that stands in stark contrast to the failed left-wing policies of the Obama Administration. This is the first and most important step we can take to rebuild the ground game of the Republican Party.

    I have only skimmed the Q&A, but I noticed a series of insightful questions about the relationships between the RNC and the two congressional campaign committees (NRCC and NRSC) and between the RNC and political consultants.

    On the strength of his responses to Morton Blackwell's questions, the Council on National Policy, which includes leaders of many conservative social and political organizations (as individuals, not as representatives of their organizations), endorsed Ken Blackwell.

    A group of about 90 conservative RNC members, calling themselves the Conservative Steering Committee, will meet today (Tuesday) to consider the possibilities for RNC chair and to cast a straw vote. The real election takes place in about three weeks.

    Notice something: 90 conservatives -- that's a bare majority of RNC membership. Notice too that the gathering of this conservative caucus has prompted discontent from other RNC members, who organized enough states to force a full meeting of the RNC the following day.

    MORE: Hoosier Pundit explains why he thinks Blackwell is the best choice:

    When the base gets mail from the national party and the campaign committees and is again willing to write checks, then you will know that the party is unified again and marching in the same direction. Right now, all I hear from people (going on two or three years now) is about how they won't give money to the national party and the campaign committees because they support liberal RINOs and don't do enough to stand up to the Democrats and (previously) to enact conservative policies.

    The RNC chairman has to appeal to the base, be competent in terms of record, and not commit unforced errors in the current political environment.

    Mike Duncan is just more of the same. It may be that he did "an alright job, considering the situation" but we need somebody that will do a great job regardless of the situation. None of the candidates inspire me in that way, at least yet.

    That leaves Ken Blackwell. He's not tone-deaf, he's articulate, nobody it seems can question his conservative bona fides (the base can buy-in to him in ways that they can't or won't for Steele), he's Evangelical without being from the South (it's important for the chairman to not have a southern drawl, if only to demonstrate that the party is not regionalized), and criticism of Obama is going to be much easier if it comes from Blackwell (or Steele) than from some typical GOP white guy.

    Looking for some information relating to my next column (dealing with the requirement to add sprinklers to older apartment and condo buildings), I found the text of one of Ronald Reagan's radio commentaries from the summer of 1977 that had to do with Tulsa and part of the local Army Corps of Engineers office moving into more expensive digs because of Federal fire prevention rules. It's found on pp. 178-9 of Reagan's Path to Victory, but with Reagan's edits and abbreviations. I've retyped it to read as he would have read it for broadcast.

    Government Cost
    July 6, 1977

    Every once in awhile another example pops up to illustrate why government costs so much. Since it's your money, I figure you should know about it. I'll be right back.

    Over in Tulsa, Okla., the Army Corps of Engineers is moving about a fifth of its operation out of its present quarters and into a new office building at roughly four times the rent NOW being paid. The figures are really interesting. The engineers are leaving almost 21,000 sq. ft. of office space for which they pay $2.89 a sq. ft. to move into only16,000 sq. ft. of office space for which they'll pay (make that, we'll pay) $11.88 a sq. ft.

    The operation that is moving represents only about 22% of the Corps' Tulsa headquarters. The other almost four-fifths of their offices are located in the old Federal building which has 75,000 sq. ft. of vacant space and which was remodeled 10 years ago at a cost of $700,000 for use by the engineers.

    Apparently none of this is the doing of the engineers. The Business Service Center of the General Services Administration is in charge of this move. According to the chief of GSA the new more costly office building is the only building in Tulsa which meets "Standard 101 of the National Fire Protection Code" called "Code for Life Safety from Fire in Buildings and Structures." He says the government is really getting tough about the fire regulations. Standard 101 is a book with 16 chapters.

    The CIty Fire Marshal of Tulsa says he doubts any building in Tulsa can meet all the requirements of Standard 101. The Fire Marshall isn't saying downtown Tulsa is a fire trap -- he's indicating Standard 101 like so many government documents goes beyond the bounds of common sense and reason. To their credit the Corps of Engineers had asked for other locations but were turned down by GSA.

    A lot of questions come to mind in this whole thing, beginning with why the one-fifth of the engineers' operations aren't over in the Federal Building with the other four-fifths where there is vacant space amounting to more than four and a half times as much space as they are moving into. If the Federal Building doesn't meet the rigorous requirements for fire safety laid down in Standard 101 why haven't the rest of the engineers been moved out? A spokesman for the Corps can only say it will be up to GSA to say when the building is no longers uitable for use by Federal employees. That answers another question. Standard 101 isn't a code that can be enforced on buildings in general. It's just a code for the protection of Federal government employees. Taxpayers can work and earn in less protected quarters. And just between us I'm sure with every bit as much safety as government employees are provided.

    According to the Tulsa Tribune the shortcomings of the building the engineers are leaving consists of the following: one stairway is 4 inches too narrow, and there was some concern expressed about the distance to the rest rooms.

    Don't feel guilty if you can't make sense out of what they're doing. Let me read a paragraph from a memo on another subject -- zero budgeting by the Office of Management and Budget. When you can understand this paragraph everything will become clear to you.

    "Agencies may use whatever review and ranking techniques appropriate to their needs. However the minimum level for a decision unit is always ranked higher than any increment for the same unit, since it represents the level below which activities can no longer be conducted efficiently. However, the minimum level package for a give decision unit may be ranked so low in comparison to incremental levels of the decision units that the funding level for the agency may exclude that minimum funding level package."

    See?

    This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.

    (Audible.com offers a downloadable five-hour collection of Reagan's radio commentaries for less than $20.)

    I was at Tulsa Promenade with my family over the weekend and had taken the 12-year-old son to the food court for a late lunch, when I saw this ad for the Tulsa Zoo:

    Photo_122008_002

    It's a spoof of the famous Che Guevara poster, depicting a lion as Che, wearing a beret, with the Tulsa Zoo logo in place of the Communist star.

    Since when, I wondered, is it OK to use an image honoring a murderous, totalitarian thug to advertise a city-owned, family-oriented tourist attraction?

    Perhaps I'm overreacting. Perhaps not. The surest way to tell is to substitute Communist imagery with that of a different totalitarian movement. Would the image below have been approved by Tulsa Zoo management for use in an ad?

    Earlier today Sen. Tom Coburn spoke to a blogger conference call in connection with the release of his 2008: Worst Waste of the Year" report. It was a wide-ranging, on-the-record discussion. Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has a good synopsis.

    Toward the end of the call, Dan Riehl asked about getting Coburn more allies for his efforts. Coburn said that, "We need a different farm team, and I'm working hard on that." He didn't offer any specifics, but he said that we need to "recruit people who get it, not just people who say they get it." He said that we need to elect officials who will be willing to sacrifice position for principle and asked, "How do you call people to service?"

    I'm happy to see that Coburn is focusing on this challenge. Our primary safeguard against excessive and unconstitutional spending are the people who make the decisions about spending. But I wonder if it's possible for us to create the kind of "farm team" Coburn wants. To elect a principled fiscal conservative to office, you have to fight against two powerful forces -- entrenched special interests that want access to public money, aided by their allies who run the mainstream media, and a voting public with a low level of understanding about economics, the proper role of government in general and the proper roles of each level of government.

    There is this idea that every problem is one that government can fix. Voters want to believe it because it relieves them of personal responsibility. Politicians are happy to promote the idea because they then get credit for doling out the goodies to favored groups and businesses, and that translates to longevity in office and a golden parachute in the form of a lobbying job with the favored groups and businesses they helped while in office.

    Here in Oklahoma, at least, we have enough voters who don't buy into that idea that we can elect principled officials like Tom Coburn, Randy Brogdon, Dana Murphy, Pam Peterson, and John Eagleton (to name just a few among many). But even here, good men and women get blocked from climbing the political ladder by a hostile media and a well-financed opposition.

    Recruiting good men and women is only half the battle. You need to give them the financial and logistical support they need to get elected and to advance their legislative agenda once in office.

    Change? Not so much

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    Hot Air has a clip of President-elect Obama's press confference, in which he was asked about the number of retreads from the Clinton administration that he's appointing to his own cabinet:

    [Obama] has The Vision. It's just that The Vision happens to involve lots and lots of Clinton appointees, with an occasional Bush appointee and negligent Wall Street supervisor tossed in.

    Victor Davis Hanson at NRO:

    We should all let President-elect Obama have some honeymoon time, but that said, so far the sudden cessation in 'hope and change' that became part of the American mindset for two years is surreal, and one of the most remarkable developments in recent American political history. Obama's Clintonite appointments, his reliance on those well-known DC fixtures credentialed by Ivy League Law Schools, and his apparent backtracking on radical tax hikes on the "wealthy", instantaneous shut-down of Gitmo, prompt withdrawal from Iraq, and repeal of anti-terror legislation seem to have delighted conservatives, relieved that the Daily Kos and Huffington Post are not calling the shots. But two minor points, it is still November, not late January. So no one knows anything yet and we should suspend judgement, despite the FDR and Lincoln daily comparisons.

    Second, if we should see in January that the government really does not want to evict Khalid Sheik Mohammed & co. from Guantanamo, and does want to stay in Iraq until 2011 to finish up, and does want to let the present tax code ride for a bit, and does want to leave most Bush-enacted homeland security measures in place, then Obama has not merely embarrassed his hard-left base, but has terribly humiliated the media as well.

    (Via Ace.)

    Harry Payne on NRO:

    Now we know why Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm is on President-elect Barack Obama's economic policy team. Judging by Obama's Saturday economic address, he plans to address the nation's ills with the same inept policies Granholm has championed for the last six years here in Michigan....

    The result has been a Michigan economy that has drowned under Granholm's watch, with unemployment tripling to a nation-leading 9.3 percent at the same time that Michigan's debilitating economic fundamentals -- high taxes and overgenerous concessions to organized labor -- have gone unaddressed. Granholm, however, has missed few opportunities for photo ops touting the companies that have benefiited from her tax handouts or her road-construction spending.

    And she has landed a key position in Obama's transition team, where she and the president-elect apparently agree that Granholmnomics is America's future.

    (Via Ace.)

    From the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire:

    During an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama economic adviser William Daley suggested that the incoming administration would reconsider whether to quickly increase taxes for Americans earning more than $250,000 per year.

    Daly, who was commerce secretary under former President Bill Clinton and is the brother of Chicago Mayor Richard Daly, said it looks "more likely than not" that Obama would not seek legislation to repeal President George W. Bush's cut in the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans before it is scheduled to expire after the 2010 tax year. Bush cut the top rate to 35% from 39.6% in 2001.

    Obama had promised to restore the top tax rate to its earlier level, while cutting taxes for the middle class.

    Via Drew M. at Ace of Spades HQ, who writes:

    Apparently it turns out raising taxes is bad for the economy. Who knew?

    ...it's funny how the facts of life are slapping The One in the face so soon after the election. It's almost as if a lot of what he said was just crap to get dumb people to vote for him.

    Robert Stacy McCain predicts fallout:

    Obama gained his margin of victory in large measure by enlisting the support of the disengaged, the disaffected and those too young to know better. Voters under 30 -- who weren't yet in high school when Bill Clinton was elected -- went for Obama by a 2-to-1 margin. Many of these young Obama supporters will be among the first to feel the shock of discovering how wide is the chasm that separates their Hope from any Change that Obama can actually accomplish.

    Already, their disillusionment is beginning, the Internet rumbling with discontent as Obama staffs his administration with Washington insiders, Clinton cronies and even, perhaps, Hillary Clinton herself. Many more will be disheartened to discover that there is no magic in Obama's economic plan, a patchwork of warmed-over Keynesian "pump-priming" claptrap as stale as the memory of Hubert Humphrey.

    Exactly how soon will the disappointments become sufficient to begin turning former believers into ex-Democrats? It's hard to tell. But it is nonetheless certain that many who voted for Obama will either stay home on Election Day 2010 or vote Republican, and still more will defect by 2012. And unless Obama starts making Peggy Joseph's mortgage and car payments, even she may eventually abandon Hope.

    From Mark Evanier:

    Didn't some of us vote for Barack Obama in the primaries because we didn't want Hillary Clinton managing U.S. foreign affairs?

    Today at 11:30, at the Summit Club in the Bank of America Building downtown (6th and Boulder -- the Fourth National Bank building for us old-timers), pollster Pat McFerron, Matt Pinnell of the Oklahoma Republican Party, and I will discuss the election results.

    Lunch is $18.00 for members and $20 for non-members. Membership is $25 for the year. Free parking in the Bank of America building garage.

    Catching up with links -- I had two pieces in last week's Urban Tulsa Weekly.

    My Cityscope column dealt with E-Tickets -- why the Tulsa Police Department needs the electronic citation system advocated by Councilor John Eagleton, and what's the hold up to getting it funded.

    Here are some earlier stories about E-Tickets:

    Also in last week's issue was a feature story with my post-election analysis, covering the Tulsa County Commission District 2 race, the Republican successes in the State Legislature and Corporation Commission, and the re-election of Sen. Jim Inhofe (while noting the strange undervote in the U. S. Senate race) and Congressman John Sullivan. I took a look at the swath of counties, stretching from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma, that gave more votes to the Republican presidential nominee this year than in 2004, and noted the connection to the lands of Ulster-Americans, aka the Scotch-Irish. I closed by suggesting that Republicans may want to adapt the British Conservative Party's Campaign North, their successful effort to rebuild their party in the north of England, where they had been nearly wiped out by the Labour Party.

    A few links related to that last point:

    On election day, a documentary crew interviewed people who had just voted for Barack Obama to get a sense of what messages about the candidates had reached them. The video revealed that these voters had heard plenty about Sarah Palin's wardrobe and her daughter's out-of-wedlock pregnancy, but they were unaware of even more embarrassing or damaging information about Obama or running mate Joe Biden. The voters, who were "chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience," were read statements and asked to identify to which one of the four presidential and vice-presidential nominees the statement pertained.

    The video quiz was followed up with a scientific poll by the Zogby organization, asking the same questions of 512 Obama voters nationwide. Only 2.4% correctly answered at least 11 of the 12 multiple choice questions.

    The interviews and polling data are research for a documentary, "How Obama Got Elected." Click that link to learn more and keep track of the project's progress.

    (Via Wizbang.)

    My election day

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    In case you were wondering:

    6:00 am -- Up after a night of tossing and turning, during which I dream of total on-air collapse: I don't get my database stuff finished, I can't keep up with the precincts as they come in, I have nothing coherent to say.

    6:20 am -- I call in to the KRMG Morning News for a preview of election night coverage. Not one of my better interviews. As soon as I hang up, I notice that I'm sitting slumped over -- not good. I guess I've lost the knack of being "up" and "on," as I used to have to be every Tuesday morning on KFAQ.

    8:00 am -- I deliver my daughter to school. I scratch my neck and discover that, although I put on Lectric Shave before I left, I had forgotten to shave. I head home to get my electric razor, use it, and take it with me for a touch up in the late afternoon.

    8:15 am -- Work. Try, try, try to focus, focus, focus. Fail.

    12:50 pm -- I take the afternoon off, leave work, and head to my precinct to vote.

    1:05 pm -- No line at the polls as such. Three people are already voting, another one or two come in behind me. My two ballots are counted as numbers 1085 and 1086, cast just after the midpoint of election day.

    1:20 pm -- Drop off watch at the On the Spot shop in Promenade; have lunch in the food court while they put in a new battery. For the first time since I used to sing with Coventry Chorale, I have to think: What can I eat that will (1) not come back to haunt me five hours from now, (2) not gum up my voice, and (3) give me enough energy to get through the day? I opt for kung pao and bourbon chicken over noodles.

    2:00 pm -- At the Coffee House on Cherry Street, I'm working as fast as I can to finish up the Microsoft Access entry form, queries, and reports that I'll use to help me compare precinct results to previous elections. I've already imported results from the 2004 elections, the 2006 Mayor's race, the 2006 Third Penny, and the 2007 River Tax vote. I have three hours to learn and use some unfamiliar Access features. I've used Access plenty in the past to create and query databases, but I usually export the data and parse it through Perl or manipulate it in Excel to see percentages and do comparisons. Tonight I won't have the time for that, so I need reports that will instantly tell me what I need to know.

    As I'm testing my queries, it becomes clear that Sen. Tom Coburn's 2004 election will be the clearest benchmark for Sally Bell's chances. Coburn lost County Commission District 2, but not by much, largely because of crossover voters in the Midtown Money Belt, who tend to prefer a Democrat who's one of their own (Brad Carson lived in Maple Ridge before moving to Claremore to run for Congress) over a populist Republican. Bell would need to outperform Coburn, holding on to Republicans outside of Midtown and picking up enough anti-tax Democrats to make up for the loss of the Money Belt Republicans to Karen Keith.

    5:30 pm -- A quick stop at the 11th and Utica QT for a bottle of Coke Zero and a couple of pepperoni and sausage stuffed breadsticks, which I fail to notice are behind the "Still cooking" sign. (Ewwww.) My wife happens to be at one of the gas pumps, filling up before she picks up our daughter from her piano lesson. I say hi to her and the two boys. They'll go to the Republican watch party for a couple of hours while I'm broadcasting. (Later in the evening, I'll get a text message from my wife saying that the kids are pretty upset over the election results. The 12-year-old has become a Mark Levin fan -- he downloads his free podcasts to his iPod every night.)

    5:45 pm -- After choking down two slightly doughy and lukewarm breadsticks, I arrive in the News on 6 lot. I'm let in along with the Mazzio's delivery guys, which means the breadsticks were totally unnecessary. I find my spot, unpack my laptop, and begin to get situated. Steve Schroeder, the news operations manager for KOTV, gets me set up with their result tracking software and looks for some headphones so I can hear the feed from KRMG. I grab a couple of pieces of pizza.

    6:00 pm -- KRMG coverage begins. I open the chatroom. Still no headphones, so I try to listen online. I keep an eye on a couple of news sites for early results from the East Coast.

    6:31 pm -- I'm all wired up and ready to go. Spend the rest of the hour in the chat room and watching early returns. I see Terry Hood and Scott Thompson zip by in my peripheral vision as they go to and from the studio to do their local segments.

    7:16 pm -- The first batch of precinct results are handed to me. News on 6 staff are taking calls from runners in the field, writing down results on paper, then entering them into the tracking system. Once they're in the tracking system, however, you can't get the individual precinct data back out, and that's what I need. So Gary Kruse collects the processed precinct sheets and brings them to me, where I enter them into my Access database. Last Friday, when I came by to check things out, I got a copy of the precinct sheet from Steve, so I laid out the entry form identically to the sheet to make it easy to enter and doublecheck the data.

    Every half hour, after the national segment with ABC Radio, Joe Kelley does a brief segment each with me, Elaine Dodd at the Democratic watch party at the TWU hall, and Don Burdick at the Republican watch party at the Crowne Plaza. I'm impressed with both Don and Elaine, who manage to say something interesting and new during each break. Joe does a great job of directing traffic and keeping the broadcast moving. Never a dull moment.

    (I'm still amused to hear Elaine talking up Karen Keith, when you know that Karen will put another county tax on the ballot of the sort Elaine and I have joined together to fight in the past. And if I hear Elaine say that Oklahoma is "ruby red" one more time....)

    There's no music in the background at the Democratic party, but when Joe cuts to Don, you can hear the Rockin' Acoustic Circus playing their blend of bluegrass, country, and western swing.

    My Access reports work as hoped. Early on I can see that Sally Bell is lagging Coburn's 2004 performance by 5 to 6 percent -- not a good sign. Good numbers for her in Jenks and Glenpool and some Sand Springs precincts, but not good enough. The street tax report shows me that both taxes are passing in every City Council district, a clear sign that both measures will win big. If a tax is passing by a slim margin in east and north Tulsa, it's passing with at least 60% citywide. I'm also watching the result tracking program for the statewide and legislative races.

    When I'm not on the air, I'm entering data as fast as I can, using a numeric keypad I bought last week. Sheets are piling up, but I sort them to get the precincts in CCD 2, Senate 37, and the City of Tulsa entered first. (It's quickly apparent that Dan Newberry has blown Nancy Riley clean out of the water.)

    At one point (about 9?) the control room calls to ask if I have data on the Rogers County races. There's nothing in the results tracking software, so I call and let them know. A few minutes later I find some results and call back, but I missed the window -- they've gone back to national coverage. I post the results in the chat room -- a good thing, because, when I finally get the chance to talk about the results, I can't find the original webpage among all the tabs I had open, so I have to resort to what I posted. It was my only real bobble of the night, thankfully.

    I am rooted to my chair from about 6:30 until about 10:40, either chatting online, entering data, or talking on air. My final slot comes around 10:30, delayed because of McCain's concession speech. I keep entering data while I'm waiting for my turn. The final slot is a chance to mention any story that we've overlooked, so I congratulate Dana Murphy for an apparent and long-overdue victory in her race for Corporation Commission.

    Thus ends my first paid radio gig. I stuck around a bit longer to finish entering the last few sheets as I listened to Obama's victory speech. In the end, the KRMG/KOTV team's runners had fetched results from 215 of 267 precincts in Tulsa County -- pretty impressive. I close out the message board -- "Everyone out of the pool!"

    11:05 pm -- I'm packed up, and ready to head out the door. I head over to the Crowne Plaza to meet up with the remnants of the Republican watch party. I hang out for a couple of hours, as we rehash the results, swap campaign stories, toast the humiliating defeat of Georgetown Georgianna, and watch anxiously to see if Minnesota really is crazy enough to elect Stuart Smalley to the U. S. Senate.

    1:00 am -- Off to the house. Everyone is asleep. I spend another hour checking e-mail and doing a little websurfing. In bed a bit after 2:00 am.

    The national outcome and the county commission race were disappointing, but not entirely unexpected. The state results were encouraging. From a personal perspective, as a lifelong news junkie and radio wannabe, I thoroughly enjoyed spending election night in a newsroom with a stack of results to analyze and a chance to talk politics on the radio.

    One-man global content provider Mark Steyn says we haven't been fighting the war for hearts and minds:

    It was in many ways the final battle in a war the Republican Party didn't even bother fighting -- the "long march through the institutions." While the Senator certainly enjoyed the patronage of the Chicago machine, he is not primarily a political figure.... He emerged rather from all the cultural turf the GOP largely abandoned during its 30-year winning streak at the ballot box, and his victory demonstrates the folly of assuming that folks will continue to pull the lever for guys with an R after their name every other November even as all the other institutions in society become de facto liberal one-party states.

    ....Go into almost any American grade-school and stroll the corridors: you'll find the walls lined with Sharpie-bright supersized touchy-feely abstractions: "RESPECT," "DREAM," "TOGETHER," "DIVERSITY." By contrast, Mister Maverick talked of "reaching across the aisle" and ending "earmarks," which may sound heroic in Washington but ring shriveled and reductive to anyone who's not obsessed with legislative process. This dead language embodied the narrow sliver of turf on which he was fighting, while Obama was bestriding the broader cultural space. Republicans need to start their own long march back through all the institutions they ceded. Otherwise, the default mode of this society will be liberal, and what's left of the Republican party will be reduced (as in other parts of the west) to begging the electorate for the occasional opportunity to prove it can run the liberal state just as well as liberals can.

    The latter being the fate of, e.g., the Conservative Party in the UK.

    On The Corner, Steyn raises a related point

    Acorn is still a disgusting organization and Obama's fundraising fraud is still outrageous. But nobody wants to hear that now. The problem for us is more basic - the Dems control the language on such issues ("count every vote", etc), and they're much better at demonizing. Why did McCain talk about Ayers but not even mention Wright? Because he was terrified someone would point a finger and cry "Racist!" And in four years' time the Democrats' media-cultural-organizational advantage on such subjects will likely be even greater.

    From Sen. Tom Coburn's office today. Pay special attention to the bits I highlighted:

    On November 4, the American people had the opportunity to choose between two candidates with the character and temperament to be not just good presidents but great presidents. John McCain ran the best campaign he could in a very difficult environment and he showed the country, once again, with his moving and gracious concession speech, what it means for a statesman and leader to put the interests of America and the next generation ahead of his own self-interest.

    Barack Obama's election last night was an historic victory not for any party or ideology but for America's aspiration to be a country where anything is possible, and where all men are created equal. His election also was a victory for democracy. Even if many Americans don't like the electoral results, his campaign proved that when the American people are inspired and mobilize they can seize the reins of government and demand change.

    Our president-elect offered an olive branch to Republicans last night to "heal the divides that have held back progress." We would be wise to accept his offer, roll up our sleeves and work together on areas where we can agree. The unmistakable mandate everyone in public office can take from this election is that it's time to define a "new kind of politics" with our actions, not just our words. The space between the parties is a vast frontier of consensus and possibility. The American people have always called this area "common sense." It's time for elected officials to put aside their careerist aspirations in service to this ideal.

    Conservatives should be reassured that our president-elect did not seek an ideological mandate in this election, nor did he receive one. The failure of the Republican Party in this election does not represent the failure of conservatism, but of the big government Republicanism that took over our party in 1996. Had the Republican Party not governed as the party of socialism-lite for the past 12 years, our candidates' concerns about the excessive spending on the other side would have had more relevance.

    Republican efforts to build a governing majority through spending and earmarks have ended in disgrace. The Republican Party can either restore its identity as the party of limited government or go the way of the Whigs. When Republicans decide to come home to the timeless conservatism present at our founding, the conservatism of Abraham Lincoln - which our president-elect graciously acknowledged last night - and the conservatism of Ronald Reagan that won the Cold War and led to unprecedented prosperity, they know where to find us.

    Post-dated to remain at the top through Election Day; revised for the final day of voting. Skip down for new entries.

    Even if you live in a solidly Republican or Democrat state, you can still make a difference in the outcome of the presidential race. You can also make a difference in close down-ballot races where you live. Your help is needed anytime today or tomorrow, until the polls close.

    You can make phone calls to undecided voters in swing states on behalf of the McCain-Palin campaign. Most mobile phone plans make it as cheap to call cross-country as to call someone in your own hometown. Even taking 20 minutes to call 20 voters can make an impact.

    Gabriel Malor has some good, practical advice for callers -- it'll help you be more comfortable, confident, and effective in talking to voters (or their answering machines). The keys: Fit the script to your personality, identify yourself by name and as a volunteer, smile and sit up straight, or better yet stand up, to put energy in your voice.

    There's still a need here for helpers in Tulsa County, too. While McCain & Palin, Inhofe, and Sullivan appear to be in good shape (although we'd like to see them win by big margins), Tulsa County will be key to electing the eminently qualified Dana Murphy to the Corporation Commission, giving Republicans control of the State Senate, expanding the GOP majority in the State House, and electing the only candidate for Tulsa County Commission who has promised not to try to raise your taxes, Sally Bell. There's growing enthusiasm for the McCain-Palin ticket, but some Republican voters need to an extra reminder to vote. Here in Tulsa you can call 918-344-6566 to volunteer to help get out the vote.

    Election day links

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    Tune in tonight to News Talk 740 KRMG starting at 6 to hear my analysis of the precinct-by-precinct results as they come it from across Tulsa County.

    Bloggers from coast to coast (and beyond) are writing about the election.

    Let's begin with a prayer for the day and for the nation, from the 1928 Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, courtesy of see-dubya:

    ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us this good land for our heritage; We humbly beseech thee that we may always prove ourselves a people mindful of thy favour and glad to do thy will. Bless our land with honourable industry, sound learning, and pure manners. Save us from violence, discord, and confusion; from pride and arrogancy, and from every evil way. Defend our liberties, and fashion into one united people the multitudes brought hither out of many kindreds and tongues. Endue with the spirit of wisdom those to whom in thy Name we entrust the authority of government, that there may be justice and peace at home, and that, through obedience to thy law, we may show forth thy praise among the nations of the earth. In the time of prosperity, fill our hearts with thankfulness, and in the day of trouble, suffer not our trust in thee to fail; all which we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

    see-dubya has further thoughts worth reading about Obama and his vow to "fundamentally transform" the United States of America.

    (Silly me, I thought he was supposed to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, not remodel it.)

    Michelle Malkin has a list of Senate, House, and Governor races to watch, along with important ballot initiatives dealing with racial preferences, wind power, marriage, and abortion. We'll find out tonight whether Taxachusetts will vote to phase out their personal income tax.

    Eric G of the Tygrrrr Express has wise words for both nominees in the form of open letters to both John McCain and Barack Obama.

    Mark Steyn says to expect dire rumors claiming to be exit poll leaks. Ignore them (and the exit poll results, which in years past have wildly overestimate Democratic support), vote anyway, and wait for the real returns to come in before drawing conclusions. Wizbang supplies a McCain campaign memo about exit poll results in previous elections.

    Political numbers-cruncher Sean Malstrom says Obama's late visits to Iowa mean he's toast. The travel patterns of the presidential campaigns reveal a much different view of the race, based on the two campaigns' internal polling, compared to the public polls. Malstrom has some interesting observations on how the Obama campaign has used friendly media to push the inevitability message, going all the way back to the primaries. He also demolishes the core assumptions of the supposedly neutral polling analysis websites. He explains why Pennsylvania is going red and explains why people in that highly unionized state lie to pollsters.

    Election Journal is watching voter fraud and irregularity issues across the country. They have this remarkable report that the publisher of the Kansas City Star is registered to vote in Missouri and Kansas.

    At Ace's place, Slublog gives the number to report voter fraud, irregularities, or suspicious behavior.

    866-976-VOTE

    American Thinker has a great analogy piece about a job interview: "Would You Hire This Man?" (Hat tip to Tyson Wynn.)

    Tulsa Chiggers sounds the battle cry for the District 2 Tulsa County Commission race: "Remember Bell's!"

    Finally, a couple of reminders of God's sovereignty in all things, including elections. From Southern Baptist pastor Tyson Wynn:

    What we do know is this: Jesus Christ is King of Kings and Lord of Lords regardless of who resides on Pennsylvania Avenue in the Capitol City. Christianity flourished under Nero, and it can flourish under the worst the world can throw at us now. To be brutally honest, a little persecution can sometimes be good for genuine faith. As Christian citizens, we can never give up the fight for influence in the political realm, but we must recommit ourselves to the personal salvation of lost souls. When God changes hearts, He changes motives and ideals. People with changed hearts, motives, and ideals tend to elect better representatives. We look forward to the Government of Christ, of which there will be no end. And we're thankful that there will always be an end to the government we elect here below.

    Steve Kellmeyer has a guest post at Dawn Eden's place titled "Catholics: Be joyful!", but all Christians should take what he says to heart. He begins with the Apostle Paul's command in I Thessalonians:

    "Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus."--1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

    We don't have to be happy, we do have to be joyful.

    Being happy is being comfortable, healthy and well-fed.
    Being joyful is knowing that God's plan is being worked out,
    and our obedience and submission to it contributes to His glory.

    He concludes with the ancient hymn, Te Deum laudamus (We praise Thee, O God), an anthem of God's glory and sovereignty which concludes with a prayer for His protection of His people.

    People ask me how they should vote tomorrow. Here's the short version:

    Vote for all the REPUBLICANS.
    Vote FOR all the State Questions.
    Vote AGAINST all the judges.

    On the street tax, I plan to vote FOR the sales tax extension (Prop. 1) and AGAINST the general obligation bond issue (Prop. 2). The sales tax extension includes money (not as much as I'd like) for paving, and the sales tax allows some flexibility, so that the City Council could (via the Brown Ordinance process) move some non-street projects to a later time while moving paving earlier. This approach also avoids raising overall tax rates and leaves the door open to implement the Yazel plan to reduce the dedicated property taxes for overfunded agencies and make that money available for more immediate public purposes.

    Some links to my columns on the candidates and ballot items:

    My debate with Elaine Dodd, in which we discuss the races for President, U. S. Senate, the 1st Congressional District, the County Commission race, and the Senate District 27 race (I'm supporting McCain, Inhofe, Sullivan, Bell, and Newberry, respectively.)
    Dana Murphy for Corporation Commissioner.
    Sally Bell for Tulsa County Commissioner, District 2.
    State questions and judicial retention ballot
    Street tax (October 15)
    Street tax (October 29)

    Scroll down the home page for more commentary on the election.

    Here's some information about voting, with links to the Tulsa County Election Board website, a precinct locator, sample ballots, and how to do early voting (you have until 6 p.m. Monday for that).

    Here's the League of Women Voters Tulsa website, with links to voting information and (in PDF format) their voter's guide to the candidates and ballot issues.

    Here's the Oklahomans for Life website and their compilation of candidate responses to their survey.

    Here's the Oklahoma Family Policy Council website and their compilation of candidate responses to their survey.

    Fearing an election-losing gaffe, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama today banned himself from talking to the press about substantive issues until after the election. Previously, his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden and his wife Michelle Obama were muzzled to prevent more campaign damage.

    Should I hold my breath waiting for Peggy Noonan, Christopher Buckley, Rod Dreher, Kathleen Parker, et al., to express outrage or "deep concern" at Obama's refusal/inability to face tough questions?

    "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." -- Barack Obama to the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board, January 2008, at about 40 minutes, 30 seconds into the video.

    From a January 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board:

    Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

    What I've said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there.

    I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

    So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.

    That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

    The only thing I've said with respect to coal, I haven't been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

    So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

    It's just that it will bankrupt them.

    It will also bankrupt the coal mining and processing companies in America and the people who work for them. It will make the United States more dependent on foreign sources of energy, and it will make all energy more expensive. That's already on its way for Oklahoma consumers, since Oklahoma Corporation Commissioners Jim Roth and Jeff Cloud voted to kill the Red Rock coal-fired electricity plant that had been proposed by PSO and OG+E.

    One of Roth's supporters, commenting on my UTW column about the Corporation Commission race, wrote that Roth was going to focus on getting Oklahomans to reduce their own usage, rather than making electricity more available and less expensive.

    Jim Roth, in his official statement for voting against the Red Rock coal-fired power plant, stated that he deemed it important to first address energy demand before continuing to increase energy supply, especially when in costs billions of rate-payers money. He soon initiated a demand-side management program to help us all lower our energy use.

    Oklahoma currently ranks 47th in promoting energy conservation and efficiency. This proves we have much room to progress and improve in our energy use practices and behaviors. The OCC is currently completing their demand-side management (DSM) collaboration. It's main goal is to offset our excessive energy demand by improving efficiency in our homes and businesses, somewhat negating the NEED for another plant, a plant that would be fueled with dirty coal from Wyoming.

    Along with cleaner air and water and lower monthly utility bills, these demand-side management programs are a great source of local green-job creation.

    In fact, Roth and Cloud's vote against the Red Rock plant will cost ratepayers billions of dollars in the aggregate.

    Worse yet, Oklahoma loses a selling point for attracting industry to the state: Plentiful and relatively inexpensive electricity.

    "Local green-job creation," which would involve selling energy-saving devices to Oklahomans, and thus sending money from Oklahomans to the out-of-state or out-of-country manufacturers of those devices, can't hold a candle to manufacturing plants or massive server farms providing goods and services to the rest of the world and bringing money to Oklahoma as payroll.

    Whatever Obama gives you with his ever-dwindling middle-class tax cut, he will take away through higher energy costs. Whatever Jim Roth is saving you by counting paperclips, he's costing you far more in higher energy costs and lost job opportunities.

    Audio of Obama from his January interview, after the jump.

    Even if you live in a solidly Republican or Democrat state, you can still make a difference in the outcome of the presidential race. You can also make a difference in close down-ballot races where you live.

    Volunteers are still needed to distribute Republican campaign literature around Tulsa County on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. You'll be hanging bags of campaign flyers on doorknobs, so it's great for shy people. Call 918-344-6566 to volunteer.

    You can make phone calls to undecided voters in swing states on behalf of the McCain-Palin campaign. Most mobile phone plans make it as cheap to call cross-country as to call someone in your own hometown. Even taking 20 minutes to call 20 voters can make an impact.

    Gabriel Malor has been making calls, and he has some good, practical advice to pass along:

    Get the names and numbers from the McCain/Palin website. Call in between loads of laundry. Call while you're waiting for dinner to be done. Call after you put the tot down for her afternoon nap. Do what I did and call while you're blogging....

    Don't worry about the self-important, low-level RNC dweeb insisting that the script is sacred. It's stilted and unwieldy. Nobody talks like the provided script and people react less warmly if they can hear you reading. Memorize, simplify, don't read it; just talk.

    Tell them your first name and say you are a volunteer.

    On demeanor, courtesy of RayJ:

    Smile when you talk. Even if they can't see you they can tell.

    Several folks also suggested standing up while making the calls.

    I had never heard that last idea, but it makes sense. It allows you to put more energy into your voice.

    If you can travel to a swing state at your own expense, the McCain-Palin campaign is looking for volunteers to be deployed.

    The McCain-Palin campaign is also putting together election monitoring teams to watch for vote fraud:

    Citizens from across the nation will join us in ensuring this year's election is conducted fairly and transparently. They will perform critical tasks at the heart of the election process, including serving as election monitors, helping in election response centers, and as members of legal response teams. They will include both lawyers and concerned citizens who want to safeguard the integrity of American elections.

    Closer to home, every campaign will be doing last-minute canvassing this weekend, and the Oklahoma Republican Party will be working hard to get every Republican voter to the polls. Here in Tulsa you can call 918-344-6566 to volunteer to help get out the vote.

    (Campaigns: If you've got a specific need for help, e-mail me with the details, and I'll add them here.)

    In my column endorsing Dana Murphy in the short-term Corporation Commission race, I wrote about the mutual back-scratching relationship between Chesapeake Energy head Aubrey McClendon and Corporation Commission seat-warmer Jim Roth.

    1. McClendon helped Roth get elected to the Oklahoma County Commission.

    2. Roth built a bridge in the middle of nowhere that boosted the value of McClendon's tree farm land near Arcadia.

    3. Not only that, but Roth offered to write a nice letter to the the people of Washington State, to let them know that McClendon and his fellow basketball team owner Clay Bennett were really not mean to gay people, because they were nice to him and his gay partner. And Roth did write that letter, which was published in the Seattle Times.

    (Roth wrote that McClendon supported anti-gay-marriage campaign activities not because he had anything against homosexuals, but because he wanted to drive up Republican turnout for the sake of the energy industry.)

    4. Then a former Democratic state chairman, Pat Hall, worked to get Gov. Brad Henry to appoint Roth to the Corporation Commission. Pat Hall is now a Chesapeake lobbyist.

    5. When Chesapeake wanted to kill plans by PSO and OG+E to build a new coal-fired electric plant at Red Rock, Roth obliged, costing ratepayers billions in higher energy bills.

    6. McClendon serves as Roth's campaign chairman and is reported to have raised over $100,000 for Roth's re-election.

    KOKH in Oklahoma City has a report (video at link) summarizing most of the above points, but adding a couple of significant details concerning Roth's "Bridge to McClendon's Tree Farm." Roth's predecessor on the Oklahoma County Commission, Beverley Hodges, had been approached about building the bridge over a steak dinner, but she refused, saying it wasn't a priority. (Imagine having a county commissioner with the guts to say no to a guy with deep pockets. Vote for Sally Bell on Tuesday, and we won't have to imagine.) Roth beat Hodges when she ran for re-election in 2002.

    And a farmer who owned land adjacent to the bridge said that Roth told him to sell an easement to the county for $200 / acre or else face condemnation.

    Mike McCarville has more.

    UPDATE: KOKH has part 2 of the story, detailing Jim Roth's hypocrisy on the bridge to nowhere issue. Each of the three Oklahoma County Commissioners -- Roth, Brent Rinehart, and Stan Inman -- had a bridge he wanted to build in a remote area of his district. Roth called Rinehart's bridge unethical, because it was near the property of one of his contributors. At the same time, Roth pushed for his bridge for the benefit of his benefactor, Aubrey McClendon.

    By the way, the "commentator" at the end of the story, Bobby Stem, is a lobbyist, so you'd expect him to downplay the impact that a major contributor and fundraiser would have on a public official's decisions.

    AND MORE: Jim Roth is downplaying his homosexuality here in Oklahoma, but he's using it to raise money nationwide from gay rights groups. Watch as Roth dodges a college student's question about his out-of-state donors:

    From an e-mail from NYU:

    A research team from the Psychology Department at New York University, headed by Professor Yaacov Trope and supported by the National Science Foundation, is investigating the cognitive causes of voting behavior, political preferences, and candidate evaluations throughout the course of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election. This stage of the study focuses on the information people use to inform evaluations during the last few weeks before the election. They seek respondents of all political leanings from all over the country (and from the rest of the world) to complete a 15-minute questionnaire, the responses to which will be completely anonymous.

    I've participated already. If you'd like to participate, follow this link.

    A selection of links and excerpts:

    CBS News gives Obama-TV a reality check:

    Without question, the Barack Obama infomercial served as a very slick and powerful recitation of the biggest promises he's made as a presidential candidate. But the very bigness of his ideas is the problem: he seems blind to the concept his numbers don't add up.

    Palestra's coverage of voter fraud in Ohio and the out-of-state Obama campaign workers who have registered and voted in that state. Two college women are doing the reporting the mainstream media can't be bothered to do.

    Los Angeles Times still won't release the videotape of Obama speaking at the 2003 farewell dinner for his longtime friend, Palestinian terrorism apologist Rashid Khalidi. A Times spokesman says releasing the tape might put the source in jeopardy. If the tape poses enough of a threat to someone that he might retaliate against the tape's source, all the more reason we need to see it before election day.

    Martin Kramer explains why Obama's connection to Khalidi matters:

    Obama and Khalidi (and their wives) became friends in the 1990s, when Obama began to teach at the University of Chicago, where Khalidi also taught. In 2003, Khalidi accepted the Edward Said Professorship of Arab Studies at Columbia; the videotaped event was his Chicago farewell party. The Los Angeles Times, which refuses to release the tape (and which endorsed Obama on October 19) reported last spring that Obama praised Khalidi's "consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases." Other speakers reportedly said incendiary things against Israel. Whether or how Obama reacted, only the videotape might tell.

    That Obama spoke on this important occasion suggests that his attachment to Khalidi wasn't a superficial acquaintance. As Obama admits, the two had many "conversations" over dinner at the Khalidis' home, and these may well have constituted Obama's primer on the Middle East. Yet Obama has given no account of these conversations, even as he has repeatedly emphasized other ones which would seem far less significant.

    A commenter on the Crunchy Con blog, a Univ. of Chicago student during Obama' time there as a professor, defends the Marxist label for Obama:

    I never took Prof. Obama's classes, but I had both friends who did and friends who were tuned in to the reputation/scholarship/ideology of the various professors much better than I was. When he was running for Senate, one of my most thoughtful friends told me, without a hint of irony, that Obama was essentially a socialist; another friend, a rather liberal Jew, actually volunteered for the Ryan campaign (till it imploded) because what he could gather of Obama's position on Israel at the time scared the hell out of him....

    I have no doubt that Obama is a man of personal integrity, at least as politicians go, and I have no desire to besmirch his character. But his associations, his instincts, and his positions on the issues (at least until he positioned himself for national office) mark him as the most left-wing major-party presidential candidate perhaps in American history. There's just no getting round that fact.

    Stanley Kurtz continues his careful, scholarly investigation into Obama's political history with Obama's membership in and endorsement by the socialist New Party:

    The New Party had members, and Barack Obama was one of them. That is what contemporaneous documents tell us, and that is the reasonable inference to be made from the requirement that endorsed candidates sign a contract of party support. We know that Obama was a close ally, supporter, and even funder of key New Party figures....

    All of this matters, not because of some simplistic associational "gotcha," but because Obama's still somewhat mysterious ideology, as revealed in that 2001 radio interview, is greatly illuminated by his New Party ties. The New Party advocated gradual, but radical economic change, arguably socialist, but in any case heavily redistributive, all swathed in the soothing vocabulary of traditional American democracy, and grounded in the hope that the reach of groups like ACORN could one day be multiplied many times over. This, I'd wager, is what Barack Obama believed when he was endorsed by the New Party in 1996, what he believed when he spoke of "major redistributive change" on the radio in 2001, and what he hopes to accomplish (over time) should he become president of the United States in 2009.

    Bill Sammon points to Obama's autobiographical accounts of seeking out radical leftist friends and associates:

    But Obama himself acknowledges that he was drawn to socialists and even Marxists as a college student. He continued to associate with Marxists later in life, even choosing to launch his political career in the living room of a self-described Marxist, William Ayers, in 1995, when Obama was 34....

    Obama supporters point out that plenty of Americans flirt with radical ideologies in college, only to join the political mainstream later in life. But Obama, who made a point of noting how "carefully" he chose his friends in college, also chose to launch his political career in the Chicago living room of Ayers, a domestic terrorist who in 2002 proclaimed: "I am a Marxist."

    Also present at that meeting was Ayers' wife, fellow terrorist Bernardine Dohrn, who once gave a speech extolling socialism, communism and "Marxism-Leninism."

    Kyle-Anne Shiver at American Thinker reminds us what's so alluring -- and so dangerous -- about socialism (hat tip to Tyson Wynn):

    A great many Americans -- perhaps even a majority -- seem poised to hand over vast amounts of their hard-earned money and their hard-won liberties to the promised "collective redemption" being offered by Barack Obama and his socialist band of "progressives" in Congress. With the votes of nanny-state supporters from all classes among us, their utopian dreams will be put to the test on our own ground and the reach of our federal government will be expanded drastically according to their plans....

    One of the simplest realities of life is that the person who pays the bill is the one who makes the decisions. When that person is you, you decide. When the payer is a state collective, the collective decides. And you obey....

    So, Obama got his ideas by palling around with radical communist revolutionaries of the 60s. Obama chose these radicals as mentors and friends. Obama's own parents were from the same mold as well. Happy socialists all.

    John McCain spent a good deal of his adult life with radical socialists too. Five and a half years to be precise. Only McCain got his education on the merits of communism from inside one of their "utopian" cells under force.

    Shiver includes this brilliant quote from C. S. Lewis:

    Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.


    Michael Spencer considers his options in the voting booth:

    As an evangelical, I'm interested in a lot of issues. But I also want someone who will simply run the country as a conservative with conservative principles.

    I just don't buy John McCain as a conservative. I don't trust him to run his presidency from conservative principles.

    So is Obama so bad, so potentially radical, so secretly corrupt, so inexperienced and so ambitious that I should vote for McCain anyway?

    Maybe. The Chosen One frightens me. All the signals I look for are deeply negative. I don't see personal integrity. I hear manipulative rhetoric. I hear a lot of lies about personal associations. I see little respect for individualism. I hear a lot of serious flirtation with socialism and Marxism. I hear rookie arrogance on foreign policy. I hear promises we can't afford and a complete dedication to the use of racial politics to accumulate and use power. I feel a distressing lack of seriousness about the presidency and nothing that impresses me as statesmanship.

    I see charisma, intellect, opportunism, a lack of candor and a vast ocean of manipulative rhetoric.

    Finally, long-time newspaperman Michael Malone is trying to understand why so many of his colleagues are so obviously "in the tank" for Obama. He concludes with a fascinating but plausible theory. He looks not to the reporters, but to the editors, who may think they have found a way to keep their jobs in the face of their industry's decline:

    Picture yourself in your 50s in a job where you've spent 30 years working your way to the top, to the cockpit of power ... only to discover that you're presiding over a dying industry. The Internet and alternative media are stealing your readers, your advertisers and your top young talent. Many of your peers shrewdly took golden parachutes and disappeared. Your job doesn't have anywhere near the power and influence it did when your started your climb. The Newspaper Guild is too weak to protect you any more, and there is a very good chance you'll lose your job before you cross that finish line, 10 years hence, of retirement and a pension....

    With luck, this monolithic, single-party government will crush the alternative media via a revived fairness doctrine, re-invigorate unions by getting rid of secret votes, and just maybe be beholden to people like you in the traditional media for getting it there.

    And besides, you tell yourself, it's all for the good of the country ...

    (Via Pretty Numbers.)

    All you folks who have been asking me about the state questions and the judicial retention ballot -- here you go. My extra piece in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly is about Oklahoma's four state questions and retention votes for some of our supreme court and appeals court judges. In a nutshell, vote yes on all the state questions, and vote no on all the judges, particularly Civil Appeals Court Judge Jane Wiseman.

    The Cityscope column proper is about the City of Tulsa street tax again, with a summary of the responses I received from the Tulsa Public Works Department, a summary of the case the Papa Bear proponents are making against the Mama Bear plan, and how County Assessor Ken Yazel's proposal fits in with all this.

    New city reporter Brandon Honig debuts in the current issue, with a solid story about the Tulsa Development Authority and its problems with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. And Natasha Ball has a lovely story about the Remingtons, a couple who adopted a family of five siblings early this year.

    Later, I'll add links to this entry to background info on the judges and state questions. But this'll have to do for now.

    Former State Rep. Mark Liotta, currently studying for a graduate degree, is inspired by the redistributive agenda of The One, and he takes it one step beyond:

    As is usually the case, I think of a good argument after class as I am driving home. In tonight's discussion of the supposed flaws in our global economy, the serious question was asked and discussed "well, what's wrong with wealth redistribution?". Some of you probably saw my jaw hit the floor. I apologize for my reaction, but I was surprised. So I tried to think of an example of wealth redistribution that we all might relate to.

    At least half of the class is working very hard and deserve an "A". The rest of us have busy lives or just aren't putting in the effort, so we are working toward a "C".

    Some would argue this is fair, but is it really equitable?

    You "A" students certainly deserve your grade, but you really don't need an A, do you? While the rest of us "C" students, we really need at least a "B" in graduate school.

    Now who's to blame for this inequity?

    I would suggest the culprit is our professor. Isn't he the one who created this system that assigns grades based on effort? Shame on this grades dictatorship that does not ensure an equality of outcomes. Surely you and I could have created a system that "spreads the wealth around" and allows us to receive an equal grade with little or no effort.

    In the spirit of redistribution of wealth, I propose that those of you with A's have some of your grade redistributed to those of us with C's. Now everyone will have B's. No one excels, but no one fails, either.

    Now we have equity, but is that really fair?

    I know this example isn't original to me, but I thought it was appropriate to our class and our times. Show me the flaw in my logic and I'll buy your lunch. And I am a free capitalist, so if I buy your lunch, it's MY money, and I will decide how to spend it on you, not you, and not the government.

    MORE: Another take, via Tulsa City Councilor Rick Westcott, from Augusta Chronicle cartoonist Rick McKee (click for the full-size image on the Chronicle's website):

    McKee-20081023-CampaignRedistribution.jpg

    Just how in the tank is CNN for Barack Obama?

    I was grabbing a late lunch at McDonald's and caught some of Rick Sanchez on CNN.

    Sanchez introduced a quote by CNN commentator David Gergen (a man as squishy as the first diaper change of the day) ridiculing Joe the Plumber for making some remarks about US policy toward Israel. Rather than let the audience hear what Mr. Wurzelbacher had to say -- you know, "we report, you decide" -- Sanchez let the audience hear Squishy Dave express astonishment at the very idea that someone like Wurzelbacher would express an opinion on such an issue. For the record, here's what happened:

    Wurzelbacher was hitting the campaign trail on behalf of McCain for the first time, joining former Rep. Rob Portman on a GOP bus tour through Ohio.

    At a stop in Columbus, he fielded the question on Israel from a self-identified Jewish senior citizen.

    The questioner said he was "concerned" with Barack Obama's associations and "It's my belief that a vote for Obama is a vote for the death to Israel."

    Wurzelbacher responded: "I do know that."

    The questioner then complained about Obama's tax policies and reiterated his Israel comment.

    "Well, you know what, I'll actually go ahead and agree with you on that one," Wurzelbacher said. "You know ... no, I agree with ya.'"

    Wearing an obnoxious smirk, Sanchez told the audience that because Joe Wurzelbacher ("Joe the Plumber") had now thrust himself into the public eye, by doing interviews and making public appearances in support of John McCain, roto-rooting into his private affairs by the mainstream media (and, one assumes, Ohio public officials) was retroactively justified. He then ran through the canonical list of misleading factoids intended to distract from Obama's answer to the question Wurzelbacher asked when Obama wandered into his driveway.

    Never, at any time in this segment, did Sanchez remind the audience what Barack Obama said to Joe the Plumber that created a national stir: "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." Who Joe Wurzelbacher is doesn't change what Obama said.

    Here's the sequence of events, Rick, in case you've forgotten:


    1. Obama, out campaigning, approaches Wurzelbacher, who was out in his yard.

    2. Wurzelbacher asks a question about Obama's tax policy.

    3. Obama gives his "spread the wealth around" reply.

    4. Obama's answer gets national attention.

    5. Obama operatives and the mainstream media (I repeat myself) begin to "vet" Wurzelbacher.

    6. After being kicked around by the Left, Wurzelbacher decides to support McCain.

    7. Wurzelbacher campaigns for McCain in Ohio.

    Chicago public radio station WBEZ has posted MP3s of then State Sen. Barack Obama's appearance on four editions of their public affairs program Odyssey. This includes several controversial remarks by Obama, frequently heard over the past few days, about flaws in the U. S. Constitution and how to bring about "economic justice" and "redistributive change." At the link above, you can also click to listen to the original Real Audio files.

    Wealth_Spread_220.jpgI applaud WBEZ for making this information more easily available. Obama has such a thin paper trail, these discussions provide valuable insight into his ideology, his understanding of the proper role of government.

    (I also applaud them for keeping seven-year old archives of programs available to the public. Too often, radio and TV stations purge their online archives after a change in website structure or a change in on-air personnel, and valuable historical material is lost.)

    Several comments on the above post called for WBEZ to demand, under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), that YouTube take down the videos containing excerpts from the show. Acting program director Steve Edwards explained why they declined to do this:

    Some of you have inquired as to why we didn't request a takedown notice for the YouTube video. Here's the deal: As an organization we strive to be an impeccable source of independent, unbiased news and information. While our audio content in this case was excerpted and repackaged in way that wasn't in keeping with our own editorial standards, the source audio was available to others on the web and its use in this case was within generally acceptable fair use provisions. Thus, we didn't have any clear legal claim to intervene one way or the other. And more importantly, to do so would have been tantamount to intervening on behalf of the Obama campaign. To take actions that could be construed as helping either campaign (Obama's or McCain's) is contrary to our own standards of reporting in an unbiased and independent manner. Instead, we believed the best approach was simply to make available the original source of the audio - in its entirety - for others to listen to themselves and to decide what Senator Obama said and meant.

    Good on WBEZ.

    (You can read my comments on Obama's January 18, 2001, Odyssey appearance -- with the discussion of "redistributive change" -- here. Image above is from The People's Cube.)

    Ace has some helpful things to say (sprinkled as always with words that would make a sailor blush, so be advised) about the Republican Party's failures to plug in effectively to what the conservative blogosphere has to offer. He wants to get bloggers engaged in candidate recruitment, finding non-traditional candidates -- retired military, doctors, farmers, teachers, businessmen -- encouraging them to run and helping to connect them to the resources they need to run and win.

    The Democrats have their recruitment pipeline-- lawyers, bureaucrats. The GOP has a much bigger and better talent pool, but we don't exploit it.

    I'm not sure why. I think it's because so many people assume, "Gee, I could never do that."

    Well, of course you could. If the Democrats can put up one hack lawyer after another, why isn't a Master Sergeant war hero a good candidate?

    We need an army of Sarah Palins in 2010.

    Look at Joe the Plumber. Pretty sharp guy. pretty likable. He doesn't have the alleged credentials to be a Congressmen -- by which I mean he's not a hack trial lawyer or sub-bureaucrat at the Department of Cutting Checks for People Who Don't Work. So what? He's got what it takes -- he's bright, politically interested, presentable, and, if he does decide to run, backed by a major political party.

    I think an awful lot of people fit this profile.

    Especially military men and women.

    For God's sakes, guys: You know you have a better than even chance of winning just by showing up?

    Think about it as just a slightly distasteful new tour of service. One one hand, you'll be surrounded by mutants and halfwits. On the other hand, no one will be shooting at you and there will be lots of free barbecue and (weak) chicken cordon blue.

    That is, by the way, how the Oklahoma Republican Party, under Chairman Gary Jones' leadership, has succeeded in winning legislative seats in traditionally Democratic rural/small town districts. They found Republicans who were known as community leaders, not political figures, and gave them the training and access to the campaign support network they needed for a successful run. As a result, Republicans control the State House and are poised to take over the State Senate.

    Ace wants to be able to call attention to and rally support for candidates in key congressional races, but for that to happen, the GOP should keep conservative bloggers in the loop and actually solicit our ideas:

    Not to overstate my importance, but the internet is a huge fundraising and name-recognition machine. Honestly, the GOP should have us on conference calls every week.

    Not for [b.s.] getting-the-message out. They do that. And we do get the message out.

    But to be more involved in this. As in, making some decisions and offering input.

    Personally the prospect of yet another conference call where I get the talking points I already knew (based on common sense) and was already getting out anyway isn't all that appealing.

    Ace links to John Hawkins of Right Wing News, who writes that Republican operatives don't get what blogs could do for them:

    The bad news is that the Republican Party looks at bloggers solely as an alternative means to get their message out. In other words, there's a completely non-functional top down organizational structure. It's non-functional because the Republican Party organizations and pols issue talking points and press releases, most of which are of no interest to bloggers, and they are largely ignored. In other words, they spend most of their time issuing unheeded orders to people who, by and large, think they're incompetent and aren't inclined to pay much attention to what they say....

    That's a real shame because had they listened to bloggers, most of the big political snafus of the last four years could have been avoided. However, they pay zero attention to things they're told by bloggers, even on the rare occasions when they ask what we think.

    Just to give you an example of what I'm talking about, here's a generic conversation, some variation of which I've had with different congressional aides at least half-a-dozen times over the last four years.

    Anonymous Aide: Hawkins, I want to ask your advice.
    John Hawkins: Shoot.
    Anonymous Aide: We're thinking about doing idea x.
    John Hawkins: Are you out of your mind? That's going to be a disaster!
    Anonymous Aide: Well, they've already decided to do it. How do we sell it to the bloggers?
    John Hawkins: You're asking me whether you should put mayonnaise or mustard on a sh*t sandwich. I can give you some advice, but it's not going to go over well no matter how you spin it.

    Inevitably, it doesn't sell -- which cuts to the heart of the problem the GOP has with bloggers: they need to have conversations with bloggers instead of just viewing us as another part of the message machine....

    What the GOP needs to realize is that bloggers, some of the better ones anyway, tend to have their fingers on the pulse of conservatism.... The Republican Party should pick up the phone and call Erick Erickson, Ace, or Michelle Malkin and ask them what the conservative reaction is going to be BEFORE the GOP makes yet another blunder instead of trying to do damage control afterwards. It would make a lot more sense.

    Hawkins has much more worth pondering about how the left and right sides of the blogosphere compare in presence and enthusiasm -- and how the left has overtaken the right over the last few years -- why conservative bloggers are bad at fundraising and generating online activity, and how conservative old media institutions and donors could help grow a conservative blogosphere.

    It just hit me tonight.

    If the Democratic nominee were Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Charles Rangel, or any other left-wing congressman from a left-leaning part of the country, he or she wouldn't stand a chance, not even in a bad year for Republicans. These politicians have never had to moderate their views to win election, the way their brethren in the rural south or west have. However freaky-left they want to be, their constituencies are just as far out there.

    Obama_RedArmy.gifBarack Obama is cut from the same cloth. All of his close friends and mentors have been far-left radicals. He won a state senate seat in a heavily Democratic area (eliminating his opponents from the ballot), then swept to a U. S. Senate victory after his primary and general election opponents were driven out of the race by embarrassing and appalling revelations about their private lives. Obama has never before had to compete for the votes of moderate to conservative voters.

    Obama is farther left than George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale, John Kerry, and Al Gore, all of whom were too far left for a majority of the national electorate.

    So why is Obama succeeding where Pelosi et al. would have failed? Let's assume that the media would have been just as in the tank for another Democratic nominee. Where's the difference?

    (1) No paper trail. His lack of legislative accomplishments works to his advantage here, as any substantive legislative achievement would almost certainly have been abhorrent in the eyes of middle America.

    (2) His cool demeanor and professorial tone of voice doesn't set off alarm bells the way the shrill and strident tones of a typical left-wing moonbat does. The ideas are the same, but the delivery is smoother.

    The poster above, and the skinny piggy bank poster below are from The People's Cube, a website that had its origins in the Communists for Kerry movement of 2004, a satirical look at the similarities between left-wing American policies and those of the former Soviet Union.

    Google loves me, which is nice, but sometimes Google loves me too much.

    I received word from the Tulsa County Election Board that voters were finding (via Google) my 2004 pre-election entry about early voting. Some of these voters didn't notice the date on the entry and came to the conclusion that early voting was possible today. Not so.

    (These must be the same folks who forward e-mails which warn of something bad happening "tomorrow" or "next Monday," and they never look for a date when the original message was sent.)

    Here's a repeat of that entry, but updated for 2008:

    You can go here to look at a sample ballot for your precinct. Each ballot will be double-sided. The front will vary based on the which legislative and county commission district a precinct is in. The back of the ballot will have the state questions and judicial retention questions and will be the same in every precinct statewide. A separate ballot will be given to residents in the City of Tulsa, containing the two street funding propositions, one for a sales tax and one for a

    Don't know your precinct? Go to the precinct locator, enter your address, and you'll be shown the precinct number, all the applicable district numbers, a picture of the polling place, a link to a MapQuest map of the polling place's location, and a number to call if you run into problems.

    You can vote "absentee in person" at the County Election Board HQ at 555 N. Denver, this Friday, October 31, 2008, from 8 am to 6 pm, Saturday, November 1, 2008, from 8 am to 1 pm, and Monday, November 3, 2008, 8 am to 6 pm. (Every county election board in Oklahoma offers the same early voting hours.)

    (Now if we could just have past election results online, I'd be thrilled.)

    You may have already heard the promos, but in case you haven't:

    I'll be part of News Talk 740 KRMG's election night coverage, keeping an eye on local races and on listener comments submitted via Internet chat on KRMG.com. Joe Kelley will anchor the coverage, Elaine Dodd and Don Burdick will provide updates from the watch parties, and I'll be in studio monitoring precinct-by-precinct results as they come in, looking for an early read on the trends.

    KRMG's coverage begins at 6 pm. I'll miss being at the GOP watch party, but I'm excited to be a part of KRMG's election night team.

    Obama's answer to Joe Wurzelbacher was no fluke. He's been talking about "spread[ing] the wealth around" for a long time.

    On January 18, 2001, then Illinois State Sen. Barack Obama participated in a panel discussion on civil rights and constitutional law on Odyssey, a public affairs program on Chicago public radio station WBEZ.

    The discussion deals with Supreme Court intervention in legislative acts. Obama had some interesting things to say about the court and redistribution of wealth. The Power Line news forum has the transcript and the link to a YouTube video embedding the key quotes.

    OBAMA: If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I'd be okay.

    But the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can't do to you, it says what the federal government can't do to you, but it doesn't say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn't shifted. One of the I think tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change and in some ways we still suffer from that.

    Support Class Envy!It's clear that in Obama's mind, the civil rights movement was right to work to "bring about redistributed change"; their mistake was to expect the court to do that, rather than pursuing "political and community organizing and activities on the ground" to accomplish it through the legislative branch.

    He's not explicit about it, but it appears he thinks it's a deficiency that the Warren court didn't interpret the Constitution as saying "what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf."

    The lead-in to that quote was another panelist talking about using the "due process" clause to pursue redistribution of wealth through the courts. It comes at about 39 minutes into the program.

    Later in the program, a caller asks Obama to expand on his point about the Warren court and "redistributive change":

    MODERATOR: Let's talk with Karen. Good morning, Karen, you're on Chicago Public Radio.

    KAREN: Hi. The gentleman made the point that the Warren court wasn't terribly radical with economic changes. My question is, is it too late for that kind of reparative work economically and is that that the appropriate place for reparative economic work to take place - the court - or would it be legislation at this point?

    OBAMA: Maybe I'm showing my bias here as a legislator as well as a law professor, but I'm not optimistic about bringing about major redistributive change through the courts. The institution just isn't structured that way.

    You just look at very rare examples during the desegregation era the court was willing to for example order changes that cost money to a local school district. The court was very uncomfortable with it. It was very hard to manage, it was hard to figure out. You start getting into all sorts of separation of powers issues in terms of the court monitoring or engaging in a process that essentially is administrative and takes a lot of time.

    The court's just not very good at it and politically it's very hard to legitimize opinions from the court in that regard. So I think that although you can craft theoretical justifications for it legally. Any three of us sitting here could come up with a rationale for bringing about economic change through the courts.

    Obama's comments on the Bush v. Gore case are interesting, too. He suggests, admiringly, that the Florida court acted in that case much like the Warren court had in the 1960s in the way they interpreted the state's election laws.

    (Via Ace of Spades HQ, where you can watch a YouTube video with the key excerpts.)

    MORE: The Daily Telegraph has an apt summary: "Although his remarks were heavily analytical and academic, he spoke warmly of the notion of redistributing wealth, suggesting that there were other vehicles than the courts to achieve it."

    According to an interview in the Alva Review-Courier, Sen. Jim Inhofe had a run-in 25 years ago with the organization at the center of a nationwide voter fraud scandal.

    It was 25 years ago, and there were ACORN protesters on then-Mayor Jim Inhofe's front lawn. The protest had to do with housing for Cuban refugees. The protesters were threatening his wife and children.

    He told them, "Get off my property or I'll kill you all." They split.

    Clarity of intention, clarity of expression: More reasons why Oklahomans love Jim Inhofe.

    Via Ace, whose commenters are appreciative:

    "I already sent him campaign money. Looks like I'll need to check the deep recesses of the couch again."

    "I think most of us Oklahomans might wonder why he warned them first."

    "Elegant in its simplicity and clarity."

    "We are going to need a bunch of guys like this, guys with a lot of intestinal fortitude, in the next session of Congress."

    "Inhofe knows global warming is b---s---. Not afraid to cap a few ACORN a--h---s. Why isn't this man running for President with Sarah?"

    "I have 'Inhofe' and 'Coburn' tattooed on my knuckles, right and left, respectively. Scares the bejeezus out of
    potential attackers."

    "Eloquent and to the point. He would make a great Secretary of State in a McCain administration. That could be his first speech to the United Nations. 'Get off my property or I'll kill you all.'"

    "Sometime in the 90's... Inhofe dead-sticked a landing in his private plane after, get this... prop fell off."

    See-Dubya wrote:

    "When I was still in diapers, I was out campaigning for that man. Umm, I mean before 2002. He ran for governor once, or maybe state Senate, long time ago." (Inhofe was the Republican nominee for governor in 1974, his first statewide race. He was a State Senator before that.)

    This is not an original thought. I know I've seen a form of this question asked, more than once, on some blog somewhere.

    We know that Barack Obama has had among his close associates and mentors a number of radical leftists: His father, his stepfather, his father-figure mentor "Frank" in Hawaii, his roommate at Columbia, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers (who babysat his children, arranged for his job with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and very possibly ghost-wrote his first memoir) -- the list goes on and on.

    So here's my question: Is there any conservative close friend or mentor or teacher in Barack Obama's history to act as a counterweight, to temper the influence of all these socialist father figures? Any influence in the direction of the benefits of capitalism, the disasters wrought by central control, the importance of the liberties that evolved through the English common law and became our founding principles?

    We know he can discuss Niebuhr at the drop of a hat. Is he conversant with Adam Smith? Milton Friedman? Friederich Hayek? Has he read de Tocqueville?

    Much has been written about presumed lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of Sarah Palin. Has Obama had the intellectual curiosity to explore conservative thought? Has he been open to understanding the equally authentically African-American but very different experiences of Clarence Thomas?

    Leaving aside the realm of the intellect, what about experience that might temper his redistributionist proclivities? Obama has spent his entire professional life as a community agitator, an attorney, or a politician. Has he ever been closely connected with someone who owned and operated a small business or a farm? Is there a "Joe the Plumber" anywhere in his experience? Has he been close to anyone who has built a business from scratch, using hard work, ingenuity, and ambition to grow it and become successful? Has he been close to someone whose ambitions have been stymied by burdensome government?

    Finally, is there anything or anyone in Obama's experience that attaches him emotionally to this country? All of his close associates are disaffected, alienated, even hostile to America as it is. He chose to detach himself from the "middleclassness" of his "typical white" grandparents and to attach himself to the grievance industry. Is there any heretofore unknown mentor or close friend whose influence on Obama would temper or moderate the influence of his known associates?

    Christopher Buckley has written glowingly about Obama's intellect. Intellect by itself is nothing without the raw materials of facts and ideas and first principles which intellect processes to come to conclusions. Is there anything of a conservative or traditionalist nature in Obama's inner repository?

    Is there anything in his formative influences, anything ingrained into his temperament, that would act as an internal brake against radical policies?

    "When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody." - Barack Obama

    Congressional Democrats agree:

    Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation's $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

    House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

    A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller's Education and Labor Committee on her proposal....

    Under Ghilarducci's plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.

    So, while the Republicans proposed allowing workers to invest a portion of their Social Security contributions in the market, with the potential of higher returns on investment over the long haul, the Democrats want to force workers to invest a portion of their 401(k)s into government accounts with no potential for higher returns.

    I found this via James Taranto's Best of the Web. (Taranto was on the Pat Campbell Show this morning).

    Ghilarducci outlined her plan last year in a paper for the left-liberal Economic Policy Institute, in which she acknowledges that her plan would amount to a tax increase on workers making more than $75,000--considerably less than the $250,000 Barack Obama has said would be his tax-hike cutoff. In addition, workers would be able to pass on only half of their account balances to their heirs; presumably the government would seize the remaining half. (Under current law, 401(k) balances are fully heritable, although they are subject to the income tax.)

    Do you really want to turn this sort of thinking loose on Washington with no check, no balance?

    RELATED: A friend sends along a "friend of a friend" anecdote:

    Today on my way to lunch I passed a homeless guy with a sign that read "Vote Obama, I need the money." I laughed.

    Once in the restaurant my server had on a "Obama 08" tie, again I laughed as he had given away his political preference--just imagine the coincidence.

    When the bill came I decided not to tip the server and explained to him that I was exploring the Obama redistribution of wealth concept. He stood there in disbelief while I told him that I was going to redistribute his tip to someone who I deemed more in need--the homeless guy outside. The server angrily stormed from my sight.

    I went outside, gave the homeless guy $10 and told him to thank the server inside as I've decided he could use the money more. The homeless guy was grateful.

    At the end of my rather unscientific redistribution experiment I realized the homeless guy was grateful for the money he did not earn, but the waiter was pretty angry that I gave away the money he did earn even though the actual recipient needed money more.

    I guess redistribution of wealth is an easier thing to swallow in concept than in practical application.

    Steve Roemerman has a detailed report from Tuesday night's debate between Tulsa County Commission District 2 candidates Sally Bell (R) and Karen Keith (D).

    Steve reports that Keith claimed the sad state of Tulsa streets was because of "failed tax initiatives." I challenge Karen Keith to name one street-related tax initiative (general obligation bond issue or sales tax) that has failed in the last quarter-century in Tulsa.

    My column in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly further explores the contrasting political philosophies of Karen Keith and Sally Bell.

    The County Commission race was also a topic of conversation in my debate with former Tulsa County Democratic Party chairman Elaine Dodd, the cover story in this week's UTW. We also chatted about the presidential, U. S. Senate, and U. S. House races, and the State Senate District 37 race between incumbent Republican-turned-Democrat Nancy Riley and Republican challenger Dan Newberry.

    Oklahoma Corporation Commission Republican nominee Dana Murphy responded today to attack ads from her Democratic opponent, appointed incumbent Jim Roth. Murphy reminded voters about Roth's cozy relationship with the head of a major energy company regulated by the OCC.

    Jim Roth is a desperate, frightened man. As almost half of Oklahomans know, divorce is an ugly, horrible thing and sadly, it brings out the absolute worst in people. My opponent is bringing up allegations against me from a 15 year old divorce case because he cannot match my qualifications for this job.

    Let's set the record straight once and for all. I have never been charged with or convicted of forgery or any other crime. Period.

    These last minute smear tactics are reminiscent of the schoolyard bully ambushing kids on the playground.

    The people of Oklahoma deserve better.

    This smear campaign is costing big bucks.

    The real question here is where are the hundreds of thousands of dollars coming from that are being used to smear me? From campaign contributions by powerful special interest groups outside and inside the State who want their lapdog at the Commission looking out for their interests, not the interests of all Oklahomans.

    Roth has proven to be that lap dog.

    Roth is panicked because this is the best job that he has ever had. He has no place else to go. When he loses this election, it will only be a matter of time before he has a job with one of those special interest groups contributing the big bucks to support his campaign.

    It is not a coincidence that Jim Roth has as his campaign chair, a man who received amazing benefits as a result of his contributions.

    First, the Red Rock Power Plant decision. That was a done deal as soon as Roth was appointed to the OCC.

    Second, when a tree farm (owned by Aubrey McClendon in Arcadia) needed a road and a bridge, it was Roth who made sure it was paid for by taxpayers.

    The list of favors for special interests goes on and on.

    I have the education, the experience and the qualifications earned during a 15-year career in the oil and gas industry and almost six years as a Law Judge at the Corporation Commission. I have forgotten more about the oil and gas industry than he will ever know and Jim Roth knows it. His special interest supporters know it too and they are scared to death.

    My only special interest group is everyday Oklahomans who need a watchdog on the Commission, not a lapdog.

    There are 12 days left in this election, I have run a clean campaign focused on the issues and my qualifications for office.

    I see no reason to change that strategy.

    If Mr. Roth wants to run a dirty campaign, wallow in the mud and sling it - that's his choice.

    Mr. Roth's mudslinging has given Oklahomans a clearcut choice as to who they want for Corporation Commissioner.

    They can have someone like him, a mudslinging bureaucratic lapdog or they can have me, someone who shares their conservative Oklahoma values and has the experience and qualifications to do the best job for all Oklahomans at the Corporation Commission."

    (Via McCarville.)

    MORE: Jenn of Green Country Values analyzes Roth's out-of-state political contributions and has the latest on the billions of dollars that Roth's decisions have cost Oklahoma utility ratepayers.

    Sen. Joe Biden has predicted that the callow youth at the top of his ticket would be tested by a "generated" international crisis, which, just as John F. Kennedy, whose obvious weakness gave Khrushchev the all-clear to wall off Berlin and plant missiles in Cuba, did, Obama will royally screw up.

    (As Rush Limbaugh was saying today, isn't the whole world supposed to love us again if we elect Obama? Why should anyone expect him to be challenged by the bad guys, since there aren't any bad guys in the world, just people who are understandably enraged that America has yet to overthrow Chimpy McBushitler?)

    Biden mentioned four or five scenarios, which inspired Gov. Sarah Palin to imagine what those five crises might be:

    (Video after the jump.)

    This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I return to the topic of the November 4 City of Tulsa street sales tax and bond issue vote, raising some questions I hope can be convincingly answered between now and election day.

    In an extra op-ed, I explain why voters of all political orientations should choose the eminently qualified Dana Murphy for the two-year term seat on the Corporation Commission over appointed incumbent Jim Roth, whose personal connections and campaign finances indicate a far-too-cozy relationship with Chesapeake Energy, one of the businesses he regulates. For good measure, here's my editorial endorsing Dana Murphy in the Republican primary.

    Okie ACORN

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    Until recently, Democratic 1st District Congressional nominee Georgianna Oliver proudly boasted the endorsement of ACORN, the left-wing organization in the news recently in connection with fraudulent voter registration activities in numerous swing states. It was the top of her "professional endorsements" page. Mad Okie noticed that that endorsement had vanished for some reason, but he was able to capture a screenshot from Google's cache. He was also able to capture the PDF directly from the website before it was removed from the oliverforcongress.com website, a brief, unsigned and undated memo on ACORN VOTES letterhead from Patricia Walker, "North Tulsa Chapter Chairperson, ACORN Votes." The PDF file has a creation date of September 16.

    The Red Dirt Report recently received an exclusive peek at an abandoned ACORN office in southern Oklahoma City:

    Left hurriedly and in a shambles, the small office, coated in a layer of plaster dust, still housed computers, documents, registration forms, I-9 employment info and boxes with an IRS return address and others with a return address for an ACORN office in New Orleans.

    The person working at this office, Adam Carter, had reportedly skipped town in June, according to the landlord. and in August, an ACORN representative from Tulsa came down and took more items, leaving behind what was found by Red Dirt Report. ACORN never fulfilled it's year lease for the property and never paid a dime in rent. The landlord told Red Dirt Report that the ACORN workers seemed to attract trouble and that there was something not quite right about what they were doing. The landlord also said that the aforementioned Tulsa ACORN worker, named "Brittany," said ACORN didn't have any money to pay for the rent and that Carter had depleted the South Oklahoma City ACORN account....

    In fact, the evidence discovered in the abandoned office on South Robinson revealed maps of Oklahoma City broken down in House districts. Districts where a Republican won, but just barely, were highlighted. Papers related to the 2006 election results for Oklahoma were also noted.

    Oklahoma City radio station KTOK reported Thursday on ACORN's brief tenure in Oklahoma City, where they attempted to get taxpayer funding for their activities:

    The city received a request for the HUD money from a Matthew Eaton who represented ACORN. Internet searches reveal a Matt Eaton is the South West Development Coordinator for ACORN who described himself as an experienced grant writer and resource development coordinator. He also claimed to be 'well versed in various forms of fund raising. "I aspire to help raise enough money so ACORN offices in the Southwest will be able to establish Tax Access and Benefit Centers in each of its neighborhood locations and to register 300,000 new voters," wrote Eaton in a website description of himself and his goals.

    But less than a year after asking for the HUD money,Eaton and the ACORN office in Oklahoma City were history. The city denied the funding request and other neighborhood agencies indicated they too had similar 'empty' relationships with ACORN. A spokeswoman of one such group said when they asked an ACORN official about the group's funding, they were told it could not be discussed.

    (Via Green Country Values.)

    MORE: In 2007, ACORN was found to have submitted more than 1,700 fraudulent voter registrations in King Co., Washington.

    RottenACORN.com has a list and map of fraud prosecutions involving ACORN. They seem to be fond of swing states.

    Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit provides a "complete guide to ACORN voter fraud" on Pajamas Media.

    At a campaign stop in Ohio, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called for the Obama-Biden campaign to disclose all communications between that campaign and ACORN. Hoft notes:

    Barack Obama worked as a former trainer with the scandal-plagued ACORN organization. He also has a long history with the Far Left group and the group has canvassed for him this year. He represented ACORN in court. And, Obama donated $800,000 to the radical group just this year for their get out the vote efforts.

    Earlier this week Palin told Obama to rein in this group of radical supporters.

    In response, the Obama campaign is trying to pressure the FBI into dropping its investigation into voter fraud. The McCain campaign has fired back:

    After a week of shifting stories and clumsy corrections regarding Barack Obama's connections to ACORN, the Obama campaign resorted to their now-customary heavy handed tactic of attempting to criminalize political discourse. Today's outrageous letter to Attorney General Mukasey and Special Prosecutor Dannehy at the Justice Department asking for a special prosecutor to investigate Senator McCain and Governor Palin's public statements about ACORN's record of fraudulent voter registrations (including in this week's Presidential debate) is absurd. It is a typical time-worn Washington attempt to criminalize political differences. For someone who promises 'change,' it is certainly only more of the same.

    The letter's request that the Department of Justice investigate 'recent partisan Republican activities throughout the country' is almost a parody of the Obama campaign's attempt to intimidate their political opponents. In case Sen. Obama's lawyer did not notice, we are in the midst of a political campaign, not a coronation, and the alleged criminal activity he calls 'recent partisan Republican activities' are what the rest of us call campaign speeches and debates. All of this is unfortunately reminiscent of the Obama campaign's recent creation of a 'truth squad' of Missouri prosecutors and sheriffs to 'target' people who criticize Sen. Obama. Rest assured that, despite these threats, the McCain-Palin campaign will continue to address the serious issue of voter registration fraud by ACORN and other partisan groups, and compliance by states with the Help America Vote Act's requirement of matching new voter registrations with state data bases to prevent voter fraud.

    If you'd like to help the rest of America see this ad -- on TV, not just the Internet -- so they can understand the role that Barack Obama and congressional Democrats played in the mortgage meltdown, please contribute to the American Issues Project

    Hat tip to Ace, who urges conservatives to give to 527s who will spotlight the financial crisis.

    McCain has been too gentlemanly to lay the blame for the crisis where it belongs. He was right on this issue, and he deserves credit for sounding the alarm when it mattered. Obama put a (metaphorical) pillow over his head to muffle the alarm (stuffed with all the -- metaphorical -- Benjamins he got from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), then rolled over and went back to sleep, only to call attention to the smoky smell when the roof was fully engulfed in flames. (Via Ace, again.)

    If McCain and the RNC won't make the case, we should be giving money to organizations that will.

    Over at Tyson Wynn's place. I'm working, but I'll chime in as I'm able.

    The downtown Tulsa Kiwanis Club is hosting a debate between the candidates for District 2 Tulsa County Commissioner today beginning at 12:15. Republican Sally Bell will face Democrat Karen Keith. KRMG's Joe Kelley will moderate the debate, and it will be cybercast live online at krmg.com. It will also be broadcast over the airwaves tonight at 6:00 on 740 KRMG.

    (Post time tweaked to keep this at the top of the blog until this evening.)

    UPDATE: KRMG has posted audio of the debate in four segments.

    A Photoshopped image purporting to be Sarah Palin's SAT report is circulating amongst the moonbats tonight. It was posted on Gawker, but Rick Paulas, Gawker's art director, has spotted several telltale signs of fakery, including the impossible variations in baselines and too-perfect kerning for the impact printers that generated SAT reports back in the early '80s.

    One glaring indication of forgery: SAT scores all ended in zero in the early '80s. Scores like 416 and 425 were impossible.

    The template for the forgery? Conservative, pro-life blogger Dawn Eden's SAT report, which she posted online four years ago. The faked Palin report cuts off at exactly the same vertical point, and the same scanning artifacts can be seen around the pre-printed letters and shading on both images. "Max Torque," on the Straight Dope message board has the... straight dope:

    Now, compare that picture with the supposed "Palin results". Interesting, eh? First, the scanned copies are at exactly the same angle, not perfectly square with the scanner's edge. The "blocked out" bits for both copies are identical: look at the "telephone number" space, for example. The remaining dot clutter is absolutely identical in both images. The dates are identical, except that "85" was changed to "82". Interesting that the "report date" of both tests would be March 23rd; in 1985, the date on the real results form, that was a Saturday, which is a typical day for SAT testing. In 1982, the date on Palin's photoshopped form, March 23rd was a Tuesday. And the real form has the same 5-3-3-1-2-3 that appears on the altered form, in precisely the same spots in the boxes.

    A few things are covered over and the form in general is blurred up some to make it look "authentic" or something, but seriously, I think this is the original scan that someone altered. Take a closer look, see if you agree. And I say all of this as someone who couldn't possibly dislike Sarah Palin any more than I already do.

    (Via Ace of Spades HQ.)

    Today at 5 p.m. is the deadline for Oklahoma residents to register to vote for the November 4 general election. While the election board will accept registration forms by mail that have been postmarked by today, the safest way to be sure that you will get to vote on November 4 is to go to your county election board and register in person before 5 p.m.

    The Tulsa County Election Board is located at 555 N. Denver Ave., Tulsa, OK 74103. The phone number is 918-596-5780.

    The Oklahoma State Election Board website has a complete list of county election boards, with the phone number, address, and hours of operation for each. Please note that election boards in some rural counties close as early as 1:30 p.m.

    UPDATE: Tulsa County Election Board will stay open until midnight tonight to accept last-minute registrations.

    Did you know you can have over 100 tabs open in Firefox at once? When that happens, it's time to dump the links, topically if possible. Below you'll find links to some interesting, maybe useful perspective on the bailout and the financial crisis.

    Yesterday in the mail, I had three new credit offers and an offer for a lower interest rate on an existing credit card. One of the offers was for a debt consolidation loan: The letter said I was pre-qualified for an amount twice the value of our home. Shouldn't I be seeing these credit offers drying up? I understand that there's a lag between Wall Street and Main Street, but I'd have thought the Main Street lenders would tighten up at the first sign of trouble on Wall Street, just as the gas stations boost prices as soon as the price of oil goes up, in anticipation of higher prices for wholesale gasoline.

    Martin Feldstein on home prices and housing starts. Feldstein was Reagan's chief economic adviser in the mid '80s, and he was being interviewed on Sept. 30 on the Charlie Rose show.

    ROSE: ...What do you believe could and what do you believe will not get us out of this?

    FELDSTEIN: Well, I think I'd come back to the issue that it's being driven by the fall in house prices. That's making people poor and forcing them to think twice about spending. It's hurting the financial institutions. It's obviously stopped construction. Housing starts are down 40 percent from a year ago. So if we don't stop that rut, if we don't stop that decay, it's hard to see how this process stops.

    House prices over shot in the up direction by some 60 percent. What's to stop them from falling 60 percent below a normal level? Nothing, if we don't find a way of stopping this process of default and foreclosure. So to me that is key to stopping this.

    ROSE: And something that's not being done so far.

    FELDSTEIN: And something that's not being done. I think that the Treasury proposal will help to take some of the bad impaired assets off the balance sheets. The Barney Frank-Chris Dodd legislation that was passed earlier will help some people with negative equity and are on the verge of defaulting. But none of that will stop this downward spiral in house prices that needs to be stopped. In addition to what has been done and what is proposed by the Treasury and the Congress, I think we need to do a third piece.

    In the Wall Street Journal Feldstein offers his prescription:

    We need a firewall to break the downward spiral of house prices. Here's how it might work. The federal government would offer any homeowner with a mortgage an opportunity to replace 20% of the mortgage with a low-interest loan from the government, subject to a maximum of $80,000. This would be available to new buyers as well as those with mortgages. The interest on that loan would reflect the government's cost of funds and could be as low as 2%. The loan would not be secured by the house but would be a loan with full recourse, allowing the government to take other property or income in the unlikely event that the individual does not pay. It would by law be senior to other unsecured debt and not eligible for relief in bankruptcy.

    The individual could repay the loan at any time or could refinance the remaining loan on more favorable terms as long as the principal did not increase. A 30-year amortization of the government loan would make the payments low, and a life-insurance policy would protect taxpayers if the borrower dies before the loan is repaid. If the homeowner chooses to accept the loan, creditors would have to accept the 20% mortgage repayment, reducing the monthly payments of principal and interest by 20%.

    It sounds a bit like an element of Dave Ramsey's plan.

    But Ed Glaeser says we should let housing prices continue to fall:

    First, the government has no business trying to make housing less affordable to ordinary Americans. Over the past 10 years, areas like New York and San Francisco, which had always been expensive, became completely out of reach. According to the National Association of Realtors, the median housing price in San Francisco was over $800,000 in 2007, and has declined to a mere $685,000 in the second quarter of 2008. The real problem is not the current price decline, but the previous price explosion.

    There is no reason to hope that middle-class Americans should pay more for any basic commodity, whether that commodity is coffee or oil or housing. Government should be fighting to reduce supply-side barriers and make housing cheaper, not trying to inflate prices artificially.

    ABC News reports that "After Bailout, AIG Execs Head to California Resort". And they're asking the Fed for more money.

    In the Washington Post Sebastian Mallaby says we shouldn't blame deregulation:

    The real roots of the crisis lie in a flawed response to China. Starting in the 1990s, the flood of cheap products from China kept global inflation low, allowing central banks to operate relatively loose monetary policies. But the flip side of China's export surplus was that China had a capital surplus, too. Chinese savings sloshed into asset markets 'round the world, driving up the price of everything from Florida condos to Latin American stocks.

    That gave central bankers a choice: Should they carry on targeting regular consumer inflation, which Chinese exports had pushed down, or should they restrain asset inflation, which Chinese savings had pushed upward? Alan Greenspan's Fed chose to stand aside as asset prices rose; it preferred to deal with bubbles after they popped by cutting interest rates rather than by preventing those bubbles from inflating. After the dot-com bubble, this clean-up-later policy worked fine. With the real estate bubble, it has proved disastrous....

    The appetite for toxic mortgages was fueled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the super-regulated housing finance companies. Calomiris calculates that Fannie and Freddie bought more than a third of the $3 trillion in junk mortgages created during the bubble and that they did so because heavy government oversight obliged them to push money toward marginal home purchasers. There's a vigorous argument about whether Calomiris's number is too high. But everyone concedes that Fannie and Freddie poured fuel on the fire to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

    So blaming deregulation for the financial mess is misguided. But it is dangerous, too, because one of the big challenges for the next president will be to defend markets against the inevitable backlash that follows this crisis. Even before finance went haywire, the Doha trade negotiations had collapsed; wage stagnation for middle-class Americans had raised legitimate questions about whom the market system served; and the food-price spike had driven many emerging economies to give up on global agricultural markets as a source of food security. Coming on top of all these challenges, the financial turmoil is bound to intensify skepticism about markets. Framing the mess as the product of deregulation will make the backlash nastier.

    We're Not Headed for a Depression - WSJ.com

    So says Gary Becker, Nobel Economics prize winner and professor at the U. of Chicago. But he says to avoid future problems we need to increase capital requirements, stop the bailouts, and sell Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

    Perry Eidelbus says Obama's objections to McCain's mortgage plan is hypocritical:

    McCain's proposal is merely an amplification, expansion, whatever you want to call it, of what the FHA is doing [as part of the big bailout plan]. If McCain's plan "won't work," then how can we expect the existing one to work when it does the same thing? Albeit on a smaller scale, and perhaps not with precisely the same details, but both have the same bottom line: Peter and Paul get to pay taxes to pay off part of Mary's mortgage, never mind that Mary alone got herself into the trouble.

    The reason it won't work, the critics say, is because it will buy up or refinance homes at greater than their true value. Gee, as if the first $300 billion wasn't doing that? As if the federal government isn't already doing that with the absurd $700 billion to buy up "distressed" securities that nobody would buy at the prices the federal government is offering?

    Steve Chapman :: Townhall.com :: A Rescue Plan That Didn't

    You may remember that when the House of Representatives voted against the original rescue plan, it was blamed for the subsequent 778-point drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. This stomach-turning development was clear proof of the urgent need for the bailout.

    But if a stock market's performance is the test of a policy, this one has failed. At best, the passage of the measure did no evident good. At worst, it backfired....

    Instead of stimulating productive activity by removing doubt, it has impeded it by multiplying doubt. It has also encouraged lenders to hold off dealing with their bad debt in hopes of getting a better deal from the Treasury than they can dream of getting from anyone else. But postponing the banks' rendezvous with reality will not speed recovery.

    Fox News: Lawmaker Accused of Fannie Mae Conflict of Interest

    Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank's efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout the 1990s.

    So did Frank's partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront of the agency's push to relax lending restrictions.

    Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie's assistant director for product initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to 1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction over Fannie....

    The two lived together in a Washington home until they broke up in 1998, a few months after Moses ended his seven-year tenure at Fannie Mae, where he was the assistant director of product initiatives. According to National Mortgage News, Moses "helped develop many of Fannie Mae's affordable housing and home improvement lending programs."

    Critics say such programs led to the mortgage meltdown that prompted last month's government takeover of Fannie Mae and its financial cousin, Freddie Mac. The giant firms are blamed for spreading bad mortgages throughout the private financial sector.

    Although Frank now blames Republicans for the failure of Fannie and Freddie, he spent years blocking GOP lawmakers from imposing tougher regulations on the mortgage giants. In 1991, the year Moses was hired by Fannie, the Boston Globe reported that Frank pushed the agency to loosen regulations on mortgages for two- and three-family homes, even though they were defaulting at twice and five times the rate of single homes, respectively.

    OpenMarket.org: Bash the Bailout: Government is Not the Answer

    A link dump within a link dump. Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute provides links to 12 articles that explain how government intervention in markets created the crisis at hand.

    The dumbest people on Earth | MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (via Kick the Anthill's "Craptacular News of the Day")

    Tom and Tina have been paying on their 100k mortgage for a couple years before having trouble. The home is still worth 100k so they have a small bit of equity. If they sold, they would make a small profit maybe depending on the realtor costs. But now enter Obama's idea. The bank is told to rewrite the load as a 75K loan for 30 more years. Now Tom and Tina turn around immediately and sell the house for that 100K and make a quick 20k plus profit all courtesy of the federal government. They can and will do that over and over. The "poor" know how to game the system and exploit every dollar. This will become the new career. Defaulting on mortgages to get equity and selling for that equity.

    I'm beginning to think that the dumbest people on Earth are people like me who actually pay their bills on time. I see all that is going on and I keep thinking why should we when you can apparently just walk away and have no consequences.

    Casaubon's Book: Ok, Now What?
    (Via Crunchy Con: Preparing for the Worst)

    We're all going to need reliable sources of food. We're all going to need some transportation. We're going to need health care, and emergency services. We're all going to need good work - even if it is only for food. We're going to need ways to keep people housed, to connect folks who need homes with those who can't keep them unless they rent some space. A lot of people are going to need warm clothes and blankets. A lot of people are going to need a meal, a helping hand, help with disabled family members and elders. And folks, when the formal economy falls away, when we cannot trust our government to act in our interests, all of us have to get acting to compensate, to keep the wolf from the door. The truth is that the bailout, on one level, was the final reminder of what Hurricane Katrina taught us, that no one is coming with a helicopter to rescue us. Fortunately, some of us have boats, and the rest of us can build life rafts, and there's a lot we can do to rescue ourselves.

    KunstlerCast Transcripts

    And here are some comments from area bloggers:

    Tyson Wynn thinks this may be an opportune time to push for the Fair Tax.

    Jeff Shaw's title says it all: The Pressure to Help Low Income and Minorities. Political Promises Gone Amok and Enhanced by Greed.

    The crisis has motivated Bobby Holt to blog, and he shares with us his letters to Sullivan, Coburn, & Inhofe about the bailout.

    The Bill Kumpe Blog: Bailout or Not, It's Gonna Be A Blue Christmas

    Ardent Voice's mailbox looks like mine:

    Yes, there were actually four credit card and/or convenience checks offers in today's mail, including one from WaMu. Most of us would be more than willing to help a recovering alcoholic get back on their feet, but we have to feel like that they are in recovery and the money we contribute won't just go for more liquor.

    Mad Okie says Tulsa should have taken care of priorities when times were good:

    Back when Tulsa had money and the economy was "good", those in power thought it would be a good idea to build an arena, repay BoK for a failed airline, and to move city hall to the most expensive building downtown.

    Now that the economy has taken a nose-dive they want you and me to pay more in taxes to do something they should have been doing all along... fixing our roads.

    Oklahoma per Square Foot reports that lenders are tightening up on credit for buying commercial real estate for investment purposes -- by a whole percentage point:

    It was revealed that those lenders that are underwriting commercial deals are not lending money for properties priced below a 9% capitalization rate, except in rare circumstances. This is concerning for the market since well over half of the investment deals transacted just in Oklahoma City over the past few years were priced at capitalization rates were in the 7% to 8% range with a few deals transacting under 7%. Now, with lenders only financing deals priced over 9%, it will become increasingly difficult for owners to achieve the high sales prices that have been driving the market for the past four years.

    But there's some "good news for Oklahoma's apartment markets":

    For Oklahoma City, Hendricks reported increased demand for apartment units by renters, which is largely the result of the slowing in the single-family housing market. During the second quarter, the increased demand led to an overall vacancy of 7.9%, which is a record low level for the city. Furthermore, as vacancy decreased, the report also noted increases in rental rates. Overall rents grew 4.3 percent during the second quarter when compared to 2007 totals. The most significant gain came in the North submarket, which posted a rental rate increase of 5.2 percent.

    Hendricks reported a sharp decrease in apartment vacancy to 8.1 percent, which is the lowest vacancy in nearly four years, according to the report. Tulsa experienced higher rent growth than Oklahoma City with a 5.4 percent increase. Two Tulsa submarkets experienced rent growth of over 6 percent in the greater downtown and Broken Arrow areas.

    (Click the link to read Bailout link dump, part 1)

    Here's the video of KJRH's debate between U. S. Sen. Jim Inhofe and his challenger State Sen. Andrew Rice, from last night. Russ McCaskey moderated with Joe Kelley of KRMG, Wayne Greene of the Tulsa World, and Karen Larsen of KJRH on the panel.

    Family therapist Bowden McElroy brings his professional perspective to the bailout:

    Think of our Representatives and Senators as parents and the executives of AIG as errant children. Years of poor decision-making calls for a natural and logical consequence. Instead we reward poor behavior. This article (AIG Executives Blow $440,000 After Getting Bailout) shows how little the men and women on Capitol Hill understand about motivating people to change. All we've taught the movers and shakers of our economy is that lousy business practices carry no consequences to them. Assuming legislation is passed to prevent these kind of problems from happening again, this country's top financial executives will simply find new ways to make poor decisions: what do they have to lose? We've just told them if you're big enough, the politicians will make sure nothing bad ever happens to you.

    Read the whole thing.

    I'm over at Tyson Wynn's place liveblogging the presidential debate with Tyson Wynn and Jenn Sierra.

    This CNN investigative report shows that Barack Obama has had a long and close political relationship with unrepentant former domestic terrorist and ongoing radical William Ayres, much closer than the Obama campaign spin will acknowledge.

    Ayres was responsible for bringing the Annenberg Challenge grant for schools to Chicago; Obama was made chairman of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which steered money to organizations run by Ayres and his wife Bernardine Dohrn. In 1995, Ayers organized and hosted Obama's first political fundraiser at his home. Contrary to Obama campaign claims, it was Ayers who organized the event, not State Sen. Alice Palmer, Obama's predecessor.

    This comment at Hot AIr by rvastar proposes the sort of speech John McCain might give to explain the relevance of Obama's ties to Ayers and other radicals to the present economic mess. It's a good summary of what has been uncovered about the Ayers/Obama relationship:

    My friends, as we try to provide you with more information about Sen. Obama's dubious ties to the likes of unrepentent domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, and radical Leftist groups like ACORN, it is inevitable that his defenders will attempt to deflect your attention away from these relationships by stating that these are just smears, an attempt to distract you from the overwhelming issue that is front and center in the minds of all Americans - the economy. But this is most certainly not the case, since we believe that that these relationships - along with many others - provide clear examples of the dangers an Obama presidency poses to this country's future economic well-being.

    The overall health of the US economy is a complicated balancing act between private-sector freedom and govt oversight. As our nation's current financial crisis is clearly illustrating, govt policies can - for good or for bad - have enormous effects on our financial markets. With this in mind, we need elected officials who have a clear understanding of how their political ideology and policies will interact with and effect our financial system; and not just in the short term of a year...or two years...or 10 year, but as regards the long-term effects that their ideology and policies will have on our country. We need officials with a keen respect for using the power of govt, as well as taxpayers' money, in responsible and beneficial ways that will promote our economic well-being for generations to come.

    Which brings us to the topic of Sen. Obama's long relationship with Bill Ayers. Now, let me be absolutely clear about something before the media spin even begins - no one is claiming that Sen. Obama is a terrorist. And no one is claiming that Sen. Obama condones or is an apologist for terrorism, whether it be domestic or international, past or present. But what we are claiming is that Sen. Obama shares certain radically Leftist views with Bill Ayers and that those shared radical views found the two of them affiliated with and working with one another for the better part of ten years.

    In 1995, Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn - herself, a convicted terrorist - hosted Sen. Obama's political "coming out" party in their own living room. Also, Bill Ayers was a co-founder of an organization called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a foundation whose primary goal was the advancement and promotion of a radically Leftist educational agenda in the Chicago school system. Ayers was instrumental in getting Sen. Obama appointed as the Chairman of the CAC in 1995, despite the fact that corporate presidents were sitting board members of the CAC and Sen. Obama was a relatively young, inexperienced associate lawyer in Chicago.

    So, what was it - exactly - that the CAC did? It provided funds to Chicago-area schools under the stipulation that said schools partner with CAC-approved "community organizations" like ACORN and the Developing Communities Project, both radical Leftist groups who were determined to push a radical educational agenda on both students and teachers. so in the end, what were the final results of Sen. Obama's 5-year tenure as Chairman of the CAC? According to the CAC's own report before the organization disbanded: "There were no statistically significant differences in student achievement between Annenberg schools and demographically similar non-Annenberg schools. This indicates that there was no Annenberg effect on achievement." In other words, the result was nothing - nothing at all; unless you count the more than $100+ million in taxpayer money that was spent in funding the CAC's efforts at indoctrinating children and teachers into a radical political ideology.

    And there, in that last point, is the relevant truth. The primary purpose of this money wasn't to improve students reading comprehension or math scores; it wasn't meant to provide them with occupational training or more individualized attention; in other words, the money wasn't meant to prepare students with the type of solid, fact-based educational experience that the future health of our country's economy is dependent on. The primary purpose of the over $100 million of taxpayer money that was spent was to support an effort at indoctrinating Chicago's children into the same far-left political ideology that Bill Ayers espouses - namely, that US is an evil country, with an evil history, and that it needs to be torn-apart at the seams so that it can be reorganized into a socialist paradise.

    And Sen. Barack Obama worked with this man and the CAC in order to achieve this goal in the Chicago school system.

    Now, does $100 million spent on this sort of nonsense bring to mind the phrase "sound economic principles"? Do Sen. Obama's radical attempts at turning our nation's school systems into political indoctrination centers sound like the activities of a man who has this country's economic best interest at heart? It most certainly does not, as it sounds to me like Sen. Obama is man who cares more about spreading his radical political views to our nation's children than he does about preparing them for their future roles as the stewards of our economic future.

    But if that doesn't convince you, let's talk about another - more direct - example of Sen. Obama's lack of judgement when it comes to the stability and prosperity of our nation's economy. Let's talk about his role as a "leadership trainer" with ACORN, and how the very "training" he provided this group is directly tied to the current financial meltdown that our country is enduring...

    MORE: Stanley Kurtz, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, fought for and ultimately gained access to the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, and he has written several articles on what he learned about Barack Obama and his radical friends.

    STILL MORE: ACORN's Las Vegas office raided in voter fraud investigation:

    Bob Walsh, spokesman for the Nevada secretary of state's office, told FOXNews.com the raid was prompted by ongoing complaints about "erroneous" registration information being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, also called ACORN.

    The group was submitting the information through a voter sign-up drive known as Project Vote.

    "Some of them used nonexistent names, some of them used false addresses and some of them were duplicates of previously filed applications," Walsh said, describing the complaints, which largely came from the registrar in Clark County, Nev.

    Secretary of State Ross Miller said the fraudulent registrations included forms for the starting lineup of the Dallas Cowboys football team.

    "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in the state of Nevada, and anybody trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot on Nov. 4," Miller said....

    But it's not the first time ACORN's been under investigation for registration irregularities. The raid is the latest of at least nine investigations into possible fraudulent voter registration forms submitted by ACORN -- the probes have involved ACORN workers in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Indiana and other states.

    In 2006, ACORN also committed what Washington Secretary of State Sam Reed called the "worse case of election fraud" in the state's history.

    In the case, ACORN submitted just over 1,800 new voter registration forms, and all but six of the 1,800 names were fake.

    More recently, 27,000 registrations handled by the group from January to July 2008 "went into limbo because they were incomplete, inaccurate, or fraudulent," said James Terry, chief public advocate at the Consumers Rights League.


    Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros, Herbert and Marion Sandler: They're all here.

    Why are Asian investors keeping their money in America? According to Asia Times columnist Spengler, it's because of Sarah Palin.

    Or rather, it's because of a political culture that allows concerned citizens like Palin to emerge to challenge and expose corruption.

    You need to read the whole thing. There are too many quotes worth requoting here. There is so much more to the success of America and the rest of the Anglosphere than the governmental structures that are common to democracies. There are legal and cultural traditions that create a level of trust and self-determination.

    A selection of the best quotes:

    What does America have that Asia doesn't have? The answer is, Sarah Palin - not Sarah Palin the vice presidential candidate, but Sarah Palin the "hockey mom" turned small-town mayor and reforming Alaska governor. All the PhDs and MBAs in the world can't make a capital market work, but ordinary people like Sarah Palin can. Laws depend on the will of the people to enforce them. It is the initiative of ordinary people that makes America's political system the world's most reliable.

    America is the heir to a long tradition of Anglo-Saxon law that began with jury trial and the Magna Carta and continued through the English Revolution of the 17th century and the American Revolution of the 18th. Ordinary people like Palin are the bearers of this tradition....

    Palin really did take on the American oil companies and turn the scoundrels out of office. Her predecessor, Frank Murkowski, appointed her to the state oil and gas commission in the apparent belief that a small-town mayor and former beauty queen would rubber-stamp corrupt deals between the state and the Big Oil companies.

    Shades of Jimmy Stewart in Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Palin ran against Murkowski and took his job. That does not qualify her to be president, to be sure, but it does show cunning and strength of character. Palin is qualified for high office by temperament if not by education, and is preferable to candidates whose education has made no improvement on their characters....

    One doesn't see demonstrations by wronged peasants in the small towns of America. There never were peasants - American farmers always were entrepreneurs - and the locals avenge injury by taking over their local governments, which have sufficient authority to make a difference. At the capillary level, school boards, the Parent Teachers' Association, self-administered religious organizations and volunteer organizations incubate a political class entirely different from anything to be found in Asia. There are tens of thousands of Sarah Palins lurking in the minor leagues of American politics, and they are the guarantors of market probity....

    It is true that Asian economies depend on American consumers and an American recession is bad for Asian currencies. But why don't Asians consume what they produce at home? The trouble is that rich Asians don't lend to poor Asians in their own countries. Capital markets don't work in the developing world because it is too easy to steal money. Subprime mortgages in the US have suffered from poor documentation. What kind of documentation does one encounter in countries where everyone from the clerk at the records office to the secretary who hands you a form requires a small bribe? America is litigious to a fault, but its courts are fair and hard to corrupt.

    Asians are reluctant to lend money to each other under the circumstances; they would rather lend money in places where a hockey mom can get involved in local politics and, on encountering graft and corruption, run a successful campaign to turn the scoundrels out. You do not need PhDs and MBAs for that. You need ordinary people who care sufficiently about the places in which they live to take control of their own towns and states when required. And, yes, it doesn't hurt if they own guns.

    I was also intrigued by this aside (emphasis added):

    China's 30 million students of classical piano are one of the two great popular movements in the world today: the other is the House Church movement in Chinese Christianity. Children who play hockey will grow up to get coffee for children who study piano. As a pool of talent, nothing compares with the educated segment of the East Asian population that has embraced and mastered Western culture.

    It's a bit startling to these American eyes to see two Chinese trends described as "the two great popular movements in the world today," but as a Christian, I'm gladdened to read that the Chinese House Church is one of those two movements.

    (Via Crunchy Con.)

    SNL on the bailout

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    Spot-on satire. Fred Armisen's Barney Frank is priceless.

    (Via Club for Growth.)

    UPDATE: Guess what? NBC pulled the sketch without explanation. Perhaps it was too honestly critical of Democrats, in particular three wealthy and powerful people who fund far-left organizations: George Soros and Herbert and Marion Sandler. Michelle Malkin has details and a link for filing a complaint with the network.

    It was the best satire of the night. Here are the script and screengrabs.

    STILL MORE: NBC never posted video of the September 20 sketch ridiculing the provincialism of New York Times reporters. Video was posted to YouTube, but NBC forced them to pull it from the site.

    TUESDAY NIGHT: Video is back up, but two things have been cut: The chyron saying "Herbert and Marion Sandler: People who should be shot," and this part:

    [ Pelosi hugs Mrs. Sandler ]

    Herbert Sandler: And thank you, Congressman Frank, as well as many Republicans, for helping block congressional oversight of our corrupt activity. [ he and his wife step away ]

    Barney Frank: Not at all!

    In other words, they got rid of anything that could get them sued by the Sandlers. Too bad they had to lose the "thank you, Congressman Frank" line.

    Via Mister Snitch, I came across this detailed, link-heavy blog post about Sarah Palin's political career, beginning with her first race for City Council in 1992, and including her 2004 decision to quit a plum $118,000 a year seat on the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission after the Attorney General and Governor not only ignored her concerns about corruption on the AOGCC, but also, in the case of the AG, threatened her with prosecution if she blew the whistle:

    Why do I mention Palin's apolitical roots? Because they help explain three things about her that become important later. One, how she's been able to stay grounded to have a normal, non-political person's reactions to the kinds of things politicians get inured to seeing. Two, why her views on reform, corruption and waste were not a pre-designed program but the evolving product of those reactions kicking in over time in response to things she observed first-hand. And three, how she was able to make the most important decision of her political career - to walk away from it all on principle with the significant chance that she was ending her career in politics.

    On a related note, I enjoyed SNL's opening sketch, which was, as expected, a spoof of Thursday's Palin-Biden debate. Unlike the real Gwen Ifill, the fictional Ms. Ifill (played by the lovely Queen Latifah) made an opening disclosure about her upcoming book about the "Age of Obama."

    I was also pleased that the SNL writers captured a moment that struck me as one of the biggest surprises in the debate: Biden saying, "Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple." Compressing the exchange slightly, the writers came close to quoting Biden's comments verbatim. I haven't seen much discussion of this in the blogosphere, so it's nice to see that I wasn't the only one who was surprised by his blunt embrace of his radical position on this issue.

    Oklahomans for Life, the organization that advocates at the State Capitol for the sanctity of human life, has published the responses to its survey of candidates for the November 4 general election in the October 2008 issue of its newsletter. There are separate surveys for federal and state candidates; both surveys ask about concrete policies and bills that are likely to come before Congress and the Oklahoma Legislature. Topics include abortion and abortion funding, cloning, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia. The federal survey includes a couple of questions about rationing of federally-funded medical care:

    10) Some hospitals have implemented formal policies authorizing denial of lifesaving medical treatment against the will of a patient or the patient's family if an ethics committee thinks the patient's quality of life is unacceptable, even though the patient and family disagree. The federal Patient Self-Determination Act currently requires health care facilities receiving Medicare or Medicaid to ask patients on admission whether they have an advance directive indicating their desire to receive or refuse lifesaving treatment under certain circumstances. Would you support preventing involuntary denial of lifesaving medical treatment by amending the Patient Self-Determination Act to provide that if failure to comply with a patient's or surrogate's choice for life-saving treatment would in reasonable medical judgment be likely to result in or hasten the patient's death, a health care provider unwilling to respect the choice for life-saving treatment must allow the patient to be transferred to a willing provider and must provide the treatment pending transfer?

    11) Would you vote against any bill that imposes price controls or otherwise limits the right of older Americans who choose to do so to add their own funds on top of the government contribution in order to obtain Medicare health insurance that is less likely to ration medical treatment and prescription drugs?

    The same issue of the newsletter includes a response by OfL director Tony Lauinger to Jerry Riley, husband of State Sen. Nancy Riley (D-SD37), who took exception to OfL's characterization of Sen. Riley's voting record. Lauinger points out that the votes a legislator casts trumps the position a legislator claims, and Nancy Riley's two no votes on SB 714 in 2007 made the difference in the legislature's attempt to override Gov . Brad Henry's veto. Lauinger reminds that Sen. Riley's votes on SB 714 contradicted her responses to the Oklahomans for Life survey in 2000 and 2004 (as a Republican candidate for State Senate) and in 2006 (as a Republican candidate for Lt. Governor).

    Lauinger's letter addresses the matter of the rape and incest exception, and why the consistent pro-life position permits abortion only when the life of the mother is in jeopardy. (Riley cited the lack of a rape and incest exception as the reason for her opposition to SB 714, but she failed to offer such an exception as an amendment, either in her committee or in the Senate as a whole.)

    Ethel Waters, the revered African-American vocalist of blues and spirituals, had occasion near the end of her life to recount its beginning: "My father raped my mother when she was twelve years old, and today they've named a park for me in Chester, Pennsylvania." Recounted in her autobiography, His Eye is on the Sparrow, her life is but one of many of children conceived in rape who went on to make great contributions to this world.

    She might wonder how it makes sense, in logic or in law, to execute a child for the crime of his or her father? Abortion does not erase the trauma of a rape. Abortion compounds the first tragedy with a second tragedy - one for which the woman herself is responsible.

    It is not valid to assume the best thing for a victim of rape or incest is to abort her baby. For society, abortion might seem to "solve the problem." But for the woman herself, it does not. Abortion often leads to psychological anguish and emotional devastation. Britain's Royal College of Psychiatry issued a warning in March that women may be at risk of mental health breakdowns if they have abortions. They advised that women should not have an abortion until they are counseled about the possible risk to their mental health.

    There are more than one million unborn babies being killed by abortion in our country every year. One could rely on the absence of a rape exception as an excuse for opposing all manner of bills that seek to reduce abortions and save the babies we can. Or one could support these reasonable, modest regulations which, while not making abortion illegal, at least give some unborn children - and their mothers - a chance to avoid catastrophe.

    That's why Nancy's votes against SB 714 were so disappointing. When the opportunity to help these babies came, she didn't give the benefit of the doubt to life.

    Sen. Tom Coburn was on with 1170 KFAQ's Pat Campbell this morning explaining his decision to vote for the $700 billion bailout. It was strange to hear Coburn acknowledge that this bill might not work, that this bill didn't address the underlying causes, but that we had to do something. He compared it to using a defibrillator on a heart attack patient; you deal with his high cholesterol levels after you've saved his life.

    But how did Tom Coburn become persuaded that the current situation is a financial heart attack and that the bailout is a financial defibrillator?

    Coburn mentioned that he heard from the heads of all the biggest banks in Oklahoma. He specifically mentioned, by title but not by name, the chairman of the Bank of Oklahoma. (That's George Kaiser, if you didn't know.) He heard that banks won't lend to each other, that people with 650 credit scores couldn't get car loans, that businesses were having their loans called by banks who needed the money on their books.

    A couple of days ago, while folding laundry, I was struck by similarities between the mortgage bailout and the BOk / Great Plains Airlines bailout. In both cases, I have the sense that the bailout is not to stave off dire consequences for the general public, but dire consequences for big shots who made bad decisions.

    Recall that in the Great Plains situation, BOK made a bad loan after two initial refusals, based on private assurances from then-Mayor Susan Savage that the City of would make the bank whole if the loan went bad. That's according to former Councilor Jim Mautino:

    In another video on that same entry, Jim Mautino mentions being called to the office of Stan Lybarger, president of BOk. Mautino took city attorneys Larry Simmons and Drew Rees with him to the meeting. Lybarger told them that he had twice turned down the Great Plains loan, but relented because then Mayor Susan Savage gave him "assurances." This would be the same Savage who gave "assurances" to the City Council at the time that transfering AFP3 to the Tulsa Industrial Authority would not expose the City to any liability in the Great Plains financing deal.

    Tulsa city councilors were warned that the city's credit rating would suffer if the city didn't pay back the loan. I suspect that the real worry was that some BOk executives would suffer legal consequences if this bad debt hadn't been paid off before a certain deadline. A federally-insured bank isn't allowed to make risky loans for political reasons.

    In the current "crisis," we're hearing from a lot of Wall Street types of impending doom, but we're not seeing an unreasonable tightening of credit on Main Street. My suspicion is that this bailout is really about protecting fat cats from the consequences of their bad decisions, and the fat cats are doing a fine job of spooking Congress into a stampede.

    I think Coburn was sincere in stating the rationale for his vote. It may be that the bank officials were shooting straight with him. Then again, he was taking his cues from someone who supports bigger government and higher taxes and is a bundler for Barack Obama.

    MORE: Whom did Coburn convince? (Emphasis added.)

    Just talked to a Republican leadership aide. Here's what he had to say about the big margin today. He cited three factors:

    1) Up to the point of the Monday vote, members were only hearing from people adamantly opposed to the bill. After the vote, that changed. They began to hear from employers, bankers, and opinion leaders back in their districts who told them how much it would hurt the local economy if they didn't act to try to calm the credit markets; 2) The strong Senate vote helped. Members could say to themselves, "Well, both my state's senators voted for it." And Sen. Tom Coburn's strong support for the measure carried a lot of weight with House conservatives; 3) The inclusion of the FDIC increase gave members something positive and easy to understand to talk about in explaining the bill. The purchase of illiquid assets isn't easy to explain, and if you can explain it, doesn't sound very appealing to anyone. The FDIC provision was easier to portray as a proposal to help "Main Street," with local bankers complaining and worrying about large withdrawals.

    Earlier this evening, Tyson Wynn interviewed me and Jason Carini of Oklahomans for Responsible Government about tonight's vice presidential debate between Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) and Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware). Click that link to listen and download the podcast.

    I thought Palin did a wonderful job and clearly came out the winner. She was effective at explaining John McCain's platform, defending her own record, and going on the attack against the policies and experience of the Obama-Biden ticket. Biden made some statements tonight that are going to require some explaining and backtracking from Barack Obama's campaign.

    Good blog commentary elsewhere:

    Here are Michelle Malkin's live blogging and post debate recap entries.

    John Mark Reynolds has been doing a fine job of rebutting the panicky anti-Palinites on the right. Here's his live-blog of the debate and his wrapup post.

    Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn ate the "crap sandwich" (House Minority Leader John Boehner's phrase), but not without dispensing some strong medicine to his colleagues.

    As a practicing physician, I compare where we are today to a physician who commits malpractice. We have a patient with cancer. They have a secondary pneumonia because of the cancer. We are going to treat the pneumonia. We are going to give the antibiotics, we are going to give something to lower the temperature, we are going to give something to suppress the cough, we are going to give something to thin the mucous, but we are not going to fix the cancer. We are going to ignore the cancer.

    Let me tell you what the cancer is. The cancer is Congresses that, for years upon years, have totally ignored the Constitution of the United States and taken us to areas where we have no business being. There is no way you can justify, in the U.S. Constitution, that the country ought to be the source of mortgages for homeowners in this country. Yet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac control 70 percent of the mortgages in this country.

    I plan on voting for this bill. I support that we have to do something now. But how we got here is very important if we are going to fix things in the future....

    If anybody in America is mad about this situation, there is only one place they need to direct their anger and it is right in the Congress of the United States.

    It is not specific Members, it is bad habits. We are not going to cut out the cancer. We are not going to give the radiation therapy. What we are going to do is we are going to continue to treat the symptoms rather than directly go after the cause that has created the greatest financial risk and peril this country has ever seen. We are not going after the cause.

    The cause is get back within the bounds of the Constitution that very specifically says where we have business working and where we do not. Because we are out of those bounds, we have now put at risk every job in this country, the savings and retirement of people who worked for years, because we decided we would ignore the wisdom of our Founders and create systems that are outside the enumerated powers that were given to us because we know better.

    We do not know better. It is obvious. There is no administration to blame. It is not the Clinton administration or the Bush administration's fault we are in this mess. Because if you say that, what you have to say is you did all the oversight, you had all the hearings, you knew what was going on and you didn't do anything about it. So either we didn't know or we did know and did nothing about it.

    There is only one place to come to hold accountability and it is in this body....

    It is very simple. We are committing malpractice. We are not living up to the oath we undertook when we became Members of this body. That oath says you will defend and uphold the Constitution. It doesn't say you will rewrite it because it pleases you politically. We are here today because of fatal errors on the part of Members of this body to do something that is totally outside the bounds of the wisdom and foresight our Founders gave us.

    Those are tough words. But we are in tough times. If we do not get about withdrawing and getting back within the realms of the power granted to us, this is just the first in a very large roll of problems this country is going to face.

    Full remarks after the jump.

    The senator from South Carolina and champion of fiscal conservatism had this to say during last night's debate on the bailout:

    We have seen this Government socialize our education system and make our schools among the worst in the world. We have seen this Government take over most of our health care system, making private insurance less and less affordable. We have seen this Government socialize our energy resources and bring our Nation to its knees by cutting the development of our own oil and natural gas supplies. And now we see this Congress yielding its constitutional obligations to a Federal bureaucracy, giving it the power to control virtually our entire financial system. Americans understand this and they are angry. They are our judge and our jury. They are watching what we are doing, and they will render their verdict based on our actions.

    I was happy to see Jim Inhofe vote no, and more than a little surprised that Tom Coburn voted yes. I do understand the fear that the failure to vote for this bill would lead to an even worse bill that would win the support of the most left-wing members of Congress.

    Read DeMint's complete remarks after the jump.

    Punchy cons

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    I've been following the anti-Sarah Palin tirades coming from a handful of conservative pundits who are embarrassed by her interview with Katie Couric. One of those is Rod Dreher, whose string of anti-Palin posts has won him interviews on Good Morning America and Larry King Live. In a recent entry Dreher blasts Palin for failing to come up with a response to Couric's question about Supreme Court decisions other than Roe that she didn't like.

    I posted the following comment (slightly amplified for clarity):

    When I heard the interview clip, I was annoyed that Palin couldn't come up with the name of another case that she didn't like.

    Then I asked myself the same question. I drew a blank. And even though I've blogged about Kelo extensively, and even though I write a weekly column that deals with urban development, I didn't think of it until about 10 minutes later. Had I been the subject of the interview, 10 minutes later would have been too late. "Oh, by the way, Katie, I just thought of another court case I don't like." Katie would have already been through three more subjects by then. Once you're off-balance in that way, you're not going to get back in the groove. At least in Jeopardy, you get several questions in the same category and a chance to get your memory going in that direction.

    On the subject of the Couric interview, Rod reminds me of an armchair Jeopardy player. It's really easy, when you're in your La-Z-Boy eating cheese doodles, to get all the answers right and to belittle the contestant who is having a bad day and freezes up in front of all the world and Alex Trebek.

    CBS is taking this one bad day and spreading it out over two weeks, making it look like a long series of bad days. Non-panicky bloggers should have realized that after the first segment was rough, the rest of them would have been, too. It's all part of the same interview, and if you'd seen it all on a single day, I think it would have created a different impression.

    If you're not familiar with the magic of television, I suppose you might be surprised and outraged that, gee whiz, Palin's interview isn't going any better than the day before or last week.

    Further thoughts: I have been interviewed hundreds of times, mostly early in the morning when I'm at my worst. The best interviews were when I knew in advance what topic was going to be discussed and had a chance to think about the key points I wanted to get across. The worst interviews involved a question out of left field, and I had to vamp while coming up with a reasonable sounding answer. I hated getting questions that begin with "What is your favorite..." or "Can you name two or three..." and the worst -- which Katie Couric has used repeatedly in her Palin interview -- is "Besides the thing you just mentioned, name another...." In other words, stop thinking about what you were just talking about and immediately start thinking about something else.

    I thoroughly enjoyed being interviewed by G. W. Schulz, who profiled me for Urban Tulsa Weekly back in July 2005. But one question he asked threw me for a loop. It wasn't a gotcha question. It was quite reasonable:

    But when asked in person what stories from the Bible influenced him at a young age, he seems at a loss--either because there's so much to consider, or because, like many bloggers, he better excels at writing fluid, delicately crafted sentences, taking time to insure proper diction, tense and grammar.

    In retrospect, a good answer would have been, "I grew up in an environment saturated with Scripture, and asking which Bible stories influenced me is like asking a plant which drops of water were most helpful in its growth and development." Instead, I tried to answer the question exactly as posed.

    Another question consistently sent me groping for words, even though I'd almost always get this question right at the end of my weekly updates on KFAQ: "What's on BatesLine today?" or some variation thereof. Almost invariably when I was prepared to plug the site, we'd run out of time before I had the chance.

    Within the last year or so, I addressed the City Council on some topic. I delivered a fairly coherent argument and did so forcefully, I thought. As I started back to my seat, Councilor John Eagleton asked me to return to the microphone to answer a few questions. I don't remember the specifics, but one of the questions discombobulated me. We were on the same side of the issue at hand, and Eagleton wasn't trying to throw me off, but he managed to ask me a question which required me to shift mental gears faster than my brain wanted to do.

    I am not a dunce or intellectually incurious, although if you judged me the way that Dreher and his fellow punchy cons are judging Palin, you might jump to that conclusion. Most of the time I manage to be articulate, even when speaking extemporaneously or when asked an unexpected question. But sometimes I have bad moments on good days, and sometimes I have completely bad days, when I can't shift gears as fast as I need to.

    Sarah Palin, who defeated a sitting governor in her own party's primary and went on to beat a former governor in the general election, had a bad hour or so in an interview with Katie Couric, a bad hour that has been stretched out by CBS editing into a week or so. CBS has succeeded in inducing panic in a few conservative Chicken Littles. If I were one of them, I'd be embarrassed at being so easily manipulated by an organization with a clear agenda to defeat conservatism by any means necessary.

    I don't expect these observations will win me a slot on Larry King Live.

    MORE:

    Here's video of Palin's 2006 general election debate with former two-term Alaska Gov. Tony Knowles:

    My wife, Mikki, wanted me to write something about why the mainstream media hates Sarah Palin. I thought what she wrote herself put it pretty well, so here it is:

    Why does the MSM hate Palin?

    She is the antithesis of "Sex in the City" and "Desperate Housewives." Our media lives with and idolizes the titillating adventure and mystery of glamour and pathos, mystery and deceit... revolving spouses - or "partners". The messages from this type of shows is - discard the old problem - person, job, house, and start over. Don't bother learning lessons from poor decision-making or childish behavior, just see if the same mistakes will work better on the next unsuspecting victim.

    Sarah Palin comes from a culture foreign to the MSM. Her salary doesn't match Wall Street. She fired a cook, although a busy working mom might actually find one quite helpful in a family of that size. I suspect she and her husband want the kids to grow up learning to work and take responsibility for themselves as well. She is still married to her first husband and decided to continue a pregnancy with a special needs child. Apparently, Sarah Palin doesn't expect her life to be "a bowl of cherries." I am sure that their marriage hasn't been perfect, and they didn't expect it to be. That is probably why they are still married.

    This is the difference between our candidates. Sarah Palin is NOT a whiner. She does not expect the "SUPER SANTA = BIG GOVERNMENT = WHITE KNIGHT" to ride in and save the day. She expects government to stop penalizing hard working people and allow us to get our work done! She is Main Street America. Why was the media so amazed at her popularity? They have never met her before. The rest of us live in her neighborhood, and consider her a good neighbor, with values that we can trust.

    That last sentence in the second paragraph seems to be the same message we're getting from the bailout backers.

    Yesterday with Hugh Hewitt, Gov. Palin did her first talk radio interview since her nomination. Here's a link to the podcast and transcript. This podcast of the full hour includes a segment with NRO's Campaign Spot blogger Jim Geraghty, who gives a point by point commentary on Palin's remarks.

    MORE: Guess who wrote a book? Gwen Ifill of PBS, moderator of tomorrow night's vice presidential debate, has a book coming out on January 20, 2009 -- Inauguration Day. It's called Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. I'd say a book with the phrase "Age of Obama" in the title is headed to the bestseller list if Obama and Biden win. If McCain and Palin win it's going straight to the remainder bin, next to Dow 36,000. This goes beyond ideological bias to an actual conflict of interest between Ifill's responsibility to be impartial as moderator and the desire of her and her publisher to see her book sell well.

    Perspective worth reading on the mortgage crisis and the proposed bailout, going before the U. S. Senate today:

    Dave Ramsey's Common Sense Fix: Government insurance for mortgages in exchange for rolling back payments into current balance, fixing the rate, and canceling prepayment penalties; remove "mark to market" accounting for two years on Tier III subprime loands; completely remove capital gains taxes.

    Mark Sanford - A Bailout for All Our Bad Decisions? - washingtonpost.com

    For 200 years, the "business model" in our country has rested on a simple fact: that while one may reap rewards from taking risks, one should also be prepared to face the consequences of those risks. Some of the proposed actions with regard to the credit market turn that business model on its head -- absolving those who took too much risk, or bought too much house, from the weight of their own choices. If Congress passes the proposed bailout, we will be destined to have far greater problems in time, leaving those who are prudent in their finances to foot the bill for those who are not....

    Last week's events were rooted in distressed mortgage securities whose optimistic values were facilitated by quasi-governmental entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The investment banking capital write-downs were turbocharged by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which did what too many laws do -- it fixed yesterday's problem. The amazing expansion of credit was fueled by a Federal Reserve offering an easy-money policy that led us right into a credit bubble. All this was made worse by the government enabling some people's tendency to want more house than they can afford.

    With that bubble popped, we will now go through a major financial de-leveraging. It will be painful. Yet to preserve what has made this country great, we need to be on guard against Washington offering endless cures to our ills.

    U.S. Congressman Mike Pence : 6th District Of Indiana: Pence opposes Bush administration bailout plan

    Americans for Limited Government letter to Congress against the bailout

    American Thinker: Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis: The Cloward-Piven Strategy, ACORN, Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Penny Pritzker, and the Democratic nominee.

    Ben Stein: Everything You Wanted to Know About the Credit Crisis But Were Afraid to Ask:

    Here s one big part of the answer. First, the alert reader will notice that Ben Stein said many times that the amount of money at risk in the subprime meltdown was just not enough to sink an economy of this size. And I was right...to a point. The amount of subprime that defaulted was at most - after recovery in liquidation - about $250 billion. A huge sum but not enough to torpedo the US economy.

    The crisis occurred (to greatly oversimplify) because the financial system allowed entities to place bets on whether or not those mortgages would ever be paid. You didn't have to own a mortgage to make the bets. These bets, called Credit Default Swaps, are complex. But in a nutshell, they allow someone to profit immensely - staggeringly - if large numbers of subprime mortgages are not paid off and go into default.

    The profit can be wildly out of proportion to the real amount of defaults, because speculators can push down the price of instruments tied to the subprime mortgages far beyond what the real rates of loss have been. As I said, the profits here can be beyond imagining. (In fact, they can be so large that one might well wonder if the whole subprime fiasco was not set up just to allow speculators to profit wildly on its collapse...)

    These Credit Default Swaps have been written (as insurance is written) as private contracts. There is nil government regulation of them. Who writes these policies? Banks. Investment banks. Insurance companies. They now owe the buyers of these Credit Default Swaps on junk mortgage debt trillions of dollars. It is this liability that is the bottomless pit of liability for the financial institutions of America.

    Because these giant financial companies never dreamed that the subprime mortgage securities could fall as far as they did, they did not enter a potential liability for these CDS policies anywhere near their true liability - which again, is virtually bottomless. They do not have a countervailing asset to pay off the liability.

    This is what your humble servant, moi, missed. This is what all of the big investment banks and banks and insurance companies missed. This is what the federal government totally and utterly missed. This is what the truly brilliant speculators in these instruments did not miss. They could insure a liability they could also create and control. It is as if they could insure a Cadillac for its value upon theft - but they could control what the value the insurer had to pay off was. The insurer thought it might be fifty thousand dollars - but it was manipulated into being two million.

    This is the whirlpool sucking down finance.

    The Credit 'Crisis' - September 26, 2008 - The New York Sun. The Sun editorial board gives us another reason to miss them already:

    Our friends at the New York Post set out this week to document the baleful effects of the credit crisis on ordinary New York businesses, attempting to make the case for the need for speedy federal passage of the Paulson plan. "Scores of small-business owners are struggling to get tightfisted banks to dole out loans for much-needed expansion plans," the Post reported.

    The Post found two cases: "the owners of Five Point Fitness were given the runaround by their skittish bank for months -- and eventually had to borrow $175,000 from well-heeled clients." And "Kenny Lewis, 39, who owns a Subway sandwich-shop franchise in Queens. He applied for a $25,000 Small Business Administration loan and was told he'd get an answer in seven business days." Reports the Post: "He is now considering borrowing from private investors, saying 'they believe in what I'm doing.'"

    Forgive us, but this strikes us as something less than a crisis. Neither the sandwich shop nor the gym have closed. Both are turning to private investors rather than banks. What, exactly, is wrong with that? Truth is, there is a vast amount of private capital waiting on the sidelines for opportunities to invest. The Investment Company Institute reports that, for the week ended Wednesday, September 24, there were $3.398 trillion in money market mutual fund assets -- enough to make that $700 billion Paulson plan look like small change....

    If the politicians can't agree on a bailout plan, that may be for the best. One possibility that hasn't been adequately appreciated is that the stock market is poised for a rally anyway. If it happens without the "bailout," Americans will understand that economic growth doesn't require the government buying or seizing lots of assets. If it happens after the bailout, Americans may fall into the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and get the false impression that the bailout was the cause of the rally.

    The Corner on National Review Online: Mark Steyn: Burke's law:

    One of my problems with the "bailout" is the way it's presented not as an emergency measure to correct the stupidity of previous political interference but as evidence of the flawed nature of the market, and thus a justification for more must-pass "emergency" measures ahead. Exhibit A - President Sarkozy rejoicing in the end of "Anglo-American capitalism":
    The idea of an all-powerful market without any rules and any political intervention is mad. Self-regulation is finished. Laissez faire is finished. The all-powerful market that is always right is finished.

    As a general proposition, when told by unanimous elites that a particular course of action is urgent and necessary to avoid disaster, there's a lot to be said for going fishing. If the entire global economy is so vulnerable that only the stalwart action of Barney Frank stands between it and ten years of soup kitchens, can it, in fact, be saved? Or look at it the other way round: Given any reasonable estimate of the number of headless chickens running around, was the five per cent fall in Asian markets and seven per cent "plummet" on the Dow in reaction to the House vote really the catastrophe some of my pals round here seem to think it was? If fear of seven per cent falls is enough to justify massive unprecedented government intrusion into the private sector, we might as well cut to the chase and go for the big Soviet command economy.

    The Corner on National Review Online: Mark Levin: Thank you, House Republicans:

    Also, count me among those few here who want to thank the House Republicans for taking a bold stand against what had been a stampede on a scale I have never before witnessed on matters of huge consequence. Conservatism is more than a quaint belief-system to be embraced and debated over donuts at Starbucks. It is more than a list of talking points. It is the foundation of the civil society. The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution's limits on governmental power. If conservatives don't stand up to this, who will? If they don't offer serious alternatives that address the current circumstances AND defend the founding principles, who will? The House Republicans have done both. And I, for one, thank them.

    Incidentally, if you want to buy a home or car today you can. And if your credit is decent, you can get loans at a good rate. Last week we were told that if a deal was not struck by last Friday, our economy would collapse. It has not. That is not to say the evidence of economic troubles or worse should be ignored. It is to say that now is a time for reasoned decisions based on tried and true principles, not for abandoning them. I notice that the socialist, who, for the last 30 years, has insisted that private institutions make risky loans based on non-economic factors, still has not abandoned his policies. Socialism does not work. We shouldn't support more of it.

    Republican Study Committee letter opposing bailouts from September 17:

    We write to express our deep concerns over the increasing propensity, size, and frequency of government interventions to prop up failing private sector companies. These bailouts have set a dangerous and urnmistakable precedent for the federal government both to be looked to and indeed relied upon to save private sector companies from the consequences of their poor economic decisions....

    It is evident that no one wants to be the one who says no to a fiscal rescue when there is so much at stake. But the reality is that actions like federal bailouts taken to delay short-term financial pain often end up producing long-term damage to our entire economy. One need only look to Japan and the banking crisis that led to its 'Lost Decade' of recession and stagnant economic growth from which it has still failed to recover. The IMF has called those economic problems "a failure to deal proactively with the impact of the collapse in asset prices" that has led to real GDP growth only averaging 1 percent a year over the past decade.

    Republican Study Committee: Chairman Hensarling's Statement on the Economy and Administration Plan for Financial Markets: Initial reaction to the Paulson plan's release on September 19.

    Human Events: Republican Study Committee Releases Alternative to Bailout Proposal: Suspend "Mark to Market," stabilize the dollar, schedule Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae for privatization, two-year suspension of capital gains taxes, followed by indexing for inflation.

    Hot Air: Party like it's 1999 redux: The New York Times predicted Fannie Mae failure

    Frank's fingerprints are all over the financial fiasco - The Boston Globe

    Brian Wesbury: Psychology and the Economy (via Club for Growth):

    Never in history has a drop in consumer confidence caused a recession. But that does not mean there won't be a first time. It could happen in the next few months and we would expect to see some very negative data on economic activity. But this would be followed by an offsetting increase in activity following the psychological slowdown.

    Productivity is still booming, and so are exports, the Fed is exceedingly accommodative and tax rates have not been hiked. Moreover, oil prices are below $100 per barrel. Finally, all it would take to fix financial market problems today is a temporary suspension of mark-to-market accounting for a targeted set of illiquid assets.

    In other words, any economic problems that the US faces in the next few months or quarters is temporary. Financial markets have priced in Armageddon, and as a result still present one of the greatest buying opportunities of our lifetimes.

    Ross Putin: Rule change hypocrisy:

    As I noted in a prior posting, financial stocks fell more than 8% on Monday, with short-selling not permitted. Who do they blame for that, with the evil speculating short-sellers out of the picture? So they impeded the free market with no proof of justification.

    On the other hand, the price of mortgage securities has been plummeting for months primarily because of a recently imposed rule change called "mark-to-market", which basically forces banks to say that their mortgage security portfolios are worth much less than an objective analysis absent those rules would show them to be. That reduction in "capital" forced banks to try to sell these things and get cash on their balance sheets. But there's no progress in getting the destructive rule changed, even temporarily for a very narrow range of assets....

    The short-selling rule change combined with the lack of change in the mark-to-market rule demonstrates that what Congress wants even more than to "save the economy" is to increase their own power and to attack the most fundamental aspects of capitalism and free markets. I only hope the House Republicans can move the debate away from the Paulson/Barney Frank plan.

    MORE:

    Jeffrey Miron: Bankruptcy, not bailout, is the right answer. The Harvard lecturer in economics writes:

    The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

    The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

    Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

    In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources....

    The bailout has more problems. The final legislation will probably include numerous side conditions and special dealings that reward Washington lobbyists and their clients.

    Anticipation of the bailout will engender strategic behavior by Wall Street institutions as they shuffle their assets and position their balance sheets to maximize their take. The bailout will open the door to further federal meddling in financial markets.

    So what should the government do? Eliminate those policies that generated the current mess. This means, at a general level, abandoning the goal of home ownership independent of ability to pay. This means, in particular, getting rid of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with policies like the Community Reinvestment Act that pressure banks into subprime lending.

    Spengler: Asia Times: Truth, lies, and ticker tape

    If American banks are permitted to fail, and their operations maintained intact by the FDIC, new investors can restart operations with a clean slate.

    What is so awful about wiping out the home price bubble of the past 10 years? Suppose home prices were to plunge by half (which is where homes in foreclosure clear the market in California or Florida)? Young people would find it easier to start families and old people would work longer before retiring.

    Don Danz traces the roots of the current upheaval in the mortgage industry back to Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act ("it wasn't the worst piece of needless economic legislation the Democrats had ever hobbled the American people with but, rather, simply a foundation on which bad policy could be built"), CRA changes approved by Bill Clinton and the Democrat-controlled 103rd Congress, requiring lenders to loosen their mortgage underwriting criteria, and Democratic resistance to mortgage industry reforms proposed by George W. Bush in 2003 and John McCain in 2005.

    Don also explains why Barack Obama was one of the politicians most generously funded by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- second only to Sen. Christopher "Countrywide" Dodd (D-ConnMan).

    Now, why would these lending institutions spend such a disproportionate amount of money on a baby Senator? Because they knew it was money well spent and it all goes back to Obama's days as a community rabble-rouser, I mean, "organizer." The original lobbyists for passage of the CRA were hardcore leftists who supported the Carter administration and were often rewarded for their support with government grants and programs like the CRA that they personally benefited from. These included various "community organizations" such as "ACORN" (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). As mentioned above, it is groups like ACORN which, for a handsome fee, provide the bogus "credit-counseling" to poor borrowers to qualify for loans instead of actually having a way of paying back the loan.

    Neighborhood organizations, like ACORN, also benefit themselves from the CRA through a process of legalized extortion. The CRA is enforced by four different federal government bureaucracies: the Federal Reserve, the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. The law is set up so that any new branch creation, branch expansion or bank merger can be postponed or prohibited by any of these four bureaucracies if a CRA "protest" is issued by a community organization. The delays and expenses associated with such a protest can cost banks huge sums of money, and the community organization not only understand this perfectly well, but count on it. The community organizations use the threat of protests to get the banks to give them millions of dollars in "donations" (read that as bribes) as well as promising to make a certain amount of bad loans in their communities. With his history as a "community organizer," the lobbyists for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac knew Senator Obama was a good buy for their money.

    I received a note today from Oklahoma Republican Party chairman Gary Jones, passing along the word that the Republican National Committee is correcting Oklahoma's vote in the official record of the roll call for the Republican presidential nomination. As BatesLine reported the night of the roll call, Sen. Jim Inhofe was cut off before he could report Oklahoma's vote as 39 for Sen. John McCain and 2 for Rep. Ron Paul. The secretary recorded 41 Oklahoma votes for McCain, and attempts to get the attention of the chairman to make a correction were unsuccessful.

    Jones continued to pursue the matter, out of respect for two unbound Oklahoma delegates, elected at the 2nd Congressional District Convention, originally bound to but released by Mike Huckabee, and their desire to have their votes count for their chosen candidate.

    Tom Josefiak of the RNC legal department sent the following e-mail to Jones on Friday, September 19:

    Just want to confirm to you that the official GOP Convention delegate vote tally for the State of Oklahoma now reads:

    "Oklahoma 41 votes, 39 for John McCain, 2 for Ron Paul". The Official Proceedings of the 2008 Convention ("The Green Book") will reflect those numbers.

    Gary Jones deserves a great deal of credit for pursuing this, especially since some of Paul's most outspoken Oklahoma fans denounced him and made his job rather unpleasant this year. The vote didn't change the outcome, but Gary saw it as a matter of fairness.

    A call to vote

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    From a grateful Dawn Summers:

    I live in the greatest country in the world.

    I was born to immigrants and was raised by a single mother earning less than twenty thousand dollars a year. Yet, I was able to graduate from one of the best private schools in New York, have college and doctoral level degrees from the best universities in the world, and own property in New York City....

    My country doesn't force me to put on a uniform and take up arms in her defense. America does not ask me to pledge my loyalty, though I would do so happily and would volunteer to police the strict enforcement of such a pledge from my fellow Americans. With extreme prejudice
    .
    America does not limit the number of children I can have or force me to use my talents to win gold medals.

    America does not even ask that I respect her leaders or learn her history - again, all of which I generally try to do.

    Heck, America, does not even require that you be American to let you enjoy all of these things. That is how awesome America is.

    So, you'd think that when a country as great as mine is, that asks as little as mine does, puts the question of who will run our nation and direct our great country's future before the people every two years that we, its citizens, would happily say "hey, no problem, America. It's the least I can do," and take our educated, fed, entertained, free bottoms down to our local polling places and pick a half dozen or so names on a ballot.

    Read the whole thing.

    In addition to all the writing I did for BatesLine during the Republican National Convention, I managed to turn out three pieces for this week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly:

    The cover story about the upcoming PLANiTULSA citywide planning workshops. The folks at the City of Tulsa Planning Department and Fregonese Associates were very helpful as I put this story together. I had a copy not only of the publicity materials but the instructions for the facilitators -- the volunteers at each table who answer questions and keep the mapping process on pace to finish within the alloted time. From those instructions, I tried to put together a vivid description of what workshop participants will experience. My feeling is that the more you know about what will happen, the better prepared you'll be to participate fully and advocate effectively for your ideas for Tulsa's future.

    I spoke to Theron Warlick, one of the City of Tulsa planners assigned to PLANiTULSA, and he told me that about 500 people had already signed up, with about a week and a half to go. Mayor Bill LaFortune's 2002 Vision Summit drew about 1100.

    If you haven't signed up yet, visit PLANiTULSA.org and register online.

    Also this week, I have a story about the the Republican National Convention as seen through the eyes of Tulsans who attended the convention.

    The week before, I spoke to Jackie Tomsovic, a first-time delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver, and covered the surprising political resurrection of former Gov. David Walters, co-chairman of the Democrats' convention rules committee.

    My column this week relates both to St. Paul and to planning. During my visit, I tried to learn what I could about how the city handles planning and zoning, river development, downtown, and affordable housing. I wound up with far more material than I could use on all of the above topics. I chose to focus on the way St. Paul connects citizens and neighborhoods with city government, using 19 independent, non-profit "district planning councils."

    MORE: Here's a video of planner John Fregonese's presentation at the TulsaNow forum on July 15. He speaks about planning concepts, demographic trends, and the results of the planning team's survey of a thousand Tulsans.

    (The embedded video was making this page load slowly, so if you want to watch it, visit the PLANiTULSA channel on blip.tv.)

    Blogger lunch at Babani's

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    I mentioned a lunch for bloggers on Wednesday of the Republican National Convention. It was organized by HotAir's Ed Morrissey, sponsored by Verizon, and held at Babani's, a Kurdish restaurant in downtown St. Paul. The food was delicious and plentiful, and my taste buds wanted more of it than my stomach, already full from a breakfast with the Oklahoma delegation and a blogger brunch, could handle.

    During the lunch, we heard the inspiring story of Babani's owner, Rodwan Nakshabandi -- his conscription into the Iraqi Army, fleeing the country following Gulf War I and Saddam's attacks on Kurdistan, making his way to the US, and finally settling in St. Paul and opening this restaurant. Ed's entry from the luncheon includes video by Danny Glover of Rodwan's story as told by Joe Repya (Lt. Col., U. S. Army, Retired), along with a transcript. Here's a bit of it:

    In 2003, prior to the start of the Iraq war Rodwan was a frequent guest on talk radio, but only under an assumed name and never mentioning his restaurant in fear for the life of his mother and other family members in Mosul, Iraq. Rodwan wants all Americans to know how grateful the Iraqi Kurdish people are to the United States and George W. Bush for liberating them from the tyranny of Saddam Hussain. Last year Rodwan took his family back to Iraq for the first time to visit relatives he had not seen since 1991. His love for America is great, but his heart still remains with his Kurdish heritage.

    The video also includes remarks by Nakshabandi and by Jon Henke of New Media Strategies, and some photos of the food at the very end.

    By now you've heard about the KFOR-SurveyUSA poll of 652 likely Oklahoma voters from September 5-7. The poll shows Republicans with substantial leads in statewide races:

    President: McCain/Palin over Obama/Biden, 65% to 32%.
    Senator: Jim Inhofe over Andrew Rice and Stephen Wallace, 56% to 34% to 6%.
    Corporation Commissioner (long term): Jeff Cloud over Charles Gray, 52% to 34%.
    Corporation Commissioner (short term): Dana Murphy over Jim Roth, 54% to 36%.

    The links above will take you to the crosstabs for each poll, showing how the candidates when the sample is broken down by race, gender, party affiliation, age, education, ideology, church attendance, income, and abortion views.

    Keeping in mind that the smaller the subsample, the bigger the margin of error, it's still striking that McCain has the support of 42% of Oklahoma Democrats.

    I'm happy to see my friend Dana Murphy doing so well. She is the most qualified candidate for Corporation Commissioner that I have ever seen on the ballot. If Oklahoma voters can look beyond party affiliation, she ought to win by a landslide.

    I asked Tulsa-area delegates and alternates to the Republican National Convention to share memorable moments from the convention for an Urban Tulsa Weekly story. Some stories came in after my deadline that are too good not to share, so I'm going to be publishing them here.

    Delegate Cheryl Medlock heads up the After Five Republican Women's Club and represents Tulsa County on the Republican 1st District Committee. (She's also married to that radio guy.) Cheryl told me about a tribute to Cindy McCain which gave her a glimpse into the personality and character of the prospective First Lady as well as her vice presidential counterpart, Todd Palin, who has been dubbed by his wife the "First Dude of Alaska."

    We were pleasantly surprised by an appearance by Todd Palin. You can see that he is just a "regular guy". He was brief in his remarks and was humorous. He mentioned that he was still on his job the week before, working shift work. He also mentioned that if he had a crystal ball a few years ago, that would have been his opportunity to steer Sarah away from getting involved in the PTA!

    Cindy McCain has struck me as an ice princess-type person, but this lunch really opened my eyes to her warmness and generosity. Her medical missions with Operation Smile was obviously a hands-on endeavor for her. She was in scrubs, hair pushed back in a band, no makeup and holding babies.

    While at the lunch, Debbie House, GOP County Chair in Payne County, approached Mrs. McCain for a photo. Debbie, a hairdresser, told her that she needed to study how she had her hair because she will be asked often to replicate the hair style for her clients. Cindy McCain was very gracious and allowed photos of her hair and had one taken with Debbie.

    (Please note that the chairman of the Payne County Republican Party is not a J. R. Ewing-type oil mogul, not a banker, not a lawyer, but a beauty shop owner who cares enough about public policy to serve as a party chairman and to pay her own way to a national convention. David Holt has more about Debbie House.)

    Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal describes in depth how Sarah Palin, first as an oil and gas commissioner and then as Governor, busted up an insider sweetheart deal involving a natural gas pipeline from Alaska to the lower 48. Here's the heart of the story:

    And so it came as no surprise in 2004 when former Republican Gov. Frank Murkowski made clear he'd be working exclusively with three North Slope producers--ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP--to build a $25 billion pipeline to move natural gas to the lower 48. The trio had informed their political vassals that they alone would build this project (they weren't selling their gas to outsiders) and that they expected the state to reward them. Mr. Murkowski disappeared into smoky backrooms to work out the details. He refused to release information on the negotiations. When Natural Resources Commissioner Tom Irwin suggested terms of the contract were illegal, he was fired.

    What Mr. Murkowski did do publicly was instruct his statehouse to change the oil and gas tax structure (taxes being a primary way Alaskans realize their oil revenue). Later, citizens would discover this was groundwork for Mr. Murkowski's pipeline contract--which would lock in that oil-requested tax package for up to 40 years, provide a $4 billion state investment, and relinquish most oversight.

    Enter Mrs. Palin. The former mayor of Wasilla had been appointed by Mr. Murkowski in 2003 to the state oil and gas regulatory agency. She'd had the temerity to blow the whistle on fellow GOP Commissioner Randy Ruedrich for refusing to disclose energy dealings. Mr. Murkowski and GOP Attorney General Gregg Renkes closed ranks around Mr. Ruedrich--who also chaired the state GOP. Mrs. Palin resigned. Having thus offended the entire old boy network, she challenged the governor for his seat.

    Mrs. Palin ran against the secret deal, and vowed to put the pipeline back out for competitive, transparent, bidding. She railed against cozy politics. Mr. Murkowski ran on his unpopular pipeline deal. The oil industry warned the state would never get its project without his leadership. Mrs. Palin walloped him in the primary and won office in late 2006. Around this time, news broke of a federal probe that would show oil executives had bribed lawmakers to support the Murkowski tax changes.

    Among Mrs. Palin's first acts was to reinstate Mr. Irwin. By February 2007 she'd released her requirements for pipeline bidding. They were stricter, and included only a $500 million state incentive. By May a cowed state house--reeling from scandal--passed her legislation.

    The producers warned they would not bid, nor would anyone else. Five groups submitted proposals. A few months before the legislature awarded its license to TransCanada this July, Conoco and BP suddenly announced they'd be building their own pipeline with no state inducements whatsoever. They'd suddenly found the money.

    Mrs. Palin has meanwhile passed an ethics law. She's tightened up oil oversight. She forced the legislature to rewrite the oil tax law. That new law raised taxes on the industry, for which Mrs. Palin is now taking some knocks, but the political background here is crucial.

    I'm excited at the thought of having this kind of energy and passion for what's right at work on behalf the entire nation, not just Alaska. I'm hopeful that Palin's actions in this case become a model for politicians of every level, ever party, in every part of the country. If this kind of reform can launch Palin to the second highest office in the land, perhaps aspiring pols will decided that busting up the Good Ol' Boys is a better strategy for advancement than becoming one of them.

    Splitting my time between experiencing the Republican National Convention and writing about it, I didn't get around to linking my new blog acquaintances until last night, and I'm only now getting around to linking the Oklahoma delegates who were there and blogging. Although the party's over, it's worth going back to read what the convention was like from a delegate's perspective. There is a lot more going on than you see on TV every evening from 8 to 10.

    The Oklahoma Gazette had two Republican delegates blogging about their convention experiences: 4th District Republican Chairman Steve Fair and Jason Reese. Steve also cross-posted his write-ups, plus more content, at his own site, Fair and Biased.

    Steve has some great write-ups of the breakfast speakers the Oklahoma delegates heard. Here's a bit from U. S. Rep. Tom Cole's Thursday breakfast talk:

    [Cole] said Palin's speech reminded him of the country music song written by Tom T. Hall called Harper Valley PTA. It was a major hit single for country songstress Jeannie C. Riley in 1968, which is probably before most of the people in the room. The song tells the story of a junior high student who is sent home with a note to her single mother from the PTA of the school decrying her behavior by small-town standards. The mother decides to speak to a meeting of the PTA where she addresses various episodes of misbehavior on the part of several of its members, concluding, "This is just a little Peyton Placce/And you're all Harper Valley hypocrites." Cole was complimentary of all his congressional colleagues.

    David Holt blogged the convention for the Oklahoman. Early on, David wrote a nuts-and-bolts description of the convention. Page through his posts, and you'll find brief profiles of several members of the Oklahoma delegation. This one, about alternate Cheryl Demarest, suggests that friendliness can be an effective economic development tool for our state's small towns:

    The Demarests moved from Long Island, NY to Talihina in 1999. They had no connection to the town or the state, but just wanted a place that was friendly to home schooling. They discovered Talihina while checking out Poteau. They were amazed that everyone in Talihina waved as they drove by.

    Robert is a printing consultant and Cheryl is starting a real estate firm. And when they discovered they couldn't get reliable and affordable Internet access in Talihina, they didn't call the government and complain, they just started their own Internet Service Provider.

    While Sarah Palin was speaking to the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, Michelle Obama was hitting two Hollywood fundraisers, giving subtly different messages to different audiences.

    Patrick Range McDonald of LA Weekly, who covered the events as the designated pool reporter. Here's his description of the first stop of the night:

    Dressed in a purple tank top with a purple floral skirt and black high heels, Obama first addressed a largely gay and lesbian audience at the home of Bryan Lourd, managing partner of Creative Artists Agency (CAA), and Bruce Bozzi, Lourd's companion. The event was described by the Obama campaign as an "LGBT Reception."

    Approximately 300 donors attended the fund raiser, which took place in the wealthy, Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Minimum contribution for a guest was $1,000 to get through the door. Supporters who raised $25,000 were given access to a VIP room, where Obama met with them and briefly spoke. All money went to the Obama Victory Fund.

    Speaking at the fundraiser, Mrs. Obama insinuated that she doesn't think Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is very bright:

    Obama then moved on to politics, where she first brought up her husband's vice-presidential choice. "I think it was a really good pick--Senator Joe Biden," she said, and later added, "People say they have amazing chemistry, and it's true."

    Obama continued with talk about Biden when she said, "What you learn about Barack from his choice is that he's not afraid of smart people." The crowd softly chuckled.

    Later, she spoke about gay rights:

    Mindful of the audience in front of her, she then touched up gay and lesbian issues. "In a world as it should be," Obama said, "we repeal laws like DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) and 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.'" She also said an Obama Administration would "recognize" gay adoption rights. Both lines received loud applause.

    Later that evening she spoke at a fundraiser at the home of Samuel L. Jackson:

    Located in the gated community of Beverly Park Estates South in the city of Beverly Hills, approximately 300 people attended the event. Minimum contribution for a guest was $2,300, with VIP access for supporters who raised $25,000. All money went to the Obama Victory Fund.

    Another star-studded crowd was on hand. Among the celebrities were actor Denzel Washington, actress and singer Barbra Streisand, actor and Streisand's husband, James Brolin, former Lakers star Magic Johnson, actress Scarlett Johansson, actor Ryan Reynolds, and former California governor Gray Davis. Guests gathered poolside in the backyard of Jackson's home and drank red and white wine. Golden shallot pancakes with brie and fig preserves and grilled vegetable torte bites with roasted pepper sauce were served. Bread & Butter Catering provided the food at both fund raisers.

    Even in front of a presumably gay-friendly, left-wing Hollywood audience, part of her earlier remarks were omitted from the second appearance:

    Obama did not mention anything about gay issues, but much of the rest of the speech was the same.

    (Via Wilshire and Washington, Variety's blog on the "intersection of entertainment and politics.)

    Fred Davis in the spotlight

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    Fred Davis, Jim Inhofe at the Republican National Convention, by Michael Bates

    I had been hearing about this famous/infamous ad-man for years, a native Tulsan and the nephew of Sen. Jim Inhofe, but I had never met him and had no idea what he looked like until I was on the convention floor Wednesday night and spotted Neil Munro of the National Journal next to the Oklahoma delegation. (Neil, Stephen Spruiell of National Review, Kate Hunter of Congressional Quarterly, and I comprised the entire press corps covering the Committee on Rules and Order of Business last Friday.)

    I went over to say hello, and Neil called my attention to someone with luxuriantly flowing blond hair standing behind the delegation, next to Inhofe. He told me it was Fred Davis, McCain's attack ad man.

    Neil had a profile of Davis in Tuesday's convention edition of National Journal:

    Television ads are the background rhythm of a presidential campaign, and Republican Sen. John McCain's drummer -- ad man Fred Davis -- is already accelerating the beat and playing his signature riffs.

    He has in the works a television ad that contrasts Democratic nominee Barack Obama's life as a politician in Chicago with that of his half-brother in Kenya, who lives in a shack on an unpaved street. Davis, chairman of Strategic Perception, McCain's advertising firm, said that the images are meant as a sharp-edged counterpoint to a theme in Obama's acceptance speech last week, in which he declared, "I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper."...

    Davis sketched out his advertising strategy for a breakfast at the Minneapolis Hyatt Hotel recently, revving up the crowd with a selection of his past spots and an anti-Obama ad that was pulled before it could be run. The ad portrayed an Obama supporter in Texas being asked to cite an Obama accomplishment; he remains open-mouthed and silent for several seconds -- as if to suggest that he could think of nothing Obama had ever done.

    Ultimately, the ad was discarded because it also showed a similarly nonplussed Democratic legislator who has since died. "There's plenty more in the can, soon to come," Davis promised.

    MORE: Here's a 2006 National Journal Q&A with Davis, in which he talks about his first major race, his uncle's 1994 run for Senate. I don't recall Inhofe being as much of an underdog as Davis suggests, but I could be misremembering. That was a big year for Republicans across the board and a near sweep of statewide offices in Oklahoma.

    And a couple of weeks ago, Townhall's Matt Lewis had this:

    I'm hearing that tensions were high recently when veteran actor Robert Duvall was taping a voice-over for a video to be played during the Republican National Convention. Apparently, the veteran actor objected to the direction he was receiving from Republican media guru Fred Davis. According to my sources, Duvall said something along the lines of: "F-you Fred! If Scorsese couldn't give me direction, what the hell makes you think you can?" Though this blow-up is actually recorded on tape, my guess is it's in everyone's best interest for this to not leak out ...

    If memory serves, Davis was responsible for Bob Sullivan's attack ads in his 2006 Republican Governor's campaign against Ernest Istook. Here's the one featuring Gailard Sartain:

    Here are links to and a few notes about the bloggers I had the pleasure of meeting this week at the Republican National Convention. (If I met you but left out your name below, it's because I didn't get your business card. Drop a reminder to me at blog at batesline dot com.)

    * Anne Leary, the BackyardConservative, from the Chicago 'burbs: Here Anne has posted some great photos from the last day of the convention, and she tells of her brushes with greatness.

    * Skye, a conservative Democrat from Philadelphia, who blogs at Midnight Blue, Flopping Aces, and Right Wing News: Skye's latest has video of Barack Obama gaffe-ing his way across Pennsylvania.

    Here's a video conversation between Anne and Skye.

    * Chad Everson of Grizzly Groundswell and Socialist Squirrel. Grizzly Groundswell is a conservative blog community.

    * Stix of Stix Blog: Stix has photos of several of our fellow bloggers at Centerfield, the Minneapolis warehouse district bar where he and several others stayed during the convention. (Unfortunately, I had to miss the Wednesday night party there. I stuck around the Xcel Center for the roll call, then posted about the problem with Oklahoma's votes and uploaded video, and I didn't get out of the Media Filing Center until 1:30 a.m.)

    * Eric of The Tygrrrr Express: Eric had an interesting run-in with some Code Pinkos:

    When they complained about a police state and overaggressive police tactics, I set them straight.

    I told them:

    "I can prove you are wrong in 60 seconds. You claim the police use excessive force. I know this is wrong because I begged them to do it and they wouldn't. I asked those cops (pointing towards them) to use tear gas, rubber bullets, and batons. I wanted Kent State 2008. They said no because we live in a democracy. So sorry to disappoint you, but as badly as you want it, you will not be savagely beaten. Now be quiet before I come back tomorrow with a razor and shave you all under your armpits."

    Sadly enough the police would not let me do that either.

    Eric also believes that Sarah Palin is the Second Coming of Margaret Thatcher.

    Skye has posted some video of Eric conversing with a Code Pinko and a "Paulbot."

    * Katherine Morrison from New Hampshire, of PurplePeopleVote and Blogs4McCain: Here's her summary of Day 2, which had the theme of service.

    * Bill Smith of the ARRA News Service, a conservative Arkansas blog, and Let's Get This Right, a conservative blog community: Here's an interview between Bill and the aforementioned Katherine Morrison, who talks about what brought her to the convention:

    I have a brother who moved to the St. Paul area and I wanted to visit him, my sister-in-law and their children. I am also a blogger and applied for press credentials as an Independent. And the RNC granted them. So, I took vacation and paid my way here. I have meet bloggers of all types: republicans, libertarians, democrats, independents and some from other countries.

    * "CyberPastor" Ed Boston of Do the Right Thing.

    * The Lady Logician of Ladies Logic: Here are her photos of the wide variety of Wednesday afternoon protesters, and here are her initial reflections following McCain's speech:

    Senator McCain's intro video was very informative and I loved the self deprecating humor that was interlaced in with some very serious subject matters. At one point, in a section where it talked about all of the different names that Senator McCain had been called, as the narrator said, "He has even been called," the camera cut to Senator McCain's 96-year-old mother saying, "Mama's boy".

    * Fausta of Fausta's blog: Here's her encounter with a couple of P.O.ed PUMAs for Palin:

    Staunch Hillary supporters with a long history of activism, they headed to Denver. Bettyjean [Kling] purchased a 27′ RV and drove to Denver with her friend Robin Robinson as part of the "300″ to get Hillary a nomination and roll call at the Democratic National Convention last week.

    They had worked on the Hillary campaign for months, Bettyjean in Pennsylvania and Robin in Delaware, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

    But once they got to Denver they found delegates who told them that they were bein pressured to vote for Obama, and who were being told that they would never have a future in politics if they didn't. "Their arms were twisted", said Bettyjean....

    Robin and Bettyjean were bitterly disappointed. When they heard that Sarah Palin was going to be the Vice-Presidential candidate, "our spirits rose and we headed to St. Paul."

    * Lance Burri, who is, according to his business card, "the widest read, most influential conservative columnist ever to emerge from Greater Metropolitan Baraboo. East side. North of the river. Ever." Lance also blogs at Badger Blog Alliance, where he posted this account of the blogger lunch at Babani's Kurdish Restaurant, complete with a mouthwatering photo, plus video of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Frank Luntz at Wednesday's blogger brunch, and of former Sen. Fred Thompson from Tuesday's brunch.

    * Dan Blatt, the western correspondent for GayPatriot, which calls itself "the internet home for American gay conservatives": Dan notes that the theme of gratitude provided bookends to McCain's speech:

    At the beginning, he acknowledged his rivals for the Republican nomination and expressed his gratitude to the president and his family. He concluded by acknowledging his fellow POW Bob Craner, telling us how that good man "saved" him.

    Maybe I read too much into this, but it says a lot of a man that he frames this speech by acknowledging how much he owes to others, showing how grateful he is for their love, their inspiration, their support, their compassion. He knows, more, he recognizes what he owes to others. For no one who has achieved any measure of success in any given endeavor could have accomplished anything without the support of others.

    Devoting so much time in a speech of this significance suggests a certain humility, something we don't see in many politicians, particularly this election cycle.

    * MarathonPundit, who recounts a conversation with a British press journalist who regarded his assignment to cover the RNC as "punishment."

    I also met (briefly) A-list bloggers Scott Ott of the family-friendly satire site Scrappleface (who was surprisingly tall and whose face did not at all resemble scrapple), Ed Morrissey of Hot Air, and former (?) blogger and rising conservative star Mary Katherine Ham.

    MORE: Skye and Marathon Pundit were interviewed by Al Jazeera during the convention.

    From Sen. John McCain's acceptance speech in St. Paul tonight:

    Education is the civil rights issue of this century. Equal access to public education has been gained. But what is the value of access to a failing school? We need to shake up failed school bureaucracies with competition, empower parents with choice, remove barriers to qualified instructors, attract and reward good teachers, and help bad teachers find another line of work.

    When a public school fails to meet its obligations to students, parents deserve a choice in the education of their children. And I intend to give it to them. Some may choose a better public school. Some may choose a private one. Many will choose a charter school. But they will have that choice and their children will have that opportunity.

    Senator Obama wants our schools to answer to unions and entrenched bureaucracies. I want schools to answer to parents and students. And when I'm President, they will.

    (Crossposted at Choice Remarks.)

    McCain's remarks, quoted above, brought the delegates to their feet with loud cheers several times.

    School choice received many prime-time mentions from the podium of the Republican National Convention this week.

    GOPAC Chairman Michael Steele:

    Some just talk about change, but John McCain believes the resiliency of the American people is the real source of the change America needs; and that means putting country first.

    So, do you want to put your country first? Then let's change the way we educate our kids.

    Let's empower those whose minds are shackled by a poor education with real choices in where they go to school....

    John McCain knows we must empower working families and stand with them against the erosion of our constitutional rights, the corruption of our school systems, the weakening of our families and the taking of human life - born and unborn.

    Mitt Romney:

    Opportunity expands when there is excellence and choice in education, when taxes are lowered, when every citizen has affordable, portable health insurance, and when constitutional freedoms are preserved.

    Rudy Giuliani:

    And as we look to the future never let us forget that - when we are at our best - we are the party that expands Freedom. We began as a party dedicated to freeing people from slavery ... And we are still the party that is willing to fight for freedom at home and around the world. We are the party that wants to expand individual freedom and economic freedom ... because we believe that the secret of America's success is not central government, it is self-government. We are the party that believes in giving workers the right to work. The party that believes parents should choose where their children go to school.

    From the 2008 Republican platform about Washington, D. C.:

    Washington should be made a model city. Two major Republican initiatives -- a first-time D.C. homebuyers credit and a landmark school choice initiative -- have pointed the way toward a civic resurgence, and a third piece of GOP legislation now guarantees young D.C. residents significant assistance in affording higher education.

    From the education section of the platform.

    Parents should be able to decide the learning environment that is best for their child. We support choice in education for all families, especially those with children trapped in dangerous and failing schools, whether through charter schools, vouchers or tax credits for attending faith-based or other nonpublic schools, or the option of home schooling.

    I was sitting down in the Media Filing Center to begin to clear out some of by back blog, but as I sat down a convention staffer brought by Texas Congressman Michael Burgess. Burgess was here to talk about health care policy. He is an obstetrician and gynecologist, and in 2002 he succeeded Dick Armey in the 26th District, located in the northern part of the DFW Metroplex.

    I'm in a rush to post, so I can go out on the floor for Tom Cole's speech (rescheduled from Monday), but in a nutshell, Burgess said that McCain's plan builds on the employer-funded insurance that serves 160 million Americans, but removes tax-code discrimination against those who purchase insurance individually. McCain's approach would make employer-funded premiums taxable, but there would be a $5,000 tax credit per family. So if you're employer pays, say $10,000 a year, for your health insurance and you're in the 25% tax bracket, your taxes would go down by $2,500 ($2,500 taxes on the employer-funded premiums, minus the $5,000 credit. If you're in the 10% bracket with the same plan, you'd be ahead by $4,000 under this plan. That net gain could be used to fund a Health Savings Account to cover out of pocket expenses or even to pay for an individually-owned plan.

    McCain also wants to create greater choice for insurance buyers, so they can choose the right plan for the right cost from a coast-to-coast selection of companies, rather than being stuck with higher costs in their own states, driven by legislative coverage mandates.

    The McCain team is also working on a guaranteed access provision to protect people with pre-existing conditions or in fragile health.

    Burgess said that liability reform in Texas has made a huge difference in medical liability insurance costs. Overall cost of the plan he had as an obstetrician dropped by 22% after the passage of Proposition 12 in 2003. He said that this modest change in liability laws freed up non-profit hospitals to spend more on nurses, capital equipment, and other improvements to patient care, using money that used to go to insurance premiums.

    There was a question about House's shortened schedule this fall. The House has less than 20 legislative days remaining. Burgess said that House Democrats are all running against President Bush, so House leadership doesn't want to give him the photo op of signing meaningful legislation.

    Burgess said there is unlikely to be a lame-duck session, unless Obama wins. In that case, Congress may go ahead and act on a free trade agreement with Colombia, so that Bush can sign it, and it won't be waiting on Obama's desk when he's sworn in.

    Obamphaloskepsis

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    Sarah Palin's speech was a big hit with the delegates. A couple of lines painted Democratic nominee Barack Obama as something of a navel gazer:

    But listening to him speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform - not even in the state senate....

    My fellow citizens, the American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of "personal discovery."...

    It was exciting but exhausting to be on the floor for nearly the whole evening. I caught a couple of interesting moments, on video, and took a bunch of photos.

    IMG_0444

    In the media filing center, I had the pleasure of sitting next to KAL, cartoonist for The Economist, watching him work on his latest set of convention cartoons. Here's yesterday's collection:

    But I've written all I can for tonight. See you in the morning.

    I stayed around after the speeches ended for the roll call of the states -- the actual, required vote on who will be the Republican Party's presidential nominee. Arizona passed first time around, and everyone from Nebraska on through the end of the alphabet passed, so that Arizona could put its senator over the top.

    I caught an interesting conversation between Sen. Jim Inhofe, who was to announce Oklahoma's vote, State Chairman Gary Jones, and two 2nd District delegates, Paul Clayton of McAlester and Robert Demarest of Talihina, about their intention to abstain.

    Some background: The 2nd District voted for Mike Huckabee in the primary, but Huckabee released his delegates. Two of the delegates elected by the 2nd District Convention were supporters of Congressman Ron Paul. Freed from the legal obligation to vote for Huckabee, they wanted to cast their votes for Paul, but thinking that they couldn't vote for anyone whose name had not been placed in nomination, they wanted to abstain.

    Inhofe and Jones told them that they were free to vote for whomever they wished. I interviewed Demarest and Clayton briefly after their conversation with Inhofe and Jones. I apologize for the weird angles, but I had to stand too close to them to get a decent two-shot.

    Later they told me that they did intend to vote for Sarah Palin during the vice presidential roll call.

    When Oklahoma finally got the chance to vote, after McCain's majority was assured, the delegation's chairman and Oklahoma's departing National Committeeman, Lynn Windel, yielded the floor to Inhofe, who began his spiel. When he said the phrase "war hero of all war heros, John McCain," the convention secretary, perhaps not paying close attention, assumed she heard the vote, and announced, "Oklahoma, 41 votes for John McCain." Inhofe attempted to correct the secretary and go on, but as soon as the secretary spoke, Inhofe's mike was cut.

    There was some minor commotion as the roll call continued, but in the end Oklahoma's vote was recorded as 41 for McCain, even though the state's vote was never announced. Delegates began filtering toward the exits. Chairman John Boehner never asked for corrections, but he did announce, "Seeing that there are no states that wish to change their vote...." before saying that McCain received all but 7 votes -- 5 for Paul, 2 (from Utah) for Mitt Romney.

    As they say on The Daily Show, and now, your moment of zen:

    California Congressman Kevin McCarthy roped in political focus group maven Frank Luntz to take about four minutes to answer a few blogger questions at the end of today's RedState.com / Google blogger brunch on the 22nd floor of the St. Paul Crowne Plaza hotel. He spoke about swing voter reaction to Sarah Palin's personality, experience, and issues and also fired off a few pointed one-liners at Hillary and Bill Clinton and Joe Biden.

    About a vice presidential debate between Palin and Biden:

    Biden's awesome. The key to the debate between Biden and Palin is to have it completely open, because Joe Biden for the first 90 seconds is as good as it gets. Always makes a stupid comment at about 2 minutes, 30 seconds.

    About Bill Clinton:

    Bill Clinton was a great speaker because he felt your pain. He caused your pain, but at list he felt it while he was causing it.

    About Hillary Clinton:

    The great thing about this election is that she's finally done. Of all the places she could have chosen to live, she chose Chappaqua, Indian for "separate bedrooms."

    In a 5 min. interview with BatesLine, Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons, a delegate to the Republican National Convention and at 19 years, 364 days old America's youngest mayor, talks about trying to meet Rudy Giuliani, how he became interested in politics, the challenges of serving as mayor, and the amount of worldwide media attention focused on him this week.

    (The embed doesn't seem to be working, so here's a link to the video's page.)

    My tank is full

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    I've spent all morning and the beginning of the afternoon eating and listening. I've finally had the time to stop taking in and starting processing and writing about what I've seen and heard.

    First stop was a joint breakfast of the Oklahoma and Louisiana delegations, way the heck out in Brooklyn Center, northwest of Minneapolis. J. C. Watts was the guest speaker. If the audio is audible, I'll post it later this evening.

    Then I drove into St. Paul, for an 11 o'clock RedState.com/Google blogger brunch. Tony Lauinger from Oklahomans for Life rode along with me -- he was headed to a "Catholics for McCain" event not far from the brunch.

    Today's blogger brunch featured a Q&A with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, U. S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy from California (not the guy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and UHF), and a surprise appearance by pollster Frank Luntz.

    At the brunch I heard about a lunch organized by Hot Air's Ed Morrissey at a Kurdish restaurant, Babani's. I hadn't gotten the invite and therefore hadn't RSVPed, but I decided to tag along anyway. We heard some brief remarks, but mostly it was a chance to chat with the other bloggers. I shared a table with Fausta, Dan Blatt, and one of Dan's readers who lives here in the Twin Cities area.

    One of the topics of conversation was how poorly organized the RNC had been in dealing with bloggers this year. Four years ago, there was a Bloggers' Corner near radio row, which gave bloggers easy access to the eminentoes coming and going for talk radio interviews. Convention staff brought elected officials and other special guests around to be interviewed by the bloggers. There were fewer bloggers in 2004, but they all knew who the others were. This time there are many more, but word about special events for bloggers isn't getting around. I was especially chagrined to hear today about an incredible Pajamas Media party last night at James Lileks' palatial Jasperwood estate. Granted, if they had had a full list of convention bloggers, they might not have invited all of us, but then again they might have.

    At the moment I'm back in Dunn Bros. Coffee, sitting next to Adam C. from RedState.com, a Tulsa native. (Here's his latest post, about a poll showing Gov. Sarah Palin with stratospheric approval ratings in Alaska.) Once I get back to the convention hall, I plan to upload more video, audio, and photos. You can see my pictures, up through last night, on my Flickr page. There are some good shots of Fred Thompson, George H. W. and Barbara Bush, and a number of Oklahoma officials and delegates, such as Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons, America's youngest mayor, being interviewed here by MTV News.

    Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons at the 2008 Republican National Convention

    You can hear more of my take on last night's proceedings on the WynnCast and in an interview with the KRMG Morning News team.

    MORE: Here's a slideshow which includes photos of my conversation with KRMG's Joe Kelley and Rick Couri.

    Day 1 and 2 roundup

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    Just a few notes on what happened today and yesterday:

    I had a terrific time at a National Review event. It was fun to spot such luminaries as former Education Secretary Bill Bennett and former U. N. Ambassador John Bolton. It was even more fun to talk politics with NR staffers and other guests. Being in a room of people who can discuss politics passionately and intelligently is heavenly.

    After the party, I headed back up Cathedral Hill to where I'd parked the car. The time passed quickly (despite my tweed jacket, my heavy laptop backpack, and the unusually warm evening) because I was on the Wynncast, being Wynnterviewed by Claremore bloggers Tyson and Jeanne Wynn -- two more folks who can discuss politics with passion and intelligence. You can listen to the latest Wynncast at this link.

    Back down the hill today to stroll past the Fox News outdoor set, where Sen. Joe Lieberman was being interviewed. I did some work on an upcoming Urban Tulsa Weekly story at a Dunn Bros. Coffee at 5th & Wabasha, located on the ground floor of a nicely disguised parking garage and sharing space with an opticians' shop. It was an interesting arrangement. They also had a coffee and snacks cart out on the sidewalk for express service. I was sad to notice that despite the extended hours that many of these shops are offering during the convention, most places in the western part of downtown seem to close early under normal circumstances.

    Dunn Bros. had become a sort of alternative media filing center. I met Britten Chase, the Oregon editor for The Politicker, a national collection of state-focused political websites. During a later writing session, I was sitting near a reporter for CBS Radio News, who was phoning in periodically about complaints by protesters that undercover cops were the ones getting violent during their marches. Other folks with notepads and microphones and cameras were typing intently on their laptops.

    While there I did phone interviews with Oklahoma U. S. Rep. Tom Cole, who is also chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, who is head of the Republican Mayors' Association. More about that in a later entry.

    I did more writing and had something to eat in a sad little food court in the Fifth Street Center. The sign on the street door said they'd be open until late. When I got upstairs, most of the places were already closed. I walked around the corner and found a local Mexican fast food place and a McDonald's still open.

    I decided to take the skyway back toward the convention center. The skyway -- at least in parts -- is like walking down an indoor Main Street. In the Town Square shopping center, I was excited to come across a little shop that sells Discovery Toys. The shop had everything some fun and wonderful educational toys, and they're currently on offer for at least a 20% discount. The store is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. If you're here at the convention and need something fun to take home to the kids, you need to stop by. (You can also find this Discovery Toys consultant, Bobbie Collins, online.)

    I made it back to the convention center about 5:30. I marveled at how much quicker it was to get into the Xcel Center than it was to get into Madison Square Garden four years ago. I've never had to wait in a long line, and tonight, I was arriving not long before the gavel.

    The accommodations for the press are much better than I had feared, after I'd read Ed Morrissey's Hot Air post about the cost of Internet access for media. The media filing center is open to everyone -- periodical press, daily papers, radio, and bloggers. We've got fairly high speed wired access, sponsored by AT&T -- I was getting about 2 Mbps down and 1 Mbps up. There are lockers -- bring your own lock -- where you can lock up your stuff if you don't care to lug it around.

    Near the lockers I found a bunch of the bloggers whom I met at the RedState.com brunch, including Skye of Midnight Blue (who requested and got a nice photo with me at the brunch). I was also invited to spend a few minutes on Grizzly Groundswell's BlogTalkRadio show tonight.

    On the way to the convention floor, in hopes of getting a media floor pass, I came across 740 KRMG's booth on radio row and saw Joe Kelley, Rick Couri, and their producer for the week, KRMG program director Drew Anderssen. They've been doing a live special edition each evening of the convention, as well as an extended morning show from 5 to 9. They were in Denver, too. You can find KRMG's convention website here, with audio and video, and their revised convention schedule here.

    I'm going to stop now -- will add more about my time on the floor of the convention in a later entry. Time for another climb up the hill and another edition of the Wynncast.

    National Review's Stephen Spruiell is over in Minneapolis at the Target Center, covering Ron Paul's counter-convention.

    Spruiell writes that one speaker's attack on his employer was a crowd-pleaser:

    Another prompted loud applause for calling for the rejection of "the redefinition of conservatism that began with Bill Buckley and National Review," adding, "To break with statism is to break once and for all with the Buckleyite right-wing."

    Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse "The Body" Ventura spoke at the event. Turns out he's a Troofer, and he's threatening to run for President in 2012.

    As Ventura continued to "ask questions" about what really happened on 9/11, a vocal contingent in the crowd (coming from all parts of the arena) took to chanting, "9/11 was an inside job." At one point, it got so loud that Ventura had to pause for a few moments before going on. Many in the crowd were applauding Ventura throughout his discussion of 9/11, but some were sitting stone-faced, looking on with dismay.

    Stay tuned to The Corner for more transmissions from Planet Paul.

    Fred! * 2

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    This morning I attended a "Blogger Brunch" sponsored by RedState.com and Google. The guest speaker was my pick in the presidential primaries, former Sen. Fred Thompson of Tennessee.

    The event was on the 22nd floor of the Crowne Plaza, which provides breathtaking views up and down the Mississippi River and up the hills to the State Capitol and the Cathedral. It's a beautiful city, and September is just about the best time of year to be here.

    On the elevator ride up, I saw political pundit and Beltway Boy Fred Barnes. Someone else in the elevator used to go to the same church as Barnes -- the historic Falls Church -- an evangelical Anglican parish that has broken away from the liberal mainline denomination. It was encouraging to hear their conversation about the new parishes being planted by the Falls Church around the Washington area. It's nice, too, to know there are committed evangelicals like Barnes with a prominent voice in the Washington commentariat.

    Google provided a terrific spread. One odd thing --- an oversight by the catering staff, I'm guessing -- they had a tray with smoked salmon, capers, onions, and all the fixings one associates with lox and bagels, only there were no bagels. I guess this was the Atkins version.

    There was only one face in the room familiar to me: J. P. Duffy, an ORU grad who had worked on John Sullivan's early campaigns for Congress. J. P. is the Media Director for the Family Research Council. (I met one of his colleagues, Tom McClusky, at last night's National Review party.)

    I met a lot of bloggers -- from Arkansas, New Hampshire, Illinois, Indiana, Virginia, Maryland, and Minnesota, among other places -- got cards from several, and I will add links to their blogs later. I was surprised by the number of people who reacted to the name "BatesLine" as if it were familiar.

    Our speaker was stuck in traffic and arrived at about 10:30. As soon as Thompson arrived he was introduced and launched into his brief speech, followed by some Q&A.

    (I tried to record his speech on my Sony recorder, but at some point in the speech, the Energizer rechargeable gave out, despite having recharged it last night. I give up on Energizer. I have had too many missed moments thanks to Energizer. Duracell only from now on. Duracell has never let me down. I'm sure other bloggers will post video and audio, and I will add links later.)

    In his appearance at the brunch, Thompson displayed all the strengths -- and weaknesses -- of his run for president. This was my first time to see him in person, so now I can better appreciate the observations of those who saw him on the campaign trail. I say "see him in person" because I didn't have the chance to meet him. He departed immediately after the Q&A and didn't hang around to shake hands.

    The physical set-up -- obviously not under his control -- was great for being able to see and hear him, but it also created an awkward distance between Thompson and the audience. He stood in an elevated area at the center of this top-floor restaurant, while the bloggers were at tables nearer the windows and several feet below.

    But of course, conservative grassroots bloggers backed Thompson for the substance of his platform, not for his outgoing personality. The same common sense, "first principles" conservatism that drove his campaign were at the heart of his remarks. That same approach to conservatism is at the heart of his newly launched political action committee.

    Here are a few quotes I managed to jot down on my old fashioned notepad:

    What he learned during his presidential campaign: "Never underestimate John McCain."

    On the Democrats' choice of Barack Obama in light of the international situation -- he mentioned tensions between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and China's military buildup among other crises: "This is no time to turn the keys to the car over to a 14 year old in heavy traffic."

    On McCain's choice of Sarah Palin: "She's the kind of public servant we claim we want... They're going to Washington and take it by the scruff of the neck and give it a good shaking."

    On mainstream media coverage of the presidential campaign: "It has been generally poor up until now, and now it's abysmal."

    On the alleged experience gap between Palin and Joe Biden: "You don't get experience by being in the Senate....[Palin] doesn't have experience making the wrong decisions about Iraq [referring to Biden's proposal to partition the country into three ethnic-religious enclaves]. She doesn't have experience being wrong about the surge."

    I didn't write down a direct quote on this, but he was asked about whether he'd be open to serving in a McCain cabinet. Thompson said it would be presumptuous for him to answer that question, and there are family considerations that would have to be weighed if such an offer were to be made.

    More notes from other bloggers:

    Shay at Booker Rising liveblogged the speech and has more quotes and photos of the event.

    PA Watercooler elaborated on Thompson's comments about Senate experience: "As a veteran of the Senate, Mr Thompson did not give rave reviews to foreign policy or domestic security exposure... saying that it was mostly about deal making and bringing back pork to the home state."

    Doc's Political Parlor weighs in.

    MORE: Here are video excerpts, via NewsBusters.

    The convention was called to order long enough for the presentation of colors, Pledge of Allegiance, National Anthem, invocation, reading of the official call for the convention, and approval of the permanent convention committees. Once those committees were officially approved, the committees, which had conducted their business provisionally last week, met to ratify their work as official committees.

    At the moment, delegates are milling about, and we're waiting for all the committees to complete their work, at which point the convention will reconvene and the delegates will be asked to approve the committee reports.

    The rules committee meeting lasted about 20 minutes, most of which was spent on the invocation, pledge of allegiance, and roll call. We were near section 117, crammed into a temporary room, surrounded by thin, 8-foot-tall cubicle walls which made it nearly impossible to hear. The committee ratified the rules report unanimously.

    I was unable to find Bettye Fine Collins, the committee member from Alabama who was circulating a minority-report petition, protesting the plan to appoint an extraordinary between-conventions commission on the primary process and calendar. I heard from several members who had signed it that they did not believe it had received sufficient signatures -- 28 were needed.

    It's 4:18, and the convention is back in session, and the chairman of the credentials committee is giving his report. There were contests in Massachusetts, Washington, and Nevada. The challenged Massachusetts delegate (from the 4th CD, I think I heard) was not seated. The Washington delegation was seated. Regarding Nevada, the chairman said an "equitable resolution was reached" allowing Nevada to have its entire delegation seated.

    4:22: Alec Poitevint is presenting the rules committee report. Passed by voice vote. No minority report was presented.

    4:25: Committee on permanent organization now making its report, naming the permanent convention chairman (U. S. Rep. John Boehner of Ohio) and other officers.

    Watch this space for updates.

    Convention about to begin

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    Some links as we get ready for the abbreviated opening session of the Republican National Convention, beginning at 2:30:

    RedState's Adam C has a nice summary of "Minnesota Nice" and the political profile of the Land o' Lakes -- the state that has the longest streak of voting Democratic in presidential elections (thanks to native son Walter Mondale), but still sees Republican success at the state and local level.

    NRO's Stephen Spruiell reviews the 2008 Republican platform and finds another indication (along with the Palin pick) that McCain is wisely handling his differences with party conservatives:

    The new platform is distinctly different from the two adopted during the candidacies of George W. Bush, which were constructed to essentially mirror his positions. The 2000 and 2004 platforms made exceptions for Bush in areas where he strayed from traditionally conservative principles. By contrast, the 2008 platform accommodates McCain's maverick positions on issues like immigration and climate change without accepting his views as the official positions of the Republican party....

    Conservatives should be grateful that the McCain campaign took a different approach to this year's platform. The committee finalized the document on Wednesday night, well before the McCain campaign picked conservative Alaskan governor Sarah Palin. But both the principled platform and the Palin pick illustrate that McCain knows and respects his limits with the base. In the last week, McCain has twice given conservatives something to cheer for.

    (Here is a link to the 67-page report of the platform committee to the 2008 Republican National Convention.)

    Someone from the PBS News Hour came by and gave me a combination pen and flash drive to promote their website. News Hour also is providing a Flickr feed and a Twitter feed of their convention coverage.

    On my way down to the Xcel Center from Cathedral Hill, I came across a rally of about 50 red-shirted folks gathered around the Grand Army of the Republic monument, carrying American flags and placards saying:

    "Support our troops AND their mission!"

    "VICTORY over Terrorism -- Let Our Soldiers WIN!"

    "Home of the FREE because of the BRAVE"

    "Some HEROES wear capes. Mine wear COMBAT BOOTS."

    and the classic:

    "How about rooting for our side for a change, you moonbats?"

    The rally in support of the troops began at 10 a.m., as anti-war protesters gathered a few blocks away at the Minnesota State Capitol for a protest march down to the Xcel Center.

    The familes' rally was organized by Families United for our Troops and Their Mission. Marrilee Carlson, the president of the group, led the event, which began with the National Anthem, sung a capella with a few notes on the trumpet, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

    Marilee Carlson is a Gold Star mom -- the mother of Army Sergeant Michael "Shrek" Carlson:

    During a night mission, his platoon was assigned to cordon off and take out of commission, two bomb-making factories. As the Bradley they were driving was going over a culvert in the roadway, the culvert gave way and the vehicle rolled over backwards into the water. Seven soldiers were in the Bradley; five died, including Michael. A rescue unit was able to save two other soldiers, in large part because before he died, Michael was able to partly pry open the hatch in the vehicle.

    Mrs. Carlson read from a "credo" that her son wrote while in high school:

    When I am on my deathbed, what am I going to look back on? Will it be thirty years of fighting crime and protecting the country of all enemies, foreign and domestic? I want my life to account for something... I only have so much time. I want to be good at life; I want to be known as the best of the best at my job. I want people to need me, to count on me... I want to fight for something, be part of something that is greater than myself. I want to be a soldier...

    Here are some of Mrs. Carlson's remarks:

    Gold Star mom Debbie Lee spoke about her son, Petty Officer 2nd Class Mark Alan Lee, a Navy Seal killed in Iraq just over two years ago. Mark was awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star with Valor, and Purple Heart:

    Lee, 28, was killed Aug. 2 in a fierce firefight while on patrol against insurgents in Ramadi, Iraq. An aviation ordinanceman and a member of a Coronado, Calif.-based SEAL team, Lee was one of the first members of the elite group to be killed in Iraq.

    U.S. Navy officers told Debbie Lee that her son died after single-handedly holding off enemy fighters as his team rescued a wounded soldier from a rooftop. During the two-hour battle, Marc Lee fired 100 rounds against insurgents, they told her.

    A base in Iraq is named in Lee's memory.

    Mrs. Lee read from her son's last e-mail from Iraq, a meditation on the nature of glory, self-sacrifice, and generosity:

    It is not unknown to most of us that the rest of the world looks at us with doubt towards our humanity and morals. I am not here to preach or to say look at me, because I am just as at fault as the next person. I find that being here makes me realize the great country we have and the obligation we have to keep it that way.

    The 4th has just come and gone and I received many emails thanking me for helping keep America great and free. I take no credit for the career path I have chosen; I can only give it to those of you who are reading this, because each one of you has contributed to me and who I am.

    However what I do over here is only a small percent of what keeps our country great. I think the truth to our greatness is each other. Purity, morals and kindness, passed down to each generation through example. So to all my family and friends, do me a favor and pass on the kindness, the love, the precious gift of human life to each other so that when your children come into contact with a great conflict that we are now faced with here in Iraq, that they are people of humanity, of pure motives, of compassion. This is our real part to keep America free!

    Here are some of Mrs. Lee's remarks:

    Mrs. Lee said that God redeployed Marc to heaven, because he'd "successfully completed his mission," but she told the families that they are only halfway through their deployment, and they have a job to do -- to stand for the troops, to write their congressmen, to write letters to the editor, to let their friends and neighbors know what's really going on in Iraq. She spoke of her visit to Iraq, and the Iraqis she met who expressed gratitude for America's presence.

    A special surprise speaker emerged a few minutes later. Actor Jon Voight addressed the families. He recalled with regret his anti-Vietnam War activities and expressed thanks for living long enough to change his ways, while saluting the troops who made such a difference in such a short time on this earth.

    I said in a little op-ed in the Washington Times, that the great patriotism that is represented by our troops and this generation of young people is really lifting our nation altogether. And thank God for them, for your children and what they have meant to all of us, to fix our minds in the proper direction....

    I'm 69 years old. I've had a lot of life. I've needed a lot of life to get my priorities straight.... I got a little wayward at the end of the '60s, with celebrity -- it does something to your mind. It drops your IQ.... It distracts you from the truth.... I got into this antiwar stuff in the late '60s and early '70s, and I pray to God everyday that he would forgive me for that nonsense....

    I am in awe of the young people who stand for this country....

    Here are Voight's remarks:

    MORE: Families United also rallied across from an antiwar protest in Denver a week ago. Looking at the Left has photos.

    I was having lunch and writing outside The Bad Waitress, a cafe at 26th & Nicollet in Minneapolis, when the wind blew the umbrella down on my head. There's still a strong wind blowing outside here in the Twin Cities, but it's nothing compared to what's about to hit the other end of the Mississippi River.

    Earlier this afternoon, the Republican National Convention media office announced that Monday's convention proceedings will be limited to the bare minimum required to establish the convention and lay the ground work for the official nomination of John McCain and Sarah Palin for president and vice president.

    At the recommendation of Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican National Convention announced substantial changes to the convention's program and actions being taken to help with Hurricane Gustav relief efforts. On Monday, all program activities beyond the official business that must be conducted in accordance with party rules will be cancelled. Among the other actions announced today are the formation of the Affected States Working Group, the establishment of an Affected States Information Center, and the chartering of a DC-9 to transport affected delegates.

    Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain 2008, announced that the upcoming Republican National Nominating Convention is making serious revisions to the convention program and surrounding activities. Davis said, "We are deeply concerned about the safety and welfare of the residents of the Gulf State region. Our top priority is to assist those who will be affected by Hurricane Gustav. This is not a time for politics or celebration; it is a time for us to come together as Americans and assist the residents of the Gulf States."

    Davis also discussed what the changes in the program will mean for the nomination process. "In order for the Republican Party to officially exist and for Senator McCain to qualify for the ballot, we are - by law - required to conduct specific official business. At this point, our program on Monday has been scaled back and will only include what party rules governing the nomination of our candidates for president and vice president require. We will perform the official business as required. In addition, we have set aside time to make delegates and Americans watching our proceedings at home aware of what they can do to assist in relief efforts designed to help those who will be affected by Hurricane Gustav."

    Davis concluded: "At some point between Monday and Thursday evening, we will convene once again to complete the activities needed to qualify Senator McCain and Governor Palin for the ballot in all 50 states. Beyond that, all we can say is that we will monitor what is happening and make decisions about other convention business as details become available."...

    The convention program has been altered in response to the situation developing in the Gulf States region. However, the convention will still take place. According to party rules, it is necessary for the convention to proceed in order to ensure that the party is able to place its candidates' names on the ballot in November.

    On November 9, 2007, pursuant to the rules adopted at the 2004 National Republican Convention, the party issued the call for its convention. The call requires that the convention meet on Sept. 1, 2008. The session must be convened no earlier than 9 a.m. and no later than 7 p.m. Under the current party rules, this is the only method by which the party may select a candidate for President and Vice President.

    This raises some interesting questions about the necessity and duration of national party conventions. Their four-day length is a relic of a time when delegates actually had decisions to make and time to deliberate them.

    Friday's Republican National Convention rules committee meeting heralded major changes in the way Republicans will select a presidential nominee in years to come, although exactly what those changes may be are yet to be determined. The primary process was one of several thorny issues debated in a six-hour meeting by pairs of representatives from each state and territory.

    Several attempts have been made in the past to reform the primary process, to address front-loading and to have a process long enough that the flaws of a candidate have time to surface. Such a proposal would normally pass through the permanent Republican National Committee (RNC) rules subcommittee, then through the RNC as a whole, then through the convention rules committee, then through the convention as a whole.

    Reform proposals in the past have been killed by the presumptive nominee's campaign team, either at the RNC stage or the convention rules committee stage. This is for two reasons: (1) The nominee wants to avoid any substantive debate at the convention, because it keeps the convention from being a coherent, four-day infomercial for the nominee and his platform. (2) Any modification to the primary calendar is bound to make some states very unhappy, and some of those unhappy states may be swing states. Better to punt the problem down the road.

    The Democrats are doing just that. Their rules committee, co-chaired by former Oklahoma Gov. David Walters, recommended the establishment of a "Democratic Change Commission" which will examine the primary schedule (and how schedule violations are enforced), the role of superdelegates, and the conduct of caucuses (caucus presidential preference votes are binding in the Democratic Party). The committee will be appointed by the DNC chairman, will convene in early 2009, and will submit a report back to the DNC by the end of the year. The DNC will then debate whether to adopt the plan for the 2012 election cycle. The plan was approved by the Democratic delegates last week in Denver.

    That approach has not been an option for Republicans, as only the quadrennial convention has the power under the party rules to change the rules. This year, however, the rules committee approved, with the blessing of the McCain campaign, an amendment that authorizes a commission to study the primary schedule and to report back to the RNC by the summer of 2010. The RNC would then be authorized to vote up or down on the recommendation (no amendments), and if it passes by a two-thirds margin, it becomes a part of the rules. This approach is similar to that used for military base closures -- the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) commission makes a recommendation and Congress votes up or down on the recommendation as a whole.

    This commission proposal will come before the convention for approval on Monday embedded in the rules committee report. The rules report is usually accepted, without debate, by a voice vote of the delegates. Blink, and you'll miss it.

    This commission proposal is a major departure from Republican tradition, which holds that only the convention can change the rules, a fact often repeated by the rules committee veterans who opposed the change.

    The composition of the RNC is very different from that of the national convention. Every state and territory has three members on the RNC -- chairman, national committeeman, national committeewoman. The size of the delegations to the national convention are weighted by population and by the state party's success in winning support for Republican candidates. This makes the national convention far more representative of the party as a whole, while the RNC gives undue influence to officials from unsuccessful, small-state party organizations. Texas, Massachusetts, and the Northern Marianas are all equal on the RNC. An RNC vote on the commission proposal which weighted votes in accordance with national convention delegate strength would be more representative of party sentiment.

    A long-time RNC member told me that the two-thirds hurdle would be easily surmounted by a commission report with powerful backing. Assuming a Republican is in the White House, the President has only to send one of his minions to the RNC with the message, "The President wants this approved," and two-thirds of the RNC members will fall right in line. (Think back to the RNC's approval of Mel Martinez as chairman.)

    Commission opponent Morton Blackwell from Virginia said during the rules committee debate that the Democratic "flexibility" on rules leads to intraparty struggles that purport to be about high-minded principle but are, in reality, about prospective presidential candidates trying to gain an advantage. And as we saw last week, even when Democrats change their rules late in the game, they still don't enforce them -- Michigan and Florida delegates were seated at the convention.

    I'm told that the commission proposal was not approved by the RNC's permanent rules committee or by the RNC as a whole. Instead, it was brought as a floor amendment on Friday by Ron Kaufman, the RNC committeeman and rules committee member from Massachusetts. RNC members who might have opposed the idea didn't know about it in time to alert their convention rules committee members or to organize opposition in advance of the committee meeting.

    There were enough dissenters on this issue that there may be a minority report, which would be presented to the convention for a vote prior to the majority report. Bettye Fine Collins, a rules committee member from Alabama, was circulating a minority report petition, which would needed 28 signatures to meet the 25% requirement to be presented to the convention. I heard tonight that she had 26, but the number slipped to 25. It's likely that pressure is being applied to rules committee members behind the scenes to keep this issue off the floor.

    Even if the minority report gets the signatures, there's no guarantee that it will get a hearing or that it will be handled in accordance with parliamentary procedure, which would require the delegates to deal with the report of a committee minority before they address the majority's committee report. The most important work of a convention happens in the first few hours on Monday afternoon, when the credentials, rules, and platform committee reports are heard. The chair rushes through the agenda as quickly as possible, while the delegates are still dazzled at being on the floor of the convention. If some attentive delegate were to try to raise a point of order, the only chance of getting a hearing is if someone turns on the delegation's microphone.

    Expect this major change to fly through right under the radar on Monday.

    Minor changes to the primary calendar

    The rules committee made changes to the primary calendar over and above the creation of the commission. The recommendation from the RNC to the rules committee would have put the official primary start date on the first Tuesday in March, except for New Hampshire and South Carolina, which would have been allowed to hold a primary as early as the first Tuesday in February.

    The change would have penalized more than 20 states which had moved their primaries into February. Committee members from two of those Tsunami Tuesday states, Oklahoma chairman Gary Jones and Tennessee national committeeman John Ryder, proposed a simple amendment to move those dates back by a month. The amendment passed, but a later amendment adjusted the exception to make the third Tuesday in January the earliest primary date for New Hampshire and South Carolina.

    These calendar changes would be superseded by anything that the primary process commission comes up with, assuming the RNC votes to approve it.

    There was an interesting proposal to discourage but allow February primaries and to help lengthen the primary season by making it harder for one candidate to roll up a huge lead during that month. Under the proposal, primaries held before the first Tuesday in March would have to allocate delegates proportionally -- no "winner-take-all." The motion failed overwhelmingly. Opponents argued that the national party shouldn't impose proportional representation on the state parties.

    Military participation in delegate selection

    A proposal to guarantee members of the military the right to participate in the delegate selection process drew opposition from rules committee members concerned about logistics and legal exposure. Military personnel are already guaranteed the right to vote in a presidential primary, and most states have special provisions for getting absentee ballots to and from military personnel stationed overseas.

    Caucuses and conventions are a different matter. With few exceptions, Republicans don't do anything meaningful to bind delegates at their precinct caucuses. They may hold a straw poll, as they do in Iowa, and the results may boost the profile and fundraising efforts of the straw poll winner, but the straw poll results have no bearing on who is elected to represent the state at the national convention and which presidential candidate those national delegates will support. A small number of Republican caucus/convention states do bind delegates based on a precinct caucus straw poll -- Kansas and Montana come to mind.

    (The Democrats are different. Presidential preference polls conducted at precinct caucuses are considered a "first determining step" toward binding delegates to presidential candidates, and the delegates to the next step in the process -- county or state conventions -- are allocated in proportion to the support for each candidate at the precinct level.)

    Even though caucuses and conventions rarely bind delegates, they still, in most states, play a role in determining who will represent the state at the national convention, where delegates not only vote for a presidential and vice presidential nominee, but for the rules that will govern the party for the next four years. (In a few states, like Illinois, primary voters vote directly for delegates and alternates.) Because the caucuses and conventions are part of the "process... for selecting delegates," simply giving the military the ability to cast an absentee ballot in a straw poll or a presidential primary is not sufficient to meet the requirement in the proposed rule.

    For example, Oklahoma binds its delegates based on the statewide and congressional district primary vote. This year, Mike Huckabee won two congressional districts and six delegates, while John McCain won three districts and the statewide vote to get 32 delegates.

    Although all these delegates were bound to McCain or Huckabee, there was still a mighty struggle at each of the congressional district conventions and the state convention as Ron Paul supporters tried to elect delegates from among their number in hopes of influencing the platform, rules, VP selection, and possibly even the presidential nomination itself. (See my April 16 Urban Tulsa Weekly column, "Paul Plot," but please note that since that column was published, I have resigned from both the state and county GOP executive committees and no longer hold any party offices.)

    The delegates to Oklahoma's district and state conventions were chosen at the county conventions, and the county delegates were chosen at the precinct caucuses.

    So the process of selecting delegates and alternates in nearly every state involves face-to-face meetings in living rooms, school auditoriums, and convention halls. How, practically, do you include active-duty military stationed half a world away in making these decisions?

    Two solutions come to mind that would allow greater military participation in the process while meeting the logistical concerns of party officials' concerns. Here's the original language of the proposed amendment:

    Any process authorized or implemented by a state party for selecting delegates and alternates or for binding the presidential preference of such delegates shall guarantee the right to vote in that process, by absentee ballot, of individuals who are serving in the United States Armed Forces.

    One way to allow military participation while retaining the face-to-face qualities of caucuses and conventions would be to authorize a "Republicans Deployed" delegation at the national convention. The members would be selected at caucuses held at bases around the world.

    There may be problems with this idea. Active-duty military aren't free to come and go as they please, so it might not be possible for the delegates elected by Republicans Deployed to travel to the national convention. I also don't know to what extent active-duty military can participate in partisan political activity, beyond casting a ballot. Do we really want soldiers at a forward base in Afghanistan arguing with each other over a platform plank or who gets to be chairman?

    Another approach would avoid those obstacles: While a deployed soldier or sailor wouldn't be able to attend a precinct caucus or a district convention back home, he could be allowed to vote in elections for delegate and alternate. This would require candidates for delegate and alternate to file well in advance of the district or state convention, rather than filing the morning of the convention as is sometimes done, so that absentee ballots could be sent to deployed members of the military who request them.

    How would runoffs be handled? The same way states like Arkansas are already handling military votes in state primary runoff elections: With "instant runoff" ballots, where voters rank their preferences. In Oklahoma's 1st Congressional District, we've been using that voting technique to elect delegates and alternates since 2000.

    Given the hour they had to deal with the issue, the rules committee only managed to come up with a compromise that turned the "shall" to a "may" and added a few more qualifiers:

    Any process authorized or implemented by a state party for selecting delegates and alternates or for binding the presidential preference of such delegates may use every means practicable, in the sole discretion of the state party, to encourage active military personnel the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.

    The compromise satisfied state party leaders, concerned about how to implement the proposed mandate, and McCain campaign officials, who wanted to avoid the embarrassment of the appearance of a rules committee vote against our troops overseas, but it did nothing to address the original concern.

    In its one-day meeting, the rules committee simply doesn't have enough time to work through a four-year backlog of reform ideas. But meeting longer than a day has its own problems. Many committee members are ordinary delegates, elected by the members of their state delegations, who take extra days off from work and pay for some extra pre-convention days in a hotel so they can participate.

    There's no doubt that the rules of the Republican Party are in need of review and reform. There has to be a better way than, on the one hand, handing the issue over to an unelected commission and, on the other hand, restricting debate and discussion to one day every four years.

    MORE: National Review's Stephen Spruiell covered the rules committee meeting and posted several entries in NRO's "The Corner" regarding the debate over military participation in delegate selection: post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4.

    For my liveblogging notes from the committee meeting see these entries:

    Rules committee: A Republican commission on the primary/caucus process
    Rules committee: Palin applause, long-distance caucusing
    Rules committee: Primary calendar changes
    Rules committee: Palin buzz

    You may also be interested in my coverage of the 2004 convention -- scroll down to read my posts about that year's rules committee deliberations.

    There. I had that headline ready to go, and by golly, I'm going to use it. (Dawn Summers already won the Sarah Palin punny headline contest: "Palin Comparison.")

    I was excited this morning to hear the buzz about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, as I hadn't been hearing her name in the last week or so. Palin is both a good choice and a brilliant political move.

    As a political move, choosing Palin helps McCain reach out to independent voters and Democrats. Some, particularly Hillary PUMAs, will like her because she's female. Others will appreciate her hard work in rooting out political corruption in Alaska. It warmed my heart to hear her say the phrase "good ol' boy network."

    At the same time, Palin fires up the conservative base. Time magazine has posted a McCain campaign report that they raised $3 million between when the announcement was made and 6 pm today. She's a hunter, she's a homeschooler, she supports domestic oil exploration. She's pro-life -- not just a theoretical pro-lifer, but one who chose life when she learned her fifth child, a son, would have Down Syndrome.

    My only worry was how well she'll make the jump from small-state politics to the national stage, but when I think of the depth of corruption she had to face in the Alaska government, I think she's ready for anything. True, she was a beauty queen, but she knows how to throw an elbow under the basket, too.

    Other reactions:

    Rod Dreher: "Whatever crossover appeal the Palin pick may or may not have, McCain has just energized the base going into his convention -- and, I think, beyond. Next week in St. Paul is going to be a lot different than a lot of us thought it would be."

    Dustbury has a photo of her as a high school basketball player who led her team to the state championship.

    MORE: My friend David Russ from Coral Ridge Ministries let me know about a three-minute "Learn2Discern" video they did recently about two families who chose life for their unborn children who had Down Syndrome. One of those families is the Palin family.


    Everything stopped here at the Rules Committee meeting as we watched Fox News coverage of John McCain's introduction of his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. Much enthusiasm here.

    Following Palin's speech, we recessed for lunch, allegedly until 12:20, but it's 12:47 and only now are most of the committee officials back on the dais.

    The issue on the floor before the VP announcement was the following amendment to Rule 15:

    Any process authorized or implemented by a state party for selecting delegates and alternates or for binding the presidential preference of such delegates shall guarantee the right to vote in that process, by absentee ballot, of individuals who are serving in the United States Armed Forces.

    Now that we're back in session (12:50), the committeewoman from Alabama is proposing a substitute amendment:

    Any process authorized or implemented by a state party for selecting delegates and alternates or for binding the presidential preference of such delegates may use every means practicable, in the sole discretion of the state party, to encourage active military personnel the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.

    This seems to satisfy everyone. State party officials were concerned about how you include someone who has been deployed in a caucus, where meeting face-to-face is the whole point. And if you can't accommodate them, what kind of legal and credential challenges are likely to occur? McCain officials will be happy that there won't be a vote on record rejecting a rules amendment about expanding military participation in the political process.

    The motion passed overwhelmingly, and we're moving on to other amendments to Rule 15.

    Oklahoma GOP chairman Gary Jones along with Mr. Ryder of Tennessee (didn't catch his first name) succeeded, by a vote of 67-31, in passing an amendment to a change to the primary calendar proposed by the Republican National Committee. The RNC proposal would have allowed only New Hampshire and South Carolina to hold primaries prior to the first Tuesday in March. Jones pointed out that this would put many states which are currently in compliance out of compliance. The two committee members from Michigan, one of whom is a state senator, spoke to the difficulty of negotiating with a legislature under mixed control to change the primary date. Under Jones's amendment, NH & SC can go any time after the first Tuesday in January; everyone else can go from the first Tuesday in February onward.

    We've had the call to order by Chairman Alec Poitevint, the invocation and pledge of allegiance here at the Republican National Convention Rules Committee meeting. Gary Jones and Mary Rumph are here representing Oklahoma. (I was pleased to see that conservative activist icon Morton Blackwell is here again, representing Virginia.)

    I'm hearing a lot of buzz about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as McCain's pick for VP. We'll see. The chairman of the Rules Committee said that they'll halt the meeting and let everyone watch McCain's announcement in Dayton when it happens.

    There was a minor delay in being admitted. The communications staff hadn't showed up with the press credentials list yet, but they let me show my convention credential letter and signed me in.

    There are six big screen TVs hanging above the room, showing the chairman or whoever is speaking. Media and guests are segregated from the committee by a three-foot-high blue curtain running the width of the room. Two thirds of the press/guest area is roped off as "McCain Staff Seating" -- at least 100 chairs, although only nine people are sitting there. About 12 people are over in the remaining third of the media/guest area. I don't see anyone else who looks like media.

    The room is lit brightly, as they're recording the meeting with four cameras.

    They are going section by section, and then rule by rule, asking for committee amendments to the rules. Most are technical in nature -- a comma here or there. If someone has an amendment to a rule, they're to speak up when the applicable rule is called.

    We have our first amendment, from Louisiana, to rule number 5, and from Kentucky to rule 7, and Louisiana again to rule 9, to Massachusetts to rule 11. That's all for the first section. They will deal with this section before moving on to the next.

    There will be a proposal relating to the primary schedule, setting a March start date for all but New Hampshire and South Carolina. (In the Republican system, national delegates don't get bound until district or state conventions, so precinct caucuses aren't considered "the first determining step" as it is for the Democrats.) Oklahoma GOP Chairman Gary Jones, who is also a member of the rules committee, is concerned that states who moved their primaries to February under the current rules, as Oklahoma did, will be penalized, as it would be up to the legislature to adjust the date.

    LINKS: Here are the rules as adopted by the 2004 Republican National Convention..

    UPDATE: As of 9:39, Rules 1-9 and Rule 11 have been closed to further amendment. Only two amendments from the floor were successful. An amendment by Mary Rumph of Oklahoma and seconded by Morton Blackwell of Virginia, requiring RNC subcommittee meetings to open with an invocation and the Pledge of Allegiance, passed by about a two-thirds margin. The only objection came from an Indiana RNC member who thought it was superfluous, as every RNC subcommittee meeting she'd ever attended has opened in that way. A technical correction to rule 7 (adding a comma to terminate a dependent clause) was passed as well.

    Rules committee preview

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    This morning I'll be in attendance at the 2008 Republican National Convention rules committee meeting. Back in April the Republican National Committee's rules committee endorsed a new primary schedule for 2012. The schedule would formally recognize the first-in-the-nation status of Iowa and New Hampshire, with South Carolina and Nevada permitted to follow closely thereafter. The remaining states would be grouped into four "pods," one of which is specifically for small states and territories. Each of the four pods would be given a starting date for their contests, and the pods would rotate position with each presidential election.

    The full Republican National Committee should have considered the issue at their meeting earlier this week. That body and the convention rules committee are both dominated by small states, which have an equal vote in those bodies to large, heavily Republican states. Stay tuned to this blog all day Friday for the latest developments.

    "No, no, no!"

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    Am I the only one who, when Barack Obama concluded his acceptance speech with the words, "God bless the United States of America," mentally heard his longtime pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, loudly contradict that sentiment?

    Live from Lamoni

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    I'm on my way north to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota. I stayed last night in Lamoni, Iowa, just north of the Missouri border. I've been spending most of the morning writing at the Linden Street Coffee House, a very comfortable place in the downtown of this small college town.

    IMG_0031

    As I worked, I was overhearing an Obama campaign intern and his supervisor looking at how to generate voter lists for grassroots campaigning. Both Iowa and Missouri are key swing states; Missouri is considered a bellwether -- almost always the candidate who wins Missouri wins the White House.

    MORE: If you're headed down I-35 and need a coffee break, I heartily recommend Linden Street Coffee House, which is about 2 miles west of the interstate on US 69 (South). During Graceland College's school year, it's open from 7 am 'til midnight most days. (It opens at noon on Sundays, stays open until 1 am on Friday and Saturday nights.) Summer hours are 8 am to 9 pm most days, noon to five on Sunday.

    I learned about Linden Street via IndieCoffeeShops.com.

    John Hart, communications director for Sen. Tom Coburn, released this statement earlier this afternoon:

    Dr. Coburn is honored to have the opportunity to speak at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night, September 2. Dr. Coburn was invited to speak early in the process but wasn't listed on the initial schedule because he was working to resolve scheduling conflicts surrounding a family wedding. Although the program has not been finalized, his remarks will likely focus on earmarks, wasteful spending and the need for real reform in Washington.

    After the RNC released their initial list of speakers yesterday, Club for Growth expressed disappointment that prominent fiscal conservatives, active in the battle against government waste, were left off of the list. Coburn was one of several Republican elected officials mentioned in the Club for Growth's statement:

    With the recent publication of the GOP Convention lineup, the Club for Growth was disappointed to see the absence of the party's most steadfast elected economic conservatives.

    With the Republican Party's brand in shambles, it is important for the Party to showcase those leaders who are currently in office fighting to preserve the limited-government, free-market principles the GOP used to stand for.

    In the Senate, Tom Coburn and Jim DeMint have waged a two-man war on wasteful spending. In the House of Representatives, conservative leaders like Jeff Flake (AZ-06), John Shadegg (AZ-03), Jeb Hensarling (TX-05), Mike Pence (IN-06), and Paul Ryan (WI-01) have never wavered in their commitment to free-market principles and have been major players in the Republican Study Committee. And of all the Republican governors in the country, Mark Sanford of South Carolina has the strongest record of fighting for limited government and economic freedom.

    Michael Steele, former Lt. Governor of Maryland and currently chairman of GOPAC, was on the Chris Medlock show on Tuesday lamenting the fact that Republican ideas were polling well, but the Republican "brand" wasn't. The GOP needs to send the message that the earmarkers and appropriators are on their way out (e.g. Ted Stevens and Don Young of Alaska) and fiscal conservatives are rising in prominence and influence.

    See below for information about BatesLine's coverage of the national conventions.

    I just got this by e-mail, the initial list of speakers for the four days of the Republican National Convention. I'm not sure why this isn't posted on the official convention website, where I could just link to it, but it isn't, so here's the whole thing:

    For Immediate Release Wednesday, August 20, 2008

    Contact: Joanna Burgos
    (651) 467-2728

    "Country First": 2008 Republican National Convention to Highlight
    Service, Reform, Prosperity and Peace
    Convention Announces Program Themes and Speaker Lineup

    SAINT PAUL, Minn. - The 2008 Republican National Convention today announced the themes and preliminary lineup of speakers for the program of events that will run Sept. 1-4. The convention's overall theme, "Country First," reflects John McCain's remarkable record of leadership and service to America. Each day of proceedings will center on a touchstone theme that has defined John McCain's life and will be central to his vision for leading our nation forward as president.

    "Our convention will showcase a cross-section of leaders who will highlight John McCain's long commitment to putting our country first -- before self-interest or politics," said McCain 2008 Communications Director Jill Hazelbaker. "The speakers will address John McCain's unmatched record of service and sacrifice for America, and his vision for moving our nation forward to keep us safe and get our economy back on track."

    The roster of speakers announced today includes John McCain, Mrs. Cindy McCain, 10 current and former Republican governors, five current and former U.S. Senators and two well-respected businesswomen. Their remarks will echo the themes that have been selected for each of the convention's four days: service, reform, prosperity and peace.

    "We are excited to announce this slate of speakers, each of whom shares John McCain's love of country and commitment to serving a cause greater than one's own self-interest. Their remarks will be a testament to Senator McCain's unparalleled record of service and sacrifice for America and his readiness to lead as commander in chief and move America forward," said Maria Cino, president and CEO of the 2008 Republican National Convention.

    The program of events is as follows:

    Monday, Sept. 1
    Service

    "Love of country, my friends, is another way of saying love of your fellow countryman."
    --Sen. John McCain

    John McCain's commitment to his fellow Americans, a commitment forged in service to his country, is one of the defining hallmarks of his life. Monday's events will highlight John McCain's record of service and sacrifice and reflect his commitment to serving a cause greater than one's own self-interest.

    Speakers will include:

    * U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (Conn.)
    * Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (Calif.)
    * Vice President Richard B. Cheney
    * First Lady Laura Bush
    * President George W. Bush

    Tuesday, Sept. 2
    Reform

    "If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you are disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and correct them."
    --Sen. John McCain

    John McCain's life is a testament to the fundamental truth that every American can be a force for change. A restless reformer who has dedicated his career to taking on special interests and the status quo, John McCain will deliver the right kind of change and reform to meet the great challenges of our time. On Tuesday, the convention program will underscore his vision of a government that is transparent, principled and worthy of the American people it serves.

    Speakers will include:

    * Former New York City Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani
    * Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.)
    * Former Gov. Tom Ridge (Pa.)
    * Gov. Sarah Palin (Alaska)
    * Gov. Jon Huntsman (Utah)
    * Rosario Marin, California Secretary of the State and Consumer Services Agency and former Treasurer of the United States
    * Former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.)
    * Gov. Linda Lingle (Hawaii)
    * Former Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (Md.)

    Wednesday, Sept. 3
    Prosperity

    "America's best days are still to come."
    --Sen. John McCain

    The American story is one of perseverance. Even in the face of tough times, the ingenuity and spirit of the American people has ushered in a new era of prosperity. Wednesday's program will focus on John McCain's plans to get our economy back on track and continue our long tradition of meeting the challenges we face and using our prosperity to help others. The day will conclude with an address by the vice presidential nominee.

    Speakers will include:

    * U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman (Minn.)
    * Meg Whitman, National Co-Chair for McCain 2008 and former President and CEO of eBay
    * Carly Fiorina, Victory '08 Chairman for the Republican National Committee and former Chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co.
    * Former Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.)
    * Mrs. Cindy McCain
    * Gov. Bobby Jindal (La.)
    * Republican Party's Vice Presidential Nominee

    Thursday, Sept. 4
    Peace

    "Our next president will have a mandate to build an enduring global peace on the foundations of freedom, security, opportunity, prosperity, and hope."
    --Sen. John McCain

    John McCain understands the challenges that America faces in the world and the sacrifice necessary to defend our freedom in a way that few others can fathom. Thursday's events will reflect his vision of an America in pursuit of peace and seen as a beacon of goodwill and hope throughout the world. The evening will close with John McCain accepting the Republican Party's nomination for the Presidency of the United States.

    Speakers will include:

    * Gov. Tim Pawlenty (Minn.)
    * Gov. Charlie Crist (Fla.)
    * U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback (Kan.)
    * U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.)
    * John McCain

    In the coming days, the 2008 Republican National Convention will announce additional speakers and program details.

    About the Republican National Convention

    The 2008 Republican National Convention will be held at Saint Paul's Xcel Energy Center from Sept. 1-4, 2008. Approximately 45,000 delegates, alternate delegates, volunteers, members of the media and other guests are expected to attend the convention. Minneapolis-Saint Paul is expected to receive an estimated $150-$160 million positive economic boost from the four-day event. For more information about the 2008 Republican National Convention, please visit our website at www.GOPConvention2008.com and join our social network sites on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn.

    It's hard not to look at the list of speakers as the VP short-list, particularly as you get later in the week.

    Yesterday the Democrats released their list of speakers for next week's convention. While nearly all of the Republican speakers are elected officials, the Democratic list includes heads of key Democrat constituencies: the heads of the AFL-CIO, the Illinois SEIU, two biggest teacher's unions (the NEA and the AFT); the head of Planned Parenthood of America and NARAL Pro-Choice America (née the National Abortion Rights Action League).

    By the way, I will be traveling to St. Paul to cover the Republican National Convention for UTW and this blog. Four years ago I went to the RNC as a delegate; this year I'm going as a credentialed member of the media. You can expect to see new blog posts several times a day during the convention, as well as articles in the following week's addition of UTW. At least one blog post each day will include multimedia -- video and audio of interviews with nationally prominent political and media folks as well as members of Oklahoma's delegation.

    It's a great opportunity to advertise on BatesLine, because the number of page views tends to go up the more frequently I post; readers check back more often and have more chances to see your ad. (8,000 page views is typical for a weekday, but it nearly doubles when I'm covering fast-breaking developments.)

    I also received credentials for the DNC, but budgetary constraints preclude attending both conventions. (It's one thing to be able to write about politics; it's another to track down freelance opportunities to sell that writing.) I will still be writing a story for UTW about the Tulsa Democrats who are going as delegates, and of course I will be commenting here on the proceedings. If you're going to Denver for the convention, I would love to hear about your convention experience and your thoughts as events unfold -- drop me a line at blog at batesline dot com and let me know how to keep in touch with you.

    The New York Sun reports that Sen. Barack Obama's campaign has confirmed that the Illinois Born-Alive Infant Protection Act (BAIPA), which, as an Illinois State Senator and committee chairman, Obama voted to kill, had the same language as the federal bill which Obama claims he would have supported. The federal BAIPA passed the U. S. Senate by a 98-0 vote in 2002. The Illinois bill was killed in the Health and Human Services Committee after it was amended to include the same "neutrality clause" contained in the federal law.

    Sen. Obama appears not to have gotten the memo from his campaign staff:

    The dispute flared again last week when a leading opponent of legalized abortion, the National Right to Life Committee, posted records from the Illinois Legislature showing that Mr. Obama, while chairman of a Senate committee, in 2003, voted against a "Born Alive" bill that contained nearly identical language to the federal bill that passed unanimously, including the provision limiting its scope.

    The group says the documents prove Mr. Obama misrepresented his record.

    Indeed, Mr. Obama appeared to misstate his position in the CBN interview on Saturday when he said the federal version he supported "was not the bill that was presented at the state level."

    His campaign yesterday acknowledged that he had voted against an identical bill in the state Senate, and a spokesman, Hari Sevugan, said the senator and other lawmakers had concerns that even as worded, the legislation could have undermined existing Illinois abortion law. Those concerns did not exist for the federal bill, because there is no federal abortion law.

    Sevugan's statement makes the eleventh reason Obama or his surrogates have given for his vote against protection for infants who survive an attempted abortion.

    Jill Stanek, the Illinois nurse who pushed for the bill because she witnessed infants being shelved to die after surviving an abortion, writes:

    While the Obama campaign tonight finally admitted Obama has misrepresented his Born Alive vote all these years, it had the audacity to offer a ludicrous excuse, an excuse Obama himself contradicted only 24 hours ago, as he has for years, that "I would have been completely in, fully in support of the federal bill that everybody supported."

    (Hat tip: Dawn Eden.)

    MORE: Via Kevin McCullough, Rick Warren wasn't satisfied with Barack Obama's "above my pay grade" answer to Warren's question, "At what point does a baby get human rights?"

    No. I think he needed to be more specific on that. I happen to disagree with Barack on that. Like I said, he's a friend. But to me, I would not want to die and get before God one day and go, 'Oh, sorry, I didn't take the time to figure out' because if I was wrong then it had severe implications to my leadership if I had the ability to do something about it. He should either say, 'No scientifically, I do not believe it's a human being until X' or whatever it is or to say, 'Yes, I believe it is a human being at X point,' whether it's conception or anything else. But to just say 'I don't know' on the most divisive issue in America is not a clear enough answer for me.

    Warren also challenges the notion that evangelicals are leaving behind the issue of the sanctity of human life:

    That's why to say that evangelicals are a monolith is a myth, but the other thing is that you've been hearing a lot of the press talk about 'Well, evangelicals are changing, they're now interested in poverty and disease and illiteracy, and all the stuff I've been talking about for five years now. And I have been seeding that into the evangelical movement and it's getting picked up and a lot of people are talking about doing humanitarian efforts. But I really think it's wishful thinking on a lot of people who think they're going to drop the other issues. They're not leaving pro-life, I'm just trying to expand the agenda....

    Don Surber says "above my pay grade" was a "staff sergeant's answer to a general's question."

    Not only that, it's a staff sergeant's answer to a "Why?" question. The staff sergeant would be able to answer a "When?" question. "Above my pay grade" means the establishment of that policy was made by a Higher Authority; I can't change it, but I can tell you what it is, and I can carry it out. That makes me wonder just what Higher Authority set the policy that Barack Obama is following. I'm pretty sure that on this issue, for Obama, the Higher Authority isn't the God addressed in Psalm 139.

    STILL MORE: Get Religion is a blog that examines the mainstream media's coverage of religion. Terry Mattingly notices that Warren asked Obama a political/legal question regarding recognition of human rights; Obama's defenders in the commentariat are treating it as a moral/religious question.

    Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, when he is crowned in two weeks as the Democratic presidential nominee, will be distinguished as the first major party nominee to oppose restrictions on infanticide.

    Before Obama came to the U. S. Senate, that body approved the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), legislation that affirmed the personhood of any baby that managed to be born alive in the process of an abortion. Surely even a supporter of abortion rights would acknowledge that once a baby is alive and separate from its mother, the only rights that matter are the baby's rights.

    You might call it the Gianna Jessen bill. Jessen survived an attempted saline abortion. Once she was born, no further attempts were made to kill her, and she received medical treatment (the attempted abortion left her with cerebral palsy and other medical problems) and ultimately was adopted. But not all abortion survivors receive the same respect. Babies who survive abortions are sometimes denied medical treatment and left to starve to death.

    Jill Stanek was a labor and delivery nurse in an Illinois hospital when she discovered that unwanted babies who survived abortion were being left to die in the hospital's soiled utility room. When the hospital refused to correct the situation, she took it public and began advocating for state and federal laws to protect babies who survived abortion.

    When BAIPA came before the U. S. Senate in 2002, before Obama came to that body, the bill passed 98-0. Not even the most ardent abortion advocates opposed the bill.

    The Illinois version came through the legislature when Barack Obama was serving as a state senator and as chairman of the Illinois State Senate's Health and Human Services Committee. It never reached the floor, because Obama and his fellow Democrats killed it in his committee.

    Obama has tried to explain his vote by saying that the bill considered in Illinois didn't have a key clause that was present in the federal BAIPA bill. But researchers have found records from Obama's committee that show the two bills were nearly identical, and in fact he voted to amend the bill to include that key clause, before voting to kill the bill entirely.

    Jill Stanek has a summary of Obama's involvement in killing the Illinois bill.

    New documents just obtained by NRLC, and linked below, prove that Senator [Barack] Obama has for the past four years blatantly misrepresented his actions on the [Illinois] Born-Alive Infants Protection bill.

    Summary and comment by NRLC spokesman Douglas Johnson:

    Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an IL state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion - even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama's legislative actions in 2003 - denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions - were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose....

    Documents obtained by NRLC now demonstrate conclusively that Obama's entire defense is based on a brazen factual misrepresentation.

    The documents prove that in March 2003, state Senator Obama, then the chairman of the IL state Senate Health and Human Services Committee, presided over a committee meeting in which the "neutrality clause" (copied verbatim from the federal bill) was added to the state BAIPA, with Obama voting in support of adding the revision. Yet, immediately afterwards, Obama led the committee Democrats in voting against the amended bill, and it was killed, 6-4.

    The bill that Chairman Obama killed, as amended, was virtually identical to the federal law; the only remaining differences were on minor points of bill-drafting style.

    Via Dawn Eden, who asks pro-life bloggers to call attention to the story, since the mainstream media probably won't. Ed Morrissey has more at Hot Air.

    You'll notice a new advertiser atop the right-hand sidebar. Congressman John Sullivan is calling on 1st District voters to sign his petition asking the House Democratic leadership to schedule a vote on an "all of the above" energy policy, to include exploration within the U. S. as well as the pursuit of alternative energy sources. Click the ad to read the petition and to sign it if you like.

    You have probably heard that the Democratic leadership of the House went into recess last week without allowing a vote on a bill that would permit drilling on the outer continental shelf and in a tiny portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Republican congressmen are staging a "speak-in" on the floor of the House, even though the C-SPAN cameras are off, to protest this move. A discharge petition is being circulated which would allow the bill to be debated openly and voted on.

    Conservation, better urban design that facilitates conservation, and alternative energy sources are important, but in the meantime we still depend on petroleum, and we need to make use of our own petroleum reserves. I've signed the petition, and I hope you will, too. (Click the ad on the right to tell them that BatesLine sent you.)

    MORE: Congressman Sullivan was on the Chris Medlock show yesterday talking about energy policy and his "all of the above" petition and taking calls from listeners. Click the link to listen to the podcast; the Sullivan interview starts about halfway through. They also discuss Sullivan's bill to address eminent domain abuse.

    Tomnibus

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    Scroll down for an update to this entry.

    Robert N. Going likes what he sees in Oklahoma's junior senator:

    I think I have a new hero, a United States Senator who believes in requiring politicians to justify their spending of your tax dollars, who kept his term limit pledge when he went to Congress, who intends to do the same in the Senate, doesn't ask for or get earmarks, is beholden to no one and votes his conscience, Senator Doctor Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

    The man has tied the Senate in knots by following their rules. He's put holds on every questionable bill he can get his hands on. See David Keene's background piece in The Hill.

    At the time Keene wrote, he fully expected that the good old boys of both parties would squash Coburn like a bug when the "Coburn Omnibus Bill" (designed to logroll enough pet projects to guarantee 60 votes) came to the floor. Lo and behold, the Republicans stuck together and only 52 Senators voted "Aye".

    What Going and other limited-government conservatives love about Dr. Tom are the very qualities that frustrate his colleagues:

    Tom Coburn's Senate colleagues don't know quite what to make of the doctor from Oklahoma. Many of them find him personally likable, but they can't understand why he seems to want to change the way the exclusive club to which they all belong has been doing business for so long.

    And what's worse, they have no way of controlling the man. Coburn (R) left the House in 2000 after three terms there because he had voluntarily term-limited himself, and he says that he'll retire from the Senate after two terms there to go back to practicing medicine in Oklahoma. What that means, of course, is that he won't be around quite long enough to chair an important committee even if the GOP should retake the Senate at some point -- and that, therefore, he doesn't have to watch his manners lest party leaders squelch his ambitions.

    Moreover, since he finds earmarks morally objectionable, his colleagues can't control him by cutting off funds for a library or parking garage back home and instead have to either confront his arguments or find a way around him. That was a lot easier in the House because there isn't all that much a lone congressman can do to derail spending programs there, but the Senate actually empowers folks like Coburn, who are willing to forsake the comity of the club and rely on the body's rules to get their way.

    We need more people like Coburn in government, people who aren't bound by ambition or fear or social ties from doing what's right. If District 2 voters have the good sense to elect Sally Bell to the County Commission, we'll be closer to that goal here in Tulsa County.

    Watch Sen. Coburn's blog to follow his crusade against indefensible federal spending.

    MORE: Via Jill Stanek, The Hill reports that the Senate Ethics committee is pressuring Coburn over continuing to deliver babies pro bono. The pretext is that, now that the formerly public Muskogee Regional Medical Center is a private institution, Coburn delivering babies there constitutes an endorsement of that particular hospital.

    Coburn spokesman John Hart agreed to discuss the issue only after The Hill contacted his office several times over the past two weeks. He called the Ethics panel's logic "absurd" and its argument "inane."

    "Just as parents don't choose him hoping to sway his vote, parents don't choose to receive his services at a particular hospital because Dr. Coburn has somehow endorsed that hospital because he is a senator," Hart said in a statement e-mailed to The Hill. "The committee has shown us zero empirical evidence to back up its flimsy claim.

    "Has Sen. Leahy provided an improper endorsement to Warner Brothers for appearing in Batman?" Hart asked. "Will millions of Americans now see Batman not because it features stars like Christian Bale or the late Heath Ledger, but because Patrick Leahy, a distinguished United States senator, has offered his illustrious endorsement to this motion picture?

    "If Sen. Coburn can only deliver babies for free at a public hospital, shouldn't Sen. Leahy only be allowed to donate his notable thespian skills to a public entity like PBS?"...

    Hart estimates that Coburn has delivered dozens of babies since last receiving an ultimatum from the Ethics panel in 2005. Coburn has received no compensation for his work and paid "tens of thousands of dollars" out of his own pocket for medical malpractice insurance and other costs related to his medical practice, Hart said.

    Other physicians in the Senate, such as former Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a heart surgeon, voluntarily gave up their medical practices when they joined the Senate.

    Coburn, however, wants to remain a true citizen-legislator and has long argued that the Senate should allow him to keep serving his patients because he plans to return to the practice when he leaves the Senate in 2016, consistent with his pledge to serve only two terms. He would like to keep up his medical skills if he is going to continue being able to earn a living in his chosen profession.

    Frist, by contrast, had no plans to return to his practice when he retired from the Senate. ...

    "The parents of babies Dr. Coburn delivers don't choose him hoping to sway his vote, and they never have," Hart said. "In the 10 years Dr. Coburn has provided free healthcare to his neighbors while serving in Congress, the Ethics Committee has never pointed to a single conflict of interest. No lobbyist or any individual has ever attempted to infiltrate his medical office under the guise of an invasive medical exam to discuss Senate business."

    Coburn's work as an obstetrician was controversial during his House career, but the House allowed him to continue to practice and make enough money to cover his medical bills. When he joined the Senate, the Ethics Committee issued him a letter prohibiting him from practicing medicine.

    Hart also made note of the timing of the press's interest in this story. The Ethics Committee sent a memo to Coburn in May, but it has only become public in the past two weeks during the battle over the Tomnibus bill.

    Stanek writes, "Were Tom Coburn aborting babies free instead of delivering them free, there would be no investigation; there would be an awards ceremony. This is ridiculous on so many levels, not the least of which is the Democrats' disregard for the poor, unless they control the dole so as to get the credit."

    Most elections I'm used to a mixed bag of results -- some encouraging, some discouraging. Once in a great while -- 1980, 1994 come to mind -- everything goes the way I hope.

    This comes close to being one of those nights.

    82% of Republican voters said yes to Sally Bell and "enough already" to County Commissioner Randi Miller. While I expected a win, my guess was 57%. There's a certain constituency who will vote for the incumbent no matter what. Bell's win is certainly due to disgust with Miller, but the size of the win demonstrates that voters see Bell as a credible prospect for County Commission. That ought to help her raise money and volunteers for the November general election, which will be tough, but it's looking more and more feasible.

    We're nearly at 100% of the vote, and it looks like Dana Murphy has won a close Republican primary against State Rep. Rob Johnson for the right to challenge appointed Corporation Commissioner Jim Roth, a Democrat. Dana is a wonderful person, she is extremely qualified for this job, and she has the integrity to do the right thing regardless of the pressure from special interests. A cynic would say that combination is political poison, but it's nice to see a good guy finish first for once. Again, it'll be tough to beat an incumbent, but Murphy is more qualified than Roth for the job (she worked for the OCC for five years, he's been there less than one), and she has been in three statewide elections. Roth has never run statewide.

    In District 35, we're headed for a runoff, as expected, between Cason Carter and Gary Stanislawski. There's only a 268 vote gap between the two -- Carter 44%, Stanislawski 40%. It's likely that Jeff Applekamp and Janet Sullivan took more support from Stanislawski than from Carter -- Applekamp comes from the southern end of the district, and Sullivan, like Stanislawski, attends Victory Christian Center.

    No surprises in the Republican primaries for U. S. Senate and the First Congressional District: Jim Inhofe and John Sullivan prevailed easily over perennial candidates.

    I was surprised that the anointed Democratic challengers to Inhofe and Sullivan won by relatively slim margins over very underfunded opponents. Georgianna Oliver beat Mark Manley by only 55% to 45%, and Democratic turnout in the 1st District was half of the Republican turnout, which reveals a lack of enthusiasm for the recently relocated Mrs. Oliver. State Sen. Andrew Rice managed less than 60% against a perennial candidate.

    I was pleased, but not at all surprised, to see Dan Newberry win his Senate District 37 primary by such a large margin. He's been walking the district for a year or more. He's got a good headstart on reclaiming the district for the Republican Party.

    John Trebilcock won over his primary challenger by a two-to-one margin. I'm told the over-the-top attacks by his opponent turned off a lot of voters.

    Elsewhere in Oklahoma, the Chambers of Commerce and the old Cargill machine attempted to defeat State Reps. Randy Terrill and Mike Reynolds. Terrill won renomination with 75% of the vote. Reynolds's race was closer -- 55-45. Disgraced former Speaker Lance Cargill was a consultant to his opponent's campaign.

    In Oklahoma County, District 2 County Commissioner Brent Rinehart got a bigger percentage of the vote than Randi Miller -- all of 21%, and that in the face of financial scandal and national notoriety for his amateurish cartoon campaign piece. But he still lost big, and Brian Maughan came close to winning outright with 47% of the vote. Maughan will face J. D. Johnston in a runoff. I know Brian through state Republican Party events, and I'm happy to see him well on his way to a seat on the County Commission.

    My take on the two Northside Democratic House primaries: All of the candidates are pretty far to my left on state issues, none of them are pro-life, and none of them will have a Republican opponent in the fall, so in a sense, it doesn't matter who wins. But Christie Breedlove, running in HD 72, has been a tireless worker for Roscoe Turner, one of the good guys on the City Council, and we're often on the same side of local issues, so I'm happy to see her move forward to a runoff.

    I was also happy to see Jabar Shumate prevail in a tough primary against Kevin Matthews in HD 73. Nothing against Matthews, but I appreciated Shumate and Sen. Judy Eason-McIntyre taking the political risk to support the New Hope Scholarship program, which would have given partial tax credits for donations to scholarship funds to pay for at-risk students to attend private schools. It was a modest school choice bill, but one opposed by a core Democrat constituency -- the teacher's union and other elements of the education establishment -- so Shumate and Eason-McIntyre deserve praise for putting their constituents' best interests above political expedience.

    It's just really nice to know that I don't have to take down any yard signs tomorrow, because all my candidates made it to the next round.

    MORE:

    I thought I heard a big flushing sound yesterday.

    Irritated Tulsan has a career possibility for the soon to be former commissioner.

    740 KRMG's Joe Kelley has video of the real reason Randi lost in a landslide.

    Michelle is OK with low voter turnout, and she has some advice for John Trebilcock's opponent:

    John Newhouse found out tonight that you should run on something besides a mistake your opponent made over a year ago, and has asked forgiveness for. Trebilcock won with about 65%.

    This post will remain at the top of the blog until the polls close.

    I'll have five choices on my ballot in the 2008 Oklahoma primary election; here's how I plan to mark it:

    U. S. Senator: Sen. Jim Inhofe
    U. S. Representative, District 1: Rep. John Sullivan
    Corporation Commissioner, Short Term: Dana Murphy
    State Senator, District 35: Gary Stanislawski
    Tulsa County Commissioner, District 2: Sally Bell

    If you're a Republican in Senate District 37, I encourage you to vote for Dan Newberry, a solid conservative and a hard-working campaigner. I think he has the best shot at recapturing the seat for the GOP in November.

    If I lived in House District 98, I'd be voting for John Trebilcock. John has hit a few bumps in the road, but he's been a solid legislator, and I appreciate his courage in standing up to the Cargill machine at the Capitol.

    Here are some links that may be helpful as you go to vote:

    Oklahoma State Election Board website
    Complete list of candidates for state and federal office
    Unofficial election results

    Oklahoma Ethics Commission
    OEC public disclosure system
    Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports and data

    Tulsa County Election Board website
    Complete list of Tulsa County candidates
    Precinct locator
    Sample ballots by party and precinct

    League of Women Voters Tulsa 2008 election information and voters' guide
    Oklahomans for Life candidate survey

    MORE: Irritated Tulsan has a motivational poster for voters in County Commission District 2. (Also, he reports that Yaw Eno has been cut down in its prime.)

    Gary Stanislawski is not at all bothered that his principal rival in the SD 35 Senate race received a certain endorsement:

    StanislawskiNotEndorsed.png

    The Whirled editorial board endorsed former City Councilor Cason Carter.

    Stanislawski, a financial planner and Jenks school board member, has been endorsed by incumbent Sen. Jim Williamson, who is leaving the legislature because of term limits, and by the Tulsa Area Republican Assembly. Stanislawski is an ORU alumnus, an active member and sometime Sunday School teacher and officer at Victory Christian Church, and served 8 years in the US Air Force.

    Here's what I had to say about Mr. Carter about a year ago, right after the vote on buying One Technology Center as a new City Hall:

    Taylor's over-the-top speech should have been greeted with howls of derision. Some councilor should have told her, "Madame Mayor, come back to talk to us when you can do so without insulting our intelligence."

    Taylor claimed that the consolidation of city government offices at OTC would be the "key that will unlock the revitalization of downtown."

    Four years ago, we were told that the new downtown sports arena was going to be the key to revitalizing downtown. Before that, we were told that the key was the Inner Dispersal Loop, the Williams Center, the Civic Center, putting the pedestrian mall in, and taking the pedestrian mall out.

    It's as if we have a junk drawer full of house keys, skeleton keys, car keys, diary keys, piano keys, and plastic baby toy keys, and our civic leaders are trying them at random until they find one that works.

    Taylor also told the Council that the OTC purchase would accomplish "transformation for our souls." I kid you not -- she really said that. Maybe it's because OTC looks like a crystal. Or perhaps Taylor has been reading The Secret.

    Our current City Hall is ugly, and moving to OTC would give a boost to the Blue Dome District, but the deal isn't all that. Only the very gullible would buy the fake-it-'til-you-make-it hucksterism in Taylor's claim that going into debt to buy OTC would "change the trajectory" of our city.

    And speaking of Cason Carter, he too professed faith in the transformational power of One Technology Center. I'm not sure whether he said that because he truly believes it or because he was trying to please Mayor Mommy by echoing her words.

    Carter plans to run for State Senate District 35 next year, but anyone who spouts such nonsense doesn't have any business handling taxpayer dollars at City Hall, much less the bigger bucks at the State Capitol.

    Cason is intelligent, a likable guy, and conservative on social issues. Many people I respect are supporting him. But he played it safe during his two years on the Council, taking care never to offend people who might be able to finance his next step up the political ladder. If someone isn't willing to take political risks and offend powerful special interests at City Hall, it's hard to believe he'll suddenly develop that level of courage at a higher level of government.

    DISCLOSURE: Early in the campaign, having already decided by process of elimination that I would not be supporting Mr. Carter or Mr. Applekamp, I did some paid computer work for the Stanislawski campaign. This blog entry is at my own initiative, prompted only by a mention of the flyer on Chris Medlock's show. (Medlock was endorsed by the Whirled in his first State House run in 1994, which he lost to Fred Perry, another conservative who was proud not to be endorsed by the Whirled.)

    MORE: This endorsement won't help Cason in Brookside:

    "As a private developer looking to invest in Tulsa, Cason Carter was extremely helpful. He put me in contact with neighborhood leaders and was able to help facilitate a project that will be a great benefit for Tulsa."

    John Gilbert
    Senior Vice President Bomasada Group, Inc.

    This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is mainly devoted to an endorsement of Edmond attorney/geologist Dana Murphy for the two-year term on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Murphy is running against State Rep. Rob Johnson in the Republican primary, and the primary winner will face Jim Roth, who was appointed by Gov. Brad Henry to fill the vacancy left by Denise Bode's resignation.

    Dana Murphy (danamurphy.com) served for five years as an administrative law judge for the OCC, presiding over more than 5,000 cases, weighing evidence and testimony and making judgments, and acting as a gatekeeper over the issues that would be decided by the three commissioners. If elected, Murphy would have no need for on-the-job training.

    In addition to her time at the OCC, Murphy has worked as a petroleum geologist and an oil and gas attorney. She did her undergraduate work in geology at OSU then went on to get a law degree at Oklahoma City University....

    I first got to know Dana Murphy during the 2002 campaign. Impressed by her credentials, I was glad to have the chance to serve in a very minor role on her team. I became even more impressed by her character, as I saw how graciously she dealt with slimy attack ads and a slim runoff defeat.

    I'm proud to call Dana a friend, and in the intervening years, I've come to have an even greater appreciation for her character....

    It's just under two weeks until the state primary election, and a number of organizations are out to help you make up your mind by asking candidates for their positions on key issues.

    Oklahomans for Life has responses from state and federal candidates to a 12-question survey dealing with the issues of abortion and euthanasia, and in ways that are likely to come before Congress and the State Legislature.

    It's disappointing that so few Democratic candidates bothered to respond to Oklahomans for Life. The usual excuse is that the survey responses will be used against them by Republican opponents, but that doesn't explain why Democrats don't respond even when no Republicans are running -- e.g. House Districts 72 and 73.


    Via Green Country Values, I learned that the Oklahoma Publishing Company, which publishes the Oklahoman, has launched a website with information on elections for federal and state offices called ElectOK.com. Enter your address, and get a list of federal and state races on your ballot, with a page for each candidate to outline a platform, and post blog entries, photos, and video. As far as I can tell, it's a free opportunity for candidates to reach the voters.

    At the bottom of the "about" page is an informative disclaimer that spells out OPUBCO's wide reach:

    ElectOK is a product of OPUBCO Communications Group, a division of The Oklahoma Publishing Company, a 104-year-old privately held corporation based in Oklahoma City, with current interests in media, hospitality, minerals, communications, technology, securities and real estate development, among other ventures. OPUBCO Communications Group publishes a statewide daily newspaper, The Oklahoman, with distribution in all 77 Oklahoma counties. In addition to The Oklahoman, and the state's most trafficked local websites, including NewsOK.com, Wimgo.com, JobsOK.com, HomesOK.com, CarsOK.com and BedlamNation.com, OPUBCO Communications Group owns and operates The Oklahoman Direct, the largest full-scale standard direct mail provider in Oklahoma. OPUBCO Communications Group is also the publisher of many free distribution publications and magazines including: LOOKatOKC, a young reader tabloid; Viva Oklahoma!, a Spanish-language news tabloid; Make and Model, a car buyers guide; Central Oklahoma Homes Magazine, an upscale homebuilders magazine; HomesOK Extra, a real estate tabloid; JobsOK Extra, a recruitment tabloid; and most recently Recreational Rides, a monthly niche product that focuses on outdoor recreation.

    (Wouldn't it be interesting to know details on, e.g., OPUBCO's involvement in real estate development? And whether that affects the Oklahoman's coverage of, e.g., zoning issues?)

    In 2002, Gary Jones, a Certified Public Accountant, ran for State Auditor. He received 48.5% of the vote, losing to Jeff McMahan, a man with no education in accounting, by about 30,000 votes. We now know that Jeff McMahan won that election in part because of massive amounts of illegal campaign money, including $157,882 from Steve Phipps, a business partner with Gene Stipe in abstract companies regulated by the State Auditor's office.

    In 2006, Jones ran again, receiving almost exactly the same share of the vote. In the weeks leading up to the election, Jones not only called into question McMahan's competence, but he began to sketch out the connections between McMahan, Steve Phipps, Gene Stipe, Francis Stipe, a dog food factory, and grants and loans orchestrated by certain Democratic legislators. It was a complicated story, too complicated to convey to the voters in a way that had impact. (As in 2002, Jones didn't have any coattails from the top of the Republican ticket.)

    Jones continued to follow the money, and eventually the Feds did, too. McMahan and his wife, Lori, were convicted in federal court for bribe-taking and conspiracy. The shady dealings that Jones had uncovered were confirmed by Phipps's testimony and affirmed by the jury.

    Jones's tenacity in pursuing corruption in state government, at the risk of being accused of sour grapes or obsession, is just the quality we need in a State Auditor.

    I've read comments here and there that Jones is a party hack, because he's served for several years as chairman of the Oklahoma Republican Party. Chairing a political party is a tough, thankless job, and it's unfair to dismiss someone who has been willing to serve in that role as a "hack."

    I remember when Jones first decided to run for chairman. Chad Alexander had resigned following the disappointing 2002 results. As a statewide candidate, Jones, from rural Comanche County, saw how the city-oriented Republican Party had failed to connect with rural voters, despite the conservative values that they share with the GOP. His motivation for seeking the chairmanship was to fix that, and the increasing success of the party in electing legislative and county officials in once-solid-Democrat districts is testimony to his success.

    After winning election to a full term as chairman in 2003 and then re-election in 2005, Jones stepped aside to again pursue the State Auditor's Office. Many Republicans, disappointed with the performance of his successor, Tom Daxon, urged him to seek the chairmanship again, and he defeated Daxon at the 2007 state convention.

    Gary's bluntness, persistence, and analytical skills have been a great help to the GOP, but those qualities would be put to even better use in the pursuit of waste and fraud in state government. By appointing Gary Jones to fill the vacancy left by McMahan, Gov. Brad Henry would be proclaiming that the era of insider dealing, bribery, and corruption is over in Oklahoma.

    The Oklahoma State Election Board yesterday voted 3-0 to deny a challenge to the candidacy of Dana Murphy for Corporation Commissioner. The challenge had been filed by Rob Johnson, Murphy's Republican opponent, on the grounds that Murphy's filing papers were invalid. At the direction of the State Election Board Secretary, Murphy had signed her name as she wished it to appear on the ballot. (She had signed her name the way she normally would on legal papers, with her middle initial.)

    Johnson did not appear at the hearing.

    In her press release, Murphy addresses another attack launched against her by Johnson:

    Republican Corporation Commission candidate Dana Murphy was vindicated by the State Election Board's ruling on Monday morning striking down opponent Rob Johnson's challenge to keep her name from appearing on the ballot.

    "This is a victory for common sense government and the people of Oklahoma," said Murphy. "This challenge over such a trivial issue as amending my name to appear on ballot as Dana Murphy instead of Dana L. Murphy is an example of wasting taxpayer money and the Election Board's time. It is disappointing that my opponent would stoop to such political pettiness."

    "I trust Oklahoma voters not to be tricked by such political gamesmanship and that they will look at a person's true qualifications and commitment for the job. Instead of touting any meaningful qualifications of his own for this office, he seems to spend his time trying to smear me in the press."

    While Murphy has been traveling around the state talking about her exemplary qualifications for a seat on the Corporation Commission and her vision for Oklahoma, opponent Johnson and his campaign aide Trebor Worthen, have resorted to the slimiest of tactics, bringing up Murphy's 1993 divorce.

    "They have attempted to use divorce filings from one of the saddest times in my life to contend I'm unethical or worse. I have never been convicted of any of the crimes or unethical acts Worthen and Johnson claim. There is nothing in my divorce decree or any other court decisions that proves their claims," said Murphy.

    "As anyone impacted by a difficult divorce or lawsuit understands, what is alleged in various pleadings and what is ultimately ruled on by a judge in a final order are often worlds apart. If Johnson cannot tell the difference between allegations made in a case and evidence needed to prove a case, he clearly didn't learn much in law school nor is he prepared to deal with the complex decisions on utility rate cases or oil and gas cases or other Commission cases."

    Murphy challenges Johnson to stop hiding behind his consultants' statements and campaign propaganda and debate the issue at hand--serving on the Corporation Commission.

    "In the legislature, laws are passed by a large group, but a Corporation Commissioner stands out as one among three for every decision made. Voters and reporters should be asking him, and any other candidates, what qualifications, experience and attributes make them the candidate best prepared to serve all Oklahomans," she said.

    "I will debate Rob Johnson any time and place on the important issues at the Oklahoma Corporation Commission affecting Oklahomans," said Murphy. "I look forward to public opportunities to allow the voters to directly compare our credentials and experience for this very important job."

    "My record speaks for itself. I've spent my entire adult life getting the education, developing the skills and gaining the experience and knowledge needed to serve as your Corporation Commissioner. I am the best qualified candidate, Democrat or Republican."

    In addition to hearing over 5,000 cases as an administrative law judge at the Commission, Murphy has also testified as a geological witness and presented cases as an attorney before the Commission. Murphy is a fifth generation Oklahoman and currently runs a successful oil and gas law practice in Edmond.

    The same attack regarding her divorce filings was attempted by her Republican opponents when she ran for Corporation Commissioner in 2002. There was nothing to it then, and there still isn't.

    Lawrence Spivak, who founded 'Meet the Press,' told me before he died that the job of the host is to learn as much as you can about your guest's positions and take the other side. And to do that in a persistent and civil way. And that's what I try to do every Sunday. -- Tim Russert, in a 2007 interview with Time.

    Tim Russert, NBC newsman and host of Meet the Press since 1991, died suddenly today of a heart attack, age 58. His willingness to ask tough questions (politely) of anyone on any side of an issue will be missed.

    Dawn Summers writes:

    I loved him when I was younger because he was an openly devout Catholic in the public eye, which was rare for anyone but Kennedys, and all the rarer for a broadcast journalist. During the "Election 2000″ I never missed Meet the Press, not ever....

    I've grumbled at him in recent months for what I thought was unfair Clinton bashing, but I cannot imagine the next four months of "Election 2008″ without him. Heaven help those who are left with George Stephanopoulos to sort the wheat from the chaff.

    Commenter Rawlins at Crunchy Con:

    Tim Russert always managed to make journalism seem fair, literate but not elite, manly (if you're a man and he was and I am), important, even elegant. How I cannot imagine. It's just that when you contrast him with the others on Sunday morning news network TV, you got George Stephanopoulos who always seems slick but a pinch oily...and Chris Wallace who feels oily and a pinch slick. Then there are the other network guys....... Couric, Gibson. Williams being the best but there too, no Tim Russert.

    I loved Tim Russert's apparent love for his Dad. His book regarding is required reading for men who need to learn what it is to be a role model. Even as a non-Dad. To bear the thought of facing this fall's election without Tim Russert is like having potted ham at Thanksgiving. I don't mean to lionize the guy, but this one really was an example of all-America at its best....

    MORE: In the Wall Street Journal, Bernard Goldberg writes that Russert's perspective on media bias set him apart from most of his colleagues:

    Tim was a big proponent of diversity, but he wanted to go further than the usual stuff. "I am for having women in the newsroom and minorities in the newsroom -- I'm all for it. It opens up our eyes and gives us different perspectives. But just as well, let's have people with military experience; let's have people from all walks of life, people from the top-echelon schools but also people from junior colleges and the so-called middling schools -- that's the pageantry of America . . . You need cultural diversity, you need ideological diversity. You need it."

    Tim understood that without that kind of diversity, journalism would be in trouble. He knew it wasn't good for journalism or America if almost all the people reporting the news lived and worked in the same bubble.

    "There's a potential cultural bias. And I think it's very real and very important to recognize and to deal with," he told me. "Because of backgrounds and training you come to issues with a preconceived notion or a preordained view on subjects like abortion, gun control, campaign finance. I think many journalists growing up in the '60s and the '70s have to be very careful about attitudes toward government, attitudes toward the military, attitudes toward authority. It doesn't mean there's a rightness or a wrongness. It means you have to constantly check yourself."

    "Why the closed-mindedness when the subject comes around to media bias?" I asked him.

    "That, to me, is totally contrary to who we're supposed to be as journalists. . . . If someone suggested there was an anti-black bias, an anti-gay bias, an anti-American bias, we'd sit up and say, 'Let's talk about this, let's tackle it.' Well, if there's a liberal bias or a cultural bias we have to sit up and tackle it and discuss it. We have got to be open to these things."

    But there are times when an American journalist has to be biased:

    We ended our conversation that day with an exchange about the criticism he took from some on the political left for wearing a red, white and blue ribbon on his lapel when he interviewed Vice President Dick Cheney on Sept. 16, 2001. He told me a good friend of his died at the World Trade Center on 9/11, and that the friend's family had asked if he would wear the ribbon, "and I never thought for a second about it."

    "I want a debate about national security and who defines national security," he said. "I understand all that. But in the end, you have to make judgments, and on that day I made a judgment that five days after the most horrific event of my lifetime and of my journalistic career, that for me to say to the country I too am part of this, I too have experienced this gut-wrenching pain and agony, and I too have enormous remorse and sympathy, with not only the people who died in the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and in the field in Pennsylvania, but all of us -- we're in this together. This isn't covering Democrats and Republicans or the Bills versus the Redskins; this is us. The Taliban doesn't believe in the First Amendment."

    "But what about those who say journalists shouldn't wear red, white and blue ribbons, that by doing that somehow you're taking the government's side in some debate or another," I asked him.

    "It is imperative," he told me, "that we never suggest that there's a moral equivalency between the United States of America and the terrorists. Period. I'll believe that until the day I die."

    ONE MORE: From the New Yorker:

    With the help of his staff, Russert was especially good at arming himself for an interview by compiling a politician's previous statements in all their contradictions. Google was his tool and Gotcha his game. But it was Gotcha at its highest form. Russert's gift was to employ his bluff, nice-guy, good-son Irish Catholic upstate persona ("Go Bills!") to offset the avidity with which he would trip up his interlocutors. Arianna Huffington, who once called Russert a "conventional wisdom zombie," was among the many critics who pressed him to go much further, but Russert, more than anyone with a remotely equivalent job, did not back off easily, whether it was with Dick Cheney, in 2002, peddling nonsense about Iraq or with Al Gore, in 2000, trying to ease his way out of a line of questioning on abortion:

    RUSSERT: When do you think life begins?

    GORE: I favor the Roe vs. Wade approach, but let me just say, Tim, I did--

    RUSSERT: Which is what? When does life begin?

    GORE: Let me just say, I did change my position on the issue of federal funding and I changed it because I came to understand more from women--women think about this differently than men.

    RUSSERT: But you were calling fetuses innocent human life, and now you don't believe life begins at conception. I'm just trying to find out, when do you believe life begins?

    GORE: Well, look, the Roe vs. Wade decision proposes an answer to that question--

    RUSSERT: Which is?

    This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly I considered Oklahoma's just-concluded legislative filing period and the decline in number of candidates filing, explaining the deterrents to running for state legislature.

    Steve Fair, a Republican Party official in southwestern Oklahoma, wondered about a related topic, the early departure of many House Republicans:

    Why are so many Oklahoma GOP House members leaving office before they are termed out? There are a variety of reasons, but here is my "spin" on why a record number of Republican members are bailing in 2008.

    Some Oklahoma House Republican members are leaving because they are young and ambitious. They are chasing the dollar or the next rung on the political ladder. Those members have never been dedicated to helping Oklahoma move forward and their departure will not leave a ripple in the political pond. Their selfishness and "me first" attitudes have not endeared them to the GOP grassroots or to Oklahoma voters as a whole. That may partially account for their early departures, but a more likely factor will be their own selfish interests. Twenty years from now their impact in the legislature will be little more than a notation in the Oklahoma Political Almanac. They ran for office because it looks good on their resume. They could care less about the issues or the average Oklahoman- it's all about them.

    Other members are leaving because they have become disgusted with the process. After serving in the minority for the early part of their tenure in the House, optimism was high in 2004 when the GOP gained a majority. These "gray hairs" thought they would be called upon for advice and counsel, but instead many were passed over for newly elected, younger, more aggressive members. The new leadership rebuffed their experience and ability to work across the aisle with their Democrat counterparts in a gracious manner.

    The situational ethics practiced by the new "principled" leadership was inconsistent with what was being press released to the public. The older members concerns on how business was being conducted was ignored and berated. The new GOP mandate was not working for the benefit of Oklahoma, but staying in power and increasing the number of "R"s. Any and all campaign methods- right or wrong- was on the table, if it won elections. Seeing no real difference in the policies and actions of the new GOP leadership and the old Democrat leadership, these members opted to leave early. Their departure is not a positive one and their experience will be missed.

    He doesn't use the name "Lance Cargill," but the former Speaker and his posse fit the description of the young, aggressive, and ambitious. The Republican caucus and the House as a whole are better off without them.

    At the end of my column, I wrote, "Even if we don't raise their pay, we ought to pay our respects to those who are willing to serve us in the legislature. When a candidate comes knocking on your door this summer and fall, give him or her a few minutes of your time, listen, ask questions, and treat the candidate with kindness and respect. It's the least you can do for someone willing to make personal sacrifices for the sake of serving you at the state Capitol."

    Fair says that in exchange for their hard work, candidates should be able to expect from the voters engagement in the process, attention to the issues, civility, and the absence of vandalism, harassment, and dirty tricks. Fair points the finger at inattentive voters for the influence of money in politics (emphasis added):

    Money and media have always driven politics but in the past twenty-five years that has escalated to new heights. It's not uncommon to see Oklahoma state legislative candidates now raise and spend six figures to run for an office that pays $38,500 annually. Some blame the big donors, the Political Action Committees, the lobbyists, and special interest groups for the infusion of money into the process, but are they really to blame? The real culprit is the average citizen and/or voter who for a variety of reasons have stopped taking equity in his government. Indifference or only causal knowledge of what is going on in your government leads to "defining" by candidates- both of themselves and their opponents. Elections are now won on popularity and not on issues.

    In a survey conducted by Harvard University, one candidate describes campaigning in the 21st century like this. "I've been actively involved in politics for over 19 years now. I've even run for public office. Getting voters to even pay attention to government for 5 minutes is a struggle. Most citizens get their information from either sound bites from the propaganda machine that some people still naively refer to as the media and others get it twisted from others without checking the facts. Dealing with the average voter is like dealing with a dyslexic hyperactive kid on drugs." In the same survey, a voter says the greatest cause for voter apathy is people feel politicians promise the world and then forget their promises once elected to office. That's why it's important to know the facts and not just base your vote on a clever jingle, logo or commercial.

    So says the presumptive Republican nominee for President in his first general election ad:

    RELATED: U.S.News and World Report has posted John McCain's first-hand account of his 5 years as a prisoner of war, originally published in its May 14, 1973, issue, just two months after he regained his freedom.

    On page 14 of 17, McCain describes the use of high-level antiwar statements by the North Vietnamese government to torment their American prisoners.

    This was the most effective propaganda they had to use against us--speeches and statements by men who were generally respected in the United States.

    They used Senator Fulbright a great deal, and Senator Brooke. Ted Kennedy was quoted again and again, as was Averell Harriman. Clark Clifford was another favorite, right after he had been Secretary of Defense under President Johnson.

    When Ramsey Clark came over they thought that was a great coup for their cause.

    He gave Richard Nixon credit for decisive but unpopular actions that brought the North Vietnamese government to the negotiating table in October 1972, leading to a cease-fire and the release of POWs:

    I admire President Nixon's courage. There may be criticism of him in certain areas--Watergate, for example. But he had to take the most unpopular decisions that I could imagine--the mining, the blockade, the bombing. I know it was very, very difficult for him to do that, but that was the thing that ended the war. I think the reason he understood this is that he has a long background in dealing with these people. He knows how to use the carrot and the stick. Obviously, his trip to China and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Russia were based on the fact that we're stronger than the Communists, so they were willing to negotiate. Force is what they understand. And that's why it is difficult for me to understand now, when everybody knows that the bombing finally got a cease-fire agreement, why people are still criticizing his foreign policy--for example, the bombing in Cambodia.

    Speaking of mocking climate change alarmists, Oklahoma voters couldn't do better than to re-elect global warming skeptic Jim Inhofe to the U. S. Senate. His first TV commercial doesn't deal with the issue, except indirectly by celebrating Inhofe's renowned stubbornness and how that quality has served the interests of Oklahoma taxpayers:

    I don't know for sure, but I suspect the road he's walking down at the end of the ad is the abandoned, two-mile-long section at the western end of the Will Rogers Turnpike, which was rerouted several years ago to connect with the Creek Turnpike.

    Just received this press release from Dana Murphy, candidate for the unexpired term on the Oklahoma Corporation Commission. Murphy is by far the most qualified candidate in the race, by virtue of her service as an administrative law judge at the OCC and her training as a petroleum geologist and an attorney working on oil and gas matters. Her primary opponent is challenging her filing on some very slender grounds.

    Note the reference in the next to last paragraph to campaign consultant Fount Holland. We've noted Holland's unfair political attacks on Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris; Holland was the consultant for Harris's opponent Brett Swab. I am sad to see Holland again using his considerable skills against a solid conservative and highly qualified Republican candidate for office.

    (Oklahoma City, OK) Oklahoma Corporation Commission candidate Dana Murphy says the attempt by Rob Johnson and his campaign consultants to challenge her filing for office is nothing more than a desperate attempt to create something out of nothing.

    "Rob Johnson and his consultants are grasping at straws because he can't challenge my qualifications. If you watch the video of my filing, you will clearly hear the Election Board clerk ask me if I wanted to be listed as 'Dana L. Murphy' or 'Dana Murphy'. I advised him 'Dana Murphy', he requested that I sign 'Dana Murphy' and I did. The Election Board clerk then scratched out the 'Dana L. Murphy' signature."

    Murphy also stated that "In addition to this clarification, he also requested that I add either short or long term with the Commission office to the form and I added short term."

    Murphy believes this ploy is just more evidence of the lackluster campaign on the part of Rob Johnson. "He has no hands-on, working experience at the Commission and little, if any, knowledge and background in matters regularly decided by the Commission affecting Oklahomans every day."

    Conversely, Murphy possesses the best qualifications of any candidate for this office. She spent almost six years as an Administrative Law Judge at the Commission hearing over 5,000 cases; she owns her own energy law practice and she worked as a geologist in the oil patch for ten years. Murphy has also represented clients before the Commission and testified as an expert geological witness in cases at the Commission.

    "Johnson's only apparent claim to fame is that he is a two term state legislator and worked as a congressional aide/gopher. His campaign is already stalling. This is his feeble attempt to cloud the fact that he has no qualifications for this office."

    Murphy believes this to be a diversionary tactic used by Johnson's consultants before and currently in use in other races. Johnson, his consultant Fount Holland and former Representative Trebor Worthen, who is working on his campaign, are no strangers to controversy and the use of old guard politician "smoke and mirrors" tactics.

    "For me, it's about serving my fellow Oklahomans. They deserve the very best," added Murphy. "What our state doesn't need is more self serving politicians who are more interested in serving themselves than serving our state."

    For what it's worth: While we lost massive tree limbs during last Sunday's hurricane-force winds, our Dana Murphy yard sign stayed in place. I've known Dana for six years, and that's an apt metaphor for her character.

    UPDATE 2008/06/09: The press release mentions video of the filing. This 12 minute report shows each of the three candidates filing and then speaking to reporters -- first Rob Johnson, then appointed incumbent Jim Roth, then (about eight minutes in) Dana Murphy, showing the interaction with the election board clerk that the press release mentions.

    Shirley Bassey and the Propellerheads provide the classy soundtrack for this See-Dubya-produced video:

    But I'm thinking I've heard this song before.

    Flip-flopping anti-war Ivy-league snob with a lovable (not) wife, who wants to appease Iran (or does he now?), and who has tight, deep connections to the anti-American radicals sixties and seventies?

    (Gotta love the growl in Shirley's voice when she sings "history repeating".)

    We're now five hours away from the close of Oklahoma's filing period for the 2008 elections, and I'm still seeing way too many seats with unchallenged Democrats; for example, 2nd District Congressman Dan Boren, and Tulsa-area State Reps. Jeannie McDaniel (HD 78) and Eric Proctor (HD 77).

    A couple of months ago, as youthful and not-so-youthful Ron Paul supporters were seeking to become delegates to the Republican National Convention, they asserted that they were engaged with the Republican Party for the long haul, and some expressed interest in seeking state and local office. I heard rumors that one young Ron Paul supporter planned to challenge Lucky Lamons in HD 66, but I haven't seen his name on the list of candidates yet.

    So far, I've only noticed two RP backers who have filed for office, and both of them have been engaged in the political process for many years. Dr. Mike Ritze, a Broken Arrow physician whose "US out of UN! UN out of US!" sign graced 101st Street for many years, is running for HD 80, a seat being vacated by Ron Peterson. Ritze was chairman of the Tulsa County Republican Party from (if memory serves) 1991 to 1993. And Sally Bell is challenging Randi Miller in the primary for the Tulsa County Commission District 2 seat.

    So where are all the young activists who were energized by Ron Paul's presidential run? Challenging a Democratic incumbent would give them a platform to air their issues and an opportunity to build valuable campaign experience, name recognition for future campaigns, and credibility with Republican old-timers. And there's always the possibility that, catching a secure incumbent off-guard, they might win.

    Rather than composing a 1000-word comment complaining about this blog entry, why not spend the hour and a half to drive to the State Capitol to throw your hat in the ring?

    UPDATE: Gary Casey, 32, has filed to challenge Democratic State Sen. Tom Adelson (SD 33). Casey sought to be a delegate at the 1st District Republican Convention and through the State Executive Committee. Of the Ron Paul supporters seeking to be a delegate, he was one of the most well-received by the non-Ron Paul supporters. I'm happy to see Gary taking up this tough challenge.

    UPDATE 2: No RP connection, as far as I know, but Jay Matlock, who sought the Republican nomination for Tulsa City Council District 4, has filed to run against Democratic State Rep. Jeannie McDaniel (HD 78). This would be a better fit for Matlock; his motivating issue was education, and he can do more about that in the State House than he could have in the City Council.

    UPDATE 3: Nathan Dahm, 25, a Ron Paul supporter who has commented here on occasion (and at length), has filed for the open HD 75 seat. And Les White, 34, a leading Paul organizer in Oklahoma, has filed for the HD 45 seat in Norman. And "Orat" has posted a 170-word complaint about this blog entry.

    U. S. Rep. John Sullivan drew one opponent in the first day of filing: Georgianna W. Oliver, 41, 1244 E. 26th St, a Democrat. You haven't heard of her, but I'm told that she has the money to self-finance a campaign.

    Any time I wonder about someone with a D after their name on the ballot, I visit the OKDemocrat forum to see what the scuttlebutt is. Apparently, she goes by the nickname Buffy, and she hasn't lived in Oklahoma for a long time, and perhaps has never been a 1st District resident. Here's what one OKDemocrat user, andypot, has to say:

    I remember Georgianna "Tankersley" White Back in the Day - we were Jr. Aides on "The Hill"...Tankersley was an LA on Congressman Bill Brewster's staff & me on Synar's. She was quite the rising star: Like a female LBJ. She was an OSU grad and Sapulpa Chieftain moved to the Big City. She liked to drop a lotta names of the rich and/or powerful at OSU or wherever she went. She of course took that instinct with her to the congressional staff. Georgianna had the rep of doing "anything to get ahead" including being a [word that looks like an anagram for "self-starter"?] to get to the top.

    Don't go screaming carpetbagger just yet. If you're gonna raise hell about G. Buffy Tankersley White Ridenhour Oliver, then NY Sen. H.R. Clinton shoulda run in Arkansas. Buffy's been a registered voter in Tulsa County for 4.5 months. According to Federal election law Ms. Oliver can run for Congress anywhere she wants, by Gawd! Running for state or county office is another matter and that's why "Tankersley" declined The Tulsa Country Club's invite to run against Randi Miller or for the State Senator in South Tulsa. The real question is why? Georgianna has a very ill, elderly hub who is gettin' treatment at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Treatment Center in Houston. She's also the non-baby momma of a young Russian boy. Shouldn't Buffy be Takin' Care of Bidnez at the hospital beside hubby instead of gallivantin' around CD1 makin' trouble for Sully? How's about bein' a PTA volly at some high dollar private school that young Ivan attends rather than goin' to Demo political functions? Otherwise Buffy, bombs away.

    (The "Tulsa Country Club" is a reference to the local wealthy Democratic establishment.)

    It's filing period in Oklahoma, today, Tuesday, and Wednesday, for state legislature, congressional offices, county offices, and two seats on the Corporation Commission -- a regular election to a full six-year term (Jeff Cloud, elected in 2002, is the incumbent), and a special to fill the unexpired term of Denise Bode (incumbent Jim Roth was appointed by Brad Henry to fill the term).

    This page on the election board website will show filings for everything except county offices. Highlights so far:

    Sen. Jim Inhofe drew his expected Democratic opponent, Andrew Rice, plus two primary opponents, perennial candidate Evelyn Rogers from Tulsa (following in her mother Tennie Rogers's footsteps) and Dennis Lopez from Thackerville.

    Three of our five congressmen have drawn one opposite-party opponent apiece, but none have drawn primary opposition. Dan Boren (D-CD 2) and Tom Cole (R-CD 4) are so far unopposed.

    Filings for legislature are pretty thin. Judy Eason McIntyre (D-SD 11), Tom Adelson (D-SD 33) and Brian Crain (R-SD 39) are unopposed so far. No one has yet filed to replace term limited Jim Williamson (R-SD 35), although several candidates have declared. No one has filed in SD 25 either, although incumbent Republican Mike Mazzei is expected to do so. In SD 37, Nancy Riley, who ran as a Republican last time and changed parties two years ago after running for Lt. Governor as a Republican, is running as a Democrat. Former City Council aide Jan Megee has filed as a Republican to oppose her. (Republican Dan Newberry is also expected to file.)

    In Tulsa area State House seats, Republicans Sue Tibbs, Rex Duncan, Pam Peterson, Fred Jordan, Ron Peters, Dan Sullivan, and John Wright, and Democrats Lucky Lamons, Eric Proctor, and Jeannie McDaniel are so far unopposed. Only one candidate has so far filed to replace Ron Peterson in HD 80, in southeast Tulsa County: Dr. Mike Ritze, a former Tulsa County Republican chairman (c. 1991). It's a heavily Republican seat and was hotly contested last time the seat was open.

    Republican Speaker Chris Benge has drawn a primary opponent, Brian Jackson, 25. Owasso Republican first-termer David Derby was rumored to be stepping down, but he filed for re-election, along with two primary opponents. Two Republicans have filed to replace departing Republican Dennis Adkins in HD 75, Greg Chapman and Dan Kirby. Weldon Watson (R-HD 79) has drawn a Democratic opponent, Chad Hawkins. Incumbent John Trebilcock (R-HD 98) will be opposed by Democrat Greg Frederick, 32.

    Democrat Jabar Shumate will face Tulsa Fire Department Administrative Chief Kevin Matthews in north Tulsa's HD 73. Shumate has been one of the strongest supporters of school choice measures in the Democratic caucus.

    Two Democrats, Christie Breedlove and John Slater, have already filed for HD 72, Darrell Gilbert's open north Tulsa seat, and it's expected to draw several more. But a strong Republican candidate, Mary Nichols, 59, has filed -- the first time in about a decade that the GOP has contested the seat. Perennial mayoral candidate Lawrence Kirkpatrick will be on the ballot as an independent.

    The Club for Growth's 2007 congressional ratings are out, and Oklahoma Senators Tom Coburn and Jim Inhofe and 1st District Congressman John Sullivan were named as Defenders of Economic Freedom for scoring above 90%.

    Coburn had a 97, just behind S.C. Sen. Jim DeMint, who had the only 100. Coburn was tied for second with N.C. Sen. Richard Burr. Inhofe's 91 had him ranked fifth in the Senate. Arizona's John Kyl and Nevada's John Ensign were the other two Senate Defenders, Republicans all.

    In the House, Sullivan scored a 95, putting him in a three-way tie for 20th with Randy Neugebauer of Texas and Eric Cantor of Virginia. 49 House members scored 90 or better, all of them Republicans.

    The highest ranking Democrats were Rep. Nick Lampson of Texas, ranked 193rd with 26%, and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, ranked 47th with 21%.

    The lowest ranking Republicans were Rep. John McHugh of N.Y., close to the median score with 15%, ranked 217th, and Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, ranked 66th with 12%.

    Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton flunked out -- goose eggs for both of them. Ron Paul scored 80. John McCain scored a 94, but isn't ranked because he didn't cast enough votes on the specified issues.

    The scorecards list the specific votes that were counted. Here is the Club for Growth House Scorecard and the Club for Growth Senate Scorecard. This entry explains how the rankings were calculated.

    A commenter on my brief summary of the Oklahoma Republican State Convention took issue with my account and helpfully provided a link to another, written by a Ron Paul supporter, on a site called "coup by memo". (It's unclear if the commenter is the author of this other webpage.) This other report is wrong in nearly every respect, but it was interesting to explore the rest of the website and learn about the values held by some members of the Liberty Values Coalition. (I will address that in a later entry.)

    I can't speak to what occurred during the morning session, as I was in and out of the convention hall, waiting for my chance to work with credentials committee chairman Pam Pollard to get the tally spreadsheet set up. (During the afternoon voting, I sat at a laptop and entered numbers in an Excel spreadsheet as the roll call of counties was read.) Because of this, I was able to see up close what was happening during the credentials process, and why it took so long.

    The check-in process went on at least 40 minutes longer than scheduled to accommodate the huge crowd. There were a number of people who were somehow left off of the list of delegates submitted by their county party chairman and so weren't in the database when they went to check in. The credentials committee acts as an appeals board for cases like these. Of the more than 1000 delegates, about two dozen were added by this process.

    Once this was done, Pam Pollard went to the podium to read the preliminary credentials report, county-by-county: How many authorized delegates (based on a formula established in the permanent state party rules), how many delegates had signed in, and the maximum number of votes. That last number is the minimum of the number of authorized delegates and twice the number who signed in. In other words, the number of people (warm bodies, if you will) is weighted to match the authorized vote count, with a maximum weight of 2.

    For example, consider a county that has 15 authorized votes:

    • If 45 people sign in, each of those 45 people count as 1/3 vote, for a total of 15 votes.
    • If 20 people sign in, each of those 20 people count as 3/4 vote, for a total of 15 votes.
    • If 15 people sign in, each of those 15 people count as exactly 1 vote, for a total of 15 votes.
    • If 9 people sign in, each of those 9 people count as exactly 5/3 vote, for a total of 15 votes.
    • If 5 people sign in, each of those 5 people count as exactly 2 votes, for a total of 10 votes.
    • If 2 people sign in, each of those 2 people count as exactly 2 votes, for a total of 4 votes.

    At the end of Pam's report (it was about 11 a.m. at this point), those county chairman who wished to challenge the preliminary report went to the sign-in area. I saw about two dozen people lined up. The main problem was that some people who had signed in and received their credentials (a pre-printed badge and a button with the county's name) weren't showing up in the database as checked in. The problem was operator error -- a box wasn't checked by the clerks. This affected about 40 people.

    In the meantime, I'm told that parliamentarian State Rep. John Wright ruled that it was permissible for business to proceed following the preliminary acceptance of the credentials report, and so the permanent convention organization was approved and the rules were debated and approved before the recess for lunch.

    The claim that there were 500 more delegates present after lunch is based on (at best) misinterpretation of what was happening. The room was as full before lunch as after. There was no credentials activity during lunch, except to distribute ballots to the county chairmen and to get me set up to keep score.

    At roughly 11, the total number of delegates (warm bodies) that had signed in was reported to the convention as 1003, according to my notes. That was the preliminary report I mentioned earlier.

    The total number of raw votes cast in the three roll call votes was 1050 in the up-or-down vote on the Executive Committee delegate slate, 1032 in the National Committeewoman election, and 1035 in the National Committeeman election. That's the actual number of ballots submitted by delegates to their county chairmen during the roll call votes. So it appears that about 50 delegates were added after the preliminary credentials report, and nearly all of these had actually signed in and received credentials; they just weren't noted in the database has having checked in and so weren't included in the initial count.

    The confusion of Mr. or Ms. coup-by-memo may be that the total for each roll call vote was announced as the weighted total -- the weighting being done in accordance with the process above as specified by the rules. Someone new to the process might have assumed there were suddenly 500 more delegates than before.

    On whether to approve the Executive Committee delegate slate, the raw vote (number of warm bodies on each side) was yes 700, no 350. The weighted vote was yes 1105.5, no 554.5.

    On the National Committeewoman vote, the raw vote was Carolyn McLarty 718, Denise Engle 314. The weighted vote was McLarty 1152.7, Engle 499.3.

    On the National Committeeman vote, the raw vote was James Dunn 520, Steve Curry 515. The weighted vote was Dunn 833.6, Curry 824.4.

    (Note that in each case, there is an almost identical proportion for raw and weighted, which you would expect. Mathematically, the only way the weighted vote would skew significantly from the raw vote is if many counties with roughly half their authorized delegates present voted differently from the general trend of the convention.)

    Coming up next, probably tomorrow, a look at the values associated with the Liberty Values Coalition, and a comparison of their slate to the Executive Committee's slate.

    P.S. I neglected to mention in the earlier entry: Tulsa County was the largest delegation present, and we had nearly as many delegates as we were authorized.

    One other note: We finished just slightly after our hard-cutoff time of 3:00 p.m. The hotel gave us a few minutes of grace, and as soon as we adjourned they opened up the walls to the other half of the ballroom and began blaring music to get us out. They had to set up for an event at 7 p.m.: Vince Gill was giving a private performance to a SemGroup event.

    The 2008 Oklahoma Republican State Convention adjourned about an hour ago, having completed its agenda, electing a slate of 23 delegates and 23 alternates, 2 presidential elector nominees, a national committeewoman, and a national committeeman.

    The convention approved the rules recommended by the convention rules committee, approved the slate of delegates and alternates nominated by the State Executive Committee (of which I am a member), and the two elector nominees recommended by the State Executive Committee. The convention elected James Dunn, the 2006 nominee for Attorney General, and retired Woodward veterinarian Carolyn McLarty to the Republican National Convention. (Incumbents Lynn Windel and Bunny Chambers stepped aside after 12 years.)

    A group calling themselves the Liberty Values Coalition -- an alliance of Ron Paul supporters, paleoconservatives, and conspiracy theorists, with a number of long-time party activists who, for one reason or another, are disaffected with party leadership -- attempted to get one of their own elected as convention chairman, attempted to defeat the proposed rules, and attempted to defeat the Executive Committee slate, failing in each case. The group distributed a proposed slate which mixed selected members of the Executive Committee slate with a number of Ron Paul supporters.

    Former National Committeewoman Mary Rumph was one of those nominated for delegate on the Executive Committee slate who was also listed on the Liberty Values Coalition flyer. When she told the convention that her name was appropriated by the LVC without her consent, the loud and long applause told the story: The "non-Pauls" had the majority at the convention.

    More later.

    Michelle Malkin links to reports in the Las Vegas Review-Journal and the Reno Gazette-Journal that chaos reigned at Saturday's Nevada Republican State Convention in Reno. Proposed rules of procedure were overturned by a two-thirds majority led by Ron Paul supporters. The Paulites also managed to pass their platform, according to the Review-Journal:

    The party passed a 20-plank platform that stresses "a literal interpretation of the U.S. Constitution" and calls for the repeal of the Federal Reserve Act and the Patriot Act as well as withdrawal from the United Nations and North American Free Trade Agreement.

    After 10 hours in session, the convention's lease on the facility ran out and party officials suspended proceedings to a later date. While votes had already been cast, but not counted, for the three delegates from each of three congressional districts, no ballots had been cast for the state's 22 member at-large delegation.

    Here's what I gather had happened: The proposed rules would have pitted pre-submitted slates of national delegates against each other. The Ron Paul people, plus some sympathetic non-Paul delegates, wanted to open nominations to anyone who wanted to run that day. They wound up with over 200 candidates for 31 slots.

    How the heck do you efficiently conduct an election with 200 candidates and 31 seats to be filled?

    I suppose you could have a ballot the size of a bedsheet and use preferential balloting, but it took us long enough at the district convention to count ballots for about 25 candidates for three delegate slots and a similar number for three alternate slots.

    The only method that makes sense to me is you allow full slates to be nominated with a substantial number of signatures required for nomination. The voters then pick one slate or another, with one or more runoffs if no slate gets a majority.

    At least one non-Paul delegate suspected the whole point of the maneuver was to stretch the process out as long as possible until only the most fanatical were still standing:

    "The Ron Paul contingent constantly nitpicks and delays things on purpose so that all the old people leave and they can take over," said Eric Tolkien of Reno.

    The Gazette-Journal story describes the Paul group's organization:

    Paul, who came in second in the Nevada caucuses, actively worked to ensure his supporters attended both the county and state conventions.

    His contingent came to the state convention prepared for battle. They had a row of printers to print ballots for their supporters to the national convention. They set up a communications network using text messages to cell phones to make sure everyone voted correctly on motions that would benefit their effort. And they scoured the rules for opportunities to level the playing field.

    Both Ron Paul and Mitt Romney, who won the caucus straw poll earlier in the year, addressed the convention.

    MORE: Reno Gazette-Journal political reporter Anjeanette Damon live-blogged the convention on her Inside Nevada Politics blog. And here is a Ron Paul supporter's account of the day.

    AND MORE straight from the horse's mouth -- State Sen. Bob Beers, the convention chairman, explains why the convention was recessed. This will ring true for anyone who has been involved in the nuts and bolts of running a convention.

    Early in the day, the state delegates voted to depart from the way the Nevada GOP has elected national delegates for the 15 or so years I have been involved. Instead of short voice votes, the delegates wanted two separate and lengthy election processes: first, dividing the state delegates by our three congressional district, then having each third separately elect three national delegates each; second, an at-large election of 22 delegates from a list of candidates that would combine those who had applied through normal channels and those who self-nominated themselves from the convention floor. Many people who had gone through the normal channels also self-nominated themselves from the floor.

    By 6pm last night:

    • we were overtime on our contract for our convention space
    • we were paying our stagehands and audio-video technicians overtime
    • our volunteers running the convention (myself included) had already put in a 12-hour day
    • only two of the three congressional district elections had been counted. The third (and largest) was about half-way done
    • our rough calculations on how long it would take to compile the results of the upcoming 22-person ballot were l-o-n-g based on the three-person ballot taking as long as it had
    • The convention secretary and party secretary (all volunteers) had compiled the 200 or so self-nomination candidates into their computer, but had not started figuring out who was on both lists and needed to be consolidated for the final, master ballot
    • Delegates, frustrated that our 5pm end time had been missed, with no end in sight, had left and were continuing to leave to execute their travel plans.

    So we made the decision to temporarily stop the convention and resume it at a later date.

    During the third hour of the Rush Limbaugh Show today, a journalism student at the University of Oklahoma called in to tell Rush about the textbook for the History of Journalism course he's taking this semester. The student said that an entire chapter of the book was devoted to the proposition that Rush Limbaugh is a racist, sexist liar, and that the next session of the course this coming Tuesday would be on that section of the book. In the previous session, the professor asked if any of the students were "dittoheads" -- only the caller and one other student, in a class of 150, raised their hands. The professor promised to give both sides equal time. Rush said he would be calling the student on Wednesday to get a report on Tuesday's class discussion.

    The student didn't name the book or the professor, so I've done some digging. There is a course called JMC 4803 History of Journalism. Here's the catalog blurb:

    Prerequisite: junior standing and 12 hours of Journalism credit hours. European background and development of the colonial press. Emergence of the partisan and penny newspapers. Evolution of personal and independent journalism. Major trends in printed and other communication media in the twentieth century. (F, Sp)

    This semester (according to the Spring 2008 schedule) the course is being taught by Assistant Prof. Keith Greenwood. (UPDATE: Jason, the student who called Rush Limbaugh, e-mailed to inform me that the course is being taught by Ramòn Chàvez this semester.) According to the OU Bookstore website, the text for next semester is Mightier than the Sword by Rodger Streitmatter.

    Sure enough, Chapter 14 is titled "Rush Limbaugh: Leading the Republican Revolution." Page 230 features the de rigeur misdefinition of the terms "dittos" and "dittoheads":

    A taste of Limbaugh's remarkable appeal came a few weeks later when a Pennsylvania caller registered her complete agreement with every word Limbaugh had ever uttered when she said simply: "Ditto." The term instantly became enshrined in the gospel of St. Rush, as disciples eagerly labeled themselves "dittoheads" and greeted him with exuberant "megadittos."

    As longtime listeners will surely know, the caller actually said "dittos to what that guy just said," referring to a previous caller who had gone on and on about how wonderful it was to hear Rush's point of view on the radio and how he hoped he'd never go away. The "dittos" caller was moving on to the point of her call and was using "dittos" to express her appreciation of Rush without getting bogged down. "Dittos" has never meant an affirmation of "every word Limbaugh had ever uttered." In Rush's own words:

    RUSH: All right. Here's the explanation. Back when this show started August 1st, 1988, it took the nation by storm because there was nothing like it in the national media. The national media was all liberal. Here was this conservative program that reflected the views of millions of people. As people would call in, the first couple minutes of their call, literally, they'd spend thanking me and talking about how great it was to have something like this on the radio, finally, it was so great, and I of course loved hearing it. After awhile, after about six months, it finally just grew old. It was delaying getting to the discussion of the issues. A woman called from I think it was like New Hampshire, and after just one of those calls, said, "Ditto to what they guy just said." So ditto means, "I love the program. Don't ever go away." It doesn't mean, "I agree with you." It doesn't mean, "You're always right." It means, "I love the program." Mega dittos means, "I really love -- I, mean I adore -- this program. It's the only program!" That's what mega dittos means.

    I couldn't read the whole thing on Google Books, but I read enough to see the standard leftist explanation that Rush's success was built on lies and deception. I'll be very interested to tune in Wednesday to hear the student's report on Tuesday's class.

    My column in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly is about the continuing push by the Ron Paul campaign to try to win the Republican presidential nomination for the Texas congressman, despite his failure to get above 3 to 7 percent in any primary election this year. The column explains how they plan to accomplish that goal and examines how they've implemented the plan so far in Oklahoma's delegate selection process.

    It's interesting to read the comments, 13 so far, all of them from Ron Paul supporters. Although I tried to maintain a neutral tone, while explaining the antagonism between the Paul people and the mainstream conservative activists who constitute the core of the Republican grassroots, the comments accuse me of bashing, smearing, and slurring.

    In the story I referred to ronpaulexposed.blogspot.com. You will also be interested in the Become a Delegate or Ron Paul Will Not Be President webpage, and the National DVDs For Delegates Project Meetup group:

    Between now and mid-August, we will create, manufacture, and distribute a series of four DVDs to the mailing addresses of all identified Delegates and Alternates to the 2008 GOP Convention in Saint Paul.

    This project will utilize the best of existing redistributable video content, and may require the creation of select new content.

    Our goal is to use this opportunity to communicate important information to GOP Delegates. We will share media containing perspectives new to most delegates, media blacked out by the 5 mega-corporations who currently ignore the Ron Paul Constitutional Message from their news and other media coverage.

    ELSEWHERE ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL: Columnist and mega-blogger Michelle Malkin linked earlier this week to a BatesLine entry from last August about Barack Obama's attempt to commiserate with Iowa voters about the price of an upscale leafy substance. One of Michelle's commenters, named Tennyson, has photoshopped a very funny revolutionary-style poster featuring Obama and some arugula. Click that link to see it.

    Earlier in April See-Dubya had a post at Michelle's blog about other "Obamessiah Fancy Foodie Follies." And when George Will calls you a snob -- George Will! -- you're missing the common touch.

    Here's what the junior senator from Illinois said, in response to a question from ABC's George Stephanopoulos during tonight's debate (click here to see the full transcript):

    MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator, if you get the nomination, you'll have to -- (applause) -- (inaudible).

    I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, the general theme of patriotism in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers, he was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol and other buildings. He's never apologized for that. And in fact, on 9/11 he was quoted in The New York Times saying, "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough."

    An early organizing meeting for your state senate campaign was held at his house, and your campaign has said you are friendly. Can you explain that relationship for the voters, and explain to Democrats why it won't be a problem?

    SEN. OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I'm talking about.

    This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who's a professor of English in Chicago, who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He's not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

    And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn't make much sense, George.

    The fact is, is that I'm also friendly with Tom Coburn, one of the most conservative Republicans in the United States Senate, who during his campaign once said that it might be appropriate to apply the death penalty to those who carried out abortions.

    Do I need to apologize for Mr. Coburn's statements? Because I certainly don't agree with those either.

    So this kind of game, in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, is somehow -- somehow their ideas could be attributed to me -- I think the American people are smarter than that. They're not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn't.

    Coburn got a lot of flack for some of the offhand comments he made during his 2004 Senate run, but I believe his friend and colleague from Illinois has surpassed him in the last seven days.

    (Via TulsaNow's public forum.)

    MORE: Coburn responds: "'Barack Obama is my friend,' said Coburn, when asked if he was offended by Obama's comment. 'We're not all necessarily happy with everything we say.'"

    LA Weekly reports on a new constituency opposing the Los Angeles Police Department's sanctuary city policy. Special Order 40, a policy forbidding police from running immigration status checks when someone is arrested, served as a model for similar policies in many other cities. It was already under legal attack as a violation of a 1996 California law banning sanctuary city policies.

    Woo-whee, the testimony was riveting this morning before the Los Angeles City Council when a group of black residents pleaded with the 15 elected council members to rescind Special Order 40, the longtime local rule protecting illegal immigrants from arrest by the LAPD.

    The black residents are seeking a decision by the council to enact the so-called Jamiel's Law, named after Jamiel Shaw, a promising and law-abiding 17-year-old high school student allegedly shot by an illegal immigrant, 18th Street Gang member Pedro Espinoza. The noxious Espinoza, who has a massively long rap sheet, was arrested by cops in Culver City, and then released by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department jailers, shortly before he allegedly murdered Jamiel.

    Jamiel's family members cried openly in the ornate Council Chambers, asking the council to allow cops to check on the illegal status of people like Espinoza so they can be deported rather than released.

    Mayoral candidate Walter Moore, proponent of Jamiel's Law has on his website Special Order 40, the proposed Jamiel's Law, and more about Jamiel Shaw's life.

    And in 2005, Heather McDonald of the Manhattan Institute testified before a congressional subcommittee on the importance of running immigration checks whenever the opportunity arises in order to curb gang activity:

    Immigration enforcement against criminals should also not wait upon a major federal-local gang initiative. The majority of opportunities to get criminals off the streets come from enforcing misdemeanors and quality of life offenses. While the police are waiting to make a major federal case against an illegal criminal, they are far more likely to have picked him up for a "petty" theft or an open-container offense. Officers should be empowered at every arrest or lawful stop to check someone's immigration status. If a suspect is committing an immigration offense, the officer should be empowered to arrest him immediately for that offense.

    (Via Mickey Kaus.)

    This recent Red State Update had me almost rolling on the floor. They've overdubbed the clip of Bill Richardson with Barack Obama, when he announced his support for the Illinois senator and related his awkward conversation with Hillary Clinton about his endorsement of Obama. The revoiced Richardson has a childlike simplicity and throws out non-sequiturs left and right, reminiscent of Danny DeVito's character Owen in Throw Momma from the Train.

    The part that had me laughing to the point of tears is toward the end, when Richardson tells about his phone call with "Mean Pants Lady."

    "And I think that any speculation on a vice presidential pick is premature. It's premature to speculate..."

    "An egg is a premature chicken."

    "Uh huh, OK, technically, Bill, I think that..."

    "Hueeeeevos Rancheeeeeros."

    "Mm-hmm. Allllll right...."

    FIXED the missing close angle bracket on an object tag which was flummoxing IE 7.0. Thanks to Michelle for pointing it out. I'm amazed that none of the other browsers seemed bothered by it.

    Paul plot

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    John McCain has enough delegates to win the Republican nomination on the first ballot. All other candidates have either withdrawn or suspended their campaigns, conceding to McCain.

    That appears to be the case, based on primary results and on the rules, which vary from state to state, that allocate delegates based on the primary results. But some hardcore Ron Paul supporters don't see it that way. They still have hope of getting the nomination for "the only man who can save America," and they have a strategy for making it happen.

    You see, in Oklahoma and in many other states, there's no connection between the primary vote and the selection of the men and women who will go to the national convention as delegates and alternates. State law requires that our delegates vote at the national convention for the candidate supported by a plurality of primary voters in the state or in each congressional district. Based on that law, six members of the Oklahoma delegation are bound to Mike Huckabee and 32 are bound to John McCain.

    But the campaigns don't select the delegates who will cast those votes. The delegates and alternates are elected by the five congressional district conventions (3 delegates and 3 alternates each) and the state convention (on May 3, electing 23 delegates and 23 alternates). For example, if I ran for delegate in this Saturday's 1st Congressional District Convention and was elected, I would be bound to vote for Mike Huckabee at the national convention even though I had been a Fred Thompson supporter. If Huckabee formally withdrew and released his delegates, he would encourage his delegates to rally around McCain, but I would be free to vote for Thompson, myself, or anyone else.

    The Ron Paul plan is to exploit this situation by flooding these conventions, being stealthy about their intentions, running for delegate positions but not identifying themselves as Ron Paul supporters. They will try to elect their people to uncommitted seats (principally in caucus states) or to delegate positions that are bound to candidates that have withdrawn or suspended their campaigns. In some states they will seek to alter the party rules so that all delegates are unbound, notwithstanding the primary result, then elect their people to the delegate positions. In other states, the delegates will be unbound if no candidate has a majority on the first ballot at the convention. If they can break off enough delegates from McCain using these strategies to deny him a majority on the first ballot, many more delegates will be released to vote for whomever they wish. This web page, "Ron Paul will STILL win, the GOP can't possibly STOP US ALL!" lines out the strategy:

    So, lets lay it out REALLY simple. How can YOU become a delegate? FIRST thing you need to do right NOW is to call your local county GOP, pay up your dues ($25/yr for me), and tell them that you want to become a delegate. Tell them that the reason you want to is because you don't want to see either Hillary or Obama as your president. The last thing you want to do is mention Dr. Paul. If you have to LIE, tell them you support McCain, then if you make it to state just say you changed your mind! Be cordial, and ask also if there is any way you can help or volunteer. My last meetup group was VERY informative. It was explained to me that the GOP is just a SHELL of itself. The APATHY of the voting process in many states has taken it's toll on the Republican Party. What this means is that voter apathy, while once thought of as our biggest obstacle, is now our ACE IN THE HOLE my fellow revolutionaries! We can TAKE OVER the Republican Party, quite easily, and UN-BIND the delegates in our respective states (this is one of the policies that delegates vote on) and nominate Dr. Paul at the Republican National Convention!

    A reader has forwarded to me a link to a site called Ron Paul Exposed, with a list of the members of the Oklahoma Ron Paul Meetup group and excerpts from some of the group's chats about convention strategy. So far the Ron Paul people have dominated two congressional district conventions here in Oklahoma, getting several of their people elected as delegates and alternates to the national convention.

    Remember that Paul only received 3.34% of the vote in the presidential preference primary. He received about 20% of the vote in a straw poll taken during the Tulsa County precinct caucuses. His supporters will succeed in getting elected as delegates only if the non-Ron Paul supporters don't bother to show up at the convention, assuming that this year's conventions will be like past years'.

    Less than 5% of Republican primary voters nationwide supported Paul. It would take years, probably decades, of concerted effort to transform public opinion to line up with his views. Paul's supporters should run for office, volunteer for campaigns and to man party headquarters, and otherwise participate in public life. They should ally with other political groups when a common goal can be found. It took 16 years for conservatives to get from Barry Goldwater's landslide defeat to Ronald Reagan's landslide victory and even then Reagan's ability to change Washington was limited.

    Ron Paul's supporters are welcome to participate in the convention process. If they do so in a constructive and open way, they can have an influence on the future direction of the party. If they instead use stealth and deception, they will fail and in the process demolish any possibility of building coalitions and moving incrementally toward the kind of changes they seek.

    Conservative blogger and lawyer historian Clayton Cramer is running for the Idaho State Senate, challenging a moderate-to-liberal Republican incumbent, whom Cramer believes is out of step with his district:

    ...[T]he incumbent received a C rating from NRA at the last election, and introduced a bill to add "sexual orientation and gender identity" to the state's employment discrimination law. The biggest town in my district is an Air Force base; the second biggest town has a mandatory gun ownership law.

    Cramer is a bearded blogger and has been told that he has to shave it off. While Idahoans may have beards, they don't vote for candidates who do. I've been told that in Oklahoma a beard will cost a candidate 4% of the vote. (A mustache by itself is worse -- 6%.) A fellow Idahoan has determined that bearded men are underrepresented in the legislature:

    So, of a total of 80 male legislators, only five have beards, equaling 6.25% of the Male Legislators. I'd say that greater that a good 10-12% of men around these parts have beards.... So, I think we can say that the beard is a detriment.

    I think Cramer should leave the beard on. Of course, I ran twice for office with a hairy face and lost both times, so take that advice for what it's worth.

    Cramer points out that Bill Sali got himself elected to Congress from Idaho with a beard (actually a Van Dyck, by the looks of it).

    Of course, there's a rather famous Idaho politician whose long career was helped considerably by a beard of a different sort....

    UPDATE: Mr. Cramer writes to say, "I am a historian. Calling me a lawyer--doesn't that qualify as defamation of character?" Happily, since he's not a lawyer, he can't sue me easily! (I fixed it anyway.)

    A blast of fresh Arctic air: Alaska's Republican Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell has filed to challenge ethically-challenged Republican Congressman Don Young, and he has the backing of Republican Gov. Sarah Palin:

    "The days of unquestioning loyalty are gone," Parnell said a few hours later after filing candidacy paperwork. "It's time for principled leadership."

    Gov. Sarah Palin escorted Parnell into the Division of Elections office and immediately endorsed him over Young, who has held the office for 35 years. She gave no thought to the protocol of an endorsement months before the August primary, she said.

    "When something's right, it's right," she said. "There's no time like the present to state your case and speak candidly about what you believe in. And I believe in his candidacy."

    (Via McGehee.)

    MORE: Last October, NR's David Freddoso called on the National Republican Congressional Committee (headed by Oklahoma's Tom Cole) to be ruthless in casting off the bad apples in the Republican orchard:

    Republicans need an ethical Housecleaning if they are ever to return to the majority again. This will require strong leadership and creativity. The real question is just how ruthless the reputedly non-confrontational Boehner can be when his legacy is on the line. Boehner will show his mettle by how he deals with two members currently under serious ethical clouds: Reps. Don Young (R., Alaska) and John Doolittle (R., Calif.).

    Freddoso goes on to point out that failure to dump these ethical liabilities not only costs credibility, it costs the party cold cash. $9 million was spent in the 2006 cycle to try to save the sorry hides of Don Sherwood (Pa., "tried to choke his mistress"), Bob Ney (Ohio, now in Federal prison), Charles Taylor (N.C.), Curt Weldon (Pa., "federal raids just before the 2006 election"), and Mark Foley (Fla., creepy IM chats with a male page). That's 11 percent of the committee's independent expenditures wasted on lost causes.

    We so often think of conservatism and liberalism in terms of a collection of disconnected policies, or we mistake the two competing ideologies for the two political parties that are respectively identified with them, that we forget the heart of the matter. What truly distinguishes conservatism from liberalism is the way each understands human nature. An ideology will succeed -- produce liberty and peace and prosperity -- to the degree that it correctly understands and accounts for human nature.

    Like ideology, drama will succeed to the degree that it correctly understands and accounts for human nature. The better a playwright is at observing the way people respond to challenges and frustrations, the abler he is at drawing the audience into his play.

    So there's this playwright, David Mamet. His job is to be an observer of the human condition. The more accurate an observer he is, the more his plays strike a chord with his audience. What he learned as an observer of humanity is that conservatism's core assumptions about human nature are right, and liberalism's assumptions are all wrong. In an essay in the Village Voice (of all places), Mamet goes back to first principles and works outward from those to come to some very conservative conclusions.

    Here is an excerpt (slightly expurgated), but you really must read the whole thing:

    And, I wondered, how could I have spent decades thinking that I thought everything was always wrong at the same time that I thought I thought that people were basically good at heart? Which was it? I began to question what I actually thought and found that I do not think that people are basically good at heart; indeed, that view of human nature has both prompted and informed my writing for the last 40 years. I think that people, in circumstances of stress, can behave like swine, and that this, indeed, is not only a fit subject, but the only subject, of drama.

    I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances--that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired--in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it.

    For the Constitution, rather than suggesting that all behave in a godlike manner, recognizes that, to the contrary, people are swine and will take any opportunity to subvert any agreement in order to pursue what they consider to be their proper interests.

    To that end, the Constitution separates the power of the state into those three branches which are for most of us (I include myself) the only thing we remember from 12 years of schooling.

    The Constitution, written by men with some experience of actual government, assumes that the chief executive will work to be king, the Parliament will scheme to sell off the silverware, and the judiciary will consider itself Olympian and do everything it can to much improve (destroy) the work of the other two branches. So the Constitution pits them against each other, in the attempt not to achieve stasis, but rather to allow for the constant corrections necessary to prevent one branch from getting too much power for too long.

    Rather brilliant. For, in the abstract, we may envision an Olympian perfection of perfect beings in Washington doing the business of their employers, the people, but any of us who has ever been at a zoning meeting with our property at stake is aware of the urge to cut through all the pernicious bulls**t and go straight to firearms....

    Whatever you think about his broader point, you must admit the man understands zoning.

    Larry David, a lefty (but the comedic genius behind Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm), reacts to the Hillary Clinton "3 a.m." ad:

    I watched, transfixed, as she took the 3 a.m. call...and I was afraid...very afraid. Suddenly, I realized the last thing this country needs is that woman anywhere near a phone. I don't care if it's 3 a.m. or 10 p.m. or any other time. I don't want her talking to Putin, I don't want her talking to Kim Jong Il, I don't want her talking to my nephew. She needs a long rest. She needs to put on a sarong and some sun block and get away from things for a while, a nice beach somewhere -- somewhere far away, where there are...no phones.

    (Hat tip: Joe Kelley.)

    Local angle: David suggests Obama run an ad featuring "a montage of Clinton's Sybillish personalities that have surfaced during the campaign," and he illustrates the point with a montage of scary Hillary pictures assembled by Tulsa's own Don Danz of danzfamily.com.

    Evidently a lot of folks share David's trepidation about Hillary picking up the Hotline in the middle of the night. Here's the ad, with focus group reactions from Hillary supporters, Obama supporters, and undecideds. Watch what happens when Hillary appears on screen:

    (Via Hot Air.)

    Ad fontes

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    Robert N. Going says it's time to get back to our roots:

    Let's grow up, Conservatives! The reason the Republican Party is slipping away from us is that they and we have drifted from our roots. With the passing of the Founding Father, William F. Buckley, Jr., now would be a good time to review where we have been and where we should go.

    As a starting point, he gives us the Sharon Statement, adopted in 1960 as the founding document of Young Americans for Freedom. It outlines in 12 short paragraphs a creed that upholds the indivisibility of economic and political liberty, the limited purposes and competencies of government, the Constitutional division of powers, the market economy and its essential role in freedom and prosperity, the importance of national sovereignty to liberty, and the necessity of opposing and defeating threats to liberty in the world.

    If you were to compose a similar summary of conservatism today, what else would it include? The Sharon Statement was written before the judicial activism of the Warren Court and its successors, before LBJ's massive Great Society expansion of government, before Roe v. Wade. A similar statement written just 15 years later likely would have addressed those matters explicitly, although the principles are already present in the statement.

    In more recent years, we've seen the rise of the wheeler dealers, a more Republican-friendly kind of government expansion which uses earmarks and special tax treatment and eminent domain to pick winners and losers in the free market. Given that the Republican Party is the major party most closely aligned with conservatism, conservatives need to denounce this kind of misuse of government power as clearly as possible.

    Going says he intends these next few months to look back and look forward. The reflections of someone who was involved in the movement from its earliest years will be worth reading.

    WFB, RIP

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    Words elude me at a time like this. They never eluded him.

    During the Carter years, in my high school's library, I first encountered National Review, the magazine he founded. His influence shaped both my political philosophy and my idea of how politics ought to be discussed and debated. His "Notes & Asides" -- brief responses to letters from readers -- was a favorite feature.

    He rescued conservatism -- resistance both to secularism and collectivism -- from a narrow political ghetto. Before Goldwater, before Reagan, there's was Bill Buckley, freshly-minted Yale graduate, declaring his intention to "stand[] athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."

    Among the many tributes to him that have been posted today, the most frequent theme is not his erudition or his devotion to the conservative cause, but his kindness and his graciousness, as remembered by those who worked with him and those who encountered him as readers and admirers.

    Robert N. Going:

    I finally met Bill when he gave a series of four lectures at Russell Sage College around 1973 and he graciously hung around to engage anyone who cared to chat. And I like to chat.

    We kept up a correspondence for a while, nothing earth shaking or worth reprinting, but the fact that he would bother to even answer every letter from every young hero-worshipper I found pretty amazing. He even invited me to lunch, but our schedules never meshed.

    Two years ago, early the next morning after his big 80th birthday bash, he emailed me to thank me for what I had written about him on this blog, at a time when I'm sure he had about ten thousand thank you notes to write to people far more important than this lone blogger. It's hard not to like a guy like that.

    Rod Dreher:

    The thing that occurs to me at the moment is how civil he was. I've mentioned before in this space what a great example he was in that regard. On the occasions I had dinner with National Review editors at the Buckleys' townhouse in Manhattan, there would always be an Ur-liberal present. Once it was Ira Glasser, the former ACLU head, and the next time it was Mark Green, the NYC politician. It was fascinating to watch Bill -- and he insisted that he be called Bill, signaling to me to knock off the Mr. Buckley stuff -- interrogate these opponents with intellectual seriousness, but also with unfailing respect and courtesy. He didn't care for their political opinions, but he liked them as people, even as friends. He was the kind of man who, though absolutely clear in his dismissal of liberal ideas, would not stoop to trashing someone's character for the sake of political gain.

    John J. Miller:

    He's probably the most gracious man I've known. He is of course a legend on the Right, and legends can be intimidating. The first time we met, my agenda was simply to avoid saying anything dumb in his presence. Yet he instantly sought to put me at ease. He asked what I was writing about and seemed genuinely curious to know. He listened to me, rather than the other way around. To my surprise, I was comfortable around him--because he had a special ability for making folks like me feel that way.

    Joe Sobran:

    I once spent a long evening with one of Bill's old friends from Yale, whose name I won't mention. He told me movingly how Bill stayed with him to comfort him when his little girl died of brain cancer. If Bill was your friend, he'd share your suffering when others just couldn't bear to. What a great heart -- eager to spread joy, and ready to share grief!

    Dean Abbott remembers meeting him at a book signing:

    I was proud to introduce my new bride to him. That introduction brought out the real Buckley, I think. When he learned we hadn't been married long, he asked my wife about setting up house.

    Here was a man who had shaped American culture, guided the modern conservative movement from its nascence, and conversed with presidents. Instead of talking about his accomplishments, he spent those few minutes asking my wife how she was decorating our home, what kind of pictures she liked to have on the walls, whether she preferred window blinds and drapes. We had come to meet him, to hear from him; and when we did, he only wanted to talk about us.

    Myron Magnet sums him up:

    In illness, he became, if possible, even more gallant. At a party he gave a while ago to celebrate the publication of his brother Jim's memoirs, he spoke with his usual wit, warmth, and eloquence--but seated on the stairs. He apologized for his ridiculous position, as he called it, explaining that he didn't feel well enough to stand and would now go back to bed. Not so long afterward, he replied to the condolence note I had sent when his vivid and unforgettable wife Pat died. Its whole point was to make me feel good, an act of gracious generosity that, under the circumstances, took my breath away....

    Many will write, in due course, about Bill's towering importance in our nation's political and intellectual life. But beyond that, his whole being provided an answer to that ultimate question, How then should we live? From first hearing him speak at my high school when he was a young man, through watching him in sparkling, imperious, and rather intimidating action as his guest on Firing Line, I saw his character become ever more clearly the unmistakable, irreplaceable Buckley: witty, cultivated, playful, urbane, gracious, brave, zestful, life-affirming, tireless, and gallant--the incarnation of grace. He taught many not only how to think but also how to be.

    Obama akbar!

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    There is no God but Obama and Mrs. Obama is his prophet!

    michelleobama.jpg

    (AP photo from April 16, 2007, found at Salon.)

    From the First Lady aspirant's recent speech at UCLA:

    Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

    You have to stay at the seat at the table of democracy with a man like Barack Obama not just on Tuesday but in a year from now, in four years from now, in eight years from now, you will have to be engaged.

    Jim Geraghty reacts:

    Does anybody on the left side of the aisle find this rhetoric a little creepy? Isn't this describing an authoritarian presidency way beyond anything George W. Bush has done or proposed?

    Do the powers of the presidency really encompass everything Michelle says Obama wants and plans to do? Based on this rhetoric, isn't he actually running for messiah?

    Here's the non-sailor-blush-inducing part of Ace's reply:

    Pardon the overstatement, but this is creepy stuff, suggesting, as it does, that your lives are now required to have meaning and purpose -- and that the government will be providing that meaning and purpose to you.

    Via See-Dubya, who says it gets weirder:

    But that's not what got some people I know fired up. My dad called me from Oklahoma last night to ask if I'd seen the Obamessiah's victory speech. I hadn't--still haven't--but the laid-back See-Dad was seriously freaked, noting that the rhetoric and atmosphere was "like a Nazi rally", "full-bore socialism", "like Stalin", and the guy kept it up for 45 minutes like Castro. And as soon as it was over a family friend, a cattleman of some means and again, a calm demeanor, had called him to ask "Did you see that?"

    Donkey songs

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    This Hillary jingle seems to have zoomed straight out of the '70s. Kept expecting to see little pre-op Michael Jackson spinning and strutting with Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, and Marlon.

    As Democratic presidential fan jingles go, I still rather listen to (and watch!) Super Obama Girl:

    (For all her super power, Super Obama Girl wasn't able to zip over to her polling place on Super Tuesday.)

    Actually, this might be the best Democratic presidential music video: Christmas with Mike Gravel. (And he's still in the race!) (Mild language warning.)

    One more, from the makers of Super Obama Girl. This makes John McCain look kind of lovable:

    Potomac Primary

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    Tomorrow, Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia will vote in a sort of regional presidential primary -- very handy for the campaigns, who will be able to maximize the value of ad time purchased on Washington television. On the Republican side, Virginia and DC are winner-take-all, awarding 63 and 16 delegates respectively. Maryland is winner-take-all by congressional district: 3 delegates for winning each of eight congressional districts, and 13 statewide delegates. The RNC members for all three jurisdictions, who are ex officio national convention delegates, will be bound to the winner of their respective jurisdictions.

    Virginia has an open primary. Will centrist, Independent types, John McCain's electoral bread and butter, decide the Republican primary is all but over and decide to use their influence in the Hillary-Obama war? Will that allow Huckabee to sneak in and take Virginia?

    Maryland and DC have systems much like Oklahoma's -- they have closed primaries, the registration books close a few weeks before the election, and there are restrictions on when you can change parties.

    John McCain, by my estimate, has only 683 delegates bound to vote for him. Including tomorrow's delegates at stake, there remain only 725 bindable delegates to be allocated. He will need to win 70% of those remaining delegates in order to be guaranteed the nomination.

    Last Saturday, Mike Huckabee was the only delegate winner, taking the 36 Kansas delegates at stake. The Washington event was a non-binding straw poll.

    Huckabee might have won 20 more in the Louisiana primary, but he fell short of the required 50% of the vote. That means all of Louisiana's delegates will be elected at Saturday's state convention. They will not be bound in any way, but the state convention will likely choose national delegates based on presidential preference. Which candidate the state convention is likely to support is unclear, as the bulk of the delegates to the state convention were elected on a "pro-family, pro-life" uncommitted slate.

    MORE: Jim Geraghty links to a good explanation of the actual process in Saturday's Washington State precinct caucuses and why the reported straw poll results are meaningless in determining the makeup of the state's delegation to St. Paul. What the Sound Politics blogger says about the Washington caucuses is true in other caucus states where non-binding straw polls have been taken, such as Iowa, Maine, Nevada, and Minnesota.

    The New York Times reports today on a trend: Federal courts are upholding locally-enacted immigration enforcement measures, such as Oklahoma's HB 1804, which went into effect on November 1, 2007, and a similar Arizona law that went into effect on January 1, 2008. Last year, several similar measures were struck down by the Federal courts.

    After groups challenging state and local laws cracking down on illegal immigration won a series of high-profile legal victories last year, the tide has shifted as federal judges recently handed down several equally significant decisions upholding those laws.

    On Thursday, a federal judge in Arizona ruled against a lawsuit by construction contractors and immigrant organizations who sought to halt a state law that went into effect on Jan. 1 imposing severe penalties on employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants. The judge, Neil V. Wake of Federal District Court, methodically rejected all of the contractors' arguments that the Arizona law invaded legal territory belonging exclusively to the federal government.

    On Jan. 31, a federal judge in Missouri, E. Richard Webber, issued a similarly broad and even more forcefully worded decision in favor of an ordinance aimed at employers of illegal immigrants adopted by Valley Park, Mo., a city on the outskirts of St. Louis.

    And, in an even more sweeping ruling in December, a judge in Oklahoma, James H. Payne, threw out a lawsuit against a state statute enacted last year requiring state contractors to verify new employees' immigration status. Judge Payne said the immigrants should not be able to bring their claims to court because they were living in the country in violation of the law....

    Judge Payne of Oklahoma, ruling Dec. 12 on state laws that took effect in November, went furthest in questioning the rights of illegal immigrants.

    "These illegal alien plaintiffs seek nothing more than to use this court as a vehicle for their continued unlawful presence in this country," he wrote. "To allow these plaintiffs to do so would make this court an 'abettor of iniquity,' and this court finds that simply unpalatable."

    The Times story mentions ordinances in Hazelton, Pa., and Escondido, Ca., which were overturned in Federal court. Surprisingly, the Times notes the change in the trend from overruling to upholding without identifying the cause: Authors of the later legislation, like Oklahoma State Rep. Randy Terrill, studied the earlier court decisions and ensured that the new laws would avoid the same legal pitfalls.

    (Via Michelle Malkin.)

    Just heard it again on Fox News: Karl Rove stated earlier in the week that Mike Huckabee would have to win 85% of the remaining delegates to win the nomination. I'm not sure how Rove came up with that number, but I looked through the remaining contests at thegreenpapers.com. Including today's events in Kansas and Louisiana, there are only 781 delegates remaining that will be bound to any candidate. John McCain currently has 683 delegates. McCain will have to win 72% of the remaining delegates that could be bound to a candidate in order to go into the convention with a sure majority.

    The 608 unbound delegates will have been elected in caucuses and conventions and are more likely to reflect the GOP grassroots distaste for McCain's record. If Huckabee can win about 600 delegates, things could be interesting in St. Paul.

    Kansas Republicans held their presidential caucuses today. The event might be better described as a party-run primary.

    At the Iowa, Maine, and Nevada caucuses, a straw poll was taken, a "winner" was declared, but in fact no national convention delegates were bound to support any candidate. The process of selecting national convention delegates in those states will involve county, district, and state conventions, and at each phase, it will be up to those voting to decide whether presidential preference will play any part in their choice of delegates to represent their state in St. Paul in September.

    But in Kansas, as in North Dakota and Montana on Tuesday, the results of the poll of caucus-goers will bind the national convention delegates to support a certain candidate. The winner in each congressional district will win three delegates, and the winner statewide, if he has also won two of the four CDs, will win all the at-large delegates, including the three national committee members. While the CD delegates would have been awarded to the top vote-getter, even if that person had less than 50%, the 24 statewide delegates would only be bound to a candidate winning a true majority; otherwise they would be uncommitted at the national convention.

    The official website for the Kansas Republican caucuses now has the final results: Huckabee won all four CDs, ranging from 53% to 67%, with just shy of 60% statewide. McCain's best performance was 27% in the 3rd CD, his worst was 18% in the fourth, mirroring Huckabee's weakest and strongest showings. So Huckabee will have all 36 Kansas delegates at the national convention. The results then:

    Huckabee, 11,627, 59.6%
    McCain, 4,587, 23.5%
    Paul, 2,182, 11.1%
    Romney, 653, 3.3%
    Keyes, 288, 1.4%
    Uncommitted, 84, 0.4%
    Thompson, 61, 0.3%

    The BatesLine Strict-Constructionist Delegate Count now has:

    McCain 683
    Huckabee 194
    Romney 143
    Paul 11
    Uncommitted 12

    This is subject to revision, as many of the Tsunami Tuesday states allocate delegates proportionally and by congressional district, and congressional district results have been hard to find. It has also been hard to find specifics on the method by which proportional delegates would be allocated in each state.

    I have put the 12 national delegates elected at the Wyoming county conventions in the uncommitted column. 8 county conventions elected a Romney supporter, 3 elected a Thompson supporter, and 1 elected a Hunter supporter. These delegates were always free to change their minds, and now that the three candidates are out of the race, they are no longer bound even by the declarations of support made at the county conventions. The formally bound primary delegates won by Romney are still in his column since he has officially only suspended his campaign and has not released them.

    Given the result in Kansas, it's reasonable to wonder what might have happened in two neighboring states, Missouri and Oklahoma, had Romney not been in the race. Huckabee might have won 90 delegates that instead wound up in McCain's column.

    Louisiana's primary today will allocate 20 delegates, but only if a candidate receives a true majority of the statewide vote. Otherwise those 20 delegates will be uncommitted. There are 24 more national delegates to be selected at next Saturday's state convention. The delegates to the state convention were elected at district conventions on January 22, and a majority of those elected were from a pro-family, uncommitted slate. Some of those uncommitted state delegates have announced for McCain, but there has been some controversy.

    The Washington caucuses today will not result in any national delegates being bound to a presidential candidate. As in Iowa, Maine, and Nevada, the real delegate decisions won't be made until a state convention in May. A primary on Feb. 19 will allocate 19 delegates, one to the winner of each CD, and 10 allocated proportionately statewide.

    UPDATE: Here's video of Sen. Tom Coburn introducing John McCain:

    Here's the transcript. From Coburn's office:

    U.S. Senator Tom Coburn's speech at CPAC

    February 7, 2008

    As prepared for delivery

    I'm honored by the invitation to be here today. I want to thank each of you for your devotion to our country, and for the sacrifices you have made to participate in this event.

    I have the privilege today to say a few words about John McCain, a man of rare courage and character, who I believe is uniquely equipped to lead our nation through the difficult challenges ahead.

    As conservatives, I know that most of us are sick and tired of politicians who tell us what we want to hear then govern in the opposite way. We won't have that problem with John McCain. He may not always tell us what we want to hear, but he will say what he means and do what he says.

    John McCain has the unique blend of character, guts, and experience to tackle the two greatest challenges facing our country - radical Islamic extremism and the looming financial catastrophe that will hit our economy when the Baby Boomers retire.

    The fact is, we haven't had a president over the last eight years who had the guts to take on the excesses of a Republican and Democrat Congress. Our government wastes $200 billion every year. Every year. John McCain will lead a top down review of everything government does and actually cut wasteful and duplicative spending. If we don't elect a president who will challenge the excesses of Congress we will wreck our economy. John McCain will heed Will Durant's warning that, "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within."

    I trust John McCain because he possesses the rarest virtue in politics upon which all else depends - courage. He has risked his political life during this presidential campaign. In defense of the unpopular surge in Iraq, John McCain said, "I'd rather lose the presidency than lose the war." John McCain may win the presidency precisely because he was willing to let it go in service to his country.

    Courage matters most in Washington, especially when dealing with Congress. Just as no battle plan survives contact with the enemy, no presidential agenda - however conservative - survives contact with Congress. John McCain has the courage, grit and conviction to tell Congress no and fight for the reforms we need to secure our future.

    Maybe it's John McCain's disregard for his own personal political safety and the opinions of other politicians that led an appropriator to say the thought of McCain presidency sends chills down their spine. Anything that sends a chill down the spines of big spenders in Congress should warm the heart of every American taxpayer.

    Other critics have said that John McCain stood in the way of the conservative GOP agenda. But, as conservatives, we have to look at the whole picture. In fact, due to a failure of leadership in Congress, I'm not sure we've had a comprehensive GOP conservative agenda since 1995.

    Was the Bridge to Nowhere and an explosion of earmarks part of the GOP conservative agenda? John McCain was one of only 11 Republicans who supported me in my fight to kill the Bridge to Nowhere. Most Republicans were marching off the bridge we were trying to de-fund. What John McCain's record tells me is that we won't have to wait until the last year of his presidency to see him pick a fight with Congress over wasteful Washington spending. John McCain will declare war on pork - the gateway drug to spending addiction in Congress - on day one. There will be no earmarks for teapot museums, First Lady Libraries and taxpayer-funded hippie flashbacks in a McCain administration.

    The new prescription drug entitlement our party leadership pushed on us was part of the GOP agenda but it wasn't part of the conservative agenda. John McCain had the foresight to vote against Medicare Part D, the largest entitlement expansion since Lyndon Johnson, when many Republicans were AWOL. John McCain believes Congress should keep the promises it has already made before making new promises it can't keep. He also has the most comprehensive and conservative health care reform plan of any candidate. John McCain will fight the government-run, universally-controlled health plans supported by Clinton and Obama with common sense, free-market principles that work.

    Even if John McCain has taken some positions we don't like as conservative, I don't believe you can ignore the fact that he took many bold stands against the Big Government Republican agenda that destroyed our majority. When most Republicans were trying to build a governing majority through pork - and were growing the government faster than the Democrats who came before us - John McCain was pushing the party in the opposite direction on key issues.

    Let me touch on some other issues.

    On judges, I wouldn't have endorsed John McCain if I wasn't confident he will nominate judges like the ones he has voted to confirm in the Senate: Bork, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown. I also know that he shares my desire to see the Senate approve conservative judges now.

    On immigration, John McCain was trying to solve a problem which, incidentally, hasn't improved much. He listened and learned and decided the facts were on our side. He doesn't have a secret plan to enact blanket amnesty as president. And, if he did, he knows I'd kill it.

    McCain-Feingold misdiagnosed the real problem as too much money to politicians rather than politicians whose votes are for sale. Even though I disagreed with McCain-Feingold, John McCain's desire to tackle corruption in the congressional neighborhood was correct. The source of Washington's corruption isn't K Street; it's Congress' lack of restraint, and John McCain has taken bold steps to tackle that problem at its source.

    Still, I have to say that the concerns I hear about John McCain pale in comparison to the two greatest challenges facing our country - terrorism and a Congress that refuses to correct our unsustainable fiscal course. If we get all of those other issues right but those two issues wrong we won't survive as a nation. John McCain's record on the issues that are paramount to our future is a record conservatives can support. John McCain also has a conservative record on what is arguably the transcendent social issue of our time: the sanctity of life. He has been pro-life for 24 years and has record that matches his principles.

    And, on national security, John McCain is by far the most qualified candidate on either side. He will meet not only the security challenges we know about but, more importantly, those we don't know about. Tyrants and terrorists will think twice about challenging the United States with John McCain in the White House.

    Is John McCain perfect? No. Will we disagree with him sometimes? Yes. But, elections are about choices. I'd be happy to debate anyone who thinks staying home or supporting Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is a better choice for our future than John McCain.

    Now, I'd ask you to welcome the person who is best equipped to talk about his own record and vision for the future, the next President of the United State, John McCain.

    I trust Tom Coburn to have the right motivations, and he knows John McCain from working side-by-side with him. I wouldn't expect Coburn to be swayed by personal or social considerations. Still, it's possible Coburn is overlooking some facts that might change his perspective. What do you think?

    So far this evening, all but three of my predictions have been borne out: McCain won in Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, New Jersey, New York. Huckabee won in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Romney won in Massachusetts, Montana, North Dakota, and Utah. (Romney appears to have also won non-binding straw polls at caucuses in Colorado and Minnesota.)

    McCain appears to have won by a very slim margin in winner-take-all Missouri. With 3355 of 3371 precincts reporting according to the Missouri elections website, McCain has an 8,000-vote lead. In percentages, McCain 32.9, Huckabee 31.6, Romney 29.3. Talk about a situation that cries out for Instant Runoff Voting! Suppose the other 9 candidates had not been on the ballot -- depending on where their voters went, you could have had any possible order of finish among the top three.

    McCain also won here in Oklahoma, 36.7% to 33.4% for Huckabee and 24.78% for Romney with 2194 of 2220 precincts reporting. It's close enough that it's possible that Huckabee won one or two of the congressional districts, but we can't tell because, unusually, the Oklahoma State Election Board has only posted statewide totals. Normally they show returns by county, which lets you know which parts of the state have reported and which have yet to come in.

    At this point, I'd like to say, "See, I told you so." Huckabee had the best shot of beating McCain here. He had a base from which to start, while Romney had been in single digits here until Thompson left the race. Romney was not going to be able to peel off enthusiastic supporters who had been with Huckabee since before Iowa.

    The national conservative commentariat boosted Romney's numbers in the South with the mantra, "A vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain," but only enough to make it close for Huckabee where he won and to cost him Missouri and Oklahoma.

    Here's how effective that slogan was: Someone I know who lives in Arkansas and who is a Huckabee fan and supporter wrote to say she'd voted for Romney because "a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain." Huckabee won Arkansas with over 60% of the vote.

    Someone who heard me on the radio Tuesday morning, whom I won't embarrass by naming -- although I reserve the right to publish, with name and e-mail address, any especially funny hate mail you send me -- wrote me this note about my explanation of the state-by-state situation and the importance of tactical voting:

    Your logic for voting for Huckebee makes about as much sense as voting for Satin. I have been an avid listener of KFAQ for years now and have always agreed with you but after hearing the crap I heard this morning from both you and Chris Medlock appalled me as a conservative. Yeah, let's give as many delegates to Huckebee, the candidate that has a snow balls chance in hell of winning the nomination!! You should be encouraging voters to vote for the only candidate that has a chance of winning the nomination! Instead you & Chris encourage the voters to vote for the likes of Huckebee and give all the delegates from OK to Huckebee instead of rallying behind a candidate that has a true chance of beating McCain. I am seriously thinking of turning my radio off in the morning to KFAQ and go back to 740 at least while the morning show is on!!!!!! Because after the CRAP I heard this morning it makes me really question listening to KFAQ's morning show!!!

    You might want to read the below transcript from Rush Limbaugh - YOU and CHRIS could learn something from HIM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Wow!!!!!111!!eleventyone!! I'd vote for satin, but only if silk wasn't also on the ballot.

    I wrote back:

    In my opinion, Romney has too much ground to make up in order to win in Oklahoma. The latest SurveyUSA poll, taken over the weekend, had McCain at 37, Huckabee at 32, and Romney far back at 23. So Huckabee only needs to make up 5 points to win Oklahoma and deny those delegates to McCain, while Romney would have to make up 14 points. Huckabee has a certain core support in the state which has been fairly constant, and while Romney has gained some ground since Thompson left the race, I don't think he's likely to cut into Huckabee's base enough to overtake McCain. Instead, Romney would just succeed in splitting the conservative vote and letting McCain squeak by with a tiny plurality.

    That SurveyUSA poll was almost dead on. Locally-based Sooner Poll, which had McCain at 41 and Huckabee and Romney far back at 19 and 17, needs to recalibrate.

    Another oddity about the Oklahoma vote -- John Edwards gets 10%. Dissatisfaction with the field? Are these DINOs who always vote for the GOP candidate in November?

    California polls haven't been closed long. Nearly all of the delegates will be allocated based on congressional district results, but so far, McCain is leading in every single district. What's curious is that Giuliani is winning 10 to 15% of the vote in nearly every district. Most likely this is an artifact of early voting. Remember that Giuliani was leading here until he dropped out after Florida. Here's another case where Instant Runoff Voting would have helped; it would have allowed early voters who liked Giuliani to still have a say in the choice between McCain and Romney.

    There are a few California districts -- and it's early yet -- where Huckabee may have cost Romney some delegates.

    One more thing about Oklahoma: I read on NRO's Corner that the South's support for Huckabee is because of a large number of evangelicals who could never vote for a Mormon. It's worth pointing out that just two years ago, Oklahoma Republicans gave a Mormon the nomination for governor, with a clear majority of the vote in a race against two well-qualified opponents (one an evangelical and one a Catholic). The difference between Ernest Istook and Mitt Romney for Oklahoma conservatives: Istook was a consistent conservative from his days in talk radio to his years in Congress. There were no flip-flops or conveniently-timed conversions.

    On the second ballot at the Republican state convention, Mike Huckabee was awarded the 18 West Virginia national convention delegates at stake today.

    Here's the first ballot result:

    Mitt Romney had 464 votes (41%)
    Mike Huckabee had 375 votes (33%)
    John McCain had 176 votes (16%)
    Ron Paul had 118 votes (10%)

    Convention rules allowed only the top three vote getters to move forward, so Paul was eliminated. The second ballot result:

    Mitt Romney has 521 votes
    Mike Huckabee has 567 votes
    John McCain has 12 votes

    It's surprising that McCain's supporters defected to other candidates, rather than sticking with their man through a second round. Had no one received a majority on the second ballot, the top two would have gone on to a third round.

    So the first item in my rosy scenario has come true. The next waypoint is Georgia, where polls close at 6 p.m. Central, and where the latest poll has Huckabee and McCain tied at 32% each, with Romney close behind at 29%.

    The last poll taken in Oklahoma before today's primary was done over the weekend. SurveyUSA interviewed 445 likely Oklahoma Republican primary voters on Feb. 2 and 3, with all surveys completed before the Super Bowl kickoff.

    The percentages: McCain 37, Huckabee 32, Romney 23, Paul 3, Other 2, Undecided 2. McCain's support remained level from the previous week's SurveyUSA poll, Huckabee gained 4 points, and Romney gained 4, while Paul lost 3. Huckabee leads McCain by three points among voters under 50 (49% of the overall sample), but trails McCain by seven points among voters over 50. Huckabee's strongest group is voters 35-49 -- he leads McCain by 8 points. McCain does best among voters over 65. Of self-described conservatives (68% of the sample), Huckabee had 37%, McCain 29%, Romney 28%.

    What this seems to show is movement toward Huckabee, who is firmly in second place, nine points ahead of Romney, and Huckabee appears to be the only candidate with a chance of overtaking John McCain and winning Oklahoma. As I explained earlier, Oklahoma Republicans who want anyone other than McCain to be our nominee are best served by casting a tactical vote for Huckabee. These new poll numbers confirm that judgment.

    Final polls elsewhere show a tightening of the race in the five other southern states. Huckabee leads in Alabama, is tied with McCain in Georgia, and is two points behind McCain in Missouri and Tennessee. Huckabee should have no trouble winning his home state of Arkansas.

    In the South at least, a vote for Romney is a vote for McCain to sew up the nomination today. A vote for Huckabee is a vote to keep the door open for anyone but McCain to emerge as the nominee.

    SurveyUSA also polled Oklahoma Democrats: Clinton 54, Obama 27, other 15, undecided 3. Hillary Clinton leads in every category. The only place it's close is among 18-34 year olds, where she has only a four-point lead over Barack Obama.

    A friend asked me about the candidates for Office 3 on the Tulsa Technology Center board and for Union Public Schools, specifically about their party registration and background. School board races are non-partisan, but party registration is a piece of information that some voters like to have.

    You may also want to look over the complete questionnaire responses submitted to the Tulsa World and the League of Women Voters (400 KB PDF).

    Bea Cramer, the incumbent, is the only Republican running for the Tulsa Tech seat. Tim Bradley and Mitchell Garrett are Democrats. Garrett, son of Muskogee trial lawyer David Garrett, parachuted into House District 23 to run against State Rep. Sue Tibbs in 2004. During that election campaign Mitchell Garrett was simultaneously registered as a voter in both Tulsa and Muskogee Counties.

    The incumbent for Union Public Schools Office 3 filed for re-election, but Jim Williams announced on January 24 that he was withdrawing his candidacy. His name will still appear on the ballot. The only other candidate is Albert Shults, a Republican. The choice for voters in the Union district is to elect Shults or to let the other board members pick a replacement for Williams. If Williams is re-elected, he would presumably resign, with the vacancy to be filled by the board.

    In Broken Arrow, both Keven Rondot (the incumbent, appointed to an unexpired term about a year ago) and Shari Wilkins are registered Republicans.

    In Glenpool, the incumbent, Michael J. Thompson is a Democrat; Kenneth Ball is a Republican.

    In Jenks, Joseph Hidy, the incumbent, and Kanna Adams, are both Republicans.

    In Liberty, Richard L. Moore, Jr., the incumbent, is a Republican, and Billie Blackburn is a Democrat.

    In Sperry, Tim Teel, the incumbent, and Derrell Morrow are both Republicans.

    In Tulsa, Radious Y. Guess and Brian T. Hunt are both Republicans. (No incumbent -- it's an open seat.)

    Tsunami Tuesday guide

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    I don't do predictions, but I will set out a rosy scenario: If John McCain is to be stopped from all but clinching the nomination, the following is the way the evening would need to unfold.

    All times Central. Delegate numbers will differ from what you see elsewhere, because I only include delegates who will be elected or bound by tomorrow's events. In many states with binding primaries, the state's three RNC members are not bound to any candidate. I am relying on the excellent The Green Papers website, along with state election board and state Republican party websites, for information on rules, delegate counts, and poll-closing times.

    Going into Tuesday:

    The BatesLine Strict-Constructionist Delegate Count has McCain with 86 delegates, Romney with 32, Huckabee with 13, Thompson 3, and Hunter 1. That accounts for primaries in NH, MI, SC, and FL, and the Wyoming county conventions which elected 12 delegates. I don't make any estimates based on the straw polls taken at the Iowa, Nevada, or Maine caucuses; the real decisions about national delegates won't be made until later stages of the process and will be influenced by what happens between now and then.

    Sometime during the day:

    West Virginia state convention (official website): It's only for 18 delegates, but this could be the most fun event of the entire day. The state party designed a process that got thousands of West Virginia Republicans to register and vote for state delegates online and got the attention of the major candidates. Huckabee, Romney, and Paul are all showing up to speak; former La. Gov. Buddy Roemer will speak on McCain's behalf. Over a thousand delegates have been certified; most were selected earlier this month by Internet voting. The candidates for state delegate identified themselves by their presidential preference. Elected officials and members of county and state executive committees make up the rest of the convention.

    If no one has a majority after the first ballot, the top three will go on to the second ballot. If no one gets a majority again, a third ballot between the top two will decide the winner of all 18 delegates. (A later primary will choose 9 more delegates.) As of January 18, before Thompson and Giuliani left the race, 520 were uncommitted, Romney 184, Huckabee 132, Thompson 103, Paul 68, Giuliani 41, McCain 12, Hunter 4. It's wide open, and it may come down to how well the candidates connect with the delegates in their speeches. For that reason, I'll predict that Huckabee will win. Huckabee 18.

    6:00 p.m.

    Georgia primary: 33 statewide delegates (including 3 RNC members who are bound to the statewide winner), 39 congressional district delegates. Winner-take-all by congressional district and statewide. Huckabee wins statewide, but by a very close margin, taking 9 of 13 CDs, losing 3 CDs to McCain and one to Romney. Huckabee 60, McCain 9, Romney 3.

    7:00 p.m.

    Alabama primary: 24 statewide delegates, 21 congressional district delegates (3 each for seven districts). Proportional allocation with a 15% threshold. Breaking 50% wins all the delegates. Huckabee wins, but close enough that McCain takes a couple of congressional districts. Romney gets a proportion of the statewide delegates. Huckabee 23, McCain 16, Romney 6.

    Connecticut primary: 27 delegates, winner-take-all. McCain 27.

    Delaware primary: 18 delegates, winner-take-all. McCain 18.

    Illinois primary: 57 congressional district delegates, with each district having 2, 3, or 4 delegates depending on how strongly they supported Bush in 2004. Ignore the statewide "beauty contest" vote. Voters will vote directly for delegates and alternates; each delegate candidate's presidential preference is listed on the ballot. Effectively this will be winner-take-all by congressional district. McCain wins statewide, but Romney wins several CDs downstate. McCain 33, Romney 24.

    Massachusetts primary: 10 statewide delegates, 30 congressional district delegates (3 each for ten districts). Proportional allocation with a 15% threshold. Romney wins. Romney 27, McCain 13.

    Missouri primary: 58 delegates, winner-take-all. Huckabee 58.

    New Jersey primary: 52 delegates, winner-take-all. McCain 52.

    Oklahoma primary: 23 statewide delegates, 15 congressional district delegates. Winner-take-all by congressional district and statewide. Huckabee wins statewide, but by a very close margin, winning CDs 1, 2, and 3. CDs 4 and 5 go to McCain. Huckabee 32, McCain 6.

    Tennessee primary: 25 statewide delegates, 27 congressional district delegates (3 each for nine districts). Proportional allocation with a 20% threshold. Breaking 66% wins all the delegates. The ballot is daunting (PDF sample here of the ballot Instapundit will see in Knox County) -- you cast your presidential preference, then you vote for 12 statewide delegates and three congressional district delegates. Order of finish among delegates for a certain candidate determines who gets to go to St Paul. For example, if Huckabee gets 55% of the vote in a congressional district, the top two vote-getting Huckabee delegates in that CD are elected to go to the RNC. Huckabee wins, but everybody gets some delegates. Huckabee 27, McCain 16, Romney 9.

    7:30 p.m.

    Arkansas primary: 19 statewide delegates, 12 congressional district delegates (3 each for four districts). Proportional allocation with a 10% threshold. Breaking 50% wins all the delegates. Huckabee wins and breaks 50% in each of the congressional districts. Huckabee 31.

    8:00 p.m.

    New York primary: 87 delegates, winner-take-all. McCain 87.

    9:00 p.m.

    Arizona primary: 50 delegates, winner-take-all. McCain 50.

    Utah primary: 36 delegates, winner-take-all. One of Romney's three home states. Romney 36.

    10:00 p.m.

    California primary: 11 statewide delegates, 159 congressional district delegates. Winner-take-all by congressional district and statewide. Romney wins, but McCain takes 20 congressional districts, winning heavily Democratic districts that don't contribute as much to the statewide total. Romney 110, McCain 60.

    Montana presidential preference caucus: 25 delegates are at stake. Each county will hold a caucus. State, county, and local elected officials, and state, county, and precinct party officials will be the only eligible voters. The precinct party officials were elected at precinct caucuses back in December. Each county caucus will take a presidential preference vote toward the end of their meeting. Montana's delegates will be bound to the candidate with the most votes statewide. Caucus times vary, but all the results ought to be in by 10 p.m. our time. Romney should win this one. Romney 25.

    North Dakota presidential preference caucus: 26 delegates are at stake. Polls will be open from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. local time. Results are due in to state HQ by 10 p.m. Central. If someone gets two-thirds of the vote, they get all the delegates. Otherwise, delegates are allocated proportionately with a 15% threshold. No absentee ballots. (Sorry, Julie.) No polling. I'm guessing that Romney will win this one, but the other two will pick up delegates as well. Romney 12, McCain 9, Huckabee 5.

    Other events:

    Alaska Republican district conventions: Electing delegates to the state convention. No national delegates will be chosen and no straw poll will be taken, as far as I can find.

    Colorado Republican precinct caucuses: A straw poll will be taken, but no national delegates will be chosen or allocated. Delegates will be elected to the county assemblies and district conventions, but they aren't likely to be selected based on presidential preference.

    Minnesota Republican precinct caucuses: A straw poll will be taken, but no national delegates will be chosen or allocated. Delegates will be elected to the equivalent of county conventions, but they aren't likely to be selected based on presidential preference.

    Bottom line:

    In this admittedly rosy scenario, which requires anti-McCain forces to coalesce around the strongest alternative in each state, Huckabee would win 7 states, McCain 6, and Romney 5, but McCain would win 396 delegates, Huckabee 254, and Romney 252. McCain is doing best in winner-take-all states; Huckabee and Romney's best states have some degree of proportionality. This would bring the totals up to McCain 482, Romney 284, Huckabee 267.

    If instead voters jump on McCain's bandwagon, he could easily win 12 of the 18 contests, and come away with over 600 delegates.

    Bill Quick has the compiled the "List of Infamy" -- ten specific problems with John McCain's record, with links to backup material. Quick includes the McCain-Feingold bill against freedom of political speech, the McCain-Kennedy bill in support of open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, McCain's attack on the veterans who served with John Kerry and exposed inconsistencies and misrepresentations in his account of his war record, his support for constitutional rights for enemy combatants, and his flirtations with leaving the Republican Party and handing control of the U. S. Senate over to left wing extremists.

    If you're persuaded that Republicans should make the effort to deny John McCain the nomination, here's how to do it and how you can help.

    MORE: Charlie Meadows of Oklahoma Conservative PAC, a Ron Paul supporter, had this say about strategic voting on Tuesday:

    Let me say this. If you just can't bring yourself to vote for Ron Paul but you don't want to see John McCain win the delegates from Oklahoma, I would suggest you cast a strategic vote. Mike Huckabee started out with a large polling lead in Oklahoma. In recent weeks, McCain has closed the gap. For whatever reason, Romney just hasn't sparked much interest among Oklahomans.

    Therefore, if stopping McCain is your highest priority, you should vote for Huckabee. The natural inclination to stop McCain would be to vote for Romney as the liberal media has succeeded in creating the perception, if not reality, that the race is coming down to two candidates, McCain (their pick) and Romney. However, Romney is too far behind in Oklahoma to overtake McCain, so a vote for Romney helps McCain as the two front runners in Oklahoma are he and Huckabee.

    If you want to help Mike Huckabee in Oklahoma and other Southern states where he has the best chance to win and deny those delegates to John McCain, you can sign up as a "Huckabee Ranger" and make phone calls to voters in those key states. (I don't know if Mitt Romney has a similar program. I suspect he can afford paid phone calls to voters.)

    Before heading off to the symphony, I was on the air once again with Elvis Polo for the first hour of his 6 to 9 pm Saturday night show on 1170 KFAQ, talking about the presidential race and Tsunami Tuesday, which includes Oklahoma's primary.

    Elvis asked me if John McCain will have the nomination sewn up when Tuesday's results are counted. I said that there was still a way to stop his momentum and keep open the possibility of Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, or even -- if no one has a majority of delegates going into the convention -- someone else being the Republican nominee. But it will require some strategic thinking by the Republicans who vote on Tuesday.

    It comes down to this: If you don't want McCain to be the nominee, you need to vote for the non-McCain candidate who has the best poll numbers in your state.

    The people who are saying a vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain are wrong. That's only true in the states where Huckabee is in third place. In Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee, a vote for Romney would effectively be a vote to hand McCain the nomination on Tuesday.

    In many of the states that are voting Tuesday, the poll numbers break down like this:

    McCain - 35
    2nd place candidate - 25
    3rd place candidate - 15
    Ron Paul - 5
    Voters who can't support McCain but can't figure who to vote for - 20

    The tricky thing is that Huckabee is that second place candidate in the Southern states and Romney is that second place candidate in the west and northeast.

    Here's the problem: If a majority of voters in that undecided anti-McCain category move toward the 3rd place candidate, McCain wins with 35% of the vote. For example, assume that 20% breaks 11% for the 3rd place candidate and 9% for the 2nd place candidate:

    McCain - 35
    2nd place candidate - 34
    3rd place candidate - 26
    Ron Paul - 5

    If that sort of thing happens in state after state on Tsunami Tuesday, McCain would manage a near sweep despite the fact that there are two Republican voters who don't want him as president for every one that does. The low winning percentage won't fit into a headline or a soundbite, and the TV networks would oversimplify the situation into a won-lost record. Romney and Huckabee would be practically finished, and McCain would be the nominee presumptive.

    If instead, that 20% block of anti-McCain voters vote strategically for the second place candidate -- Huckabee in some states, Romney in others -- McCain would win only a state or two, and the rest would be split between the other two candidates. No one would come out of Tsunami Tuesday an overwhelming lead in the delegate count. The campaign would continue, with the possibility of new candidates entering later primaries and no one having a majority of delegates going into the Republican National Convention.

    The most recent Oklahoma poll, done about a week ago by Survey USA, had McCain moving into the lead, Huckabee about where he had been two weeks earlier, and Romney moving up from single digits.

    McCain 37
    Huckabee 28
    Romney 19
    Giuliani 6
    Paul 6
    Other/Undecided 5

    A look at the details shows that Romney's support is softest -- 48% say they could change their minds -- with McCain next at 42% and Huckabee at 39%. Huckabee's numbers have been pretty stable, suggesting that his supporters decided sometime ago, while Romney's backers in Oklahoma have only recently and reluctantly made him their choice. It seems possible for Huckabee to catch McCain here; Romney would have a much steeper hill to climb.

    Here's the bottom line for Oklahoma voters:

    If you're an Oklahoma Republican and want Mike Huckabee to have a chance at the nomination, vote for Huckabee. You won't be accidentally helping McCain.

    If you're an Oklahoma Republican and want Mitt Romney to have a chance at the nomination, vote for Huckabee, even if you don't particularly like Huckabee. Huckabee has the best shot at denying McCain the delegates and the win here in Oklahoma and thus at slowing McCain's national momentum, which would give Romney the opportunity to fight on.

    If you're an Oklahoma Republican and you don't like anyone left in the race -- this is my category --vote for Huckabee. Denying McCain a win here helps to stop his momentum and leaves the door open for a new candidate to be chosen at the convention.

    Now all this second-guessing and predicting what your fellow voters will do would be unnecessary if we had a sensible voting system like Instant Runoff Voting, where you could vote your conscience secure in the knowledge that your vote will not inadvertently help your least preferred candidate. Using proportional delegate allocation, where you don't have to finish first to gain delegates, would be another way to make the delegate allocation more closely reflect the opinions of the voters.

    An article by Newsweek science writer Sharon Begley points to a voting methods demonstration on the American Statistical Association website where you can vote by the traditional method (pick your favorite), by the approval method (check all candidates that are acceptable), and by the instant runoff method (rank the candidates in order). The election method used affects the order of finish. Begley writes:

    For anyone who believes in democracy, this is a little disturbing. What it means is that "election outcomes can more accurately reflect the choice of an election rule than the voters' wishes," writes mathematician Donald Saari of the University of California, Irvine. One candidate could win with some rules and lose with others. In fact, as mathematicians analyze voting systems, they are turning up other oddities that can yield a "winner" who does not reflect the will of even a plurality, much less a majority. The discoveries are especially relevant this year. "The severity of the problem escalates with the number of candidates," notes Saari, and one thing this primary season has is a lot of still-viable candidates.

    One of the most surprising aberrations mathematicians have found comes in a four-way race. There, of course, one candidate wins a plurality and another comes in last. Saari examines what happens if the third-place candidate drops out and, in the next round of voting, people have the same ordered preference as before (A is the first choice of the most, followed by B, then D).

    She then presents a four-candidate scenario where one candidate dropping out completely inverts the order of finish using the traditional single-preference, first-past-the-post voting system.

    While we can hope that the Republican convention rules committee will pass improvements to this system this fall, it will come too late for this campaign season.

    However much they stink, the rules are what they are, and if you're an Oklahoman who doesn't want one of the least conservative Republicans in the Senate to get the nomination, you need to vote for Mike Huckabee on Tuesday.

    UPDATE: Numbers USA, the anti-amnesty organization, explains when to vote for Romney and when to vote for Huckabee in order to cast an anti-McCain vote in each of Tuesday's states. The only disagreement with my list is Georgia, where more recent polling shows Huckabee, not Romney, in second place.

    "I'll rely on people to judge me by the company that I keep." -- John McCain, January 30, 2008

    I'd hope that, whatever one's opinion on how to deal with illegal immigration, all Americans would agree that the goal is that people coming to live in this country would become fully connected with the American language and culture and to think of themselves as Americans first.

    Juan Hernandez doesn't agree. He holds dual citizenship in Mexico and the United States -- he was born in Texas -- and he served in the government of Mexican President Vicente Fox as a cabinet official, head of the President's Office for Mexicans Abroad. He is an advocate for a free flow of people across the US-Mexico border. He is an advocate for keeping Mexicans in the United States from "going native," from assimilating. Instead, Hernandez wants Mexican-Americans -- whether new immigrants or in the US for generations as citizens -- to continue to see themselves as Mexicans first and to retain a closer emotional, linguistic, and, most of all, financial bond to the country of their ancestors rather than the country where they have made their home.

    John McCain has chosen Dr. Hernandez to be his director of Hispanic outreach.

    Here's a montage of Dr. Hernandez's TV appearances which will give you a sense of the man and his views.

    An interview of Hernandez by Michelle Malkin was excerpted in the above video. You can see the entire segment on this Hot Air entry. And here's an entry specifically on Hernandez turning a blind eye to identity theft. And here's more about Hernandez from Michelle Malkin's blog.

    McCain claims that he learned his lesson after the conservative grassroots rose up last year to defeat his McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill. But the company he keeps with Dr. Juan Hernandez suggests otherwise.

    On Tuesday, I'm voting for whichever candidate has a shot at finishing first in Oklahoma ahead of John McCain. (At the moment, that appears to be Mike Huckabee.) I want to stop his momentum toward the nomination. Part of it is that I don't want anyone to steamroll to a majority of delegates by finishing first with only 35% of the vote in a bunch of states. Part of it is that none of the remaining candidates are consistent conservatives, and I'd like to give the delegates at the national convention the chance to come up with a better choice.

    There are plenty of reasons to admire John McCain, both for his military service and his service in Congress. He is solid on the War on Terror. From a conservative perspective, he would still be a better pick for President than whoever the Democrats nominate. But there are plenty of reasons why a McCain presidency would be the worst of any realistic option remaining to Republican primary voters. Between now and Tuesday I'll post some of those reasons here. Here's the first one:

    In 2001, when the GOP was hanging by a thread to a majority in the Senate, John McCain negotiated with Senate Democratic leaders about leaving the Republican Party and organizing with the Democrats, giving the Democrats the majority and putting key Senate committee chairmanships in the hands of extreme left-wingers. (Via Ace of Spades HQ.)

    At Tuesday's Republican caucuses in Tulsa County, a straw poll was taken. Here are the results:


    Governor Mike Huckabee 28%
    Governor Mitt Romney 27%
    Congressman Ron Paul 25%
    Senator John McCain 13%
    Mayor Rudy Guiliani 4%
    Congressman Tom Tancredo 1%
    Congresman Duncan Hunter 1%
    Alan Keyes .5%
    Senator Fred Thompson .5%

    You might notice that Congressman Paul had a strong showing of supporters at caucuses across the county -- more about that later.

    The caucuses also selected delegates to the Tulsa County Convention on Feb. 23 and considered resolutions for the party platform. Note that the allocation of Oklahoma's delegates to the National Convention to presidential candidates is entirely dependent on the results of next Tuesday's primary.

    Survey USA has a new tracking poll of 502 Oklahoma Republicans from Sunday which shows John McCain with 37%, Mike Huckabee with 28%, and Mitt Romney with 19%. That's an 11 point boost for Romney, a gain of 8 points for McCain, but a drop of only 3 points for Huckabee. Part of what we're seeing is the redistribution of Fred Thompson's 13% in the previous Survey USA poll from January 11-13. Giuliani's numbers also dropped from 11% to 6% -- I'd guess most of that went to McCain. The pollsters warn that Florida results today "can and will color what happens in Oklahoma and the other states voting on February 5. Expect further buffeting in future SurveyUSA tracking polls."

    Keep an eye on the RealClearPolitics poll page for the Oklahoma Republican primary to see how the race develops.

    Survey USA also polled Oklahoma Democrats -- Clinton leads with Edwards in second place. Clinton's margin has narrowed slightly in the last two weeks.

    From a story in The Hill, about the possibility that John Edwards could be a kingmaker at the Democratic convention:

    At the Democratic convention this August, delegates will be allowed to vote freely even if they are already pledged to a candidate, [Georgetown professor Stephen] Wayne explained. But he expected that Edwards's delegates would do his bidding.

    Wayne said that Edwards's delegates have been "hand-picked" because of their loyalty.

    "That loyalty would probably extend to the convention, though Democrats have a rule that would not impose loyalty," he explained.

    Wayne, however, predicted that either Clinton or Obama would probably wrap up the nomination before the convention, but conceded "anything is possible."

    If it's true that Democratic delegates aren't formally pledged to a candidate, that's news to me. In 1980, when Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter, Kennedy tried unsuccessfully to get a convention rule modified (rule 16(c), if memory serves) so that delegates were free to vote their conscience regardless of which candidate they had been bound to support.

    Can anyone confirm whether Prof. Wayne is correct?

    UPDATE: recyclemichael provides a link to this MyDD article, which cites specific party rules that seem to prove the point. And that article links to this August 12, 1980 New York Times article about Kennedy's rules maneuver at the 1980 convention. My memory was a bit off -- it was rule F(3)(c):

    The rule that took force as a result of the vote reads as follows: F. Voting 3) Roll-Call Votes: (c) All delegates to the National Convention shall be bound to vote for the Presidential candidate whom they were elected to support for at least the first convention ballot, unless released in writing by the Presidential candidate. Delegates who seek to violate this rule may be replaced with an alternate of the same Presidential preference by the Presidential candidate or that candidate's authorized representative(s) at any time up to and including the Presidential balloting at the national convention.

    Jackie Broyles is heartbroken, but Dunlap is determined to "take Fred Thompson and make Fred Thompson-aid":

    You can bid on Jackie's painting of Fred on eBay. Don't miss the Q&A.

    "Don't you want to see an old man's searing pain turned into a colorful conversation piece?"

    Farewell, Fred

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    It's official:

    Today I have withdrawn my candidacy for President of the United States. I hope that my country and my party have benefited from our having made this effort. Jeri and I will always be grateful for the encouragement and friendship of so many wonderful people.

    James Taranto provides the traditional Bye-Ku:

    They called him "tortoise"
    But now the man with no hair
    Has got out of ours

    (That page has links to earlier Bye-Kus, and this page has Bye-Kus from 2004.)

    For all the talk about lethargy and fire in the belly, what really seemed to be missing from the Thompson campaign was effective organization. Even for something as small scale as a race for City Council, you need someone with organizational skills and preferably some past campaign experience -- some idea of what needs to happen and when. There also has to be effective communication and coordination, and all this needs to be handled by someone other than the candidate, so that the candidate can focus on raising funds and meeting voters.

    Supporters of Thompson are offering up numerous anecdotes that confirm that impression of the Fred 08 campaign. Fred had plenty of admirers who offered skills, time, and access to publicity, but the campaign had no effective means of harnessing all that good will.

    See-Dubya:

    I sent off a resume to the campaign in, oh, seems like about May, and never heard from them. Not even a thanks for your interest. I'd like to think there were a couple of things on my resume that would have caught their eye, and I was ready to move out of California (no great loss) but whatever. Obviously it didn't dampen my convictions that Fred was the right guy. Two weeks ago I was contacted about volunteering in California--speaking to media, that kind of thing--and I responded I'd be happy to. Nothing. Crickets.

    Bryan Preston:

    Early in the Fred Phenomenon I tried and tried and tried to lock in a sit-down with Fred to talk to Michelle on camera. This was last spring and summer, before his official announcement that he was even jumping in, when he lived in McLean, VA and wasn't running around the country campaigning. We were offering time here on Hot Air to make his case and show his stuff. But we could never get a straight answer out of the campaign. And this was in spite of the fact that I was promised more than once that we would get an interview, it was just a question of timing and logistics. It wasn't a case of getting the runaround. It just, from the outside, felt like there were an awful lot of moving parts that hadn't been attached to a functional machine yet.

    It's surprising to me that the Thompson campaign never held (as far as I know) a teleconference to keep supportive bloggers in the loop -- many other campaigns have.

    During the three-day filing period for the Oklahoma primary back in December, I became concerned when, at the end of the second day, Thompson's name wasn't on the list of candidates who had filed. I wanted to make sure the deadline hadn't escaped the campaign's attention, so I decided to call someone.

    I went to the fred08.com website and could not find any contact information for a national campaign office. There were campaign offices listed for Iowa and New Hampshire, so I called the New Hampshire office. The apathetic-sounding young man on the phone said that the office's director was out, didn't know when he would be back, and not to worry, he was sure that the campaign knew about the situation and would take care of it.

    I got better results when I called the Iowa office and spoke to a young woman who happened to be a native Tulsan. She promised to make some calls and to get back to me -- and she actually did. An e-mail to Steven Smith, who ran the Blogs for Fred mailing list, also got a quick response -- the campaign had filed already but had just learned that there was a problem with the paperwork.

    At a Christmas reception I ran into a prominent Republican activist who had signed on early as a point of contact for the campaign in Oklahoma. I asked him how things were going and he gave me a kind of disgruntled shrug. He was hearing crickets, too.

    About a week and a half ago I was contacted by Jamison Faught of the Muskogee County Republican Club. They were putting on a presidential forum, with representatives speaking on behalf of the Republican candidates. I was asked if I could show up that night to speak on Fred's behalf. Jamison told me that he had asked the Thompson campaign a month earlier to line up a speaker, and they contacted him the day before the forum to tell him they couldn't get anyone to do it. So Jamison took it upon himself to contact me and some other known Thompson supporters in Oklahoma to see if someone could step in at the last minute.

    Remember that Thompson had been endorsed by Sen. Jim Inhofe, Congressman John Sullivan, Corporation Commissioner Jeff Cloud, former GOP state chairman Steve Edwards, and KFAQ morning hosts Gwen Freeman and Chris Medlock. Other activists and bloggers had announced their support for him. I'm amazed that the campaign did not have a list of available surrogates and well-connected activists to contact when opportunities like this arose. Not that I'm anything special, but I can string a few sentences together, and I have a means for getting information out. Within a few days of receiving a request for a speaker, Fred's supporters in Oklahoma should have heard from the campaign asking if we knew of anyone who could speak on his behalf at this event.

    Steve Largent's 2002 campaign for governor had a similar problem. The professional campaign folks didn't seem to know what to do with the grassroots types who wanted to help Steve get elected. Contrast that with the Tom Coburn campaign two years later, which was very effective in leveraging grassroots support.

    If any campaign should have been a model for Thompson, it was Coburn's successful campaign for Senate. Coburn entered the race reluctantly and late, in response to a great deal of encouragement from activists who were less than enthused about Kirk Humphreys. I wish I'd thought to make that point to someone in the campaign last summer, but I'm not sure I could have found the right person to carry that message where it needed to go.

    For most of Fred's supporters (but not for all) the campaign's failure to plug us in effectively didn't dampen our desire to see him get elected. Thompson holds the right positions on nearly all the issues, and those positions have a solid underpinning in sound principle. Even when he's wrong on an issue, it's a difference of opinion on the application of a principle, not on the principle itself.

    I'm sorry he's dropping out. He's still on the Oklahoma ballot, and I may still vote for him, but that will depend on how Florida affects the race. If a tactical vote for a different candidate can deprive the post-Florida front-runner of some delegates and momentum, I'll do that, as I think an open convention would be the best outcome for the Republicans this year.

    MORE: Dan Paden weighs his options and settles on Huckabee.

    Ace agrees about the core of Fred's appeal and tells Romney what he will have to do to pick up those voters:

    A lot of former Fred supporters, and possible Romney supporters generally, acknowledge that Romney says mostly the right things. The trouble is, he seems to offer these glibly as crowd-pleasing platitudes, and they're not sure if he actually believes them.

    Fred, I think, had a lot of enthusiasm because he didn't just say the right thing, he gave the right reason for believing the right thing (and the right subsidiary reason for believing the right reason). His conservatism, to many, was deeper. He didn't just have the conservative answer, but the underlying conservative assumptions supporting that answer.

    If Mitt wants to seal the deal with a lot of conservatives out there, he'll offer a "What I Believe" type internet address, maybe 15 or even 20 minutes long, explaining his thinking. Not just the surface conservative conclusions, but the underlying conservative thinking. Heartfelt and inartful (not so much smiling, few applause lines, generally stodgy and somewhat wonky (at least in broad principles, not techno-wonky) and designed to appeal to conservative political geeks, not a general audience) would be the right tone.

    Ace also has this intriguing entry on the "Dark Star" effect in political reporting: A reporter is made privy to a rumor about a candidate, believable but not substantial enough to report. He lets his colleagues in on the rumor, and it necessarily affects their attitude toward and coverage of the subject of the rumor, just as a large but invisible object like a black hole or dark star bends gravity. The effect can only be seen indirectly:

    But the press also seems to suffer from the non-political bias of thinking they know more than they actually know, behaving as if a fact is "confirmed" when it hasn't been confirmed at all. And they don't actually print these Phantom Facts, knowing there's no actual confirmation of them -- technically abiding by the rules of journalism. But then they shape their coverage to reflect these unconfirmed Phantom Facts, putting these little nuggets of non-information out there through slant and angle.

    Wouldn't it be far more honest to admit to this stuff right up front? Is it more "fair" or "honest" for the press to keep the rumors and beliefs secret from the public (and immune to refutation) while allowing these exact same rumors and beliefs to shape, distort, and (mis)inform its actual published news product?

    "Immune to refutation" is key -- if the rumor isn't public, how can a candidate effectively rebut or refute it?

    The rumor in Thompson's case is this, according to Fox News' Carl Cameron:

    Back in March of 07 at the CPAC convention in DC several former Fred Thompson Congressional staffers told me Fred Thompson was thinking about a run. Some of his Tennessee cronies had been talking him up too.

    I reported first that he was eyeing a White House bid. At the time several insiders told me OFF THE RECORD that it was largely a trial ballon to guage his popularity and float his name as a possible vice presidential nominee. I was sworn to silence.

    Those insiders have now lifted the conditions on our conversations. From March to August of 07 through postponed announcement days, staff changes, firings, resignations and general disarray the Thompson camp was stunned by the incredibly positive response and didn't really know how to manage it. The trial balloon soared mighty high and he found himself being dragged into a race that he was not even sure how to run.

    State of the race

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    Moxie is puzzled:

    I'm having a tough time understanding exactly WHO is voting in the Republican primaries and caucuses. Because it should be Republicans.

    How is it that McCain, Romney and Huckabee keep winning, when good, solid conservatives like Duncan Hunter, Fred "sleepy" Thompson and RUDY barely register?

    I wouldn't count Rudy as a good, solid conservative, but still, she has a point.

    We haven't had one primary yet in which only registered Republicans are allowed to vote.

    New Hampshire has registration by party, but allowed independents ("undeclared voters") to vote in either primary.

    Michigan and South Carolina don't have registration by party. Michigan's Democratic primary was meaningless, so Democrats would have been tempted to vote in the Republican primary. South Carolina's Democratic primary isn't until next Saturday, so centrists may have decided to go ahead and vote in the Republican primary.

    Florida's is the first primary where you must be a registered Republican to vote in the Republican primary.

    Tonight's result is interesting because it appears that McCain and Huckabee each won three of South Carolina's six congressional districts. Huckabee won everything north of I-20 toward the mountains; McCain won everything to the south toward the ocean.

    South Carolina is winner-take-all by congressional district. It is also one of the states that has been penalized with the loss of half its delegates for going too early, but it's not clear whether the lost delegates will be taken from the statewide delegates or from the congressional district delegates. If it's the former, then Huckabee wins 9 delegates and McCain wins 15. If it's the latter, then Huckabee wins 3 and McCain wins 21. I'm going to bet that the former method is used, but it may depend on which candidate has the most supporters in the state's Republican hierarchy.

    CNN is keeping a delegate count and they are kind enough to show their work, detailing which delegates come from which states. I think they're wrong, however, in estimating the makeup of Iowa and Nevada delegations based on straw poll results at their caucuses. The preferences of the actual delegates elected to the convention won't be determined until those delegates are elected in April (for Nevada) and June (for Iowa).

    An accurate delegate count should only include those delegates who are bound by primary results plus the announced preferences of delegates who have already been elected to go to the national convention. That means delegates bound by the New Hampshire, Michigan, and South Carolina primaries, plus the announced (but unbound) preferences of the 12 national delegates elected by Wyoming's county conventions two weeks ago, plus any announced (but unbound) preferences of Republican National Committee members who are national convention delegates ex officio.

    NH: McCain 7, Romney 4, Huckabee 1
    MI: Romney 20, McCain 7, Huckabee 3
    SC: McCain 15, Huckabee 9

    So that's McCain 29, Romney 24, Huckabee 13.

    Add in the
    Wyoming results: 9 of the delegates elected at their county conventions said they support Romney, 3 said they support Thompson, and 1 said he supports Hunter. They are free to change their minds between now and the national convention in September, and they may well do so. Adding them in anyway, we get to Romney 33, McCain 29, Huckabee 13, Thompson 3, Hunter 1.

    CNN says they've surveyed RNC members and 6 support Romney, 3 support Huckabee, and 1 supports Giuliani. They are free to change their minds before the convention.

    I wonder if CNN is only surveying RNC members who have already been re-elected. Two of Oklahoma's three RNC members won't be running for re-election; their replacements will be elected in May at the state convention.

    Still, counting those in, we end up at Romney 39, McCain 29, Huckabee 16, Thompson 3, Hunter 1, Giuliani 1. 1,191 is how many you need to be nominated.

    So McCain leads in terms of bound delegates, Romney leads when you include elected, unbound delegates who have announced a preference.

    Florida's 57 delegates will go to the candidate with the highest vote total -- winner-take-all statewide.

    On February 5, here's how it breaks down. (Delegates bound by the primary vote listed in parentheses. * means RNC members are bound.)

    Winner-take-all, statewide: Arizona (50), Connecticut (27), Delaware (24*), Montana (25*), Missouri (58*), New Jersey (52*), New York (87), Utah (36*), West Virginia (18)

    Winner-take-all, statewide and by congressional district: California (170), Georgia (72), Oklahoma (38)

    Proportional allocation: Alabama (45), Arkansas (31), Massachusetts (40), North Dakota (26*), Tennessee (40)

    Elected, but unbound: Illinois (57)

    Montana and West Virginia are odd cases. Montana holds county conventions involving about 2,000 party officials statewide. A presidential preference poll will be taken and the winner will control all 25 delegates. West Virginia is holding a state convention. A roll call will be taken and if no one has 50% or more, they hold a second ballot with the top three candidates, and if necessary hold a third ballot with the top two. The candidate that prevails takes 18 delegates. Nine more will be allocated in the May primary.

    Illinois has a "beauty contest" primary, but voters also elect national delegates, whose presidential preferences will be listed on the ballot. It appears that, like the Wyoming delegates, presidential preference may help a delegate get elected, but he isn't bound to stay with that preference at the convention.

    So that's 812 more delegates bound and another 57 elected but not bound on Super Duper Tuesday.

    Earlier tonight, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes interviewed Sen. Fred Thompson on their Fox News program. Hannity kept coming back to horse-race type questions and to the baseless allegation that Thompson, in taking on Mike Huckabee during last Thursday's debate, was only acting as a stalking horse for John McCain.

    Hannity asked three times, in one form or another, whether Thompson would now "go after McCain," who is leading in the South Carolina polls. Each time, Thompson replied that he already has been drawing distinctions between his positions and McCain's, had done so during Thursday's debate, and would continue to do so. He pointed out that Huckabee had been in the lead before Thursday and so that's where he focused his attention, but not exclusively. Thompson's response was clear, and it debunked the idea that he was somehow in cahoots with McCain.

    Just a few minutes ago, at about 11:30 central, Hannity was interviewing Newt Gingrich, and Hannity said that he'd asked Thompson three times if he was going to go after McCain, but Thompson didn't answer the question.

    I can't find video of either interview yet, but I'm sure they'll be posted, and I'll add links here when they are available. In the meantime, Hot Air has video of Thompson from Fox News (you know, Hannity's channel) and a transcript of his conversation with Glenn Beck, both from earlier today, making it clear where he thinks McCain is wrong on the issues.

    If Hannity had been watching his own network, he wouldn't have badgered Thompson for no good reason or gone on to mischaracterize the interview.

    I've become accustomed to checking RealClearPolitics every day for the latest polling numbers for key early primary states, and as a Fred Thompson supporter, I was anxious to see the impact of his stellar performance at last Thursday night's Fox News debate on the South Carolina polling numbers.

    All other signs say that it made a difference. The campaign met and far exceeded its fundraising goal to pay for TV, radio, and voter contact efforts in South Carolina. (They've upped the goal twice and need $75,000 to meet that third goal of $1,000,000 raised in a week.) There are reports of standing-room-only crowds and people being turned away from his campaign appearances. Hundreds of supporters have come to the state on their own dime to volunteer for Fred.

    But we haven't seen the polls change because there hasn't been any polling in South Carolina since the January 10 debate. Not a single poll. Michigan has had six polling firms -- three national and three in-state -- in the field with surveys since January 10. Florida, whose primary is still two weeks away, has had two polls in the field since Thursday.

    Because South Carolina is a winner-take-all primary by congressional district, perceptions of a candidate's chances will have an impact on voter decisions. Many voters will limit their decision to those candidates who are within striking distance of first place, to have a chance at impacting who receives the state's delegates. Polls showing a post-debate Thompson surge would help persuade voters who like him on the issues that he has a chance of winning.

    Is there really no polling going on in South Carolina? Are poll results being withheld for some reason? Or is there some truth to Scott Ott's latest satirical news story?

    UPDATE: As a couple of commenters note, Rasmussen has new numbers for South Carolina showing Fred Thompson gaining and Mike Huckabee falling back, both in a virtual tie for second with Mitt Romney and far behind John McCain.

    Also, Survey USA has polled Oklahoma about our February 5 primary. Click the links to see the Republican results and the Democratic results, including crosstabs. A couple of things stand out -- the Thompson gender gap, softness of Huckabee's support, and the difference in Huckabee's support between western and eastern Oklahoma. (Hat tip: The McCarville Report.)

    Mitt Romney cliche count

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    From last night's Late Night with David Letterman:

    (Via Hot Air.)

    I received an urgent e-mail from Jamison Faught of the Muskogee County Republican Club. They're holding a presidential forum tonight, with a supporter of each Republican presidential candidate speaking for 10 minutes on the candidates behalf. He'd like to have a speaker there to represent Fred Thompson, and he contacted me to see if I could help. I can't make it, so I'm throwing the appeal out to you -- if you'd be willing to speak on Fred's behalf, and can be at Jasper's restaurant at 1702 W Okmulgee St. in Muskogee at 7 p.m. tonight, please call Jamison Faught at [redacted] ASAP.

    UPDATE: Richard Engle, an Oklahoman and president of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies, will be speaking on Thompson's behalf.

    (Faught told me that he asked the Thompson campaign a month ago for a speaker, but only yesterday did they notify him that they couldn't find anyone, which raises this nagging question: Shouldn't the Thompson campaign have known that Engle, a fairly prominent activist in his role as head of the "GOP wing of the Republican Party," was one of their supporters and notified him -- and me, and other Oklahomans who signed up as Friends of Fred on the website -- that there was need for a speaker?)

    ... or the Oaxaca caucuses.

    Bill Richardson, D-Mexico?

    Photo by Tulsa County GOP Vice Chairman Frazier Henke.

    (If you don't get the joke, look at the text that C-SPAN posted under Richardson's name. The mistake remained uncorrected for the full length of Richardson's concession speech to his supporters.)

    Tonight Fred Thompson was on Fox News on "The O'Reilly Factor," and he spoke about national security, the situation in Pakistan, and why he's the only consistent conservative in the race.

    Today on his program, Rush Limbaugh asked conservative evangelicals to consider Fred Thompson:

    My question for you evangelicals is this. If you're looking for a real conservative, why are you supporting Huckabee? He's completely discredited himself. What about Fred Thompson?

    Thompson has the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee PAC, which is making an independent mailing to voters in South Carolina in support of his candidacy.

    And in a new video on the Fred '08 website, Thompson talks about moving on to campaign in South Carolina and gives a brief outline of the principles at the heart of his platform.

    Even if you're not in an early primary state, there are several ways you can help the Fred Thompson campaign. The campaign is halfway to its goal of raising $540,000 dollars by Friday to fund ads in South Carolina. You can help by making a contribution of $25, $50, $100 or more.

    Even if you can't contribute financially, the campaign would like Thompson supporters to sign up as "Friends of Fred" -- they'd like to enroll 50,000 new members by Friday.

    If you're already a Friend of Fred, the campaign is asking you to help make phone calls to prospective voters in early primary states. There's a big push tomorrow to make calls into South Carolina between 5 and 9 p.m. Eastern time (4 to 8 p.m. Central).

    Sorry, Rudy: If an immigration reform bill allows illegal aliens to stay in the country and become citizens, it's amnesty, even if they have to pay a financial penalty. Fred Thompson spells it out in last night's WMUR-Facebook-ABC debate:

    (Here's a transcript of the ABC Democrat debate. Here's a transcript of the ABC Republican debate.)

    Earlier today on NBC's Today Show, Thompson responded to yet another stupid "when ya gonna drop out" question by refocusing on his key issues -- addressing the threat of terrorism and the looming entitlement crisis. When reporter Lester Holt pressed, Thompson took a shot at the mainstream media for uncritically broadcasting a rumor of his impending withdrawal, a rumor that likely was started by a campaign that stood to benefit by knocking Fred down by a few points.

    FRED THOMPSON: I'm not going to engage in that -- further beating the process issue to death. We're talking about the future of our country here and the fact that our worst enemies are trying to get their hands on nuclear weapons and we're bankrupting the next generation. That's what I'm talking about. The rest is all speculation and I don't engage in it.

    HOLT: It's a fair point you make; you don't engage in it. But you were the victim of some rumors on this subject of your viability and questions if you would drop out. How much did that hurt you?

    THOMPSON: Well let's think about that. It did hurt me, and the media lapped it up. It was put out by another campaign; made no sense at all.

    HOLT: Which campaign?

    THOMPSON: A few days before the election and made no sense at all, and I was coming strong, and the media took it up, and spread the rumor, and probably cost me two or three points in Iowa. So the lesson there is not, you know, politicians being politicians. The lesson there is that the news media really ought to check these stories out and come to me, and ask me, and take my word for it.

    One commenter at the previous link wrote, "I would consider voting for Fred just for the entertainment value of watching him spend four years slapping around the drooling half-wits in the MSM."

    By the way, Fred Thompson is in second place in the delegate count. Yesterday, twelve Republican county conventions in Wyoming elected the first twelve delegates to the Republican National Convention. The voters in these county conventions were the committeeman and committeewoman for each precinct, plus delegates selected by precinct meetings in December.

    Eight counties elected a Mitt Romney supporter to represent them in the Twin Cities, three counties elected a Fred Thompson supporter as delegate, and one county chose a Duncan Hunter supporter. Two more delegates will be elected at the Republican state convention on May 31.

    One delegate-electing county (Laramie) also elected an alternate delegate, and the eleven counties that didn't elect delegates each elected an alternate. Of the twelve alternates, five support Romney, one each support Thompson, McCain, and Hunter, and four are uncommitted. An alternate only gets to vote at the national convention if his corresponding delegate is unavailable.

    The Wyoming delegates are not bound to stay with their announced preference, unlike many states (e.g. Oklahoma) where delegates are bound to support a candidate based on the primary election result. Nevertheless, the candidates for national delegate announced their presidential preference in their speeches to the county conventions, which undoubtedly influenced the result.

    No national delegates were selected at Iowa's caucuses on Thursday, and the results of the Republican straw poll will likely bear no resemblance to the preferences of the 37 national delegates who will be elected at the Iowa state convention on June 14.

    (A tip of the hat and a deep bow to The Green Papers, a website which has, since its founding in 1999, devoted itself to providing the nitty-gritty details about the process that the mainstream media glosses over.)

    Getting closer to fulfilling a new year's resolution to get a link to my weekly column posted here in a timely fashion: This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is an overview of all the elections Tulsans will be voting in this year. Here are the key dates; read the story for more background on each of the races:

    January 14, 15, 16: Filing for Tulsa City Council and City Auditor.

    February 5: election for school board, Tulsa Technology board, and presidential preference primary. Filing was in December.

    March 4: City of Tulsa primary.

    April 1: City of Tulsa general election, including charter amendments. Tulsa Technology Center board runoff, if needed. (No Tulsa County school board race drew more than two candidates, so all of those races will be settled on February 5.

    June 2, 3, 4: Filing period for federal, state, and county offices.

    July 29: Primary for federal, state, and county offices.

    August 26: Runoff for federal, state, and county offices.

    November 4: General election for federal, state, and county offices.


    Romney ad, vapid and creepy at the same time:

    Via Ross Douthat, who writes:

    With five or so hours to go till the Iowa Caucuses, Mitt Romney has to be judged the frontrunner for the GOP nomination, but it's awfully hard to find anyone not named Hugh Hewitt who seems excited about the prospect. More than enough ink has been spilled on how his political inauthenticity, his consultant-ish pursuit of ideological correctness, has undermined any excitement surrounding his candidacy, replacing it with the resigned, "he's the best we can do" thinking that undergirds the NR endorsement and others like it. (David Brooks' column this weekend offers, I think, the last word on the subject.) For my part, though, the most alienating and off-putting quality of the Romney campaign hasn't been what's he's said, but how he's said it - the words he's chosen and the tone he's employed, which have made following the Romney campaign the equivalent of listening to nails drawn across a chalkboard.

    Lest you think that was just an artifact of filming an ad, I experienced the same creepy feeling watching Romney's post-caucus interview on Fox News.

    Meanwhile, Ed Rollins, a political adviser to Mike Huckabee, did his boss no favors, first by talking within eavesdropping distance of a reporter for Townhall.com:

    At a hole-in-the wall Des Moines eatery, Mike Huckabee's campaign chairman loudly bashed their top rival presidential candidate Mitt Romney and made several predictions to two national television reporters....

    -He distinctly talked about going negative in South Carolina and told someone on the phone to "put some good in there if you have to, with the bad. Do what you gotta do."

    -Rollins let the f-bomb fly twice and told his blonde female dining companion a joke about flying the Confederate flag in the South Carolina state capitol.

    -Rollins indicated several times their campaign was the victim of "dirty tricks" and that they were being unfairly outspent.

    Then by showing his posterior to Chris Wallace on Fox News:

    Note to Ed: Your team won tonight.

    Some notes from tonight's Iowa coverage:

    Republican results are here on iowagop.net, which features an interactive map showing results by county. If their server is swamped, try the Washington Post site instead. You can find Democratic statewide results here at iowacaucusresults.com. The site also has precinct results by county for each precinct.

    I've been flipping back and forth between C-SPAN and C-SPAN2, showing a Democratic and Republican caucus respectively. To C-SPAN's credit, they're showing the whole caucus including the non-presidential bits -- such as platform debates and officer elections.

    The beginning of the C-SPAN-televised Republican meeting in Carroll, Iowa, featured speeches by local Republicans on behalf of individual candidates. A young law student supporting McCain gave the most eloquent speech. The local chairman spoke for Romney, but his speech was faint praise -- Romney made things a little better in Taxachusetts. No one spoke for Huckabee -- would he have finished first if someone had? Thompson was represented by a young man who said The totals for the four Carroll, Iowa, Republican wards that were meeting together: McCain 95, Romney 74, Huckabee 67, Thompson 46, Paul 23, Giuliani 22, Keyes 2, Hunter 0

    The GOP meeting is over, but a small number of Democrats in Des Moines Precinct 53 have stayed around after the presidential vote to debate platform resolutions. A white female college student, an Obama supporter, is arguing for a resolution that affirmative action should be based on income, not race, or else it's eliminated altogether. She says it's wrong that she should be ineligible for certain full-ride scholarships at her school just because of the color of her skin. A black teacher who says he was hired to come to Iowa from New England to help his school meet affirmative action goals is arguing in support of race-based affirmative action because race is still important. The motion was defeated.

    We were eating dinner with Fox News on in the background. My 11-year-old son, a Harry Potter fan, looked up at B-roll of a Republican candidate's campaign appearance and said, "Who is that guy that sort of looks grey? I thought it was Lord Voldemort." Can you guess which GOP candidate it was?

    mccain-snarl.jpg

    voldemort-snarl.jpg

    UPDATE: Huckabee just walked to the podium to the Liberty Bell March. (You know, the Monty Python theme.) Chuck Norris is visible behind Huck's left shoulder. (Or is it that Huck is at Chuck's right hand?) I can't find the right image online, but my son and I both think Mike Huckabee looks like Mr. Tweedy from Chicken Run.

    If you were listening to 1170 KFAQ this morning (I was on with Gwen Freeman, filling in for Chris Medlock, who had lost his voice), you'd have heard producer Elvis Polo taunting me and Gwen about a story on the Politico website, speculating on what would happen if Fred Thompson didn't finish strongly in tonight's Iowa caucus. This isn't the first time that Politico has posted a story seemingly designed to demoralize Thompson's supporters and shift the focus away from issues. (The last time this happened, video came out showing that Politico reporter Roger Simon's account of the event was wrong and misleading.)

    Thompson debunked the story on several media outlets and told a rally this morning that it's time to "shock the world." The best way to help make that happen is to use your phone to encourage Iowa Republicans to turn out and support Fred Thompson. If you're a Thompson supporter, if you've watched the videos and read the position papers and are convinced, as I am, that he's the right man to be our next president, take some time this afternoon to phone for Fred.

    The presidential straw poll that will get most of the attention at Thursday night's Iowa precinct caucuses is only a small part of the business that Republican voters will conduct. On the home page of the Polk County Republican Party website, chairman Ted Sporer outlines what will happen at caucus meetings on January 3. Since it is on the homepage, and therefore likely to be replaced with something new after Thursday night, I'm taking the liberty of putting the entire text here.

    Season's Greetings.

    We have seen months of candidates campaigning here in Iowa with ads on the television surveys over the phone, and literature in the mailbox. Finally the caucus season is upon us! The race is fluid and Republicans are ready to pick their nominee. All eyes are upon Iowa Caucuses, the First in the Nation, on January 3, 2008.

    Thank you for visiting our site. As hard as it seems to believe, the 2008 Caucuses are almost upon us. The Republican Party will caucus on January 3, 2008 at 7:00 o'clock, p.m. The Democrats are convening at 6:30 so please disregard any information that you might have seen or heard that our caucuses are at the same time, they're not.

    With so much at stake and so much Republican interest in each of our candidates we expect a large turnout. You should try and arrive early, around 6:30. Most of the larger precincts will have more than one check in lines but delay is always possible. We are also sharing some facilities with the Democrats and we want to allow everyone time to get organized and to participate.

    You must be a registered Republican who is at least seventeen and one half years of age to participate. You may only caucus in the precinct in which you are registered to vote. You can register as a Republican at your precinct caucus-voter registration forms will be available. However, you can only be registered in one place at a time so a new registration form on caucus night will void any earlier form. Please remember, completing a fraudulent voting registration is a crime.

    The Presidential Straw Poll is only one of the many items of business that will be conducted at your caucus. You will also elect:

    Two members of the Polk County Central Committee. Central committee members form the backbone of our volunteer force. The term of office is two years. Central committee membership has nothing to do with your support for a Presidential candidate. As a central committee member you will be asked to serve on a subcommittee and to provide service to the party at events and for political projects such as our vote by mail program.

    Delegates to the county convention. Each precinct has an allocated number of delegates, ranging from a low of 1 to a high of 33. The CountyConvention is March 8 at West Des Moines Valley High School. The gavel falls at 10:00 a.m. Delegates at the County convention will elect a smaller group of delegates to the Third Congressional District (April 26 in Grinnell) and State Conventions (June 13-14 in Des Moines).

    Alternates. Each precinct elects alternate delegates who will represent that precinct at the County convention if the elected delegates cannot serve.

    Junior Delegates. Each precinct will also select junior delegates to the County Convention. Junior delegates are those interested young Republicans who will not be old enough to vote in the November 2008 general election.

    Platform Convention Delegates. Each committee will elect one person to represent that precinct at the Platform Convention. The platform convention is January 19 at Valley Southwoods in West Des Moines.

    We have included information about the Polk County Caucuses on our website. Please check each of the three links to the right for more information.

    Thanks again for visiting our website. Victory in 2008 begins with the Iowa caucuses. Please feel free to contact us with any remaining questions.

    Ted Sporer

    Polk County Chair

    Other links on the site list the locations of each of the 183 precinct meetings (mostly in school classrooms) and set out the order of business. (The order of business seems to have been put together by a pro-life group. On the item for electing delegates to the county convention, it states, "It is perfectly proper to ask anyone running where they stand on the right to life issue." And on the next item, "Discussion of Platform Issues," it states, "It is at this time that you will want to submit the Pro-life Resolution so that it can be voted on.")

    The process will be slightly different in smaller counties. Russ from Winterset describes the process in Madison County:

    Madison County's got somewhere around 17,000 people (accoring to the 2000 census), and my contact is thinking that this year will be an overflow crowd like '88. Our countywide caucus will be held at the Winterset High School auditorium, with the individual precincts breaking down & voting in classrooms after the joint presentations, and a crowd of more than 800 or so will mean it's "standing room only". Assuming that the county's 50-50 split between the two parties (Iowa's teetered between the parties lately, so that's probably a fair cop, if you count affiliated voters only), that means that a 10% turnout will give us somewhere around 600 people (assuming 1/3 of voters are Rep, Dem and Ind).

    At the beginning of this post I referred to the presidential straw poll. For Republicans, at least, the vote that will be taken at these caucuses is completely non-binding. The allocation of delegates to presidential candidates won't happen until the state Republican convention in June. (See the Green Papers entry on Iowa Republicans for details of the process.)

    The process for Iowa Democrats is different: Precincts will pick delegates to their county conventions based on presidential preference, but delegates to the national convention won't be chosen until the state convention in June, and only then will it be known with any certainty how many delegates are pledged to each candidate.

    For both parties, any attempt to allocate Iowa's delegates to candidates prior to June will almost certainly be incorrect.

    The Iowa caucuses aren't that different from the way delegate selection was handled in Oklahoma prior to the establishment of a presidential preference primary in 1988. If memory serves, Oklahoma's Republican caucuses were often held before Iowa or New Hampshire. We just didn't market them as well.

    SeeDubya is fed up with talking heads and pundits who are too busy trashing the style of Fred Thompson's campaign to pay due attention to the substance of the man and his principles:

    Let's lay this moron-meme to rest right now. I don't care if you're for Fred or not, and I don't care if you attack his issues or his record. Actually, scratch that. I'd love for pundits to start talking about his policy positions and his voting record! Exactly which aspect of his plan for border security or social security do you disagree with? What part of his rhetoric rings false? Which part of his doctrine of resolve, or his understanding of first principles do you disagree with, and which candidate's principles are better? That's a debate, and that's what we're supposed to be having now.

    "Fire in the belly" is a completely meaningless statement. It's subjective and irrefutable--or, more precisely, it's unfalsifiable. You can't prove it, and beyond what I've laid out here you can't disprove it, so it just hangs around like a bad smell. It's the recourse of political commentators too lazy or too biased or unable to come up with serious objections to Fred. From now on when I hear pundits trot out that canard, I'm going to ask whether they really want their own jobs--you know, whether they're a just little bit lazy, whether they're just phoning it in, and whether they've got any fire in their own bellies.

    SeeDubya begins the post with a long list of sacrifices and efforts Thompson is making, which ought to be enough to prove to any honest observer that Thompson thinks he's the best choice for president and is working hard to convince voters of that fact. But the mainstream media narrative is set even for much of the conservative media: Every ill-timed yawn or apparent frown becomes more "evidence" that Fred Thompson really doesn't want to be president, so you don't need to listen to his ideas or policies, and you don't need to bother to give him money or volunteer for his campaign.

    Just four days until the Iowa caucuses. In this seventeen-minute video, Fred Thompson explains why he believes he's the right man for the job:

    At a campaign stop in Burlington, Iowa, earlier today, Fred Thompson answered a question from a voter about whether he truly has the desire to become president. He pointed out the financial and family sacrifices he has made to make this run, as an indication of his desire to be president, but he also says he's not consumed by personal ambition. Thompson is running because many people wanted him to run, and because he thinks he has "the background, the capability, and the concern" to serve as president.

    It's such a good answer, and it so captures what I like about the man's character and attitude that I've reproduced the entire answer below, but I've bolded the bits that I especially like.

    [THIS IS A BEST-EFFORT TRANSCRIPT OF THE SPECIFIC QUESTION AND ANSWER] Q: My only problem with you and why I haven't thrown all my support behind you is that I don't know if you have the desire to be President. If I caucus for you next week, are you still going to be there two months from now?

    ...In the first place I got in the race about the time people normally get into it historically. The fact of the matter is that others started the process a lot earlier this time than they normally do. I think it was for some of them when they were juniors in high school.

    APPLAUSE

    That is a very good question, not because it's difficult to answer, because, but I'm gonna answer it in a little different way than what you might expect.

    In the first place, I wouldn't be here if I didn't. I wouldn't be doing this if i didn't. I grew up very modest circumstances. I left government, I and my family have made sacrifices for me to be sitting here today. I haven't had any income for a long time because I'm doing this. I figure that to be clean you've got to cut everything off. And I was doing speaking engagements and I had a contract to do a tv show, I had a contract with abc radio like I was talking about earlier and so forth. I guess a man would have to be a total fool to do all those things and to be leaving his family which is not a joyful thing at all if he didn't want to do it.

    But I am not consumed by personal ambition. I will not be devastated if I don't do it. I want the people to have the best president that they can have.

    When this talk first started, it didn't originate with me. There were a lot of people around the country both directly and through polls, liked the idea of me stepping up. And of course, you always look better at a distance, I guess.

    But most of those people are still there and think its a good idea. But I approached it from the standpoint of a deal. A kind of a marriage. If one side of a marriage has to be really talked into the marriage, it probably ain't going to be a very good deal for either one of them. But if you mutually think that this is a good thing. In this case, if you think this is a good thing for the country, then you have an opportunity to do some wonderful things together.

    I'm offering myself up. I'm saying that I have the background, the capability, and the concern to do this and I'm doing it for the right reasons. But I'm not particularly interested in running for president, but I think I'd make a good president.

    Nowadays, the process has become much more important than it used to be.

    I don't know that they ever asked George Washington a question like this. I don't know that they ever asked Dwight D. Eisenhower a question like this. But nowadays, it's all about fire in the belly. I'm not sure in the world we live in today it's a terribly good thing if a president has too much fire in the belly. I approach life differently than a lot of people. People, I guess, wonder how I've been as successful as I've been in everything I've done. I won two races in TN by 20 point margins, a state that Bill Clinton carried twice. I'd never run for office before. I've never had an acting lesson and I guess that's obvious by people who've watched me. But when they made a movie about a case that I had when I took on a corrupt state administration as a lawyer and beat them before a jury. They made a movie about it and I wound up playing myself in the movie and yeah I can do that.

    And when I did it, I did it. Wasn't just a lark. Anything that's worth doing is worth doing well. But I've always been a little bit more laid back than most. I like to say that I'm only consumed by very, very few things and politics is not one of them. The welfare of our country and our kids and grandkids is one of them.

    If people really want in their president a super type-a personality, someone who has gotten up every morning and gone to bed every night and been thinking about for years how they could achieve the Presidency of the United States, someone who can look you straight in the eye and say they enjoy every minute of campaigning, I ain't that guy.

    So I hope I've discussed that and hope I haven't talked you out of anything. I honestly want - I can't imagine a worse set of circumstances than achieving the presidency under false pretenses. I go out of my way to be myself because I don't want anybody to think they are getting something they are not getting. I'm not consumed by this process I'm not consumed with the notion of being President. I'm simply saying I'm willing to do what's necessary to achieve it if I'm in sync with the people and if the people want me or somebody like me. I'll do what I've always done in the rest of my life and I will take it on and do a good job and you'll have the disadvantage of having someone who probably can't jump up and click their heels three times but will tell you the truth and you'll know where the President stands at all times.

    It reminds me of the attitude that Tom Coburn has brought to his service in Congress. He would much rather be back in Oklahoma delivering babies, but, like Thompson, he is concerned about the country that we will leave to our children and grandchildren, and he is willing to do what he must to get elected and serve with integrity.

    I'm sure the former Oklahoma governor meant well:

    Former Governor Frank Keating is the co-chairman of "Catholics for McCain," formed to support Arizona Senator John McCain's Republican presidential bid.

    but I wonder if it really helps the Arizona senator to have someone with that surname leading a group connected with his campaign.

    Redoubtable Thomas

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    Of all the lovely presents I received this Christmas, one of my favorites is a gift from my in-laws: The book My Grandfather's Son, the memoirs of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas is one of my favorite Supreme Court justices, not only because of his respect for the Constitution and his incisive legal mind, but for the character he displayed under assault during his confirmation and in the years since.

    So far, I've read through his childhood in Pinpoint and Savannah, Georgia, his years in seminary, and his decision to enroll in Holy Cross College, in Worcester, Mass.

    During my tenure at FlightSafety, I took several business trips to Savannah and spent every free hour exploring the city, particularly the historic district. I drove through Pinpoint, a little fishing village along an estuary south of town, near the Bethesda orphanage. Thomas grew up in a part of the city I've never seen; as he put it, "Savannah was hell."

    Tonight I started reading the book to my two older children, ages 11 and 7. While I won't take them through the whole book -- at their ages they don't need to know about all the ugliness of his confirmation hearings -- I think they'll benefit from hearing his vivid descriptions of the poverty in which he spent his early years, the hard work and discipline of his years living with his grandparents, and the impact of racism on his life. I read part of the first chapter to them tonight and both of them were disappointed when it was time to close the book and go to bed.

    Many political memoirs -- including some written by conservatives -- aren't worth the paper they're printed on. My Grandfather's Son looks to be not only an insight into one of America's most influential men, but a book full of valuable life lessons.

    I'm supporting Fred Thompson for President because on the issues that matter -- the war against Islamofascism, defense, and foreign policy; taxes, entitlements, and the economy; social issues and judicial restraint -- he's right, and for the right reasons. There's a foundation of sound principle that undergirds his views on specific policies and the willingness to stand firm on those principles even in the face of hostility.
    That's why Fred Thompson can rightly call himself a consistent, common-sense conservative, the only one among the leading Republican candidates.

    If you're undecided, I encourage you to read through the detailed policy papers on the Fred '08 website.

    If you've already concluded that Fred Thompson is the best choice for President, I urge you to contribute to his campaign, so he'll have the funds to get his message out in Iowa before next Thursday's precinct caucuses. Here's a handy form for sending in a contribution:

    The Fred '08 campaign is trying to raise about $250,000 by 6 pm Friday to be able to run this TV ad, titled "Substance":

    Another way to help is to spend an hour or two making phone calls to Iowa Republican voters on Fred's behalf. The campaign will provide the names and the instructions, you just have to be willing to call. Many if not most potential caucus-goers have yet to come to a firm decision about whom they'll support. Your phone call will make a difference.

    To my Oklahoma readers: Although it's another month before we vote, if you want Fred Thompson to be still be a viable choice when it comes our turn, we need to do what we can to help him finish strong in Iowa and then go on to victory in South Carolina and Florida.

    UPDATE: We did it! The goal was reached and exceeded, and the new ad will run in Iowa all the way through caucus night on Thursday. (I'm sure additional contributions would still be welcomed and appreciated.)

    Coulter on Huckabee

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    Yes, it's Ann Coulter, but there are a few quotables in her latest column, "Liberals Sing 'Huckelujah'":

    All I want for Christmas is for Christians to listen to what Mike Huckabee says, rather than what the media say about him....

    Huckabee is a "compassionate conservative" only in the sense that calling him a conservative is being compassionate....

    Huckabee opposes school choice, earning him the coveted endorsement of the National Education Association of New Hampshire, which is like the sheriff being endorsed by the local whorehouse....

    According to Huckabee, most people think conservatives don't like music. Who on earth says conservatives don't like music -- other than liberals and Mike Huckabee? This desperate need to be liked by liberals has never led to anything but calamity....

    He supports a nationwide smoking ban anyplace where people work, constitutional protection for sodomy, big government, higher taxes and government benefits for illegal aliens. According to my calculations, that puts him about three earmarks away from being Nancy Pelosi.

    Liberals take a perverse pleasure in touting Huckabee because they know he will give them everything they want -- big government and a Christian they can roll.

    Coulter also has a link on her homepage to this surprising quote from of a profile of Huckabee from the December 12, 2007, New York Times Magazine:

    [Bill] Clinton's goodwill stems, Huckabee believes, from Huckabee's own restraint during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. ''Obviously I was asked to comment. If I had been willing to criticize President Clinton, I could have made a cottage industry out of it. But I didn't do that, I didn't discuss it at all. And I think he was grateful for that.''

    MORE: Dean Barnett says that Huckabee is this cycle's equivalent of the 1996 Pat Buchanan campaign. After Buchanan's win in New Hampshire, he had a moment in the spotlight to convince the American people he could be a responsible President, and he failed. Likewise Huckabee in 2008:

    Rather than assure the Republican electorate that he was more than a one trick pony who could speak beautifully on social issues and spiritual concerns, he doubled down on his pastor side. Perhaps with good cause. When he ventured opinions about serious policy matters outside his comfort zone, especially regarding global affairs, he showed an ignorance that was quite frankly stunning for someone who had the audacity to seek the presidency at a time of war.

    Then there is Huckabee's lucrative side business as a speaker:

    Over the weekend, it came out that Huckabee received $35,000 in honoraria in 2006 from a company that does stem cell research, the very same company that social conservatives blasted Mitt Romney over because his blind trust had invested in it. Huckabee's take of $35,000 from the stem cell researchers was but a small sliver of the roughly $378,000 in outside fees that Huckabee raked in during his final year as Arkansas' governor.

    Barnett is predicting a third-place finish in Iowa for Huckabee, with soft Huckabee support shifting to Romney and Thompson. He also says to ignore the latest ARG poll, which was taken over the weekend before Christmas -- not the best time to get a political sample.

    Tired of soundbites on important national issues? Pajamas Media is beginning a series of extended conversations with presidential candidates on the War on Terror. The first interview is with Republican former Sen. Fred Thompson, conducted by Roger L. Simon and Bob Owens:

    A transcript can be found here.

    Fred Thompson displays the sort of thoughtful, well-informed understanding of foreign policy that I want to see in our next president.

    (If you're of the same opinion, and you like what you see in this interview, Fred Thompson could use your help with a contribution of any size to help him get his message to Iowa voters.)

    If you're frustrated that you won't get a say in the choice of presidential nominees because your state has a later primary, fret not. You don't even have to go to Iowa or New Hampshire to make a difference. You can use your free long distance service to phone likely voters in those states.

    Since many if not most mobile phone plans treat local and long distance calls the same, you may as well put all those extra minutes to good use. Other campaigns have done this: I used my cell phone to make calls for Pat Toomey's 2004 campaign for U. S. Senate in Pennsylvania.

    On Fred Thompson's campaign website, supporters can log in to get numbers to call and to indicate the result of each call online. (You have to register first as a Friend of Fred.) It wouldn't surprise me to learn that other campaigns are doing the same thing.

    While a call from a paid telemarketer or a recorded message can be annoying, I'd like to think that an undecided voter would be impressed that an ordinary voter would feel strongly enough about a candidate to make long distance phone calls on his behalf.

    NOTE: Be sure to check out the linkblog over in the left hand column of the BatesLine home page. There are several new entries today, including some about Tulsa and Oklahoma issues. Each entry is a link to an interesting article and webpage with a brief description or pull quote. As it was a two-column week (early deadline because of Christmas), I'm too worn out for much more than a few quick linkblog entries.

    The front-loaded, earlier-than-ever primary schedule has enabled a campaign opportunity that wouldn't have worked as well in years past. The Ron Paul campaign is urging his student supporters (college and driving-age high school) to come to Iowa to campaign for him in advance of the January 3 precinct caucuses there:

    School is out, and the Ron Paul Revolution is taking over Iowa! All students (high school & college) of student age (16-30) are invited to join us in Iowa Dec. 14-23 and Dec. 27 - Jan. 4 for Ron Paul's Christmas Vacation!

    If you can get to Iowa on Friday Dec. 14 and/or Thursday Dec. 27, the campaign will provide you with the rest. Food, housing, and gas will be covered for 150 students in Iowa. All you have to do is get there.

    The students will be going door-to-door, urging people to show up at their precinct caucus to support Ron Paul. The blog entry notes that 25,000 supporters will be sufficient to place in the top three. If the campaign gets the 150 volunteers they want, they can easily knock on twice that many doors. If the campaign has good lists of likely caucus-goers, this could be a very productive effort.

    This is a great idea for maximizing grassroots energy in a low-budget way. Is the Fred '08 campaign paying attention?

    Stop the hand shows!

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    If you've been thinking about supporting Fred Thompson's campaign, today would be a great time to do it. The Fred '08 campaign is looking for 2400 donors in 24 hours. From the campaign website:


    Stop the Hand Show

    Running for President is serious business. We're facing pressing issues like national security, bankrupt entitlements, a broken tax code, and out-of-control judges. So what did the liberal moderator want at Wednesday's debate? A show of hands. We deserve serious discussion not kindergarten antics.

    Don't you want a conservative leader who won't grovel to the liberal media?

    If 2,400 people donate in the next 24 hours it will tell the liberal media that the American people are tired of their games.

    Stand with Fred and reject the liberal media's "monkey business" and gotcha games. Donate today.

    Then send an e-card to your friends letting them know you're standing up with Fred.

    In the photo above, that's Giuliani, Romney, Huckabee, and McCain indicating agreement with the statement that global warming is a serious problem caused by human activity.

    If you're wondering what the "hand show" comment is about, here's the best moment from Wednesday's Des Moines Register forum for Republican presidential candidates.






    Fred Thompson's refusal to take seriously the mainstream media's childish approach to the presidential race has been evident in his responses to a series of fluff questions from the Associated Press. Some candidates would spend a lot of time trying to craft an answer that would avoid offending any important constituency. Jay Tea at Wizbang reports the questions so far and Thompson's answers:

    Thompson's attitude seems to be "this is stupid, and I'm not going to treat it seriously. Instead, I'm going to simply give answers that take the crap you people have flung at me and give it right back to you -- in one or two words."

    The first question was "what was your childhood nickame?" Fred's answer? "Mr. President."

    The second one was "what is your most prized personal possession?" "Trophy wife."

    As soon as I saw the third question, I knew the answer. "What do you like to do on a lazy day?" I said "run for president," but that was too wordy. Thompson cropped it down to "campaigning."

    The hits on Thompson have been that he got a late start, he's lazy, and he has a trophy wife. Here he's taken each of them and tossed them right back in the face of the AP.

    Jay Tea also makes this interesting point:

    I've said numerous times that I think one of the key elements in winning the presidency has to be a sense of humor. The American people seem to prefer to vote for the candidate who comes across as warmer, funnier, more ready to laugh at themselves and with people than one who is not. That trend has held true in every election since 1980, and (once you skip the 64-76 period, when laughter just didn't seem appropriate -- an assassination and Watergate bookending two war referenda) most before then. A sense of humor and a willingness to laugh at oneself seems to indicate a level of comfort with oneself, an ease and general even-temperedness that the American people seem to value in a president.

    And the judgment of history seems to bear it out. Those presidents who consistently rank the highest in historical reflection are the ones who seem to have had the readiest wit -- Reagan, Kennedy, FDR, Lincoln.

    Chris Matthews made a similar observation all the way back in 1999, identifying 1964 as the lone exception in recent history:

    We Americans may vote indoors, but we elect to the White House candidates with the look, feel and freshness of the outdoors about them. Identify "the man with the sun in his face" and you've picked yourself the winner....

    Instead, in election after election, we've gone with the guy who looks like he's just made it in from the countryside, the outsider seeking our trust, the guy running against the suits, the guy we can imagine without one.

    Maybe this is something peculiarly American, some trait primordial to our rebellious, pioneer nature. Did any other country -- France or England or Canada? -- ever select a face in the crowd like Andy Jackson as its leader, a self-proclaimed "rail-splitter" to keep itself from being split in two?

    National Review endorses Romney by process of elimination.

    Many conservatives are finding it difficult to pick a presidential candidate. Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything -- all the traits, all the positions -- we are looking for. Equally conservative analysts can reach, and have reached, different judgments in this matter. There are fine conservatives supporting each of these Republicans.

    Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization -- none of the major candidates has -- he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction.

    In their view: Giuliani, Huckabee not consistently conservative, McCain not as conservative as Romney, Thompson not a good campaigner.

    Meanwhile, Jeffrey Lord, a former Reagan White House political director, is worried by Romney's focus on process and pragmatism over principle:

    Mr. Barnes says Mr. Romney's "approach to government is not ideological." A Romney adviser is quoted as saying of his candidate: "He's super-pragmatic. He's an eclectic conservative." And Mr. Romney himself says flatly that as president he would "insist on gathering data . . . and analyze the data looking for trends."

    Uh-oh.

    Make no mistake. If the leading candidates in the GOP presidential race are to be litmus-tested as conservatives, all would cause conservatives sleepless nights. If the Reagan coalition was of economic and social conservatives combined with national security hawks, each group has something to be disturbed about with this batch of front-runners....

    Yet the Romney approach as described not only by Mr. Barnes but more importantly by Mr. Romney himself is an approach that goes far beyond any particular issue. It is, as Mr. Romney himself freely admits, all about process. Whatever the issue--economic, social or national security--Mr. Romney would gather the data, look for a trend and thus "you make better decisions."

    This should cause conservatives to break out in cold sweats....

    Mitt Romney is clearly one decent guy, one very, very accomplished human being. He has announced where he stands on the issues of the day, putting himself head and shoulders above a Clinton, Obama or Edwards. But as conservatives head into caucus and primary season, they should not be hesitant to question what appears to be his addiction to process for the sake of process.

    Go back to Fred Barnes's Romney quote, the one in which Mr. Romney says he looks for a "new alternative that everybody agrees is the right way to go." What Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan shared was a core belief that in fact it was a better thing for some principles to triumph over others. "Everybody" did not agree with Lincoln that freedom was better than slavery, that keeping the Union together was better than not, or with Reagan that the free market and tax cuts philosophy was a better philosophy than one of big government and tax increases. But they went ahead anyway.

    Is there a place for data? Is there value in process? Sure.

    But base an entire presidency on the importance of data and process over principle? Is this what Mitt Romney would do? Is this where a Romney presidency would lead? If so, conservatives have been here before.

    It is not a good place to be.

    During Romney's term as Governor of Massachusetts, the equivalent of the state supreme court declared that the Massachusetts ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional. Columnist Sandy Rios said Romney's hands were not tied. Romney had a choice, and he chose wrongly, issuing executive orders to legalize gay marriage:

    Exactly one year ago I signed a letter of challenge to Mitt Romney along with Paul Weyrich and 42 other pro-family leaders asking the governor to use the time he had left in office to "reverse the damage that has been done to the sacred institution of marriage." We urged him to "declare immediately that homosexual 'marriage' licenses issued in violation of the law are illegal and to issue an order to all state and local officials to cease violating the law."

    Why did we make such a difficult and uncomfortable request? After all, Governor Romney had done everything he could to stop homosexual marriage, hadn't he? And as he explained to the people of Massachusetts and to the country, he had "no choice" but to "execute the law." He had no choice when he ordered marriage licenses changed from "husband and wife" to "party A and party B"... no choice when he ordered city officials to immediately begin performing same-sex marriages ... no choice when he threatened them with losing their jobs if they didn't comply ... no choice but to be the very instrument, the expeditor, the person responsible for ushering in same-sex marriage. ...

    Except, of course, if you consider that the court order was directed at the legislative and not the executive branch. The Massachusetts Constitution is clear that all decisions regarding marriage shall be governed by statutory law and not by courts. It was an illegal order by a rogue court to a weak legislature advanced by a governor who had no choice--except if he had considered following the dictates of conscience and the Constitution he had sworn to uphold.

    We were given an insight into that seemingly premeditated "no choice" in a New York Times article dated September 8, 2007. It reported that, during a 2002 meeting in a gay bar with Log Cabin Republicans, Romney "promised to obey the courts' ultimate ruling and not champion a fight on either side of the issue"--a promise he most definitely kept, despite head fakes to gullible conservatives, pressing them to think he was crusading to protect marriage, children and defend the constitution.

    You can watch all of yesterday's Des Moines Register Republican debate in chopped-up YouTube segments at the paper's website.

    The paper's political columnist, David Yepsen, thought Fred Thompson had the best debate:

    But it was Thompson, the former Tennessee senator, who was specific, good-humored and exuded an executive persona during the low-key, 90-minute session that was sponsored by The Des Moines Register and broadcast by Iowa Public Television.

    He had several high points. One of them came when he flatly refused to play the "raise your hand" game in answering a question about global warming. Another came when he said the biggest problem facing education was the National Education Association. (Bashing teacher unions is always popular with Republican audiences.)

    Thompson also gets credit for being a stand-up guy willing to take on entitlement programs that threaten to bankrupt the country if left unchanged. He made it clear that wealthy, older Americans could no longer expect full Medicare benefits if he's elected. Thompson also teased Romney about his wealth and how the former Massachusetts governor is "getting to be a pretty good actor."

    Yepsen also criticized his own paper's format:

    The biggest problem with the debate was that it wasn't really a debate. Candidates got almost no opportunity to grill one another. Often they ran out of time and were cut off just as they started to probe an opponent.

    The event would have been more nourishing had the format allowed for more back-and-forth.

    Bizarrely, the DMR's editorial board complained that the candidates didn't spend enough time on the big picture. Don't they bear any responsibility for that, since their format didn't allow time for the big picture?

    Many of the candidates' answers were only somewhat satisfying.

    Indeed, the hour and a half spent with these nine men who aspire to lead the nation left us wanting to know more about their vision for America.

    The real complaint becomes apparent as you read through the editorial: The candidates don't agree enough with the DMR's vision of America.

    UPDATE: Jay Cost says the debate was a waste of time:

    For how pompous the moderator seemed - shushing candidates left and right, and abjectly refusing to allow Fred Thompson to speak on global warming - you would think she was asking something better than these inane queries.

    When the questions were not completely useless - the format impeded anything approaching an intelligent answer. The Des Moines Register took the same basic MSNBC format - where candidates are awarded for pithy one-offs and silly sound bite attacks - but did not ask the questions that facilitate those small-ball answers. This was the second big problem. The format. The Register wanted important answers compacted into the petty time allowances. That just was never going to happen. So, Mike Huckabee was given ten or so seconds to tell us something new about how his faith would inform not just his policies generally, but his health care and his education policies.

    A sampling of alarm and concern from conservative, pro-life bloggers about Mike Huckabee's views on foreign policy:

    The editors of National Review worry about a repeat of the late '70s.

    On Iran, Huckabee is at his most troubling. He accuses the administration of "proceeding down only one track with Iran: armed confrontation." This is false, and the kind of rhetoric you'd expect from DailyKos bloggers, not a Republican presidential candidate. Huckabee thinks it has been a lack of diplomatic engagement that has soured our relations with Iran: "We haven't had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years, my whole adult life and a lot of good it's done. Putting this in human terms, all of us know that when we stop talking to a parent or a sibling or a friend, it's impossible to accomplish anything, impossible to resolve differences and move the relationship forward. The same is true for countries."

    This is the kernel of Huckabee's foreign policy. He wants to anthropomorphize international relations and bring a Christian commitment to the Golden Rule to our affairs with other nations. As he told the Des Moines Register the other day, "You treat others the way you'd like to be treated. That's to me the fundamental issue that has to be re-established in our dealings with other countries."

    This is deeply naïve. Countries aren't people, and the world is more dangerous than a Sunday church social. Threats, deception, and -- as a last resort -- violence must play a role in international relations. Differences cannot always be worked out through sweet persuasion. A U.S. president who doesn't realize this will repeat the experience of President Jimmy Carter at his most ineffectual.

    Reacting to the story above, Ace writes:

    Not that what one blogger thinks matters that much, but if Huckabee gets the nomination, I'm voting Democratic. It's not just an idle threat; I just won't vote for him and in fact won't even vote third party or stay home. I'll vote for the Democratic candidate, even Hillary. I won't be a party to selling out everything the party is supposed to stand for to a liberal ideology. If we're going to have eight years of liberal rule, I'd rather the Democratic Party be governing, so at least they can take the blame....

    And... I do not want Huckabee setting the agenda for the GOP as de facto head of the party. I'd rather there be a (different) liberal in the White House, with the GOP Congress and Senate free to pursue genuine conservative policies, rather than having to support Huckabee's liberal impulses.

    Not to mention a Republican National Committee feeling duty-bound to back the president of their party, right or wrong.

    Hot Air has video of Huckabee flip-flopping on the trade embargo of Cuba: He wrote a letter urging that it be lifted in 2002, but admits that he supports it now because he's running for President.

    Frank J. of IMAO responds:

    With Huckabee saying he was for restoring ties with Castro's Cuba while governor of Arkansas because, back then, he was unaware of the issues between the U.S. and Cuba, is he now becoming Obama dumb on foreign issues? Each day, I'm getting more and more scared of Huckabee's front runner status.

    But Frank Rich likes Mike. That's Frank Rich, the left-wing columnist for the New York Times.

    MORE: Did Mike Huckabee lose weight the old-fashioned way? One brand-new blogger thinks Huckabee fits the profile of a gastric bypass patient. But Gerard Vanderleun notes that it fits the profile of a hit blog -- a blog set up specifically to put an anonymous attack on a candidate in play. (So I've deleted the direct link for now.)

    How to make an attack ad

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    From the recent Australian general election. The Aussies have learned well from us:

    (Via Hot Air).

    The political topic of the week was Mitt Romney's speech on religion, his attempt to defuse any concerns voters may have about his Mormon faith.

    Over at National Review Online (of all places), Jason Lee Steorts responds to criticism that "Mormonism is nuts" (as he puts it) by saying that all religion is nuts.

    I'm not going to attempt a comprehensive treatment of why Mitt Romney's Mormonism does matter in the presidential campaign, but here are a few thoughts I had while gazing into my stovepipe hat at a rock folding laundry.

    1. Mormonism's weirdness goes beyond the strangeness of its specific doctrines (e.g., God is a man who earned his godhood on the planet Kolob) to two more worrisome qualities: Its esoteric nature and the fact that it relies on the testimony of a convicted con-man, someone who used fakery to bilk people out of money and used the same sort of fakery to invent a religion.

    While there's plenty of "weirdness" to be found in Christianity, it's all out in the open for anyone to see. But the Mormon temple and its ceremonies are off-limits to all but the faithful.

    In that regard, Mormonism bears a resemblance to a much newer American-born religion: Scientology, where you have to work (and pay) your way through several levels of initiation to hear the core doctrines about galactic warlord Xenu and the poor Thetans he blew up.

    2. While a candidate's view on, say, the propriety of infant baptism or the nature of the Trinity may be irrelevant to his performance in public office, there is a branch of theology that is fundamental to governance -- anthropology, which in a theological context deals with the moral and spiritual attributes of mankind. Historically, Christian doctrine has affirmed the special dignity of man as created in the image of God, but also his fundamental depravity as a result of the Fall. One's views on this topic will affect the way you approach right-to-life issues, animal rights, education, law enforcement, and defense policy. The belief that mankind's dignity and depravity are immutable characteristics -- a fundamental precept of conservatism -- will lead you to different conclusions than the belief that human nature is evolving and progressing. The notion of checks and balances stems from the notion of human depravity and the need to limit the power available to selfish human beings.

    More importantly, your views on human nature will either square with reality or they won't. The proof's in the pudding: An accurate understanding of human nature will help you develop policies that work, just as an accurate understanding of the principles of aerodynamics will help you develop aircraft that fly.

    The Mormon view of human nature strikes me as a kind of Pelagian moralism, which is bound to err in the direction of trying to achieve moral improvement through legislation. To be fair, plenty of Christians err in the same way.

    3. I keep thinking about Harold Bloom's book The American Religion, which lumped Mormonism and the dominant strain of Southern Baptist thought for most of the 20th century (until the conservative resurgence in the 1980s) together with Emerson's transcendentalism as varieties of gnosticism. (David Wayne's review of the book is worth reading.) Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were both Southern Baptists of the type that Bloom identifies with gnosticism. What about Mike Huckabee?

    ONE MORE:

    4. Romney said, "There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution." Dead wrong.

    The Constitutional prohibition is a limit on government: The federal government can't make a rule that, for example, all customs inspectors must affirm the Nicene Creed or denounce the Pope.

    Recall that for over a century, anyone holding an office under the Crown of England had to receive communion in the Church of England and had to subscribe to the following declaration:

    "I, N, do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God profess, testify, and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any Transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ at or after the consecration thereof by any person whatsoever: and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other Saint, and the Sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous..."

    This Test Act was still in effect when the U. S. Constitution was drafted.

    Romney is wrong to suggest that the prohibition in the U. S. Constitution forbids individual voters from considering a candidate's religious views. I can choose not to vote for Romney because he wears magic long-johns and follows a religion founded by a con-man. I can choose not to vote for him because of his impeccable hair. I can choose not to vote for him because of his flip-flopping on social issues.

    Or I can choose not to vote for Mitt Romney because he is deliberately misreading the Constitution in a self-serving and freedom-limiting way.

    UPDATE (2007/12/11): The misreading and mischaracterization spreads. I'm no fan of Lawrence O'Donnell, but Hugh Hewitt is wrong to say that O'Donnell favors a religious test because he wants Romney to explain where he disagrees (if at all) with the tenets of the Mormon religion. Hewitt also asks O'Donnell, "Why are you so bigoted against Mormons?" That's an unfair question and beside the point. It's the sort of cheap rhetorical ploy I'd expect from a radical lefty.

    MORE (2007/12/13): Rod Dreher has this right, regarding Huckabee's recent comment about an odd Mormon doctrine:

    To be sure, I don't care what Romney believes about this matter, as long as it doesn't affect the way he proposes to be president, and I think it's a big mistake to hold that against him. But surely it isn't an "attack" for Huckabee merely to have brought up one of the more unusual doctrines of the Mormon church.

    What Romney is really doing is trying to deflect public attention from a religious teaching he would rather not explain by trying to make Huckabee seem like a villain for having raised it in the first place. It's a strategy I'm familiar with. There's a Muslim lay leader in Dallas who has repeatedly accused me of attacking the Islamic faith when I have pointed out unusual and threatening things that Islam teaches, and have tried to get him to explain, or at least own up, to it. To his credit, he hasn't backed away from the sharia's brutality, even as he affirms it as just and right, but he indefatigably characterizes my perfectly legitimate questions about what he believes his faith requires of him in public life (e.g., killing homosexuals) as bigoted attacks on his faith. He keeps saying we ought to all try to get along. Well, yeah, let's get along ... but let's not deny real and important differences, especially when they involve theological sanction for revolting violence, even murder. Ya know?

    The Iowa caucuses are less than a month away, and you may be thinking, "Are there any bloggers in Iowa that can give us a perspective on the caucuses that we won't get from national media?" There are indeed.

    Russ from Winterset, an Iowan active in Republican politics and a regular commenter at Ace of Spades HQ, was asked to suggest some blogs covering politics in Iowa. He named five sites in his reply: Iowa Politics, State 29, 24 Hour Dorman, Radio Iowa, and The Real Sporer. The latter blog belongs to the Ted Sporer, chairman of the Polk County Republican Party (that's where state capital Des Moines is) and an official in the state Republican Party.

    Here are a few of posts on those blogs that I found interesting:

    Political columnist Todd Dorman, in The Countdown: One Month to Go, lists the "top 5 campaign narratives that have turned out to be wrong" -- all the conventional wisdom that proved to be unwise. Number 5 is "Obama and Huckabee are on their way to caucus wins": "Sure, I know this is the current narrative. I just want to be among the first to say it's wrong. Please don't ask me why until January."

    Kay Henderson of Radio Iowa interviewed Fred Thompson about fiscal policy, religion and politics, the contrast between Thompson and Huckabee, and Thompson's plans for the closing weeks of the Iowa campaign. Thompson recalled the conventional wisdom in 2004 that Howard Dean would win big and said it "tickles [him] to death" to know that Iowa voters have the independence to defy conventional wisdom.

    Ted Sporer links to a blog post by Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich taking issue with Hillary Clinton's attacks in Iowa on Barack Obama's Social Security and health care plans and on his courage. Reich writes:

    Yesterday, HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton] suggested O[bama] lacks courage. "There's a big difference between our courage and our convictions, what we believe and what we're willing to fight for," she told reporters in Iowa, saying Iowa voters will have a choice "between someone who talks the talk, and somebody who's walked the walk." Then asked whether she intended to raise questions about O's character, she said: "It's beginning to look a lot like that."

    I just don't get it. If there's anyone in the race whose history shows unique courage and character, it's Barack Obama. HRC's campaign, by contrast, is singularly lacking in conviction about anything. Her pollster, Mark Penn, has advised her to take no bold positions and continuously seek the political center, which is exactly what she's been doing.

    State 29 has an entry about political diversity (the lack thereof) at the University of Iowa and has been in dogged pursuit of Sen. Chuck Grassley's efforts to get a $50 million earmark toward construction of a rainforest in Iowa.

    Iowa Politics seems to be more of a comprehensive news site than a blog. A subdomain provides a helpfulIowa caucus visitors' guide, covering accommodations, restaurants, entertainment, and wifi coffee houses.

    RELATED: Newsweek's latest Iowa poll has Huckabee zooming 22 points ahead of Romney. But hold the phone: Half of Huckabee's support and two-thirds of Romney's support is soft. Thompson is running third. Also, that's among 275 self-reported likely caucus goers, so there's a 7% margin of error. And about half of the "likelies" say this would be their first time to attend a caucus. I wonder what the numbers would be like for a sample of 500 previous caucus attendees.

    "Fred Thompson is addressing the real issues important to real conservatives and he's offering real solutions." So says this impressive ad produced independently by a Fred Thompson supporter:

    Need proof? Here's Fred Thompson's recent interview on the Charlie Rose Show on PBS. It's a 55 minute program with considerable emphasis on foreign policy and federalism. I can't imagine any of the other presidential candidates, save Duncan Hunter, addressing foreign policy and defense as intelligently and with as much grounding in reality. You get a glimpse of what I appreciate most about Thompson -- not only does he happen to hold the right positions on issues, he holds those positions for the right reasons, grounded in sound principles.

    You can read the specifics on Fred Thompson's principles and positions on the issues on his official campaign website.

    Here is the official list of filers for the February 5, 2008, Oklahoma presidential primary. The number before the name is the order in which they filed:

    Democrats:

    1. BARACK OBAMA, 233 N. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60601
    9. HILLARY CLINTON, 4420 N. Fairfax Dr. Arlington, VA 22203
    10. JOHN EDWARDS, 410 Market St., Suite 400 Chapel Hill, NC 27516
    12. BILL RICHARDSON, 111 Lomas Blvd. NW, Suite 200 Albuquerque, NM 87102
    13. DENNIS J. KUCINICH, PO Box 110180 Cleveland, OH 44111
    17. CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, PO Box 51882 Washington, DC 20091
    18. JIM ROGERS, 8623 E. Reno Ave. #5 Midwest City, OK 73110

    Republicans:

    2. JOHN McCAIN, PO Box 16118 Arlington, VA 22215
    3. TOM TANCREDO, 501 Church St., Suite 212 Vienna, VA 22180
    4. DUNCAN HUNTER, 9340 Fuerte Dr. #302 La Mesa, CA 91941
    5. RON PAUL, 3461 Washington Blvd., Suite 200 Arlington, VA 22201
    6. RUDY GIULIANI, 295 Greenwich St. #356 New York, NY 10007
    7. JERRY R. CURRY, PO Box 387 Haymarket, VA 20168
    8. MITT ROMNEY, PO Box 55239 Boston, MA 02205
    11. ALAN L. KEYES, 13533 Scottish Autumn Ln. Darnestown, MD 20878
    14. FRED THOMPSON, 1130 8th Ave. S. Nashville, TN 37203
    15. DANIEL GILBERT, 115 Justin Trail Arden, NC 28704
    16. MIKE HUCKABEE, PO Box 2008 Little Rock, AR 72203

    January 11, 2008, is the last day to register to vote or to change your party registration for the presidential primary. Both parties have closed primaries; you must be registered with a party affiliation to vote in that party's primary.

    Oklahoma will have 41 delegates at the Republican National Convention. Three delegates will be pledged to vote for the top candidate in each congressional district. 23 delegates will be pledged to vote for the top candidate statewide. The remaining three delegates are the state chairman, the national committeeman, and the national committeewoman, who go to the convention free to vote as they will. The national committeeman and committeewoman will be elected at the Oklahoma Republican state convention in the spring; the incumbents, Lynn Windel and Bunny Chambers, have announced that they will not seek re-election.

    RNC rules penalize states holding primaries before February 5 by cutting their delegate allocation in half. Because the Oklahoma legislature did not move our primary a week earlier, Oklahoma will retain all of its delegates to the 2008 convention. For the same reason, Oklahoma voters will have minimal impact on the selection of the Republican presidential nominee. On the same date there are 17 other delegate selection events, including California and New York. Oklahoma has only 41 of the 1,081 delegates to be chosen on February 5. Don't expect to get any attention from any of the candidates.

    There will be 47 Oklahoma delegates at the Democratic National Convention. The six Oklahoma members of the DNC, U. S. Rep. Dan Boren, and Gov. Brad Henry will go as unpledged delegates. A ninth unpledged delegate will be elected at the state convention. Five delegates from each congressional district will be allocated proportionately to candidates who receive more than 15% of the vote. The same formula will be used to allocate 13 delegates according to the statewide result.

    My source for the delegate allocation rules is The Green Papers, probably the most comprehensive accounting on the web of when and how convention delegates are selected.

    Here's an 8-minute segment from Wolf Blitzer on CNN's Situation Room, an interview with Fred Thompson. Thompson answers questions about his faith ("no apologies to make") and explains the distinction between his support for legal immigrants and his opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants (illegals shouldn't be allowed to get in ahead of those who are trying to play by the rules).

    On this topic, Blitzer asked, "Is there too much pandering going on on this issue, in your experience?" Thompson's reply: "Why should this issue be any different than any other issue?"

    Much of the interview dealt with consistency. Thompson ran an ad in Iowa quoting past statements by Romney and Huckabee that contradict their more recent statements on a number of issues. Thompson said of the others in the race, "Most of these other guys have had to alter their positions when they decided to run for President. I have not."

    (Please note that there is some overlap between the two clips.)

    (Via Fred Thompson News.)

    By the way, Thompson will be filing in Oklahoma. In fact, paperwork was already filed, but something needed to be corrected. I've been assured by the campaign that this will happen before the deadline Wednesday at 5.

    Today through Wednesday at 5 is the annual filing period for the February 5th school board elections in Oklahoma, as well as for the presidential primary to be held the same day. As of 1 p.m., only Barack Obama has filed for the Democrats. John McCain was the first Republican to file, followed by Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, and Jerry Curry of Haymarket, Va. The state election board will be updating this PDF file with the complete list of those who have filed for the Oklahoma presidential preference primary.

    In all of Tulsa County's independent school districts except Tulsa, Office No. 3 is up for election to a five-year term, elected at large by the entire district. The two dependent districts (Keystone and Leonard) will elect a member for Office No. 3 to a three-year term.

    In the Tulsa District, board members are elected by election district to four-year terms. Board members for District 5 and District 6 -- Cathy Newsome and Ruth Ann Fate, respectively -- are up for re-election. If for no other reason, they both deserve to be defeated for their hostility to charter schools and to expanded options for Tulsa's school children. It was the Tulsa school board's stonewalling that led to bipartisan state legislation this year providing for a way for charter school organizers to bypass the board.

    Even if you don't have school-aged children, if you care about the vitality of the City of Tulsa's central core, you should want to see more opportunities for charter schools. We need to offer families better educational choices if we want them to stay in the city instead of moving to the 'burbs.

    Click here for a PDF map of Tulsa County's school districts, also showing the boundaries of Tulsa Schools' seven election districts.

    District 5 (Newsome) covers Utica to Yale, 11th to 41st, plus Utica to Harvard between 41st and 51st, Riverside to Utica between 21st and 51st, plus the remainder of precinct 106 south of I-44. District 6 (Fate) is roughly I-244 to 51st, Yale to Memorial, plus 51st to 61st, Sheridan to Memorial, plus the bit of the Tulsa district south and east of 31st & Memorial, with minor adjustments for precinct 56 (in the district) and 92 (out of the district).

    Also on the ballot is the Zone 3 seat on the board of Tulsa Technology Center, for a seven year term. Bea Cramer, a retired Tulsa Tech staffer first elected in 1990, is the incumbent. Zone 3 is most of the City of Tulsa southeast of 31st & Yale, plus a bit of Broken Arrow northwest of 101st St and 145th East Ave. Click here for a map of the Tulsa Technology Center board election zones. Tulsa Technology Center serves all of Tulsa County plus a portion of each neighboring county.

    If you don't like the school system, throw your hat into the ring.

    UPDATE: As of 3:30, Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton have also filed for the presidential primary. Also, Brian Hunt, vice president of CB Richard Ellis/Oklahoma, has announced that he is running for Cathy Newsome's Tulsa school board seat. You may remember him as chairman of the Tulsa Real Estate Coalition, the political wing of the local development industry, during last year's city elections, when TREC excluded mayoral candidate Chris Medlock from a debate. I've e-mailed him some questions and will let you know the answers I receive. Brian has two children in Tulsa Public Schools -- one at Eliot Elementary and one at Zarrow International Elementary.

    Todd Seavey sends a couple of witty darts in the direction of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's popularity bubble and in the process introduces a useful phrase into the political lexicon (which I've highlighted in bold):

    A vote for Huckabee might as well be -- well, a vote for some other Arkansas governor. Just enough centrism to govern, not enough principle to make a difference. Huckabee is the sort of politician that makes one fear that mass democracy, after enough decades of refinement, will almost always produce de facto committees in the form of individuals....

    Regarding Huckabee's philosophy of "verticalism":

    But Huckabee does not -- because he cannot -- explain exactly what it is that he wants us to move vertically toward. "Upward to freedom" makes sense. "Upward to totalitarianism" even makes sense, bad idea though it may be. "Upward to a grab bag of focus-grouped ideas, some left, some right, none daring, that might play well in a Midwestern state like Iowa and get me on the ticket later as a southerner" is hollow. Don't fall for this Rorschach approach to politics, America. We already have one Clinton in the race.

    Meanwhile, Greg Kaza, the head of the Arkansas Policy Foundation, that state's free market think-tank, writes at National Review Online that Arkansas has just had its biggest tax cut in history: a 50% cut in sales taxes on groceries. That cut didn't come under former Governors Bill Clinton or Mike Huckabee. How, Kaza asks, "did the tax survive two decades that included Clinton's "Bridge to the 21st Century" and Huckabee-style 'compassionate conservatism'?"

    The long answer, however, was a failure to cross the fiscal T's, as in taxes, and dot the visionary I's, as in imagination. This is where freshman Democratic governor Mike Beebe comes in.

    Beebe, raised by his working mother, a waitress, had the imagination to make a phase-out of the grocery tax his main issue in the 2006 election. And this year he turned that idea into reality. The governor skillfully navigated the grocery-tax cut around legislative critics who preferred an earned-income tax credit that excluded the middle class. He would also base the tax cut on a budget surplus of nearly $1 billion that Mike Huckabee did not use to reduce taxes.

    The story also notes that it was a Democrat in the Arkansas legislature that led the charge to eliminate the state grocery sales tax.

    It's not good for the GOP if a Democratic governor is better at cutting taxes than a Republican governor.

    There's been a lot of arguing back and forth about former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee's record on taxes and spending. The Club for Growth argues that Huckabee is not a fiscal conservative. Huckabee's allies accuse the Club for Growth of being deliberately misleading about Huckabee's record, although when they get down to specifics, what they are really arguing is that the facts that have been documented by the Club for Growth aren't important.

    One of the factual points on which Huckabee has directly contradicted the Club for Growth is on the matter of the fuel tax increase he signed into law in 1999. Here's what the Club for Growth said in their analysis of Huckabee's fiscal record:

    He signed bills raising taxes on gasoline (1999), cigarettes (2003) (Americans for Tax Reform 01/07/07), and a $5.25 per day bed-tax on private nursing home patients in 2001 (Arkansas New Bureau 03/01/01).

    In response, Huckabee claims that while the fuel taxes went up, the increase was approved by 80% of the voters in a referendum. Club for Growth has a new video showing Huckabee saying something of that sort on five different occasions in recent interviews and debates.

    The end of the video has the following response:

    On April 1, 1999, Huckabee signed the gas and fuel tax hikes into law. The tax hikes began taking effect that day. -- Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, 04/25/99

    On June 15, 1999, 80% of Arkansas voters approved a bond issue, which DID NOT include the gas tax increases. -- Arkansas Democrat- Gazette, 06/29/99

    I don't have access to that newspaper's archives, but I was able to find records of the 1999 legislative session on the Arkansas Legislature's website. This link lists all the acts of 1999 -- bills that were enacted into law -- with links to PDFs of the legislation. This link provides summaries of all the acts of the 1999 session.

    The two relevant acts were Act 1027 and Act 1028. Here are the summaries from that Legislature's website:

    HIGHWAY BONDS

    Act 1027 (HB1500) - The act authorizes the Arkansas State Highway Commission to issue revenue bonds not to exceed $575,000,000 for the purpose of constructing and renovating roads and highways. The act authorizes that the repayment of the bonds shall be guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the state and prescribes the terms and conditions of the issuance of such bonds. The act describes the sources of repayment of the bonds and provides for a statewide election on the question of issuing such bonds.

    MOTOR AND DISTILLATE FUEL TAXES

    Act 1028 (HB1548) - The act levies an additional excise tax on motor fuel in the amount of 1¢ per gallon per year for 3 years. The act also levies an additional excise tax on distillate special fuel in the amount of 2¢ per gallon on the effective date of the act and provides that the tax on distillate special fuel will increase to 4¢ per gallon effective one year after the effective date of the act. The act also provides that the additional taxes collected pursuant to the act shall be special revenues and shall be distributed as set forth in the Arkansas Highway Revenue Distribution Law. The act also eliminates the current limitation on the transfer of funds to the State Aid Road Fund.

    These two bills were passed by the Arkansas Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Huckabee. Note that the only reference to an election is in Act 1027, which is about the issuance of revenue bonds. There is no election mentioned in Act 1028; unlike Oklahoma, politicians in Arkansas can enact a tax without a vote of the people.

    Just to be sure, let's drill down into the actual text of the bills:

    Here's Act 1027, the Arkansas Highway Financing Act of 1999. The bill calls for the issuance of bonds, to be guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the state, to be repaid by anticipated federal highway funds and the increased excise tax on "distillate special fuels" (e.g. diesel):

    Revenues derived from the increase in taxes levied on distillate special fuels pursuant to Section 2 of the "Arkansas Distillate Special Fuel Excise Tax Act of 1999" and the "Motor Fuel Excise Tax Act of 1999" and transferred to the State Highway and Transportation Department Fund pursuant to Arkansas Code 27-70-207(c) in accordance with Section 4(a) of the "Arkansas Distillate Special Fuel Excise Tax Act of 1999" and the "Motor Fuel Excise Tax Act of 1999".

    Section 5 of the Act calls for an election:

    No bonds shall be issued under this Act unless the issuance of bonds has been approved by a majority of the qualified electors of the state voting on the question at a state-wide election called by proclamation of the Governor.

    So Act 1027 called for an election to ask the voters of Arkansas whether or not to issue revenue bonds for highway projects.

    Now let's look at Act 1028, which is given two names in Section 1:

    This Act may be referred to and cited as the "Arkansas Distillate Special Fuel Excise Tax Act of 1999" and the "Motor Fuel Excise Tax Act of 1999".

    Here are the key paragraphs, sections 2(a) and 3(a):

    On and after the effective date of this act, in addition to the taxes levied on distillate special fuels in this section and Arkansas Code 26-56-502 and Arkansas Code 26-56-601, there is hereby levied an excise tax of two cents (2¢) per gallon upon all distillate special fuels subject to the taxes levied in those code sections. Effective one (1) year after the effective date of this act, the additional tax levied by this subsection shall be increased by an additional two cents (2¢) per gallon....

    On and after July 1, 1999, in addition to the taxes levied on motor fuel in 26-55-205, 26-55-1002 and 26-55-1201, there is hereby levied an additional excise tax of one cent (1¢) per gallon upon all motor fuels subject to the taxes levied in those code sections. On and after July 1, 2000, the additional tax levied by this subsection shall be increased to two cents (2¢) per gallon. On and after July 1, 2001, the additional tax levied by this subsection shall be increased to three cents (3¢) per gallon.

    Note that the tax isn't contingent on voter approval. The act, approved by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Mike Huckabee, directly increases the taxes at the pump on diesel and gasoline. Here is the only mention of voter approval in Act 1028. It's at the beginning of section 4:

    (a) The additional taxes collected pursuant to this act shall be considered special revenues and shall be distributed as set forth in the Arkansas Highway Revenue Distribution Law, beginning at Arkansas Code § 27-70-201.

    (b) However, if the bond issue provided in the Arkansas Highway Financing Act of 1999 is approved by the voters, the distillate special fuel taxes collected pursuant to Section 2 of this act shall be distributed as provided in the Arkansas Highway Financing Act of 1999.

    The only thing voter approval changed is how the additional tax revenues would be allocated. The tax increase would go into effect either way.

    Bottom line: Club for Growth is telling the truth about Huckabee's gasoline and diesel tax hike. Huckabee's recent statements about the tax increase are at least misleading -- when he mentions the tax increase and then says that Arkansas voters approved "a road program," giving the impression that the tax increase and the "road program" (meaning the bond issue) were one and the same thing -- and at worst a flat-out lie -- when he says that Arkansas voters approved the tax increase.

    BONUS VIDEO: Here's Huckabee, at the opening of the 2003 special legislative session, telling legislators he'd be fine with any tax increase they'd choose to pass:

    There's more interesting stuff about Huckabee's fiscal record and lack of support from Arkansas Republican legislators on the Arkansas Journal blog.

    AND MORE: The latest counteroffensive from Huckabee's blogpals is on Evangelical Outpost, where Joe Carter accuses Club for Growth of hypocrisy for not including a 2005 earmark that benefitted a company owned by Club for Growth.net donor and chairman Jackson Stephens Jr. in one of the CfG's congressional RePORK Cards. I replied in the comments:

    Joe, the Club for Growth issued its first RePORK card in 2006, based on 19 anti-pork amendments offered by Rep. Jeff Flake; the earmark to which you refer was in 2005. And even if they'd had a RePORK card in 2005, the earmark wouldn't have been on the RePORK card unless someone like Jeff Flake or Tom Coburn had proposed an amendment to bar funding for it, unlikely considering that it was for a "Surgical Wound Disinfection and Biological Agents Decontamination Project" for the DOD.

    WRDA veto overridden

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    The U. S. Senate voted 79-14 this morning to override President Bush's veto of the Water Resources Development Act of 2007 (HR 1495). The bill becomes law; the House voted Tuesday to override, 361-54.

    The fourteen brave souls who voted against the override comprise 12 Republicans and 2 Democrats, including our own Tom Coburn: Allard (R-CO), Brownback (R-KS), Burr (R-NC), Coburn (R-OK), DeMint (R-SC), Ensign (R-NV), Enzi (R-WY), Feingold (D-WI), Gregg (R-NH), Kyl (R-AZ), McCaskill (D-MO), McConnell (R-KY), Sessions (R-AL), Sununu (R-NH).

    Of the seven Senators not voting, five are presidential candidates: Democrats Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, and Joe Biden, and Republican John McCain. (Republicans John Cornyn of Texas and Jim Bunning of Kentucky were the other two.)

    The bill includes a $50 million authorization for Arkansas River corridor projects related to the Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan:

    SEC. 3132. ARKANSAS RIVER CORRIDOR, OKLAHOMA.

    (a) In General- The Secretary is authorized to participate in the ecosystem restoration, recreation, and flood damage reduction components of the Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan dated October 2005. The Secretary shall coordinate with appropriate representatives in the vicinity of Tulsa, Oklahoma, including representatives of Tulsa County and surrounding communities and the Indian Nations Council of Governments.

    (b) Authorization of Appropriations- There is authorized to be appropriated $50,000,000 to carry out this section.

    Club for Growth wanted to see the veto sustained and will make this vote part of its congressional scorecard. The bill came out of conference committee 60% bigger than either of the original House or Senate versions, and the Heritage Foundation called the bill "a prime example of legislation run amok."

    RELATED: Andrew Roth of the Club for Growth, writing at National Review Online, debunks the top lame congressional excuses for pork barrel spending:

    • "I know my district better than some unelected bureaucrat!"
    • "Earmarks don't increase spending."
    • "It's for the children!"
    • "I'm fighting to get our fair share!"

    And they're off!

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    Jay Cost, whose Horse Race Blog provided detailed day-to-day analysis of the 2004 presidential election at the level where it mattered -- on a state-by-state basis -- is back and blogging at Real Clear Politics. (Actually, he's been back for a while, but I just now noticed.)

    Cost's writing was a refreshing surprise, emerging as it did in the homestretch, the last month the '04 race. This time he began a year and a half before election day.

    As I skim through the archives of the new blog, I'm remembering how much I enjoyed Cost's thinking and the clear way he expresses it. Here are a few bits by way of introduction.

    About his approach and style:

    This blog will probably be unlike most other blogs you read. I do not really think of myself as a blogger so much as a prolific essayist. As the election draws nearer, I think this space will start to resemble a blog more, as there will be more news to analyze. But, for the time being, I do not intend for this place to be my running tally of who is "up" and who is "down." It is just too soon for that.

    Instead, I will try to make this site a forum for questions and answers about our electoral politics. I am at my best when I am trying to answer an exact question. So, what you will read here will be my answers to questions that I have asked myself. When formulating these questions and answers, I prize theoretical clarity and analytical precision. That is, I like to develop clearly-stated, intuitively sensible theories about what is going on, and then analyze those theories as precisely as I can. It is a goal of mine that this space be full of clear and precise thoughts.

    About himself:

    I don't understand politics as a pitched battle between the forces of Good and the forces of Evil. I understand it as the competition between divergent interests in the venue that Americans have set up to manage such conflict, namely our Madisonian system....

    I like math, and I think it is useful for studying politics. Yes - math and politics in the same sentence - you read that right!...

    I am not really interested in the "should" of American politics; I am interested in the "is."... This is not to say that my own preferences for the "should" won't creep into my analysis of the "is," but I am going to keep them as separate as possible.

    Because I will not be able to keep the "is" and the "should" entirely separate, you should know a little about my worldview. I'll put it in two different ways, the hoity-toity philosophical and the meat-and-potatoes. Hoity-toity: my political philosophy lies at the nexus of Karl Popper, St. Bonaventure, and Edmund Burke....

    By and large, I do not get frothy-mouthed over the "should."... It is hard to be frothy-mouthed about what should happen when you learn the dirty little secret of the Madisonian system: it is set up specifically to prevent much from really changing. So, why get all frothy-mouthed over my idea of the way things should be when our forefathers set it up so that my idea of "should" will almost always lose?

    His rules for e-mail are worthy of widespread adoption. The last one sums them all up.

    Emails should be polite and respectful. They should implicitly convey your understanding that a fellow human being you (probably) have never met shall be reading what you have written, and that - as you have never met him - you have no business being anything but nice.

    On the flaw in asking for first preferences only in primary polls:

    Primary voting is staggered. Some of us vote after others. This is important because candidates drop out. In reality, Iowans are the only people who make a selection for the presidential nomination the way respondents answer polls. The rest of us have to choose from a smaller field. So, this format of polling does not capture the reality of the primary election....

    So, the poll I would like to see is a query of primary voters that asks them to rank the candidates from worst to first, and let us view the raw data. Maybe then we could get a sense of what will happen.

    On the way conventional wisdom develops:

    Nevertheless, this is how the Washington chattering classes work. They put together disparate pieces of data into an over-simple narrative (the only kind that works in sound bite format) - and they repeat it, and they repeat it, and they repeat it. Eventually, it takes upon a life of its own, as the conclusion of the chatterers becomes a fact that all and sundry have "observed."

    Finally, a couple of quotes from a brilliant recent essay, The Awful Task of Governance:

    There is a strange tension in the American political party. It strives to achieve a governing majority. That is its goal. But a governing majority is nothing but a hassle. It cannot accomplish much more than half measures, watered-down versions of what it promised, or symbolic gestures that change nothing at all. Eventually, its supporters catch on to this impotence, and they come to loathe it, decrying its members as dime-a-dozen politicians who squandered the public trust. So, I can't help but ask: why bother?

    Of course, like a salmon swimming upstream, the party does bother. It works tirelessly to acquire 218 Reps or 51 Senators, even though it knows (or it should know) what awaits it upon "victory." And what awaits the party is one of the inevitable features of our system: it thwarts, stymies, and frustrates governing majorities. It was designed to do exactly that....

    The function of the political party is to concentrate power just enough so that the government can actually work.... What was needed was some kind of centripetal force in our system to collect at least some of the power that the Constitution disperses. Without such a force, our system would do little more than enforce the status quo. Thus, the party caucus was born. This remains the job of the political party to this day: to concentrate power by coordinating the actions of governmental agents with similar views.

    I've added the Horse Race blog to my Newsgator-powered headlines page, which shows the latest 100 posts from about 160 blogs and opinion feeds, so you and I will know when a new Jay Cost essay has been posted.

    An idea advanced by Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton that the Tulsa Whirled editorial board found silly beyond their intellectual capacity to explain is already in use in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

    The following text appears in Chapter 2, Section 5A of the Minneapolis City Charter (emphasis added):

    Section 5A. Conduct of Elections. Notwithstanding the provisions of Minnesota Statutes, Section 205.17, subdivision 2, or any other provision of law and except as otherwise provided in this section, the City General Election for Mayor and City Council shall be conducted in the manner provided by law for elections for nonpartisan offices. All such candidates shall, however, state the name of their political party or political principle, stated in three words or less, on their affidavits of candidacy and affidavits of candidacy for Mayor and City Council shall otherwise conform with all requirements of the Minnesota general election laws pertaining to affidavits of candidacy for partisan offices. The political party or political principle shall be placed on the General Election ballot with the names of the candidates for such offices. (As amended 6-13-55; 3-29-68; 81-Or-145, § 1, 6-12-81; 11-8-83; Charter Amend. No. 161, § 1, ref. of 11-7-06)

    While this chapter was amended last November, by a referendum replacing a non-partisan primary and runoff with Instant Runoff Voting, the requirement to "state the name of their political party or political principle" was not part of the amendment, so it dates back at least to 1983.

    This candidate list from the 2001 election gives you an idea of what candidates submitted for "political party or political principle." As you'd expect in Minneapolis, many candidates are DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor), but you'll also see Green, Republican, Independent, Conservative Democrat, Independent Fiscal Conservative, Empowering Your Community, Social Justice, Affordable Housing Preservation, Old Skool, No Snow Emergencies, Better Democracy/Capitalism, Service, Accountability, Change, Preserving Individual Rights, Sense with Dollars, and New Voices Party, among others.

    So what you have now is Minneapolis is what I've endorsed for Tulsa -- multi-partisan elections with Instant Runoff Voting.

    Right after we were married, way back in 1989 and the early '90s, my wife and I lived in the Marella Apartments on Riverside Drive. About the time we moved in there, a few blocks east, on the southeast corner of 39th and Peoria, there was a little commercial building, and a brightly painted red-white-and-blue cafe in a very narrow space. A fellow from Pennsylvania named George Van Wyck thought Tulsa needed a source for authentic Philly cheesesteak sandwiches, so he opened Steak Stuffers USA. The place got a four and a half star rating from the Tribune, upgraded to five stars when the store expanded -- the close quarters was the only knock against the place. George ran (and still runs) a clean store; I remember seeing health inspection scores in the upper 90s. He was always shooting for 100%. We visited frequently.

    I think Steak Stuffers USA was the first place in town to serve corn fritters as a side item (sometimes called corn poppers or corn dodgers).

    The restaurant was successful, and eventually he expanded into the space next door, but his time on Brookside came to an end in 1992, when Albertson's bought the building and knocked it down to make room for their parking lot. George found a new home for Steak Stuffers USA in an old Braum's location on 51st Street between Utica and Lewis. At some point in the '90s, he also expanded to 81st and 145th in Broken Arrow, but he had trouble finding enough reliable workers to keep both locations operating to his high standards.

    I'm rehearsing all this history to tell you that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani is going to be at Steak Stuffers USA, 1932 E 51st St, tomorrow (Friday) at 3:15 p.m. for a brief appearance. (He'll be at the Summit Club for a paying reception at 4.)

    There are things I like and dislike about Rudy Giuliani, but I'm very happy that his campaign is giving George Van Wyck and Steak Stuffers USA a moment in the spotlight.

    Just remember, Rudy: Use the fork to push down the meat, mushrooms, and cheese and wrap the roll around for full flavor.

    UPDATE: David Schuttler has photos of Rudy getting stuffed.

    In 1980, Congressman Tom Steed was interviewed at Rose State College and had something very sensible to say about the way decreasing voter participation empowers pressure groups. (Found on the Democrats of Oklahoma Community Forum.)

    Well, you really struck a nerve with me there because my pet-peeve is the fact that people won't vote. And I have studied it. I've talked to a lot of authorities and there's a lot of people concerned about it all over the nation. And so I've actually come to the conclusion that there's no more insidious enemy my country has than a person who will not vote.

    Now, as the vote went down and down over these years, the pressure groups in Washington went up and up and up. Where there used to be a page of them in the telephone book in Washington, now there's many pages. Everybody has a pressure group.

    Well, finally the Congressman who votes for what's right and antagonizes one or more of these pressure groups comes home and finds that most of the people that he represents and that he did that for won't even bother to vote. He has no protection. And off goes his head. Well Joe Doaks sees Bill Spivey get it in the neck, so the next time, he gets cautious. And it's a growing sickness.

    I don't know how to make people vote. Now in the bicentennial year, we got together, we raised money, we put on a special drive. We had the help of all the media and everybody else. No one was against it. We finally got 55 percent of the eligible voters in Oklahoma to register and we got 94 percent of the 55 percent to vote. And we led the nation - in our bicentennial year. Number one in the nation - in citizenship! Did you hear anything about it? Any hats go up in the air? Have you seen any chamber of commerce slogans or anything? If we were number one in football, maybe we'd a heard a lot, but not on citizenship.

    Now after that, I said, well, I don't know, I give up. If that won't set the state on fire, I don't know what you could do. But it's a sad thing and I never pass up an opportunity to scold people because they won't go vote.

    When ordinary people don't pay attention and don't support officials who put their interests first, voters are swayed by the ads purchased by various pressure groups. Elected officials learn to fear the pressure groups rather than their own voters.

    I think that goes a long way toward explaining how the current ill-conceived river tax increase found its way to the ballot.

    In his column The Worst GOP Field Ever--or the Best?, Michael Medved makes a good point about how unimpressive the candidate selection was in years past. I think he's right when he points to the lack of "one obvious and overwhelming frontrunner" as the source of some unease. Republicans seem to like a bandwagon to jump on, and this year there isn't one.

    What's interesting about this column is how Medved fames his writing to boost Huckabee. He casts Tom Tancredo, Ron Paul, and Duncan Hunter as "angry fringe candidates." (He describes Steve Forbes, who made a late entry in 1996 and was considered an early top-tier candidate in 2000, as a "hard right fringe candidate.")

    Sam Brownback, often paired with Huckabee as a fellow social conservative from the south central US, is described by Medved as an "ego-tripper" in the mold of Orrin Hatch and Bob Smith ("ran more for attention and publicity than with any real thought of winning anything").

    Medved includes Huckabee as a major contender, one of the "Big Five", and as he runs through the flaws of each -- "two messy divorces," "slick, pandering flip-flopper," "too old and too cantankerous," and "upstaged by his micro-managing Trophy Wife" -- Huckabee's problems are "can't seem to raise money" and "background as a Baptist preacher" which might alienate Catholic voters. Medved tags the other four with internal, character flaws, while Huckabee's only problems are external and beyond his control. Nothing about his nanny-state proclivities, his record of supporting tax increases, his opposition to tough immigration enforcement.

    Mitt Romney has Hugh Hewitt, and now it appears that Huckabee has his Hewitt in Michael Medved.

    Policy analysts have come out swinging on the topics of the Fair Tax (national sales tax) and public-private toll roads. The language goes beyond dry analysis. Here's Bruce Bartlett in the Wall Street Journal on the Fair Tax:

    For those who never heard about it, the FairTax is a national retail sales tax that would replace the entire current federal tax system. It was originally devised by the Church of Scientology in the early 1990s as a way to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service, with which the church was then at war (at the time the IRS refused to recognize it as a legitimate religion). The Scientologists' idea was that since almost all states have sales taxes, replacing federal taxes with the same sort of tax would allow them to collect the federal government's revenue and thereby get rid of their hated enemy, the IRS.

    Holy Guilt by Association, Batman! The rest of the piece raises some reasonable questions about the numbers that Fair Tax advocates have been using and the problem with taxing some sales that aren't currently taxed (e.g., new home sales) and collecting sales taxes where there currently isn't a state sales tax (e.g. Delaware). I think, though, that he's off-base regarding the sales tax rebate included in the plan. Bartlett writes:

    Since sales taxes are regressive--taking more in percentage terms from the incomes of the poor and middle class than the rich--some provision is needed to prevent a vast increase in taxation on the nonwealthy. The FairTax does this by sending monthly checks to every household based on income.

    Aside from the incredible complexity and intrusiveness of tracking every American's monthly income--and creating a de facto national welfare program--the FairTax does not include the cost of this rebate in the tax rate. As noted earlier, the FairTax is designed only to match current revenues and does not cover any increased spending that it may require. Since the rebate will cost at least $600 billion the first year, either federal discretionary spending would have to be cut by 60% or the rate would have to be five percentage points higher than advertised.

    It's my understanding that the rebate would be uniform and universal, effectively exempting the first X dollars of spending from this national sales tax. It still would require a federal taxing authority to determine who is entitled to the rebate, and I suppose it would vary by number of people in a household.

    This seems a bit of a juvenile rhetorical overreach, too:

    Perhaps the biggest deception in the FairTax, however, is its promise to relieve individuals from having to file income tax returns, keep extensive financial records and potentially suffer audits. Judging by the emphasis FairTax supporters place on the idea of making April 15 just another day, this seems to be a major selling point for their proposal.

    Yet all but six states now have state income taxes. So unless one lives in one of those states, this promise is an empty one indeed. In short, the FairTax is too good to be true, and voters should not take seriously any candidate who supports it.

    If the Fair Tax takes hold at the federal level, presumably voters will want to encourage it at the state level too.

    I have my own doubts about the advantages of the Fair Tax -- there will still be wrangling about what is and isn't a taxable sale, what constitutes a valid business expense, and the distinction between wholesale and retail -- but I don't think Mr. Bartlett is being entirely fair.

    The other rhetorical smackdown comes from Stephen Malanga in City Journal against opponents of public-private partnerships for the construction of roads and other infrastructure:

    If the deals can overcome resistance from anti-privatization groups and from politicians who benefit from keeping a stranglehold on government assets, they could help make up for decades of underinvestment in infrastructure—and thereby renew America’s landscape....

    The extraordinary breadth and scope of these deals places America on the verge of a financing revolution—that is, if it isn’t snuffed out by powerful politicians and anti-privatization advocates, who’re trying to turn a practical solution for governors and mayors into a partisan issue. There’s no reason that Democrats shouldn’t get behind privatization, as they did recently in big projects in Chicago and Virginia. Nevertheless, Democratic congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon, head of the powerful House Subcommittee on Highways, Transit, and Pipelines, accused the Republican Daniels of selling the Indiana Toll Road to make “an ideological point” about downsizing government....

    Malanga seems oblivious to the concerns about public-private partnerships coming from conservative Republicans over foreign control of public assets, public entities "leasing" their power of eminent domain to private companies, the lack of competitive bidding when selecting a private partner, and the bizarre non-compete clauses insisted upon by the private "partners."

    These two articles seem to be more about marginalizing a threatening alternative perspective than engaging in dialogue with otherwise like-minded people who disagree on these issues.

    MORE: In the comments, Tyson Wynn notes that Fair Tax advocate Neal Boortz rebutted Bartlett's column on his radio show earlier this week. You can read what he had to say in Boortz's "Nealz Nuze" archives for August 26 and August 27.

    Ron Coleman writes of Bill Clinton's latest whopper:

    I use Bill Clinton in my work all the time. My work as a lawyer is in the field of litigation, and I frequently have to help witnesses prepare for their depositions. As part of that preparation, I always tell them this, more or less verbatim:
    Don't even try lying. Who was the best liar in our lifetimes -- the world champ? Right, Bill Clinton. He was the greatest. And what happened to him? He got caught, hung up. Almost no one is a good enough liar to keep it going, so if your conscience doesn't prevent you from lying under oath, at least learn the lesson of Bill Clinton. Just tell the truth.

    As the saying goes: "It may be that your sole purpose in life is to serve as a warning to others."

    I thought the Democrats already had a wealthy, out-of-touch pseudo-populist in the race. Here's Barack Obama at an Iowa campaign stop:

    One line that landed a little flat, though, was when Mr. Obama sympathetically noted that farmers have not seen an increase in prices for their crops, despite a rise in prices at the supermarket.

    “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” the senator said. “I mean, they’re charging a lot of money for this stuff.”

    The state of Iowa, for all of its vast food production, does not have a Whole Foods, a leading natural and organic foods market. The closest? Omaha, Minneapolis or Kansas City.

    Mr. Obama, perhaps sensing a lack of reaction from the crowd, moved along to the next topic. After all, he never claimed to be a farming expert.

    Remember back in 1988, when Michael Dukakis suggested that Iowa farmers should diversify and cultivate Belgian endive.

    What is it about Democratic presidential candidates and upscale leafy vegetables?

    In the U. S. House, fifty amendments have been offered to strip earmarks from appropriations bills. Club for Growth used votes on those amendments to compile a "RePORK Card" for House members.

    None of Oklahoma's delegation was 100%, but District 1 Rep. John Sullivan came closest with 94%. Mary Fallin scored a 26%. The rest of the delegation was in single digits: Cole (8%), Lucas (6%), Boren (2%). The median score for all congressmen: 2%. Only 43 members scored 90% or better.

    Presidential candidate Ron Paul, His Libertarian Majesty? Only 29%.

    Only one pork-butchering amendment passed:

    House Vote 593 - Bars funding of $129,000 for the Mitchell County Development Foundation for the home of the "perfect Christmas tree" project. Amendment passed, 249-174.

    Some that sailed through:

    • $1 million to the Center for Instrumented Critical Infrastructure in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, requested by Rep. John Murtha (D-PA). No congressional member could confirm the existence of the alleged Center. Amendment failed, 98-326.
    • $2 million to establish the "Rangel Center for Public Service" at City College of New York, requested by none other then Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY). Amendment failed, 108-316.
    • $34 million for the Alaska Native Education Equity program, requested by Rep. Don Young (R-AK). When Scott Garrett challenged Young's earmark, Rep. Young declared, "You want my money, my money!" Amendment failed, 74-352.

    Nice: "My money! My money!" I guess being the target of a Federal corruption investigation has a way of setting your nerves on edge.

    Republican Party officials at the national and state level ought to be praising the fact that 119 of the top 120 were GOP members -- Cooper (D-Tenn.) scored a 98% -- but condemning the fact that so many Republicans have been captured by the appropriations culture. The NRCC ought to be ought recruiting replacements for every one of the 24 Republicans who couldn't bear to vote against a single piece of pork.

    In watching for Cal Thomas's column remembering Jerry Falwell, his erstwhile boss at the Moral Majority, I read through several of his recent columns and was reminded that I need to read him more often. Here's a sampling of a few recent columns.

    On Tuesday, Thomas looked at Rudy Giuliani's problem with Republican voters on abortion and suggested one way forward for the former mayor:

    If Giuliani really hates abortion, he will propose steps to reduce their number. If he wants to split the difference on this most contentious social issue — maintaining choice while reducing the number of abortions — he could favor "truth in labeling" legislation similar to a federal law that requires information on bottles, packages and cans. Sophisticated ultrasound machines have been shown to contribute to a sharp reduction in abortions for abortion-minded women. Such a proposal would allow him a rarity in politics: to have it both ways.

    (He'd even have a model to follow: Oklahoma's informed consent legislation.)

    Thomas is a frequent visitor to Northern Ireland, a connection he made through Ulster native Ed Dobson, Thomas's colleague at Moral Majority and his coauthor on Blinded by Might. In April, following the Northern Ireland Assembly elections, Thomas spoke to the Rev. Ian Paisley, the new First Minister of Northern Ireland, about the unprecedented power-sharing agreement between Paisley's hardline Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army:

    Thomas: You mentioned bitterness. For the last 30 years there has been a lot of that. More than 3,500 people have been killed. How long do you think it will take to heal the wounds? Can it occur quickly, or will it take many years?


    Paisley:Oh, I think it will take many years because of the brave ones amongst us, and the shame of how the British government treated us by not dealing with terrorism the way they should have. There is a lot of bitterness. But what progress could we make by just sitting on the devastation and this sea of tears and just moaning and bemoaning our position? I think if we can get the people to move toward faith that will enable them to overcome (bitterness). It could be shorter, or it could be longer, depending on how things work out at the end of the day.

    Thomas on Fred Thompson:

    I have no idea whether Fred Thompson, former senator from Tennessee, will run for the Republican nomination for president, but he should....

    Thompson conveys Middle American, common sense values. When he is asked a question, he doesn't sound as if he's giving a poll-tested pabulum answer. Agree or not, his statements spring from conviction.

    Thomas goes on to quote approvingly from Thompson's interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News.

    Thomas remembers Kitty Carlisle Hart:

    We met by accident at a newspaper editor's convention in St. Paul, Minn., in 1989. She was to be one side in a debate over federal funding for the arts. She was for it. Her opponent was against it. Except, her debating partner's plane was delayed, and so the host editor called me....

    I was somewhere else in town and had to come back to the convention site. By the time I arrived, she had begun her presentation. It was worse than I had anticipated - not her presentation, but the obstacles I faced. There she was with her half granny glasses and a little lamp on the podium, reading her notes. I was supposed to attack this grandmother twice my age? I should rather commit suicide!

    An inspiration came to me. When it was my turn to respond, I began by saying how much I admired her husband, the late Broadway director Moss Hart, and how when I read his autobiography "Act One" in the early '60s, it had deepened my appreciation for the theater. I had her eating out of my hand!

    I also found this, in Jewish World Review's eight-year archive of Thomas's columns, an April 2000 column about Falwell's re-entry into the political sphere:

    At a time when the Christian world is focusing on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the meaning of those events, Rev. Jerry Falwell is again focusing on politics.

    A decade ago, after disbanding the Moral Majority (for which I toiled for five years), Falwell announced he was going back to preaching. People who heard him said his preaching became more powerful when he returned to his first love. But he has again succumbed to the temptation of politics and its illusion of power. At a news conference last week in Washington and on his "People of Faith 2000'' Web page, Falwell announced a drive to register 10 million new voters in order to impose a moral code through government which most citizens, comfortable in their materialism, are not willing to impose on themselves.

    The failure of Falwell's efforts to change culture through government was the subject of the aforementioned Blinded by Might, published in 1999. The book was wrongly reviled by James Dobson and others as a call for Christians to withdraw from political engagement. In fact, it was a call for Christians to be realistic about what could be accomplished in the political sphere, and to remember the distinction between what Augustine called the City of God and the City of Man.

    Falwell's lasting legacy, Thomas says, will be Liberty University, principal among his efforts to engage and transform the culture by non-political means.

    Fred Thompson, former Tennessee senator and potential Republican candidate for president, was invited to speak over the weekend to the Council on National Policy, a group made up of conservative leaders in various spheres of influence. Here's the text of his speech.

    An anonymous tipster told Hotline that Thompson's speech was underwhelming, but the Washington Times reported that Christian conservative leaders are lining up to support Thomspon. (Although the Times story doesn't mention the CNP meeting, the story came out Monday and the anonymous comments almost certainly came from CNP members.)

    Thompson didn't try to cover every possible issue and said at the outset he would not be delivering a rousing oration. Instead, he took two examples of his recent government-related activity and used them to set out his basic philosophy of government and the principles that guide him.

    The two examples Thompson used were assisting Chief Justice John Roberts through the confirmation process and helping Scooter Libby through his recent trial over the Valerie Plame case. In the course of talking about Roberts he makes clear his support for judicial restraint, his opposition to Roe v. Wade, and his opposition to judicial overreaching on church-state issues.

    In the part of the speech about Libby, Thompson rehearsed the facts of the case. He believes the Justice Department caved to political pressure and that Libby deserves a presidential pardon. He marvels that Libby is facing time in jail, while pants-stuffer Sandy Berger has suffered no penalties for stealing what were likely classified documents from the National Archive.

    Here's how Thompson tied these two stories together:

    The Roberts nomination shows us that we can win against those who would use the Constitution for their own ends, even though it is always a fight.

    Libby’s prosecution demonstrates how injustices can occur when public officials lack the courage to go against the public clamor and to do the right thing, thereby perverting the rule of law.

    Thompson does a very clever thing here in a very subtle way. Without mentioning President George W. Bush by name, and without criticizing him by name or title, Thompson set out what Bush did well and what Bush did wrong and how a Thompson presidency would differ from the Bush administration.

    Bush's biggest policy failures stemmed from a desire to preempt criticism from the left-leaning mainstream media -- No Child Left Behind, signing McCain-Feingold, the Medicare prescription drug benefit; going into Iraq with not enough troops, too quickly turning Iraq and Afghanistan over to new civilian governments, adopting too-strict rules of engagement.

    By contrast, Thompson has demonstrated that he will stand by someone who was done an injustice, even when voices from his own party are clamoring that Libby is a pariah. Thompson's willingness to stand for justice when it could do him political harm but no political good whatsoever -- that's a character quality I want in a president.

    UPDATE: A brilliant 30 second video response by Thompson to Michael Moore's challenge to debate him about healthcare.

    Thursday was election day across Britain, with voters picking local government councilors and members of the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly.

    For the first time, Scotland will be choosing local authority councilors using the single transferable vote (STV) method, a form of instant runoff voting that is designed to produce a proportional outcome. Rather than having a single member per council ward, each ward will elect three or four members. Voters will rank the candidates in order of preference. This same system is used for parliamentary elections in the Republican of Ireland and local government and European Parliament elections in Northern Ireland.

    The change was authorized by the Local Governance (Scotland) Act 2004. Its passage was a condition set out by the Liberal Democrats for entering into a coalition government with Labour in the Scottish Parliament following the 2003 election.

    Under the old system, with four or more parties competing in each ward, it was typical for the winning candidate to receive far less than 50% of the vote. The Vote Scotland website estimates that only 40% of the voters had the satisfaction of seeing their choice elected, but under STV, the number one choice of about 80% of the voters will wind up in office. (An Electoral Reform Society study on the most recent local election in Northern Ireland showed that 75% of first preferences went to candidates that were elected, and another 12% of first preferences were for a party that had at least one member elected from that constituency.)

    Instead of doing a hand count, Scotland is using scanning machines which read and perform optical character recognition on hand-marked ballots. A company called DRS is providing the scanning technology, and the Electoral Reform Society, a non-partisan group that encourages adoption of STV, is helping to educate voters about the new system. If the voter's intent is uncertain, the scanner will capture an image of the ballot and transmit it to an election official, who will read and interpret it. In all cases, the paper ballot marked by the voter is preserved and available for hand-counting if necessary. (There ought to be a law against any automated counting or voting system that doesn't preserve a paper record which has been verified by the voter.)

    The ERS study in Northern Ireland showed a high degree of voter satisfaction with the voting method and outcome. Spoiled ballot counts were nearly the same as in the last parliamentary election, which used the traditional X next to your candidate's name.

    That same study also had some interesting notes on the strategies used by parties to maximize the number of seats they captured in a given constituency, with pictures of signs and handbills used by parties to instruct their voters. In Northern Ireland, each constituency had six seats up for election. The RTE website has detailed counts for each constituency, showing vote transfers as candidates were elected and eliminated. For example, here's the count for the North Antrim constituency, home turf for Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley. Despite the DUP's dominance, with 49% of first preferences, minority interests still were able to elect a representative. The DUP won three seats; Sinn Fein, the SDLP, and the Ulster Unionist Party won one each.

    Things are a bit more complicated for Scottish voters. While the local elections are using STV, Scottish Parliament elections use a form of proportional representation called the additional member system. A voter votes for a specific candidate to represent his constituency, then casts a vote for a party's regional list of candidates. When all the votes are counted, a method is used to "top up" each party's number of seats in the region, so that the overall total is as close as possible to the proportion of votes cast for each party. The extra members for a party for a region are taken in order from a list of names supplied by party leadership, which means that these members aren't being elected by name by the public. You can see an example of both ballots and an attempt at an explanation from one of Scotland's local authorities, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar (Western Isles).

    UPDATE 2007/05/04: Things did not go smoothly in Scotland. Three different votes with two different voting methods on two ballots caused some confusion, the scanners jammed on the paper ballots, and the software was having difficulty with "consolidating" the votes. That latter problem is surprising because it doesn't have anything to do with voter confusion or scanning problems. Consolidation is what's done once the ballots have been scanned and interpreted -- the process of counting first preferences and redistributing the surplus votes of elected candidates and the votes of eliminated candidates. That part should have already been perfected.

    The good news, for those who believe in a United Kingdom, is that the Scottish Nationalists beat Labour but fell short of a majority of seats, and will have to solicit the support of parties that oppose secession in order to form a government. The other pleasant surprise is that the Conservatives, who have had their difficulties north of the Tweed in recent years, finished third, ahead of the Liberal Democrats.

    The Conservatives had a great day south of the Tweed as well, taking about 40% of the vote in local elections and winning 50% of the more than 10,000 council seats up for election. Particular congratulations go to former MP Michael W. Bates, leader of the Tories' efforts to rebuild the party in the North of England. The Conservatives took control of several northern councils including Blackpool (gain from Labour), Chester, East Riding of Yorkshire, and South Ribble. I'll be interested in seeing the vote breakdown by region.

    The map of England is increasingly blue, and that's a good thing. (I will never forgive USA Today for assigning red to the Republican Party in their famous county-by-county map of the 2000 presidential election. Red, the color of socialist parties everywhere, properly belongs to the Democrats.)

    Here's what Conservative Party chairman Francis Maude had to say about the result:

    Now that most of the results are in, it's clear that we've made a massive breakthrough. We now control over 200 councils across England - three times as many councils as Labour and the Lib Dems combined. What's more, we've made a great breakthrough in the North of England with more councils than Labour in the North West and Yorkshire.

    We're now the only party that represents the whole of England. This is a great base on which we can build victory at the next election, taking our message of change, hope and optimism to more communities across the country.

    In today's edition of American Spectator Online, there's a piece by me, trying to explain to a national audience what Republican activists in one of the reddest red states were saying at last Saturday's convention about the 2008 presidential race and what Sen. Jim Inhofe is doing to motivate his base of supporters.

    I'll be writing one more piece on the convention (I promise, Jason and Michelle!) for GetRightOK, a new online community for Oklahoma conservatives. It'll mainly be some personal reflections on the races for state chairman and vice chairman. (It's next in the queue.)

    Bill Whittle doesn't post often to his blog -- he started long before I did and is only up to entry number 140 -- but when he does he always knocks the ball out of the park. In his latest entry, he delves into the psychology of conspiracy theorists, those who believe we aren't being told the truth about the Kennedy assassination, the moon landing, or 9/11.

    Of his encounter years ago with a moon landing conspiracy theorist, he writes:

    Now it’s my turn to ask some questions, and here’s where it goes from the ridiculous to the sublime:

    I was there at Cape Kennedy for the launch of Apollo 13. Is he saying I am lying about this whole moon mission conspiracy? I and millions of others who stood there and saw those Saturn V’s climb into the sky?

    Of course not, says Joe. They actually launched. The astronauts just stayed in earth orbit the whole time.

    I see. So we have the technical expertise to build a 40-story rocket that can produce millions of pounds of thrust. We can build capsules and lunar landers that function in zero-G. We have the means and the will to put these massive objects into Earth orbit, keep them up there for two weeks, but the additional 3-4% of the total launch energy needed to send this package to the moon is so obviously beyond our technical skill that the whole thing must be a hoax?

    I’m sorry, that’s the thinking of someone who is mentally ill. There is something deeper at work there.

    That “something” is different than someone who “believes” in UFO’s or the Loch Ness Monster. Such people may be short on critical reasoning, but the emotional force that drives them is a desire for wonder and the magical. Many have remarked that this is, indeed, almost a religious impulse. I’ve wanted to see a real-live flying saucer my entire life. Likewise, if Nessie really existed, what an incredible sight that would be…to look upon the last surviving dinosaur in the flesh! But a videotape of a standing wave shot from five miles away does not outweigh the whole air-breather / no fish evidence. It does not come close to outweighing it. And so I reluctantly throw Nessie back into the superstition bin from whence she came.

    But these denialists – the Moon Hoaxers and the 9/11 “Truthers” – these are a different breed. And they are cut from precisely the same cloth. That is to say, they suffer from the same disease: an unwillingness to face reality and its consequences.

    Regarding Rosie O'Donnell and her claim that 9/11 was orchestrated by the Bush administration:

    I will make the point yet again because I believe it is the crux of the issue: what kind of moral universe do you have to inhabit to be able to believe that your own people – airline personnel, demolition experts, police and security forces, faked witnesses and all the rest – are capable of such a thing? How much hate for your own society do you have to carry in order to live in such a desolate and ridiculous mental hell? What psychoses must a mind be riddled with in order to negate what was perfectly obvious and instead believe a theory of such monumental fantasy? How much pure constant hatred does that take?

    What, in short, is the miserable black hole of self-loathing that drives a person like Rosie O’Donnell and millions like her?

    In the course of the essay, he debunks two of the key assertions of 9/11 "truthers" -- that a controlled demolition brought down the World Trade Center, and that there's something fishy about the lack of major aircraft debris. And I learned about a conspiracy theory that was previously unknown to me -- "chemtrails."

    The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the first to adopt, in 1979, a "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to illegal immigrants. That policy, known as Special Order 40, is being challenged in court as a violation of California state law. A separate lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch is challenging the policy as a violation of Federal law.

    Here is a link to the policy, as issued by the LAPD's board of commissioners. The policy forbids arresting anyone under the illegal entry provisions of the U. S. Immigration Code, and it forbids "police action with the objective of discovering the alien status of a person." It does require reporting to Federal immigration authorities when an undocumented alien is arrested on a felony, a "high grade" misdemeanor, multiple misdemeanors, or a repeat offense. There's nothing in the policy, however, that would allow the police to hold an arrestee on anything more than the non-immigration-related offense.

    Federal law passed in 1996 makes LA's policy illegal:

    …a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (now Immigration and Customs Enforcement) information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.

    The LA Times story mentions that many rank and file officers want to see the policy repealed, but they are afraid to speak out. The mayor and police chief both support Special Order 40.

    The argument made in support of such a policy -- Tulsa has something very similar in place -- is that police depend on the cooperation of crime victims to do their work of protecting the public. If the police could report immigration status, some crime victims might not come forward for fear of being deported. Michael Williams offers a rebuttal:

    [Illegal immigrants are] "living in the shadows" because they chose to break the law and come here illegally. All sorts of criminals "live in the shadows" because of their crimes. Drug dealers and pimps hesitate before calling the cops, too, but should we stop prosecuting them? Criminals shouldn't feel comfortable approaching the police.

    When you put yourself beyond the reach of the law, you put yourself beyond the protection of the law.

    UPDATE: In the comments, Roy asked for details about Tulsa's policy. MeeCiteeWurkor has a scan of the Tulsa Police Department's "sanctuary city" policy (PDF), which is even more friendly to illegal aliens than LA's Special Order 40. For example, if a citizen reports a likely illegal alien to the Tulsa Police Department, the citizen is simply to be given the number for the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services enforcement office in Oklahoma City. Unlike LA's policy, there is no provision for TPD to report repeat or major offenders to the Feds. It appears that the policy was originally approved under Mayor Susan Savage in 1995, then updated in 2003 to reflect the renaming of the INS.

    MeeCiteeWurkor has an extensive archive of items on illegal immigration and enforcement (or lack thereof) in Tulsa and Oklahoma.

    ...and he's proving it by standing up the Oklahoma Republican convention. Romney had committed months ago to be the keynote speaker at this year's convention, to be held on April 14 in Oklahoma City.

    But just yesterday, Romney's people notified the state GOP that he would not be coming to speak. When the party contacted the Romney campaign to find out why, so that they could provide some explanation to the delegates, some graceful way out for Romney, the campaign's response was that they had no response.

    Barring a family emergency -- not a likely reason for a cancellation 10 days in advance -- there's no good reason for Romney to cancel. He doesn't have legislative or executive responsibilities to fulfill. He's just running for president, and this has been on the calendar for a long time.

    The message the cancellation sends is that Mitt Romney will stick to a commitment, but only until something better comes along.

    It may be too late to schedule another speaker, but convention organizers are giving it their best.

    Wouldn't be exciting -- and symbolic -- if Fred Thompson came to speak, filling the void left by Romney?

    Amazing Grace

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    Today's Vent at Hot Air is about the movie Amazing Grace, the story of William Wilberforce's decades-long efforts to ban the slave trade in the British Empire.

    I saw it a couple of weeks ago, and I enthusiastically encourage you to see it. One of the things I love about the movie is that it gets the politics right. Instead of the usual Hollywood treatment that sets up and neatly resolves a conflict with a quick victory for the good guys, you see Wilberforce's years of failed attempts to pass his bill. You see the power of public pressure and the limits of that power. You see the influence of financial interests, both direct and indirect. You see politicians justify a brutal and inhumane policy on the grounds that it's good for business.

    The depiction of Pitt the Younger is particularly commendable. He was a friend of Wilberforce and an ally of the cause, but he had to be strategic about how openly he would support the cause, because of his responsibilities as Prime Minister. It's to the credit of the filmmakers that he wasn't depicted as a contemptible sellout.

    Politicians who need a shot of political courage should see this film. Christians who feel a pull toward politics but wonder if one can truly serve God in that realm should see this film.

    (I was amused by the resemblance between Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Pitt the Younger, and James Daughton, who played smarmy Omega House president Greg Marmalard in Animal House. Anyone else notice that?)

    Below I'm going to try to provide some cultural context for James Dobson's comment casting doubt on Sen. Fred Thompson's Christian faith (while applauding serial bigamist Newt Gingrich). But first, these folks had some worthwhile things to say on the subject:

    See-Dubya:

    Dobson has alienated a lot of people with his comment and he's also set up the biggest Sistah Souljah moment of the upcoming race. Fred ought to use this as a chance to talk about his faith, and also to differentiate himself from shrill voices like Falwell and Dobson.

    Allahpundit at Hot Air, where See-Dubya has this to say in the comments:

    Speaking as someone who was baptized in the Church of Christ myself, [Dobson] has just used up every last bit of goodwill I had for him. It’s sanctimonious jackass spokesmen like Robertson, Dobson, and Reed who are making Christian conservatism irrelevant and driving us into the arms of mushy-headed Rick Warren feelgoodism.

    In the comments of the same post, blogger Right Wing Sparkle defends Dobson's career, but not his comments in this situation.

    Karol writes:

    Much as my instinct is to lash out at Dobson (I mean, who is he to say who is or is not a Christian) I know that he is quite a big deal, especially in the swing state of Colorado. I don't know what he has against our man Fred, but I do hope he cuts this nonsense out.

    The USA Today article included a quote from a Dobson spokesman that may be difficult for non-evangelical readers to parse:

    In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson's claim. He said that, while Dobson didn't believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless "has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian -- someone who talks openly about his faith."

    "We use that word -- Christian -- to refer to people who are evangelical Christians," Schneeberger added. "Dr. Dobson wasn't expressing a personal opinion about his reaction to a Thompson candidacy; he was trying to 'read the tea leaves' about such a possibility."

    Let me try to translate and provide some context, without justifying Dobson's comment.

    Evangelicals draw a distinction between nominal Christians and committed Christians. Within the evangelical subculture, the bare word "Christian" means someone who has a personal relationship with Jesus, someone who has had a conversion experience, someone who has asked Jesus to come into his heart, someone who has been born again. (As I write those phrases, I'm struck by the difficulty of explaining the concept to people who aren't native speakers of evangelicalese.)

    While other branches of Christianity define being a Christian in terms of participation in the sacrament of baptism, which they regard as objectively making a person a Christian, evangelicals understand being a Christian in experiential terms -- making a decision to follow Christ, having a conversion experience.

    The pietistic predecessors of modern evangelicalism looked at the institutionalized churches of the 17th century and saw a dead orthodoxy -- the form of religion was there, but the life-changing power of the resurrection was absent. America's Great Awakening in the early 18th century was not about converting pagans but about calling a nation of outwardly moral, faithful churchgoers back to a lively personal faith in Christ.

    From the evangelical frame of reference, it makes perfect sense to ask the question, "Is he a Christian?" of someone who was baptized and has gone to church every Sunday morning of his life. As the saying goes, being born in a Christian home doesn't make you a Christian any more than being born in a garage makes you a car. The reality of your faith and the security of your salvation is suspect if you can't point to a date and place when you came to faith.

    I can remember, as a Campus Crusader in college, being very suspicious of people who claimed that they couldn't remember a time when they weren't Christian. There were a number of students in our group who grew up in Christian homes and had been baptized as infants, but they had conversion experiences in college. Many chose to be baptized as adult believers, because only now did they consider themselves Christian. Their earlier church involvement was mere religion, not living faith in and a vital personal relationship with Christ.

    To bring this back to politics: Here in Oklahoma, even our Catholic politicians are expected to be born again. When a Republican politician from a liturgical background runs for higher office, you can expect to see an interview with him in a magazine like Community Spirit, in which the pol tells of a personal conversion experience and describes his devotional habits of prayer and Bible reading. (Extra points for being part of a Bible study or prayer group with fellow politicians.) Evangelical voters are reassured to hear a politician talk in this way: He must really be saved, and therefore he has the spirit of God dwelling within him, and therefore he can make godly decisions as a government official.

    The demand to hear a conversion story can have comical results. I can't find the exact quote, but I recall that the elder George Bush, a lifelong Episcopalian, had a typically awkward answer when asked, during his campaign for the White House in 1988, whether he was born again. He knew he had to say yes, but it was clear that he didn't really understand the question.

    While Dobson might be upset that Thompson hasn't come to pay his respects, I suspect Dobson's main problem is that Thompson doesn't wear his faith on his sleeve, that he doesn't talk about his prayer life or having a quiet time or being in a Bible study or listening to Christian radio. The problem with that is that it mistakes the talk for the walk. It puts Dobson (and those he influences) at the mercy of whoever can make the most convincing use of the standard evangelical buzzwords, which doesn't necessarily correlate with genuine devotion to Christ.

    UPDATE: Mollie Hemingway at Get Religion gets it. She agrees that the follow-up quote from Schneeberger is the key to understanding what Dobson said:

    I also think it’s worth highlighting that what we’re seeing here are classic distinctions in how various Protestants define Christian.

    Whether they admit it or not, many Americans adopt a view similar to that held by Dobson: Christianity is mainly about behavior and feelings. Christians of all stripes — as well as folks who don’t define themselves as religious — tend to judge Christians’ fidelity to their faith (and adherents of other religions) by their actions. Many of them incorporate personal testimonies into the equation as a means of speaking to behavioral change or a change of feelings. I bet that many readers are nodding their head and saying, “And what’s the big deal about this?”

    Well, this view is extremely different from that held by other believers, myself included. In my church body [Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, one of the most conservative branches of American Lutheranism] we don’t really speak of personal behaviors or statements — as Dobson seems to have done — to determine someone’s religious status. Instead we point to whether they’ve been baptized.

    ALSO: Barb the Evil Genius, a Lutheran blogger, initially thought I was defending Dobson and wondered if I still held the opinions that I say I held as a Campus Crusader in college. You can see my response, plus some additional thoughts, in the comments below. If you can't imagine that someone can be a genuine Christian without a crisis conversion experience, you need to read Barb's thoughts on the subject.

    Columnist Mona Charen explains "Why Fred Thompson Should Run":

    The current Republican field is like a smorgasbord at Denny's -- lots of OK choices, but nothing to get the heart racing. That's why the potential candidacy of former Sen. Fred Thompson is creating a palpable stir.

    She runs through the leading candidates, explaining how each one falls short: Giuliani, McCain, Romney. What about Brownback, Huckabee, Hunter, et alii?

    The other candidates in the race are barely registering in the polls, and one of those waiting in the wings is carrying enough baggage to sink a cruise ship.

    So. What about that likable fellow from Tennessee? Thompson is not "just an actor" (though they said that about Reagan, and he turned out OK). He began his professional life as an assistant U.S. attorney, worked as Sen. Howard Baker's campaign manager and did a stint as co-chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee. It was he who asked the innocuous-sounding but momentous question of Alexander Butterfield: "Were you aware of the existence of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the president?"...

    His voting record is solidly conservative. He is articulate, self-made (his father was a car salesman), highly intelligent, and exudes calm authority. His star power offers him an opening with independent voters that other candidates can only dream of, while his solid conservative credentials will excite the Republican base.

    Mark Alexander likes Thompson on every issue:

    Thompson's record as a U.S. Senator from 1994 to 2003 shows that he was on the right side of every critical issue. As chairman of the Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs from 1997 to 2001, he voted for national-debt reduction, the all-important balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, a presidential line-item veto to eliminate congressional pork and efforts to privatize elements of Social Security. He supported legislation in the interest of free enterprise and opposed many regulatory and tax measures. He opposed growth in social-welfare programs, including expansions in Medicare and welfare for immigrants. He supported efforts to decentralize or disenfranchise unconstitutional government programs.

    Fred voted for limits on death penalty appeals, product-liability punitive-damage awards and class-action lawsuits. He opposed decreasing restrictions on wiretaps. He supported increased oil exploration, including ANWR drilling permits, and is an advocate of free trade, understanding well the underlying national security implications. He supported an amendment to prohibit flag burning and voted for numerous measures in support of Second Amendment rights. (Charlton Heston campaigned for him in '94.)

    On family and social issues, he opposed "marriage" between homosexuals, partial-birth abortion, cloning, the addition of "sexual orientation" to hate-crimes legislation and legislation prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation. He voted for many education-reform measures, including the provision of school vouchers.

    Most important, Thompson's support for Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom was, and remains, steadfast. Thompson has the authoritative grasp of national-security issues necessary for a commander in chief, particularly with respect to the long-term jihadi threat.

    Peggy Noonan has a general comment about the field which may explain the appeal of Thompson. She says Republicans should stop being intimidated by the legacy of Ronald Reagan:

    For Republicans especially he should be a reorienting memory. He was modern conservatism. If they are for more government, more spending, a more imposing state, what are they?

    For Democrats he should function as a reminder that ideas and philosophy count, that they give politics meaning.

    Republicans should take heart from his memory but not be sunk in him or spooked by him. Life moves. Reagan's meaning cannot be forgotten. But where does it get you if it's 1885, and Republicans are pulling their hair out saying, "Oh no, we're not doing well. We could win if only we had a Lincoln, but they shot him 20 years ago!" That's not how serious people talk, and it's not how serious people think. You face the challenges of your time with the brains and guts you have. You can't sit around and say, "Oh what would Lincoln do?" For one thing it is an impractical attitude. Lincolns don't come along every day. What you want to do with the memory of a great man is recognize his greatness, laud it, take succor from it, and keep moving. You can't be transfixed by a memory. Hold it close and take it into the future with you....

    Doesn't matter what you call yourself, matters who you are. Reagan wasn't magic. He was serious, farsighted and brave about the great issues of his time. Republican candidates could try that. If they did, it would have a secondary benefit. They'd start respecting themselves instead of merely being full of themselves. This would help them stop being spooked.

    A Rasmussen head-to-head poll shows Fred Thompson beating Hillary Clinton 44-43 and only 12 points behind Barack Obama. (Via Alarming News.)

    The American Spectator blog has this observation:

    Suffice it to say that a number of folks in Massachusetts and Manhattan and Arizona are getting nervous. Without having spent a dime, Thompson is a more credible candidate than some folks who have spent upwards of $10 million.

    An Iowa, ARG has Giuliani and McCain tied at 29, Thompson in third at 12, and Romney in fourth at 10.

    In Texas, ARG shows Giuliani at 30, McCain at 20, Romney at 13, Thompson at 12, and Gingrich at 11.

    ARG hasn't done an Oklahoma poll since the Thompson buzz began. Their February poll has Giuliani at 37, McCain at 21, and Huckabee at 14. Romney is at 2.

    (Huckabee is doing great in Arkansas, but is in the single digits at best everywhere else.)

    Looking at all of ARG's state-by-state polls, the message that come across clearly is that Romney should just give up. He is in the single digits almost everywhere except his two home states -- Utah and Massachusetts -- and New Hampshire, where he had a lot of exposure as governor of a neighboring state. Even where he's just into the low teens, he's well back of Giuliani and McCain, competing with a couple of undeclared candidates. For all of the money he has spent, he's not making an impression. Only a win in Iowa or an overwhelming win in New Hampshire (a close win would fall short of what would be expected of a Massachusetts official there) would make him a contender in later primaries. For all of the advertising he has done, for all of his time in those two states, Romney's numbers aren't budging.

    (But, you say, shouldn't that be true of Huckabee, Brownback, and the rest, too? The difference is that they could credibly claim they haven't made their media push yet in those states, so they wouldn't expect to see much support at this stage.)

    Finally, Karol at Alarming News tracks the tempest over Thompson's views on abortion. A group called "Evangelicals for Mitt" posted an entry on its blog with quotes from 1994 and 1996 news stories saying that Fred Thompson was a supporter of abortion rights at the time, just as Romney was in '94. But an executive with the National Right to Life Committee interviewed Thompson at length in 1994, during his first race for Senate:

    [National Right to Life executive co-director Darla] St. Martin said that she went down to Tennessee in 1994 to speak with Thompson personally when he first ran for Senate, and that she determined he was against abortion.

    "I interviewed him and on all of the questions I asked him, he opposed abortion," St. Martin said. She told me that the group went on to support him in that election, and his record reinforced for her that their determination was correct.

    "He has a consistent voting record that is pro-life," she said.

    MORE FRED:

    Thompson dominated a straw poll held at the Gwinnett County, Georgia, Republican Convention. Gwinnett County, in the Atlanta suburbs, ought to be Gingrich country, but Newt finished with 17%, well back of Thompson with 44%. It's not a scientific poll, but county convention goers are the sort who volunteer for candidates and persuade their neighbors to vote.

    Michele of Reformed Chicks Blabbing comments on these results:

    I think we are seeing the erosion of support for the leading candidates and the beginning of a ground swell for the closest we are going to get to an electable, conservative candidate. At least I hope that's the case.

    George Korda, writing in the Knoxville News Sentinel, remembers August 1994, during Thompson's first run for U. S. Senate, when he was running well behind his Democratic opponent. The column has a great title: Thompson and the Hunt for a Red November. That's red as in Republican. How long has it been since we had a president that wasn't from the sunbelt?

    There's a lot of interesting news on Bill Hobbs's Elephant Biz blog including a Daily Fred roundup. Hobbs also ponders whether Thompson's surge disproves the conventional wisdom that an early entry into the presidential race is essential, dissects Hugh Hewitt and Michael Barone's analysis of Fred's chances, and why Mitt Romney's success at fundraising may all be for naught.

    The American Spectator blog has more on who's funding and supplying info to the Evangelicals for Mitt blog, which lately seems focused on downplaying anyone who might compete with Romney for conservative support.

    Finally, here's a blog devoted to news about Fred Thompson.

    YET MORE: Robert N. Going says he "likes a guy who says what he means and means what he says." He cites Thompson's response to the question, "Do you want to overturn Roe v. Wade?"

    I think Roe vs. Wade was bad law and bad medical science. And the way to address that is through good judges. I don't think the court ought to wake up one day and make new social policy for the country. It's contrary to what it's been the past 200 years.

    Last week, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed, by a vote of 82-14, HB 2595 (link opens a Microsoft Word-compatible Rich Text Format file), which would move Oklahoma's 2008 presidential preference primary from the first Tuesday in February to the last Tuesday in January. The bill was authored by State Rep. Trebor Worthen and State Sen. Todd Lamb, both Oklahoma City Republicans. The bill has been assigned to the Senate Rules Committee.

    Oklahoma is already in a strategic position with its current primary date, which it shares with California, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Missouri, and Utah. (West Virginia has a state convention for delegate selection that day, and North Dakota has caucuses.) Although California will attract a lot of attention, it doesn't have the majority of delegates up for grabs that day. In fact, Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma have a combined total of 125 delegates. Add in Alabama's 45, and you have what amounts to a south central regional primary offering 170 delegates. (The numbers exclude the three uncommitted superdelegate seats allocated to each state's RNC representatives.)

    Despite a much greater population, California has the same number of delegates, a consequence of the party's overall lack of success in statewide races there. California gets one bonus delegate (for winning the Governor's Mansion); Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma have a total of 55 bonus delegates.

    (Arizona and Utah are inconsequential -- likely locks for McCain and Romney, respectively.)

    While California was a winner-take-all state in years past, in 2008, there will be 54 separate elections. Three delegates will be allocated in each congressional district to the candidate with a plurality. The winner of the statewide tally will get an additional 11 seats. There's an incentive for an underfunded candidate to focus on winning in just one of California's media markets, while spending more time and money in the less expensive, more compact south central states.

    So there are already plenty of strategic reasons for presidential hopefuls to spend plenty of time in Oklahoma. If HB 2095 passes the State Senate, Oklahoma would become even more important, leaping ahead of South Carolina by four days to become the second primary on the calendar, just a week after New Hampshire.

    Of course, any other state might move its date, too, if there is still time for its legislature to act. In some states, legislatures have authorized the governor or the state's chief election official to move the date in response to the actions of other states, whether or not the legislature is in session.

    LINKS: The Green Papers has a wealth of information about the 2008 primary process, including a chronological calendar of primaries, caucuses, and conventions, which in turn has links to details on each state's rules, delegate allocations for the Republicans and Democrats, showing the allocation formula used by each party. There is also a table showing who is eligible to participate in delegate selection and what allocation method is used for each state for both Republicans and Democrats. Each state page includes notes on legislation affecting the date of the primary.

    The fact that the Green Papers got Oklahoma's legislative information wrong makes me wonder about the reliability of their other information, however. They have this:

    Oklahoma HB 1790 was amended on 7 February 2007 to change the Presidentail Primary date from the first Tuesday in February (5 February 2008) to the first Saturday in February (2 February 2008).

    HB 1790 is actually Rep. John Trebilcock's very sensible bill to reduce the number of permitted special election dates from 21 to 14 in every two-year cycle. Unfortunately HB 1790 didn't make it out of committee. I can't find any legislation that would move the primary to a Saturday.

    Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn will be on ABC's 20/20 tonight (9 p.m. CDT) to talk about Congress's spending addiction:

    But who in Congress really wants to end [wasteful spending]? After all, you can get re-elected by spending other Americans' money on people in your state.

    Well, at least one senator wants to cut back on that spending — Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

    "The oath that we take has no mention of our state. The oath we take is to do what is in the best interest of the country as a whole," Coburn said....

    And what's his response to other members of Congress who say that they're building useful things — necessary infrastructure in their districts?

    "If you're building infrastructure and you're stealing it from your grandchildren, how's that moral?" asked Coburn. "The greatest moral issue of our time today isn't the war in Iraq, it isn't abortion, it isn't any of the other issues. It is, is it morally acceptable to steal opportunity and future from the next generation?"

    They're stealing your money, he said, to spend it on things like a North Carolina Teapot Museum. Are those teapots crucial to the national interest? The museum is still not built, so the teapots are waiting in a warehouse.

    "That's stealing," said Coburn. "It's also unconscionable that we would not be paying attention to that."

    Also tonight on 20/20, they'll talk to State Rep. Dan Greenberg about his "Edifice Complex Prevention Act," which would prohibit naming public facilities after living people:

    "This is a practice that's got to stop," Greenberg said. "For me, it just comes too close to using taxpayer money to build temples to living people."

    "In the old days we had a tradition of waiting to judge a person's whole life before we named a building after them," Greenberg said. "Now we have this modern trend of … naming buildings after politicians while they're in the prime of life. And you know, that creates a problem. If we're gonna use taxpayer money to publicize ourselves, if we're gonna use taxpayer money to build temples to ourselves. … That's very dangerous."...

    What made Greenberg say "enough" was when he discovered there was a park named after him and a bunch of other legislators.

    "The worst thing was that another county legislator said, 'I appreciate you putting my name on this sign, but you did not put it in my campaign colors,'" Greenberg said. "And that was so distasteful. I just said to myself, 'Enough.'"

    Greenberg's had to make some adjustments in his original proposal -- to allow someone who donates a building to a college to get his name on it, for example. But the main point -- keeping pols from honoring themselves antehumously -- is still intact.

    The apple doesn't fall far from the tree: Dan Greenberg is the son of Paul Greenberg of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, who writes one of the best syndicated columns anywhere -- literate, witty, filled with common sense.

    Here's a video interview with Greenberg after he pulled his bill earlier this year, talking about his colleagues' reaction to the bill. (A fellow Republican told him that he shouldn't be bothered by the naming of buildings because Republicans were winning the building naming war in northwest Arkansas.)

    You've got to like a state rep who can quote Cato the Elder or come up with a punny bill title.

    A local story indicates the danger of honoring living persons with buildings.

    There's a city park on 41st Street west of Red Fork. Originally it was named to honor Finis W. Smith, the State Senator for District 37 from 1965 to 1982. He spent four years as State Senate President Pro Tempore (1969-1973). He quit two years before his term expired, just as a controversy surrounding business he and his wife did with Tulsa County tag agencies began to erupt. Then in August 1984:

    Former state Sen. Finis Smith and his wife were indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on mail fraud and tax evasion charges in connection with business dealings they had with four Tulsa County tag agents.

    The 18-count indictment alleges the Smiths maintained several undisclosed foreign bank accounts and failed to report income from their business interests on their federal and state income tax forms.

    According to the indictment, the Smiths held five certificate of deposit accounts, one savings account and one money market account in a bank in Tampico, Mexico.

    Finis Smith arranged for three family members to be appointed as tag agents, then set up dummy corporations to "perform services" for these tag agencies. The money paid to these companies was diverted into the Smiths' personal bank accounts. Not only were Smith and his wife Doris subjected to Federal prosecution, several school districts sued them, because their actions misdirected funds that were due to the schools.

    In November 1985, the two were convicted and sent to Federal prison. A month later, the Tulsa Parks and Recreation Board removed Smith's name from Finis Smith Park, renaming it Red Fork Tract. (In 1986, it was renamed Challenger 7 Park in honor of the crew of the space shuttle that exploded early that year.) His name was also taken off a teaching clinic at the Oklahoma College of Osteopathic Medicine and Surgery. To Smith's credit, he took the initiative to have his name removed; news stories indicate that the parks board and the OCOMS board complied regretfully.

    (There's a whole 'nother story I could go into about the connection between the Smiths' conviction and the downfall of then-Mayor Terry Young. It's fascinating.)

    Oh, and do you remember when Driller Stadium was named Sutton Stadium? And why it didn't stay named that for very long?

    UPDATE: Thanks to Rep. Greenberg for stopping by! (See his comment below.) And on NRO, Deroy Murdock has photos of the edifice complex in action at the federal level:

    It is tough for politicians to oppose projects named after their colleagues. It’s one thing to block questionable funds for the Johnstown Cambria County Airport. It’s quite another to turn thumb’s down on the John Murtha Airport when big, bad John himself is standing ten-feet away on the House floor, glowering at you.

    Bits and pieces:

    Here's a website dedicated to the proposition that Rudy's Really Liberal. Quotes from Mr. Giuliani on a variety of topics, including his rather callous views on abortion.

    WMCA talk show host Kevin McCullough doesn't think much of Newt Gingrich's assertion that private lives should be off limits in the 2008 presidential campaign:

    Bill Clinton deserved to be scrutinized. His behavior (supposedly in private) put the nation's security at risk. He also ended up committing felonies.

    Since the dirt of these men's lives IS going to be examined. They would be better off demonstrating that they are no longer the men they once were - as opposed to making these waste of time statements about how this part or that part of their lives should be "off limits."

    Telling Dr. Dobson that he did something wrong doesn't fully address Gingrich's character problem. Newt didn't just make one oopsie while tipsy. He did the trophy wife trade-up not once, but twice, in each case taking up with wife N+1 while still married to wife N. (Six years overlap in the case of his second-to-third-wife transition.) And there's more -- Google "Newt Gingrich" and "little boy smile" and you'll see what I mean.

    Now on to the continuing buzz about former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson.

    Mickey Kaus wants to know

    Wherein lies the greatness of Sen. Fred Thompson? Just asking!

    Ron Coleman has a similar question:

    But is this another case of mistaking the TV character for the person? ....

    Conservatives are in the dumps because there isn’t a Reagan, or even the version of George W. Bush they thought they were buying, in this race. But what exactly it is that they see in Thompson is not clear unless, as I said, they are actually voting for a rich baritone voice, six-and-a-half-feet of USDA Grade A beef, and — here’s the kicker — his role as a fair but firm, if a little politicized, urban crime-fighter.

    I'm getting excited about a candidate for the first time in this race, and I've never seen "Law and Order," so that isn't all there is to it. I suspect Thompson's stint as a Paul Harvey fill-in has done more to get conservatives excited. Here is someone who is saying all the right things on fiscal issues, social issues, and foreign policy -- and saying them so well!

    The point Kaus makes about Thompson's lack of executive experience is a valid one, but does that lack outweigh the benefit of having a nominee who holds the right views on the key issues of the day and who can articulate and defend them?

    Thompson's radio commentary on illegal immigration has Karol waxing lyrical. And she points to Ryan Sager's piece in the New York Sun weighing the effects of a Thompson candidacy on the rest of the GOP field:

    But there's one candidate whose campaign he could end almost instantaneously, should he choose to run: that of Mr. Romney. Mr. Thompson is pro-life, pro-gun, anti-gay marriage, and anti-tax — like Mr. Romney. But he has one advantage over the former governor: He didn't just come to these positions over the last year or so, in a "Road to Des Moines" conversion.

    On virtually every issue, Mr. Thompson is as far right, or further, than Mr. Romney, and he has been for some time. Mr. Romney's claim to fame so far in the campaign has been that he's the "true conservative" in the race — in contrast to Mayor Giuliani and Senator McCain. If Mr. Thompson jumps in, however, the rationale behind Mr. Romney's candidacy drops out.

    "Road to Des Moines conversion." Heh.

    Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza thinks Thompson can do what social conservatives like Sam Brownback and Mike Huckabee have struggled to do: raise money.

    McCain, Romney and Giuliani have all been in the race and raising money for months (if not years), and with the pricetag for the nomination estimated at between $50 and $100 million the ability to raise millions of dollars is a huge hurdle.

    Lucky for Thompson that his home state is renowned for its willingness to donate to political candidates. Beginning with Sen. Howard Baker's (R-Tenn.) run for the presidency in 1980 and with Al Gore's first run in 1988 and then both of Sen. Lamar Alexander's unsuccessful bids for national office (and don't former Sen. Bill Frist's abbreviated run), Volunteer State donors are acclimated to supporting their native sons.

    Baker, Frist and Alexander are intimately involved in the recruitment of Thompson and would undoubtedly bring their financial networks to bear on his behalf -- ensuring a solid financial base on which to build a national campaign.

    That via Mary Katherine Ham, who notes that John McCain is helping to make the case for Thompson by his slap at the Club for Growth. She notes: "We fiscal conservatives don't take kindly to Club for Growth bashing." No, we don't.

    Finally, via WorldMagBlog, an interesting piece from the Weekly Standard on believers and the presidency -- not about whether past presidents were serious about their faith in God, but about whether they really believed in the direction they were leading the country:

    Four or so years ago, I heard the comedian Jackie Mason mock George W. Bush's slender rhetorical powers. "He stumbles, he stutters, he mispronounces. He goes arghh, he goes ahhh; he twists himself up in words; it's hopeless. Unlike Bill Clinton, who speaks with never a pause, never a miscue, never a hitch of any kind. You know, when you come to think of it, it's a hell of a lot easier to speak well when you don't believe a word you're saying."

    More than merely amusing, this comic bit is provocatively suggestive. What it suggests is that American presidents can be divided into those who are true believers and those who are something else: managers, politicians, operators, men who just wanted the job. While in office, Bill Clinton, who seems to have had as little true belief as any politician in recent decades, sensed that the country wanted to move to the center, so he moved to the center along with it: changing the welfare system, doing nothing radical about health care, rocking no boats, giving the people what the polls told him they wanted....

    Belief is not a sine qua non in a president. At times the country does better with a politician whose aim goes little beyond keeping the ball in play, the game in motion. And where belief is detectable, the question of course is what is the content of the belief a candidate holds. If Churchill was a believer, so was Hitler.

    Yet no great American president I can think of has not been a believer. The greatest of our presidents, perhaps the greatest American, Abraham Lincoln, was great precisely because of his deep, almost religious belief in the necessity of maintaining the Union and doing everything he could to keep it intact. Had they then existed, polls heavily in favor of his bringing the boys back home by stopping the Civil War would scarcely have dissuaded him.

    Oh, one more thing, not specifically presidential, but related, given the concern about the true leanings of Giuliani, Romney, and McCain. Rush Limbaugh has been criticizing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's shift to the left on a variety of issues. On the Today show, Schwarzenegger called Limbaugh "irrelevant." Limbaugh took that in stride -- assumed that Arnie meant Rush isn't relevant to his decision-making process in California. Here's a link to a transcript of Rush's response. Rush notes the electoral disasters that befall Republicans when they fail to govern or campaign as conservatives. He mentions that he hasn't settled on a presidential candidate yet. "[O]ne of the things I'm concerned about is there's not one Reagan conservative in the bunch -- which is okay, but then don't tell me that there is."

    He also makes an interesting point about friendships between commentators and politicians:

    I know Arnold. I have smoked stogies with Arnold, and I like Arnold! He's an engaging, friendly, nice guy. But that's why I always said, "Folks, when you're in a position, as I am, a national commentator, the one thing you can't do is become friends with these politicians." When you become friends with them, you can't criticize your friends. When they become part of your traveling gang or your inner circle, they are insulated from criticism, and that's not going to help me and that's not what I'm here for, is to make friends with these people.

    It is a tough thing for me to be critical of politicians I've gotten to know. (Mostly -- some politicians I've gotten to know well enough that it's extremely easy for me to criticize them.) I hope I can effectively criticize their policies while being sympathetic to the challenges they face in making the right decisions.

    Schwarzenegger called in to talk to Limbaugh (here's the transcript) and they had a frank but friendly exchange on the increase in the state's minimum wage, health care for illegal immigrants, and cigar smoking. Neither one backed down, but they kept it civil.

    An update on Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn's efforts in Washington:

    On Monday, Bob Novak reported that the Bush Administration is blocking release of the pork-barrel database that has been championed by Coburn:

    As part of "Sunshine Week" to promote transparent government, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) last Monday was supposed to release a comprehensive database revealing the number and cost of earmarks since 2005. It did not. The word on Capitol Hill was that the OMB was muzzled by the White House for fear of offending powerful congressional appropriators....

    But just as the OMB was prepared to put out this information, it sent word to Capitol Hill that -- over its protests -- it was being kept under wraps by the White House to appease the appropriators. With Congress in the midst of the budget process, President Bush's team did not want to stir up the Hill.

    All that was released last Monday was a compilation of earmarks in 2005, with few details. [OMB Director Rob] Portman publicly called it "an important first step towards providing greater transparency." In private, however, he said last week: "My hands are tied." Republican Sen. Tom Coburn, the scourge of earmarks, told me: "I think the American people should be very disappointed."

    Coburn has also introduced health-care reform legislation aimed at bringing choice and free-market discipline to bear on health costs. Here, from a press release from Coburn's office, are the key features of the proposal:

    • Promoting prevention. The legislation will reform our rudderless and wasteful federal prevention programs and demand results and accountability. Five preventable chronic diseases – heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes – cause two-thirds of American deaths. Seventy five percent of total health expenditures are spent to treat these largely preventable chronic diseases. A sound prevention strategy will save countless lives and billions of dollars.
    • MediChoice tax rebates that will shift tax breaks away from businesses to individuals. Giving Americans a rebate check ($2,000 for individuals and $5,000 for families) to buy their own insurance will foster competition, improve quality and drive down prices. This provision will help put individuals back in charge of the health care, and help restore the doctor-patient relationship that has been severed by third-party government and health insurance bureaucrats.
    • Creation of a national market for health insurance. The bill would give Americans the right to shop for health insurance anywhere in America. Patients should not be forced to be pay for outrageously expensive health plans in states like New Jersey when they can save thousands by buying plans from companies in other states.
    • Creating transparency of health care costs and services. This Act requires hospitals and providers receiving reimbursements from Medicare to disclose their estimated and actual charges for all patients as well as the rates they are reimbursed through Medicare and Medicaid. This provision could allow patients to “Google” their doctor and comparison-shop for health care the way that they do for cars, computers, or other products and services.
    • Securing Medicare’s future by increasing choice and encouraging savings. The bill retains existing benefits but encourages true competition among private plans to hold down costs, a model already is working in Medicare’s prescription drug benefit. The plan would give Medicare recipients similar health care options available to Members of Congress and employees of Fortune 500 companies.
    • Keeping Medicaid on mission. The bill liberates the poor from substandard government care and offers states the option to provide their Medicaid beneficiaries the kind of health care coverage that wealthier Americans enjoy. The bill creates incentives for states to achieve private universal coverage for their population. The bill offers states the freedom to design the programs that serve their beneficiaries with the best care instead of the current, one-size-fits-all straitjacket.

    Minimize red tape, increase consumer choice and transparency -- sounds like a good approach.

    You can read more about the rationale for Coburn's medical reform bill here, where you'll find a link to a more detailed discussion of the proposal. An excerpt:

    Have you ever wondered why is it that in America, patients can not choose their own doctor? Why, in the land of the free, do government bureaucrats, insurance companies and employers make your health care decisions instead of you? Why do health insurance costs increase faster than your income? Why are prescription drugs prices cheaper in every other country when the medical research is often funded with U.S tax dollars? And why does the U.S. spend over $2 trillion annually on health care, more than any other nation, and 45 million Americans do not have access to health insurance?

    The answer is simple. Unlike every other aspect of American life, there is no free market in health care. Well intentioned, but shortsighted laws passed decades ago removed patients from their own health care decisions.

    On a Dean Barnett entry about Newt Gingrich's "creepy" televised confession of adultery to James Dobson, a commenter called GenXDad nails it:

    It's not Newt's infidelity in and of itself that bothers me, it's his self-centeredness and egotism that bothers me. His infidelities are a manifestation of his overinflated sense of self. In that respect, I dislike Newt the man for the same reasons I dislike Bill Clinton the man.

    Anyone else remember Gingrich's public complaint about being forced to ride in the back of Air Force One. Which was worse: That he was genuinely bothered by such a minor slight, or that he felt it was appropriate to complain about it publicly?

    Related to that: Here's an interesting piece from Vanity Fair in 1989, capturing Gingrich at an interesting moment. He has risen to the House leadership, he has gained national attention for his attacks on the ethics of Speaker Jim Wright, and you can begin to see the arc of the next five years, leading to the Contract with America and the Republican majority in the U. S. House.

    Gingrich is an interesting thinker and strategist, and I admire the groundwork he laid in making Republicans competitive in the House of Representatives. I just don't want him to represent the Republican Party in next year's election.

    Some stories on the 2008 Presidential sweepstakes:

    Jim Geraghty wants to know: Where are the policy wonks? We see candidacy trial balloons going up all over the country, but who is floating an issue trial balloon?

    So far, there’s been nothing strikingly compelling or repelling about these candidates’ vision of where they want to take the country, and so we argue about their past stands, decisions, and positions, instead of what they want to do with the office they seek.

    How many candidates on either side are running for president because they want to do something? How many candidates on either side are running for president because they want to be somebody?

    My guess is that the policy wonks are waiting until the field thins out a bit. If a wonk picks the right candidate to help, he can look forward to, at the very least, White House invites, maybe even a cabinet post or a role as a White House advisor. Pick the wrong guy, and you've lost your chance at being in the next president's inner circle.

    Now a wonk might team up with someone for reasons other than personal vision. If a candidate offers a compelling agenda that aligns with a wonk's ideals, the wonk might sign up to help whether the candidate as a chance or not, just to have the opportunity to get some attention focused on his key issues.

    But the candidates don't seem to have the boldness to talk about new ideas at the moment. Everyone seems afraid of putting a foot wrong. So expect the policy wonks to stay on the sidelines for a while longer.

    Meanwhile, former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson is being talked up by more and more conservative activists, who until now felt their choice was between conservative candidates who can't win and RINOs who might be able to win. Thompson is filling in this week for Paul Harvey and has been wowing listeners with his plain-spoken commentary. He has the ability to say something principled and pointed without being apologetic, but also without being shrill or obnoxious.

    For example, read Thompson's commentary on Gandhi, Iraq, and pacifism. Pointing to the anti-war protesters who have made Gandhi an icon of their movement, he reminds listeners of the extremes to which Gandhi took his pacifism. Gandhi said that Jews under Nazi rule should have willingly abandoned themselves to the slaughter rather than resist. "Collective suicide would have been heroism," Gandhi said.

    Thompson's concluding thoughts:

    The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country. When Americans think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolf Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

    Gandhi probably wouldn't approve, but I can live with that.

    Thompson conveys substance (and he actually has substance), he has a way with words, and American voters are not going to cringe when they hear him speak.

    He is a conservative of conviction, not of convenience. He is a social conservative, a fiscal conservative, and is pro-victory in the Global War on Terror.

    This is the first candidate that I've felt any enthusiasm about supporting -- Fred Thompson is, as Doug Patton writes, a conservative who can win. Can anyone give me a good reason why I shouldn't jump on the Fred Thompson bandwagon?

    The compressed 2008 presidential primary schedule may not be the only thing that leads to an early conclusion to both parties' nomination processes.

    Mickey Kaus passes along an e-mail from an anonymous reader who writes that the mainstream media networks don't have the resources to cover two long battles involving multiple candidates. He says the networks will simplify the race to match their staffing levels -- two leading candidates plus one wild card in each party. Other candidates will simply not get any attention from the networks, which will lead donors, volunteers, and voters to assume that they aren't viable and to throw their support behind one of the three in the media spotlight.

    It has always frustrated me to see my preferred candidate drop out before our turn to vote in Oklahoma. In 1988, I was a Pete du Pont fan -- first candidate with the guts to call attention to the looming social security crisis -- but he was gone after New Hampshire. In '96, Phil Gramm was my pick. I don't think he even made it to New Hampshire.

    I understand that candidates need money to keep up a campaign, and if they can't win in a state like Iowa and New Hampshire where campaigning is relatively inexpensive and where there's no need to jet across the country, then they won't be able to convince the donors to invest in them.

    I even understand the bandwagon effect that leads politicians to get behind the apparently inevitable candidate early on. A senator or congressman wants to be able to remind the new president that he was on his side when it counted, while there was still a degree of uncertainty about the nomination.

    But I don't understand the bandwagon effect on voters. So what if New Hampshire backed McCain and South Carolina backed Bush? So what if Forbes suspended his campaign? If Forbes is still on the ballot, and you think he's the best choice, vote for him.

    This is the first time since I don't know when -- 1952? -- that neither party has an heir apparent for the nomination. 1960 was a race for an open seat, but Nixon was Ike's heir apparent. 1968 started out with LBJ planning to run for re-election, but then he dropped out in favor of his veep. The next year with no incumbent running was 1988, and Vice President Bush was the obvious Republican front runner. In 2000, it was the Goracle's turn to succeed his boss.

    This year we have a huge number of candidates on both sides. Everyone you might call a front-runner for the Republicans has some significant negative. This could be a long nominating process, but will the mainstream media succeed in portraying early 30% primary pluralities as landslides and starving close second place finishers of the attention they need to keep campaigning? Kaus seems to think that candidates being starved of MSM attention could maintain viability via blogs, YouTube, and other forms of new media.

    I doubt it. The most faithful primary voters aren't internet users. They're the last demographic that still depends on the 30 minute Big Three news shows to find out what's happening in the world.

    Hat tip to Ace of Spades, who also has the straw poll numbers from CPAC: Five candidates within a few percentage points of each other. Romney had the most but only 21%; Giuliani and Brownback were close behind. I wish they had done an instant runoff ballot. It would have been interesting to find out the attendees' second and third choices.

    As part of the process of complying with the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (2006) by the required date of January 2008, the anti-pork-barrel-spending bill championed by Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, the federal Office of Management and Budget has set up a website called federalspending.gov. This site doesn't yet have the promised spending information available, but it does have the implementation timeline, a set of FAQs on the requirements of the law, aimed at both users of the information and the agencies who will have to report the information, and a place to collect comments on how best to make the database useful to the public. There are also links to existing websites with information on Federal spending.

    The site makes mention of a pilot program for reporting subgrants and subcontracts. Hopefully, this would include things like recipients of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds -- a city or county government is the direct recipient of the grant from the Federal Government, but it would be interesting to see whether controversial organizations are receiving CDBG money as subgrants.

    I don't really have time to blog tonight, but I should at least follow up on this story. A day after Salon reported the campaign of presidential candidate John Edwards had fired the two far-left bloggers he had hired to run his website's blog, Edwards made an announcement:

    The tone and the sentiment of some of Amanda Marcotte's and Melissa McEwan's posts personally offended me. It's not how I talk to people, and it's not how I expect the people who work for me to talk to people. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but that kind of intolerant language will not be permitted from anyone on my campaign, whether it's intended as satire, humor, or anything else. But I also believe in giving everyone a fair shake. I've talked to Amanda and Melissa; they have both assured me that it was never their intention to malign anyone's faith, and I take them at their word. We're beginning a great debate about the future of our country, and we can't let it be hijacked. It will take discipline, focus, and courage to build the America we believe in.

    (For details of the offensive tone and sentiment, see Dan Riehl's lengthy list of Marcotte quotes.)

    Marcotte posted this non-apology apology:

    My writings on my personal blog Pandagon on the issue of religion are generally satirical in nature and always intended strictly as a criticism of public policies and politics. My intention is never to offend anyone for his or her personal beliefs, and I am sorry if anyone was personally offended by writings meant only as criticisms of public politics. Freedom of religion and freedom of expression are central rights, and the sum of my personal writings is a testament to this fact.

    Of course she meant to offend people for their personal beliefs. She deliberately chose offensive imagery and language to characterize people who don't share her unbelief. Dawn Eden, Marcotte's frequent target, provides a frequently occurring example:

    I guess it's nice to know that all those times her blog referred to Our Lord and Saviour as "Jeebus" — in 114 blog entries to date (the most recent last Sunday) — she was only kidding.

    A search of Pandagon archives shows that Amanda has yet to devise a similarly ha-ha name for Mohammed. Well, give her time; she's been on the Edwards campaign for only a week and a half.

    (I remembered something else Eden and Marcotte have in common -- neither one owns a TV. All together now: "Oh, the harlot and the chaste girl should be friends....")

    Somewhere in my blog reading, I saw a Marcotte defender justify that nomenclature: According to this person, "Jeebus" refers to the judgmental, false god worshipped by conservative evangelicals and Catholics (i.e., her view of the Jesus of the Bible). In other words, it doesn't count has mocking the Christian religion, because these people are just using religion as a tool of patriarchal oppression.

    Walter Olson of Overlawyered notes that this represents an about-face in the space of four days:

    That's how it goes: no regrets as of Feb. 4, "I am sorry" as of Feb. 8.

    Regarding Edwards' statement, KC Johnson asks:

    This statement begs the question: if "the tone and the sentiment" of some of the duo's posts offended the candidate, and did not meet the standards for his employees, why did Edwards hire the duo in the first place?

    Jeff Goldstein says that Edwards' statement implies that Marcotte and McEwan were just posturing all that time:

    ...Edwards just showed up Marcotte and McEwan as frauds and posturing blowhards, writers who have been pulling the wool over their audiences’ eyes by posting vicious “arguments” they never truly believed. To use the loaded language of establishment feminism—he publicly castrated them—and in so doing, he made fools out of their audiences, to boot.

    Further, in doing so, he has shown himself to be nothing more than a calculating political opportunist of the worst sort—one who believes the voting public so daft they might actually buy a statement like the one he just released.

    This lefty blogger seems to share that evaluation:

    To me, his statement reads : 'I want to fire them but that wouldn't look right, so I'm going to pretend that they didn't actually write those things and require that they be more genteel in the future'. That isn't a fair shake. That's hustling for favor, and precisely what I despise about politics. Michelle [Malkin] and her tiny little litter should have been dismissed with laughter and derision. Instead, the message sent was, 'you're right, of course, but I'm not going to let it look like you're telling me what to do'.

    Michelle Malkin has an extensive roundup of reaction, including this pointed evaluation by Paul Mirengoff of Power Line:

    If the campaign keeps Marcotte and the other lefty blogger, it will be a clear sign of weakness -- powerful evidence that Edwards needs the unhinged element of his party so desperately in his quest to overcome Hillary Clinton that he can't dump a pair of infantile bloggers who, at a minimum, will constitute a liability in the unlikely event the party nominates him.

    The bloggers themselves also seem pretty desperate. Apparently, they need this gig so badly that they don't mind being told to "shut up and sing."

    UPDATE: Iowahawk has another Marcotte-related parody, "My Fair Blogger," featuring hit tunes like "I've Grown Accustomed to her Hate" and "We Know the Street Where You Live." (Be warned, the parody is as vulgar and atrocious as fair Amanda is.)

    Once More with Feeling contrasts the approaches to this situation taken by Catholic League spokesman Bill Donahue and Dawn Eden, and makes a good point that applies to speaking publicly on any controversial topic:

    ...[N]othing is worse in the face of a hostile audience than acting outraged in the face of outrageous behavior. You only look like a whiner. And the media will paint you as “angry” unless you’re positively cheerful.

    Bit of a tangent: By default, I discredit anyone who says he is "disturbed," "outraged," "horrified," "nauseated," "sickened," or "appalled." Each of those words denotes a visceral reaction, and they have been cheapened to the point of meaninglessness. Someone nauseated should look green around the gills. Someone truly outraged should have a red face. If you're horrified, your hair should look like you just touched a Van der Graaf generator. If you're appalled, you should be as white as a sheet. Instead, most of the time I hear these words uttered in some sort of press conference, the person speaking the words appears to be completely blasé. At best, he's mildly peeved.

    UPDATE: Amanda's gone after all, as is Melissa McEwan.

    And an old acquaintance of Amanda's speaks out in the comments at Hot Air:

    Amanda graduated in the same high school class as my son and in fact was the girl friend of his best friend so I saw I fair amount of her. Three things to me stand out: she was exhibitionistic by nature, she had nothing but contempt for the other students in general although half were Hispanic and most were the “salt of the earth” types she claims she want to promote politically, and although being intelligent, she was not nearly as smart as she thought she was.

    At the senior prom, she dressed up as a transvestite witch a la Rocky Horror Picture Show. She failed to get much of a reaction because no one had seen the movie and few would have appreciated the movie if they had. She thereupon lectured to the gathering there (there were 70 graduates total that year) what her costume represented and how important the movie is as a cultural event. When the gathering still “didn’t get it,” she sulked for the remainder of the prom. She attracted enough attention to get a scholarship to St. Edwards, a decent Catholic college in Austin. I’m sure it now regrets this.

    As is so common with fairly intelligent people who overestimate their intelligence, she has been attracted to an extremist ideology that neatly explains all of the world’s happenings. Her blog with her “colorful” language and over-the-top opinions has given her the attention she craves. However, she seems to be the classic example of the Peter Principle in being promoted beyond her abilities and the chickens hatched by the conflict between her high ideals and serious personality flaws are coming home to roost.

    Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has declared war on Federal spending. He has announced that he will do everything in his power as a senator to block new spending. Here's the letter Coburn sent to his colleagues (via Club for Growth):

    Dear Colleague:

    I look forward to working with you over the next two years to confront the problems facing our nation.

    Perhaps the greatest threat to our nation is our nearly insurmountable national debt which now exceeds $8.6 trillion. This ever growing red ink threatens both the long-term solvency of important programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, as well as the future standard of living of our children and grandchildren.

    Over the past two years, I have heard members on both sides of the aisle call for fiscal responsibility. While we may have different concepts of how to obtain this goal, balancing the budget is not a partisan issue.

    We may have differences in opinions on the role of government, but those differences should not prevent us from working together to ensure our charity today does not come at the expense of future generations of Americans.

    For too long, Congress has simply borrowed more and more money to pay for new spending. In the real world, families can not follow this example and must make difficult decisions and set priorities on how to spend their limited financial resources.

    Paying for a child’s college education or the medical expenses of a loved one compete against purchasing a new car or taking a vacation. Americans want Congress to live within its means, using the same set of common sense rules and restraints they face everyday.

    To this end, I wanted to communicate with you a list of principles I will use to evaluate new legislation in the 110th Congress. I also want to give you advance notice I intend to object to consideration of legislation that violates these common sense principles:

    1) If a bill creates or authorizes a new federal program or activity, it must not duplicate an existing program or activity without de-authorizing the existing program;

    2) If a bill authorizes new spending, it must be offset by reductions in real spending elsewhere;

    3) If a program or activity currently receives funding from sources other than the federal government, a bill shall not increase the federal government’s proportion of the costs of the program or activity;

    4) If a bill establishes a new foundation, museum, cultural or historical site, or other entity that is not an agency or a department, federal funding should be limited to the initial start-up costs and an endowment shall provide funding thereafter.

    This is not an exhaustive list as I may also object to legislation that I believe oversteps the limited role of the federal government enshrined in our Constitution by our Founders or that violates my own deepest personal convictions.

    I wanted to alert you, however, to the basic fiscal measurements that I will use to evaluate legislation. My intent is not to be an obstacle, but rather to give you the courtesy of knowing how we can work together now to advance our individual and collective goals.

    I recognize that the Senate’s diversity is one of its strengths. I certainly appreciate that you might articulate a different set of core principles to evaluate legislation.

    I would humbly suggest, however, that we are at a point in our history when the question of whether we should live within our means and prioritize spending is beyond debate.

    Our nation’s unsustainable fiscal course, the impending bankruptcy of Medicare and Social Security, and our national security challenges leave us no option but to make the hard choices today that will secure the future for tomorrow.

    Again, I look forward to working with you to address the challenges facing America in a fiscally responsible manner.

    Sincerely,

    Tom A. Coburn, M.D.
    United States Senator

    I'm glad Coburn is taking the bull by the horns. And make no mistake, he's liable to get tossed around by this bull.

    Amanda Gone

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    The latest blogstorm has been over Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' hiring of a couple of left-wing bloggers to serve as "blogmasters" at his official campaign website.

    One of them is Amanda Marcotte, who created and was lead blogger for Pandagon.

    Readers of The Dawn Patrol will know of Pandagon as the "Anti-Dawn Patrol," a pro-abortion, anti-chastity base used to launch potty-mouthed mockery and insults at Dawn Eden for her support for the sanctity of life and the sanctity of marriage. For a mild example, this entry, which begins:

    The year is winding down, so it’s as good a time as any to have some fun mocking our favorite anti-choice nut Dawn Eden.

    The funny thing is that, despite being on opposite ends of the spectrum on social and sexual issues, the two have some things in common, like a love of the semi-obscure musical subgenre known as power pop. (It's a shame Marcotte can't acknowledge some common ground and be a friendly antagonist, but what do I know? Here in Oklahoma, we believe that even the farmer and the cowman should be friends.)

    Now they have something else in common -- being fired because of controversial blog content -- although in Marcotte's case, it's actually justified.

    It's being reported that Marcotte was dropped by the Edwards campaign after several days of bloggers posting some of her more outrageous, obscene, and offensive screeds.

    The problem wasn't just her use of language that would make a sailor blush, it was the hatred and vitriol directed against devout Christians and anyone who defends traditional moral standards. Referring to Christians as "godbags," mocking Christian beliefs with vile imagery, referring to pregnancy as "punishment" -- it won't help Edwards in the South, a must-win region for him, and it won't help Democrats as they try to lull evangelicals back into the party.

    It doesn't help Edwards to have his blogmistress writing things like this, regarding the Duke lacrosse team rape case:

    In her part of the country [the South], both women and black people are seen as subhuman objects to be used and abused by white men.

    She replaced the text of the entry and deleted the above comment once the controversy began, but you can still read it here.

    It amazes me that whoever in the Edwards campaign made the decision to hire her didn't bother to read back through her blog. Or perhaps someone did read it, but didn't see anything objectionable, which speaks volumes about the decision-maker in question.

    Ideology aside, if you're going to give someone the virtual keys to your official campaign website, shouldn't you want someone who can express herself in a civil manner?

    If you want specifics on Marcotte's trail of trash-talk, Michelle Malkin has text and links here, here, and here. Those links will also take you to video of Malkin performing a reading and a dramatization of some of Marcotte's blog entries.

    UPDATE: James Lileks sums up the Edwards campaign -- and Marcotte:

    John Edwards, who demonstrated his managerial skills by hiring as his blogmaster a writer whose ceaseless profanity makes Richard Pryor routines look like a papal encyclical, and showed his concern for "the Other America'' by building a new house large enough to shelter them all.

    AND MORE: Iowahawk offers a pitch-perfect parody -- the Pandagon Papers. (Strong content warning, but no worse than Pandagon itself.)

    Robert N. Going, who was set to run for a seat on the 1976 New York delegate slate as a Reagan supporter (and was a Reagan delegate in 1980; see his comment for explanation -- I've corrected this paragraph), says of the recently departed 38th president, de mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.

    Here's a selection of bona sententia in tributes to the Accidental President. The same three points frequently recur: a decent man, the right man for the hour, and, even if not a great president, certainly a good deal better than his predecessor and his successor:

    (Also at Hot Air, Allahpundit posts video of the first thing (I sheepishly admit) that came to my mind when I heard the news on the radio. This sketch from Saturday Night Live in 1996 is really a satire about the network news business, not about Ford; his name was just a hook on which to hang the concept: Dana Carvey as Tom Brokaw prerecording several versions of breaking news of Ford's death, just in case something should happen while Brokaw is on vacation. In the event, Ford outlived Brokaw's career.)

    My own reminiscence: The first political convention I ever attended was the 1976 Oklahoma 1st District Convention at Nathan Hale High School. My dad was there as Wagoner County's lone delegate (our precinct was the only one in the county in District 1), and he was a Ford man. He also served that day as convention secretary. Then as now, the state and district conventions selected who would go to the national convention as delegates. But prior to 1998, Oklahoma didn't have a presidential preference primary, and national delegates weren't bound to a candidate; instead candidates for national delegate would announce their preference and run as a slate. The Reagan slate won the 1st District by a large margin that day. I was sad that Ford fell short in that skirmish, happy to seem him win the nomination at Kansas City, but sad again to see him lose to Jimmy Carter by such a close margin. At age 12 I didn't understand all the ideological issues in the '76 primary campaign. (I didn't discover National Review until the following year in the high school library.) He was the Republican incumbent, he was a decent man in a difficult time, and that was reason enough to support his renomination.

    MORE remembrances, but not so kind:

    Paul Greenberg on "Gerald Ford: The In-between President":

    There is much to be said for mediocrity, and surely it will be at the state funeral now in the offing. There are worse things. Certainly few things are more perilous than man's eternal striving for greatness and the hubris it engenders. Look what happened to Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, and is happening to George W. Bush.

    At such times we are tempted to think, oh, yes, better someone who can wrap up an indecent defeat as decently as possible, the way Jerry Ford did in Vietnam. It wasn't his fault. He was just there in the White House at the time, like Zelig. Give us another Zelig, the people cry. A nice unknown quantity who will soothe things over - a Jerry Ford. (And now a Barack Obama?)

    It's exhausting, always acting on principle, seeking to shape history rather than be shaped by it. There comes a time when the country just wants it all to be over, and that is the time when a Gerald R. Ford earns our gratitude, or at least gets it. And let it be noted that Mr. Ford was a good citizen even if he was First Citizen - no easy thing.

    Much like Gerald Ford himself, most of us want to do the decent thing and overlook some other things in the interest of a little peace and quiet for now, whatever whirlwind we are sowing for later. Let it be said that Gerald Rudolph Ford was just the man for his time - a time not unlike this discouraging one, a time yearning for a return to a normalcy that never was.

    Christopher Hitchens at Slate: "Our Short National Nightmare: How President Ford managed to go soft on Iraqi Baathists, Indonesian fascists, Soviet Communists, and the shah … in just two years":

    Ford's refusal to meet with Solzhenitsyn, when the great dissident historian came to America, was consistent with his general style of making excuses for power. As Timothy Noah has suggested lately, there seems to have been a confusion in Ford's mind as to whether the Helsinki Treaty was intended to stabilize, recognize, or challenge the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe. However that may be, the great moral component of the Helsinki agreement—that it placed the United States on the side of the repressed populations—was ridiculed by Ford's repudiation of Solzhenitsyn, as well as by his later fatuities on the nature of Soviet domination. To have been soft on Republican crime, soft on Baathism, soft on the shah, soft on Indonesian fascism, and soft on Communism, all in one brief and transient presidency, argues for the sort of sportsmanlike Midwestern geniality that we do not ever need to see again.

    A "Little Drummer Boy" parody, by blogger Saint Kansas. He ought to send this in to Rush Limbaugh:

    This seems as good a time as any to direct you to Kevin McCullough's excellent series on why he believes (against his hopes) that Barack Obama will be the next president. Here's the latest installment -- Why OBAMA will be President - Part 10 - "He's NOT Howard Dean, John Edwards, or Hillary...":

    Many of my critics are also saying that I'm off on the Obama prediction by claiming Obama to be an "empty-suit". Friends, call him anything you want, call him short on experience, call him only two years deep into his freshman Senate term, call him a baby-face in Washington - but Obama is not an empty-suit. John Edwards is for sure, but not Obama.

    Obama's ability to identify across a broad spectrum of people groups comes from a very multi-faceted background that has allowed him to live in MANY different environments. His exemplary record at Harvard Law school would make most of our recent Presidential candidates reel in embarassment. He also was the FIRST African American to head the Harvard Law Review.

    Everything about Obama's political career has been strategic. The reason he settled on Chicago as his home base. The reason he ran for the state positions that he did. Even in running for Congress and losing against Bobby Rush he observed, analyzed, and re-strategized.

    Kevin McCullough has been watching Obama's career from the very beginning, and he looks to be as indispensible a guide to Obama as Paul Greenberg was in 1992 in educating us about Slick Willie.

    (On the other hand, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal explains why he thinks Obama may not run, and how Obama can bow out in a way that maintains and enhances his prospects for the future.)

    World Magazine is starting a series of profiles of potential presidential candidates and first up is Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas. World editor Marvin Olasky recently spent the night in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana with Brownback.

    Brownback was on my list of possibles, but I think he just dropped off. He appears to be mushy on Iraq, on the death penalty, on illegal immigration. He may have been trying to come across as thoughtful, but he came across as muddle-headed instead. He's even muddled on theology -- he converted from evangelicalism to Roman Catholicism, but he still attends an evangelical church with the rest of his family, who apparently did not join him in his conversion.

    We don't need a firebreather as the Republican nominee, but we do need someone who isn't blown to and fro by every breeze.

    A press release from Sen. Coburn's office:

    Tonight, Friday at 9:06 p.m. ET C-SPAN will air a panel discussion entitled “Where Do Conservatives Go From Here?” that featured U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, House Minority Whip Roy Blunt, Paul Weyrich and others.

    The event was taped today at the Free Congress Foundation in Washington, D.C.

    That's 8:06 Oklahoma time. It should be worth watching, especially since Blunt's position in Republican leadership was confirmed today, despite the concerns of fiscal conservatives in the Republican caucus.


    Abramoff's donkeys

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    Too late to make a difference in the election, but we're learning that the Culture of Corruption™ wasn't limited to the party in power:

    Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff is scheduled to report to federal prison tomorrow, over the objections of federal prosecutors who say they still need his help to pursue leads on officials he allegedly bribed.

    Sources close to the investigation say Abramoff has provided information on his dealings with and campaign contributions and gifts to "dozens of members of Congress and staff," including what Abramoff has reportedly described as "six to eight seriously corrupt Democratic senators."

    (Via Hot Air.)

    On the House side of the Capitol, we are reminded that John Murtha, Nancy Pelosi's pick for Majority Leader, was an unindicted co-conspirator in the ABSCAM bribery investigation, and there's videotape of him leaving the door open for future bribes. Here's a summary of Murtha's involvement in ABSCAM on Wikipedia. (The videos are on YouTube, which is down for scheduled maintenance at the moment.) (UPDATE: Here is the entire, unedited video on Google.)

    Clean 'em all out.

    UPDATE: For those who believe this blogstorm about Murtha is the activity of mind-numbed Rovian robots, please note that the left-leaning Talking Points Memo Muckraker website is all over Murtha. Presumably they are as embarrassed at the prospect of Majority Leader Murtha we are about Trent Lott, once-and-future Minority Whip. Here's their explanation of how Murtha managed not to get prosecuted or disciplined for ABSCAM. And here's Murtha quoted as saying a Democratic-sponsored lobbying reform bill is "total crap".

    Regarding Newt

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    For some reason, the results of Tuesday's election have increased the amount of chatter in support of a Newt Gingrich run for the presidency in 2008.

    Newt Gingrich is a brilliant thinker. He deserves credit for helping to get the House majority for the Republican Party in 1994. But he wasn't an effective Speaker.

    And there's this: He trades in an old wife for a newer model as often as some folks trade in their cars. Call me a fuddy-duddy, but I think that may indicate a character flaw that will cause some problems for a Gingrich presidential campaign and administration.

    There may be a more effective place for Mr. Newt to serve.

    Chuck Colson responds to the conclusion of Tempting Faith, by David Kuo, the disillusioned former staffer in President Bush's office of faith-based initiatives.

    But Kuo is dead wrong to suggest that that Christians ought to enter into a time of "fasting" from politics. These words, which I wrote in 1987, that so influenced David are true today: "Christians need to influence politics for justice and righteousness." But we must do so "with eyes open, aware of the snares . . . Today Christians may find themselves suspect -- I have experienced this myself -- to the very people on whose side they are fighting. But that is the price they must pay to preserve their independence and not be beholden to any political ideological alignment." That's what I wrote in 1987; that's what I mean today.

    Fasting from politics is the exact opposite of what I taught David Kuo, however. Only by continuing to fight for our beliefs, regardless of the temptations, compromises, or being called "nuts," can we achieve the kind of moral reform and protection of human rights that Christians throughout the centuries and in every culture work for.

    This is why Christians must never "fast" from politics. And it's why Christians, of all citizens, ought to be lining up to vote on Tuesday. Do your civic duty because you'll do your duty to God in the process.

    And to abandon the battle on behalf of the sick and the suffering, the prisoner and the unborn: That would be a true sin.

    RELATED: Democrats are making a strong pitch for the support of Values Voters, particularly in the South. Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. is calling himself pro-life, but Kathryn Jean Lopez says that as a congressman he hasn't voted that way:

    According to the National Right to Life Committee, Ford's claim to be pro-life "is radically at odds with Ford's 10-year voting record in the U.S. House. Overall, Ford has voted against the pro-life side 87 percent of the time." Among his most notable votes cast on this front, Ford voted against "Laci and Conner's Law," which recognizes an unborn child who is injured or killed in the commission of a federal crime as a child and crime victim. Even though the bill was not explicitly about abortion, abortion groups considered its implications and thought long term -- if we give in here, will it hurt us later? They knew it could very well, and so they opposed the bill, despite Conner Peterson. And so did Harold Ford, even though all but one member of the Tennessee congressional delegation voted for it.

    The latest advertiser on BatesLine is a website (gopsenators.com) run by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and they appear to have video of every TV commercial being run by a Republican candidate for senator in the 18 states (of 33 with races) that the NRSC is targeting. (Florida, New York, and Massachusetts aren't among them.)

    It's interesting to see the different approaches being used across the country.

    In Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, the RINO that the RNC and NRSC propped up against a conservative primary challenger, is running on a platform of opposition to the war in Iraq, pork barrel for Rhode Island, and embryonic stem cell research. (Polls show he's losing, by the way. The voters of Providence Plantation evidently prefer a real liberal Democrat to one with an R after his name.)

    In Maryland, Michael Steele is running as an agent of change: "Ready for change? Ready for Steele." In this long-form video he sets out his proposals for lobbying reform (no gifts at all, four-year wait before a congressman or staffer can become a lobbyist), and we hear excerpts from several speeches as he talks about his background and his stands on various issues, and comments from supporters. As you'd expect in a blue state, the word "Republican" never comes up, and he says he wants to be a bridge between the parties. Blocky metallic lettering and the sound of lug nuts being driven help the viewer to remember the name Steele.

    Here's a negative Steele ad against Democrat Ben Cardin, in which Cardin's statements that he stood up to various interest groups are split by text showing how much campaign money he took from each. The message: Cardin won't change Washington; he'll fit right in. And here's Steele's reply to attacks from Cardin, delivered with a light touch, using garbage cans as a prop to remind voters that Cardin staffers pled guilty to hacking into Steele's financial records.

    This NRSC ad, from Tennessee, is just video of Congressman Harold Ford Jr., the Democratic nominee, crashing a press conference by the Republican nominee, Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker. And here's a clever one, featuring "man-on-the-street" (all right, "actor-on-the-street") comments about Ford's upbringing in Washington DC as a congressman's son, his lack of connection with Tennessee, and his lack of experience outside of politics.

    For students of campaigns and elections, this is pretty interesting stuff. Please click on the ad to your right, and check it out for yourself.

    UPDATE: Here's the Tennessee Senate ad that everyone has been talking about; it's an RNC ad, not from the NRSC or Corker's campaign. It's a funny use of man-on-the-street (funnier than the one above) to contrast Ford's congressional record with the views of Tennessee voters. Not that I'm obliged to provide equal time, but here's a Ford ad attacking Corker for being wealthy.

    On Evangelical Outpost, Joe Carter looks at seven votes in the U. S. House of special concern to social conservatives, then compares the voting records of the current Republican House committee chairmen with those who would replace them if the Democrats win a majority of seats in November. While not all the Republican chairmen have stellar records on this set of votes, all but two are over 50% (Jim Leach of Iowa and Howard Coble of N. C. only voted the right way on 3 of 7), and 8 of the 13 chairmen voted the right way on at least six of the seven votes. Meanwhile, most of their Democratic counterparts scored a big fat zero. (Three exceptions: One chairman voted the right way once, another voted the right way twice, and Ike Skelton of Missouri, ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, who scored a 71.)

    I've heard politically-active evangelicals around here say that "the lesser of two evils is still evil." Carter leads off with a quote from Thomas à Kempis book The Imitation of Christ: "Of two evils, the less is always to be chosen." To choose otherwise is to let the greater evil prevail. Refusing to choose, waiting instead for some ideal to fall from the heavens, is to make a choice for the greater evil.

    Overall, under Republican leadership in the House, the desired result for social conservatives was attained in five of these seven measures. (A sixth, regarding embryonic stem cell research, was stopped by President Bush's veto.) Looking at the scores of these current and potential committee chairmen, I have no doubt that under Democratic leadership, legislation that protects the sanctity of human life and the traditional definition of marriage would never make it out of committee.

    We've seen exactly that situation here in Oklahoma, where, despite a professed pro-life majority in both houses, a Democratic Senate committee chairman, supported by the Democratic Senate majority leadership, blocked pro-life bills from being debated on the Senate floor. The lead story October 2006 issue of the Oklahomans for Life newsletter (PDF) tells how this year's landmark pro-life legislation nearly didn't make it to the Governor's desk:

    Senate Democrats were determined to prevent any pro-life legislation from being enacted this year. Senate Democrats facilitated the killing of seven (7) prolife bills that had passed the House this session. The bills were killed by a Democrat committee chairman, serving at the pleasure of the Democrat Senate Leader, who, in turn, serves at the pleasure of the Senate’s Democrat members.

    When the Republican House of Representatives reinserted five of those bills in another piece of legislation which had already passed the Senate (and, therefore, did not have to go through committee in the Senate again), the Senate Democrats resisted as forcefully and as long as they possibly could. They were fully prepared to ignore the rules of the Senate by refusing to allow the Republican author of SB 1742 to present the bill for a Senate vote.

    The Democrat Leader of the Senate told the bill’s author as late as May 17, the day before the bill ultimately passed, that the bill would not be granted a vote on the Senate floor. It was only when Republicans made it clear that they would attempt to force the issue through a procedural
    motion (which would have been voted on in public) that the Democrats relented and agreed to let the vote occur.

    With great reluctance, the Democrat Leadership of the Senate allowed the bill to be voted on when the political pressure had built to such an extent that they could no longer contain it.

    Once the bill was allowed to come to a vote, SB 1742 passed the Oklahoma Senate 38-8.

    At the state level and at the federal level, which party will have control of the chamber is as important as which individual will represent your district.

    Here's the conclusion Joe Carter draws:

    Social conservatives have reason to be disappointed in the Republicans in Congress. As these scores indicate, though, we will be even more disappointed should the Democrats gain majority control. The GOP doesn't deserve to win; but if the Democrats regain power, it will be society that loses.

    RELATED: Paul Weyrich points to the Bush Administration's solid record on judicial appointments and says you can expect strict-constructionist nominees like Samuel Alito never to get a hearing in a Democrat-controlled Senate. "I understand, and am sympathetic to, the reasons not to retain the current crowd in office. But there are two very big reasons why they should be re-elected. If they do not improve their performance in the 110th Congress, recruit primary candidates and replace them."

    AND THIS: Are social conservative voters budding theocrats? Bill Rusher hits the nail on the head:

    What has happened is that, in the past thirty years, a large number of Americans whose deepest beliefs and concerns are not political but religious have concluded that they have no choice but to gird themselves for participation in the nation's political wars. There are quite enough such people to influence the election returns, and they have been doing so.

    But -- and this distinction is crucial -- their posture is essentially defensive. They are not seeking to turn America into a theocracy. They are simply trying to preserve, and where necessary restore, the politico-religious balance that has been traditional in this country. It is the intellectuals, with the critical support of the courts, and above all the Supreme Court, that have successfully eroded that balance, seeking to marginalize religion and convert the entire civic framework of the nation into a purely secular arena, on the pretense that this is required by the First Amendment's supposed erection of a high "wall" between church and state.

    Those who imagine that it is religion's defenders who are the aggressors here are simply not paying attention to the increasingly sharp attacks on religious faith that can be found today in such influential places as The New York Times.

    In the Examiner, Robert Cox points to the recent banning of conservative columnist Michelle Malkin at YouTube for "objectionable content" as an example of something he's been warning about for some time -- left-wing dominance of major Web 2.0 sites may push conservative ideas out of the 21st century equivalent of the public square:

    Last week [Malkin] received notice from YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing service, that her video had been deemed “offensive.” The result? Her account was terminated and her videos deleted.

    YouTube refused to say why her videos were “offensive” and there was no avenue available to challenge the decision. Today, her videos are gone and her voice is suppressed on the most important video “node” on the Internet.

    So? She can just show her videos somewhere else, can't she?

    Of course she can, but that would fail to understand the powerful forces of “network externalities” at play online. There is no Avis to eBay’s Hertz for good reason: Once an online network is fully catalyzed, there is no reason to join an alternative network. If you want to get the most money for your Beanie Baby collection, you are going to want access to the most potential bidders — and that means eBay.

    YouTube is poised to become the eBay of video file sharing. If you want the biggest audience for your video, you want access to the most potential viewers — and that means YouTube.

    I'm less worried about YouTube, because you could still find Malkin's material on the web if it were being hosted by another site. But I am worried about the infrastructure that helps us find our way around the web. We are very dependent on Google, Technorati, del.icio.us, and those companies' willingness to be evenhanded in their treatment of web content. There's reason to be concerned: We already know that Google will alter search results to avoid giving offense in authoritarian and totalitarian countries.

    What if these sites began to shun conservative content? While it would be possible to set up an alternative set of web search, blog search, and social bookmarking websites, we'd only be creating a conversation that is disconnected from the broader discussion about the issues. How would Google users, for example, realize that they aren't getting the best or most complete search results, and that they really should be using multiple search tools? Conservatives would wind up talking to each other -- to the rest of the world it would look like no one holds to conservative ideas anymore.

    I don't know what the solution is, but as Robert Cox says, it's time to pay attention to the problem.

    This ad about foreign policy, featuring Madeline Albright and Kim Jong-Il impersonators, was written and directed by David Zucker of Airplane!, Kentucky Fried Movie, and Naked Gun fame. It is funny, and it makes its point brilliantly. Some bozo at YouTube flagged it as possibly objectionable, which it isn't, except for a brief glimpse of the Albright impersonator's knickers.

    I suppose veterans of the Clinton administration might object to it:

    Seenoevil_large.jpg

    Allen at Acorns from an Okie explains why you can't deal effectively with the greedy b*stards in the corporate world by making the Government more powerful:

    Greedy Bastards are Greedy Bastards. Being greedy, they will gravitate to where the power is. They will be draw, like patchouli stenched peaceniks to a Chomsky book signing, to the seats of power and position. And being bastards, they will start back-stabbing and finagling their way into those positions of power.

    And then those greedy bastards will be running the whole show, not just their company.

    Read the whole thing.

    At the heart of conservative philosophy is the insistence on seeing human nature as the stubborn thing it is, and designing government to harness its qualities for good, rather than trying foolishly to transform human nature.

    What she said

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    In the comments to a post about yet another Republican congressman in hot water:

    And yet you continue to blindly support this party, regardless of the number of times that items like this surface.

    Borderline brainwashed. Facts don't matter anymore...
    Posted by: New York Hotlist at October 5, 2006 03:47 PM

    Ok, I'll go slow for you: I'M A CONSERVATIVE. The Republican party best represents my interests. There is NO WAY that the Democrats can represent me better. NONE.

    What part do you need me to explain again? And, seriously, I'd cut the brainwashed crap out right now. Previous idiots who made similar comments were made to feel very, very small.
    Posted by: Karol at October 5, 2006 03:52 PM

    Am I proud that Mark Foley and Don Sherwood are Republicans? No. Do I have questions about the way the House leadership handled the Foley case? Yes. But in the battle for control of the Congress (and the State Legislature here in Oklahoma), it matters which party wins, which party controls the committee chairmanships.

    Although we have Republican majorities in both houses of Congress and in the Oklahoma State House, we don't have a conservative majority in any of those bodies yet. That means that some conservative ideas don't get as far as they ought to. But if the Ds are in charge, conservative ideas won't even get a hearing. (Neither will conservative judicial nominees.)

    Although passage of Sen. Tom Coburn's anti-pork Federal Spending Database bill had bipartisan support, it wouldn't have gotten off the ground if it weren't for the fact that Coburn holds a subcommittee chairmanship. Even in the Senate (much more in the House), a freshman member in the minority party isn't going to wield much influence. Keeping the Republicans in control gives solid conservatives a chance at making a difference on our behalf.

    RNC press release today:

    The Republican National Committee today announced that its Site Selection Committee has voted to recommend Minneapolis-St. Paul to host the 2008 Republican National Convention, pending the successful negotiation of the Site City Agreement. The full RNC will vote on the recommendation at its Winter Meeting in January, 2007. The convention will be held September 1-4, 2008.

    I'm disappointed that it's not New York, site of the last convention and one of the three candidates passed over (along with Cleveland and Tampa/St. Pete). I enjoyed the 2004 convention, not only because I got acquainted with a great group of NY-based conservative activist bloggers, but because it's a great city for conventions. Everywhere I needed to be was packed into about a square mile, and the rest of the city was a short subway ride away. I didn't have to think once about parking a car. When the convention sessions were over at midnight, we could still find a good place to eat, and twice we ended up at O'Lunney's, an Irish pub just off of Times Square that keeps its kitchen open until 3 a.m. (Warning: That's an annoyingly Flash-ified web site.) I have the feeling that, in the Twin Cities, many of the delegates will be bused to hotels in the suburbs, and the late night dining choices will consist of Denny's and the all-night drive-thru at McDonald's.

    Still, some of the New York blogger activists will make their way out to MSP, and there will be plenty of interesting locals to meet. Minneapolis has its own powerful contingent of right-leaning bloggers, many of whom were at the 2004 RNC. There's Power Line, Captain's Quarters, and the rest of the Northern Alliance. And then there's James Lileks. The legendary Minnesota State Fair will be happening the same week, and the weather should be perfect.

    The RNC's choice of Minneapolis cuts the Democrats' 2008 choices down to two, New York or Denver, as Minneapolis bid on both conventions, but can't support both in back-to-back weeks.

    Allen retch

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    James Webb, the Democrat challenging U. S. Senator George Allen of Virginia, wrote an article in the November 1979 issue of The Washingtonian magazine, called "Women Can't Fight." A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy, he served four years in combat in Vietnam. The article argues against women at the military academies, on the grounds that the academies exist to train combat leaders, and women do not belong in combat:

    Lest I be understood too quickly, I should say that I believe most of what has happened over the past decade in the name of sexual equality has been good. It is good to see women doctors and lawyers and executives. I can visualize a woman President. If I were British, I would have supported Margaret Thatcher. But no benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat.

    The function of combat is not merely to perpetrate violence, but to perpetrate violence on command, instantaneously, reflexively. The function of the service academies is to prepare men for leadership positions where they may someday exercise that command. All of the other accomplishments that Naval Academy or West Point or Air Force Academy graduates may claim in government or business or diplomacy are incidental to that clearly defined combat mission.

    An entry on George Allen's newly-minted blog cites this article as part of Webb's "legacy of misogyny."

    Did I miss something? Since when is it the conservative position to support women in combat? Since when do conservatives consider it misogynistic to recognize that in certain spheres of life there ought to be differences in the roles played by men and women?

    I do want Allen to be re-elected, because I want the Republicans to retain control of the U. S. Senate and of its committees. And I'm not endorsing everything Webb said in the article and certainly not endorsing the other comments quote by Allen, or Webb's position on Iraq, but it's wrong for a Republican candidate to trash a conservative position on an issue for the sake of political advantage.

    This seems to be another example where alleged conservatives are trying to run to the left of liberal candidates who happen to be conservative (or have been conservative in the past) on a certain issue, probably because they see the conservative position as out of step with the media. In Britain, the new Conservative Party leader, David Cameron, is running to the left of Tony Blair's position on the global war on terror.

    Allen is said to be a leading candidate for president in '08. If this is any indication of the stuff he's made of, I'm not impressed.

    RNC boosts RINO to victory

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    So you have a Republican U. S. Senator who is facing a challenge from another Republican. The senator is out of step with the Republican party platform in every respect -- on social issues, fiscal issues, national defense, and foreign policy.

    But, you say, the senator is a loyal Republican. If he backs the President, a Republican, and supports the Republican leadership in the Senate, surely that loyalty, that reliable vote, can compensate for ideological differences. It might, but this guy isn't loyal. He didn't vote for the President's re-election, and he's actively working to block the President's nominee to be UN ambassador.

    But instead of treating this Republican in Name Only as an outcast, instead of backing a primary challenger who will be in step with the platform and cooperative with his fellow Republicans in government, the Republican National Committee mobilized its forces to prop up the RINO. The RNC paid for party interns to fly in and campaign for the RINO incumbent. The RNC mobilized the 72-hour task force -- the strategy designed to boost turnout and defeat Democrats in the general election -- but this time it was used to prop up the RINO incumbent.

    The RNC succeeded in propping up RINO incumbent Sen. Lincoln Chafee and defeating conservative Cranston, R.I., mayor Steve Laffey by about 4,000 votes.

    This is nothing new, just one more reason I urge you not to give money to the RNC, the NRSC, or the NRCC. If you want to help real conservative Republicans to win office, you should contribute directly to the campaigns of those real conservative Republicans.

    Part of the problem, as I noted back during the 2004 Republican National Convention, is that the Republican National Committee -- the board of directors for the national party organization -- is structured to overrepresent small states with small, ineffective state Republican organizations. The big and growing Sunbelt states where Republicans have gained dominance are underrepresented. Every state (and each of several U. S. territories) has three votes on the RNC -- the state chairman, the national committeeman, and the national committeewoman.

    Even so, there are still more red states than blue states, and if the national committee members from the conservative states banded together, they could stop the inappropriate actions that the RNC staff took in a primary in support of a RINO.

    But for that to happen, grassroots conservative Republicans in those red states have to be sure their RNC members are conservative. And that those RNC members are willing to rock the boat, to come together in a coalition and to stop the RNC staff from putting its resources into a primary in support of a RINO.

    The fact that there was no outcry from the RNC members, that no heads have rolled at the RNC, ought to tell every grassroots activist that he needs to pay closer attention to his state's national committee members. Are they not paying attention? Are they not conservative? Is it time to replace them?

    RELATED: Scott Sala urged New York Republicans to take advantage of the rare opportunity to vote today in a primary. Party rules in New York encourage nominees to be chosen behind closed doors and anointed at conventions. Contested primaries are rare, but this year there was one in the race to challenge Hillary Clinton for re-election to the U. S. Senate.

    Term limits are working

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    Remember the claim that term limits would give lobbyists more power? From John Fund in the Wall Street Journal, on efforts to repeal term limits:

    Mark Petracca, a liberal who chairs the political science department at the University of California at Irvine, notes that lobbyists actually dislike term limits because they have less influence with a steady influx of unpredictable new legislators. "It's no surprise that business and labor interests have long been reliable opponents of term limits," he notes. "There is no systematic evidence that lobbyist power has swelled under term limits."

    Other groups have obvious self-interested reasons to oppose term limits. "Journalists who cover politics hate term limits," says columnist Jill Stewart, a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times. "They must cozy up to a new bunch of lawmakers every time the old bunch is forced out. They have to develop new sources and--Horrors!--update their Rolodexes."

    Term limits mean there is less time for a legislator to build a stronger sense of identity with bureaucrats, lobbyists, journalists, and fellow legislators than he has with his own constituents. He's less likely to start thinking of the Capitol Gang as "us" and his constituents as "them," less likely to become assimilated into the culture.

    And the more new members there are at any given time, the less likely new members will feel intimidated by the institution, and the more likely they will trust their own intelligence and judgment and will be open to change.

    Here are a couple of interesting items on the intersection between faith and politics.

    On RedState, Erick Erickson, a political consultant in Georgia, has an explanation for the defeat of Ralph Reed and an evangelical legislative candidate in Tuesday's Georgia Republican primaries, and it's not that voters are rejecting religious values:

    Ralph Reed and Kay Goodwin lost, not because they were the evangelical candidate, but because they were poseurs....

    For some reason, there are always candidates who think that to run as a social conservative they have to play up to evangelicals on issues that only evangelicals care about. They rally the faithful and pack the churches. But in doing this they expose their achilles heel.

    All an opponent has to do is cast reasonable doubt on the character of the evangelical candidate and that candidate's base will stay home. You convince a strong Christian that his preferred candidate has serious character flaws and the Christian is not going to vote for a man shown to be of morally poor character. And that's what happened in Georgia.

    Erickson quotes Peggy Noonan's Wall Street Journal column: "Is [Ralph Reed] a Christian who went into politics, or a politician who went into Christianity?"

    Erickson's advice:

    The moral of all of this for an evangelical running for office is to run as a conservative, not an evangelical. Talk about conservative issues and let your values shine through. Be humble and don't make your values the issue. After all, in a race of multiple conservatives, it is a lot easier to tear down the guy who is running as the super Christian than it is to out Christian him.

    Here's the context of that Peggy Noonan quote, and a bit more:

    I always thought the question about Mr. Reed is: Is he a Christian who went into politics, or a politician who went into Christianity? Was he sincere and driven by a desire to have a positive impact on public policy, or a mover driven by a desire to get a piece of the action as American Christians, disaffected from a Democratic Party that had grown wildly insensitive to, and in fact disdainful of, their values, started to become a force in the Republican Party? Maybe one or the other, maybe both, maybe both but to different degrees....

    When I read some of the emails he'd sent to lobbyist friends--"I need some corporations, I need some moolah," that kind of thing--I thought: Ick. This is a man suffering from a case of advanced insiderism. This is a guy who thinks it's cool to be cynical.

    Anyway, his defeat this week came at the hands not of "them," of the left, but of conservative voters on the ground in Georgia. His loss seems to me another sign of one of those quiet changing of the guards in professional politics. Quietly an older generation recedes, quietly a newer one rises.

    Good. We need new.

    Not sure why, but Reed has always given me the creeps from his initial emergence as head of the Christian Coalition. My respect for him grew during his service as Georgia Republican Party chairman. He put himself in the background in 2002 and used his organizational skills to mobilize the grass roots. As a result, Republicans won the legislature and several statewide races, some that Republicans hadn't won since Reconstruction. What he did in Georgia became a model for the national Republican get-out-the-vote effort in 2004. In Oklahoma, it won all 77 counties for Bush and swept Tom Coburn into the Senate with a commanding margin.

    As impressive as he is as a strategist, Reed doesn't come across well as a person. There's not even the kind of sarcastic wit that humanized Bob Dole. I'm not surprised Georgia voters passed him by.

    Now for a bigger-picture lok at the intersection between faith and politics: Last weekend over at Junkyard Blog, See-Dubya posted a brilliant piece explaining the similar outlooks of traditional Christianity and modern American conservatism:

    One of the greatest things about Christianity—one of its most powerful, if most cynical and unappealing, insights—is the fallen nature of man. This is, I think, one of the reasons for its worldly success: most people can understand and acknowledge that there is an evil and selfish element in even the most saintly of us.

    This is one reason Christianity and modern American-style conservatism are so closely related. Both reject the notion that humans may perfect themselves. The first sin in the Garden was committed on the false promise that “ye shall be as gods”; but likewise the false promise of Marxism was that we might pull ourselves by our own bootstraps out of misery and into a terrestrial paradise. Millions and millions of deaths later, we see that’s not the case and that it was hubris to think that we could ignore those realistic assessments of human nature offered by Christianity—and by Chesterton, and by public-choice economics. The safest bet is that people will do what is in their interest. Anything else, any act of kindness or virtue, is a mitzvah, but it’s nothing to bet the farm on, or build a society on.

    If you have always depended on the kindness of strangers, you have probably lived a miserable life.

    He goes on to say that there are those within Christianity -- in the liberal denominations, but also in evangelicalism and Catholicism -- who want to move away from the centrality of man's depravity and need for divine redemption, not a self-improvement program. He explains why these intramural Christian debates should matter even to people who aren't Christians:

    ...[W]ithout a notion that redemption of our flawed natures is the exclusive province of God, then a license is granted for unlimited social experimentation in pursuit of the perfection of man.

    Speaking only as a political commentator, this is a naive and dangerous direction for the largest religion in the most powerful nation in the world to take. Speaking as a Christian, it’s blasphemous.

    It was hard not to quote the whole thing -- I left out some very pithy lines -- so go read the whole thing.

    Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute write that Americans shouldn't get their knickers in a twist over the price of fuel:

    In truth, gasoline prices today are taking less of a bite from our pocketbooks than has been the norm since World War II.

    For instance, let’s look at 1955, a year most of us associate with big cars, big engines, and cheap fuel – automotive glory days, as it were. Gasoline sold for 29 cents per gallon. But one dollar in 1955 was worth more than one dollar today. If we were using today’s dollars, gasoline would have cost $1.76 per gallon in 1955.

    Gasoline now costs around $3.00, so we are worse off than in 1955, right? No. Because we were poorer in 1955 than we are today, $1.76 then had a bigger impact on the pocketbook (that is, it represented a larger fraction of income) than $1.76 today. If we adjust gasoline prices not only for inflation but also changes in disposable per capita income (defined as income minus taxes), gasoline today would have to cost $5.17 per gallon to have the same impact as 29 cents in 1955.

    But what they don't adjust for is the amount of driving we do today compared to 50 years ago. While the post-war suburban building spree had begun, cities and towns were still fairly compact, families made do with one car, most shopping was done at neighborhood stores or shopping centers, children walked to school, and stores still made deliveries.

    Although our vehicles are more fuel-efficient today, we do a lot more driving just to go about our daily business. We've had 50 years of construction based on the premise that everyone has a car and distance is no barrier in the search for more selection and lower prices.

    For example, even 20 years ago, Wal-Mart had stores in towns like Pawhuska and Nowata, both about 30 miles away from the next nearest stores in Ponca City and Bartlesville. Wal-Mart believed that customers would be willing to drive that extra 30 miles to shop at a Supercenter, so they closed the stores in Pawhuska and Nowata.

    Here in Tulsa, supermarkets, gas stations, and pharmacies have all trended away from smaller, ubiquitous outlets to fewer but larger locations spread further apart.

    It may yet be that transportation costs for a typical family are a smaller percentage of after-tax income than in 1955, but Taylor and Van Doren haven't established that as a fact in their article.

    A recent photo of me with Congressman John Sullivan, taken when he spoke at the Kiwanis Club luncheon on April 17:

    20060417sullivanbates-581x542.jpg

    The photo was taken by Sullivan's communications director, John Tidwell, who is an excellent amateur photographer. From this photo and some of his other work that I've seen, it's apparent he has a knack for catching people and places at just the right moment in just the right light.

    When I filed this week's column Monday morning, I had no way of knowing the final result, but I felt certain that whoever won the Republican nomination for Mayor would win without a majority of the vote. I thought that was the optimum time to write about the advantages of instant runoff voting without drawing complaints that it was an exercise in sour grapes.

    For what it's worth, I've proposed instant runoff voting at least twice during the City Council's charter review process held every two years.

    You'll find more information about instant runoff voting at FairVote, which reports that Burlington, Vermont, used IRV to elect their mayor this last Tuesday.

    And here's the Burlington Votes website, with a helpful and thorough set of answers to frequently-asked questions, the results of the two rounds of the mayoral election, a sample ballot, and, for election nerds, a text representation of each ballot and the open-source software used to count the ballots.

    Also, this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly has a story by Ginger Shepherd about Maurice Kanbar and Henry Kaufman's plans for downtown Tulsa. And Gretchen Collins talks to the two Portland-based investors who hope to convert the Towerview Apartments into lofts.

    That latter story is very encouraging, but the most discouraging note is that city officials and the head of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited tried to talk them out of doing anything with the building. It's a shame our local yokels don't seem to understand that good, urban downtowns are built, renovated, and redeveloped one lot, one building at a time. When you start talking about whole blocks or superblocks or (heaven forbid) acres devoted to a single use, you're not talking about an urban streetscape any more, but transplanted suburbia.

    The Towerview is the building that city officials have targeted for condemnation to make way for a hotel across the street from the arena. There's no reason that a hotel can't coexist with a restored Towerview and other new buildings besides. The Crowne Plaza takes up about a half-block, the Mayo a quarter-block, the old Holiday Inn/Ramada about a third of a block. Even the Doubletree, able to sprawl a bit because it's built on urban renewal land, would fit in less than a full block.

    Here are a couple TulsaNow forum topics about the Towerview:

    Towerview photos

    Discussion of LaFortune's plan to condemn the Towerview

    Beat Ted?

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    Talk radio host and blogger Kevin McCullough watched Ted Kennedy's performance during last week's Judiciary Committee hearing for Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito. Kevin thinks Ted needs straightening out:

    "Ted Kennedy needs a beating."

    Let me be clear, I don't mean some "pansy slap" on the wrist. I mean a bona fide beating!

    This was supposed to have been Kevin's latest column for World Net Daily, but it was spiked as too extreme. I read it, and I don't think so -- but you have to read the whole thing. Go see for yourself. Kevin invites your comments.

    UPDATE: Just in case you've not bothered to click the link and read the article, Kevin isn't calling for physical violence against the senior senator from Massachusetts.

    A sure-fire flop

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    This item by Karol about NY Governor George Pataki's presidential ambitions is brilliant for a couple of reasons.

    First, there's this observation:

    New York Governor George Pataki mentioned ethanol in his State of the State speech last week. Of course, that means he's running for president.

    She links "running for president" to a Google search for ethanol+subsidies+Iowa. The only reason a pol from outside Iowa would boost ethanol is to lay groundwork for a good showing in the Iowa caucuses.

    Karol goes on to wonder why Pataki's advisers don't tell him he's a no-hoper, and some of her commenters have it pegged. Sean writes:

    He won't win, he hasn't got a shot, but that doesn't mean that his "advisers" and "consultants" won't sign contracts for $16,000/month in the process of failing miserably.

    Commenter Jay comes close to nailing it:

    The "Producers" motivation for running for president. Raise a lot of campaign funds, tank miserably, pocket the remainder.

    That's a reference to the 1968 Mel Brooks film, in which a failed theatrical impresario and his accountant realize there's a pile of money to be made in a play that closes on opening night. As Karol points out, though, candidates can't pocket any remaining campaign funds.

    But Pataki isn't Bialystock or Bloom, as Jay and others seem to suggest. Pataki is "Springtime for Hitler" -- the sure-fire flop -- and his political consultants are the producers. They'll butter him up, appeal to his vanity, and convince him to run. They'll get him to raise a pile of money, which won't be tough for the governor of a large and wealthy state, and they'll spend it for him over the course of '07 and early '08. They can make all sorts of promises in the course of raising money, because they know the candidate will never be in a position to keep those commitments. They'll setup fundraisers, mass mailings, and media buys, and add a percentage to each one, in addition to their monthly consulting fees. When the campaign falters, no one will blame the consultants, who, after all, didn't have much to work with, and they will live to consult again.

    There is no shortage of unscrupulous political consultants who will flatter a candidate into running, preferably a candidate who is wealthy enough to self-finance. For this sort of consultant, a successful campaign is one in which the check clears.

    So from henceforth, let's refer to consultant-driven no-hope election bids as "Springtime for Hitler" campaigns. We've seen plenty at the state and local level, and there are sure to be more before 2008 comes along.

    Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican from California, resigned today and pled guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion. (Here's the AP story. Hat tip to Dan Lovejoy.) Cunningham took $2.4 million in bribes in exchange for steering defense contracts to certain contractors. (I haven't been able to find out yet how he, as an individual congressman, was able to make that happen, but if he was, that needs to be fixed.)

    What I find interesting is the method used for one of the larger bribes. Mitchell Wade, head of a defense contractor called MZM, purchased a home from Cunningham for $1.675 million, then sold it a year later for $975,000. The Realtor who set the price for the sale by Cunningham to Wade was a campaign contributor to Cunningham. That amounts to $700,000 in Cunningham's pocket that wouldn't show up as a payment or a gift, even though that's exactly what it was.

    Remember Speaker of the House Jim Wright? As a source of extra income, he compiled and published a vanity book of speeches and notes called Reflections of a Public Man, and to help him get around limits on outside income, groups would buy crates of the thing, and then warehouse them or throw them away. If I recall correctly, there were no limits on book royalties for House members, but there were limits on speaking fees and other sources of income, intended to prevent the use of such fees as a way to influence a congressman. Wright resigned as Speaker and from Congress in 1989 under that ethical cloud.

    Two points to make:

    (1) The more power is concentrated in any one individual to direct public money for private profit, the more likely bribery becomes. Procurement procedures with checks and balances may take more time and cost more money, but they discourage this kind of abuse.

    (2) Bribes aren't given as bundles of cash in a brown paper bag anymore. If you see a government official consistently steering business to a handful of close associates, and you're looking for a quo to go along with a quid, you ought to look at any opportunity to render payment to a public official (home sales, salaries, services rendered) and see if that payment is in excess of market prices or customary rates.

    Tolerance?

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    Over at Alarming News, guest blogger Candace (another brilliant Republican blogger I had the privilege of meeting during last year's Republican National Convention) tells a story of a party, and how the guests respond when they learn that one among them is Different. Be sure to read the whole thing, and the comments, too.

    Also on Alarming News, Karol has a great post on how Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum's support for his colleague, Republican but social liberal Arlen Specter, is costing him support from conservatives as he faces reelection next year: "But the Santorum lesson is one that should be heeded by conservatives abandoning their principles to make nice with the party. Yes, conservatives will most often vote Republican but all it takes is a pro-life Democrat and a Republican seen as lacking a backbone, and the conservative vote can not be assured."

    New York City Democrats narrowly avoided having to go back to the polls for a runoff in their mayoral primary. Early counts showed Freddy Ferrer just shy of the 40% required to win the primary outright. The second-place finisher, Anthony Weiner, got about 29%, with the remaining 31% split among four candidates. Weiner conceded defeat and endorsed Ferrer, but apparently NYC requires the runoff to go forward regardless. Tulsans will recall the December 2001 primary to replace Congressman Steve Largent: When John Sullivan finished first, well ahead of First Lady Cathy Keating, but shy of Oklahoma's 50% runoff threshold, Mrs. Keating graciously withdrew and the runoff was cancelled.

    In the event, final returns gave Ferrer the necessary 40%. (NY1.com had the results, but a big chunk of that site is currently offline.) Still, the close shave with a pointless election has some New Yorkers talking about alternatives, like Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). And it's interesting that, while some criticize IRV for encouraging fringe candidates by eliminating the worry of "wasting" your vote on someone with no chance of winning, the voices advocating IRV say it will force candidates to make a broader appeal, rather than simply try to put together the biggest of the tiny slivers of the electorate.

    Daily Gotham:

    A candidate must appeal to his rivals' supporters for their second and third place votes in order to prevail in multiple rounds of counting. Divisiveness doesn't work if you're simply a plurality, nor does painting certain candidates (the wild ones, with the kooky lefty ideas) as "spoilers." Voters could finally vote their conscience and their true preference, and candidates would have to emphasize common ground and areas of agreement.

    Doug Israel and Amy Ngai of the Citizens Union Foundation add their support and offer this explanation of the system:

    Other jurisdictions have conducted runoffs while managing to avoid these shortcomings through a system called Instant Runoff Voting. In this system, the voters rank their preferences when they vote in the primaries. If no clear majority is achieved on first-choice votes, the candidate with the minimum amount of votes is eliminated, with his or her votes reallocated to the voters’ second choice. If there is still no victor, election officials go through the count again with voters’ third choices, and so on, until a candidate reaches the threshold for victory.

    That entry links to a Mark Green op-ed from earlier this year. He argues that IRV saves money and empowers voters:

    Instant runoffs encourage candidates to run high-minded races, because they need to simultaneously court voters for their second- and third-choice votes. So instead of seeking a plurality by only working their respective racial, religious or community niches, candidates have to seek votes outside their own particular constituency. That avoids the scenario of a winner who gets elected by a sliver of voters only because the majority was divided among more generally favored candidates.

    Instant runoffs also can level the general election playing field when the challenger's party has an additional - and often divisive - runoff contest while the incumbent saves money, face and energy. On Election Day, IRV frees voters to vote their consciences without the worry of wasting their vote on a long-shot spoiler candidate like a Ralph Nader since their ballots will be recast for their next choices if their first loses.

    Confirmation comics

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    Sean Gleeson is a genius. You must click this link. Biden reminds me of a certain "Kids in the Hall" recurring character.

    And here are some questions Sean wants asked of Judge Roberts.

    I was amused by this article about the facial hair of U. S. Sen. Jon Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey, in today's Asbury Park Press. Corzine, the only member of the U. S. Senate with a beard, will become the only sitting governor with a beard if he wins New Jersey's gubernatorial election this fall.

    While facial hair hasn't been a problem for Corzine to date, some say it could still cost him points with voters. There are persistent, negative connotations underlying the taboo, according to political consultants, image experts and others.

    "The problem with beards is the association with the '60s and '70s — the beatnik and hippie movement, the anti-establishment attitudes that were communicated by people in those years by people wearing beards. It's guilt by association, regardless of whether they were part of that," said Judith Rasband, a professional image management specialist.

    I have often heard Oklahoma political consultant Fount Holland say that a beard will cost a candidate 4% of the vote. The only thing worse than a beard: A mustache by itself will cost you 6%. I don't have any numbers, but I suspect the electorate is even harder on men with a C. Everett Koop / Amish look (full beard, no mustache), a Fu Manchu mustache, a soul patch, mutton chops, or anything resembling Robert Bork's wispy chin fuzz. (The Organization for the Advancement of Facial Hair has a page of illustrations of beard types.)

    Reid Buckley, younger brother of William F., writes in Speaking in Public:

    [T]he heavily bearded speaker tends to look like a wooly caterpillar with lips. Most of the expressiveness in the face emanates from the thousands of tiny muscles surrounding the area of the mouth. When this is shrouded, what the audience discerns of the speaker's mug is precious little; what it gathers of expression is nada. Rubbery lips in their hairy casements... writhe, like sea anemones....

    Bearded men, moreover, unless they are blond or redhead, tend to look dour, grouchy, even menacing; like Frederic March's Mr. Hyde.

    Buckley's advice to public speakers: Shave it off, or at least trim it close.

    I have twice run for office, and I was told before both campaigns that I had to shave. During my 2002 campaign for Tulsa City Council, I received a phone call from a voter who had received a campaign postcard with my photo on it. He felt compelled to inform me that under no circumstances would he or his wife vote for anyone with a beard. I informed the gentleman that I had two small children who were used to Daddy having a beard, and that they would be puzzled to see Daddy clean-shaven. I also told him that my wife liked me with a beard, and when it came to my appearance the opinion of my wife and children mattered most. The voter was unmoved.

    I later looked up the gentleman's name in the voter registration database and found that he was rather advanced in years. I suspect that for those whose working life was mainly in the '40s and '50s and into the '60s, beards represent a rejection of authority and society. Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Castro, and (of course) Che had beards. For boomers and younger, beards are more commonplace, and they're more likely to have positive associations: fatherly, avuncular, professorial, venerable. Burl Ives had a beard and sang folk songs in Disney movies. Ernest Hemingway had a beard. Santa Claus has a beard, for that matter.

    I lost my council race by slightly more than the beard penalty, and my opponent (Tom Baker) subsequently grew a beard of his own, although I think he had shaved it before the 2004 campaign.

    I have not been fully clean-shaven since 1985. I first grew a beard as a junior in college, during an extended stay in the infirmary. It was weedy and scraggly, and I shaved it off before job hunting the following summer, then grew it back the next winter, during another extended illness. When I went job hunting as I neared graduation, I didn't shave. I figured that if a company didn't want me, beard and all, I didn't want to work for them. That may not have been the best job-hunting strategy in Tulsa in 1986, but I had a good job within two months anyway.

    I trim my beard closer now, and I shave more of my cheeks and neck than I did back then, but other than that (and other than a growing number of white whiskers), it's the same beard as 20 years ago, and I'm given to believe it suits me. The first time I met my wife, I was clean-shaven and wore glasses; the following year we met again, and I had a beard and wore contact lenses. This time we clicked in a way we hadn't the first year, and I always suspected the beard made a difference. An erstwhile friend told me she didn't like facial hair and had urged plenty of men to shave, in brutally frank terms, but in my case, the beard was a part of who I am, and she couldn't possibly be more attracted to me. (There are at least two ways you could take that last phrase, one of which is complimentary.)

    When your beard is part of who you are, shedding it before a campaign is likely to come across as an act of political expediency as cynical as shedding a long-held principle. Jon Corzine seems to take the same view:

    "It's staying," he said when asked about the beard in a July interview. "When you've had something for 25 years, why would you reshape yourself to get into public life? And I haven't tried to."

    I don't share the man's politics, but I hope his success opens doors for his bearded brethren everywhere.

    The final word on the matter belongs to Minnie Pearl:

    Kissing a feller with a beard is like a picnic. You don't mind going through a little brush to get there.

    TRACKBACK: Kyle at Neumatikos chimes in: "[My wife] insisted I not shave for our wedding, which was a great relief. Later generations would have wasted considerable effort wondering who mommy’s first husband was, and why we insisted on putting out pictures of that wedding, instead of ours." (Found via Google's new Blog Search.)

    Karol isn't predicting who the Republican nominee will be in '08, but, blogger enthusiasm notwithstanding, she says it won't be Rudy or Condi. Go read why, and read her insightful list of the eventual nominee's defining characteristics.

    Karol links to Patrick Ruffini's latest straw poll. He's added two twists to the previous poll. In addition to a ballot of likely candidates, there's a second ballot, with some unlikely but popular choices -- Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Condi Rice, and Fred Thompson. You indicate whether you'd vote for one of the four over your initial pick, if you had the chance. He's also asking for your state and is presenting results by state. Patrick is also tracking results by referring blog, but I notice that neither BatesLine nor Karol's Alarming News show up in the stats for the previous straw poll, even though we both had it linked. Ruffini has posted his analysis of the initial results for the new straw poll.

    Patrick also has been analyzing detailed presidential results, and has a map showing the change in the Bush vote between 2000 and 2004 in each municipality in New Jersey. The cool thing is that he overlaid the map on Google Earth, so you can see aerial view colored with the results, and get a sense of the types of places where Bush gained and lost. The most interesting trend: The wealthier a township, the more likely a swing away from Bush from 2000 to 2004.

    Political analyst Michael Barone is now a blogger, and he's categorized the congressional districts where Bush gained and lost the most between '00 and '04. Barone calls Oklahoma's rural 2nd, 3rd, and 4th districts, where Bush did much better in '04, "Zell Miller districts."

    One of the darkhorses in the Ruffini straw poll is Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, who got a favorable mention here a while back. A couple of weeks ago Fayetteville, Arkansas, blog Overtaken by Events reported that Huckabee, along with many other Arkansas pols, protested loudly against an immigration raid at a poultry plant in Arkadelphia. Huckabee said the calls to his office were running a thousand to one against his position, but does it take more courage to defy popular opinion or the interests of the state's biggest business interests?

    ... is this.

    Walken across America

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    Christopher Walken, the actor, plans to run for President in 2008, and he has launched a campaign website. Is this a self-indulgent publicity bid? Is there some depth to his political thinking, or is he just another celebrity with an inflated sense of self-importance? This quote from his bio may be a clue:

    Having residences both in rural Connecticut and upper-west Manhattan, he sees that all walks of life are becoming disgruntled and apathetic towards the American government, and feels a duty, as a child of the American public, to restore the peace, prosperity, and greatness of the United States.

    Yes, you'll meet all walks of life in the Upper West Side and among the Connecticut country estates of the wealthy. He forgot to mention that he sometimes travels to Los Angeles and flies over the great heartland of our country, occasionally looking out the window for a second or two.

    He stakes out positions (pretty much the mainstream media consensus positions) on only three issues (campaign finance reform, stem cell research, and military spending), but Ace has gleaned some additional platform planks from the characters he's played in the movies.

    One of the names that should have been on Patrick Ruffini's 2008 Republican Presidential Straw Poll was that of Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. I hadn't really thought of him as a contender until our recent visit to Little Rock, where I heard him speak at a banquet honoring community volunteers (including my mother-in-law). He's a social and fiscal conservative and has a solid record over nine years as governor.

    I was impressed by his ease addressing the audience. I suppose after nine years as governor and many years before that as a Baptist preacher, public speaking wouldn't be a problem, but I've seen plenty of veteran politicians who never learn to deliver a speech in a comfortable, natural way. I was surprised at how mild his accent was -- much less noticeable than Bill Clinton's.

    Someone else thinks Mike Huckabee deserves a look as a presidential contender. Someone calling him/herself "Blue State Republican" has started the Mike Huckabee President 2008 blog. He's got an extensive excerpt from a recent column by David Broder, who also enthuses over Huckabee, calling him the most intriguing candidate present at the recent National Governors' Association conference.

    Someone to watch.

    Patrick Ruffini is running a straw poll for the 2008 Presidential nomination. He's missing a few potential candidates that ought to be on the list, and at least three of five are no-hopers, but he's added an interesting twist that makes it worth your while to participate: He's sorting the results by referring blog, which means we'll be able to see how results among BatesLine readers compare to the overall result. So click on through, and cast your vote.

    (Hat tip: Karol at Alarming News.)

    President Bush has announced the nomination of U. S. Court of Appeals Judge John Roberts to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the U. S. Supreme Court.

    I don't have time to write a reaction (or even have one yet), but you'll find plenty of commentary in the newly-established section on the sidebar to the right of the BatesLine home page. Just below the Blog Oklahoma button, you'll find "News blogs, frequently updated," with a selection of right-leaning individual blogs and group blogs that focus on national and world news and (with one exception) are frequently updated. (The exception is the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today," which is nevertheless worth your attention if you're keeping up with the world at large.)

    The Discoshaman/TulipGirl family is celebrating Independence Day in America this year for the first time in several years. Discoshaman writes about how they celebrated, and TulipGirl has pictures.

    I love the fact that they wanted to include in their observances a viewing of the movie "Red Dawn" -- a film we referred to at the time as the official movie of the 1984 Republican National Convention. In the film, Patrick Swayze and C. Thomas Howell (fresh from gang battles on the mean streets of Tulsa) take on a Soviet/Cuban invasion of small-town America. My favorite moment in the movie is when the Cuban commander orders his men to round up all the gun owners in the county. How does he know who these gun owners are? From the registration records collected by an American government that didn't respect the Second Amendment. (The hamhandedness of that plot point shouldn't distract from the fact that invading tyrants would do exactly that.)

    Discoshaman also lets us know how the lefty intellectualoids are observing the holiday and uses a unique illustration, no doubt meaningful to his four boys, to teach the relationship between rights and responsibilities.

    One test of a good voting system is whether it effectively prevents a candidate to enter the race as a "spoiler." There is probably a technical term for this, but there ought to be a stability of results. If A would beat B in a two-candidate race, the addition of C to the list of candidates shouldn't result in a victory for B. By extension, adding a candidate to an n-candidate race shouldn't hand the election to someone who would have lost the n-candidate race.

    Because many jurisdictions don't have any sort of runoff at all, and only a handful use instant runoff voting, we often see elections where the winner is someone who might not have won with fewer candidates in the race. Sometimes the winner is someone who might have lost head-to-head with several of the other candidates, but wins the multi-candidate race because the other candidates split a common core constituency.

    Here are two more recent examples.

    Yesterday there was a special primary election in Ohio's 2nd congressional district, a seat previously held by Rob Portman, who is now U. S. Trade Representative in President Bush's cabinet.

    Here's the final result (PDF) in the Republican primary:


    JEAN SCHMIDT 14232 31.35%
    BOB MCEWEN 11565 25.48%
    TOM BRINKMAN, JR. 9211 20.29%
    PAT DEWINE 5455 12.02%
    ERIC MINAMYER 2111 4.65%
    PETER A. FOSSETT 1026 2.26%
    TOM BEMMES 695 1.53%
    JEFF MORGAN 400 0.88%
    DAVID R. SMITH 374 0.82%
    STEVE AUSTIN 221 0.49%
    DOUGLAS E. MINK 100 0.22%

    Ohio has no primary runoff, so Schmidt wins the primary despite the 69% of the vote against her.

    Had the 4th through 11th place candidates not been in the race, the distribution of their votes to the top three could have put any of the top three in first place. Even an Oklahoma-style primary runoff wouldn't fix the problem, as the top three were close enough that we can't know which of them would have finished 1-2 if the other eight candidates had not been in the race. Instant runoff voting would have produced a winner with the support of a majority of the voters. The beauty of instant runoff voting is that you eliminate the spoiler effect of an additional candidate.

    We had another example in last week's Republican primary for New Jersey governor.


    Doug Forrester 108,090 35.94%
    Bret Schundler 93,926 31.23%
    John Murphy 33,662 11.19%
    Steven Lonegan 24,346 8.10%
    Robert Schroeder 16,691 5.55%
    Paul DiGaetano 16,551 5.50%
    Todd Caliguire 7,472 2.48%

    It's been argued that Steven Lonegan acted as a spoiler for Bret Schundler, peeling off enough conservative support to keep him from once again winning the GOP nomination. The counter-argument is that if the other minor candidates had not been in the race, most of their votes would have gone to Forrester. A runoff is the only way to know for sure.

    A simple two-candidate runoff probably would have been sufficient to provide a clear outcome, but theoretically Murphy could have finished second in a three-way race -- the bottom four candidates had enough combined votes that if they had been out of the race and all their votes had gone to Murphy, Murphy would have finished second.

    Virginia is for voters

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    Today is primary day in Virginia. Virginia has a one-term limit for governor, so Democrat Mark Warner will be stepping down (rumored to be planning a run for Senate next year against incumbent Republican George Allen). Jerry Kilgore is expected to defeat George Fitch in the race for the Republican nomination for Governor; the winner will go on to face Democrat Tim Kaine, unopposed for his party's nomination.

    The most hotly contested races are for the lower house of the legislature. Last year, a number of Republican delegates supported a tax increase to address a budget crisis, and many of them have drawn primary challengers this year.

    Unlike Oklahoma, Virginia has an open primary system. You don't register by party. Instead, at each primary you ask for the ballot of one party or the other. An incumbent facing a primary challenge might try to win renomination by luring voters who usually vote in the other party's primary.

    Last week when I was digging for info on the New Jersey primary, I was surprised not to find any blogs devoted to Garden State politics, and only a few with even a mention of the contestants in the main race, but a quick search today found several conservative blogs devoted to Virginia politics. One blog, Sic Semper Tyrannis, contacted me before the Oklahoma Republican Convention to write about George Allen's speech there and how he was received by the delegates. A district attorney blogs about politics under the pseudonym John Behan at Commonwealth Conservative. One Man's Trash is covering the governor's race extensively.

    Bacon's Rebellion is a biweekly Virginia public policy e-zine. It's covering the election, but it also covers government efficiency, taxation, and transportation and land use. There's a blog, updated daily, and a special blog on transportation, urban design, and land use, called The Road to Ruin.

    Polls close at 7 local time, and you can see results from 7:30 on via the Virginia State Board of Elections.

    Yesterday afternoon Chelan County, Washington, Superior Court Judge John Bridges ruled against Republican gubernatorial nominee Dino Rossi, affirming that Democrat Christine Gregoire won last November's election. There were over a thousand invalid ballots cast, far greater than the margin of victory. As I understand it, Rossi's team tried to make a statistical case, based on where the irregular votes were cast, that enough of the invalid votes were cast for Gregoire that Rossi would have won if those votes weren't counted. The judge ruled that it couldn't be determined with certainty which candidate received the benefit of those invalid ballots, therefore the result stands. Michelle Malkin live-blogged the judge's press conference. She links to Seattle-area political blog SoundPolitics, which has been covering the situation in great depth since last November when the recounts began.

    This result is puzzling. Under Oklahoma law, if the number of irregular or fraudulent votes is greater than the margin of victory, so that the result cannot be mathematically determined, the election is voided and a new election is held. This happened in Tulsa in 2004, in a Democratic primary for City Council. Incumbent David Patrick received three votes more than former incumbent Roscoe Turner, but in one precinct, 255 votes were cast, but only 207 Democrat voters signed in. Evidently, 48 Republicans who showed up to vote in the presidential primary were also given Democrat city primary ballots. After Turner contested the election and presented evidence of the irregularities, a judge ordered a re-vote, which Turner won handily. I'm surprised a similar provision doesn't exist in Washington law.

    Jim Miller, one of the bloggers at SoundPolitics, appears to have coined a new term to describe what seems to have happened in Washington -- distributed vote fraud. Rather than a coordinated effort to stuff the ballot boxes in a few precincts, handfuls of ineligible voters cast ballots in each precinct -- maybe only 1 in every 1000 voters, maybe as high as 1 in 100, but more than enough to affect the outcome of very close elections, like Oklahoma's 2002 governor's race, which was decided by three votes per precinct.

    Miller's disclaimer on the topic explains what it would take to determine the extent of the problem. He also observes that Democrats tend to favor policies (like the Federal "Motor Voter" act) that make fraud easier to commit and to oppose policies (like showing photo ID when you vote) that make fraud easier to detect or deter. He writes, "Perhaps all these Democrats are wrong to think that there is an advantage for their party in what I call distributed vote fraud, but I doubt it." You'll find a longer treatment of the problem here.

    New Jersey votes today

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    One of two states with a statewide election this year, New Jersey holds its primary today for offices from governor all the way down to township officials. (Virginia has a primary next Tuesday. Louisiana and Kentucky are the other two odd-year states; they'll vote in '07.)

    There are seven candidates vying for the Republican nomination for Governor -- leading the pack are former Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, the 2001 nominee, and Doug Forrester, who lost the 2002 Senate race after Frank Lautenberg tagged in for the damaged-goods incumbent, Bob Torricelli.

    Kevin McCullough has posted his assessment of the two candidates. The latest Quinnipiac University poll has Forrester leading Schundler 35-33, within the margin of error. (HT for the poll to The Hedgehog Report.)

    On the Democrat ballot, Sen. Jon Corzine is expected to win handily over two other candidates.

    Here's the official list of candidates. Each candidate has an official slogan in each county, which I assume appears on the ballot. Forrester's slogan in each county has some variation on "Regular Republican," but in some cases it's clear that he has the endorsement of the county party organization, e.g. the slogan "Middlesex County Republican Party." Schundler uses "Bret 2005" unless a specific organization has endorsed him -- he was endorsed by the confusingly-named "Middlesex County Republican Organization." The idea of county organizations making an endorsement seems strange -- here in Oklahoma, it's against state party rules. I rather like the idea of having a slogan on the ballot; it could make it easier for voters to remember which candidate is running on which issue.

    One more New Jersey oddity: You vote for two candidates for your district in the General Assembly (the lower house of the legislature). Same thing applies in the primary election.

    This is the official page for 2005 election results, but it isn't clear if live results will be available. Polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 8 p.m. Eastern Time.

    Why does an Oklahoma blogger care about the result in New Jersey's primary? It's partly job-related -- more than that I won't say. Mostly, it's for the same reason that some people bother to look at box scores in April. It's politics, and today it's the only game scheduled -- that's reason enough.

    UPDATE: NJ.com has results from the Associated Press updated at 10 minute intervals.

    It's time for the annual Wal-Mart shareholders meeting, and Fayetteville-based blogger Matt of Overtaken by Events has photos of a pathetic little protest march down Dickson Street.

    Immigration Reform for Oklahoma Now (I.R.O.N.), a group pushing for stricter enforcement of immigration laws, is having its monthly meeting this Thursday, June 2, 6:30 p.m., at Hardesty Library in the Oak Room. Undersheriff Edwards will be the speaker. You can learn more about the organization at its website, www.okiron.org.

    It was interesting to read Karol Sheinin's comments today on illegal immigration on her blog, Alarming News. Karol is a legal immigrant to the US from Russia. About the illegal immigration summit in Las Vegas and the protesters who called the summitteers racist, she writes:

    What is racist about thinking that illegal immigration is wrong? What is racist about worrying about the security of your nation's borders, at a time when your country is at war with a shadowy enemy who is trying to infiltrate your country to destroy it from within? Minuteman organizer Chris Simcox spoke at the conference and, mentioning recent deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border in Arizona, said 'There is no reason human beings, regardless of where they come from, should die horrible deaths.' What's racist about that?

    The tax eaters' party

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    Scott Sala of Slant Point links to a City Journal article by Stephen Malanga about the political engine that drives politics in America's "bluest" cities. Malanga calls it the "New New Left," or "the tax eaters' party," a coalition of government-employee unions, social service agencies funded by government, and workers in the health care industry, which is increasingly funded and controlled by government. He sketches the history and growth of each component of the New New Left and its influence over municipal politics in many cities:

    Increasingly in U.S. cities, the road to electoral success passes through the public- employee/health-care/social-services sector. In New York, for instance, more than two-thirds of city council members are former government employees or ex-workers in health care or social services....

    One reason that these politicians have succeeded electorally is that those who work in the public sector have different voting priorities from private-sector workers or business owners. An exit poll conducted by City Journal of the 2001 New York mayoral election found that private-sector workers heavily backed Michael Bloomberg, the businessman candidate who had been endorsed by Rudy Giuliani and had run on a pledge of no new taxes (which he broke after his first year in office), while those who worked in the public/health-care/social-services sectors favored his Democratic opponent, who ran on a promise of raising taxes to fund further services. In the race, Bloomberg won among private-sector voters by 17 percentage points, while the Democrat won by 15 points among those who worked in the public/nonprofit sectors.

    And of course public-sector workers, who know they are going to the polls to elect their bosses, make sure to remember to vote. Though they make up about one-third of New York City’s workforce, public/nonprofit-sector voters made up 37 percent of the electorate in the 2001 mayoral race.

    His analysis is interesting, but maybe a bit alarmist. 37% of the electorate vs. 33% of the workforce doesn't seem terribly disproportionate, and if the Democrat had only a 15 point win among public-sector voters, it suggests that not all public-sector voters vote for whoever promises to increase public funding. It would be interesting to know what motivated the public-sector voters who picked Mike Bloomberg over Mark Green four years ago.

    Still public employee unions have become very influential, especially in Democratic politics -- you won't get far without their endorsements and the help of their footsoldiers. I've heard that it's the only growing sector of the labor union movement. While I appreciate the complaints of Tulsa's city workers, who have borne most of the city's belt-tightening, I think it was a mistake for the City Council to approve unionization, even in a limited way. It will be difficult to say no to the next department that seeks unionization. A unionized city workforce will make it more difficult for the city's elected officials to make adjustments in order to cope with tight finances, and a city employee union would be an organized political force always pushing for expansion of city government.

    That's in New York City, where it's even more remarkable. Thomas Ognibene is challenging incumbent Mayor Michael Bloomberg in the Republican primary for this November's New York municipal elections. Scott Sala of Slant Point has been providing thorough coverage of the local New York political scene, and he's posted an interview with Ognibene, the first of several he plans to do with NYC candidates. Ognibene is pro-life and opposes the redefinition of marriage, positions that may win crossover votes from evangelical Democrats who can't find candidates in their own party who share their values. In the interview, Ognibene refutes the idea that only a liberal Republican can be elected Mayor, pointing out that Rudy Giuliani, while a social liberal, ran and governed as a conservative, cracking down on crime, reducing City Hall bureaucracy, trimming the welfare rolls, and cutting burdensome taxes and fees. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg, a RINO, has focused on banning smoking everywhere, promoting a new Manhattan stadium for the New York Jets, and wants to spend $3 million from the city budget to promote the "morning after pill."

    This should be a fascinating election to watch. Thanks, Scott, for giving us a front row seat.

    Finally found the magic Google phrase to locate something I've been trying to find for some time now: A chart showing the number of Republicans and Democrats in each state legislative chamber in the United States. Here it is, on the website of the National Conference of State Legislatures, as of earlier this month.

    If you want counts from further back in history, visit their Partisan Composition and Control page.

    It's Wictory Wednesday, when hundreds of bloggers ask their readers to contribute to a Republican candidate somewhere in the USA. Today's target of opportunity is Mark Kennedy, running for Senate from Minnesota. Here's Kennedy's website, and here's where you can make a contribution. Minnesota is one of the GOP's best shots at picking up a Senate seat in '06. Early contributions to Kennedy will help discourage Democrat candidates from getting into the race.

    You'll find the list of blogs supporting the Wictory Wednesday in the sidebar on the BatesLine homepage.

    Last Saturday was Tulsa County Republican Convention and the election of party officers for the next two years, the culmination of a process that began over a month ago with precinct meetings in homes all over the county.

    The same process for the Tulsa County Democratic Party begins this Thursday night, March 10, at 7:00 p.m. Elections will be held for chairman, vice chairman, and secretary for each precinct. The Democrats will have 20 regional meetings around the county, each of which will host several precinct meetings. As I understand it, these newly-elected precinct officials will then gather to elect a chairman and other county party officials.

    If you're registered to vote as a Democrat, you can participate in the precinct elections. Visit the website of the Tulsa County Democratic Party, or phone party headquarters at 742-2457, to find out where your precinct election will be held. If you need to find out your precinct number, try the Tulsa County Election Board's precinct locator on the web, or call the election board at 596-5780.

    I'll be putting up several posts about Saturday's Tulsa County Republican Convention -- you'll see "TCRC 2005" in the title. The convention meets every odd-numbered year to elect party officials and to approve a party platform. There is also a county convention in every presidential election year.

    The usual order of business is to hear speeches from Republican officials in the morning then after lunch to elect party officers and vote on the platform.

    The party officers elected for 2005-07 are

    Chairman: Jerry Buchanan
    Vice Chairman: Joy Pittman
    State Committeeman: Michael Bates
    State Committeewoman: Charlotte Harer
    1st District Committeeman: Jeremy Bradford
    1st District Committeewoman: Erin Patrick

    The 1st District Committeeman race was the only contested race -- 2002 mayoral candidate Ray McCollum was the other candidate. It was clear that Jeremy Bradford, president of the Young Republicans chapter, had the support of a broader cross-section of party leaders.

    Jerry and Joy are going to make a great team. Jerry took a leap into politics a little over a year ago when he decided to run in the special election for House District 67. He didn't win, but he ran an honorable race, and rather than sulk, he volunteered to help build the party organization. He will do a great job with the nuts and bolts of the party. He's also a man of principle, evidenced by his role as a lay leader of the Church of the Holy Spirit, an Episcopal parish at odds with the national church over the ordination of homosexuals. As a spokesman for the congregation, he's demonstrated firmness without vitriol.

    Joy was a fellow delegate to the Republican National Convention and served on the RNC platform committee. She's also a heck of a dancer. (Shockwave required, click on DAY 3, then click on DELEGATE DANCE-OFF. That's Joy on the right as the video begins and ends.)

    As I was unopposed, I was allowed to make a two-minute acceptance speech, in which I called the delegates' attention to three crucial elections coming in the next few months. (1) The City of Tulsa has a general obligation bond issue for basic infrastructure on the ballot in April, and it needs to pass. It's all about the basic duties of city government. (2) In order to hold on to the District 5 council seat, it's crucial for only one of the seven Republicans who have expressed interest in the seat to go ahead and file for the special election. The election has no primary and no runoff -- it's first-past-the-post. I urged the candidates and precinct leaders in the district to caucus and agree as to which of the seven should be the Republican standard-bearer. (3) We've got to defeat the recall attempts and keep Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino in office. It would be a violation of democratic principles if duly elected officials were replaced in midterm by the appointment of the candidates who lost the last election.

    The six elected officials together form the Central Committee of the county party. It's a good team, and I'm proud to be part of it once again.

    Naughtie but nice

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    File this under "Oh, what a giveaway":

    THE BBC’s reputation for fair and balanced reporting was at risk last night after top broadcaster James Naughtie blurted out his pro-Labour sympathies.

    In a live chat with ex-Treasury chief Ed Balls — weeks before the May 5 election — he asked: “If WE win the election, does Gordon Brown remain Chancellor?”

    He struggled to recover, saying: “If YOU win the election.”

    The blunder came on Radio 4’s flagship Today programme. Mr Naughtie has frequently given Conservatives a rough ride in interviews while apparently giving Labour frontmen an easy time.

    The veteran anchorman is author of a biography of Gordon Brown and is close to Tony Blair and other Cabinet ministers.

    But he surprised his own colleagues yesterday by blurting out his true colours on prime time radio.

    I find blatant bias rather refreshing, much nicer than bias concealed beneath a veneer of objectivity. Go ahead, James, purge yourself. Let it all out. We'll all feel much better.

    Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

    Dan Lovejoy has been all over this story: The Federal Department of Homeland Security has put veterans of some of the most invasive software and Internet companies in responsible positions overseeing the department's privacy issues. Nuala O'Connor Kelly, formerly Chief Privacy Officer for DoubleClick, is now Chief Privacy Officer for the Department of Homeland Security. And an executive from Claria (neé Gator) is on a Homeland Security privacy board. Many websurfers, myself included, installed Gator because it promised to help us more easily manage all the different usernames and passwords one acquires in the course of registering for this newspaper's website and that online banking service. It also would hijack your browser and pop up windows for its advertisers based on the site you were currently browsing. Dan reminds that Gator has been the subject of a number of lawsuits.

    Dan has filed a Freedom of Information Act request to find out all he can. If the Cornyn-Leahy OPEN Government Act (S. 394) gets through Congress quickly enough, the FOIA request might not be too expensive:

    A while back I noted that the Democrats' vacillating response to Islamofascism was driving otherwise liberal voters to become "9/11 Republicans". I wondered if these new Republicans would follow in the footsteps of the neo-conservatives of the 1960s:

    In the 1960s, certain liberals were appalled at the weak-kneed, apologetic response of some of the their fellow liberals to oppressive, imperialistic Soviet Communism. Over time this core group of "neo-conservatives," which had broken with the mainstream of liberalism over foreign policy, began to question liberal orthodoxy on domestic policy. Their movement away from liberalism was accelerated by the left's hysterical response to their "apostasy" from the true liberal faith. Time will tell if today's "9/11 Republicans" become tomorrow's "neo-neo-cons".

    Wizbang's Paul links to a recent indication that War on Terror Republicans are re-examining conservative views on other issues. In an op-ed on SFGate.com, Cinnamon Stillwell, who grew up in far-left Marin County, tells about the shift in her views, from being a Nader voter in 2000 to voting for George W. Bush in 2004.

    Randy Barnett, writing at the Volokh Conspiracy, urges libertarians to refocus on getting libertarian candidates to succeed within the two-party system:

    Libertarians should stop thinking of parties as teams and think of them instead as the playoffs. In NFL football terms, The Democrats are the AFC and the Republicans the NFC. To get into the Superbowl, you have to survive the season and the playoffs in your respective conference. In effect, Libertarians want to form their own league which no one but themselves is interested in watching. And they assure themselves of never making the playoffs much less the Superbowl.

    The analogy is apt, especially because of ballot access laws that institutionalize the two parties in many states (Oklahoma, particularly), the way legislative bodies organize themselves into majority and minority caucuses, and a voting system that penalizes third-party votes -- vote for a third-party candidate in our first-past-the-post system and you probably help your least favorite candidate.

    In another post, he points out that the existence of the Libertarian Party drains libertarian activists from the two major parties, giving them less influence.

    The same message applies to conservatives who are tempted to leave the Republican Party for, say, a minor party like the Constitution Party.

    Speaking of ballot access, I'm proud to see that Owasso Senator Randy Brogdon is the Senate sponsor of a ballot access reform bill for Oklahoma. Sen. Brogdon has frequently demonstrated the courage of his convictions, and I predict bigger and better things for him down the road. At least I hope so.

    A breath of fresh air from Karol:

    Isn't there something to be said for politicians taking a side of an issue, us voting for them based on where they stand, and then them representing our interests in elected office?

    We are forever being told that some issue is too important to be left to the politicians, too important to allow it to become politicized. And some folks are just unnerved by vigorous debate.

    There are indeed those fundamental, inalienable, absolute rights which should not be subject to the whims of politics. Those genuine rights aren't in competition -- my exercise of my freedom of speech doesn't require anything of you. All that is required is for the government not to infringe on those rights.

    Beyond those basic freedoms, we enter the realm of trade-offs and competing interests, where what I seek may very well undermine your aims and vice versa. Politics is our way of arbitrating between those interests and setting the rules of the game. I much prefer deciding such matters through politics; the alternatives are tyranny and revolution. When the really important matters are removed from the realm of politics, ordinary people lose hope of change, opposition goes underground and becomes extreme, and government moves from openness to hidden, often corrupt, influence.

    We shouldn't be ashamed of politics.

    This news is about a week old, but it escaped my notice at the time; perhaps you missed it, too. It reinforces my sense that the Republican Party's leaders at the national level fail to understand the source of their strength and electoral success, and that there is a structural basis to this failure that needs correction.

    During a conversation this morning at church, I received the disappointing news that an abortion advocate has been elected by the Republican National Committee as its new co-chairman. JoAnn Davidson of Ohio was nominated to the post by new RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, who had been the chairman of Bush's re-election campaign and was nominated by Bush to replace Ed Gillespie as head of the committee. Davidson has been a board member of Republicans for Choice, the pro-abortion pressure group within the GOP, since that organization's founding in 1990.

    Davidson's nomination received opposition from pro-life members of the RNC. In order to gain the desired unanimous approval, she promised committee members privately not to speak at organizing or fundraising events for pro-abortion groups and to back the President's agenda publicly. In other words, she'll keep quiet about her abortion views and focus on political nuts-and-bolts, for which she's reputed to have some talent. From news reports I learned that her predecessor was also a supporter of abortion rights, news to me -- so it certainly is possible for someone to serve in that position and be a good team player by keeping quiet on matters of disagreement with the mainstream of the party.

    Her colleagues at Republicans for Choice have higher ambitions for her tenure as RNC co-chairman. Their home page declares: "We look forward to working with her to help make sure the concerns of pro-choice and moderate Republicans are heard within the Republican National Committee Headquarters..."

    (More about Davidson, and why this move is wrong on principle and wrong politically, after the jump.)

    Coburn assigned to Judiciary

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    RedState.org has the full list of Republican Senate committee assignments from the leadership, subject to confirmation by the Senate Republican caucus. Sen.-elect Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas have been assigned to Judiciary, replacing Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Larry Craig of Idaho. This is great news, a bit of compensation for having to put up with Arlen Specter in the chair. Coburn has also been assigned to Homeland Security / Government Affairs.

    Our senior Senator, Jim Inhofe continues as chairman of Environment and Public Works and will be third-ranking Republican on Armed Services, behind John Warner and John McCain.

    Thanks to Adam, an editor for RedState.org, who is also a native Tulsan, for the tip. Adam is a self-described social moderate, and when asked by a commenter why he most wanted to see social conservatives on the Judiciary Committee, he replied:

    My preference for judges is for ones that will not make law from the bench. For example, I support most gay rights initiatives, but I don't want a judiciary to impose those rights. I support a higher level of environmentalism than the Bush administration, but I don't want judges imposing it. And on and on.

    Furthermore, I think Roe v. Wade is a flawed ruling (regardless of my view on the legality of abortion) and should be overruled or at least curtailed. These two will definitely side with me on that one.

    I appreciate Adam's respect for the Constitution.

    You just thought the 2004 election was over!

    Louisiana has a unique election system. There are no party primaries, but all candidates of any party face each other on election day. If someone gets 50% of the vote, he is elected; otherwise, the top two candidates are in a runoff a few weeks later.

    This year two Louisiana Congressional races are on the runoff ballot this Saturday (another Louisiana peculiarity), and Republicans are poised to win both and achieve a 6-1 lead in the state's U. S. House delegation.

    This Wictory Wednesday, BatesLine joins hundreds of other blogs in asking you to contribute to Dr. Charles Boustany, Republican candidate for Congress in southwest Louisiana's 7th District. You can donate to the campaign by following this link. Dr. Boustany is a heart surgeon and, if elected, would be the first Republican ever elected from the district.

    You'll find a list of all the Wictory Wednesday blogs on the lower right of my homepage, along with information about how bloggers can participate.

    Arlen escapes

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    Way too often for my liking, elected Republicans do something to justify being called "the Stupid Party." (For the record, people who call the GOP "the Stupid Party" call the Democrats "the Evil Party.")

    Yesterday, the Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to recommend Arlen Specter to be the committee's new chairman, despite a long and loud outcry from grassroots conservatives who believe, with good reason, that Specter will be an obstacle to needed legal reforms and to the nominations of judges who believe in interpreting the law, rather than legislating from the bench. The other committee members are crowing about the "concessions" they extracted from Specter before endorsing his chairmanship. Specter issued a statement defending his record on judicial nominations and pledging that he would not apply a litmus test against pro-life nominees, that he would hold quick hearings and early votes on the President's judicial nominees, that he will use his "best efforts to stop any future filibusters." He has also pledged not to bottle up legislation and constitutional amendments in committee, even when he is personally opposed.

    Let's look at the bargain that was struck: Specter gets what he wants right away in exchange for a promise. What are the consequences if he breaks his promise? There are none. The Republicans have said they could deprive him of his chairmanship if he goes back on his word, but doing so for policy reasons would be unprecedented, and they won't be willing to withstand the condemnation from the mainstream media. And even if the Republicans do respond to a betrayal, the damage will have already been done -- a fine legal mind will have been publicly trashed and blocked from taking a seat on the Federal bench, and the President will have been forced to name someone with views more like Specter's to get him through the Senate.

    Maybe Republicans are just too merciful or sentimental or trusting or tradition-bound to press their advantage. The point of winning elections is to accomplish the agenda you set out during your campaign. If you have the power, use it to make the system work to enact your agenda. We have handed a victory to the forces of judicial lunacy in exchange for mere words from someone who has proven himself to be untrustworthy.

    Here's a tip for Republican officials: When you're negotiating with someone you don't trust, he should be required to fulfill his part of the bargain before or at the same time that you fulfill your end of the deal. If neither party trusts each other -- that's why there's escrow. Please note that someone issuing a statement promising to fulfill his part of the bargain is not equivalent to actually fulfilling it.

    At the very least the Republicans should have put his chairmanship in escrow for two years -- if he supports the President's judicial nominees and works to end the practice of judicial filibustering, he gets to take over as chairman in 2007.

    The battle to stop Specter did at least shake things up a bit. Maybe it will make a difference when a controversial judicial nominee is before the committee. We'll see. Until then Arlen Specter's trustworthiness is "not proven."

    Time for action on Specter

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    Although the Senate Judiciary Committee will not formally make a recommendation and the Republican caucus won't vote until January, today may be when the decision is made whether Arlen Specter will assume the chairmanship or not. The Senate is back in Washington for its lame duck session, and Specter will be meeting this morning with his colleagues on Judiciary and with the Senate Republican leadership, according to Roll Call.

    If you care about 2nd Amendment rights, lawsuit reform, the defense of traditional marriage, the sanctity of human life -- if you just believe that judges should uphold the law, not rewrite it -- you want someone other than Arlen Specter to hold the reins of the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can find links to all you need to know here. He's on the wrong side of nearly every legal issue that conservatives care about.

    Please take a few minutes to call members of the Senate leadership and the Senate Judiciary Committee. You can find e-mail links and phone numbers here. You can send a blast fax here. Do it this morning.

    The bottom line is this: Specter plays nice with the conservatives just before an election, then abandons them once he's safely back for another six years. At age 74, he may not run for re-election in 2010, and even if he does, he won't swing back into "be nice to conservatives" mode until late 2008 at the earliest, just as President Bush is leaving office. With two or three retirements on the Supreme Court opening up, we need someone solid in charge of that committee right now.

    It will only take you a few minutes to make a difference. Get on the phones!

    Coburn mum on Specter

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    Oklahoma Senator-elect Tom Coburn is quoted in today's Whirled as saying he won't take a public position on whether Sen. Arlen Specter should be elected as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, even though Coburn's philosophy of government and the judicial branch is completely at odds with that of Specter. According to the Whirled (PDF here, jump page here):

    "I am not going to get into that," Coburn said. "I don't want to stake out any territory right now publicly." ...

    Coburn, who is scheduled to be in Washington over the next few days to attend orientation sessions for new senators, said he has not sat down and looked at the controversy surrounding Specter.

    "I am the senator-elect, not the senator," he said.

    Coburn, who continues to work out of his Muskogee medical office, said he has not received calls from conservatives on the controversy.

    Well, we can fix that! He doesn't have a Senate office yet, but for now you can call his main campaign office in Muskogee at 918-684-4308. The fax number for the campaign office is 918-684-4309. His Muskogee medical office number appears to be 918-682-4318.

    Here's what Coburn says on his website about judicial nominations:

    Dr. Coburn will actively work to confirm federal judges who respect the Constitution and the original intent of the Founding Fathers. He will oppose activist judges who use the bench to advance political agendas whether liberal or conservative. Dr. Coburn will seek to impeach and limit the jurisdiction of activist judges who abuse their judicial power.

    Democrat senators have damaged the confirmation process by their endless and baseless political attacks on well-qualified, well-seasoned Bush judicial nominees.

    Dr. Coburn's previous congressional experience will assist him in endeavoring to stabilize the confirmation process and will allow qualified judges the opportunity to receive an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

    Arlen Specter, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will work to thwart everyone of those admirable goals. The Chairman has only one vote, but a lot of power as to when and how hearings on nominees are conducted. The Chairman controls the staff and the staff has a lot to say about how the issues are presented.

    The same Whirled story quoted Sen. Jim Inhofe as saying that he's not happy about Specter as chairman, but he has no plans to oppose him. Inhofe suggested that if Specter breaks his promises he could be removed. That would almost certainly not happen. If a Senate majority, fresh from a triumphant election in which judicial restraint was an important issue, is so bound up in tradition and seniority that they are unwilling to insist on putting someone consistent with party philosophy in charge of an important committee, there is no way they will have the gumption to remove someone once he's already in office.

    The controversy over Specter isn't just about abortion. It's about democracy. A bad decision by the Supreme Court 31 years ago removed that controversial subject from the realm of public deliberation. It's not just that Arlen Specter believes abortion should be legal -- it's that he believes that judges should be able to invalidate laws they disagree with, whether or not they have a sound constitutional basis for so doing. Andrew McCarthy got to the heart of the issue in a recent column for National Review Online:

    The judiciary-committee controversy is not about abortion. It is about whether there is any meaningful limiting principle that compels judges, regardless of their predilections and the trendy pieties of any particular era, to stay their hands so that Americans are free to live as they choose — including in 50 different ways if that is the judgment of the people in 50 different states.

    There are, essentially, two competing visions of judicial philosophy. The first, the one that is regnant at this time (and to which it appears Senator Specter subscribes), is that the Constitution — with its many pliable terms — is as manipulable as necessary to place beyond democracy any issue that may be said to reflect a "value" the American people revere at a given time. The problem here is that this camouflages a brute power reality.

    In truth, the American people have very few values which enjoy such broad consensus that, given the choice, our society would enshrine them in our Constitution and render them immune from further popular consideration, regardless of evolving attitudes or changed circumstances. Constitutional protection, we must admit, is a forbidding carapace — one need look no further than the contortions engaged in by would-be reformers when values incontestably engraved in the Constitution, like free speech and bearing arms, collide with innovative schemes like campaign finance and gun control.

    It is a commonplace for judicial opinions to couch various concerns in extravagant rhetoric about values claimed to be venerated by all Americans. Yet, at bottom, this reflects nothing more or less than the subjective preferences of a majority (often a bare, fractious majority) of judges — whose views about social issues, even if they masquerade as legal issues, should be of no greater moment than what the people of, say, Bayonne or Des Moines think about abortion, or gay marriage, or stem-cell research.

    The second school of thought holds merely this: that judges are not supreme. It contends that there are firm, objective limits to the areas of life that jurists may remove from the democratic self-determination of the American people. They are found in the text of the Constitution as it was originally understood at the time its provisions were adopted. They do not change over time or with passing fancies. This philosophy is erected on an unchanging premise: In a democracy, it is to be presumed that great social conflicts will be resolved democratically. That presumption is not beyond rebuttal, but for it to be overcome there must be unmistakable proof that the dispute at issue was removed from democratic consideration by the Constitution.

    So let Sen.-elect Coburn know how you feel on this issue, and you might remind Sen. Inhofe that you are watching how Specter is handled to see whether the Republican majority will follow through on its stated priorities.

    MORE: Steve Moore, head of Club for Growth, lays out the case against Specter on National Review Online. And you can learn more about the controversy, why it matters, and what you can do to help here.

    Armavirumque links to this nice satirical piece, in which the folks in the Kerry states offer a deal to the inhabitants of Jesusland: Play nice and we won't secede. A couple of excerpts:

    We, the bold, free-spirited peoples of the Diverse Lands of Blue America, hereby contract with you, the safe, ordinary drabs of the Nearly-contiguous Lands of Red America to exist peaceably and amicably in the manner to which we've become accustomed....

    We need a tremendous amount of ever-changing, ever-improving goods and services. We will need you to provide manpower for industries and meet these needs. As such, we will need you to raise respectful, honest, hard-working children. We don't care how you do it, but please don't tell us how. If it has anything to do the preservation of the "traditional family unit" or instilling "moral values" we really, REALLY don't want to know. ...

    We are your story-tellers, and we will present constant meretricious offerings concerning nihilism, the insanity of living and the horror of dying. And just to let you know that we're in touch with your boring little lives, we will occasionally tell you your own story through movies about people that can't wait to leave their backwater towns and girls that have babies in Wal-Mart. Please attend these movies in herds so we can turn around and do ones about the salvific qualities of lawlessness, sexual promiscuity and abortion.

    Speaking of Wal-mart -- STOP GOING THERE. We are really, really serious. We would never set foot there ourselves, but it bugs the crap out of us that they exist, seeing as how they run out of business your quaint little shops that we also were never going to.

    A commenter adds:

    "And we'll of course need you to provide us with a constant supply of food."

    And Moxie helpfully provides a travel guide for liberal visitors to Jesusland.

    Democrats drawn and quartered

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    Kevin McCullough links and comments on Walter Shapiro's USA Today column, analyzing the Democrats' dilemma. Shapiro says that the Democrats are really four parties in one, united only by opposition to the Republicans. He names the four factions as "the Party of Cultural Permissiveness," "the Anti-War Party," "the Party of Economic Justice," and "the Status Quo Party." "Status Quo Party" refers to the Democrats' habit of frightening certain constituencies into voting against any change to their pet government programs.

    I think he's missing one faction, somewhat related to the "Status Quo Party." That's the "Perks and Power Party" -- the faction devoted simply to doing whatever is necessary to remain in power and enjoying the fruits thereof.

    My feeling is that the "Party of Cultural Permissiveness" is on the rise in the Democratic Party, and that if you scratch beneath the surface of many in the other factions, you'll find that cultural issues ultimately motivate their opposition to the Republicans on the war, the economy, and government programs. Increasingly voters sort themselves between the parties based on cultural issues more than any other issue.

    Wictory Wednesday: Support the RNC

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    Wictory Wednesdays roll on. As we savor last week's big wins, we have to lay the groundwork for future victories. The Republican National Committee does some of the groundwork that helps Republican candidates at every level of government. The appeal for this Wictory Wednesday is to contribute to the RNC, which you can do by clicking this link.

    You can find a list of the blogs that participate in Wictory Wednesday on the right side of my homepage at the bottom of the sidebar.

    Someone, presumably Sarah Seward, who put the map on the web, observed that all the states that John Kerry won (except Hawaii) are contiguous with Canada. So if I understand the map, the idea is to have the Kerry states (appropriately pink) secede and merge with Canada to form the United States of Canada, while the remainder of the US (a green and pleasant land) would be renamed Jesusland, in honor of the Carpenter from Nazareth whose claims to Lordship are taken seriously by a lot of people in the proposed new nation.

    You might not think that Jessica, a young Jewish woman from New York City, would feel comfortable in Jesusland, but you'd be wrong. In fact, she tell us that she hearts it. Follow that link to find out why.

    Meanwhile, OkiePundit, who's from Jesusland, doesn't seem that pleased about it (a bit of litotes there), and thinks that evangelicals "are not only one of the greatest dangers to a liberal democracy in the United States but a threat to the world at large if they take control of this superpower." But in the same entry he tells us:

    NotSpecter.com

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    If you're not happy about the possibility of America's Worst Senator being in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee, NotSpecter.com -- a project of RedState.org -- has the tools to help you communicate your views to those who will make the decisions, including an easy way, for a nominal fee, to send faxes to judiciary committee members and the entire GOP Senate caucus. Check it out.

    Horserace analysis

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    Jay Cost, the Horserace Blogger has the first two installments of his post-election analysis up. I think he has the Bush/Cheney campaign just about right.

    Dear Senator Frist:

    Congratulations on Tuesday's results. As a Republican State Committeeman and a volunteer for the 72-hour Task Force here in Tulsa, I was thrilled to see the huge turnout of Republicans, sweeping President Bush into office and giving you four more seats in the Senate. Tom Coburn's big win here was heartening for all of us who care about fiscal responsibility and the sanctity of human life.

    It was heartening to see the high turnout by religious conservatives. Across the nation, millions of voters supported Republican candidates because of their concerns about moral issues and about the activist judges who seek to overrule the will of the people on moral issues.

    I am writing to ask that you do whatever you can to ensure that someone other than Arlen Specter be elected Chairman of the Judiciary Committee. Allowing Sen. Specter to assume the chairmanship would damage the Republican Party's credibility with those millions who were motivated by moral issues. It would be breaking faith with these voters to give control over the judicial nomination process to a senator who is not committed to judicial restraint. Sen. Specter has blocked and would block judges who are committed to applying the Constitution and laws as they are.

    What will happen if conservative nominees are blocked by Sen. Specter? How will conservative voters respond if the President is forced to nominate squishy centrists and judicial activists in order to get any nominees out of committee?

    In this election, we saw the Democrats trying to blur the distinction between them and the Republicans on the sanctity of human life. They tried to convince pro-life voters that voting Republican wouldn't advance their cause -- for example, Chris Matthews' assertion that President Bush isn't really pro-life. Here in Oklahoma, Brad Carson, the pro-abortion candidate tried to pose as a pro-life candidate, while smearing Tom Coburn as an abortionist because he performed life-saving surgeries on two women with ectopic pregnancies. The Democrats' hope was that those who are passionate about the sanctity of human life would stay at home.

    We were able to rebut this by pointing to President Bush's record of accomplishments and Tom Coburn's clear pro-life voting record in the House. We alerted these voters to the danger that Democrats might regain control of the Senate, at a time when at least three Supreme Court justices are ready to step down and countless lower court seats remain vacant. No matter how conservative the Democratic nominee for Senate might seem, the question boiled down to this: "Do you want a Vermont liberal controlling who becomes a Federal judge?" That concern brought pro-life and pro-traditional-values voters home for the GOP and gave you a stronger majority to lead.

    Think ahead to 2006. What will happen if a Pennsylvania liberal Republican spends two years blocking good judicial nominees because they are conservatives? "Values voters" will wonder if the Democrats were right -- does it really matter who controls the Senate? Expect religious conservative turn out to drop and Republicans to lose seats in 2006 as a result.

    I am sure that Sen. Specter is promising to be a good boy and a team player, but I don't believe that he will. He is too vain, too fond of the praise he receives from the mainstream media when he betrays his own party. When we really need him, he isn't there for us. Wouldn't it be better to give the Judiciary chairmanship to someone who really believes in his core what your Platform Committee wrote? "The sound principle of judicial review has turned into an intolerable presumption of judicial supremacy. A Republican Congress, working with a Republican president, will restore the separation of powers and re-establish a government of law." A senator with Specter's views, so out of sync with the mainstream of the Republican Party, should be a backbencher, not chairman of one of the most powerful committees.

    For the sake of the "values voters", for the sake of traditional values, traditional marriage, and the sanctity of human life, please don't let Arlen Specter be chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

    Sincerely,

    Michael D. Bates

    New Yorkers invade swing states

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    Jessica of The New Vintage, one of the New York Republican bloggers I met during the Republican National Convention, went to Iowa to help during the last few days of the campaign. She is back home and starting to write up her experiences here. One of her first stories is of handling ticket check for the VIP section at President Bush's appearance in Sioux City, and seeing the whole first family up close. She says she has the pictures to prove it -- let's see 'em.

    Meanwhile, another blogger I met in New York City, Dawn Summers (aka Evil Dawn), who is anything but a Republican, writes of her experiences campaigning in Arizona (which was anything but a swing state, as it turned out) here.

    Karol of Alarming News worked for the Republicans in Durango, Colorado, and posted way too much for me to link to everything she wrote about her time there. She has also posted a pile of pictures. I imagine she'll be writing more once she's gotten some sleep.

    I've already linked to Scott Sala's journeys to Philadelphia and New Jersey.

    Let's hope that the New York Republican Party can get its act together sufficiently that these young Republicans will be able to stay home and make a difference in competitive races.

    Tom Coburn won because...

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    Katherine Bates stamped 101 mailers...

    0975352-R1-033-15-Kath-Joe-Stamping.jpg

    and Joseph Bates stamped more than 1000, and helped tag the bulk rate trays...

    0975352-R1-017-7-Joe-RedTag.jpg

    and a lot of other boys and girls, moms and dads, college kids and retirees made phone calls, dropped flyers on doorsteps, talked to their friends, and sent e-mails.

    Take a look at that photo and at all the youngsters working in the background. Stay-at-home moms brought their kids after school, homeschool moms built campaigning into the curriculum. This is the Roe effect at work -- coming generations are going to be more conservative than the Baby Boomers and the Gen-Xers. The kids who helped with Tom Coburn's campaign were born to parents who place more value on life than on convenience and career, parents who understand the importance of acting on one's beliefs, and these children are learning to embrace the same values.

    It's not just the unwashed hippy peaceniks who have time for political action in the middle of the day. If the lefties ever understand the political power of families, they'll probably try to mandate day care and 10 hour days in public school.

    (Photos by my lovely wife, the proud mom of these kids.)

    Bush wins!

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    0975352-R1-017-7-Kath-Bush-Yay.jpg

    and Katherine says hooray!

    It's been a busy day and a frantic evening. I finally got to a computer about an hour ago to post a summary of the Oklahoma results over at The Command Post.

    Earlier in the evening, from 7 until about 10, I was doing "color commentary" on News Talk 1170 KFAQ, live from the Republican watch party in Tulsa, and I was three feet away, but without my camera handy, as Tom Coburn got the word that the networks were predicting him to win the U. S. Senate race.

    I'll be on KFAQ again in the morning, from 6 until about 8, sifting through the results.

    It was frustrating to see how slowly the state election board results were being updated. Tulsa results were very late to come in. The results look great for Oklahoma, and things look very hopeful nationwide.

    Unless something extraordinary happens, don't expect an update here until midday tomorrow at the earliest. In the meantime, you can watch the remaining Oklahoma results trickle in here.

    And Jay Cost's Horserace Blog has some fascinating coverage, looking at county by county results in the battleground states and comparing them with the 2000 results. Things don't look good for the President in Iowa or Michigan, but things are hopeful in Ohio and Wisconsin.

    A brief voters' guide

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    (ENTRY POSTED 8:10 PM, Monday, November 1, postdated to remain at the top through election day.)

    The Tulsa County Election Board website is here.

    Here is a precinct locator: Enter your address, and the locator will tell you what precinct you're in, where you vote, and what districts you're in. There's even a photo of the building that hosts the polling place.

    Nationwide, you can go to MyPollingPlace.com to look up your precinct location. The result will also tell you what kind of voting device is used and how to make sure your vote is counted in that kind of device. They tell you the hours that your polling place will be open. They also provide a phone number for the county election board and a link to the state election board website.

    You can look at PDFs of the different ballots that will be seen in Tulsa County here.

    Some voter's guides that may help you:

    Oklahoma Family Policy Council (all offices plus state questions)
    Christian Coalition (PDF -- Presidential and Senate races only)
    Oklahomans for Life (4 MB PDF -- all offices)
    Oklahoma Libertarian Party
    Oklahoma Prosperity Project

    My picks

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    (ENTRY POSTED 6:59 PM, Monday, November 1, postdated to remain at the top through election day.)

    UPDATED 12:00 AM, Tuesday: I've moved off dead center on 707.

    Here's how I'm voting tomorrow -- click the link below, for my choices with links to what I've written about them:

    My best guess

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    Here's my guess as to the result, with the help of the OpinionJournal.com electoral vote calculator:

    bateslineelectoralprediction2004.bmp

    Out on the trail

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    You might imagine that a busy blogger like me would decide that I'm too busy to get involved in hands-on campaigning. It would be easy enough to rationalize not getting involved, but all the blogging in the world is useless if people don't turn out to vote for the candidates I support.

    So Saturday evening I spent about three hours making calls at Tulsa County Republican HQ, 15th & Denver. It was easy work. We had a simple, short script, nothing that would tie up a voter on the phone for too long. A few people hung up, but most people responded positively. Our reward -- a cool T-shirt and dinner brought in. We lucked out: The organizers were sick of pizza so they brought in food from Atomic Burrito. There's a big need for callers today and tomorrow -- stop by 15th & Denver, 52nd & Harvard (in front of Mardel's), Coburn HQ at 61st & Memorial, and at 2191 E. Kenosha in Broken Arrow (near County Line Road/193rd East Ave). Call 627-5702 (Republican county HQ) or 313-4516 (Oklahoma Victory 2004) if you

    Sunday afternoon I got out in the rain on the streets of Owasso with some ORU students, dropping off campaign literature. The list of homes to target was tough to use (it treated different spellings of the same street as two different streets), and it didn't help that we were in the Cone of Confusion -- those places in the Tulsa street system where the numbers of the east-west streets are very close to the numbers of the north-south avenues. It can make your head spin to be at the corner of North 108th East Place and East 108th Place North. Still the five of us managed to distribute 600 literature bags, containing flyers for many of the Republican candidates in the course of about three hours. The rain stopped after the first hour, which was nice.

    Scott Sala of New York-based Slant Point headed across the Hudson yesterday to campaign for Bush-Cheney in New Jersey. He's got a nice write-up and photos of the experience here. He's very optimistic about Bush's chances in the Garden State.

    Even if you only have an hour to spare, that's enough to make a difference. Show up and ask what you can do to help get your candidates elected.

    Liberal spam

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    I've received two e-mail messages tonight on several different addresses -- one trying to connect Tom Coburn with an extremist group, the other containing a Shockwave animation encouraging the reader to visualize a Kerry victory on November 2. Earlier I got spam from disgraced Democrat and former Gov. David Walters encouraging me to support Carson, in which Walters claimed that his progressive policies are why he only won one of his three statewide races.

    And so Little Boy Brad Carson's smear campaign continues -- on the radio, on the phones, on TV, and now in e-mail. I know there are "ends justify the means" types in the Republican Party, but they're on the fringes and they have the disrespect of elected party officials and grass-roots volunteers. On the other hand, the "win at all costs" mentality seems to have captured the heart and soul of the Democrat Party.

    REVJAB thinks the Democrat Party has all the marks of a cult (hat tip: TulipGirl):

    Truth to tell, the contemporary Democratic Party has become a gathering-place for all sorts of conspiracy-theories, esoteric quasi-religious devotees, insurrectionists, and con-men. Consider its cult-like characteristics:

    * Blind, amoral devotion to a leader that completely disregards and/or excuses the sexual, financial, and ethical evils of the leader(s).
    * An apocalyptic intensity fired by a worldview -- more or less Marxist -- that sees everything as a titanic battle between the forces of Repression (Christianity, constitutionalism, heterosexuality, monogamy, and property-rights) versus the forces of Liberation (them).
    * An all-out selling of soul to ends-justify-the-means, operationally married to "ethics" only when and if it has some helpful persuasive PR effect.
    * An underlying anti-God-ism, taking various forms -- materialistic atheism on one extreme, and variety popsicles of animism/polytheism/pantheism/gnosticism on the other, with evolutionism as a common bridge between the two groups.

    I don't think this is so characteristic of most grassroots Oklahoma Ds, like the folks I met walking for City Councilor Roscoe Turner, but it seems to fit the activists that now dominate the party machinery.

    Jay Cost's Horserace Blog has a fascinating review of the major polling companies and what each says publicly about the methodology used to select a sample and weight results.

    Another issue that has come to my attention is the problem of methodological publicity. As a person involved in academia, I cannot tell you how important it is for academics to make their methods available to the public at large. Most academic articles go to great lengths to explain their method before they actually provide you their results. The reason for this is that method matters. Unfortunately, a surprising number of polling firms do not make their methods available.

    In addition to my own snooping on the internet, this evening I found an article written by incredible DJ Drummond that gives a superb summary of the methods and openness of each of the major polling firms in this election. I have relied on him for much of this piece. I believe many of these results will surprise you.

    Cost summarizes Drummond's findings (click that link for Drummond's detailed and link-rich discussion of the major polling firms) and adds his own perspective. He considers Time, Battleground, and Gallup to be the only reliable polls -- the others weight too heavily toward Democrats or use questionable methodology.

    Of course, polls can't tell you who really will turn out on election day, and in a close race it comes down to which side does a better job of getting their voters to the polls. That's why your involvement in Get Out the Vote (GOTV) efforts are crucial. In the Tulsa area, you can stop by Coburn for Senate HQ at 61st and Memorial (between Jason's Deli and Atlantic Sea Grill), the Republican election office at 52nd and Harvard (in front of Mardel's), at the Republican County Headquarters at 15th and Denver, and at 2191 E. Kenosha in Broken Arrow (on 71st west of 193rd East Ave aka County Line Road). They'll be calling through this evening and tomorrow, and tomorrow at 9, they'll be sending out precinct walkers from the 52nd and Harvard location. There will be more going on Monday and Tuesday until the polls close.

    It will take a lot of volunteers to counteract all the paid workers the Democrats are using. This is a crucial election, especially for U. S. Senate and state legislature, so jettison your plans and make yourself available to help. It matters.

    Demystifying the polls

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    Karol calls attention to The Horserace Blog, a great blog focusing on polls, and analyzing what they really mean, with a lot of information about how the different polling organizations do their work and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

    Jay Cost, the author of the site, is looking for about 45 people to watch and help analyze county-by-county results in battleground states as they come in. He points to the Florida situation in 2000 as an example:

    In 2000, I attended an election party at my alma mater. My friend -- who, at our conservative newspaper, went by the name "Hawk" -- and I (and a few others) were keeping tabs on the vote totals in Florida. I gave up on this after the MSM called the state for Gore. But Hawk tenaciously kept his eyes on the county-by-county returns. While I was busy formulating a contingency strategy for Dubya to get to 270 ("if he wins IA, WV, TN, AR and WI..."), Hawk kept telling me, in his wonderfully understated southern drawl, "I don't know, Cost. I think they called Florida wrong!" I told him he was crazy, but sure enough...they called it back. Hawk was ahead of the curve by about 2 hours because he kept his eyes on the vote totals and knew what to expect in every county.

    He lists a number of requirements to make this effort work. It looks pretty interesting, and I think his site will be worth watching on election night.

    It's still (barely) Wictory Wednesday, the final one before what we hope will be a real victory celebration in seven days' time.

    The polls are all over the place, especially in the presidential battleground states and here in Oklahoma's Senate race. Different pollsters have different ideas about which voters are likely to turn out. There are millions of new registrants -- will they show up at the polls? Which party's supporters are most motivated to show up on Tuesday?

    Turnout is the key.

    In Georgia in 2002, no one believed that the Republican Party could win the governor's mansion, take over the state legislature, and defeat incumbent Senator Max Cleland. But they did because a disciplined, focused turnout effort -- known as the 72-hour Task Force -- got Republican voters to the polls.

    The Wictory Wednesday appeal this week is twofold. First, vote early, if you can, for President Bush and the Republican ticket. In Oklahoma, you can go to your county election board for in-person absentee voting from 9 to 6 on Friday, 9 to 1 on Saturday, and 9 to 6 on Monday. By voting early, you'll make sure you won't be too busy or forget on election day.

    Second, volunteer for the 72-hour task force at www.72hour.com. There are roles for all sorts of volunteers. (They're even looking for attorneys to volunteer to help with any legal issues that may emerge.)

    Signup for volunteers takes just a minute -- you provide contact information and when you're available to help from Friday morning through Tuesday evening. Do it now!

    Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

    I've been wondering when someone would point this out. Mark Steyn does it as an aside in his latest column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

    Speaking of which, if there's four words I never want to hear again, it's "prescription drugs from Canada." I'm Canadian, so I know a thing or two about prescription drugs from Canada. Specifically speaking, I know they're American; the only thing Canadian about them is the label in French and English. How can politicians from both parties think that Americans can get cheaper drugs simply by outsourcing (as John Kerry would say) their distribution through a Canadian mailing address? U.S. pharmaceutical companies put up with Ottawa's price controls because it's a peripheral market. But, if you attempt to extend the price controls from the peripheral market of 30 million people to the primary market of 300 million people, all that's going to happen is that after approximately a week and a half there aren't going to be any drugs in Canada, cheap or otherwise -- just as the Clinton administration's intervention into the flu-shot market resulted in American companies getting out of the vaccine business entirely.

    Well, duh. TANSTAAFL.

    Faithless in West Virginia

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    Monday morning on KFAQ, Michael DelGiorno, Gwen Freeman, and I were discussing the Electoral College, and the oft-forgotten reality that when you vote in the presidential race in Oklahoma, you're really voting for a slate of electors who will go to the State Capitol in December to cast the only votes that really matter for President and Vice President. Here's one of Tulsa County's sample ballots to illustrate the point (PDF format). Note that next to where you mark the ballot is a bracket containing the names of the seven electors nominated by the political party.

    In most states, the political parties choose electors for their slate based on their years of service to the party and the expectation that the electors will remain faithful to their pledge to support the party's nominee. Oklahoma Republicans selected one elector nominee in each of our five congressional district conventions (which also selected three delegates and three alternates each), and then approved two electors, nominated by the state executive committee, at the state convention.

    In some states, electors are bound by law to vote as pledged for their party's nominees. (Here are the state-by-state rules from 2000.) In Oklahoma, electors take an oath and are subject to fine if they violate that oath, but it is not known whether such penalties would be upheld by the Supreme Court. Here is an article, also from 2000, that looks at the legal issues, and past court rulings that might have a bearing on the question. In many states, electors are not bound by law or there are no legal penalties for voting contrary to pledge. (A defection would certainly mark the end of an elector's involvement in his political party, particularly if the defection mattered to the final result.)

    West Virginia is such a state, and one of the five Republican nominees for elector has expressed his openness, if elected, to voting for someone other than President George W. Bush. Richie Robb is the mayor of South Charleston, West Virginia, and finished fourth in the Republican primary for Governor, which is apparently how he was chosen to be an elector. I can't find the reference, but I recall reading that the West Virginia Republican Party decided to nominate the five runners-up in the primary for Governor as the elector nominees. They didn't bother to find out whether all of them were Bush loyalists or not. Richie Robb is not a Bush loyalist.

    It is often said that the presidential race is not one election, put 51 separate elections -- actually 56, when you add in the separate battles for individual congressional district electors in Maine and Nebraska. In 2000, there was talk of efforts to sway some of Bush's electors to vote for Gore out of respect for the popular vote result. If it's that close again, we may have a further 538 contests -- one each for the heart and mind and vote of each of the electors.

    John Hospers, the founding father and first presidential nominee for the Libertarian Party back in 1972 (and the third-place Electoral College finisher with one vote, thanks to faithless elector Roger MacBride of Virginia) has endorsed the reelection of President Bush. His endorsement is worth quoting at length. All the complaints, however reasonable, about the growth of government during the Bush administration pale in comparison to the threat to life, liberty, and property posed by those who want to subject the United States to the rule of the speech-suppressors and money-grabbers of leftist fascism, and by the Islamo-Fascists who intend to subject the west to their laws or kill us all in the attempt.

    Hospers believes that there is more than a "dime's worth of difference" between the two parties and that a John Kerry presidency poses a grave threat to civil liberties and national sovereignty:

    The election of John Kerry would be, far more than is commonly realized, a catastrophe. Regardless of what he may say in current campaign speeches, his record is unmistakable: he belongs to the International Totalitarian Left in company with the Hillary and Bill Clintons, the Kofi Annans, the Ted Kennedys, and the Jesse Jacksons of the world. ...

    The Democratic Party today is a haven for anti-Semites, racists, radical environmentalists, plundering trial lawyers, government employee unions, and numerous other self-serving elites who despise the Constitution and loathe private property. It is opposed to free speech: witness the mania for political correctness and intimidation on college campuses, and Kerry's threat to sue television stations that carry the Swift Boat ads. If given the power to do so, Democrats will use any possible means to suppress opposing viewpoints, particularly on talk radio and in the university system. They will attempt to enact "hate speech" and "hate crime" laws and re-institute the Fairness Doctrine, initiate lawsuits, and create new regulations designed to suppress freedom of speech and intimidate their political adversaries. They will call it "defending human rights." This sort of activity may well make up the core of a Kerry administration Justice Department that will have no truck with the rule of law except as a weapon to use against opponents.


    "There's nothing wrong with a little indecision, as long as your job doesn't involve any responsibility."

    David Zucker, director and writer of the "Naked Gun" series and "Airplane!", has directed a funny new ad for ClubForGrowth.net. Steve Moore, president of ClubForGrowth.net, would like you to take a look at it, and if you like it, to help fund its airing in key battleground states. Go here to view the ad (in Real Player, Windows Media Player, and QuickTime formats) and learn how you can help get it on the air.

    There were rumors of bad news for John Kerry coming in the Washington Times this morning. Here it is (hat tip to Power Line). Kerry has repeatedly claimed that he conferred with the entire UN Security Council prior to his vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq. Not so. Read it for yourselves.

    Nobel laureate quote of the week

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    "The idea that you can increase taxes and stimulate the economy is pretty damn stupid."

    -- Arizona State University Professor Edward Prescott, 2004 Nobel Laureate in economics, in an interview in the Arizona Republic.

    Election legal issues loom large

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    Maybe I should consider changing careers. The field of election law looks to become a booming industry.

    Over at Rick Hasen's Election Law Blog, you'll find links to news stories around the country -- especially in swing states -- dealing with the nuts and bolts of administering elections. A sample:

    • The butterfly punchcard ballots in use in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, are even more confusingly designed that the notorious Palm Beach County, Florida, butterfly ballots used in 2000.
    • The U. S. Justice Department has filed a brief in support of Ohio's law requiring voters casting provisional ballots to do so in the correct precinct. A U. S. District Judge had thrown out the rule in response to a lawsuit from the state's Democrat Party. (Since the races on the ballot change from precinct to precinct, this seems only reasonable, but I guess not to the Democrats.)
    • Voters in Florida don't have much confidence in the paperless balloting to be used in 15 counties. One Palm Beach County Commissioner is urging voters to submit paper absentee ballots instead of voting on election day.
    • Four swing states allow voters to register when they come to the polls.
    • Columbus, Ohio, residents are getting phony calls, claiming to be from the County Election Board, telling them that their polling place has changed.
    • Colorado's proposition to allocate its electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote is slipping in the polls.

    And much, much more. If nothing else, the 2000 election has alerted us to what can go wrong in an election. If we're honest about the problems, we're in a better position to fix them.

    Kathryn Jean Lopez reports on NRO about Senate Democrat Leader Tom Daschle's attempts to reinvent himself as pro-life and pro-marriage, another example of the Democrats attempting to blur distinctions on issues that matter deeply to many voters. The article links to a blog that has been keeping a close watch on the South Dakota U. S. Senate race between Daschle and former Republican congressman John Thune: Daschle v. Thune.

    (Daschle is also trying to reinvent himself as a South Dakotan, after claiming a homestead exemption on his house in DC, thereby declaring the DC house to be his domicile.)

    Following up my entry about last night's edition of "Hardball", here's the relevant section of the transcript, an interchange between host Chris Matthews and William Donohue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights:

    MATTHEWS: Lets talk about the president‘s position.

    What is the president‘s position on abortion rights, Bill?

    DONOHUE: The president is a opposed to abortion. The president is a pro life person. The president understands and if a women is pregnant and carrying a child, then if you kill that woman, you‘re also killing the child as well. John Kerry doesn‘t understand that. The president understands that life begins at conception, as does John Kerry, except that the president is willing to take it a step further and say that is why you cannot destroy an embryo. Because if you destroy and embryo, your destroying life.

    MATTHEWS: There are two ways—Bill—

    DONOHUE: Kerry, is the one that is really the problem.

    MATTHEWS: There are two ways, Bill, to outlaw abortion in this country. One is to have a constitutional amendment to change the constitution overturn Roe v. Wade. Well, you know this as well as I do, just reciting the obvious. And the second is that you appointment Supreme Court justices, a couple of them at least and that shifts it back against the Roe vs. Wade position, the Scalia position.

    Very clearly, the president of the United States has not promised to do either of those. He‘s not promoting a constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion, to overturn Roe v. Wade. He‘s not saying he‘s going to pick pro life judges. How can you say he‘s pro life, then, I don‘t get it.

    He‘s not pro life.

    DONOHUE: Take a look at the judges he has appointed already. I don‘t think there‘s any question about it, Kerry‘s the one says there‘s a litmus test. You can‘t be pro life to be on a bench.

    MATTHEWS: The president has not said he‘s going to outlaw abortion. You know that, he makes a point of saying that all the time. I‘m not going to outlaw abortion, he said. The country is not attuned to right now. He says it all the time.

    DONOHUE: But Christians know as well as I do, most Americans don‘t want to go back to the Roe v. Wade day, but they also don‘t like abortion on demand. There‘s a consensus in this country which neither the conservatives or liberals are paying attention to.

    MATTHEWS: Don‘t call the president pro life—don‘t call the president pro life if you mean it...

    DONOHUE: He is.

    MATTHEWS: But he doesn‘t want to outlaw abortion.

    DONOHUE: Look, there are a lot of—the pope himself has said, he has come out and said it‘s OK for a legislature to vote for a law which doesn‘t outlaw all abortion, provide that it‘s more restrictive than the current law. He didn‘t say you have to get all or nothing.

    MATTHEWS: I just think. I‘m only interested in the politics of this.

    The president‘s getting vote from pro lifers because he‘s pro life.

    I don‘t think they should be voting for think he‘s going to outlaw abortion if he gets another years. Bill, if the president gets another four years is he going to outlaw abortion, is he going to be pro life president?

    (CROSSTALK)

    DONOHUE: No, I don‘t think he‘s going to -- I don‘t think he‘s going to outlaw abortion. But what I think what he‘s going to do is put people on the court who won‘t have reflexive tendency to say that, if in fact, you‘re pro life you‘re not allowed to get on the bench. That‘s what Kerry wants to do. It even gets into the question of anti-Catholicism.

    MATTHEWS: You know, Bill, you bought that from Ronald Reagan. I think these guys are very clever at suggesting a philosophical agreement with your position, fair enough they never deliver.

    We‘ll be right back with upon Monsignor McSweeney and Bill Donahue.

    (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

    "They never deliver." Read the whole transcript and you'll see that the point of the show was to persuade Catholics who are concerned about the abortion issue that they shouldn't make the issue a factor in their decision. In fact, the other guest during this segment, Monsignor Tom McSweeney of the Diocese of Erie, speaks of traveling around the diocese making that very case to the flock:

    Chris, I‘m speaking to you from Pennsylvania. I‘m up in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania. My diocese is the Erie Diocese, 13 counties. I‘ve been around the diocese. I‘m in charge of evangelization. Doing a lot of talking to people and getting a lot of counseling for this election because of some of the issues that are concerned here. And I tell you, the poll that you have quoted, the first one, not the one that bill Is referring to, resonates completely with the voices that I‘m hearing here in Pennsylvania.

    They want to know first of all, if they can vote for a candidate who clearly is, you know, pro choice and we talk about that. In talking with these people I‘m finding that they are wanting to expand the conversation, the discourse to be all of the life issues, to develop a consistent ethic of life. And so some of them are liberating themselves from feeling badly about voting for Kerry, because they feel that, in fact, Kerry is offering offering more opportunities to expand the notions of life.

    This is what I‘m hearing. So the new polls that are indicating that there‘s some success rate with Catholics seems to indicate that there‘s a shift in the pro life movement in a way to expand that conversation to include all of the life issues. In other words, to connect violence of abortion with violence of poverty, violence of capital punishment, violence of war.

    So Msgr. McSweeney offers a different definition of what it means to be pro-life, one by which John Kerry qualifies as pro-life, despite his consistent support for legal and federally-funded abortion, and by which the President presumably doesn't qualify.

    But let's look at the specific issues raised by the monsignor:

    The violence of abortion: Kerry will ensure that abortion remains legal on demand and will obstruct, either directly or through the judges he appoints, even marginal improvements in protections for the unborn. Bush will appoint strict constructionist judges and will continue to work, as he has in his first term, to do all that is politically possible to protect the unborn.

    The violence of poverty: It's a stretch to treat this as a life issue -- being killed in the womb is a far more permanent disability than being poor -- but we'll do so for the sake of argument. President Bush wants government assistance to help people emerge from poverty into financial stability, rather than maintain people in a state of dependency, and Bush wants to involve faith-based organizations in helping the poor build new and better lives. Kerry has gone back and forth on the issue, supporting the failed "War on Poverty" approach for most of his career, but supporting welfare reform in 1996 when he faced a serious reelection challenge from Gov. William Weld.

    The violence of capital punishment: This point confuses the punishment due to those who take innocent life with the murder of the innocent. The teaching of the Catholic Church does not demand the abolition of capital punishment. The Pope has written, in his 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, "punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society." Catholic doctrine notwithstanding, both the President and John Kerry support the use of the death penalty.

    The violence of war: Here again, both candidates supported the war in Afghanistan, and both have supported the war in Iraq (at one time or another, in Kerry's case). And here again, there is an invalid moral equivalence drawn between those who murder the innocent and those who take up arms to defeat murderous tyrants. Whether you believe it was politically wise or not, discoveries like the mass graves in Iraq filled with the skeletons of children clutching their toys, provide a moral justification of the use of force to stop the continued slaughter.

    George W. Bush stands for the defense of innocent human life from tyrants and butchers. John Kerry will do nothing to stop or even slow the slaughter of innocents in this country or to act decisively against terrorists and their state sponsors.

    Here's another Kerry contradiction the Bush campaign would do well to exploit. John Kerry cannot try to wear the mantle of tough guy and maintain his claim to be more pro-life than Bush by this broader standard. In claiming that he will "hunt... down and kill" the terrorists, or subject them to the death penalty, he is just as out of step with the pacifist caricature of Catholic doctrine on these issues as President Bush is.

    Welcome, Corner readers

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    Welcome to all of you who found BatesLine through this morning's link in NRO's "The Corner". The post you seek is linked below, but while I have your attention, I want to urge you to help Tom Coburn, the Republican nominee for U. S. Senate in Oklahoma. Dr. Coburn is an obstetrician, a three-term congressman, and an eloquent advocate for the sanctity of human life. Coburn is in a tough race, against a slick, Clintonesque pro-abortion Democrat named Brad Carson, who has a ton of money, and is using it to remake himself as a pro-life conservative. Coburn is ahead, but the race is still close, and Carson will apparently do and say anything to win. The Senate could be won or lost right here, and Tom Coburn could really use your help. Click here to contribute.

    And click here to read about Chris Matthews' claim that George W. Bush is not pro-life.

    Mission: Depress pro-life turnout

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    Working late tonight, and I took a late dinner break at the nearby McDonald's. It was recently given a complete makeover -- a style I'll call High Tech Googie for the sake of calling it something -- and it's got a couple of big screen TVs. I sat down next to the one showing MSNBC, and "Scarborough Country" was just ending.

    Then "Hardball" started, and the subject was the Catholic vote and a dramatic jump in John Kerry's support among white Catholics, according to a Pew Research survey. Then, host Chris Matthews was talking to Bill Donahue of the Catholic Action League. Matthews, with an unusually calm tone and demeanor, insisted that George W. Bush is not pro-life, that he's unfairly getting credit for being pro-life, but he isn't because he isn't even promising to ban abortion in his second term. Matthews repeated his assertion several times. (As soon as the transcript is online, I'll link to it.) According to Matthews, to be pro-life, the President would have either to promise to work for a constitutional amendment to ban abortion or to promise to appoint to the courts only those judges who are committed to overturning Roe v. Wade.

    So a pattern begins to emerge. We saw another example in Andrew Sullivan's promotion of bogus numbers purporting to show that the number of abortions have been on the rise since Bush took office.

    There was a study -- about the time of the 2000 election, if I recall correctly -- that said that abortion was a decisive issue for about 15% of voters. 9% of voters nationwide would vote only for a pro-life candidate, 6% would vote only for a pro-choice candidate. That's a 3-point advantage for the pro-life candidate in a race with a clear distinction between candidates on the abortion issue. And that's why the Democrats are so desperate to take the issue off the table by blurring the clear distinction between Bush and Kerry, and, in theOklahoma senate race, between liberal, pro-abortion Democrat Brad Carson and conservative, pro-life Republican Tom Coburn.

    Chris Matthews surely understands that there is not the political will in this country to support a full-on effort to ban abortion. A "Human Life Amendment" to the Constitution would not pass Congress, and even if it did, it would probably fall short of the required number of states for ratification. If the President were to announce a policy of only nominating judges committed to overturning Roe v. Wade, he'd be accused of trying to overturn the Constitution. There is not a pro-life majority in the Senate, and Bush has had a hard enough time getting his judicial nominees confirmed even without an explicit "litmus test." Bush has said he will appoint only judges committed to interpreting the law, not making it, a stance which implies rejection of the "emanations and penumbras" approach taken by the court in Roe v. Wade.

    In the current political climate, there is not a popular consensus for banning abortion, but there is a consensus for restricting abortion at the margins -- banning barbaric practices like partial-birth abortion, insisting on parental notification when a minor has an abortion, requiring a woman to give informed consent before an abortion. There is also a consensus that government shouldn't be funding abortion services or the promotion of abortion, here or abroad, and that clinics and hospitals should not be required to provide abortions as a condition of receiving federal funds for other services. All of these incremental changes help to save lives, and President Bush has promoted and supported these changes, while Senator Kerry has opposed them.

    See for yourself: The National Right to Life Committee has fact sheets (in PDF format -- handy for printing and handing out at church) comparing the records of the presidential candidates and Senate candidates in key states. (Here's the one for the Coburn-Carson race.) And here's another PDF factsheet with detail on Bush's pro-life record.

    It looks like there is a coordinated effort, with the cooperation of the mainstream media, to blur distinctions on issues where the Democrats are out of step with the majority of Americans. It will take concerted grass-roots efforts to get the truth out that there is a clear difference on issues that matter.

    UPDATE: Kathryn Jean Lopez of NRO has an interview with a pro-life obstetrician on the specific things Bush has done to aid the cause of the unborn and what Kerry has done to hurt that same cause.

    Thictory Thursday: South Carolina

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    I missed posting on Wictory Wednesday, so I'm going to make it up today:

    This week's spotlight race is on South Carolina and Jim DeMint. The Club for Growth has made electing Jim DeMint one of their highest priorities (just behind electing Tom Coburn). Here's what Club for Growth President Steve Moore has to say:

    Jim is one of the most free-market and principled men in Congress. Columnist George Will was exactly right when he wrote that if DeMint wins “the Senate will acquire a distinctive voice.” He has been a leading advocate of the key economic growth issues of our time, and has a rock solid voting record, earning “A” grades from the National Taxpayers Union four times.

    His liberal opponent, Inez Tenenbaum, has been plastering Jim for his support of replacing the income tax with a fair and simple tax system. Her TV ads are a complete distortion of his position. What a surprise . . . liberal lies against a free-market champion.

    Tenenbaum favors retaining the dreadful Death Tax. In her post as State Superintendent of Education, she supported massive statewide tax hikes and opposed school choice. With all her backing from lawyers, it’s no surprise she opposes tort reform, too.

    The latest poll shows Jim’s lead at just three points.

    You can donate to the DeMint campaign here, or through Club for Growth here.

    Here's what PoliPundit has to say about the race:

    Republican Congressman Jim DeMint is slightly ahead of his Democrat opponent in the race for South Carolina’s open Senate seat. But he needs one last push to close the deal. If you don’t want to see more Democrats in the Senate, you can help DeMint by donating to his campaign.

    Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

    Stick a fork in him

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    Andrew Sullivan appears to be in the terminal stages of Bush Derangement Syndrome. Once a mighty warblogger, now a single-issue zealot (in support of gay marriage), he's adopting the Brad Carson technique of trying to make pro-life voters think the pro-life candidate really isn't. The hope is at least to plant the seed of doubt so that pro-life voters aren't as motivated to turn out. Little Boy Brad has done this in the Oklahoma Senate race by turning the fact that Tom Coburn has performed two surgeries to save a pregnant woman's life by removing an ectopic pregnancy into a blatantly false accusation that "Tom Coburn is an abortionist."

    So now Andrew Sullivan (no relation to any of Tulsa's political Sullivans, who are not at all related to each other) wants pro-life voters to believe that abortions are on the rise in the Bush years. Dawn Eden has the straight scoop here and a pithy conclusion, too.

    Each week our church runs a one-minute promotional spot on the local Christian radio station. In last week's minute, Pastor David O'Dowd provides a sixty-second Christian voter guide. He makes no mention of parties or candidates, but urges Christians not to vote based on outward appearance or tradition or self-interest. Instead, we're to vote biblically, and Pastor O'Dowd lists a few questions for a voter to consider as he casts his vote. Here's the spot in MP3 format.

    The previous week's spot talks about the importance of judges and voting for officials who will restrain the judiciary from becoming an unaccountable oligarchy as Thomas Jefferson warned. "We need the rule of law and not judges who become the law."

    These spots are fine examples of being direct and thought-provoking about key issues without making the church serve either party or any particular candidate.

    You can make a difference

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    NYC Republican blogger Scott Sala tells of his day knocking doors in Philadelphia for President Bush:

    In that first hour of waiting for people to arrive, I was struck by three amazing facts that left me extremely optimistic for Bush. First, the simple numbers. 25 or so New York City residents traveled on their own dime, paid for their own hotels and were about to put in their own volunteer effort for Bush. In PA. Second, the sheer diversity of the group. I expected all young people ready to walk the streets for hours, but we had people of walks of life - kids, seniors, Jews, Christians, Chinese, Greek, White, you name it. And last, probably most significant, I think I met at least 3 people who were life-long Democrats who were voting for Bush this year. All of them had become outcasts or were in hiding among their NYC friends, but none cared. Bush had to win for them....

    The first door I knocked on was an elderly widow who was the quintessential undecided voters. We spoke for about 10 minutes, perhaps too long with the work ahead, but necessary nevertheless. She expressed concern for her grandchildren saying issues for her hardly mattered since she had little time left on this earth. I talked of education and taxes and security. We bonded well in a short time. Strangely, she started to mention the two candidates but couldn't quite get Kerry's name right. Something like John ____. She didn't know it. This led me to believe the undecided factor was all about Bush. She just needed convincing he was good enough to go it again. And I did convince her. We ended the conversation with her agreeing Bush deserved a chance to finish what he started, in Iraq and on the economy.

    Here in Tulsa, there are plenty of opportunities for you to help between now and election day. Oklahoma has a crucial Senate race and a battle for control of the state legislature. Any time of day, for any length of time, there is something you can do to help the cause. You can be involved with calling voters or talking to them at their doors, or if you're shy, there are tasks to be done where you won't have to talk to anyone. Just call Tulsa County Republican Headquarters at 627-5702 and let them know what you can do to help.

    What's up with electoral-vote.com?

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    A couple of weeks ago I sang the praises of electoral-vote.com, a website devoted to tracking state-by-state polling in the presidential race. It is a technically impressive site, making great use of maps and charts, and providing all the data for download if you want to do your own analysis.

    Over the last couple of days, the webmaster has come to the conclusion that evil Republicans are trying to take his site down. I can't imagine why, as his presentation of the data has been very even-handed, even though he is a Kerry supporter. More likely his site has been deluged with visitors because it is the best at what it does.

    Until a couple of days ago, he had a page showing a projected final result, based on applying statistical analysis to the poll results and projecting a trend in each state to November 2. The projected final consistently showed Bush with over 300 electoral votes, victorious everywhere except the Pacific coast, the Northeast, and a couple of Rust Belt states. As of yesterday, the projected final page is no longer linked from the home page, and may be down altogther. It just may be too depressing to put all that work into a beautiful website, only to show that your candidate is headed to certain defeat.

    The webmaster, as I said, is a liberal, but has tried to be even-handed. He's bound to be overwhelmed by the success of his site and by the challenge of keeping up with the flood of state polls -- where they were once weeks apart, a battleground state may have four or five polls happening simultaneously. The webmaster has had to figure out how to account for overlapping polls in his methodology.

    I'll bet he's exhausted as well as discouraged. If you appreciate his site as I do, you might drop him a note, thank him for his work, and give him permission to take a day off now and then to recharge the batteries.

    Wictory Wednesday: Tom Coburn

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    It's Wictory Wednesday again, a weekly web reminder on dozens of blogs to support a Republican candidate in a key U. S. Senate race. Today's spotlight is on our own Tom Coburn, who is running neck and neck against liberal Democrat Brad Carson for the seat currently held by Don Nickles.

    When I heard that Nickles planned to retired at the ripe young age of 54, the first name that came to mind, the person I most wanted to see in the U. S. Senate, was Tom Coburn. During his years in Congress, he was one of those "Class of '94" stalwarts who insisted that the Republican Party follow through on the promises it made for lower taxes, smaller government, and fiscal responsibility. That's why the Club for Growth has made electing Tom Coburn their number one priority. The Senate needs someone with his character and determination.

    You can donate to the Coburn campaign here

    Here's what PoliPundit has to say about the race:

    Coburn is the more talented candidate, but Carson is benefiting from a systematic campaign by Oklahoma media to boost his candidacy. Coburn needs our help to tip the scales. A few dollars can go a long way towards buying advertising that highlights Coburn’s conservatism and Carson’s liberalism.

    Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

    It's Wictory Wednesday again, a weekly spotlight on a Republican candidate in a key Senate race, hosted by dozens of blogs.

    The spotlight race this week is in North Carolina, the open seat being vacated by Democrat VP candidate John Edwards, pitting Republican Congressman Richard Burr against former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles. Bowles got off to an early lead, but Burr has closed the gap. Your contribution could help put him over the top. North Carolina is a solid state for W, but W needs the support of a solid Senate majority. Click here to contribute to the Richard Burr campaign. Every little bit helps.

    Below is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

    Scott Sala of Slant Point reports that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn't willing to help Republicans get elected in local races, so New York Republicans need to band together and make it happen themselves:

    One of the best opinion-shaping methods is endorsements. With a Republican mayor, you'd think he could help propel Republicans into a few offices this year, especially after a pretty decent term and a successful RNC Convention. But he refuses to do so.

    Bloomberg is claiming to simply desire to keep his voting private. This is a load of crap. He chose to be a politician and courted the Republican Party to do so. He won, with our help. Now, Mr. Mayor, help us....

    Well, Mr. Bloomberg, you are not a Republican. You wear our clothes, come to our parties and smile when we enter the room, but you offer sporadic help at best. Yes, thank you for helping put on an amazing convention. But that was not only supposed to get Bush re-elected, but also propel the Republican Party within New York City forward.

    We were moving, but like the morning commute you and nearly every other New York takes every day, the train just jerked. You pulled the emergency brake and left us with coffee spilled on our clothes, sweat building up, tempers flaring, and ultimately our candidates will be late for their interviews.

    And Republicans will not get the job.

    Bloomberg's distance from the party is no surprise, but it is a momentum killer. The convention brought a lot of NYC Republicans up from the catacombs, and Bloomberg could have been part of mobilizing them to help local candidates. Instead, with no clear direction from party leaders and elected officials, talented and energetic young Republicans are headed elsewhere to try to make a difference. (E.g. Karol, who has gone to Colorado, and Jessica, who is heading to Iowa.)

    Little Boy Brad's role model

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    On the drive to school this morning:

    Joe: "I hope President Bush is going to win."

    Dad: "I think he will. It's looking better all the time. But I'm not sure if Tom Coburn will beat Brad Carson. That race is really important."

    Joe: "Brad Carson sure lies a lot."

    Dad: "Yeah. He tells a lot of half-truths. Do you know what a half-truth is?"

    Joe: "No."

    Dad: "It's when you say something that's true, but you leave out some important information that would change the way people would think about what you told them. It's not giving them the whole picture."

    Dad: "I'm trying to think of a good example...."

    Joe: "The serpent in the garden?"

    Heh.


    Conservative Karol has a conversation with the liberal Dawn Summers about Kerry's strategy for the rest of the campaign. The punch line is precious, and I would spoil it if I post even an excerpt here, so just go read it for yourself.

    Wictory Wednesday: Alaska

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    BatesLine is now a part of the Wictory Wednesday effort, a weekly spotlight on a Republican candidate in a key Senate race, hosted by dozens of blogs.

    The spotlight race this week is in Alaska, where incumbent Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican nominee, is up against Democrat Governor Tony Knowles. This race is currently rated by most observers as a toss-up. Here's what PoliPundit has to say about the race. The scenario will sound very familiar to Oklahomans:

    In Alaska, incumbent Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski is locked in a tight race with former Democrat Governor Tony Knowles. The race is tight only because Knowles claims to be a “moderate.” You know what that means, don’t you? If he gets to the Senate, he’ll raise your taxes, cut defense spending, block President Bush’s judicial nominations, hug Michael Moore, and run for re-election every 6 years as a “moderate.”

    Don’t let this happen! We don’t need one more “moderate” Democrat in the US Senate for the next 30 years. You can help Murkowski by donating to her campaign today.

    After the jump is the list of blogs participating in Wictory Wednesdays. If you're a blogger and would like to join in, e-mail PoliPundit (a prolific political blogger) at wictory@blogsforbush.com.

    Find the forger

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    A reader calls my attention to William Safire's latest New York Times column, in which Safire points out that the forged Texas Air National Guard documents which were used by Dan Rather as the basis for a "60 Minutes II" story aren't just a dirty trick, they constitute a felony violation of Federal law, namely:

    Whoever, having devised any scheme or artifice to defraud transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both. " U.S. Criminal Code, Chapter 63, Section 1343.

    Pointing us back to the "third-rate burglary" at the Watergate back in 1972, Safire says that we must not be satisfied with the political fallout -- like the Watergate burglary, this appears to be a violation of the law in an attempt to influence the outcome of a presidential election:

    What should CBS do now? First, release Rather's interview with Burkett in its entirety; viewers are entitled to the outtakes now. Next, let Mary Mapes, at the center of all this, speak to reporters. Third, expend some Viacom resources to track down the possible original sources, including the man whose name Burkett says he "threw out" to mislead CBS.

    Appointing independent reviewers should not be a device to duck all others' questions; that's Kofi Annan's trick to stonewall his oil-for-food scandal. But lacking the power of a grand jury's subpoena or testimony under oath, victimized CBS cannot put real heat on the perpetrator or conspirators. We have hard evidence of crimes by low-level operatives here - from wire fraud to forgery - as well as the potential of high-level political involvement. Is no prosecutor prepared to enforce the law?

    Conservatives should stop slavering over Dan Rather's scalp, and liberals should stop pretending that noble ends justify fake-evidence means. Both should focus on the lesson of the early 70's: from third-rate burglaries to fourth-rate forgeries, nobody gets away with trying to corrupt American elections.

    Who would investigate and prosecute such a crime? As a violation of federal law, it would come under the Department of Justice, through the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U. S. Attorney's office. Charges would probably be brought in Texas, whence the forged documents were faxed. Congress couldn't do anything directly in this case, although they could bring some political pressure to bear on the Department of Justice to pursue the matter. A note to your congressman would be a way to ensure that the matter isn't ignored.

    What's the difference?

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    An interesting point from Roger L. Simon:

    What Do the UN and CBS Have in Common?

    They are both conducting internal investigations - the UN of Oil-for-Food and CBS of Rathergate.

    Second question: What's the difference between an "internal investigation" and a "cover up"?

    Electoral vote projections

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    There are a couple of fascinating web efforts to track the polls in individual states, in order to put together a clearer picture of the presidential election as it is actually conducted, not as a single nationwide race, but as 53 separate contests. (That's 49 winner-take-all states, plus the District of Columbia, plus the state of Maine, where separate elections for elector are conducted in the state's two congressional districts, and two at-large electors awarded to the statewide winner.)

    The Electoral Vote Predictor updates the electoral map daily with new state poll results. The "Votemaster" (I can't find anywhere on the site where he identifies himself) admits to being a Kerry supporter, but he seems pretty scrupulous about sticking with hard data. Right now he has Bush at 327, Kerry at 211.

    The daily update includes analysis of the day's new polls, plus a lot of intelligent discussion of the challenges faced by pollsters, like today's update which deals with the impact of the increasing use of cell phones on phone polling. If you want to play around with the numbers yourself, you can download the raw data in Excel format. There's even a way to look only at the polls done by a particular pollster.

    And the Votemaster has a projection of how the votes will come out on November 2nd, using linear regression to predict the outcome in each state. He cautions that the data is still pretty "noisy" and won't be very useful until October. At the moment, his model has Bush at 315, Kerry at 172, with 51 votes in states (New York, New Jersey, and New Mexico) that are projected to be exact ties. Again it's early, and his projection has Kerry winning Tennessee.

    This site is an example of what the Internet can do so much better than the traditional news media -- provide a quick overview if that's all you want, but allow you to drill down as deep as you care to.

    Election Projection is another site devoted to tracking individual state polls. Scott Elliott, the self-styled Blogging Caesar, is an unabashed Bush supporter. He updates his site's projection once a week, but you can subscribe to a daily update for $40. He also posts regularly to a blog on his homepage.

    Electoral Vote Predictor links to a fascinating page on the comprehensive political website Politics1 which shows the ballot access status of all minor party candidates. Oklahoma has only one possible minor party ticket -- the Libertarians, if they win their court challenge to Oklahoma's very stringent ballot access law. The list of every known major and minor party and its nominees, with links to more detailed bios and analysis can be found here. The bottom of that page has links to many other useful and interesting political resources on the web.

    I should also mention the site of University of Virginia polisci prof Larry Sabato, which covers races for Governor, Senate, and House, as well as the presidential election map.

    And I can't close an entry on politics without reminding you of one of my daily reads: SoonerPolitics.com, by OU polisci professor Keith Gaddie. He is overseas and hasn't been updating lately, but if you haven't visited before, it's worth reading back through his archives.

    Fake memos came from Abilene Kinkos

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    Kevin McCullough has done some digging and may have a lead on the forger. The suspect is one Bill Burkett. And Scott Sala has some perspective from his time working for Kinkos, and links to other stories.

    Meanwhile, Tim Blair sympathizes with Dan Rather's lament:

    Life is so unfair. Dan tries to bring down a President with some fake documents, and all these stupid people want to do is talk about the fake documents when the real story is the crucial information contained ... in the fake documents.

    Bill Dyer, a Texas attorney who once defended CBS against a libel suit, says that Dan Rather and CBS are no longer victims of fraud in the Memogate case but have become complicit in fraud:

    On Thursday, September 9th, I wrote a post entitled, "Burden now on CBS to authenticate its documents lest it become a co-conspirator in fraud."

    In hindsight, I was clearly wrong.

    I gave CBS News and Dan Rather the benefit of the doubt — the presumption that they did not know the Killian memos were forgeries when they ran their hit piece on "60 Minutes II" on the previous evening. I argued that because of the doubts immediately raised about the authenticity of the memos, CBS ran the risk of becoming a co-conspirator in the fraud perpetrated by whoever forged them.

    But Dan Rather and CBS News had become co-conspirators by the time of their broadcast. ABC News has revealed that two of the experts whom CBS News consulted before running the broadcast — Emily Will from North Carolina and Linda James of Plano, Texas — could not and would not authenticate the fraudulent Killian memos, and expressly told CBS that. ...

    Dan Rather and everyone else at CBS News who had direct managerial authority over, and supervisory involvement in, the production of last Wednesday night's "60 Minutes II" broadcast about the Killian memos must be fired. Not retired. Not pensioned off. Not allowed to resign. Not given 30 days' or even three days' notice.

    They must be fired — instantly, effective immediately, "for cause" and "with prejudice," forfeiting all unvested future benefits from their employment. They should be escorted by security personnel from the building, with their belongings sent to them in due course after they've been screened for relevant evidence. All of their computers, files, and other items of potential evidentiary value must be segregated immediately and secured under lock and key with a tight and explicit chain of custody. There must be no spoliation of evidence permitted.

    This must be done publicly — before the close of business on Wednesday, September 15, 2004, and preferably before noon.

    If it's not, then the executives who failed to do the firings should be fired before the close of business on Thursday, September 16, 2004.

    He also calls for Congressional investigations. I have serious doubts about this, because of First Amendment concerns, and because it would recast the issue as a partisan squabble and take the focus off of CBS's credibility. There are remedies for fraud, and there is always the power of the free market to discipline any wrongdoing.

    You'll find thorough detail and rationale on Bill Dyer's website. Hat tip to Charles G. Hill for the link.

    Catch me in two days

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    Robin Juhl had the great idea of contacting Frank Abagnale, world's foremost expert on forgery and embezzlement, to ask his opinion on the alleged Texas Air National Guard memos presented by Dan Rather on CBS's 60 Minutes II. Abagnale's early career as a forger and embezzler was the subject of the movie, "Catch Me If You Can". The reply from Abagnale's firm contained this tidbit:

    I can tell you that [Abagnale] sent an e-mail to Neil Cavuto of Your World on Fox News Network (he knows him personally) that stated: "If my forgeries looked as bad as the CBS documents, it would have been "Catch Me In Two Days".

    (Hat tip to Little Green Footballs for the link.)

    Blogs bust CBS

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    I'm enough of a contrarian to resist writing about something just because everyone else is. And I'm lazy enough and busy enough not to want to duplicate what others are handling in such a thorough fashion.

    But I feel like I've been neglecting my responsibilities to you, dear reader, by not saying anything about this huge story that has been dominating the blogosphere since the middle of last week, and has now made the leap into print and broadcast media. At least a part of my readership comes straight to this site and perhaps never ventures beyond, despite the long blogroll on the right-hand side of the home page.

    In a nutshell: CBS's "60 Minutes II" presented what it alleged were memos written in 1972 and 1973 by Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, George W. Bush's superior, in the Texas Air National Guard, suggesting that pressure was applied to give Bush a more favorable evaluation than he deserved.

    Some noticed that the memos had some odd features for documents banged out on a typewriter over 30 years ago -- a proportional-spaced font, unusual in typewriters, was the first clue that something was amiss. Then someone noticed a superscript 'th' in an ordinal number and curly single quotes, instead of straight apostrophes -- the sort of thing that happens automatically when typing a document in newer versions of Microsoft Word. Closer examination revealed that the vertical pitch (distance between lines) matched the default in Microsoft Word, but couldn't be produced by a typewriter.

    Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs went so far as to open up Microsoft Word, and without changing the margins, tabs, font, font size, or any other setting, he typed one of the memos and found that everything lined up perfectly with the document CBS claimed was an authentic typewritten 1973 memo.

    There's a lot more to the story. Some defended authenticity of the memos by trying to come up with scenarios under which such a memo could have been produced in the early '70s. In response, people who worked with early printer and word processor technology, forensic document analysts, and other experts came forward to answer speculation with the reality of the technology of the time. Bloggers provided a focal point for relaying expert testimony. doing original research, and exposing contradictions.

    I encourage you to dig into the details. Here are some places to start:

    The New York Sun has a story on how this story developed and the role played by blogs.

    Power Line has been all over the story from the beginning. And there's some great analysis as well, such as this item about the apparently new willingness of the mainstream media (MSM) to sacrifice its credibility for political ends:

    So we have entered a new era. We now know that our richest and most powerful news organizations are willing to blow themselves up--to destroy their own credibility, once considered a news organization's most precious possession--to achieve a political goal. The landscape will never look quite the same again. Those of us who still value truth must look at the mainstream media in a new, more skeptical and critical way, taking nothing for granted. Because, like suicide bombers, the mainstream news organs will go farther to achieve their political goals than we ever imagined.


    Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has a summary of all of his entries on the memo scandal to that point, although he has since posted more.

    Bill of INDC Journal sought out a forensic document examiner, Dr. Philip Bouffard, to render an opinion on the likelihood that the documents were authentic.

    AllahPundit has a plethora of links, commentary, and detail.

    Hugh Hewitt has been all over this. And John Fund summarizes the story in the Wall Street Journal.

    Dr. Joseph M. Newcomer, an expert in electronic typesetting since its advent in the '70s, came forward with a detailed analysis of the memos, with everything you could want to know about fonts and spacing.

    Old-media op-ed titan William Safire weighs in here (registration required).

    On the lighter side, Scott Ott has uncovered a suspicious 1972 e-mail, and Frank J. thinks he's discovered another forgery.

    And a friend sends along a link to a Shockwave animation that puts the whole thing in a nutshell.

    Tragedy of the Bunnies

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    Ever tried to explain the important socio-political concept of the Tragedy of the Commons to your toddler? The Internet comes to the rescue with a Macromedia Flash game called the "Tragedy of the Bunnies". When all the bunnies are owned in common, the bunnies all get caught and sold in the first round, because it's in everyone's interest to grab as many as they can, while they can, without regard for the future. Then there aren't any bunnies When everyone has a number of privately owned bunnies, protected against bunny-thieves, each bunny farmer has an incentive to sell a few, but keep most around to multiply.

    Hat tip to Iain Murray for the link.

    J. M. Branum quotes approvingly from Margaret Cho's account of the Sunday, August 29, 2004, protest in New York City:

    . . . There were police all over the street. More than were necessary, and more than I thought actually existed. I am sure they had a major recruitment rush before this week, because their uniforms were ill-fitting and too new, and they all had an awkward nervousness to them. Every once in a while, you would see a grey suited delegate speedily walking alongside on the other side of the barrier. Often, they would be hiding their badges with their hands as they almost ran back to the safety of Madison Square Garden.

    There was a small group of delegates sitting near the entrance, watching the enormous crowd go past, with glum but semi-stunned looks on their faces, as if they were watching their empire crumble, which is exactly what was happening.

    Nice attempt at mindreading there, Margaret.

    Now this protest occurred on Sunday, the day before the opening of the convention. Delegates didn't go to Madison Square Garden on Sunday. There was nothing for a delegate to do there, and I doubt that delegates would have been admitted. The only thing that would have been happening there on Sunday was last minute preparations for the start of business the following day. Delegates and guests had a separate credential for each session -- numbered 1 through 5. Number 1 was for Monday morning, the only morning session. We didn't have a number 0 credential.

    Where were the delegates? Were we being protected from reality, as Mike from Little Axe suggests?

    PENNYBAGS.jpg

    On Sunday afternoon, delegates were still en route to NYC in many cases. Those of us who had already arrived were going to church, sightseeing, attending welcome brunches, and getting ready to see a Broadway play -- the NYC host committee provided matinee tickets for all the delegations. And I doubt that many delegates were wearing grey suits on a warm summer Sunday afternoon.

    After reading some of the protest websites before the convention, I told people that the radicals seemed to think that we would stroll the sidewalks of New York looking like Rich Uncle Pennybags, with cane, top hat, tails, monocle, spats, and furs. All of us members of the Halliburton board of directors, we were undoubtedly assembling to plot the next round of plunder, rape, and pillage, but the mighty protestors would confront us and shock us and send us scampering back to the Hamptons (um, no, all rich liberals out there) or Bel Air (ditto).

    So Margaret Cho spotted a hotel manager or a security supervisor or a salesman from Macy's mens' department, taking a break and watching the wackos pass by, and imagined him into a plutocrat quaking with fear at the fall of the ancien regime.

    If it makes you feel better, Margaret, you're welcome to believe you made a struck a blow against the system and left a deep impression on the nation's kingmakers, but the reality is that we delegates (who aren't very powerful anyway) were busy having fun that day, and we missed seeing you. Sorry. Better luck in four years. If I see you then, I promise to sneer at you through my monocle, whack you in the shin with my walking stick, and leave you in a cloud of exhaust as my Bentley speeds off, so you can feel properly victimized.

    Another Democrat for Bush

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    Dan and Angi (who have Something to Say) call our attention to an essay by another Democrat who is not only endorsing George W. Bush for re-election, but also endorsing a continued Republican majority in Congress (and citing conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt in his rationale). The Democrat in question is science fiction writer Orson Scott Card:

    Now, as a Democrat, what can I say to that except that, because my party has been taken over by an astonishingly self-destructive bunch of lunatics who are so dazzled by Hollywood that they think their ideas make sense, I have to agree that right now, any President but Bush and any Congress but a Republican-dominated one would be disastrous.

    As a Democrat, I would hope that a solid trouncing of our fanatic-ruled party at the polls this November would serve as a wakeup call and remind Democrats that they only get to do the things that the Democrat Party exists to do if they get enough votes to control the White House and Congress. Which requires that you have serious candidates and embrace serious issues that most Americans, not just tiny pressure groups, care about.

    Card goes on to make an interesting point about machine politics at the local level, and why he won't be voting straight party Republican all the way down the line:

    Convention impact

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    "The Republicans came to town with the Ten Commandments in one hand and a $100 bill in the other, and they didn't break either." -- New York State Senator John Sabini, Democrat from Queens, in the September 4, 2004, New York Post.

    Local politicians love to be able to tell voters that they've created jobs, and for forty years or more, the pursuit of convention business has been a favorite way to spend city dollars in hopes of drawing tax dollars to the city from visitors -- people who come, stay, spend, and leave before they become a burden on the city's infrastructure. Despite plenty of evidence that cities rarely make back in increased tax revenues what they spend on the operating cost of convention centers, not to mention the initial capital cost of building or expanding a convention center, or the extra financial incentives offered to major conventions, local politicians still push for higher taxes to finance ever bigger and fancier convention facilities, adding to a glut of underutilized facilities.

    I've followed the antics of convention center promoters for many years. In 2000 I led a successful opposition campaign against a convention center expansion and new arena for downtown Tulsa. The project was to be funded by a city sales tax increase and it was sold as a way of generating new convention business for Tulsa, filling empty hotel rooms, and preventing us from becoming a "fourth-tier" city in the competition for national conventions and trade shows. If we voted for the expansion, we were told to expect $100 million in additional direct spending annually -- a threefold increase over the actual direct spending numbers at the time. In debunking their numbers and making our case, we depended heavily on the research done by Heywood Sanders, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the nation's leading expert on convention center economics, who has made a career of comparing the claims of feasibility studies to the results produced by new and expanded convention centers.

    Tulsa's arena and convention center package was ultimately sold to the voters in 2003 as part of a billion-dollar package of corporate welfare ($350 million to Boeing for an aircraft assembly plant), parks, university facilities, street improvements, and assorted other pieces of pork, collectively known as Vision 2025, and funded by a 1% sales tax. In the 2003 vote, promoters talked as little as possible about the convention center and arena, and instead pointed to the city's dire economic circumstances -- second only to San Jose in job losses in the wake of the tech bubble's bursting -- and convinced the voters that "we have to do something," never bothering to provide an economic rationale for their claims that Vision 2025 would pull us out of the doldrums. When they did respond to projections that the convention center would run an even bigger operating deficit after expansion, the convention center promoters would claim that increased sales tax revenue generated by additional visitor spending would more than make up for the deficit.

    For all that I've read about convention center economics, I don't often go to conventions, so it's been interesting to have an inside look, as a delegate, at a "pearl of great price" in the convention industry -- the kind of event that cities would give everything to attract. And they often have.

    New York City has been a great host, and I would love to come back to New York for the 2008 Republican convention, but I wouldn't blame New Yorkers for rolling up the welcome mat. Mind you, not because of political differences, but because an event of this magnitude may cost far more than any economic benefit.

    Early estimates from New York City's Economic Development Corporation (EDC) put the net economic impact of last week's Republican National Convention at $255 million, but the numbers are based on economic models and standard industry figures for delegate spending, not actual receipts, using $220 per person per day for five days as a spending estimate for the 47,000 visitors. And that $255 million is a net number -- $341 million in spending, less $86 million in lost retail activity.

    It's hard to tell how close those numbers are to reality. Our room was $155 a night, and I'd estimate that my wife and I spent another $50 a day on food and taxi or subway fare, plus incidentals. Four young women in our delegation shared a single hotel room to save money. A lot of additional money was spent on us by various corporations and politicians at the breakfasts and receptions we attended, but I suspect that would still leave the total well shy of the number used by the EDC. Last month, New York City's comptroller estimated that the city would lose $309 million on the convention, the result of all the disruptions and inconveniences connected with the event.

    Looked at through the eyes of a convention planner, a national political convention is an odd combination of a trade show and a SMERF event. SMERF stands for social, military, educational, religious, and fraternal organizations. These are the least coveted conventions, because delegates are attending on their own behalf and are spending their own money, not traveling on expense accounts, and accordingly they stay at budget accommodations (or double up in luxury accommodations) and look for restaurant bargains. Like delegates at most SMERF events, RNC delegates paid their own way to New York, as did thousands of volunteers. But then there were also thousands of media staff, campaign staff, and Republican party staff who were at the convention for business reasons and so were traveling on someone else's dime. Economic impact calculations had better take the dual nature of these conventions into account.

    The New York papers have had fun recounting delegate penny pinching. A New York Post article featured complaints from hotel concierges who were getting "God bless yous" instead of gratuities in thanks for their assistance. One indignant concierge blasted the thrifty delegates: "They even ask where the nearest Laundromat is so they can wash their own clothes. Look, if you can't afford to travel, don't come." We didn't go to the laundromat or let the hotel do our laundry -- it would have been cheaper to buy replacements. As a way to save money on drinks, we brought along an insulated, leakproof piece of luggage which can be used as a cooler. We bought 6-packs of Diet Cokes for $2.99 each from a nearby drugstore, and filled the cooler with just enough ice from the hotel's machine to keep the sodas cold.

    Merchants and restaurateurs near Madison Square Garden suffered badly during the convention, as did Broadway. I wonder, too, about the impact of a nearly empty Javits Center. The Republican committee meetings the week before the convention used only a tiny fraction of the Javits Center, but the rest of the cavernous center was left empty, presumably for security reasons.

    New York City taxpayers bore a large chunk of the security costs of this convention -- as much as $15 million out of an expected total cost of $65 million. (The rest of the money comes from the Federal Government.)

    Unlike most cities that chase convention business, New York City can plausibly claim that even losing money on this convention, particularly one that draws from every state in the union, can help the city in the long run. Thousands of delegates who had never been to the city, or hadn't been since the bad old days, pre-Giuliani, came away with very positive impressions of the city and are more likely to return and to excite their friends and relatives about visiting. Someone attending a convention in Wichita, let's say, might feel that he had exhausted the tourism potential of the city in the course of a week-long meeting. Nice city, but no plans to return. Most Republican delegates in New York left with a sense of unfinished business, unable to exhaust the possibilities that New York City offers in the handful of free hours we had each day. We will be back.

    Beyond the economic impact, the presence of tens of thousands of Republicans had a positive impact on the small but mighty band of local conservatives. Blogger and political consultant Karol Sheinin wrote, "I love the convention being in my city. All the regular rightwing events are on steroids, with more people than ever and a great vibe." Beyond regular events, like the New Criterion's Tuesday evening gatherings at Fitzgeralds, special events connected with the convention, like the National Review cocktail hour cum mosh pit at Turtle Bay, "The Right Stuff" comedy show, and the Club for Growth's events, gave local conservatives a chance to find each other, as they emerge from the catacombs.

    Who knows but that a few more such boosts may help develop a thriving conservative social scene in New York City? Shouldn't the capital city of capitalism be the capital of conservatism, too? Conservatives from the rest of the country should offer, out of the goodness of our hearts, to gather annually in Manhattan for a major political shindig -- not so major that it shuts down whole neighborhoods, but major enough to draw the biggest names and the brightest rising stars, a week-long celebration of conservatism. Just like a national convention, but minus the convention sessions, which just get in the way of all the parties and receptions. Yes, we could have it on some cruise ship in the Caribbean, but it would encourage our New York brethren more to have it in their midst. I'm willing to sacrifice for the cause. How about you?

    Protest warriors

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    One of the unreported stories of the Republican convention was the effort by a pro-American group called Protest Warrior, who tried to infiltrate the radicals' protests with some contrarian signs:

    "Except for ending slavery, fascism, nazism, and communism, WAR HAS NEVER SOLVED ANYTHING"

    "Protect Islamic Property Rights Against Western Imperialism -- SAY NO TO WAR!" -- the poster depicts a woman in a burka being dangled from a choke chain.

    My wife met one of the Protest Warriors on her flight to NYC -- an aviation science student at Oklahoma State University. He dropped me a line yesterday, pointing me to some links to photos and anecdotes on the Protest Warrior website:

    As far as anecdotes, we were called fascist and Nazis quite often which are both leftist theories contradictory to conservative ones and, when trying to explain to them this fact they would turn violent. They don't really care for being cornered in a debate. One notable event that comes to mind is a group of protesters protesting for free speech were telling us we didn't belong there and that we shouldn't be allowed to say what we were saying. Others were saying stuff such as: capitalism is for the greedy and socialism is the only true way to go about things. These are people that have jobs and are consumers of goods and services, plain hypocrisy if you ask me.

    The Cool Blue Blog (hat tip to Candace) has a first-hand report of the August 29th march.

    Top RNC speech excerpts

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    John Hawkins of Right Wing News has his top 10 speech excerpts from last week, plus some honorable mentions.

    And the RNC convention website can rewind you to any day of the convention for text, audio, and video of the speeches.

    Party poopers

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    There were complaints in the press and on various gossip blogs that Republican delegates are a bunch of dull party-poopers -- we didn't stay out late and we didn't attend parties. Here's an item from Friday's Page Six column in the New York Post:

    September 3, 2004 -- THE Republican delegates seem to have run out of gas when it comes to parties. An Independence Bank bash at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden was canceled at the last minute yesterday for lack of attendance. "You can't do a party there for less than 125 people at approximately $125 a head. I'm told that 200 to 300 conventioneers were originally expected," said our source. RNC parties at the Bronx Zoo, Snug Harbor on Staten Island, and in Queens were also under-attended. "The only party that was packed today was the governor's event at the Fulton Ferry Pier in Brooklyn, right in front of the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory," we're told. Not only the outer boroughs are being shunned. Gov. Pataki invited 800 GOP backers Monday night to Tupelo Grill, right across from Madison Square Garden, to eat, drink and get merry while watching Rudy Giuliani's speech. "Only 50 people showed up," said our informant. "But the gov didn't exactly lose his appetite. Instead of savoring the mini-quiche made especially for the occasion, he demanded a cheeseburger with all the fixings."

    And this bit from Cindy Adams in the same paper:

    CONVENTIONS run from 7 to 10 p.m. Theoretically. Because BS flows like Niagara, they last through 11 p.m. Result? The after-parties, like for Rudy, Arnold, the Bushes, the gov, all begin at midnight. Everyone's exhausted and hungry. Restaurants lose money, since this kills the dinner hour. The original 7-to-10 p.m. concept was for prime-time newscasts. There's no longer nightly network coverage because no longer are folks glued to the screens unless they're TV repairmen. These rah-rah conventions no longer even have a raison d'etre because all's decided beforehand so I asked "Law & Order" actor/Sen. Fred Thompson why not change that 7-to-10-p.m. deal? And he wisely replied:

    "I have no idea."

    Cindy's a bit off on the timing -- the convention was planned to end at about 11:00 pm EDT every night. That was not an accident. The aim was to get the main speakers -- Giuliani on Monday, the First Lady on Tuesday, Cheney on Wednesday, and the President on Thursday -- going right at 10:00 pm EDT. That would maximize live viewing across the country -- 7 o'clock on the West Coast, and toward the end of prime time everywhere else. This was typically the only hour carried by the major networks. The President was the only one to go beyond 11, and that just barely, followed by another 15 minutes or so of the balloon drop.

    But what worked well for the networks didn't work well for the delegates. After the session it was far easier to get on our buses, rather than wander out into the city beyond the barriers. Monday afternoon at the end of the first session was the one time I tried to walk directly out, and I got stuck trying to cross 34th Street at 7th Avenue, as the police were giving priority to the convention buses -- I finally backtracked and walked around to 8th Avenue.

    Particularly from Tuesday night on, with protests near the convention site, we faced the choice of riding on buses with police escorts and traffic priority returning us straight to the hotel, or leaving the secured area on foot and walking into the middle of a police-protester confrontation that might keep us from going anywhere for a while. The easy choice was to take the bus and leave from the hotel if we wanted to go out.

    Scheduling and security worked together to dampen attendance at outside events, whether during the day or late at night. The evening sessions gobbled up a six-hour block of time from the time we left the hotel until we returned -- all of which was spent within the security perimeter or on the bus. Once you were inside the Garden, the thought of passing through security again was a strong disincentive to dropping in on another event. For the same reason, delegates tended to avoid MSG during the day -- you showed up as late as possible while still arriving in time for the speakers you wanted to hear.

    As for parties, we were invited to some afternoon and early evening events -- all but one of them specifically for the Oklahoma delegation, and that other invite came from our congressman. There were rumors of some great after-parties -- John McCain hosted a "Wednesday Night Live" party headlined by SNL star Darrell Hammond -- but no one I knew was invited. The master schedule we were given at the start of the week had long lists of events, most of them labeled "private". I started to go through the whole schedule and mark interesting possibilities, but so many were marked private that I dropped the idea. We might have been daring and shown up to crash a party, but we were too worn out and hungry to waste time and energy showing up at an event only to be turned away.

    That's the general, here are the specifics. Let me take you through my week and I think you'll understand.

    Distraction

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    To the folks who inhabited Blogger's Corner this week: If you think it was distracting to write in a small poorly lit area, surrounded by a dozen other bloggers, next to the main entrance to the media area, try blogging with Sesame Street's Elmo chatting up a storm on the computer game my daughter is playing in the next room.

    Processing.... please wait

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    Back home on the non-stop from Newark today with Mikki and a few other delegates including Mayor Bill LaFortune, who spent most of the flight snoozing in an aisle seat near the back. I was envious -- I had only had about 3 hours of sleep but could not sleep on the plane because of the continual traffic up and down the aisle. (I could comment about the irony of the Mayor of Tulsa being on the non-stop flight, which was on Continental -- the result of a company responding to market opportunities -- and not Great Plains, the airline that lobbied for millions in government support on the promise of providing direct flights to the coast, a promise it never fulfilled. But I won't.)

    I return home with a pile of newspapers I never got through during the convention. Because I was in the middle experiencing the event directly, I haven't had much time to find out what other observers have been saying. I'm especially interested in the feature stories that have been written -- how the delegates responded to New York and vice versa. I want to take another couple of days to sum things up -- what it's like to be on the floor, how a major convention affects a major city, delegates as party-poopers and lousy tippers, the rumored contenders for '08, the moderates who spoke.

    Mikki and I finished packing this morning, shipping a box of convention stuff back and just getting our checked luggage under the weight limit, thanks to all the tote bags and books we were given by various sponsors.

    Before catching the shuttle to the airport, Mikki and I had time for a brief visit to Ground Zero, a chance to remember September 11, and to remember Jayesh Shah, a graduate of Tulsa's Memorial High School and the University of Tulsa, who was in his office atop the north tower when the plane hit. Jay left behind a young wife, two daughters and a son, and a younger brother who was his nearest and dearest friend. I prayed silently for his family, and looking at the list of heroes, I picked a name at random and prayed for that family too. We spent some time at the east fence, then walked down to Battery Park to view the globe that once stood on the World Trade Center plaza.

    This election is about one thing and one thing only -- winning the war on terror. Whatever other disappointments I may have in the administration, George W. Bush is committed to preemptively defeating terrorism while John Kerry seems to want to wait for another attack.

    RNC photos from the Daily Oklahoman

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    Finally got pointed to the photos of my wife Mikki that were in the Daily Oklahoman earlier this week. We rode to Newark airport with Oklahoman assistant photo editor Steve Sisney, who showed us a slideshow of the photos he took of the convention, and pointed us to the Oklahoman's online gallery which currently features Steve's photos of RNC events. Mikki's two pictures are here and here. And here's Real Media video from KWTV channel 9 in Oklahoma City.

    And you can find an archive of Daily Oklahoman coverage of the RNC by going to their homepage and clicking the RNC tab.

    The photos were taken at the Community Food Bank of New Jersey, where volunteers from several delegations boxed food Tuesday morning, as part of the convention's "Compassion Across America" emphasis. (Mikki went; I stayed behind to try to get my phone upgraded so I could blog from the convention floor.) Throughout the summer leading up to the convention, each state delegation was asked to adopt a local charity, with every delegate giving time, materials or money to the cause. The organizing committee in New York City was also engaged in service projects around NYC all year long. (Here's a press release about the emphasis.

    People who went agreed that the trip was worthwhile, but there was some disappointment because in the end only about 25 minutes was spent working. There were problems finding the location, which added another hour or so to the ride over, and no one had a point of contact to call for directions. Once there, they were given an introduction to the work of the food bank, which was informative, but cut into the time available for work. They had to leave early enough so that the First Lady of Oregon could get back for an event at 2.

    A contributing factor to some of the difficulties was the inability of the organizers to meet on Sunday to finalize plans and work out details. The planned meeting at Madison Square Garden couldn't happen because the protest parade had stopped in front of the Garden, and security locked the building so that no one could go in or out.

    As Mikki noted in the KWTV story, the people who came for the convention are active back home in their communities in many different ways. This event could only dramatize in a small way the more significant contributions that are made the other 51 weeks of the year back home. I'll add that the political efforts made by the delegates -- running for office, organizing, campaigning, contributing money to candidates, and the giving of time, money, privacy, and energy involved -- are an expression of compassion toward their fellow citizens, even if it can't be deducted as a charitable expense.

    Mission accomplished

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    100_1413-confetti.jpg

    The story of the convention is this: The convention closed last night without a major incident. No attacks, no riots, no explosions. Just a handful of hecklers in the hall, drowned out by delegates who started chanting "Four More Years" at the first sign of a disturbance. The speeches hit the marks and made the points that needed making. In the end, the delegates felt like we were doing our job as well, providing support with our cheers and applause.

    New York City did its job. I would have the 2008 convention back here, if New York would have us -- but I would understand completely if the people of this city didn't want to deal with a summer of preparations and a week of serious inconvenience.

    I'll write more later. We fly home later today.

    Touring around

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    There's a lot of competition for the time and attention of delegates - more events and special exhibits than delegate-hours to go around. One of our delegates, Rodd Moesel, went on a "green tour" of lower Manhattan - he was the only delegate along with 15 city officials. He met a rep from General Motors' Allison division, who asked if we might have use for a couple of buses. They were looking for opportunities to show off their new hybrid vehicle technology in the form of these diesel/hybrid buses, particularly to city leaders.

    One of the buses took us up to the New-York Historical Society for a tour of their new exhibit on the life and death of Alexander Hamilton. This impressive exhibit includes portraits of his contemporaries by Stuart, Peale, and others, documents from his life and career, and the pistols used in the duel 200 years ago this July. There's a wonderful love letter he wrote to his future wife and the farewell letter he left for her before the duel should he not survive. There are two life-sized bronzes of Burr and Hamilton in firing position - Hamilton is shown wearing sunglasses.

    These artifacts give you a sense of the political reality of the day - the turn of the 19th century was not just marble busts and powdered wigs.

    The exhibit opens next week and will run for 6 months, then it will tour 40 cities across America, with facsimiles instead of original documents. Mayor LaFortune spoke to the curator about bringing it to Gilcrease - it would be a great fit with Gilcrease's collection of early American documents.


    Over on MSNBC's website, they present side-by-side videos comparing delegates dancing at the Republican and Democrat conventions. The Republican video begins and ends with two Oklahoma delegates -- Erica Lewis, a career consultant from Stillwater, and Joy Pittman, an attorney from Tulsa. Joy was also on the convention platform committee.

    I got an inordinate amount of camera time last night because I happened to be standing right in front of the two delegates mentioned above and three or four more attractive young female delegates.

    Meanwhile, John Derbyshire reports his experience being in the hall for last night's proceedings:

    The delegates were whooping and hollering, punching the air, jumping up and down. Readers, **I** was jumping up and down. The heck with that British reserve — I'm an American now, and a Republican, and I can holler and jump with the best of them. Zell Miller, unfortunately, is not a Republican — but he had explained that point to everyone's satisfaction, and no one held it against him. By the time he finished, nobody in the hall held anything against him. Whatever he was for, we were for. Whatever he was against, we were against. This was a real star turn, the best speech of the convention so far — better than Arnie, better than Rudy. It was an honor and a privilege to be in that hall when Zell Miller spoke.

    Now if we can just get Derb in a chorus line with the Oklahoma delegation....

    (Here's the direct link to the Shockwave file.)

    Convention coverage highlights

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    Wizbang's Kevin Aylward has a great summary of Zell Miller's responses to Hardball's Chris Matthews and his usual rude interviewing style. Sorry I missed it, but Kevin's selection of quotes from Miller makes me feel like I was there. My favorite: "I wish we lived in the day that I could challenge you to a duel."

    Redstate and Captain Ed both wonder whether the Miller speech was too fierce. I really appreciated finally hearing a speech delivered with passion, but I understand that we live in Pony-Tail Guy's world now, and we don't like politicians who say harsh things or speak in harsh tones. The Republicans (me included) loved it. Zell in '08!

    That's all for now. Check out rncbloggers.com for more.

    and Arlen Specter. Go here to see them both.

    Heckler hustled out

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    I heard some outcry - not loud at all - and then a rush of security, followed by a rush of press. Whoever it was was quickly hustled out gate 67.

    I wonder if it would have been less distracting to let the fool holler. A single unamplified voice doesn't carry very well in here.

    Media update

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    Big media day for the Bateses. I've been profiled by Gawker. The Daily Oklahoman has a picture of Mikki on the front page, packing boxes at a food bank as part of Tuesday's "Compassion across America" event. If the photo is online, you'll find it at www.newsok.com. I'm told that I'm in a picture of the Oklahoma delegation in the Tulsa Whirled. And Scott Sala of Slant Point has posted an interview with me about last week's committee meetings.

    The laptop has been in and out of a coma all day, so I have been unable to update, to fix a couple of glaring errors in earlier entries (apologies to Jay Nordlinger for linking his name to Derb's archive), and to link to the excellent coverage by the other convention bloggers. Go over to RNCbloggers.com for all their latest.

    W is officially nominated

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    and the MSG floor is bouncing.

    Literally.

    What's the resonant frequency of this floor?

    Perfect ending

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    Harlem Boys Choir singing Peter J. Wilhousky's setting of Battle Hymn of the Republic.

    Would have been even better if people had been quiet so it could have been heard.

    We can't hear you!

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    I'm up in the cheap seats with my wife at the moment - have been here through Brownback's & Frist's speeches. I was still on the floor during Liddy Dole's speech. People aren't paying close attention to any of these speeches. That's partly because the audio seems muffled and subdued when someone is speaking from the front, and when people can't hear they mill around and chat . When the music is playing, it seems twice as loud, and people quiet down.

    Too bad because these were good speeches enunciating our social platform. Rod Paige (Sec'y of Education) and Michael Steele (Maryland Lt. Gov.) have delivered their speeches with more energy than the earlier speakers and seem to have the audience more engaged.

    These speakers are suffering as well from the lack of a formal introduction to create anticipation in the audience and focus attention. And a rap of the gavel isn't a bad idea once in a while.

    Steele really got us going - well-written speech beautifully delivered - and of course instead of building on that momentum, we get blasted with another over-amped tune. But then Arnold should do fine :)


    Over the top

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    As I suspected, all the passing in the roll call by larger states was to give a key swing state the chance to clinch Bush's renomination. I suppose it's close enough there that the little bit of press they'll get out of this back in Pennsylvania could be the margin of victory.

    The "spontaneous" demonstration fizzled -- we weren't quite sure when we were supposed to wave the "4 more years" signs, and the word finally reached us to wait until Pennsylvania's turn, but I don't think everyone got the word. It's hard to keep that up without someone leading from the front.


    Turn it down!

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    I'm down on the floor - wireless web is working agan - and we are being blasted by the convention band, to the point that we can barely hear.

    Wall-to-wall Corner

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    Mikki (my wife) and I attended the NRO Corner bash at Turtle Bay. They were giving out buttons saying things like "Save a Hamster / Vote for Kerry" -- someone though that had to do with that old urban legend, but it's a reference to one of Kerry's daughters speech about her dad givning CPR to a hamster.

    Got to meet and chat briefly with NROniks John Derbyshire, Jim Geraghty, who writes the "Kerry Spot", and Jay Nordlinger, who writes Impromptus. Might have met more NR people, but the place was absolutely jammed with people. We saw fellow bloggers Karol, Lisa(Happy Birthday!), Roger L. Simon. Nearly a dozen other bloggers were arriving just as we were headed to another event.

    We also met John P. Margand, executive director of Project REACH, an organization that provides support to crisis pregnancy centers, and Eric Metaxas, who used to be a writer for Veggie Tales (a favorite of all ages at our house).

    Here are a few photos -- Jonah Goldberg holding court at the bar:

    Derb in discussion:

    And a picture of the vast throng that assembled:

    I like what Karol had to say:

    I love the convention being in my city. All the regular rightwing events are on steroids, with more people than ever and a great vibe. I had my doubts about the convention being in the city, I thought that the protestors would be a downer but its been so great, the protestors are like crazy cousins who you tolerate but all the good times happen without them.

    You mean the New York conservative scene isn't like this all the time?

    Moore than enough

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    100_1290-nationofcourage.jpg

    At about 9:30, an Oklahoma delegate returned to our section and told us that she had been stuck for 15 minutes. She and others were herded into a lounge, and the curtains were drawn while a VIP passed. The VIP, a rotund gentleman, had a security detail two deep on both sides. One onlooker stepped out in front of the VIP, and a security officer grabbed him by the jacket and said, "I said step back, and when I say something you listen!" GOP delegates were penned up for about 15 minutes to make sure Big-Lie-er Michael Moore wasn't confronted with angry dissent.

    This must have been about the time that Moore was making his way to the press box at stage left. Shortly after our fellow delegate's breathless report, someone spotted Moore's red cap and spherical form. This was before John McCain began speaking. Some few people tried to get a chant going -- "Go home, Michael Moore" -- but it didn't catch on.

    But then when John McCain uttered the words, "And certainly not a disingenuous filmmaker" -- the crowd turned toward Moore, booed loudly and some began chanting "you! you! you!" while sharply pointing fingers at him. (All right, it wasn't just some -- it was me, too.) The boos lasted for what seemed like a minute -- almost a "Two Minute Hate" -- until McCain interrupted by saying that the line worked so well he was going to repeat it.

    In response to all this noise, Moore grinned and tipped his cap. Clearly he had read the reference to himself in the advance copy of the speech and decided to be in the arena to milk it for all it was worth. We gave him exactly what he wanted, and I'm sure he'll have a field day with it in his next USA Today column.

    McCain's speech was well-done and well-received on the floor of the convention, Giuliani's even more so. The chanting of "flip flop" -- which I could just hear on the C-SPAN broadcast -- in response to Giuliani's accounting of Kerry's record on the war was utterly spontaneous and seemed to start in our part of the hall.

    Did you notice the warm applause when Giuliani said at the beginning of the section of his speech about Kerry, "I respect him for his service to our nation"? If you're wondering, no one told us when to wave signs or applaud. That was spontaneous, too.

    The other feature of the evening that got the crowd going was the tribute to the armed services, which featured the song of each service. Everyone around me was singing along along, to the extent that they could remember more than the first line or two. (Lyrics and a bouncing ball on the big screen would have been nice.)

    OTHER VIEWS: Scott Sala was moved by his experience on the floor. Karol Sheinin loved McCain's anti-Moore line enough to forgive McCain for praising his Democratic "friends". Rick Brookhiser on NRO evaluates Giuliani's speech, career, and prospects.

    Radio row, bloggers' corner

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    Spent some time before this morning's proceedings came to order and during the some of the duller moments rambling through the media area. Bloggers' Corner is in a prime location to catch dignitaries as they pass by, and they are right across the aisle from where Sean Hannity will be broadcasting. As I came up, the credentialed bloggers were still working to get connected to the Internet -- no WiFi here. I saw Scott Sala and Karol Sheinin, whom I had already met around town, and Kevin McCullough introduced me to Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics, Kevin Aylward of WizBang (who was kind enough to add me to the RNCBloggers aggregation site), Roger L. Simon, John Hinderaker of Power Line and Captain Ed Morrissey.

    I got there just in time for the bloggers' chance to interview former Mayor Ed Koch, whose first remark was "What's a blogger?" and after being told it involved publishing opinion and news on the internet, he said he sends out an e-mail newsletter and asked if that made him a blogger, too. He was told that he's halfway there.

    Koch had been warmly received up on the convention floor a few minutes earlier, where he told delegates, "I'm here to convert you... for the 2008 election." For him the election comes down to who's willing to fight the war on terror.

    Over the course of my time on radio row, I spotted Neil Boortz, Tony Snow, G. Gordon Liddy, Pat Buchanan, Al Franken, and Biff Henderson of the Letterman Show. The Gatlin Brothers, who sang the National Anthem this morning -- the way it should be sung, at a moderately fast tempo and without all the diva-esque sliding around that most anthem singers use, but with wonderful three part harmony -- were appearing on various talk shows and occasionally bursting into song. (I will add that the Gatlins sang the anthem in a way that invited the delegates to sing along, which was a refreshing change as well.)

    I happened by Kevin McCullough's booth a bit later at a time when he was between guests and I had the chance to talk to his listeners here in NYC and over the web for a few minutes. I was caught off guard when he asked if I had a chance to listen to his show yet, so I hope he doesn't think I'm uninterested, it's just that I was in the platform and rules committee meetings during his timeslot. I have listened to his broadcast over the web (the latest show is repeated 24/7 -- follow the above link, or the blogroll link to his website), and it's a great show.

    Media blogrolling: New York Sun

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    Many thanks to New York Sun columnist Gary Shapiro for his kind mention of me in his column today:

    KNICK-KNACKS Tulsa-based software engineer Michael Bates arrived in town as an Oklahoma delegate. He blogs at www.batesline.com where he reported seeing the pro-Bush political theater group “Communists for Kerry”perform in “Soviet Union Square.”They shouted slogans such as “End the two Americas! Create one homogenous welfare state!” and “End tax cuts! Stop the menace known as ‘success’!”

    The Sun is New York's fastest growing newspaper and it has fraternal ties to great newspapers worldwide like the Daily Telegraph of London and the Jerusalem Post. I had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with Gary last week, and am grateful for the tip of his fedora.

    Remember, folks, "Papa says, 'If you see it in the Sun, it's so.'"

    For my KFAQ listeners, here's a link to the item I mentioned this morning:

    Advice to a Just-Elected Conservative Friend by Morton C. Blackwell.

    There was very little objection voiced to a rules amendment granting the Republican Party of the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas equal status with the 50 states, D.C., and four other territories (Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, and American Samoa). This would give the territory three seats on the Republican National Committee (chairman, national committeeman and national committeewoman), and two seats on each of the convention committees, the same number as each of the states, however large or small.

    The Commonwealth enjoys the same relationship with the US as Puerto Rico, but while Puerto Rico has nearly four million people, the Northern Marianas has only 78,252 inhabitants over less than 200 square miles. That's fewer people than Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, but a little more than American Samoa with population of 57,902.

    At first I thought it was nice for them to be included, as an acknowledgement of their status as a commonwealth and the strength of the local GOP. There were two gentlemen in the gallery whom I took to be Marianans -- they were very pleased with the result of the vote and were being congratulated by the Rules Committee members from the other territories.

    Thinking about it further, it doesn't make much sense for any of the territories to be extended equal status with the states in the Republican Party. The Republican Party exists to fight federal elections for Congress and the presidency, and these territories aren't involved in that process. Unlike the territories of the past, these territories are unlikely to become states and their current status seems permanent. It would make more sense for the Republican National Committee, representing the 50 state parties, would establish a fraternal or affiliate relationship with territorial parties, which would be autonomous.

    There's something silly about the tiny Northern Marianas having the same say as Texas in governing the Republican Party and setting its platform and rules. True enough, the final say is given to the convention as a whole, in which the size of state delegations is dependent on population and the success of the state party in electing Republicans to office. But the rules are such that the convention only ever votes up or down on the recommendations from the Rules and Platform Committees. It is just barely possible to bring an amendment from the floor, but it requires a suspension of the rules, and that means the support of a majority of six state delegations just to move for a suspension, and the support of two-thirds of the delegates to approve the suspension and allow you to bring your amendment. For all practical purposes, the decisions are made by the committees, and it would require a good deal of pre-convention organizing to successfully break through that barrier. There are considerable barriers to doing pre-convention organizing, but more about that later.

    Luck of the draw

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    One of the more intriguing proposals put before the Rules Committee on Friday came from Utah State Senator James Evans. Sen. Evans proposed a rule that would reserve four convention speaking slots for delegates selected at random. Evans argued that the grass roots are the strength of the party, and this would be a way to highlight that strength. He argued that delegates are informed, passionate about the party, and any one of them could speak for a few minutes about why he or she is a Republican. Presumably those who would not feel at ease behind the big podium could opt out of the lottery.

    The opposition came mostly from the northern states. Those committee members expressed concern that randomly-selected delegates might not "stay on message," and that it was important to use every hour of the dwindling amount of network TV coverage to put the nominee's message across. Never mind that the reason for the dwindling amount of coverage is that nothing unscripted is allowed to happen. Evans tried to calm the control freaks' fears by saying that the RNC would still be able to vet these random delegate speeches, as they vet every other speech.

    The proposal was defeated by about a 2-to-1 margin. The lesson that Republican leaders took away from the 1992 defeat was not, as it should have been, "don't renege on a promise not to raise taxes," but "no more Pat Buchanans" -- everything must be scripted and nothing must deviate, down to the signs that the delegates will be instructed to wave. (I don't however believe there is any truth to the rumor that convention organizers studied North Korean political rallies for ideas.)

    Evans voiced the heretical notion that the convention is not only for the nominee but for the delegates and the whole party. The question in his mind was one of trust -- why wouldn't we entrust a short speaking slot to a delegate who has given time and talent in support of the party?

    Through this debate and several others, I kept hoping one of the rules committee members would acknowledge the elephant in the living room -- the party is being run by control freaks whose control freakery hasn't actually been all that successful over the last few elections. Recall that Republicans haven't won the popular presidential vote since 1988, but we've done remarkably well in congressional and state legislative races, where our candidates are less likely to be polished and professionally managed, and more likely to say something off-message.

    It's good to be a B

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    I was going to post this from the front row of the "dress" section of the Ford Center (the old Lyric Theatre on 42nd Street, not the big mostly empty arena in Oklahoma City), but I still can't get Sprint's wireless web to work.

    My wife and I had great seats for the musical "42nd Street" thanks entirely to the fact that I am the first Oklahoma delegate in alphabetical order. Oklahoma had the right half of the first balcony, sharing the theatre with delegates from Texas, Nebraska, and Kansas.

    We left the hotel just after 3 and wisely decided to walk the three long blocks rather than take a cab.

    Did not see a single protester today. Not a one. Some friends went to Columbus Circle to catch the "big" protest and said there were maybe 100 people there. They weren't there when we arrived at the theatre, and they weren't there when we left. Times Square looked pretty normal, with tourists milling about.

    At the theatre, they had free soft drinks, champagne, and bottled water for us, courtesy the New York City host committee, and on each chair was a New York Times tote bag full of goodies, including Fodor's New York Flashmaps -- an extremely useful and portable guidebook -- some cough drops, and a very small New York Times T-shirt. As if I'm going to let my kid wear that.

    I should add that starting with our official check-in with the delegation on Saturday we have been loaded down with stuff -- a tote bag from the host committee with Rudy Giuliani's book, a book on New York landmarks, a box of special Republican Convention Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, with elephant noodles. Congressmen Istook supplied a tote bag with Istook logo merchandise -- ball cap, beverage mug, and that sort of thing. This morning we had a Sunday Times on the doorstep, plus a packet with NR, TNR, The Hill and Roll Call in it. I've heard we'll be getting a New York Sun every morning. (I know I should italicize all that, but I can't be bothered right now.)

    RNC chairman Ed Gillespie welcomed us, then introduced Rudy Giuliani to a standing ovation. Giuliani spoke briefly about the importance of reelecting this president, who after 9/11 understood the need to go on offense against the terrorists, not just play defense. We had a fifteen minute gap after Giuliani spoke, during which someone got the idea that our delegation should sing "Oklahoma!" which we did, with gusto. Then the Texas delegation in the orchestra section did some sort of bizarre ritualistic chant while they made a evil-looking gang sign involving the extension of index finger and pinky. We attempted to reverse any bad vibes by displaying the Texas sign upside down. Way up in the nosebleed section we heard the chanting of "Big Red! Big Red!" and we started to chant along until we realized that it was the wrong Big Red -- it was the one from up north, where they have an "N" for "nollidge" on the sides of their football helmets. So we drowned them out with a hearty "Boomer Sooner" chant. The Kansas folks sang "Home on the Range," the nation's least specific state song. Then there was a halfhearted attempt at "Deep in the Heart of Texas" from the folks from Baja Oklahoma, which was mercifully cut short by the overture.

    A star-studded night

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    Starry-eyed radio talk show host Kevin McCullough reports (with photos) on the wonderful evening he and his wife had at Saturday night's media reception (I like the Don King / John McLaughlin photo), and an exciting chance encounter walking home from the bash.

    This afternoon my wife and I spotted G. Gordon Liddy in the hotel lobby, but we didn't stop as we were worried about being late for the play. I am happy to report that there was no electrical tape on our hotel room door when we returned.

    Rules are made

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    On Friday I attended the Republican National Convention Rules Committee meeting. This committee, made up of one male delegate and one female delegate from each of the fifty states and five territories (D. C., Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands), met for five hours to approve a set of rules governing this convention and the party for next four years. Rules Chairman Bob Kjellander, Republican National Committeeman from Illinois noted in his opening remarks that the Democratic National Committee can alter their party's rules willy-nilly at any time, while the Republican rules can only be changed by the national convention.

    Take note of that distribution of seats at the table, because it came into play several times during the committee's deliberations. States and territories, big states and small states, states with strong Republican Party organizations, and states where the local Republican Party is nearly dead -- all have the same amount of representation on the Rules Committee, the Platform Committee, and the Republican National Committee, which governs the party between conventions.

    Like the Platform Committee, the Rules Committee met at the Javits Center, a massive convention center on the Hudson River three long blocks west of Madison Square Garden. The GOP committees were the only activities in the building, which meant that at most you had 500 people meeting in a few conference rooms downstairs while the cavernous exhibition hall went unused. I wondered who picked up the tab for reserving the whole hall. Javits is in the deadest part of midtown Manhattan -- very little foot or auto traffic, very few nearby restaurants, the nearest subway access is half a mile away at least. Committee members were delivered to and from Javits by bus.

    The Platform Committee was set up for TV, with the committee members on risers facing the gallery, microphones in front of each pair of delegates, and bright TV lights on both the delegates and the committee chairman and co-chairmen. The Rules Committee had no risers, only three microphones, which were set up in the aisles, and the committee members were facing away from the gallery and toward the chairman who was up on a dais. There were a lot of reporters and cameras at the platform hearings; the only reporter at rules committee seemed to be Bob Novak, who was taking notes, answering numerous cell calls, and visiting with Morton Blackwell and one other committee member whom I didn't recognize.

    More Commies for Kerry

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    The real deal this time. From the Communist Party, USA, website:

    [A] victory by Kerry and the broad democratic movement that supports him would be a body blow to the extreme right, bring some relief on bread and butter issues, and lift the siege on our nation's constitution.

    It also would create a much more favorable political terrain on which the people's movement could struggle for its agenda, beginning with an end to the occupation of Iraq. ...

    The biggest danger in this election is not that people have unrealistic expectations of a Kerry administration, but rather that a substantial section of voters still believe that it doesn't make much of a difference who they vote for on Nov. 2. The responsibility of left and progressive people is not to spend their time bellyaching over Kerry's shortcomings, but to convince millions of people that there is a choice and that the outcome of this election will have enormous consequences for our nation's future.

    You might want to be sure to obtain a "Get Out of Gulag" card, while you still can.

    Embrace your inner bolshevist!

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    The revolution is glorious, Comrades!

    I have returned from the Communists for Kerry rally in Soviet Union Square, during which the message of world revolution went forth, despite the best efforts of agents provacateurs posing as socialist agitators, claiming that the comrades were agents of Fox News, or Karl Rove.

    Comrade Lenin harangued the masses, explaining that getting John Kerry into the Red House is only the first small but necessary step toward true revolution.

    Revolutionary slogans echoed through the gathered throng:

    "Embrace your inner bolshevist!"

    "Only one thought, happy thought! Let the Party do your thinking for you!"

    "Red is the new black!"

    "We cure weak liberalism with strong communism!"

    "End the two Americas! Create one homogeneous welfare state!"

    "Stop the economic boom created by G.W.Bush!"

    "End tax cuts! Stop the menace known as 'success!'"

    RNCBloggers.com is an aggregation of the latest posts from credentialed and non-credentialed bloggers covering the Republican National Convention. Many thanks to RNCBloggers for including me on the list. I notice there's another blogger who is here as a convention participant -- the wife of an alternate delegate from Ohio, who writes at white-pebble.net.

    While I will mainly be writing about the Convention, there is still a lot brewing back home in Tulsa politics, which is my usual beat, so bear with me if I deviate into local politics now and then.

    Off to Commies for Kerry rally

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    Off to Soviet Union Square to join the proletarian uprising in support of Comrade Kerry. Meanwhile, here's a puzzler for my Tulsa readers:

    "We don't need the diversity of opinions, things get done more efficiently without the meddling of intellectuals!" Who said it?

    A. Tulsa Whirled editor Ken Neal.

    B. Bloodthirsty Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.

    Hmmmm.

    Convention boogers arrive

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    Had the pleasure last night of spending some time with Dawn Eden, and through her (influential person that she is) got to meet Matt Welch and Tim Blair, who will be covering the RNC on the convention blog of Reason magazine.

    Matt is an associate editor of Reason, a Los Angeles-based libertarian monthly (and an excellent source for free-market perspectives on local government policy). You can find his blog here with a preview of his convention coverage and links back to columns he wrote about the DNC.

    You can find Tim Blair's blog here. He has interesting plans for Sunday's protest. And here's Right Wing News's interview with Tim.

    And you can now find both their blogs and the Reason conventions blog on the blogroll on the right side of the home page.

    Platform committee coverage

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    I'm about to run out of battery power, so I'll comment later, but here are a couple of stories on NRO about some of the more interesting platform committee debates.

    Tim Carney of Evans and Novak Political Report writes about the education platform plank that praises the Republican Party for spending more than LBJ.

    Conservatives in New York this week knew there was trouble once they read the first sentence of the platform on "No Child Left Behind." It read: "Public education is the foundation of civil society." (In comparison to "family," which earned the description of being the "cornerstone.")

    The second sign of trouble was learning that the subcommittee handling education was chaired by Rep. Phil English (R., Penn.), a key ally of Arlen Specter this past spring, and had the endorsement of the National Education Association.

    The two days of platform debate confirmed the suspicion that the GOP has become the party of Big Education.

    And that's a winning strategy for alienating our base while completely failing to impress the educrats of the NEA, of which the Democrat party is a wholly owned subsidiary.

    Mark Krikorian writes about Wednesday night's debate over immigration policy:

    Before the draft Republican platform was released yesterday, the immigration plank was being billed as an independent effort, not directed by the White House. The selection of Pennsylvania's Rep. Melissa Hart to head the subcommittee that would address immigration was spun last week as a concession to pro-control conservatives, despite her mediocre voting record on immigration. On Monday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, the platform committee co-chairman, denied that the White House was writing the platform immigration plank, telling the Washington Times that "I have talked to Karl [Rove] about the platform for a total of less than two minutes since I began working on this in the last month."

    They must have packed a lot of information into those two minutes, because the draft platform's immigration section echoed in every particular the president's call for a massive guest-worker amnesty. It included the very same language, about matching "willing foreign workers with willing U.S. employers," and the same disingenuous disavowal of amnesty.

    Krikorian goes on to compare the draft platform language with that of previous conventions going back to 1992.

    The most important issue of this election is the War on Terror, and George W. Bush is still the right man to finish that job, but more and more conservatives are unwilling to overlook the administration's rejection of long-standing conservative aims in these and other areas. They aren't angry because he's deviating from the party line, but rather that he's deviating from policies that these grass roots voters believe are best for the country, and embracing policies that take us in the wrong direction.

    Superdelegate kryptonite

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    More from today's Rules Committee meeting:

    Morton Blackwell, Republican National Committeeman for Virginia, moved to eliminate the automatic delegate slots given to the three RNC members from each state. Blackwell objects to the fact that an RNC member elected in 2004 will go as a delegate to the 2008 convention without facing voters in 2008. The superdelegate provision was added in 2000 for 2004.

    Rodd Moesel from Oklahoma gave a great speech in support of the motion, pointing out that the Democrats have a large and increasing number of "superdelegates" - officials who automatically get a seat at the convention without the support of the grass roots. It's a distinction of the Republican Party that the grass roots elect all our delegates, something we can boast about.

    Blackwell's motion would not have reduced the total number of delegates, and in nearly every case, the three additional at-large slots called for in the Blackwell amendment would go to RNC members, but the state convention would have the option of sending someone else, if an RNC member should become unacceptable in the four years between election and the next convention.

    The motion was defeated, with strongest opposition from northern states.

    Disclaim this!

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    Ever received a fundraising letter from the "Tulsa County Republican Fund Drive"? Did you know that none of that money goes to the Tulsa County Republican Party?

    This has long been a complaint of local party leaders, who have to go to the same donors who have received these solicitations and ask for money to fund a local party office, a part-time office manager, grass roots activities, and assistance to local candidates. Most donors assume their contribution to the RNC will help the local party too, so county chairmen have to disabuse them of that assumption.

    This morning at the Republican Convention Rules Committee, someone tried to address this problem. Patricia Carlson, delegate from Texas and Tarrant County, wanted an amendment to force the RNC to include a disclaimer in RNC fundraising letters, explaining that none of the money stays locally. The amendment was killed by being tabled by a bare majority vote. Thanks to Mrs. Carlson for making the attempt.

    Bryant Park Blogging

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    This has been a rotten day for blogging. There was plenty going on in the Rules Committee meeting worthy of reporting, but the SprintPCS wireless web network was down. When I called the help desk, they said their whole corporate network was down -- call back in a couple of hours.

    (By the way, for those who are curious, I have a Kyocera 6035 SmartPhone, which runs PalmOS, and I use mo:Blog, which so far is the only Palm app for blogging I've found that doesn't crash or lock up my phone.)

    All right, so I'll blog back at the hotel. The dial-up connection is pretty good -- 40 kbps and no dropped connections. Then I notice the rate card by the phone by the bed (which I hadn't used yet -- there's no rate card by the phone on the desk). The hotel wants $1 a local call, up to 10 minutes, plus 10 cents a minute thereafter. Oops.

    Hotel's got high speed internet, too, but it's $10 a day. I thought about buying a month of Wayport access ($50) which would bring the cost down to about $5 a day, but the Wayport website refused my credit card. (I double-checked with the credit card company, which said Wayport hadn't even tried to bill my card, so the problem is with Wayport.)

    I don't know why expensive hotels with hard beds and tiny rooms and limited cable service add insult to injury by charging for local calls and high speed net access. The nicest places I've stayed are the midrange suite hotels that are cheaper than full service, but have a fridge, a microwave, the full local cable lineup (yay C-SPAN2!), free high speed wireless, and beds that are actually comfortable.

    But I have found a nicer place from which to blog. Bryant Park is just a few blocks from the hotel, just behind (west) of the New York Public Library, and it offers free WiFi access. The park is bustling with life. Some parks are dysfunctional -- the space isn't inviting, isn't comfortable, so people don't stop and use it. It's really easy to build a park that doesn't work. (Nota bene, you pocket-park planners in Tulsa!)

    Bryant Park was once a dysfunctional park, a scary place to be avoided, but no longer. I'm sitting on the terrace, on a chair with the laptop on the table. If I felt like it, I could move the table and chair somewhere else. There are chairs and tables all over the grassy area and on the plaza around the fountain. Some of the chairs are like school desks with an attached writing surface and a drink holder. People are reading books and newspapers, doing homework, writing letters, meeting friends or just watching the passing parade. There's a little carousel on the south edge of the park. A double-row of trees -- birches, I think -- buffer the park from the surrounding city blocks but don't make you feel cut off or hidden. Very nice.

    I don't know about my fellow Oklahoma delegates, but I don't feel at all like a fish out of water in the big city. I lived in Boston for five years and walked or rode the subway everywhere. It's great to be back in a truly urban place for a few days.

    The last couple of mornings I walked from the hotel into Grand Central Station to catch the subway for part of the trip to the convention committee meetings. To see the streams of people rushing in every direction, crossing without colliding, and then to jump into one of those streams isn't at all scary to me. It's exhilarating. Between the rush of the people and the sight of Grand Central's beautifully restored interior, I have had a silly grin on my face, which I'm sure would betray me as a bumpkin from the sticks, if anyone actually made eye contact, that is, which they don't.

    Bryant Park is as relaxed as Grand Central is frenetic, but that silly grin still made an appearance at the sight of this beautiful park and all the people who are enjoying it.

    Primitive tribe invades NYC

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    NYC blogger Jessica is on "crazy protester watch" and she thinks she's made her first sighting:

    The other girl, with even messier dreads than the first, took out a can of sliced peaches and concentrated on opening it with an unidentified object. It seemed like an object not meant for opening cans, or at least for opening cans very poorly. She would suck out the juice as she slowly made her way around the circle, and would wipe her hands on her dirty pants. The last guy was trying to talk to his companions about a book he was reading. He was analyzing the way the author described primitive human beings, and I could not for the life of me make any sense of his argument. Maybe because he was distracting me by going off on his little tirade while playing jungle gym with the handle bars. The dude looked like a human monkey as he lifted himself up and hung from the ceiling of the subway car.

    This is going to be a fun week.

    Seriously, without going into any details, I have seen a very significant police presence around town, and contrary to one report I read, the officers look to be vigilant, not goofing around.

    Jessica also features a minute-by-minute account of a protest last weekend by Communists for Kerry.

    RNC bloggers profiled

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    The Wall Street Journal has a nice profile of most of the bloggers credentialed for the Republican National Convention. It looks like a good group, certainly a sympathetic group, for the most part. I'm looking forward to meeting them next week. I've already met one of them, Karol Sheinen, who has a great blog called Spot On, and who is a political consultant who worked on Herman Cain's Senate campaign in Georgia. In the WSJ piece, she mentions hoping to hear him speak at the convention -- that would be electrifying. His loss in the primary was a big loss for the party, although we should still take over that open seat from the Democrats.

    Fuzzy memories -- by John Kerry

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    New York talk radio host and blogger Kevin McCullough caught another interesting discrepancy between John Kerry's memories of the '60s and what actually happened. Kevin 's got a sound bite from a Brit Hume report quoting a Kerry speech on Martin Luther King Jr's birthday last year. It's reminiscent of Bill Clinton's "vivid and painful memories" of the burnings of black churches in Arkansas during his childhood.

    Go have a listen.

    UPDATE: Thanks to Kevin for the nice mention. It was a real pleasure to get to meet him in person and talk politics. Kevin will be covering the convention from Radio Row and on his blog, and you can hear streamed audio of his latest show 24/7 by following this link.

    More anti-delegate discrimination

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    Yesterday Platform Committee staffers were handing out copies of proposed amendments. I asked for a copy and was told that they were only for press. I pointed out that I was a delegate. No dice. I asked if I could have a copy if any were left over. Only reply was a shrug.

    I realize that I am not a committee member or a credentialed journalist, but I am a convention delegate and will be voting on this platform in a few days' time. Can't I at least have the scraps from the table?

    UPDATE 8/26/2004, 5:00 PM: When education-related amendments were being passed around this afternoon, I gently pressed the issue with another committee staffer, who was kind enough to check with her boss if it was OK for me to have the handout. (There were far more copies than people in the room.) She got the OK, and not only have me a copy then, but made sure I got a copy of a later handout.

    Re-reading this, I think it makes me come across as bitter about this, which isn't the case. But the inversion of importance between the media and the delegates does seem absurd, and it's an aspect of the gradual slide of national conventions from real conventions to long-form infomercials.

    Palestinian pal

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    (UPDATED: 5:20 PM)

    Platform committee member Cathie Adams of Texas just gave a stirring speech in support of the removal of a platform plank which calls for a Palestinian state within the present borders of Israel. She did not move to have the platform condemn the idea, just to drop advocacy of the idea.

    Colo. Gov. Bill Owens, chairman of the subcommittee on the War on Terror, argued for retaining the language, on the grounds that Pres. Bush supports creation of a Palestinian state and so does Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. (Nevermind that Sharon's support was necessitated by pressure from the U. S. State Department.) That's not really an argument, rather it's an appeal to authority.

    Bill Owens, someone I had thought might be my pick for President in '08, just dropped several notches in my estimation. I can't support anyone who will defend the policy of pressuring Israel to commit national suicide.

    The motion was tabled with a loud voice vote. I understand that the tabling tactic was used on the issue of embryonic stem cell research as well, to avoid taking an up or down vote.

    If you wonder why I feel so strongly about this, you need to know about Abigail Litle.

    Ramesh Ponnuru of NRO blogged the platform proceedings (start there and scroll up) as he watched via C-SPAN2. The aforementioned R. Novak has published a column saying that the platform is for all practical purposes being dictated by the Bush campaign. Platform proceedings started later than usual (late Tuesday instead of Sunday), and the draft was kept away from everyone, even the committee members, until the committee convened. The list of committee members was kept under wraps, which made it impossible for them to be lobbied for one change or another.

    I'm hearing that the harmony on the family subcommittee I mentioned earlier is a side-effect of a very clever maneuver -- herd all the strong social conservatives onto one subcommittee, then put certain contentious issues, like embryonic stem cell research, in the hands of other subcommittees less likely to deviate from the administration's line.

    I don't have a problem with showing due deference to Republican elected officials in the drafting of a platform, but neither should elected officials, not even the President, be allowed to dictate the party's position on individual issues or the priority attached to them.

    Perils of phone blogging

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    Sorry for the multiple posts. I am still getting the hang of using moBlog to post from my phone/PDA. moBlog is telling me posting failed when apparently it succeeded.

    Either that, or the radical menace that is Communists for Kerry have hacked my site.

    Who's in charge?

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    Frist has just asked the parliamentarian for a ruling on whether a platform amendment decrying the growth of gambling is germane to this section of the platform. Mr. Chairman, you alone have the authority to make rulings. The parliamentarian can only advise. Surprised none of the committee members made that point of order.

    On my right

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    ...about seven seats down, Bob Novak. I thought about asking for an autograph or taking a picture, but there's something unseemly about treating a working journalist like a celeb.

    Sen. Bill Frist has just called the Committee on Resolutions (Platform Committee) to order, at about 6:05 pm EST.

    skipandjoy.jpg

    Before the session, I spoke to Oklahoma's committee members, Joy Pittman from Tulsa and Skip Healey from Davis (seen above). Joy was on the "Protecting Our Families" subcommittee, chaired by Mississippi Governor and former RNC chairman Haley Barbour. It was the first committee to finish its work, at 10 o'clock this morning, earning a special reward from Frist -- a box of Goo-Goo Clusters, shipped up from Nashville.

    Joy said that the subcommittee, which dealt with social issues, was harmonious, conservative, and pro-life. The platform section is very similar to the language in the 2000 platform.

    The family subcommittee is the first to report. So far the only amendments offered have been attempting to make the platform even more conservative.

    Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be focusing a lot more here and in real life on the Republican National Convention. (Note to the Cockroach Caucus -- I will still be keeping an eye on City Hall, so don't try anything.)

    Earlier today I sent the following e-mail to the chairmen of all the state delegations to the Republican National Convention, asking them to forward it on to their states' delegates and alternates. I will let you know what kind of feedback I receive.


    Dear fellow delegates,

    I'm an at-large delegate from Oklahoma, and I'd like to take a few minutes of your time to call your attention to an important issue.

    In just over a week we'll be gathering in New York City to renominate President Bush and Vice President Cheney, and to celebrate our party's achievements at every level of government.

    We will also be looking ahead to 2008 -- we as delegates will vote on the rules which will govern the Republican Party until the next convention, including the 2008 presidential nominating process. The decisions we make at this convention will shape the contest for our party's next standard-bearer, and it's important that we make the most of this once-every-four-years opportunity to reexamine our rules.

    Going as far back at least 10 years, there has been a growing sense that the current system of front-loaded and plurality-take-all primaries does not serve our party well, and that the problem is only getting worse as more states move their primaries earlier. At best, we may well find ourselves in 2008 in the same awkward position that the Democrats are in this year. The nominating process would be effectively over eight months before the election, and the party would be stuck with a presumptive nominee who fails to inspire the grass roots of the party and fails to appeal to the American electorate as a whole. At worst, the shortened primary season may not give us enough time to learn about the candidates. Damaging information may emerge about the presumptive nominee during the many months between clinching the nomination and the convention. Under the current rules, if such a flawed candidate refused to step aside, the convention would have no choice but to go ahead and nominate him.

    Leading up to the 2000 convention, the Brock Commission studied reforms and brought forward a recommendation known as the Delaware Plan, which would have addressed front-loading by putting the most delegate-rich states at the end of the primary calendar. The plan received the endorsement of the Republican National Committee, but in the Rules Committee it was killed as the result of lobbying by political operatives who were focused on short-term advantage rather than the long-term health of the Republican Party. You can read what happened by clicking this link.

    Since 2000, the schedule has become even more front-loaded and the problem has only gotten worse. If we waste this opportunity and take a pass on the issue at this convention, it will be four years before there is another opportunity to reform the process, and changes won't take effect until the 2012 primary season.

    The word from on high is that no substantive changes to the rules will be brought before the 2004 convention. But ultimately, that decision is up to us, the delegates.

    As a grass roots party activist like you, I've worked on countless campaigns, attended countless caucuses and conventions, was the Republican nominee for a city council race, and currently serve as a state committeeman and member of my county's central committee. I don't have a candidate picked out for 2008 or any axe to grind. I'm not committed to any particular reform proposal. I'm just concerned that we have a process in place that will give us the strongest possible nominee as the standard-bearer for our Republican principles in 2008 and beyond.

    We can make a difference. The future of the Republican Party has been entrusted to us as delegates to this year's convention. If you agree with me that this convention should address our broken presidential nominating system, if you agree that we can't wait until 2012, take action today:

    1. Contact your state's delegates to the convention Rules Committee and urge them to consider and recommend primary reforms to the convention. Remind them that any Rules Committee member has the right to bring a reform plan up for consideration by moving to amend the proposed rules. Urge them to give the convention as a whole the chance to consider this important issue. Remind them, too, that it only takes 25% of the committee members to write a minority report, which would also come before the convention.
    2. E-mail me at gopreform -at- batesline -dot- com and let me know of your interest in this issue. In order to bring about reform, we will have to be organized and in communication. When you e-mail, let me know the best way to get in touch with you in New York City. If there's sufficient interest, we may organize a meeting prior to the convention's opening.

    If you would like more information, please write me at this e-mail address. A web search for Delaware Plan and primaries will lead you to many articles on the reforms proposed in 2000. This website presents nearly a dozen alternative plans for reforming the nominating process, listing the pros and cons of each. Whatever reform proposal you prefer, let's work together to address the problems in our broken nominating system.

    Sincerely,

    Michael D. Bates
    Oklahoma at-large delegate

    Scott Sala of Slant Point is one of the bloggers given official press credentials by the RNC for the Republican National Convention. One of his recent entries has an up-to-date list of credentialed bloggers. He also asks for ideas:

    I still am soliciting ideas for angles to cover. Lots of people recommended issue that are getting sidelined - like choice, religion and others that may not portray such an Urban Republican message. Let me know any thoughts. Thanks.

    Here's an angle for the convention bloggers: Any controversy likely to be associated with the convention will happen the preceding week, during the platform and rules committee meetings. Plan to attend and cover these meetings and talk to the delegates who are on the committees. I don't have a complete schedule, but I understand that Platform Committee sessions begin Tuesday, August 24, and will continue daily through the week. Rules Committee is only scheduled to have a single meeting on Friday, August 27.

    The issues Scott mentions above, and many other contentious issues, will be discussed in the Platform Committee and its subcommittees. Committee members will be working with the 2000 platform, platforms submitted by the state Republican parties, and input provided to the convention website. The aim will be to keep the base happy while avoiding any public show of disunity during the convention proper. While a major challenge to the President's positions on the issues is not expected, any of the members of the committee (two from each state) could take the initiative on a pet issue.

    One issue that may not be on your radar screen is immigration. There is a lot of grassroots discontent with the President's immigration policy. It was evident in resolutions submitted by precinct caucuses to the Tulsa County Republican Convention Platform Committee (which I headed this year) -- it was one of the three most often expressed sentiments, the other two being support for a strong pro-life plank in the platform and support for the President's execution of the War on Terror, including military action against Saddam Hussein. Oklahoma's state platform reflects the same concern about the consequences of Bush's immigration policy, which many consider an amnesty, for all practical purposes, which will encourage a surge in illegal immigration. Any disconnect between the President and the grassroots is where controversy is likeliest to erupt.

    The Rules Committee will recommend a set of rules to govern this convention and the rules which will govern the party until the 2008 convention, including the rules for the presidential nominating process. At the 2000 convention, there was a detailed proposal for reforming the process which had been hammered out by a special task force over several years and was going to be recommended by the Republican National Committee's permanent Committee on Rules to the convention's Rules Committee. At the last minute, the Bush campaign pressured the committee to pull the proposed changes off of the table. I hear that the permanent Committee on Rules isn't making any recommendations for significant reforms this year, but that doesn't preclude a group of the convention's Rules Committee members from taking the initiative and making a proposal of their own. In my opinion, it would be a lost opportunity if the issue wasn't debated at all.

    To prepare yourselves for covering these committee meetings, be sure to review the rules and platform adopted by the 2000 Convention. And feel free to e-mail this delegate and long-time party activist with any questions you may have. (And don't miss this entry on what being a delegate is all about.)

    Scott Sala of Slant Point, one of the bloggers invited by the RNC to cover the Republican National Convention, caught my earlier entry about security and the situation that the media (including invited bloggers) may be afforded more liberty than the delegates, in terms of what we are permitted to bring with us into the convention hall. He wrote a sympathetic reply:

    While I sympathize, especially since delagates are perhaps the most-enthusiastic Republicans in the country, and they merely want to be confortable and have fun and record a few memories for posterity, I understand security concerns as well. I guess I think of it as a sports event, with very much the same policies people are subject to every weekend around the country. Yeah, it sucks, but in many ways that's the world we live in - and it was this way long before 9/11.

    But some of this delegate's concerns are due to his discovery that bloggers will be allowed to bring in the items listed above. This of course is due to the status of media being given to select bloggers.

    What he says makes perfect sense if you start from the assumption that "delegate" is just a fancy way of saying "spectator," "fan," or "cheerleader." Scott's reference to delegates as "perhaps the most-enthusiastic Republicans in the country" suggests that he makes that assumption. Most people who watch these conventions on TV have never attended a precinct caucus, or a county, district or state convention, and probably haven't given much thought to how the delegates got there, or why they are there. It would be reasonable to assume that the only people who matter are the speakers and the media there to cover them.

    The celebration will be fun, as will being there in person to hear the President and other leading lights of the Republican Party, but I'm sure people at home will be better able to see and hear the speeches. I am not going to New York, and spending money on airfare, hotel, and restaurants just to be a prop, a warm body in the stands, or a member of the cheering section. I am going for the same reason I attended the county, district, and state conventions -- to participate in setting the course of the Republican Party for the next four years. The delegates are there to vote on four items -- a presidential nominee, a vice presidential nominee, a platform, and the party rules for the next four years, including the rules governing the 2008 presidential nominating process. The first two items are foregone conclusions this year. The second two don't attract much attention, but they matter greatly.

    Balloon failure, 1980

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    The news that the founder of the American Muslim Council pled guilty today to engaging illegally in business with Libya, and last Thursday night's balloon deployment failure at the end of the Democrat National Convention brought back memories of 24 years ago, when Libyan connections overshadowed another Democrat convention, and the balloons wouldn't fall that year either.

    You may recall that in 1980 Sen. Ted Kennedy had challenged President Carter for the nomination, and although Carter had the lead coming out of the primary season, Kennedy refused to drop out.

    Toward the middle of July 1980, Billy Carter, presidential brother, acknowledged that he was being compensated by the government of Libya to serve as that country's agent. By the end of the month, the White House and the Attorney General had admitted to knowing about the connection, the Senate had announced plans to investigate, and a "dump Carter" movement began to build momentum. Democrat leaders could smell disaster and were afraid that Jimmy Carter would take down the whole party with him -- and they were right to be afraid.

    Still, Carter had enough pledged delegates to assure his renomination. There were calls from Democratic congressmen and governors for Carter to release the delegates pledged to him, so that they could vote their consciences. The convention opened with a rules debate -- over Rule 16(c) if I recall correctly. A contemporaneous account by Rick Brookhiser was rerun on National Review Online this week:

    At stake was a proposed rule requiring delegates to be bound by the results of the primaries and caucuses that chose them. It was of course the final consummation of the campaign reforms so zealously sought by the party's liberals, and the Carterites insisted righteously on enjoying the spoils of success at the polling booth. In the heat of the moment, Senator Ribicoff even declared "we can't take from a man what he has rightfully won" — an outburst that challenged fifty years of Democratic social policy, but never mind. Supporters of the "open" (that is, brokered) conventions were forced into equally contorted postures. By binding the delegates, warned Governor Carey, the Democrats would be forsaking a "tradition of 150 years," and somewhere in Heaven Burke smiled on his newest disciple. Senator McGovern challenged the rule on the grounds that it wasn't democratic enough — delegates committed to a previous decision could not carry out the "present convictions of the people." He did not say whether, moved by his own present conviction, he would now retract his vote against allowing the states the same privilege with regard to the ERA.

    I learned today from the King of Fools, who attended the Texas Republican Convention as a delegate and with media credentials, that a number of bloggers (including Michele of "A Small Victory", SlantPoint, Wizbang, Captain's Quarters and Matt Margolis) have been offered credentials to the Republican National Convention. The King offers some good convention-blogging advice from his experience -- things like don't forget to eat.

    Here's the part of the invite:

    For the first time, bloggers will hold an on-site presence at the Republican National Convention called "Bloggers Corner." Positioned near Radio Row, credentialed bloggers will have the opportunity to connect with delegates, guests and other surrogates for interviews, and to provide original content, including multimedia, to their audiences. Through this behind-the-scenes look at the convention's proceedings and events, bloggers will play an important role in telling the story of the 2004 Republican Convention.

    Bloggers Corner will be located in Madison Square Garden's Theater Lobby in the corridor adjacent to Radio Row. Electrical outlets, tabled work stations and necessary hook-ups for laptop and other portable computers will be available for high-speed Internet and Intranet access. Main TV monitors will also be accessible in all convention common areas including Bloggers Corner and will carry closed circuit coverage of all floor activities.

    Bloggers will be credentialed to move about all media areas with access to the Media Center and the news conference center for briefings.

    Now I am pleased to see that bloggers are being accorded this kind of recognition, but as a delegate to the Republican National Convention, I'm starting to feel like a second class citizen. Yesterday, I received a packet of info from the convention, which included a list of prohibited items. These are things we won't be permitted to carry within the security perimeter. Included in the list are laptop computers, camcorders, cameras with long lenses, bags for carrying cameras or binoculars, backpacks of any kind. So it appears that observers of this event -- members of the media, including bloggers -- will be accorded far more freedom and trust than actual participants in the event -- the delegates.

    I had really hoped to be able to do some blogging of my own, and even e-mailed someone on the organizing committee asking about the availability of Wi-Fi in the convention hall. I've started to look into wireless web on my cellphone and using Azure or another PalmOS-based Movable Type client as an alternative to the laptop, but there's no guarantee that they won't decide to ban cellphones and PDAs -- the letter emphasized that the list of banned items is not exhaustive.

    Most of the other banned items are the sorts of things you're not allowed to bring on airplanes, but the ban on laptops, camcorders, and camera bags strikes me as just not wanting to have to bother screening them, and who cares if the delegates are inconvenienced. It reminds me of the early days of TSA screenings when they were confiscating nail clippers. Umbrellas are banned, too, as are containers of any kind. Given that Madison Square Garden is about a mile from the hotel, I had planned to do what I used to do when I lived two miles off campus in college -- put anything I might need for the day in a small backpack and then plan not to return to the hotel until after the evening session. I suppose I might be able to fit my glasses and contact lens case, Kleenex pack, map and guidebooks, Oklahoma pins for trading with other delegates, business cards, my digital camera, the agenda, platform, rules, and any other bits of paper and ephemera they hand out, and a NY Post somewhere in the pockets of my pants or my official Oklahoma delegation blazer, but a little backpack would make life easier. I'd even settle for one of those transparent backpacks the students have to carry in dangerous schools. It would be nice to be allowed to bring in a bottle (plastic, of course) of Diet Coke and a bag of M&Ms or trail mix, but it looks like that would violate the "no container" rule.

    Thanks to SlantPoint for posting the invitation letter, so now I know who at the convention to bug about bringing in my laptop.

    David Szondy has been watching the Democratic National Convention and, in his August 1 entry, has concluded that the race is now Bush's to lose. Kerry can't embrace his Bush-hating base without alienating undecided voters, doesn't have the economy to run on, and is in an untenable position regarding the War on Terror:

    What I came away with from in Kerry's speech is a man who would indeed defend his country, but only in extremis and for whom 9/11 is a tragedy rather than an atrocity. His strategy for the war on terror will likely be that he will continue to help Iraq, but will undertake no new military initiatives or stand up to the French. He will instead quickly and quietly relegate the war to the back burner. "War" will become a rhetorical word and it will be a matter for diplomacy and law enforcement. We will see the odd special forces raid; a missile strike or two; deference to Chirac; embracing of the UN; all sorts of new commissions, committees, and conferences; resolutions and treaties aplenty will be signed; but the end result will be a Munich Accord with the Axis in return for promises to behave so that the West can return to the status quo of the past five decades. Meanwhile, the terrorists and their sponsors will do as they please knowing that no one will seriously bother them.

    What I see is basically this: assuming that nothing new happens in the next four years (no new strikes against the Axis or spontaneous regime changes), if George Bush is re-elected we will face a ten to one chance of a major terrorist strike against the west. By that I mean one where we lose 50,000 people in an WMD attack (If we take out Iran or North Korea the odds shoot to a hundred to one). If John Kerry is elected, we face even odds of getting hit. This is because, whatever his failings, Bush knows that we are in a real war with real villains who want us dead or enslaved and our enemies know that Bush will kill them. Kerry gives the impression that they are just a problem to be managed, and that is an impression that is one of dangerous folly.

    With this in mind, all Bush has the initiative. All he has to do is speak honestly about what he believes, what he has done, and what he will do and the electorate will have a fair measure of the man. With Kerry you have a man who is without the support of his very antiwar supporters if he speaks true, will not fight if he is false, and would hit soft either way.

    Read it all, then go enjoy some of the light-hearted stuff in the archives.

    Convention wishes

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    There's a teleconference for Republican National Convention delegates on Monday night. It's good timing: Watching this week's Democrat convention has got me thinking about our shindig in a month's time. Here's my wish list:

    1. No lame pop music from the '70s (or any other decade). Aging boomer Democrats look awkward enough boogying on the convention floor -- imagine how goofy Republicans will look. Let's go for traditional upbeat patriotic music instead -- John Philip Sousa is timeless.

    2. Get rid of all the milquetoast moderates they've got lined up for the prime time speeches, and give the podium to eloquent, passionate leaders who can make the case for the Republican platform. The supplemental list included some improvements, like Colorado Governor Bill Owens, but more could be added. Now that he's our Senate nominee, Tom Coburn would be a great choice. So would Senator Lindsay Graham of South Carolina. Herman Cain would be terrific; even though he didn't win his race, he's got a future in politics. Michelle Malkin offered some suggestions on her blog.

    3. And why not show off our party's deep bench? Put the spotlight on up-and-coming stars now serving in state legislatures, county courthouses, and city halls. I'll bet the state chairmen would have some suggestions. From Oklahoma, I'd suggest Speaker-to-be Todd Hiett and State Rep. Pam Peterson.

    4. Let's have at least one real debate -- a decision for the delegates to make where the outcome isn't predetermined. I suggest a debate about the 2008 nominating process. I believe the process is broken -- not counting incumbents running for reelection, we haven't had a nominee with the enthusiastic support of the grassroots of the party since 1980. (Counting incumbents only takes us up to 1984.) Republicans haven't won a majority of the popular vote in a presidential election since 1988, when we were helped immensely by an incompetent Democrat nominee running on a platform of "competence, not ideology". 1988 happens to be the year that Oklahoma and many other states switched from caucuses to primaries, as part of the push for Super Tuesday. The system we have gives all the delegates to a candidate who can manage the slimmest of margins in the early primaries, and the field is cleared within a week or two as everyone scrambles to jump on the bandwagon of the inevitable winner. I'd like to debate a national rule that would nullify any state rule binding a delegate to vote for a particular candidate. Whether or not there's agreement with my diagnosis, the debate is worth having. What better way to demonstrate that the Republican Party is responsive to the grass roots?

    5. Highlight the War on Terror every night. Remind the delegates and the viewers what is at stake. Give people a vision for the long road ahead and why we must take it. Remind people what happened on September 11th, 2001, and also the terrorist strikes that led up to it -- the '93 WTC bombing, the bombing of the American embassies in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, all the way back to Iran's seizure of American hostages in 1979. Help people understand that a strong defense is not enough; we must take the fight to the Islamofascists. We also need to emphasize the progress we're making. Maybe someone could arrange for Hopper Smith to speak to the convention via satellite from Afghanistan.

    In a time of war, a time when so much is at stake, we don't need a big party choreographed to the music of Kool and the Gang.

    Cain rising

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    As Tom Coburn heads for what could be an outright primary victory at the end of this month, another principled conservative in on the rise in Georgia. Herman Cain, former president and CEO of Godfather's Pizza, is rising in the polls in his race to succeed Zell Miller in Georgia and has front-runner Johnny Isakson running scared. Over on the Southern Appeal blog, there's a post that neatly captures why conservatives are so excited about his candidacy. He's a straight shooter, "a conservative 'Bullworth' candidate who tells voters... exactly what he believes." And what he believes is grounded solidly in conservative principles, on social issues as well as economic issues. The link will take you to a couple of extended quotes from Cain's speeches and website which will give you a flavor. Cain and Coburn will make a great team, and conservatives ought to do what they can to make sure both win their nominations this month and are elected in November. (Remember even if you can't vote or pass out flyers, you can give money through his website.)

    Like the Oklahoma race, the conservative favorite started as an underdog. Unlike the Oklahoma race, the establishment favorite in Georgia is a social liberal, which should make the choice for Georgia voters even clearer.

    Thanks to NRO's Corner for the link.

    The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas is hosting an exhibition from the American Museum of the Moving Image in New York. Called "The Living Room Candidate", it's a collection of TV ads for presidential campaigns going back to 1952. You don't have to go to New York or Dallas to see the exhibit. It's online here.

    The Right Nation

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    This past week National Review Online featured five excerpts from a new book by British authors about the distinctives of American conservatism -- The Right Nation by John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge. The authors are respectively the U.S. editor and Washington correspondent for the Economist.

    From the fourth excerpt, "Right from the Beginning":

    The life span of the American conservative movement is comparatively short. The life span of America's exceptional conservatism, on the other hand, stretches back to the country's birth. The United States has always had conservative instincts: suspicion of state power, enthusiasm about business and deep religiosity. But for most of its history America has been so comfortable with its innate conservatism that it has had no need of a political movement to articulate conservatism's principles or harass its enemies.

    The article goes on to discuss the moderation of America's revolutionaries and to explain why the US has never had a potent socialist movement. And there's this interesting note illustrating that America isn't such a young country:

    Galileo was offered a chair at Harvard University, which was founded in 1636, before Charles I had his head cut off.

    Here's a comment that misses the mark, somewhat:

    But because they conceive of themselves as a new nation, Americans don't feel any need to make a cult of newness in the way that some Britons and French do. They have not disfigured the center of Washington with aggressively new buildings, as modernists have felt the need to update London.

    I'm not sure if they mean downtown Washington or the Mall. A couple of the Smithsonian Museums are aggressively modern. And a major battle in the War on Poverty involved the destruction of the old buildings where poor people lived and made a living and replacing them with modernist housing projects. (The places for these people to make a living were not replaced.) But in the authors' defense, the impulse to destroy came mainly from political elites enamored with European socialist solutions, not from ordinary Americans.

    The other articles in the series are:

    The Right Nation
    A Different Conservatism
    The Right Rules
    Right Roots
    Faith, Fortune, and the Frontier

    A few more interesting quotes:

    • "Not only has America produced a far more potent conservative movement than anything available in other rich countries; America as a whole is a more conservative place."
    • "In no other country is the Right defined so much by values rather than class. The best predictor of whether a white American votes Republican is not his or her income but how often he or she goes to church.... Yet despite the importance of values, America has failed to produce a xenophobic "far Right" on anything like the same scale as Europe has. The closest equivalent to a European hard-Rightist is Pat Buchanan, and his political fortunes have waned rather than waxed.... In Colorado Springs, conservatives see immigrants mostly as potential recruits, rather than as diluters of the national spirit.

    This week we say farewell to a man whose bold leadership reshaped our nation and the world. We mourn with his family at his passing, but it is also fitting to celebrate a long life well lived and recall happy memories. Many of us were inspired by Ronald Reagan to become actively involved in politics.

    There's going to be an informal gathering tonight at 7:30 in Tulsa at Paddy's Irish Restaurant and Pub to toast the life and accomplishments of President Ronald Reagan. You're invited to join us -- bring along a favorite Reagan quote or anecdote to share. If you've got memorabilia from his campaigns or his administration, bring that along, too. We won't be doing a formal program, just sharing memories.

    Paddy's is on the northwest corner of 81st & Memorial.

    Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Gail Heriot challenges the notion that the initiative petition process has been subverted for the benefit of powerful special interests. She cites a soon-to-be-published article analyzing the subversion hypothesis:

    It seems that there are real differences in the fiscal policies of initiative and non-initiative states. Initiative states spend less than non-initiative states. Initiative states concentrate more of their spending at the local level. And initiative states raise a greater portion of their revenue through fees rather than through taxes. The subversion hypothesis, however, gets no support from Matsusaka's research. In each case, the initiative states move public policy in a direction that it consistent rather than inconsistent with popular will. Voters tend to want their state governments to spend less money, etc. Hence, instead of subverting the true popular will, the initiative process appears to be giving that popular will a means with which to influence public policy.

    I think that is certainly true here in Oklahoma. Initiatives are not often used -- most of the ballot questions we get are referenda from the legislature, required in order to approve constitutional amendments. Only 366 initiative petitions have even been submitted since statehood, and many if not most of those have been ruled legally or numerically insufficient. There appear to have been fewer than 10 over the last 10 years, and it looks like about half never made it to the ballot.

    But initiatives gave us term limits, a ban on cockfighting, and set the bar higher for tax hikes -- all issues with popular support, where there was insufficient political will or clout to accomplish them in the legislature. One somewhat recent initiative was clearly the work of a special interest group -- that was the petition to legalize casino gambling, which went before the voters in February 1998. The original sponsors of the drive lost interest once it was on the ballot and it lost by a three to one margin. If, say, a company tried to use an initiative petition to give itself an indirect advantage over the competition, voters would pretty quickly see through the effort. The company would find it a lot more cost effective to lobby 149 legislators than a million voters.

    Club for Growth blog

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    The Club for Growth, which has endorsed Tom Coburn for Senate, has a blog, which I found through a trackback from ScrappleFace's obit for President Reagan.

    The Club's blog has an entry about Citizens Against Government Waste's 2003 ratings of members of Congress. Tulsa's Congressman John Sullivan had the highest 2003 ranking of Oklahoma's U.S. House delegation. His lifetime rating of 83 is just behind Ernest Istook's 84. The House as a body got a 50 rating for 2003 -- in 19 of 38 votes "the taxpayers won."

    The Club for Growth blog also has an entry with links to photos and audio clips of Ronald Reagan.

    Sometimes you find the best insights in the comments on the best blogs. Found this comment on Samizdata, in response to this challenge from a British reader: "Is the US Constitution such a sacred cow that you lot in the US will be shocked at someone in the UK who questions its utility?"

    It isn't that we mindlessly revere our constitution, or the utility of any written constitution. It's the particulars of our constitution that we treasure. Ours was basically written by a bunch of crabby, cynical, argumentative political junkies, dilettantes, cafe intellectuals, rabble-rousers and gentlemen farmers who disliked and distrusted government and people who seek power. There's some stupid stuff in there (it's been a while since we worried about having troops billetted in our homes), but it's held up remarkably well because it's not about particulars, it's about human nature. The checks and balances thing, for example, is a blueprint for pitting groups of vain ambitious men against each other in the hopes that none of them get much done.

    How often do people who dislike government get to build one?

    We began to disobey it before the ink was dry. So, as you point out, it's hardly an ironclad defense of liberty. But it helps. It's significant that when they want to break free of its restraints, our public figures are still compelled to pretend to see something in it that isn't there, and write heavily-footnoted rulings about how the thing that isn't there really is if you squint and turn your head on one side.

    Posted by S. Weasel at June 2, 2004 11:37 PM

    Spot on. "It's not about particulars, it's about human nature," is reminiscent of the conservative proverb, "Human nature has no history."

    (That last bit about "the thing that isn't there really is if you squint" makes me think of conservative Presbyterian arguments for infant baptism, but, as with the judges and the Constitution, at least they feel obliged to pay their respects to the original authoritative document.)

    Swinging the states

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    Politics! Maps!! A new web toy from the folks at Opinion Journal gives you a clickable map to develop your own electoral college scenarios of the upcoming election. A click on a state rotates it from the Republican to the Democrat to the undecided column. (Alas, they insist on coloring Republican states red and Democrat states blue, following USA Today's 2000 county map, despite the fact that red, as the color of the socialist parties throughout the western world, properly belongs to the Democrats.) A shift-click on a state shows you the percentage outcomes for the last six presidential elections. You can use any of the last six elections as your starting point, or use their default, putting high-margin-of-victory states in one column or the other, and leaving the rest for you to sort out.

    For more insight, you might want to read Slate's series on the swing states, which just began with a look at bellwether Missouri. See also Best of the Web Today from Thursday with a roundup of recent polls and Friday's edition, with the latest bookmakers' odds.

    Larry Sabato has an interesting analysis, based on 2000 results plus trends apparent from mid-term elections.

    There's a realistic scenario that could leave us deadlocked. (Click the image below to see the map.) If Kerry wins everything north of the Mason Dixon line, plus West Virginia, the upper Midwest (Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, Illinois), the west coast and Hawaii, plus New Mexico and Bush wins everything else, it's a 269-269 tie.

    If there's a tie and we have no faithless electors, it goes to the House of Representatives as a state-by-state vote. If the current House makeup holds, Bush gets the votes of 29 states: AL, AK, AZ, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, MI, MO, MT, NE, NV, NH, NM, NC, OH, OK, PA, SC, UT, WY.

    Four states are even-steven: MN, MS, TX, WI. Texas could go either way, as the new redistricting created several incumbent vs. incumbent battles. And several states have a one-congressman difference that could swing the other way. Note that several states are unlikely wins for Bush at the top of the ticket, but are heavily Republican in the Congressional delegation.

    (My state-by-state evaluation of the partisan balance of each House delegation was done in a hurry, with info from Politics1 which features lists of likely candidates for each federal and state race, links to newspapers in each state, and images of buttons from campaigns past. (Oklahoma's entry has a picture of the Bud Wilkinson for Senate button. An article in Oklahoma Monthly suggested that if Bud hadn't run down the Rural Electric Administration during his campaign, he would have won that Senate race and would have been positioned to be Nixon's VP and ultimately President.)

    The truth about Al Gore

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    Following the former veep's recent speech, Frank J. presented an assortment of "Fun Facts about Al Gore." Here's a selection:

    * His programming was specifically for him to be a politician. Now that he no longer is one, he's gone rogue.

    * If you turn on a microwave while Al Gore is near, he'll suddenly start singing showtunes.

    * Al Gore spent most of his vice presidency trying to keep Clinton away from his daughters.

    * The only way to destroy Al Gore is to get him to chase you under a hydraulic press. It's best to keep in memory all the nearest hydraulic presses before hand.

    Go read it all. And here's Frank J.'s guide to his best stuff.

    New media gets respect

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    The King of Fools has been granted press credentials for the Texas Republican Convention. Congrats to the King and we'll look forward to experiencing another state's convention vicariously.

    Here's his account of the senatorial district convention he attended back at the end of March.

    I note that he is raising some money from his readers to offset the costs of traveling to the State Convention, in anticipation of the live-blogging he plans to do from the convention and he's gotten a good response so far. You suppose someone headed to the National Convention might ought to try that?

    Remembering the Great War

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    Instapundit links to a length and fascinating story by Jack Neely in the Knoxville Metro Pulse about Knoxville and its people in the Great War and the war's aftermath. A few excerpts:

    Americans first regarded it as one of those stubborn, creaky old European conflicts that flared up in the Old World every now and then like the shingles, in which old men with peculiar hats and baroque motives would order slavish troops onto the field to whale away at each other for the old routine of glory and slaughter....

    Knoxville's reaction to the war:

    Patriotic optimism was overt; negative newspaper stories about the war effort were rare. But in some cases the war’s effects were disheartening. For more than half a century, Knoxville had been proud of its German population. Over the years, several German-born men were elected to City Council. A downtown Lutheran church conducted services in German. In the 1890s, the city had elected a German mayor, Peter Kern, of Heidelberg. The German society, Turn Verein, hosted popular dances and festivals.

    But now the Germans were no longer the Germans; in newspaper headlines and in common conversation, they were the Huns. During the war, some East Tennesseans of German heritage changed their names to make them sound English. Knoxville’s German community has rarely gotten together to publicly celebrate itself since. ...

    On Armistice Day:

    It was a wild day. Most businesses were closed, and even the stoic farmers on Market Square shut down early. Max Finkelstein put up a sign on the front door of his clothing store: “Closed For Joy.” The newspapers published Extras, hawked in the crowded streets, where horns, gunfire, cowbells, and firecrackers made things noisier than some battles, and multiple effigies of Kaiser Bill and Crown Prince What’s-His-Name sustained all manner of insults. Reporters found it remarkable that even middle-aged women were openly cussing, shouting “Damn the Kaiser!” right on streetcorners. All over town, Wilhelm was wishfully dragged, burned, beheaded. Some 10,000 gathered at Wait Field to burn phony kaisers. The only live European known to be in Knoxville that day was one unaccountably errant French officer wearing the blue uniform of the 171st French Regiment. Local women mobbed him with kisses, as if he were liberating Knoxville itself.

    Go read the whole thing. There's an interesting bit about the origins of Memorial Day which was started in Knoxville by a Union widow. Then there's this 1919 event, which puts Tulsa's own troubles two years later into perspective:

    Knoxville’s postwar months also brought unexpected anti-black sentiment. For half a century, Knoxville had regarded itself a model city with regard to race relations.

    The summer of 1919 would become known as Red Summer due to a rash of race riots, some of them provoked by the image of black veterans returning from war. Though the military was strictly segregated, and returning black troops were not feted nearly as extravagantly as returning whites, some were offended to see them wearing the same uniforms as whites, and to see them being hailed as heroes. Also, the Red Scare manifested itself in the South chiefly through rumors that the Bolsheviks were stirring up blacks into revolution.

    Knoxville’s own crisis came late that summer, when a frustrated lynch mob and a confused detachment of guardsmen laid siege to a largely black downtown neighborhood. Several were killed, some of them by machine-gun fire with a new weapon developed for combat in Europe. The military enforcement of a post-riot curfew was disproportionately harsh on the black community.

    Black historians cite World War I as the end of the years of prosperity and trust between blacks and whites in Knoxville. There followed a black exodus. The city had once been almost one-third black, but the minority percentage of the city’s population slipped below 20 percent.

    Thanks again to Instapundit for the link.

    A lot of chat the last few days about Sen. Jim Inhofe's outrage over the outrage [sic] over abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. (For comments on National Review's "The Corner" start here, then scroll up for more.)

    All this has reminded me how annoying it is to hear politicians claim, in reaction to some event, to have emotions that they obviously don't possess. Genuine emotion is accompanied by physiological phenomena -- your pulse races, your blood pressure goes up, you get goosebumps. But many politicians seem to have the same level of personal experience with emotion as Data from Star Trek. And just like Data, these pols seem to be programmed to mimic emotions as a way to set the humans at ease. Data's programming seems to be superior to that of these elected officials, who appear to be running beta versions of Genuine People Personalities.

    So, Senator, are you really feeling the emotions you find it politically expedient to profess?

    "appalled" -- Did all the color go out of your face?

    "horrified" -- Did the hair stand up on the back of your neck?

    "shocked" -- You sure seem talkative and coherent for someone in shock. Shouldn't you have mouth agape, drooling?

    "angered" -- Face flushed? Vein in temple throbbing? Jaw clenched? No? Then you're not really, are you?

    "saddened" -- I took a good look at your face, and it was impossible to trace the tracks of any tears. You haven't even had a good sniffle about it.

    "disgusted" -- Show me the airsick bag.

    The honest, all-purpose statement would be something like this:

    Jaded cynic that I am, I am generally pretty numb, particularly when it comes to human suffering, but I confess to be inwardly gleeful at the discovery of the "silver bullet" that will bring down the Bush presidency. But so as not to offend against the quaint folkways of the American people, I will pull a frowny face and talk about how it makes me sad and angry.

    Black Box Voting

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    There's a website devoted to concerns about electronic voting. BlackBoxVoting.com tracks news stories about the all-electronic voting systems that have been introduced in recent years. It's ironic that these systems, introduced in response to problems with paper ballots in the 2000 elections, may be even more susceptible to fraud and tampering. The website includes a free PDF version of a book on the subject. The introduction provides this definition of black box voting:

    Black Box Voting: Any voting system in which the mechanism for recording and/or tabulating the vote are hidden from the voter, and/or the mechanism lacks a tangible record of the vote cast.

    Oklahoma's voting problems have to do with who is allowed to cast a ballot, like the recent Tulsa City Council primaries in which hundreds of voters were given a primary ballot for the wrong party. Oklahoma's vote counting mechanism itself is very solid, particularly since there are physical ballots, which the voter personally marks and examines. If touchscreen voting is used it should produce some sort of marked paper, which the voter can examine and verify that it reflects his intent. This paper would be deposited in the ballot box and would be available for use in a recount.

    A number of experts have called for states to require that voting machine vendors release the source code for the programs that control the machine, so that flaws, backdoors, and other vulnerabilities could be uncovered and corrected.

    Odd polling trends: UK

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    Website PoliticalBetting.com reports on an interesting little adjustment made by polling agency Populus, which signals a major shift in public attitudes toward the parties. The latest Populus poll of the British electorate puts the Conservatives ahead of Labour by 4% -- 36 to 32, Labour's lowest percentage in years, with 22% going to the Liberal Democrats, a party that runs to the left of Tony Blair's New Labour.

    The raw numbers gave the Conservatives a 6-point advantage over Labour, but Populus adjusted Labour's numbers up by 2 points. Here's why:

    Early last year, after a short period of neutrality, the spiral of silence reversed itself. Polls began to find that the proportion of former Labour voters saying that they didn’t know how they would vote next time began to climb, while the proportion of Labour supporters saying that they were sure to vote began to fall. Pollsters have been adjusting Labour’s poll support upwards to take account of this growing number because all empirical data tell us there is about a 60 per cent probability that, however reluctantly, if they vote at all they will end up voting Labour again. Without this adjustment the Conservative lead in today’s poll would have been 2 per cent higher. SO in place of Shy Tories we now have Bashful Blairites, people unwilling to admit to pollsters or their friends that they still support the Prime Minister. Once so fashionable, new Labour has now gone out of fashion. This is very difficult to reverse.

    My guess is that this is due to Blair's support of the US position in the war on terror, which has been attacked fervently by the arbiters of popular culture. Backing Tony isn't cool any more. A few years ago, in the latter days of John Major's reign, voters supporting Conservative policies were embarassed into silence by sex and financial scandals involving Conservative MPs.

    A question: Is the "spiral of silence" a factor in American politics? How would you adjust a poll result to account for it? I'm guessing that it varies state to state, but generally the effect would reduce stated preferences for Republicans.

    All pollsters make adjustments, in part because people aren't always honest with pollsters, for various reasons, in part because a variety of factors (time of day, weather, age of respondent) can skew a voter's willingness to respond. The website for Populus has a frank and fascinating discussion of how they arrive at their adjustment factors.

    3. The logical way to try to make sure a poll sample is politically representative is to ask those polled how they voted at the last election and compare what they say with the actual result – a known fact about the political views of the country as a whole that serves as a benchmark, so that if the voters who have been surveyed for the poll prove to be politically unrepresentative, the whole sample can be made representative by weighting it to the election result. For the first few months, Populus polls for The Times were, therefore weighted to the actual result of the last election.

    4. But the detailed data of Populus polls bore out research at previous general elections, and surveys re-polling the same people during the course of a Parliament, all of which have shown that when asked after a general election how they voted, a lot of voters – possibly as many as one in five – don’t recall correctly: they may lie, or want to be seen to have backed the winner, or are correcting their past vote to match their future intention, or they may simply forget.

    The likeliest date for the next British election is believed to be 05/05/05. Another interesting fact, cited in the PoliticalBetting.com report, is that the Tories will need a 7% popular vote edge over Labour in order to win more seats than Labour. It has mostly to do with the presence of a third major party, which tends to split opposition votes. This is another reversal from the '80s and '90s, when the same phenomenon worked in the Conservatives' favor.

    Odd polling trends: USA

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    Over on WSJ's "Best of the Web Today", James Taranto asks why Kerry isn't gaining ground on Bush despite "right track/wrong track" and approval numbers that would normally mean trouble for an incumbent.

    Yesterday he found answers in some other poll numbers -- very low "strong support" numbers for Kerry among his own supporters (38% vs. 68% for Bush), and an indication that the Democrats are overplaying their hand (60% of voters think Rumsfeld should stay on the job). And there's a great Kerry quote that illustrates the personality problem he has with voters.

    Today Taranto presents some readers' explanations for the phenomenon. Here's a sample from Ray Newton:

    I think that you are missing one important point on the polls. If a pollster asked me if I approve of the job Bush is doing I would have to say no. Too apologetic, not strong enough.

    Do I approve of his handling of Iraq? Again no. Need to get tougher.

    Do I approve of his handling of the economy? Again no. Too much spending. Too much appeasing the Dems. Tax cuts must be permanent.

    For all of these reasons Kerry is a much worse choice. That is why polling can be very confusing. When you disagree, they never ask if you tend more towards the right or the left.

    Taranto breaks the last six elections involving an incumbent into two categories -- in 1972, 1984, and 1996, where the incumbent was a polarizing figure with strong opposition from the other party but solid support in his own party; in 1976, 1980, and 1992, where the incumbent was not as polarizing a figure, but had unenthusiastic support from his own party, and was challenged for the nomination. Incumbents in the first category won landslide victories, incumbents in the second category all lost. Taranto puts W. in the first category and says that this election comes down to Bush vs. anti-Bush, and if you're not already a Bush-hater, it's unlikely that anything is going to happen in the next six months to make you one.

    Rich Lowry had a great piece a few days back on National Review Online about how congressional gerrymandering is eroding democracy by making more and more congressional races uncompetitive.

    With the help of district lines sometimes so tortured that they look like works of abstract expressionism, incumbents have increased their reelection rate from 92 percent to 98 percent. That is a marginal-seeming but significant change. University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato has a feature on his website tracking close congressional races. In 2002, it followed the "Nifty 50," the 50 most competitive races. This year it features the "Dirty 30." "And we had to stretch to get to 30," says Sabato.

    Eighty-one incumbents ran unopposed in 2002, according to the Center for Voting and Democracy. In 350 of the 435 congressional races, the winner won by more than 20 percent. The center projects an even less competitive congressional cycle this year. This means representatives increasingly operate without the factor that tends to force them to be representative — the fear of defeat.

    Lowry goes on to cite other advantages of incumbency, and the difficulty of finding challengers to go after incumbents with such strong built-in advantages. He also recalls the way Democrat majorities in most state legislatures used their power in the '80s and '90s to try to ensure that majority of support for Republican policies didn't translate into a majority in the House of Representatives. That may explain why Republicans were able to reclaim the Senate in 1980, long before they conquered the House -- you can't gerrymander state lines. The Republicans' 1994 victory was not only the result of Clinton's unpopularity, but interpretations of the Voting Rights Act that resulted in drawing snake-like "majority-minority" districts, putting blacks, the most reliably Democrat demographic, in concentrated districts, pulling them out of districts where they had combined with white Democrats to keep southern seats in the Democrat column.

    Lowry's conclusion:

    States should adopt objective criteria for the drawing of districts, including contiguity and compactness that will limit somewhat the ability of the parties to play games. Bipartisan commissions should be given a significant role in drawing district lines. In Washington state, such a commission has created generally competitive districts so even a speaker of the House (Tom Foley) has lost a race there in recent memory.

    The goal should be to make it possible for most people to vote in a congressional election that matters. What a concept.

    As we've seen in Oklahoma, the problem extends to the drawing of legislative boundaries. We have absurd gerrymanders like Senate District 18, which runs from Grand Lake to 21st & Sheridan in Tulsa, evidently drawn that way to help Kevin Easley build support for the GRDA job and to ensure that his mama would have a good shot at succeeding him in the State Senate. Another goofy district is House 41, which is 80 miles long and six miles wide, stretching from Enid to Oklahoma City.

    It's important for legislatures to take up this issue now, long before it's time to redraw the lines in 2011.

    Iowa's approach is worth a close look. They have detailed information on their redistricting website.

    Their legislative service bureau uses computers to develop a plan, on which the legislature can only vote up or down. The Iowa redistricting process has certain features to avoid gerrymandering:

    Let's go RINO hunting

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    Today there's an election in Pennsylvania -- a Republican primary for U. S. Senate between incumbent Arlen Specter and Congressman Pat Toomey. Latest polls show the race even, so it's all down to which side will turn out their voters.

    Conservatives everywhere have the chance act today to shape the future of the American judicial branch. If Specter is renominated today and reelected in November, he will become the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, with the power to derail conservative, pro-life judicial nominations.

    (Recalling that local political divisions don't fall along national partisan lines, I recognize that some of my Tulsa readers, who are allies on local issues, might think giving Specter the power to derail conservative judicial nominations is a good thing. It's nice that we can work together on areas of agreement, despite passionate differences on other important issues.)

    Those of you who follow national politics will remember Specter's many betrayals of conservative principles. If you need reminders, follow this link for a list of National Review Online articles about the man. Or read this one from yesterday.

    If you've got even a few minutes to make some calls, send an e-mail to electtoomey@yahoo.com and they will send you a script and a list of phone numbers. Polls in Pennsylvania close at 8 p.m. Eastern time (7 p.m. Tulsa time), and the Toomey campaign plans to call until the polls close.

    Long distance calls are cheap, especially if your cell phone plan includes free long distance. My AT&T calling card from Sam's Club is less than 4 cents a minute -- for less than a meal at McDonald's I can encourage 100 voters to get out and vote for Pat Toomey.

    "Good guys walk out"

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    That was the headline on this entry in National Review's "The Corner". I didn't imagine National Review would take note of a local story -- the absence of four Tulsa City Councilors from last night's meeting, the first one to be held under Randy Sullivan's chairmanship. Sure enough, it was about something else.

    Four members of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission walked out of the Commission's monthly meeting when the chairman refused to permit a discussion of the staff director's attempt to reorganize the agency, a move the dissenting members say was not authorized by the commission. The item goes on to present remarks from each of the four commissioners who walked out, explaining their rationale.

    I suspect a similar motive -- the chairman's high-handed treatment of members -- was behind the absence of Jack Henderson, Jim Mautino, Chris Medlock, and Sam Roop from Thursday's City Council meeting. The Whirled story on the event mentioned a dispute at Tuesday's Council committee meeting over new Chairman Randy Sullivan's intent to appoint a permanent chairman over each committee, rather than share the chairmanship as had been done in the past.

    The Whirled reported that Roop objected to the new policy, which would be a change from the Council's traditions. Roop voted to uphold Council tradition on Monday in allowing Sullivan to become chairman, despite questions about Sullivan's character and fairness, so Roop must have felt betrayed by Sullivan's rapid abandonment of settled practice.

    Another possible motive -- an unwillingness to proceed with Council business until Roscoe Turner is officially seated and the Council's ranks are complete. This was the motive Jim Mautino cited, when asked by the Whirled about his vote against Sullivan for chairman -- he thought the Council should wait a week until the special election results were in, out of respect for the voters of District 3. Instead, not only was lame duck Councilor David Patrick allowed to vote in the selection of a chairman, he was allowed to preside, and he even nominated the vice chairman. Traditionally, the Council Secretary presides until a chairman is elected.

    Whatever the rationale, the missing councilors owe the public some sort of explanation, otherwise they leave it to the rest of us to speculate, and they allow the Whirled to put its own unsympathetic construction on the situation. The dissenting members of the Civil Rights Commission set a good example to follow. If these Councilors want to issue statements, I will be happy to publish them in their entirety, unedited.

    ScrappleFace is a wonderful news satire blog. Here's a bit from a recent entry:

    "Just like Bush reversed conventional wisdom by proclaiming that Republicans actually care about people," said Mr. Kerry, "my agenda declares that it's okay to be a bleeding-heart liberal without the bleeding heart part."

    Democrat National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe said it's all part of the "New Aloofness," a Democrat sensibility that says "It's okay to be for big government and higher taxes without having to justify it by claiming to care about people who are many rungs below you on the economic ladder."

    Please note that this is a parody, not a real news item, but like all satire, its punch is directly proportional to its proximity to the truth.

    More about "scare quotes"

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    Oklahoma City blogger Charles G. Hill over at Dustbury linked to my item about scare quotes in the District 4 City Council race. His first paragraph links to an example of Reuters' use of scare quotes, and that article links to this Weekly Standard column by Alan Jacobs, Wheaton College Professor of English, about the use of scare quotes in coverage of the War on Terror, and how they are a ready substitute for serious analysis and debate.

    (Scare quotes are also sometimes called "sneer quotes", which comes closer to conveying the attitude of the writer who uses them.)

    Scare quotes have two functions, the first of which is quite straightforward: They allow their users very easily to express incredulity about, and often contempt for, the views of their political opponents. But they also allow those users to avoid the hard work of thinking up their own descriptions of events or people or ideas. And they're parasitic: They suck all their nourishment from the host words, contributing nothing of their own. Fisk's sneer quotes--he's not as scary as he'd like to be--allow him to express his revulsion at the very notion of describing what's happening in Iraq as "liberation," but relieve him of the obligation to say just what he thinks is happening in that city. Is it (as many left-wing critics have said) a new form of colonization? Ah, but that is a claim too easily refuted, unless one wishes to stretch the term beyond all historical recognition. Is it occupation? But if so, we would need to have a conversation about the purposes of occupation, some of which can be better than others. This is all too complicated; it's so much simpler to wheel out the trusty old inverted commas.

    (I have a suspicion also that many journalists, even those most addicted to the scare quote, would say that it's their job merely to report, to describe--leave it to the editorialists and news analysts to offer positive explanations. But it is surely a curious understanding of reporting that allows the journalist merely, and just typographically, to cast doubt on the claims of others, without offering any reasons for that doubt or any alternatives to those claims.)

    Read the whole thing, then go visit dustbury.com and get caught up on life at the other end of the Turner Turnpike.

    For all that I write about Tulsa, the number one search phrase that leads to batesline.com is "howie carr", the Boston Herald columnist I saluted some time ago. And here's what I wrote about his February column about John Kerry's DYKWIA problem.

    HowieCarr.jpg

    A friend who lived in Boston in '88 (and gave me a gift mail subscription to the Herald during that presidential campaign) is cleaning house and dropped off a few political newspaper clippings from yesteryear. I thought I might scan a few of the most interesting and post them here. The first one up is this Howie Carr column from Friday, October 21, 1988, "Endorsement gives Pee Wee the Willies". Here's how it starts:

    How 'bout that Willie Horton guy?

    Just when it looks like Pee Wee is taking the pipe, Willie gets a phone call from the Gannett News Service.

    Does Willie say, "Tell them to call back in 20 to life"?

    Does Willie say, "I'm too busy making license plates"?

    No, Willie Horton takes the call and makes it clear where the murderer-rapist vote is going this year.

    "Obviously, I am for Dukakis."

    Obviously. Nice touch, Willie. Everyone reading that story in USA Today got a big kick out of that. Obviously.

    Carr goes on to suggest several other Massachusetts criminals and disgraced government officials who would gladly give their endorsements to Dukakis for his kind treatment of them.

    And here's a link to a recent column by Republican media consultant Jay Bryant reflecting on the Willie Horton furlough issue, its impact on the '88 campaign and lessons to be learned from it for 2004.

    If the Whirled had a columnist as funny and hard-hitting as Howie Carr, the paper might actually be worth reading.

    Oh, and here's a recent Howie Carr column on the Massachusetts Supreme Court.

    When you see quotation marks around a single word or short phrase in a news story, what comes to mind? It's a signal that the writer of the story doesn't buy the phrase or word being used, and she doesn't want you to buy it either. It sends the reader a signal that they should think something is fishy.

    (I can't think about this use of quotation marks without thinking of a Saturday Night Live character called Bennett Brauer -- played by Chris Farley -- who punctuated his remarks by making quote marks with his fingers. 'Well, maybe I'm not "the norm". I'm not "camera friendly". ')

    Here's a bit from a good summary of the semantics of this use of quotation marks:

    The use of quotation marks can be extended to cases which are not exactly direct quotations. Here is an example:
    Linguists sometimes employ a technique they call "inverted reconstruction".

    The phrase in quote marks is not a quotation from anyone in particular, but merely a term which is used by some people ‹ in this case, linguists. What the writer is doing here is distancing himself from the term in quotes. That is, he's saying "Look, that's what they call it. I'm not responsible for this term." In this case, there is no suggestion that the writer disapproves of the phrase in quotes, but very often there is a suggestion of disapproval:

    The Institute for Personal Knowledge is now offering a course in "self-awareness exercises".

    Once again, the writer's quotes mean "this is their term, not mine", but this time there is definitely a hint of a sneer: the writer is implying that, although the Institute may call their course "self-awareness exercises", what they're really offering to do is to take your money in exchange for a lot of hot air.

    Quotation marks used in this way are informally called scare quotes. Scare quotes are quotation marks placed around a word or phrase from which you, the writer, wish to distance yourself because you consider that word or phrase to be odd or inappropriate for some reason. Possibly you regard it as too colloquial for formal writing; possibly you think it's unfamiliar or mysterious; possibly you consider it to be inaccurate or misleading; possibly you believe it's just plain wrong. Quite often scare quotes are used to express irony or sarcasm:

    The Serbs are closing in on the "safe haven" of Goražde.

    The point here is that the town has been officially declared a safe haven by the UN, whereas in fact, as the quote marks make clear, it is anything but safe.

    Reuters and the BBC are renowned for using scare quotes to distance themselves from Western Civilization's War against Islamist Terrorism -- this for example was a BBC web headline when Saddam Hussein's sons were killed:

    U.S. celebrates 'good' Iraq news

    Here in Tulsa we saw extensive use of scare quotes in coverage of the District 4 City Council. For some unexplained reason, the Whirled insisted on referring to the Republican nominee as Jason "Eric" Gomez. The man's full name is, in fact, Jason Eric Gomez. This is how he is listed in voter registration records. But like a lot of people (including my dad), he is known by his middle name. There is nothing shifty or unusual about this practice, but the scare quotes suggest that an alias is being used, or perhaps he is some sort of eccentric or "colorful character", like Virginia "Blue Jeans" Jenner or Cowboy "Pink" Williams.

    When I first met him, he was introduced to me as Eric Gomez, and I only recently learned that Eric was not his first name. He uses his middle name in his business, on his website (eric4tulsa.com), on his campaign signs, and on the ballot. At one point I wondered if the Whirled was using that punctuation because that was the way Eric's name was to appear on the ballot. But the name on the ballot was Eric Gomez. (By the way, when you file for office, you get to pick how your name appears. Frequent candidate Virginia Jenner added "Blue Jeans" as her middle name on the ballot in later races, even though she is registered to vote as Dorothea Virginia Jenner. The two times I've run, I opted for my full first name, plus middle initial to differentiate myself from most of the other Michael Bateses in town, although I could have used Mike Bates.)

    Note that the Whirled did not give the same treatment to Gomez's opponent, "Councilor" Thomas Lee "Tom" Baker. I do not know if this "decision" was made by City Hall reporter Pamela Jean "P.J." Lassek, or by "City Editor" Lewis "Wayne" Greene, or perhaps by Editorial Page "Editor" Kenneth W. "Ken" Neal. I just know the "newspaper" wasn't consistent in the application of whatever "style book rule" they used to justify "Jason 'Eric' Gomez."

    You may think me silly to believe that this would make a difference in an election, but when a voter doesn't know much about the candidates or their stands on the issues, any minor thing may be enough to tip his decision one way or another. A voter can grasp at anything that would suggest one of the candidates is unreliable or just odd in some way. And in such a close race -- less than one vote per precinct -- it may have made the difference.

    Trusting the press

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    Jay Rosen was the author of the article about the role of journalists in a political campaign, which I linked to in the previous entry. He posted the article on his blog, and there are many interesting comments below it. Here's one from Dan McWiggins that speaks to an experience of cognitive dissonance that will be familiar to many readers of the Tulsa Whirled:

    I once received a really stunning insight into press coverage. Someone who had suffered a particularly unpleasant bout of media exposure asked me to think about the following question: How many times had I, watching the press deal with a subject I was intimately familiar with, seen them come even close to getting the story right?

    My response, after some thought, was "almost never." The fellow I was talking to then asked me why I would think they would do much better on any other topic. It was a very eye-opening moment for me, especially when I considered that most reporters are seriously left-leaning political partisans and, where politics are concerned, large amounts of power and money are at stake.

    I've never trusted the press since. Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass and Andrew Gilligan just drove the point further home.

    Instapundit points to an interesting column by Jay Rosen, from the Columbia Journalism Review, outlining how the true job description for a journalist covering an election has changed.

    Whenever we re-describe what journalists do new problems arise in what they should be doing -- and perhaps quit doing. New questions of accountability spring up.

    Welfare for the rich

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    Over on Reason magazine's website, John Stossel of ABC lists a number of ways middle and lower class taxpayers are funding welfare for the comfortable.

    Ronald Reagan memorably complained about "welfare queens," but he never told us that the biggest welfare queens are the already wealthy. Their lobbyists fawn over politicians, giving them little bits of money -- campaign contributions, plane trips, dinners, golf outings -- in exchange for huge chunks of taxpayers’ money. Millionaires who own your favorite sports teams get subsidies, as do millionaire farmers, corporations, and well-connected plutocrats of every variety. Even successful, wealthy TV journalists.

    That’s right, I got some of your money too.

    In 1980 I built a wonderful beach house. Four bedrooms -- every room with a view of the Atlantic Ocean.

    It was an absurd place to build, right on the edge of the ocean. All that stood between my house and ruin was a hundred feet of sand. My father told me: "Don’t do it; it’s too risky. No one should build so close to an ocean."

    But I built anyway.

    Why? As my eager-for-the-business architect said, "Why not? If the ocean destroys your house, the government will pay for a new one."

    What? Why would the government do that? Why would it encourage people to build in such risky places? That would be insane.

    Stossel goes on to cover farm subsidies and eminent domain abuse, including the famous case in Atlantic City involving a widow trying to keep her home against Donald Trump, who was trying to use city government to take it from her. It's worth reading. (Hat tip to Clayton Cramer for the link.)

    Slate's Explainer

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    Came across this while looking for the definition of the political phrase "stalking horse". Slate -- Microsoft's web magazine -- has a column called "The Explainer", which answers questions about the news. Interesting and, as far as I can tell, accurate. (Here's the Explainer's explanation of "stalking horse".) (Here's a better explanation from Wikipedia.)

    An entry from four years ago answers the question, "Do delegates to the national political party conventions have free will?" In other words, are they allowed to deviate from the preferences expressed by the primaries or caucuses that chose them? The short answer is yes for Democrats, and for Republicans it depends on the state -- each state party sets its own rule in that regard. The Supreme Court struck down state laws controlling delegate allocation, according to this entry, which doesn't say why, but I imaging it's on freedom of association grounds.

    Howie on Kerry: DYKWIA?

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    Those of us on the right were looking forward to Howard Dean as the Democrat presidential nominee. National Review even put his picture on the cover with the caption, "Please nominate this man!" Doesn't look like that's going to work out, but the alternative could be just as much fun, because John Kerry is from Massachusetts, and Howie Carr of the Boston Herald has been watching him like a hawk since his days as Mike Dukakis's Lieutenant Governor.

    In 1988, a friend gave me a mail subscription to the Boston Herald covering the run up to the presidential election. Two or three times a week, I got to read Howie Carr deflating the myth of Mike "Pee Wee" Dukakis and the "Massachusetts Miracle". Now that Kerry is the front runner, we get a foretaste of what we can expect if Kerry wins the nomination. From the New York Post last Thursday, here's Howie on Kerry and his dealings with hoi polloi:

    ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives.

    The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"

    And now he's running for president as a populist. His first wife came from a Philadelphia Main Line family worth $300 million. His second wife is a pickle-and-ketchup heiress. ...

    Kerry is, in fact, a Brahmin - his mother was a Forbes, from one of Massachusetts' oldest WASP families. The ancestor who wed Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter was marrying down.

    At the risk of engaging in ethnic stereotyping, Yankees have a reputation for, shall we say, frugality. And Kerry tosses around quarters like they were manhole covers. In 1993, for instance, living on a senator's salary of about $100,000, he managed to give a total of $135 to charity.

    Yet that same year, he was somehow able to scrape together $8,600 for a brand-new, imported Italian motorcycle, a Ducati Paso 907 IE. He kept it for years, until he decided to run for president, at which time he traded it in for a Harley-Davidson like the one he rode onto "The Tonight Show" set a couple of months ago as Jay Leno applauded his fellow Bay Stater. ...

    In the Senate, his record of his constituent services has been lackluster, and most of his colleagues, despite their public support, are hard-pressed to list an accomplishment. Just last fall, a Boston TV reporter ambushed three congressmen with the question, name something John Kerry has accomplished in Congress. After a few nervous giggles, two could think of nothing, and a third mentioned a baseball field, and then misidentified Kerry as "Sen. Kennedy."

    Many of his constituents see him in person only when he is cutting them in line - at an airport, a clam shack or the Registry of Motor Vehicles. One talk-show caller a few weeks back recalled standing behind a police barricade in 2002 as the Rolling Stones played the Orpheum Theater, a short limousine ride from Kerry's Louisburg Square mansion.

    The caller, Jay, said he began heckling Kerry and his wife as they attempted to enter the theater. Finally, he said, the senator turned to him and asked him the eternal question.

    "Do you know who I am?"

    "Yeah," said Jay. "You're a gold-digger."

    John Kerry. First he looks at the purse.

    Sadly, the Boston Herald keeps its columnists under online lock-and-key, so we have to hope that Howie's columns about Gigolo John are syndicated or otherwise made available on the web, like this one found on FreeRepublic.com.

    The headline is a bit misleading. The Chamber of Commerce function I attended was sponsored by the East Aurora, NY, Chamber of Commerce. Thursday night was President Millard Fillmore's 204th Birthday Party, held at the historic Roycroft Inn. I'm in the area on business, and I met up with a friend and joined the festivities.

    The event was graced with the presence of the birthday boy himself (bearing a startling resemblance to the editor of the local newspaper), fresh from his resting place at Forest Lawn in Buffalo. The 13th President delivered some choice remarks on local and national politics. For example, he recently visited Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to see how he was settling in to his new job. The new governor reports that he has his hands full....

    It was rather relaxing and amusing to hear about local political intrigue in which I have no involvement whatsoever. But local politics are the same everywhere -- developers and preservationists battle for control of the village council, governments face tough decisions on controlling spending, political rivalries mutate into personal vendettas.

    So in this lovely hotel in this charming village east of Buffalo, we drank Teetotaler Cider, ate Know-Nothing Stew and Politically Correct Corn Bread ("nicely presented and easy to swallow," according to the menu), and sang the ballad of Millard Fillmore, by Carol Sturdevant, to the tune of "Davy Crockett":

    Some folks wanted to invade Peru And make their forunes with rare bird doo. But they couldn't convince Millard Fillmore So he got credit for averting a war.

    Millard, Millard Fillmore, least known prez of all!

    Clayton Cramer links to an amazing speech by bestselling author Michael Crichton to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, on September 15, 2003. Crichton says that modern environmentalism is a religion, the "religion of choice for urban atheists". Here are a few choice quotes:

    There is no Eden. There never was. What was that Eden of the wonderful mythic past? Is it the time when infant mortality was 80%, when four children in five died of disease before the age of five? When one woman in six died in childbirth? When the average lifespan was 40, as it was in America a century ago. When plagues swept across the planet, killing millions in a stroke. Was it when millions starved to death? Is that when it was Eden? ....

    How about the human condition in the rest of the world? The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction....

    Howie Carr, scourge of hacks

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    Looking for some other stuff on the web, I came across something about Howie Carr.

    Howie Carr is a favorite of mine. Howie is a columnist for the Boston Herald and a radio talk show host. Oddly, I don't remember reading him during my time in college. I became aware of him a couple of years later, during the 1988 presidential campaign. Howie was doing the rest of the country a great service by telling the truth about Michael Dukakis' maladministration of Massachusetts, at a time when PeeWee (as Howie calls him) was running on a platform of "competence, not ideology". Howie exposed the reality behind the "Massachusetts Miracle", called attention to the frantic financial fudging that was going on to avoid Massachusetts showing a deficit a month before the election. A friend bought me a mail subscription to the Herald, and I had a great time reading Howie's hilarious dissections of Bay State politics.

    Howie's central focus is on government corruption and cozy deals, reporting things that the political "hacks" (a favorite word) would just as soon keep quiet. Howie doesn't just talk about what other people report. He does his own digging and comes up with the documentation. He regularly calls attention to ex-legislators and relatives of politicians who have landed cushy high paying jobs in the state bureaucracy, reporting their salaries and job "responsibilities". Many of Howie's columns feature info from the "hack hotline" -- whistle-blowing reports from government employees.

    Oklahoma 2004 election schedule

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    In case you hadn't heard, Oklahoma's election calendar, which has been more or less unchanged for decades, has undergone a makeover for 2004, moving the presidential preference primary, filing period, primary, and runoff about a month earlier each. The legislature approved the changes in this year's session. The earlier presidential primary date (a week after New Hampshire) has actually put Oklahoma on the radar for the Democratic presidential candidates. The earlier regular primary and runoff is designed to provide sufficient time for sending out and receiving overseas military absentee ballots between the runoff and the general election.

    By the way, the ballot for the presidential primary is set, and you can see the list of candidates here. The only surprise entry on the Democrat side is Lyndon LaRouche, while someone named Bill Wyatt has filed to run against President Bush in the Republican primary. The primary coincides with Tulsa's municipal primary, normally a very low-turnout affair in non-mayoral years. The coincidence could have an impact on a couple of Council races in heavily-Democratic north Tulsa -- the race to replace Joe Williams in District 1, and the rematch between David Patrick and Roscoe Turner in District 3.

    World (not the Whirled) has a blog

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    World Magazine -- the news-weekly that covers world news with wit and insight from a Biblical worldview -- started a blog about a week ago. The effort is headed by Editor-in-Chief Marvin Olasky. World had previously introduced a regular "BlogWatch" column, reporting on the blogosphere.

    In introducing the blog, World makes the point that many of the main voices in the blogosphere are either left-leaning or libertarian, so in coming from a socially conservative perspective they'll be filling a niche.

    They appear to be using Movable Type, which is good, and unlike most corporate media blogs, they have comments open -- we'll see how long that lasts.

    (I have considered opening comments on this site, but I don't have the time to play comments policeman. Instead, I encourage discussions about Tulsa issues to head over to the forums at tulsanow.org.)

    One of the items they cover that escaped my notice: Planned Parenthood has had trouble finding a general contractor for their new building in Austin. They got the story from WSJ's James Taranto's Best of the Web, but World linked to the current day's column, rather than to the permalink containing the story of interest. A common beginner's mistake.

    My only gripe is that this appears to be a group blog, but there is no indication of authorship on the entries. Part of the fun of other group blogs, like National Review's The Corner and the Dallas Morning News editorial board blog, is the give and take between different perspectives. Hopefully we'll see some of that on World's blog as well.

    Speaking of the Dallas Morning News blog, editorial board member Rod Dreher, formerly of National Review, is going on vacation, and Ann Coulter is taking his place as guest blogger. Should be worth watching.

    Just to be clear, World Magazine has no connection with the Tulsa Whirled, and they don't share the Whirled editorial boards whirledview at all.

    Dyn-o-mite on the right

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    Had no idea comedian Jimmy Walker (JJ on "Good Times") was a conservative, but here he is, defending Rush Limbaugh's comments about Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb and citing other examples of racial politics in the NFL.

    And here's a page of opinions on his website about the death penalty, the state of stand-up comedy, Trent Lott, reparations. Elsewhere on the site, it mentions that he's been hosting talk radio shows alongside his stand up work. Interesting.

    Presidential fundraising maps

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    Andrew Sullivan links to this fascinating map, showing the balance of contributions to Republican and Democrat presidential candidates by three-digit zip code region. You can also look at the same data by state and by county and see for each candidate where their money is coming from -- just use the pulldown menu to change candidates. Elsewhere on the site are rankings showing who's pulling money from the grassroots and the fat cats. Bush draws well from both grassroots -- measured by the number of small donations -- and fatcats. Lieberman and Kerry have the wealthiest donors on average.

    So far most of the money donated from Oklahoma is going to Democrats, particularly Lieberman, Dean, and Edwards.

    Lileks is unimpressed with the World's Greatest Deliberative BodyTM:

    The spleen, she hurts. I think it had to do with listening to the Senate debate, if that word applies, and wondering: are they always this banal? This condescending? Are bloviating prevarications the rule rather than the exception? In short: is the world’s greatest deliberative body really filled with this many dim bulbs, card sharps and overstroked dolts who confuse a leaden pause with great rhetoric? If everyone in America had been tied to a chair and forced to watch the debate Clockwork-Orange style, we’d all realize that the Senate is just a holding tank for people whose self-regard and cretinous reasoning is matched only by their demonstrable contempt for the idiots they think will lap this crap up.

    Unicameral house! Two year term! One term limit!

    And I thought the City Council was bad enough.

    Best of RWN Interviews

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    Over on RightWingNews they've got selected quotes from this year's best interviews, with links to the interviews. The list includes Milton Friedman, David Horowitz, Walter Williams, and Mark Steyn, the "one man global content provider". A sample:

    "When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I asked the local police chief (it's a one-man department) about what I should do in the event of an attempted break-in. He said, "Well, you could call me at home. But it'd be better if you dealt with it. You're there and I'm not." The British police would rather die than admit that. So, instead of prosecuting the burglar, they prosecute the homeowner for "disproportionate response". You're supposed to wait until the burglar has revealed his weapon before picking yours. "Ah, forgive me, old boy, for reaching for the kitchen knife. I see you've brought not a machete but a blunt instrument. Be a good sport and allow me a moment to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed, there's a good egg." This is insane, but, despite the visible deterioration of civic life in even the leafiest suburbs and villages, the British show no sign of rousing themselves to do anything about it." -- Mark Steyn

    Jack Ganssle is an expert in embedded software -- the kind of software that runs not on a computer but as part of another device -- controlling your car's performance, your digital cable converter box, your pacemaker or hearing aid. He writes that the Federal Election Commission's standards aren't sufficient to guarantee that the software running in voting machines is trustworthy.

    California's recall election will be tallied by a mix of voting machines, ranging from punched cards to the latest in high-tech wizardry. Anyone following the comp.risks forum knows of the furor over electronic voting machines.

    They're junk.

    That's a strong statement, but it applies to any product that does not fulfill its mission. In the case of voting, the only important feature is trust. And few computer scientists feel the devices deliver an accurate count.

    Vendors claim their machines work correctly and are tamper-proof, citing the Federal Election Commission's standards. Well, check those standards out. Any computer jock with the faintest knowledge of building good code will be appalled.

    Ganssle links to the FEC standard and delves into some technical detail, then proposes to replace the FEC standard with something more stringent and reliable:

    The FEC's mandates are much too weak to eliminate miscounting machines. It's time for a different approach.

    Let's get the mob involved.

    Don Corleone would never tolerate gambling machines that might rip off the five families of New York. State lotteries and casinos won't tolerate rip-offs either. They know how to instill trust in their products, trust that though everyone loses, customers know by how much. Customers would flock to other casinos at the faintest hint of a cheating machine.

    Outside contractors verify the integrity of all gaming machines, electronic or otherwise. They do this so thoroughly that granny hasn't a care in the world when she pulls the lever of the one-armed bandit.

    One such outside auditor is Gaming Laboratories International (GLI). To certify a new device, or even a software upgrade, vendors send GLI all of the source code, all of the tools needed to build the code, maybe a development computer, and even an in-circuit emulator if that's how you debugged your code. Expensive? You bet. Accurate? It sure seems to be.

    GLI tears the design apart, digs into the guts, finds back doors impossible to isolate via testing and ensures the customer will lose by exactly the amount specified. Tests check both functionality and threat resistance. Technicians zap every square inch of the gaming machine with a 27 KV prod - because cheaters often try to rip off the devices using ESD to confuse the electronics. GLI jimmies the coin box, and generally simulates all of the attacks observed by those hidden cameras in the casino's roof. That's regression testing of a whole new order. ...

    Change the code -- even just one line -- and the whole process repeats. The FEC has no such requirement. ...

    If a gaming auditor certified voting machines, elections wouldn't be so much of a, uh, crap-shoot.

    Educational empowerment

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    I went to the monthly Tulsa County Republican Men's Club luncheon today. The group's name is a bit of a misnomer, since the crowd is close to half-female and there are regular attendees from other counties. The food is good, the speakers are usually interesting, and it's fun to catch up with the latest political gossip. With term limits going into effect next year, candidates are already lining up for next year's races. At today's lunch I saw Brian Crain, who is running for Senate 39 (incumbent Jerry Smith is term-limited); Pam Peterson, who is running for House 67 (incumbent Hopper Smith is leaving the House this year or next -- he plans to run for Senate 25, but he may be deployed overseas with the 45th Infantry, in which case he'll resign early, and a special election will be held); and Joan Hastings, former County Clerk and State Representative, who may be running for Senate 25 (incumbent Charles Ford is term-limited).

    The topic of the day was education and the speakers were Union Schools Superintendent Cathy Burden, State Senator Charles Ford, and State Senator Scott Pruitt. Cathy Burden called for administrative consolidation of our more than 500 school districts and said it was hard to find teachers to meet the needs of that growing district. Sen. Ford gave a brief history of state funding for education, a system that has gone from locally-funded to one that is 75% state-funded, and which creates disincentives for local funding. Sen. Pruitt spoke of giving more control back to local districts, providing state funding and demanding results, but not dictating the methods to achieve results, thus empowering local administrators to make decisions.

    Amidst all the talk of empowering administrators and tweaking funding formulae, talk of empowering taxpayers (or, in Educanto, "patrons" ) and parents was conspicuous by its absence, especially conspicuous in a Republican meeting. I got to ask the last question, and so I stood up, and said so.

    We need patron empowerment. Our system of electing school boards is designed to discourage accountability to the voters. Board members in large districts like Tulsa serve four year terms, with one or two members elected each February. The filing period is in early December, during the Thanksgiving to Christmas rush; the election is the second Tuesday in February, which in even numbered years is one week after the municipal primary. Because of the staggered terms, there is no way for the electorate to dump the whole bunch at once, no matter how incompetent or unresponsive they are. The terms of office are far too long. Over time, a school board member tends to regard himself or herself as an ambassador representing the school administration to the community, rather than as the representative of taxpayers and parents, holding the administration accountable. An "us vs. them" mentality develops, with "us" being the administration and the board, and "them" being the unruly parents and taxpayers who have unreasonable expectations and are stingy, too.

    My remedy is to have every district elect the entire school board every two years, during the normal election cycle. I didn't mention this, but I'd even favor partisan elections -- there are stark differences in educational philosophy and they generally fall along national party lines (something that isn't true with municipal issues). Sen. Ford said that the legislature voted to change the election dates back in the '80s, but the school districts applied pressure to change them back.

    We also need parental empowerment, by which I mean genuine school choice -- the opportunity for more parents to choose private education for their children. I favor tuition tax credits and tax credits to donors to scholarship programs as ways to make alternative education affordable for more families without creating an entanglement between private schools and the state. Oklahoma is looking for ways to make itself attractive to energetic entrepreneurs, looking to attract and retain young people. As far as I am aware, no state has a statewide school choice program. Here is an opportunity for us to distinguish Oklahoma, make life better for families with school-aged children, and create a competitive environment that will help all schools improve.

    I'm just amazed that none of the Republican legislators brought up the issue of school choice. It makes me worry that even if Republicans take over the legislature, they will content themselves with tinkering with this broken system, and placating the teachers' unions and the administrators' lobby. The point, after all, is not to prop up an existing way of doing things, but to educate children, whether in state-run schools, private schools, or at home.

    Which presidential administration first raised the alarm that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to America? The Clinton Administration. Rich Lowry has them warning of the danger in their own words. (Thanks again to Dave Russ for the link.)

    A bit of belated blogging: A week ago I attended the monthly luncheon of the Tulsa County Republican Men's Club (a misleading name, since probably half of our attendees are women). The guest speaker was Howard Barnett, former CEO of the late great Tulsa Tribune, and chief of staff for former Governor Frank Keating for most of Keating's two terms of office.

    Barnett spoke about the current budget mess at the State Capitol. He said that the process is messed up because it was designed that way by Alfalfa Bill Murray. Oklahoma's founding fathers didn't trust big business and didn't trust the railroads, and made it difficult for companies to do business here. They also didn't trust government, so they hobbled the executive branch as best they could. Barnett says Oklahoma really doesn't have an executive branch, as most state government agencies are run by boards, to which the Governor only has a minority of the appointees, and he can only remove his appointees with cause. If the Governor appoints someone apparently solid to a board, but then his appointee goes native, becomes more of an advocate than an overseer for the agency, the Governor is stuck. There is no accountable executive power, and there is no means for negotiating priorities among the different agencies of government.

    Barnett says he's working on a book about Oklahoma Government, and his working title is It's Amazing That It Works At All.

    Barnett called for reform of the State Constitution. He headed up the effort to rewrite Tulsa's City Charter in 1989, and reflecting on that experience, acknowledged that they hobbled the City Council excessively, out of a fear that Councilors could become ward bosses. Some would say that the result under the previous administration was a city-wide ward boss unfettered by checks and balances. Barnett said that some structures do a better job of functioning when you have the wrong people in office -- so constitutional reform is important -- but the quality of the office holder is the most important factor in the healthy functioning of government.

    If I can find anything on the web that Barnett has written on this subject, I'll link to it, and post an update to this entry.

    This time it's the limited government advocates who feel cut out of the Bush administration:

    In a memo to hundreds of fellow conservatives, a former Reagan administration official says traditional views are being edged out by a neoconservative "national greatness" ideology that accepts big government and advocates interventionist foreign policy.

    "Today, most conservative pressure ends up as simple cheerleading for the White House," Donald J. Devine, who was President Reagan's director of the Office of Personnel Management, wrote in the memo. "That can be helpful, but there is nothing that pushes politics further to the right, leaving conservatism and the Republican Party to drift." ....

    The close identification between the conservative movement and Republican politics is part of the problem, said former Reagan administration official Floyd Brown.

    "The Republican Party is becoming more and more entangled with big government," said Mr. Brown, now executive director of Young America's Foundation. "As that trend continues, the movement needs to stand up and differentiate itself from Republican politics — not that I am not a supporter of the president's, because I am."

    A similar danger may loom for conservatism and the Republican Party locally as well. We love finally having a mayor who embraces faith and traditional values and who is willing to upset a few applecarts in order to reform city government. But what will conservative Republicans do if the Mayor backs a sales tax hike to build a new sports arena? Will conservatives swallow our concerns and rally 'round him? If the Democrats come out in opposition, will we feel more compelled to demonstrate loyalty to Our Mayor, or will we join with the Democrats against a regressive tax increase, on principle? And what if Republican leaders go in two different directions on the issues?

    We can only hope that the Mayor won't put the Republican Party in such a tough spot.

    Stephen Glass, "who fabricated details in 27 of the 41 stories he wrote" for the New Yorker has apologized with a hand written note to the head of the American Conservative Union for a 1997 article describing orgies and drug abuse amongst the College Republicans at that year's CPAC conference, an article Glass fashioned out of whole cloth. Nice of him to own up six years later when he's promoting a new book.

    Time to drain Foggy Bottom

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    Not a day goes by without a report that employees of our State Department (motto: "To protect and to serve... Saudi interests") is in some way undermining the policies of their nominal boss, President Bush.

    Donna M. Hughes, Women's Studies Professor at the University of Rhode Island, reports on NRO that the State Department seems to be touting legalized prostitution to foreign countries as a solution to the problem of global sex trafficking:

    Last week, the State Department took a Southeast Asian delegation for a tour of a brothel in Nevada. As a part of the International Visitor's Program, nine people from the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia visited the Moonlite Bunny Ranch and heard lectures on legal prostitution....

    Taking foreign visitors to brothels in Nevada seems to be an ongoing practice of the State Department. In August 1999, I gave a presentation on trafficking of women and children for prostitution to a group of U.S. Information Agency visitors from East Asia. They told me they too had visited a brothel in Nevada as part of their tour....

    The purpose of these particular State Department visitors' tours is to teach the participants about human trafficking and how the U.S. is combating the problem. One might conclude from the program of a visiting brothel and a pro-prostitution organization that the State Department is telling international visitors that legalization of prostitution is a solution to trafficking.

    Meanwhile, the Washington Times reports on morale over at State Department HQ:

    Walk the halls of the State Department's main offices in Washington these days, and you'll encounter an abundance of political cartoons — something you could not have found even three years ago. It's not that the diplomats at Foggy Bottom have suddenly developed a sense of humor, but rather a newfound contempt for the leader of the free world. The cartoons overwhelmingly lampoon President Bush as a simpleton who doesn't understand the "complexities" of the foreign policy.

    Foreign Service sneering at a president is nothing new, of course, but such open disrespect for a commander-in-chief hasn't existed since Foggy Bottom's diplomats decried Ronald Reagan's description of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire." But at least then-Secretary of State George Schultz was able to keep something of a handle on his lieutenants and foot soldiers. Colin Powell has not.

    Consider an example with deep policy ramifications. On March 31, representatives of the North Korean government told State Department officials, for the first time, that they were reprocessing plutonium, a key step in developing nuclear weapons. The Pentagon and the White House did not learn of this stunning announcement until Pyongyang told them during previously scheduled talks with North Korea in China on April 18. The State Department intentionally withheld this vital piece of information, fearing that, if the White House knew, officials there might call off the meeting. The White House was reportedly furious about this deception, but it has done nothing concrete to make sure it doesn't happen again.

    And if you want more reason to get mad, read through NRO's archive of reporting by Joel Mowbray, who has relentlessly covered the State Department's policy of expediting visas for Saudi nationals, obstructing efforts to release abducted American children being held in Saudi Arabia, and undermining our relationship with Turkey.

    Does the State Department exist to represent U. S. interests abroad, or to influence U. S. policy for the benefit of foreign countries? Is there corruption -- bribery -- behind this behavior? Or is it that people attracted to the Foreign Service are more likely to be enamored of foreign countries and disdainful of America? Does the glamour of jetting around the world and attending peace conferences in fancy hotels lead to a preference for "peace process" over real peace (which usually only results from the measured application of military force)?

    Perhaps we ought to fire the whole lot and start from scratch. A government agency charged with representing our interests around the world ought to by manned by people who identify with those interests. Yes, Foreign Service employees should have an appreciation for foreign cultures, but they ought to passionately love our culture, our way of life, and our traditions of liberty and rule of law, and seek to defend them against all threats.

    If someone views himself more as a "citizen of the World" then as an American, let him go join the French Foreign Legion. He doesn't belong in the U. S. Foreign Service.

    A hat tip to Little Green Footballs for the link to the Washington Times op-ed. LGF is another source for a long litany of State Department outrages.

    In today's edition of NRO, Kenneth Connor, President of the Family Research Council, warns that the Republican Party is in danger of alienating social conservative voters, who see the party leadership more interested in wooing those actively working to undermine traditional values than in defending those values. Connor points out that 4 million evangelicals failed to vote in 2000 and might stay home again:

    Since church attendance was the single best indicator of voting behavior, the stay-at-home evangelicals cost Mr. Bush the popular vote and very nearly the election. If these evangelical voters were not highly motivated by eight years of the smarmy Clinton presidency, and were not eager to "run to the polls" and put the whole sorry Clinton era behind them, then it is dangerous to dismiss the possibility they might stay home again on Election Day 2004 if their core issue is treated in a cavalier fashion.

    The remark of Cain

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    In case you missed it, an excerpt from the remarks of State Senator Bernest Cain:

    "I got a quote the other day that I got from Adolf Hitler. Adolf Hitler. And I don't have the exact words, but here's basically what it says. He says, in our government we are going to put Christians in key positions of responsibility because there has been too much liberal access going on out there and we are going to straighten up and make sure that the Christian culture is back in control. Now folks, they took Jewish people and they took them out and they strung them apart, they killed them, they mass murdered some of those people, and all of the ideas that were behind that were, and they were doing this while they were having Christian music going on, while they were having hymns. They killed thousands of Jews while they were doing hymns. That is what happens when you let the right wing of the Taliban come in and try to dictate to the State how we should run our business."

    You can read it all here in the context of the legislative debate, with a brief, apt rebuttal from State Senator Charles Ford.

    Cain has used his position as chairman of the Senate Human Services Committee to block legislation aimed at protecting the dignity and sanctity of human life. For example, he blocked a ban on human cloning which passed the State House on a 96-0 vote and which was sponsored by fellow Oklahoma City Democrat Opio Toure. On this occasion as well, he took the opportunity to bash supporters of the bill.

    "I'm not going to pass laws just so a bunch of right-wingers can go pump to their folks that they passed something," Cain said. "I'm not going to do that. We've got too much of that junk."

    I see from Cain's bio (linked above) that he learned philosophy as an undergraduate at Oklahoma Baptist University. Hope they do a better job of filtering out the duds nowadays.

    Updated 2020/01/24 to redirect the links to the transcript and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation press release to the Internet Archive.

    Separation of church and state notwithstanding, you can't separate your theology (or lack thereof) from your politics. What you believe about the existence and nature of God and the nature of mankind will shape your ideas about government and society. If we build public policy on a solid foundation of ideas that reflect the world as it really is, we will build a peaceful, happy and prosperous society. If we build policy on a complete misunderstanding of human nature, we will produce chaos and despair. That's why I like to ask candidates -- particularly judicial candidates who won't be drawn out on specific issues -- "Are people basically good, or basically evil?" If they get this question wrong, they'll make all sorts of bad decisions, and I'll end up in my house behind seven different kinds of locks, hoping the marauding hordes will leave me alone.

    This is what got me thinking about this: In today's "Bleat", James Lileks tells us about a couple of Anthony Burgess's dystopian sci-fi novels (The Wanting Seed, A Clockwork Orange), and how they reflect Burgess's fascination with "the dynamic between the teachings of St. Augustine and the Pelagian heresy." Augustine said that it was not possible for man not to sin -- because of the fall, humans cannot acheive perfection, apart from God's grace. Pelagius said, yes, it was possible for man to be perfect, and Augustinians shouldn't be so lazy about attaining personal holiness. Of course, theology has implications for public policy: "...in this argument, Burgess saw the two poles of political philosophy at work in the West, and beyond. Augustinian philosophy, which saw man as flawed and sinful and basically hosed when it came to perfectibility in this mortal plain, was the conservative view. Pelagius was liberalism: our nature is not only perfectible, we can perfect ourselves here and now."

    Which view you hold comes down to a matter of religious conviction but it leads you to very different conclusions about the role of government, how to educate, how to deal with crime. Some theological propositions aren't testable, but with regard to human nature, we have thousands of years of recorded history to draw from. We can see how real humans have responded to various methods of governing and quickly determine which set of presuppositions, which model, is closest to reality.

    I am reminded of a Monty Python bit: The Amazing Mystico and Janet, an illusionist (and his assistant) who builds high-rise apartments by hypnosis -- they stay up as long as the tenants believe in them. In real life of course, apartment buildings stay up only if they are constructed in accordance with the immutable laws of physics, exploiting those laws to produce the desired result. In the same way, a society built in accordance with the immutable laws of human nature will stand firm, while no amount of sincere believing will sustain a society built upon an illusion.

    Read the whole article. Lileks' Bleat is always worth reading, and the rest of his site is hilarious, thought-provoking, and amazing, too.

    Showing some initiative

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    Just got finished with our monthly Midtown Coalition meeting. We shifted it from our usual date and time in order to hold a discussion with area legislators. Tuesday falls in the middle of the legislative week and it's inconvenient to return to Tulsa for a meeting only to drive back to OKC the following morning. We understood, set a Thursday date at the recommendation of the legislators, who normally don't meet on Fridays, confirmed availability, got a meeting room. The only State Senator who said she would come backed out, citing the Senate's schedule, but so far no bad news from the House members. (Although Rep. Easley did warn me that so close to the end of the session, something might come up that would make the members unavailable.)

    Monday I sent out reminder postcards to our members. Tuesday afternoon I sent an e-mail reminder to the legislators. Within minutes I received two replies saying that because of the addition of a session on Friday, the representatives regretted that they would be unable to attend our meeting. Wednesday afternoon another cancellation came in. I'm expecting a big crowd for this meeting, and so I started to worry, because the star attractions won't be at the meeting. So I asked Councilor Chris Medlock to have someone come to talk about the Route 66 proposal.

    Thursday morning I got a phone call and an e-mail cancelling. Now we're down to one legislator left who confirmed he would be there and who hasn't cancelled. I assumed he had just forgotten or perhaps he figured that we will assume that he can't come like all the others. And since I hadn't heard if anyone could come to talk about Route 66, I called County Commissioner Randi Miller to see if she could come talk to us. At least we'll get to visit with one elected official.

    Lo and behold, at 7 p.m., just before the meeting is set to begin, State Rep. Roy McClain (D) walked in. The reason he didn't e-mail with a cancellation is because he actually planned on showing up. I cast no aspersions on the others for cancelling. Perhaps some had committee meetings late into the day; for the older members, perhaps making back to back drives between Tulsa and OKC would be too much to take. But I was impressed that Rep. McClain took the time to be there and was willing to make the extra drive. (I wonder if his colleagues will scold him for showing them up.)

    McClain may be just another Michael Flanagan. Flanagan, a poorly-financed Republican, beat Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, an entrenched and powerful but scandal-plagued incumbent, in 1994, but then lost big in 1996 as the seat reverted to its normal voting habits, replacing Flanagan with another Democrat.

    McClain didn't wow anyone with his answers tonight, but the kind of initiative he showed just by showing up may indicate that he has what it takes to hang on to a district that is overwhelmingly Republican by tradition and character. Mark Liotta (R) and Mary Easley (D) are two examples of representatives who hang on against unfavorable voter registration numbers; they do it by maintaining contact with their constituents all through the legislative session, and by wearing out shoe leather during the campaign season.

    Republicans who want House District 71 back in their column shouldn't take it for granted.

    P. S. Thanks to Julie Miner of the City Urban Development Department, who came to talk about Route 66, and Commissioner Miller, for being available at such short notice.

    No-runoff nightmare

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    The Democrat primary to replace convicted State Sen. Gene Stipe (D - Big Mac) has produced a narrow win for State Rep. Richard Lerblance of Hartshorne, with only 27% of the vote in a field of five candidates. There is no runoff in this special election, so Lerblance moves to the general election knowing that 73% of Democrat primary voters wanted someone else.

    We had a similar result in the race to replace John Sullivan in the State House after his election to Congress in early 2002. Six candidates ran in the Republican primary, won by Chad Stites with only 35% of the vote. The predominantly Republican district gave him a healthy victory over the Democrat in the race, but then the man's flaws began to surface. One wonders if a runoff in that special election would have brought matters to a head earlier.

    I believe in majority rule, and "winning" with 27% of the vote doesn't qualify as a majority. Given the closeness of the race, even a two-candidate runoff could fail to give the victory to the candidate preferred by the majority of the voters. The third-place finisher, with 22% of the vote, might have been the choice of those who voted for #4 and #5 if the bottom two candidates had decided not to place their names on the ballot. If all of their votes had gone to #3, he would have had 48% and far outpaced #1 and #2. A similar situation in Louisiana in 1991 sidelined the incumbent governor and left voters with a choice between "The Crook" (Edwin Edwards) and "The Klansman" (David Duke). The same sort of thing happened in Oklahoma in 1990 in both parties' gubernatorial primaries; Burns Hargis might well have placed 2nd had it been a three man race, and Steve Lewis easily could have finished 1st ahead of Walters and Watkins, if a couple of minor candidates had not been in the race.

    (Gubernatorial -- doesn't that word just make you think of a peanut doing the backstroke?)

    The only way to ensure that the most preferred candidate is elected is to have a series of runoffs, eliminating the candidate with the lowest vote total after each round.

    Too expensive and time consuming you say? That's why they invented Instant Runoff Voting -- one ballot, one election, but all the runoffs you need to ensure that the voters' preference gets the victory.

    The 2/5 cent sales tax for the use of the Sheriff's Department of Oklahoma County, opposed by the Mayor of Oklahoma City and the Chamber of Commerce as "too large ... too loose ... too long", was defeated soundly tonight, by an 80-20 margin. While the debate leading up to the vote was forceful, it did not appear to get personal, and as this Daily Oklahoman article (free registration required) shows, the two sides were respectively gracious in defeat and magnanimous in victory, with Sheriff Whetsel phoning to concede defeat, and a Chamber official offering to work with the sheriff to address the needs that prompted him to seek the tax increase. 36,000 people signed the petition to put the issue on the ballot, but only 10,059 voted for the proposition. Turnout was less than 14% of registered voters.

    Last night Mikki and I attended a banquet honoring Arthur E. Rubin, a pioneer, volunteer, and elder statesman in the Tulsa County Republican Party. Art, now in his 80s, campaigned for Wendell Wilkie in 1940, helped reorganize the local party after big losses in 1958, and has been in the party leadership ever since. He got Jim Inhofe started in elective politics, and has been an encouragement and supporter of countless other candidates, including John Sullivan and Bill LaFortune. He's a man of strong convictions, and a frequent writer of letters to the editor. When he started, Tulsa County was 4-1 Democrat; today, the county is solidly Republican.

    The evening included an impression performance by the Trojanaires, Jenks High School's show choir, and a slide show starting with Art's early days on the farm near Fairland, Oklahoma, through his service in World War II, his wedding, and his many travels with his wife. The photo that got the biggest laugh was of him riding bareback on a donkey while on a visit to Greece -- a humorous illustration of his life's work.

    Half the fun of these events is getting to talk to elected officials and other activists and hear some of the inside scoop, which of course I can't share in this forum. I will simply say that for someone as fascinated by politics as I am, talking to these folks is like "an adult Christmas every day", as Rush Limbaugh says about his radio show.

    Not many years ago, I was on the outside looking in. I was interested in politics, but felt unable to make much of a difference. I had been involved in the late '80s and early '90s, but was frustrated by some of the internal party politics and backed off to invest more time in my church.

    Sometime in the mid '90s, on the ok.general Usenet group, Dale Switzer, a computer engineer who was active in the GOP, mentioned that he had been part of a group of activists and leaders who effectively chose between two high-profile candidates for a major office. Both gentlemen were interested in the office, and were viable candidates, but as a result of the influence of activists like Dale one of the two filed for office, ran, won and served for many years, and the other never filed for the race. I asked Dale how he managed to get into such an influential position, and he said it was by being a dedicated, involved foot soldier in the party. It certainly wasn't money or power.

    In the intervening years, I learned that Dale was absolutely right. As I've been constructively involved in campaigns and party-building, as well as civic issues, more people have come to know and trust me, and some of the friends I've made are now in influential positions. Many activists have had the thrill of seeing a candidate elected to high office, having helped knock doors or raise money for his first city council campaign. Politicians, the good ones, at any rate, remember and remain grateful to the folks who were with them from the beginning.

    So if you love politics but feel left out, go volunteer, get involved, even if what you are doing seems insignificant. No one is going to appreciate the brilliance of your ideas until they see the sweat of your brow. Once you've demonstrated your bona fides, the doors begin to open. And doggone if it isn't a hoot!

    Today's featured article on the Wall Street Journal website is a note of thanks from Iraqi poet Awad Nasir. He says that it wasn't the Turks, the Iranian mullahs, the Arab League, or Jacques Chirac that came to free his people from the clutches of Saddam:

    "No, believe it or not, Iraqis of all faiths, ethnic backgrounds and political persuasions were liberated by young men and women who came from the other side of the world--from California and Wyoming, from New York, Glasgow, London, Sydney and Gdansk to risk their lives, and for some to die, so that my people can live in dignity.

    "Those who died to liberate our country are heroes in their own lands. For us they will be martyrs and heroes. They have gained an eternal place in our hearts, one that is forever reserved for those who gave their lives in more than three decades of struggle against the Baathist regime."

    Read it all.

    Chamber Pots

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    Tulsa Today has a powerful account of the self-destruction of the once-powerful Tulsa Metro Chamber, an organization that receives millions of tax dollars annually to promote Tulsa's economic development. The article quotes an unnamed staffer who describes Chamber CEO Jay Clemens as "a complexly bizarre kind of guy who vacillates between psychotic paranoia, arrogance, and bullying." The article goes on to detail the control-freak organizational culture that keeps employees in a state of fear and keeps board members in the dark.

    The Chamber's influence has been on the wane since the November 2000 defeat of "It's Tulsa's Time", the $263 million sales tax increase for a new arena and convention facilities. I served on the Convention and Tourism Task Force leading up to that vote. It was supposed to be a grass-roots process to determine what Tulsans wanted for our city, and there were reports that the Steering Committee was developing a novel set of recommendations that would look very different from the failed 1997 proposal. The Chamber leadership and then-Mayor Savage sidelined the Steering Committee, a broad-based group which included opponents of the failed 1997 package, and created an "Executive Committee" that could be relied upon to reach the predetermined conclusion. The Chamber's campaign strategy was to avoid debate and pretend that the opposition didn't exist. The ostrich-like strategy didn't work, and Tulsa voters simultaneously turned down the Tulsa Time package and approved "4 to Fix the County", a sales tax extension for a variety of improvements to county facilities and infrastructure.

    The Chamber leadership seems to still want to believe that they alone run the city, and they've rebuffed friendly overtures to include them as partners with other groups in developing a new vision for the Tulsa region. "My way or the highway," is the unspoken gist of the Chamber's response.

    High praise to Mayor LaFortune and his team for setting out to scrutinize the effectiveness of the Chamber's economic development efforts. Meanwhile, the hundreds and thousands of ordinary businesses who belong to the Chamber ought to wonder if their interests are being effectively represented by the organization that receives their dues. The board's job is to hold the CEO and staff accountable; the members should insist that the board do its duty.

    Hard to believe? Well, it's not happening here. It's happening in Oklahoma City, where Mayor Kirk Humphreys and the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce are joining forces to defeat a 0.4% permanent county sales tax sought by Oklahoma County Sheriff John Whetsel to fund his department. The Daily Oklahoman quotes Humphreys as saying, "It's too large in the amount of money, it's too loose in accountability and it goes on for too long."

    Approval of the tax on May 13 would create an oversight committee, but the members would serve at the Sheriff's pleasure. The tax will raise $30-$35 million a year. The Sheriff could spend it on anything. Mayor Humphreys says that having that kind of money to spend with no oversight would make the Sheriff more powerful than the Governor.

    Competition over and coordination of tax elections takes place all the time behind the scenes, as overlapping government entities try to keep the money flowing. An ill-timed bond issue from, say, the Vo-Tech District could make it harder for another taxing authority, such as the city, to extend a sales tax. But an elected local official is usually reluctant to oppose another local official's tax hike, because he doesn't want to create enemies for the next time he must ask the voters for more money. So it's refreshing to see Mayor Humphreys break the code of silence of the Bureaucratic Brotherhood and take a public stand against a bad idea.

    Here's the Oklahoman's collection of stories on the proposed tax hike.

    Conservative media gains

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    You have heard that Fox News won the war-coverage war, but conservative news outlets posted gains in other media as well. Local news/talk station KFAQ nearly doubled from the previous quarter, rising from 17th in the market to 11th. And the latest newspaper circulation numbers show New York Times circulation dropping 5.34% from the previous year, while Rupert Murdoch's New York Post gained 10.21%. Despite the war, the LA Times and Washington Post also saw numbers drop, although not as steeply as the New York Times. The story only showed the top 20 papers -- anyone know how the Oklahoman and the World did?

    We tend to use "democracy" as a shorthand description for the relatively free and stable social, political, and economic system we enjoy, but by looking at the post-colonial experience of most Third World nations, it's easy to see that a voting system alone is an insufficient basis for liberty. Peruvian economist Hernando DeSoto, in an interview in National Review Online, explains why establishing secure title to property is an essential step for "nation-building" in Iraq. He mentions a startling figure: There is no clear title to 78% of assets in Mexico, 90% of assets in Egypt. Investment and credit are impossible if no one can be sure who owns what.

    Here's the website of DeSoto's organization, the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, for more on this concept.

    Christine's Lullaby

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    James Lileks introduced a new piece of music at this weekend's Minnesota Youth Symphonies concert, dedicated to a two-year-old girl who was on her way to Disneyland with her mommy and daddy on September 11, 2001, when her plane slammed into the World Trade Center. Lileks writes that her story "is the story that defines that day, and makes me unable to speak." Yet it was his task to introduce a piece written in her memory, with her grandparents in the audience, and then to introduce Mahler's Resurrection Symphony. Lileks wrote about Christine on the anniversary of 9/11; his words still give me chills.

    We must never, ever forget. Read these columns and remember. And pray.

    Interesting column by George Will in the April 28 newsweek on Oklahoma senator
    Jim Inhofe. Here's the lead:

    "Many members of the House and Senate say they ran for office out of love—of justice, equality, peace, the American way, etc. James Inhofe says he ran for Congress in 1986 for “vengeance.” In a city full of people who pretend to believe that politics should be kinder and gentler, Inhofe is refreshing. He does not even pretend."

    Sorry about the lack of entries for the last couple of days, as I was down at the Oklahoma Republican Convention in Midwest City. It was a fun but busy time. Friday was a day-long seminar for grassroots party leaders. County party officers from across the state were there to learn about election and campaign finance laws, motivating volunteers, and fundraising. I gave a brief talk on using computers for campaigns and for off-year party building.

    I went to my first State Committee meeting late Friday afternoon, where we debated amendments to the state party's permanent rules, deciding which would go before the full convention. The most controversial rule would have abolished the requirement that chairman and vice chairman not be of the same sex. It would have applied to every level of the party: precinct, county, congressional district, and statewide. I supported the move, as it would make it easier to fill precinct offices. I was surprised at the opposition to the change from the rural counties, which dominate the state committee. Some women expressed fear that women would be squeezed out of leadership if the amendment were passed. I think you'd be more likely to see women filling both top spots, given that women dominate grassroots activity in the party.

    Friday night was the convention banquet. Ralph Reed , chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, and Joe Allbaugh , recently retired head of FEMA and one of George W. Bush's closest advisers in Texas, were our two main speakers, both introduced by political consultant Marc Nuttle.

    The connections in politics are amusing -- Nuttle and Allbaugh first met in 1974, when Henry Bellmon was running for re-election to the Senate. The '74 Senate race (Bellmon was opposed by Ed Edmondson) was one of the closest in Oklahoma's history , and there was a controversy involving the voting machines in Tulsa County, which lacked a "straight party" lever. Bellmon was finally seated by the Senate 90 days after the election. That year Allbaugh was Bellmon's driver, Nuttle was campaign manager. 26 years later, both wind up in Florida, working on the closest presidential election in recent history -- Allbaugh as an adviser to Bush, Nuttle as an attorney working on the legalities of the recount process.

    More later.

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