Warner Todd Huston's blog

A Pandering, Union suck-up that wants to soak the rich. Is this guy any different than the last guy?

Did you know that unless we pass Replacement Governor Pat Quinn's union appeasing, pension stuffing budget, Illinois prison doors will be opened for a flood of dangerous criminals to walk free? Did you know that the old and infirm will be left to die in the streets? Did you know that all our teachers will be sent home never to teach again? The busses will stop, health care will end, local governments will lose state aid, locusts will descend from the skies, we will find our skin erupting in boils and disease will plague the state? Did you know it's doomsday?

Well if you didn't, Replacement Governor Quinn has been so kind as to have informed us all of the pending doom to the state of Illinois unless he gets his way. Quinn issued his "doomsday budget" warning at an address made yesterday at Chicago's City Club, a downtown civic organization popular as a platform for city and state politicians to issue political pronouncements. Sadly, the Replacement Governor's doomsaying is no different than the previous criminal governor we had that did the same thing. It is little else but scare tactics designed to force the legislature to bend to his will.

Quinn warns the state that if we don't pass his budget, the end is nigh. Granted, the Replacement Governor is right when he says that the days of barreling forward with no mind to the mess being made is no longer tenable -- not that it ever was -- but he is misleading to say that his budget cuts spending. In fact, it increases over all state spending 6.5 percent! If we need to tighten belts, Quinn's budget is no solution.

Here is the doomsday scenario Quinn laid out at the City Club:

• 14,300 public school teachers would be laid off, a $1.5-billion cut.
• 400,000 college students would lose scholarship aid in a $554-million reduction.
• 650,000 people would lose health care benefits in cuts totaling $1.2 billion.
• 271,000 seniors would not be taken care of in the wake of $368 million worth of reductions, cutting things like the state Department on Aging’s Circuit Breaker program, and services to help seniors remain in their homes and fight elderly abuse.
• 6,000 prisoners would be let out of jail early.
• $769 million in human services cuts would mean 5,000 disabled people would lose home care services and 45,000 people would no longer get addiction treatment and prevention.
• Mass transit cuts of $549 million would eliminate all public funding for public transit and Amtrak.
• Local aid to state government would be cut $1 billion.
• Another $1 billion in cuts have yet to be determined.

Does the Replacement Governor really think anyone believes this nonsense?

And why is it that these politicians always go straight to warnings of cuts in services but never offer any cuts in the layers upon layers of administrative and management jobs? Of course, we know why that is, don't we? All these faux management jobs are filled by family members and other foot soldiers of the machine that gear up to get politicians elected each election cycle. Sure they have make-work, unnecessary jobs, but the only reason they are there is to reelect the politicians. So their cushy jobs with bloated pensions are the last ones anyone ever imagines will see cuts.

Another measure, one that could easily save billions, never seems to be offered by these politicians. It is a measure that occurs in the real world of business all the time. That would be across the board wage cuts. How much would be saved if every state worker from the highest offices to the lowest was forced to take a five percent pay cut?

Of course, undeserved, lavish pensions is the biggest problem. We can thank the cozy relationship between politicians and employees unions for this situation. It is the politicians that approve these lavish packages written by employees unions in order to get automatic union support during election time. Unions offer in return more political foot soldiers, automatic fealty, and many millions of dollars for these politician's election campaigns. It's a very handy arrangement. Unions steal ever more benefits from We The People as politicians act as rubber stamps to get campaign funds, lucrative jobs for friends and family members, and money in the pocket upon retirement. Yes, it is a very lucrative relationship that benefits everyone... everyone except the taxpayers.

Unions are antithetical to good government all the way 'round. A union's business is to "get stuff" for its members, of course. But when that union is representing government workers and it is they doing the getting, who is being "gotten"? That would be the taxpayers who are forced to foot the bill. Unions are not concerned with the final product of their jobs in any given field, only in taking from the employer for the benefit of the workers. And this being true not only are We The People finding more and more of our employees (those we pay for with our taxes) being unconcerned about their actual job, but we find them heaping costs in lavish benefits upon us that are not reflected in similar jobs in the private sector. Earlier retirement, better health care and other benefits are the order of the day for government workers but not for those of us that work in real jobs to pay the state's bills.

So what does Quinn want to do? He insists we raise the state income tax 50% in a state that already has some of the highest taxes in the land. Quinn is also, however, proposing more deductions and tax credits for the middle class, an idea that would pretty much eliminate the supposed added income that the tax increase will bring in.

Not only is Quinn prophesying doomsday, he is pandering to the middle classes AND soaking "the rich" with a wholly unrealistic budget proposal.

And... what is the difference between the Replacement Governor and our past criminal in chief again?

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Lanny Davis Wants it both ways: truth commissions without the truth commissions

In a recent Washington Times editorial, former Clinton Special Council Lanny Davis has decided that former vp Dick Cheney should be brought up on charges even though he has formerly spoken against such prosecutions. Why the sudden flip flop? Apparently his only reason is that Cheney has had the audacity to appear on a few TV talk shows to defend himself.

It is somewhat ironic that Davis, with Clinton a man that appeared all over TV during the Lewinski scandal to defend themselves, is upset that Cheney is appearing all over TV to defend himself. But the sad thing is that Davis has had to twist himself into a pretzel to excuse his revenge against Cheney. Davis' legal logic leaves quite a bit to be desired with this about face.

Here is what Davis claimed changed his mind from opposing these destructive truth commissions to now accepting them:

[Cheney's] insistence on putting himself on multiple TV programs and conservative radio talk shows, not only defending torture but offering the defense that it worked, has changed my mind.

This is a prime example of the singular illogic that the left keeps purposefully foisting on the American public in order to justify a desire for witch hunt trials and truth commissions. It is a misconstruction of what the underlying reasoning was for using waterboarding during Bush's years in office. The disconnect with the truth here is that Cheney is not "defending torture." In fact the position of Cheney and the Bush administration is that the enhanced interrogation techniques approved by White House lawyers specifically held that it wasn't "torture." Whether you now agree that waterboarding is torture or not, the whole point here is that the advisers then said it wasn't. So, on that basis Cheney and advocates of the methods went forward under the aegis that no torture was being committed in the first place. So, in truth, Cheney is not "defending torture" because they contended that it was no such thing.

This is a key point that the left is purposefully ignoring because it is the only way they can excuse their own actions. It is pure spin that ignores the legal understanding of the whole incident. For a lawyer like Lanny Davis, that isn't very lawyerly of him.

Davis next goes on to clam that Cheney is merely looking for an "I told you so" moment with all this. In case we are attacked, Davis postulates, Cheney can say that Obama's reckless abandonment of the methods that kept us safe for the last seven years will the the cause of that attack. I find it a bit hard to believe that Cheney would interrupt his retirement, would put himself out there on a tree limb like he has, would sacrifice the silence that might have more easily kept him out of this whole mess, would do so merely to be able to say "I told you so."

Davis' attempt to personalize Cheney's TV appearances as a direct attack on Obama is rather silly and smacks of him, not Cheney, playing politics with America's safety.

That aside, though, Davis still insists that no others should appear on the docket alongside former vp Cheney. Except for a truth commission only for Cheney, Davis still opposes such attacks on other former administration officials.

... I oppose any criminal prosecution of prior-administration officials on torture or other issues relating to the Iraq War and the war on terrorism, especially those CIA interrogators who relied in good faith on the instructions of policymakers and the legal opinions issued by Justice Department senior officials.

Davis correctly cites the fact that the White House Office of Legal Council approved the use of the enhanced interrogations. He points out that Jay S. Bybee and John Yoo declared that the techniques were not in violation of the 1994 federal law against using torture. Davis also points out that other voices disagreed. Still Davis does not seem to be in favor of going after Bybee or Yoo, only Cheney.

This does not pass the smell test for logic and seems to argue that Davis is not interested in law but in vindictiveness alone against Cheney. If Davis is so sure that Yoo and Bybee had indulged in insincere "legal gymnastics" to justify breaking federal law, then Davis should be looking to see Bybee and Yoo's heads on a pike right alongside Cheney's. But Davis still seems to insist that no other official should be brought up on charges. This simply makes no logical sense.

So, how does Davis square his refusal to countenance prosecutions of everyone but Cheney? Here is the crux of his argument.

... Mr. Cheney knew waterboarding was being used against detainees, that he expressly approved its use, or that he actually directed interrogators to use it. If any of these are true, then Mr. Cheney could be guilty under U.S. laws of being a co-conspirator or an accessory to a crime.

Davis justifies attacking Cheney alone because the vp was at the top of the chain and made the order directing the use of "torture." I've already discussed the singular fact that council had informed the vp that no torture was being committed and that Cheney went forward on that basis, but there is another problem with Davis' justification: Cheney wasn't at the top. Bush was.

If we are talking only going after the top man, then we should be talking going after Bush, not Cheney (or, perhaps, not just Cheney, in any case). Bush was the president, not Cheney. So, whatever the vice president did it was under the color of Bush's authority.

In the end, even Davis' weak reasoning for attacking only Cheney can't stand to reason.

This whole push for truth commissions on behalf of the extreme left is the worst thing for the nation. Should such witch hunts as those Lanny Davis now suddenly approves commence, it will diminish the office of the president and the vice president both and will certainly have repercussions for the honest council offered the executive branch for decades to come.

Davis ends his ill-conceived editorial with one more example of the left's essentially un-American focus by citing a foreign source to buck up his call for truth commissions. This penchant of the left to cite foreign opinions, laws, and ideas and to apply them to U.S. law is yet one more way to tear at the sovereignty of our own nation. For his part, Davis cites approvingly an opinion by the Israeli Supreme Court as if that has any bearing at all on what we here are doing or should do here in the United States.

Whether the Israeli Court's sentiment is a good one or not, their legal opinions simply have no bearing on ours. Unfortunately, lefty legalists in the U.S. are determined to force foreign precedent on the U.S. and this is just another woeful example of that.

Sadly, Lanny Davis failed to convince that his vindictive desire to hang Dick Cheney from the nearest yardarm is based on any logical legal reasoning. Mark Lanny as just another wild-eyed DailyKos type looking to execute former officials in an updated, American version of the French Revolution. For Davis and his compatriots it's to hell with the Ancien Régime and off with their heads.

So much for the law.

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There is one particular lefty whose blog I frequent. I do so for several reasons. First of all, he is not psychotic, second he has a great sense of humor, and third I think he really means well for the country. Of course, he's still wrong, naturally. There is also a fourth reason. I watch his blog because I get the lefty spin du jour without having to sift through the stupidity of the DailyKos, the childish profaneness of wonkette, the circus acts of Olbermann and Maddow, or the down right mental disease that infests the Demmocraticundergound. Plus my friend Piker saves me a lot of time, really.

Anyway, the lefty spin of the day is over Pelosi's "torture" lies. What the left is selling itself is a claimed "lack of understanding" over why those of us on the right are so exercised over the lies that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is telling concerning when and of what she knew about the enhanced interrogations being carried out by the CIA and others of America's intelligence forces.

You see, instead of trying to wrestle with their consciences over her lies and her obvious tacit, half decade of support for what they consider "torture," the left has decided to worry more about why the right is so upset at Pelosi. I guess that is preferable to introspection. Less mental anguish that-a-way, I suppose.

So as it happens, many on the left are asking some questions of the right on this Pelosi business. After I saw the question on my aquaintence’s blog, I took a look around the web and saw it in multiple places. I’ll give two sources shortly, but I saw these themes on more than a few lefty sites.

They are essentially asking why we would be upset at Pelosi for being quiet about the "torture" over the last few years? How can we justify being mad at her for doing what we obviously think was a good thing? If she was quiet that whole time why attack her for what she knew? What makes us so mad about the whole thing?

The second aspect of their spin is that the right is still the worse party because calling Pelosi a hypocrite over her sudden desire to prosecute Bush officials over "torture" means that she did know "torture" was carried out. This line of lefty thinking posits that we are mad that our "torture" program is being revealed so, while Pelosi may be a hypocrite, her being so pales in comparison to Republicans being pro-torture. Ergo, they can still stomach a lying, hypocrite that made a bad choice of staying quiet because we approve of torture. (How’s that for a pretzel?)

Perhaps you can see their dilemma under their terms?

Of course, the main problem with their somewhat warped view of the situation is based on faulty premises all the way around.

Their first wrong-headed premise, and the most important one here, is that Republicans are "pro-torture." This assumes that waterboarding is torture and also assumes that we on the right consider it as such. This, however, is completely wrong. No one on the right is a supporter of torture, nor do any of us agree that sleep depravation, waterboarding, or the other items that comprise "enhanced interrogation" is torture. So, their very first premise, the one that undergirds their entire argument, is faulty. We just aren't "pro-torture."

Secondly, we on the right are not mad that Pelosi kept quiet before. We would be just fine with her ignoring the whole debate now -- and that would include not pressing the absurd idea of prosecutions of Bush officials today. She is a hypocrite on the issue not because she is lying about what she knew and when she knew it but that she is attempting to use the "torture" issue only now when she thinks it might pay her political dividends. If she was so upset over "torture" as she now claims to be, why did she remain quiet all this time until now? Of course we all know that the answer is that it is only now when her party is in control of Congress and the White House. It is now that she feels she can safely use the debate as a political football.

But the very fact that she is only bringing it all up now proves that the idea of "torture" really doesn't bother her at all and never did. It can't have ever truly bothered her because if it so horrified her, why was she quiet for so many years? And her claim that she didn't know is simply a lie. There isn't a soul in any position to really know that is backing her play. Porter Goss, Leon Pannetta, Pelosi's own staff, and her own past actions prove she knew everything there was to know.

So...

• We aren't mad that a "torture" program is exposed because none of us agree there ever was any torture carried out
• We aren't mad that Pelosi was quiet for half the decade
• We aren't even mad that she's a hypocrite. After all, we all assume one must be a hypocrite to be a Democrat in the first place. That is a given!

Here is what we see with the issue:

• Pelosi never cared about "torture" in the first place because she went half a decade without protesting it even as she knew all about it
• She knows that the U.S. wasn't torturing anyone but now pretends we were merely for the sake of politics
• She is only now raising the issue because she thinks she can make political hay out of it proving she has no real principles
• She is playing politics with our national security
• The left is stupidly covering for someone that they would call a "war criminal" if only they'd have had an "R" next to their name

So, there you have it. A little example of how the left twists itself into a pretzel to explain away its own failings and that of its fellows. An Olympic gymnast could not bend himself in half so effectively as the unprincipled American left does to explain away their own hypocrisy.

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Patrick McIheran has a short piece on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's website that is a pretty good read. I think you should all check it out in its entirety here.

The piece has several links to other articles in it, but the main point is about the overgenerous and unfunded pension plans that unions all across the country have been foolishly allowed to negotiate. These pensions are simply untenable and always were but most businesses and unions kept kicking this can down the road until it is finally hit a dead end.

McIheran quotes Diana Furchgott-Roth as she discusses how these pension obligations will pretty much destroy any new business that ends up forced into a union via the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

“If the arbitration panel were to require a firm to join one of the many underfunded plans, the firm could well become liable for the pensions of workers, some already retired, of other firms. This would generate an inflow of new cash to the plan but harm the financial position of the firm. According to Brett McMahon, vice president of the construction company Miller and Long, ‘Strengthening underfunded plans is an unstated union motive for seeking mandatory arbitration.’”

The EFCA really needs to be shot down or this depression in which we are in will get far, far worse.

So, go on over to the Journal Sentinal and read it all.

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There are classic lies. There's "Mom, my invisible friend broke the window, not me." Of course, we all have heard, "I didn't see any cookies." Then there's that ever favorite, "No, officer, I didn't know I was speeding." And who can forget that time worn, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Monica."

But these days the American left has puffed itself up as the keeper of truths, the sacred protectors of America's soul. And, since we all know the fable of rocks and glass houses, we must then realize that all leftists imagine that they simply don't violate truth. They are paragons of it, to be sure. Not a lie should cross our lips, they contend, for it if does the presence of that lie is enough to abrogate our very Americanness.

The truth, you see, is of acclaimed importance to the self-anointed high priests of truth on the left these days. And they have their Messiah as a shining example of that sitting today in the White House. He is the one we've been waiting for. The light. The truth. The way.

At least, this is their delusional self-assessment, anyway.

So, I am wondering about the following: does it matter that one of the left's most exalted leaders is a blatant liar?

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has made of herself only one of two things over the “torture” issue, and neither of those things is good. She is either a liar, or an utterly disgraceful incompetent of no principles whatever.

As report after report is revealed of what and when the Speaker of the House knew about the so-called torture of prisoners held by the Bush administration, at least one fact is becoming crystal clear. She and other members of Congress did, indeed, know of what was going on when it was going on.

Paul Kane of the Washington Post is only the latest to show that Congress was made well aware of the treatment that Bush officials had directed to be carried out on terroist prisoners. In his May 9 report, Kane tells us that Michael Sheehy, Pelosi's top aid, had attended a 2003 White House briefing where the waterboarding of al Qaeda suspects was discussed. Also in that meeting was the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee Representative, Jane Harmon (R, CA), who afterward sent a letter of protest to the Bush administration over the situation. Pelosi has admitted that she was aware of that letter.

Yet, all this time, as she has ginned up the country to attack President Bush over "harsh interrogations" and his supposed criminal "secrecy," Pelosi has claimed she was never told that these techniques were in use.

One wonders how Pelosi can say with a straight face that she didn’t know anything about “torture” but at the same time was aware about Harmon’s letter protesting the same?

So, we are left with two possibilities here.

Scenario One:

Pelosi is incompetent. She has a habit of sending top aides to meetings from which she never bothers to inform herself of the outcome. Further, she does not pay much attention to the doings of her colleagues. In other words she is uninterested in her job or the duties of her office.

Scenario Two:

Pelosi is a liar. She knew everything and is only trying to obscure the fact that she knew all along of what the Bush administration was doing. She deemed it unimportant to worry over much about any "torture" until now. And now she is worried abut it only so that she can use it as a political device.

Either way, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is a loathsome character. And yet... and yet the left is falling all over itself to stand behind her.

So, do lies by leftists matter? Or is it only the ends that matter?

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After several years of missteps and dunderheaded RINOist policy proscriptions, Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham got one right for a change. The unctuous pair published an Op Ed in the Wall Street Journal on May 6 that is spot on in its analysis of the dangerous road down which Barack Obama and the Democrats are taking us as far as the war on terror is concerned.

Because this issue is so important and so as not to waste time, we will take as a given here the poor standing that both Senators rightfully have with conservatives, set aside their RINOism, and move past their inability to "get it" on every other issue but this one. What McCain and Graham had to say in their WSJ piece is of supreme importance and it is an area where we can all agree upon in all the most important ways. So, let's focus on the Guantanamo facility and the greater debate on the war on terror, shall we?

In the first paragraph of the piece McCain and Graham pinpoint one of the most injurious things that Obama's possible upcoming "truth commissions" will have on future American administrations. Obama's prosecutions of Bush officials for having given their honest council to the president will simply destroy the trust that future advisers will have to give their best council. If future advisers imagine that they can be hauled off to jail with ever new administration's ascension to office, no adviser will ever feel safe. All will unduly hedge their advice for simple self preservation. This cannot help but hurt this country from this point forward.

McCain and Graham write, "We believe that any subsequent attempts to subject those who provided such legal advice to prosecutions are a mistake. They will have a chilling effect on the candor with which future government officials provide their best counsel."

In fact, we have already seen the deleterious effects that Obama's coming crusade against members of Bush's administration has caused. Already the CIA is so wary of Obama as to seriously damage its already low level of trust in the presidency and its already low level of effectiveness in the field. The reticence of the CIA to give its full, thoughtful council will spread to every other agency soon enough if Obama allows these show trials to begin.

This will surely make us less safe.

The next point is also spot on.

In January, the president announced via executive order that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay will close within a year. The announcement was easy -- but it left unanswered the hardest questions about detainee policy for the future.

As we have seen with Obama so often, he is prone to windy pronouncements and showy efforts that contain little substance. In the case of his signing of an executive order to shut down the Guantanamo Bay facility we have all the worst of that propensity. Not only did Obama not really sign any order to shut the facility down -- all he signed was a pledge to take the matter up in a year -- but he also did not bother to make provisions to pay for the effort, nor make any plans on what to do with those imprisoned there once it is shut down.

It was an act free of any substance whatever made solely to get his extreme left-wing patrons off his back. But it was a reckless action, nonetheless.

From there McCain and Graham go on to detail some salient points on how to treat these terrorist combatants, what to do with them and what not to do with them. Each point is an excellent read of the situation. Obama would be right to listen to them.

The two Senators say that terrorists are not "criminals" and they should not be brought into our civil courts. The designation of "enemy combatant" is a good and proper convention and so military commissions are well and proper, they say. Also we absolutely must decide what to do with those we've already gobbled up and placed in detention before we make airy pronouncements of shutting down the facilities in which they are housed.

Lastly the pair bring up the single biggest failing of the Bush Administration, though they don't necessarily identify it as such.

Finally, Congress must be involved in crafting detainee policy. It is critical for all branches of government to work together to develop solutions to the complex legal problems presented by this war.

George W. Bush's single biggest failing was not spending, it was not the No Child Left Behind program, it was not the war itself either. It was his failure to fully engage Congress in the definition of terms and the creation of the legal process by which we as a nation dealt with the war on terror.

Bush took the role of war president one step too far when deciding that handling enemy combatants and creating the processes by which we would prosecute terrorists was a thing only a president should do within his duties as a war leader. By essentially ignoring Congress he opened himself up to the sort of left-wing, partisan attack that the Democrat Party glommed onto as a way to oppose his presidency.

Instead of taking the findings of his legal council and simply moving forward from there as if Congress had little or no part in the debate, he not only handed enemies to American safety and power a club with which to beat him over the head, he also denied the public the vigorous debate over national security that the country and the issue deserved. Yes, it would have been messy. But it should have occurred, anyway.

The piece ends with a paragraph that I truly wish the Bush administration had considered:

We believe that the time has come to focus on these urgent issues, rather than spend the nation's energy on the debates of the past. We stand ready to work with President Obama to develop an enemy-combatant detention process that is transparent, provides robust due process consistent with the law of war, involves an independent judiciary, and protects us against a dangerous enemy. The American people and the international community will see such a system not as an arbitrary exercise of power, but as an intelligent balance of due process and national security.

The only problem I see here is that the Democratic Party has now vested itself in losing the war on terror, scaling back actions against our enemies, and making the USA safe. I hope it isn't too late to have this debate.

So, kudos to McCain and Graham for a fine editorial. Let's hope it finds some open minds inside the Obama administration... though I, for one, won't be holding my breath.

Please go read the McCain/Graham piece in the Journal. See if you don't agree with it in all the most important ways.

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If we need no other example of why government can't "stimulate" an economy, we have but to look at the use to which the city of Akron, Ohio wants to put some of its "stimulus" money. Akron, it seems, wants to spend some of that money for suicide prevention. Oh, not a general suicide prevention program that might at least employ people. No, Akron wants to build a fence on a bridge that seems to emit a siren call for jumpers to prevent them from killing themselves.

Akron's All-American Bridge, a "Y" shaped structure that serves as a main artery into the city, has been a platform for suicide jumpers for so long now that area residents have nicknamed it the suicide bridge. Consequently, city officials have proposed using more than one million dollars of the city's "stimulus" money to erect a fence that will help prevent people from being able to use the span as a means to an end.

Sure it might be a good idea. Who the heck wants citizens constantly plummeting to their deaths from the thing? But, is this something that will "stimulate" the local economy? The only possible answer is a resounding "no."

With some of the most facile reasoning I've ever heard from a politician, Mayor Donald L. Plusquellic says that the million dollar fence is need so that Akron won't look like an "uncaring community." Plusquellic told The New York Times, "I think that for a community to have... an icon that represents suicide, and then not to take some action, do something -- we’d really look like an uncaring community. That is not what our image should be out there."

How we go from trying to buck up a faltering economy to trying to make Akron look "caring" is anybody's guess.

The Times also reports that Akron's suicide rate is no higher than the average for the country, so the project does not seem very urgent. Rightfully, many residents oppose the great expense of the fence project.

But whether this fence is a good idea or not is not the issue. The good citizens of Akron have every right, of course, to vote on erecting this suicide prevention fence and if the majority agree with it then funds might properly be raised to satisfy the will of the people.

But what is being proposed is that Akron use its "stimulus" payoffs from the perpetual campaign effort of Barack Obama to fund this fence plan even though it has absolutely nothing whatever to do with stimulating the economy.

This plan will not create jobs. It will not foster local economic growth. It will not help save jobs or support businesses. Even if one imagines in the dim, Keynesian recesses of his mind that growing government somehow helps the economy, this fence plan doesn't even achieve that fantastic idea.

Good idea or no, this is not a "stimulus" plan and the city of Akron has no right to spend "stimulus" money on this fence. It's really just that simple.

Unfortunately, this sort of misallocation of funds is happening all over the country. "Stimulus" funds are going to improve roads, fund safety projects, going to political payoffs for unions and community groups, and wrongly going to government agencies to fund everything from schools to medical care. None of this "stimulates" any "economy" but that of government. It helps no one otherwise. At least it offers nothing of lasting economic impact.

This is all an excellent object lesson that when left to its own devices government cannot be trusted not to metastasize into areas in which it does not belong. These funds were meant to stimulate the economy and help keep us all from going into a depression. But, instead of stimulating the economy, this money is going for all sorts of things that have nothing whatever to do with the economy. Without the people holding government to strict accountability, government does whatever it wants regardless of what is good and right. Obama's stimulus is a failure and is nothing else but more corruption piled on top of corruption.

This bridge fence plan, whether it is essentially a good idea in and of itself or not, should not be paid for out of Akron's "stimulus" funds. But, sadly, this Obama perpetual campaign payoff has nothing whatever to do with stimulating anything other than his plans to run for president again in 2012 and it really was never meant to do anything else but.

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Michael O'Brien over at The Hill reports that Senator Jeff Sessions (R, Ala.) told Fox News recently that he had no litmus test on abortion for judicial candidates and that a judge that had pro-abortion views could get his vote for confirmation.

This might alarm anyone that is vehemently anti-abortion. It should also alarm all those conservatives that pushed for Senator Sessions to be made the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

...but hold your outrage for just a minute. Let's more closely look at what he said.

"I don't believe in a litmus test. I believe a judge can have a different view on abortion than I have, and still receive my vote."

On it's face, this is a prudent position. After all, when evaluating a judge it is foolish to say beforehand that any one issue will prevent that candidate from taking the bench. One never knows what one will find when evaluating a candidate. Besides, it has long been a standard to eschew litmus tests in judicial candidates. After all, isn't that what we complain about from the extreme left, that they have litmus tests?

Additionally, even if you do have a personal idea that being pro-abortion violates your litmus test, it is not a good idea to say so outloud.

Still, also on its face, we might find reason to be worried if that was all Sessions said on the matter. But even if we decide to jettison the historical non-litmus stance and find something to worry about in Sessions' statement, we can find solace in his follow up point...

"I would like to know how they analyze the logic behind Roe vs. Wade. If they are faithful to the law, then we can get along pretty well."

Think about what Sessions just said there. He just said that if a candidate follows logic and Constitutional originalism in considering the law, then such a candidate and the Senator can "get along pretty well."

So, what does that mean?

In my opinion, this was Sessions' cagey way of saying that if a judge follows the law properly said judge cannot hep but realize that Roe v Wade is bad law and should be reversed. So, that means that even if a judge is personally pro-choice, but follows the logic of the law, he'll be anti-Roe v Wade regardless of his personal convictions. Sessions was saying that this is the sort of judge he could get along with "pretty well."

I think that Sessions brilliantly set himself up as Mr. "reasonable" as far as his left-wing opponents are concerned while still sending the signal to us that he does, indeed, have a litmus test for a judge. It is a test that holds a judge to strict originalism and logic and not personal crusades.

In essence, Sessions just told us that he will vote thumbs down on any judge that adjudicates with his feelings and not the logic of the law. In essence, Sessions hinted that Obama's "empathetic" candidate won't get much empathy from him.

Let us hope I am right. Because if I am not, we just lost another one of our leaders to the mushy middle.

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According to a new study released by the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, some of our most liberal states rank at the bottom in a measure of personal freedom. "Freedom in the 50 States, an index of personal and economic freedom," finds the most free states to be first New Hampshire, then Colorado, followed by S. Dakota, Idaho, Texas, Missouri, Tennessee, Arizona, Virginia and N. Dakota.The bottom ten least free states in the U.S. are (in descending order) Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, Hawaii, Maryland, California, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and bringing up the bottom is New York.

I hope I have this story all wrong, I really do. But it seems that Representative Mark Kirk has signed onto an effort that could criminalize the free political speech of bloggers or anyone else that uses the Internet to communicate. Kirk, a Republican who has been making noises about running for governor of Illinois, has his name attached as a sponsor to the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act (HR 1966 IH), a bill in the House proposed by Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D, CA), that would make it a federal felony to use the Internet to cause "emotional distress" through "severe, repeated, and hostile" speech.

Why is Representative Kirk signing onto a bill constructed with such overbroad language that it could criminalize bloggers?

Perhaps he doesn't realize he's doing so? The bill is supposed to stop "cyberbullying" and does not seem to be intentionally aimed at political blogs. The title refers to Megan Meier, the 13-year-old Missouri girl that committed suicide in 2006 over scurrilous messages that she found about herself posted on the Internet by Lori Drew, the mother of one of her classmates.

However, the language is overbroad and unclear. Because of the unclear language in the bill, this thing could easily be applied in all sorts of areas for which it is not intended, as lawyers and activists judges are prone to do.

The bill describes electronic communication as:

(1) the term `communication' means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user's choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; and

(2) the term `electronic means' means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.'.

This describes everything that we use to communicate from phones to the Internet. Everything.

Then we get to the behavior that is supposedly covered by the bill:

(a) Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.

I want to key in on these words from the above language: "with the intent to coerce, intimidate."

Wouldn't this cover just about ANY kind of political activism on the Internet, including blogs? Isn't this phrase a bit overbroad? After all, if I were to write repeated editorials about any particular politician (as I have done in the past) couldn't that politician charge me in violation of the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act? Could I be assumed to be engaging in "cyberbullying" by attacking the record of a local judge or school board member if I blog about them in an unflattering manner?

And what about complaining about customer service or product safety? Should consumer safety maven Ralph Nadeer have made his splash on the Internet instead of TV, newspapers and books, could his efforts to highlight the abuse of the public's trust by various corporations be deemed "cyberbullying"?

What about unions? They use the Internet to organize their forces for boycotts, walk-outs and issues, too. Are they engaging in "cyberbullying"?

Well, the examples that could easily be shoehorned into this act could go on forever. And what of the First Amendment? How far does this act go to stop speech? How far can it go? One blogger, Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy, feels that this bill cannot possibly survive a Supreme Court challenge because it is "facially overbroad and probably unconstitutionally vague."

Volokh expressed shock that Rep. Sanchez even attempted this absurd bill.

What are Rep. Linda Sanchez and the others thinking here? Are they just taking the view that "criminalize it all, let the prosecutors sort it out"? Even if that's so, won't their work amount to nothing, if the law is struck down [by the Supreme Court] as facially overbroad -- as I'm pretty certain it would be? Or are they just trying to score political points here with their constituents, with little regard to whether the law will actually do any good?

As for me, I am not surprised. It has been a long time since any congressman has worried over much whether a proposed bill is Constitutionally justified or not. Few in Washington (including most judges) care much about what the Constitution says on any given subject. They want feels-goodism, not legitimate law.

Increasingly, we cannot count on the courts to see the error of the legislature's ways, either. All too often judges are ruling on their personal feelings rather than case law and/or the Constitution. Unconstitutional laws like this are being churned out every day all across the land and going unexamined as well as unchallenged. Unfortunately President Obama is not looking to reverse this downward trend as he has announced that he wants his Supreme Court candidate to have "empathy" for people and not to focus on the letter of the law. This would tend to further destroy the Constitution bit by emotionally driven bit.

Look, no one wants to excuse the mean-spirited actions that might cause 13-year-old girls to commit suicide. But this badly written bill will surely prove to invoke the law of unintended consequences and prove once again that, far from "fixing" things, government makes things worse.

Finally, it is also sad that a man that claims to be a serious student of the Constitution like Mark Kirk would sign on to this garbage legislation. It is telling that Kirk is the only Republican sponsor. It smacks of him positioning himself for a gubernatorial run in Illinois instead of a principled stance against the amorphous realm of "cyberbullying."

Sponsors of HR 1966 IH:

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D, OH)  
Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D, CA)  
Rep. John Yarmuth (D, KY)  
Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D, CA)  
Rep. Lois Capps (D, CA)  
Rep. Timothy Bishop (D, NY)  
Rep. Bruce Braley (D, IA)  
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D, AZ)  
Rep. Phil Hare (D, IL)  
Rep. Brian Higgins (D, NY)  
Rep. William Clay (D, MO)  
Rep. John Sarbanes (D, MD)  
Rep. Joe Courtney (D, CT)  
Rep. Mark Kirk (R, IL)

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