Politics, Government & Public Policy: March 2007 Archives
I'm not sure how common this practice is, but it sure calls into question the value of political endorsements. After dropping out of the race, former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack has agreed to endorse Hillary Clinton; in a completely unrelated matter, Hillary Clinton has offered to pay off Vilsack's campaign debt.
Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack gave Sen. Hillary Clinton his endorsement for her presidential campaign.The Clinton campaign has promised Vilsack to help pay off a $400,000 campaign debt he built up during his run for the White House.
A representative for Clinton's campaign said they are not sure how their campaign will do that. They concede that at some point, Clinton will have to contact her supporters.
The campaign said there is no connection between Vilsack's endorsement and their commitment to help pay off his campaign debt.
That Clinton's representative didn't know how they'd do it indicates to me that this practice isn't too common. In any event, I'm not going to weight Vilsack's endorsement too highly.
(HT: James Taranto.)
Ryan Sager writes about McCain-Feingold and five years of CFR failure.
Last but not least — and here we get to the real nub of campaign-finance regulation — McCain-Feingold supporters promised that the bill would curb the scourge of "negative" and "dirty" advertising. "It is about slowing political advertising," Ms. Cantwell said during the debate. "Making sure the flow of negative ads by outside interest groups does not continue to permeate the airwaves."Of course, curbing and "slowing" speech critical of politicians by "outside interest groups" (a.k.a. "citizens") is in no way a permissible goal under the First Amendment. But, ultimately, the politicians may have failed in this most nefarious goal.
Let's hope this unconstitutional law -- which impinges on our freedoms far more than the Patriot Act -- will be dismantled soon.
(HT: Instapundit.)
Congress wastes a lot of time on useless posturing, but sometimes they actually pursue policies that seem designed to harm American citizens. Most recently, the Senate just passed a bill 94-2 declaring that no new US attorneys will be approved for an indefinite period of time. It's called the "Preserving U.S. Attorney Independence Act of 2007", which is silly because US attorneys aren't supposed to be independent, they're political appointees. That doesn't mean that the US attorneys should overlook wrongdoing by allies of the President, but he is their boss.
The Senate passed this bill that would prohibit the attorney general from filling U.S. attorney vacancies for an indefinite time period. The attorney posts are subject to Senate approval.
As I wrote earlier, the to-do over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales firing some of his subordinates is nothing more than the typical criminalization of politics. This bill is nothing but a job security program for US attorneys appointed by President Clinton that President Bush decided to keep around for whatever reason (even though Clinton himself fired all 93 US attorneys when he took office).
On the House side is the "Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act of 2007" which is completely removed from reality.
This House bill would require the government to replace public housing that was damaged by Hurricane Katrina. The Department of Housing and Urban Development determined that 7,500 apartments are unsuitable for repair and has plans to raze the buildings to clear the way for new construction of mixed-income housing. Supporters contend that plan would leave poor people displaced by the hurricane with no housing. The bill would require HUD to make public housing available to displaced tenants and prohibit the agency from razing any public housing without a plan to replace it. Opponents contend that the mixed-income housing would increase the standard of living in neighborhoods with public housing by providing economic development.
The bill passed the House 302-125, but hopefully it will die in the Senate. Newsflash: millions of poor people left the Gulf region and aren't going back. Building government housing to a level that may not be needed is a stupid waste of money. Of course I oppose all government housing on principle, but I'm especially opposed to building structures that won't even be used because the poor people who would have lived in them are gone.
Despite being in the fringe minority, anti-war protesters get a lot of attention by squeaking the loudest.
Peace activists armed with poetry occupied the Capitol Hill office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Tuesday to protest Democrats’ support for a bill funding the Iraq war. They camped out in his office for nearly eight hours, reading verse and reciting the names and biographies of soldiers killed in Iraq, punctuating each by banging on a gong they had brought with them. ...“Obviously, when you have a group of people in your office gonging a gong and reading off names it’s somewhat distracting, but it did not disrupt the workflow,†said Marilyn Campbell, Van Hollen’s spokeswoman.
Why don't conservatives don't use similar techniques to get noticed? Maybe it's because we prefer actual intelligent debate rather than lunatic raving, or maybe it's just because we have jobs.
When I first saw the furor over Alberto Gonzales I was flabbergasted. He's in trouble for firing eight US Attorneys? One of Bill Clinton's first acts as President in 1993 was to fire all 93 US Attorneys and no one had a problem with it then because, as now, the US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President. They're not independent entities like so-called "special prosecutors", they're an arm of the executive branch.
Despite the molehillish nature of the mountain at hand, Democrats are inexplicably eager to remove the highest-placed Hispanic that has ever been in the United States government -- who also happens to be pro-choice and pro-affirmative action. Intrade doesn't give Gonzales a very good chance of surviving, although the trading volume is very low at the moment. I haven't been following the story very closely, but my opinion is that this should blow over quickly since there just isn't much to it.
I can't imagine a white politician getting away with the kinds of racist remarks New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin makes on a daily basis.
New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin has suggested that the slow recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina -- which has prevented many black former residents from returning -- is part of a plan to change the racial makeup and political leadership of his and other cities."Ladies and gentlemen, what happened in New Orleans could happen anywhere," Nagin said at a dinner sponsored by the National Newspaper Publishers Association, a trade group for newspapers that target black readers. "They are studying this model of natural disasters, dispersing the community and changing the electoral process in that community." ...
"Everybody in America started to wake up and say: 'Wait a minute. What is he doing? What is he saying? We have to make sure that this man doesn't go any further,' " Nagin told a room full of black newspaper publishers and editors at the Capital Hilton. ...
"They thought they were talking about a different kind of New Orleans," Nagin said. "They didn't realize that folks were awake, that they were paying attention."
If this isn't "coded" racism then I don't know what is. Ray Nagin is a despicable racist, and prominent black leaders like Barack Obama should speak up and denounce him.
Maybe he's just inarticulate -- a compliment? -- but John Edwards needs to learn the basics of Christianity and get a little humility rather than presuming to speak on Jesus' behalf.
"I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," Edwards told the site. "I think he would be appalled, actually."Edwards also said he was against teacher-led prayers in public schools, but he added that "allowing time for children to pray for themselves, to themselves, I think is not only OK, I think it's a good thing."
So John Edwards thinks children should be praying to themselves rather than to God? Who knows. It's also not clear how America is corporately "ignoring the plight" of "those around us", since the Bible never talks about corporate charity, only individual charity. A guy who owns the most expensive home in his county has some room for improvement in the charity department himself.
After his anti-Christian blogger debacle you'd think John Edwards would want to stop digging, but apparently not. Alas, lecturing and pontificating aren't going to get Edwards out of the hole with Christians.
