Archive for January, 2010

This is funny, because it is so accurate.

President Obama is telling the Justice Department to find a different location than New York City for the terror trial. Mayor Bloomberg had expressed concern about the trial taking place in Manhattan and even liberal Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer wanted it somewhere else.

It begs the question: if you can’t do it in New York, where, pray tell, do you think you can do it? It certainly won’t be well received anywhere else. Maybe since Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Reid have been so gung ho about civilian trials of terrorists, they should do the trial in either San Francisco or Las Vegas.

Actually, Vegas seems like the perfect venue. It’s all for show anyway.

This whole episode is going to continue to damage Obama’s credibility on the war on terror, or whatever his administration calls it these days. The bottom line is that terrorists should not be tried in civilian courts in the first place.

Buz Mills has officially launched his campaign for governor with a $2 million splash. If Clean Elections matching funds are shelved by the courts, this $2 million, and the additional money he is expected to put into the race, gives him a huge money advantage over Governor Brewer and Treasurer Dean Martin.

He will need a lot of money to introduce himself to voters. Brewer and Martin have near universal name ID among Republican primary voters, so they can spend their money on messaging and voter ID.

Mills entry into the race will probably hurt Martin’s chances by adding another person to the mix of the “anti-Brewer” vote and Mills also greatly diminishes John Munger’s chances.

Why blog on the State of the Union when I can post this!

Politico is reporting that President Obama will propose an across-the-board non-security spending freeze in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night.

Huh. That’s a bit different than candidate Obama.

Erick Erickson at Redstate.com has a post that is certain to make you angry.

Remember how the Democrats vehemently denied both the existence of the death panels and the cold nature of the decision making processes that would be invoked to save money on health care?

Well, then you should not be shocked to learn the Democrat leadership of the House of Representatives is prohibiting members of Congress from putting links to Haitian Relief efforts on their websites and encouraging donations to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and other groups.

Why?

According to the House Administration Committee,

“We understand the good intentions of those making such inquiries, but the rules of the House preclude Members from using official resources for any purpose other than in support of the conduct of the Member’s official and representational duties on behalf of the district which he or she currently represents,” the letter states. “This has, in the past, been interpreted to mean that charitable solicitations using official resources are not permitted.”

But don’t worry. The House Democrats say it is permissible for members of Congress to link to the White House’s relief effort. Just not private sector charities.

Really?  The President of the United States has to use a teleprompter for a little speech to an elementary school?

“The Fix” from the Washington Post discusses this hard-hitting ad in Thursday’s Politico.  The ad itself says it all.

This has been a big week for the First Amendment.

In Arizona on Wednesday, Judge Roselyn Silver ruled that candidates who raise or use their own money in state elections will not be “gifting” taxpayer money to “clean election” candidates beyond the initial allotment given. In Arizona election parlance, it means no more matching funds. If you are a clean elections candidate, you may hope someone decides to run traditional and raise and spend a lot of money, because under the original law, any money raised by a traditional candidate beyond the threshold amount is matched with taxpayer money.

If the 9^th Circuit decides not to take up the appeal from the Clean Elections Commission, it will be bad news for the likes of Governor Brewer, Dean Martin and Terry Goddard because Buzz Mills is poised to spend millions of dollars that would not be matched. The Governor’s race just got a lot more interesting.

In a huge decision on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the prohibition of unions and corporations from using money to directly advocate the election or defeat of a federal candidate. This is a total game-changer for federal politics. Because candidates and parties will still have the same restrictions on the type of money and the amount they can take, there will likely be some U.S. Senate races and U.S. House races in 2010 that are decided by outside interests.

Think of it this way. A union decides they want to target a Republican who voted against card check. That union could literally spend millions of dollars communicating directly to voters to throw the incumbent out.

Some will claim that this makes politics more dirty. I don’t. Politics has always been pretty messy. It’s the way human nature works. If a corporation decides that a particular candidate is dangerous to their industry, they can now campaign directly against them.

Seriously, this will change campaigns in a big, big way.

Let me give you an example. Remember when State Senator Jim Waring tried to pass a bill to do away with fees for breaking contracts with cell phone carriers? Ostensibly, if the likes of Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile thought he might pose a threat to them if he were elected to Congress, they could literally spend millions of dollars running ads and sending mail advocating his defeat.

Huh. Wonder if that will happen…

UPDATE: Lest someone think that I am singling out Waring, another example would be if the health insurance industry decided to run ads against Congressman Shadegg (if he were running again) because he exposed their continued immunity from lawsuits under ERISA in the Democrat House health care bill.  It could also be that a consumer group, thankful to Waring for taking on cell companies, could run ads lauding his courage.  The point is that the Supreme Court decision will likely fundamentally change the game of federal elections for the near future.

As this Politico article points out, the health care issue mattered a lot in Scott Brown’s upset victory in the Massachusetts special election.

Scott Brown’s opposition to congressional health care legislation was the most important issue that fueled his U.S. Senate victory in Massachusetts, according to exit poll data collected following the Tuesday special election.

Fifty-two percent of Bay State voters who were surveyed as the polls closed said they opposed the federal health care reform measure and 42 percent said they cast their ballot to help stop President Obama from passing his chief domestic initiative.

“I’m not surprised it was the top issue, but I was surprised by how overwhelming an issue it was. It became a focal point for the frustration that has been brewing with voters, and it’s a very personal issue that affects everyone,” said Tony Fabrizio of Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates, a Republican firm that conducted the exit poll of 800 voters.