FederalRepublic.net

Yet another show of defiant obstruction by the liberal left in Washington:

Senate Democrats today will try to make the case that Brett M. Kavanaugh is too much a conservative activist to deserve a federal appellate judgeship. In the process, they may experience some unsettling flashbacks to the Supreme Court confirmation of John G. Roberts Jr. — a big success for President Bush and Senate Republicans.

Like Roberts, Kavanaugh, 41, has spent most of his professional life in the service of conservative causes and bosses. Now White House staff secretary, Kavanaugh was deeply involved in Kenneth W. Starr’s investigations of President Bill Clinton regarding Whitewater and Monica S. Lewinsky.
 
Kavanaugh also is widely described as brilliant, affable and disarming, attributes that prevented Democrats from successfully demonizing Roberts. And as they did with the Roberts nomination, Democrats are focusing largely on what they do not know about the nominee, an approach that gained little traction in the chief justice’s confirmation debate.

Link

By Thomas Sowell

Amid all the hysteria among politicians and in the media over rising gasoline prices, and all the outraged indignation about oil company profits and their executives’ high pay and lavish perks, has anybody bothered to even estimate how much effect any of this actually has on the price we pay at the pump?

If the profit per gallon of gas were reduced to zero, would that be enough to reduce the price by even a dime? If the oil company executives were to work free of charge, would that be enough to reduce the price of gasoline by even a penny a gallon?

Surely media loudmouths making millions of dollars a year and the multibillion dollar TV networks they work for can afford to get some statistics and buy a pocket calculator to do the arithmetic before spouting off nationwide.

But this is the age of emotion, not analysis.

Mr. Sowell has a point. With the news media and government officials hyping the recent rise in gas prices, the American people (especially those who do not educate themselves on such matters) do not know what to think. Democrats continue to denounce Republicans with party rhetoric, while Republicans have picked up the no-results and often repeated Democratic strategy of investigating oil profits and price gouging.

Politicians are even more hypocritical. The government collects far more in taxes on every gallon of gasoline than the oil companies collect in profits. If oil company profits are “obscene,” as some politicians claim, are the government’s taxes PG-13?

The very politicians who have piled tax after tax on gasoline over the years, and voted to prohibit oil drilling offshore or in Alaska, and who have made it impossible to build a single oil refinery in decades, are all over the television screens denouncing the oil companies. In other words, those who supply oil are being denounced and demonized by those who have been blocking the supply of oil.

Given the vast amounts of gasoline sold across the length and breadth of this nation, and given the mega-billion dollars involved, whether or not some corporate executive has an inflated pay scale is unlikely to explain the price of gasoline.

Instead of worrying about creating an environment that promotes lower oil prices by increasing supply and reducing regulation, both Republicans and Democrats continue to denounce oil corporations and profits. The reality is that the increased demand of oil around the world has increased the profits of oil companies. Anyone with basic economic knowledge can realize this.

It may allow some people in the media to vent their emotions and some politicians to create a bogeyman, since they can’t play St. George without a dragon. But cheap demagoguery cannot explain expensive gas.

When the two most heavily populated nations on earth — China and India — have rapidly growing economies and rapidly escalating importations of oil, how could that not affect the world price of oil? After all, the price of oil is determined in the international markets, contrary to conspiracy theories that keep turning up whenever gas prices rise.

Those conspiracy theories have been investigated time and again, without uncovering anything. But it is still a clever political ploy to ask for more investigations when gas prices rise. If nothing else, it distracts attention from those who have been blocking all attempts to enable us to use our own oil.

Instead of doing things that achieve lower oil prices like opening up ANWR, reducing environmental regulations, or building more refinaries, officials continue to play the game of party rhetoric. This yields no positive results for the country, and in fact, does nothing to increase the supply of oil in our nation.

Nothing is easier, or more emotionally satisfying, than blaming high prices on those who charge them, rather than on those who cause them. The same thing happens when stores in high-crime neighborhoods charge higher prices than stores in safer neighborhoods.

Both crime and precautions against crime add to the cost of doing business and this adds to the prices. But seldom, if ever, do those who decry the high prices blame those prices on the crime, vandalism, and violence committed by local inhabitants.

Where the stores are owned by a different ethnic group, such as Asians in black ghettoes, it is virtually guaranteed that the store owners will be denounced for “gouging,” “discrimination” and whatever other political rhetoric will rouse the emotions.

People with no experience in business, no knowledge of history, and utterly ignorant of economics do not hesitate to leap from high prices to greedy profit-makers. Many of these ignorant people are on nationwide television and some are in Congress.

If Americans are to have cheaper gas prices, Congress must do something to increase the supply of oil like adopting a more liberal drilling policy (by opening up ANWR for drilling), reducing oil regulation, and building more refinaries. It could also reduce gas taxes to draw down the price, though the chance of that is likely zero. We must fight for results in Washington, instead of tolerating partisan rhetoric.

Read the whole article

The Heritage Foundation is carrying a great article concerning an absurd proposal by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist that cuts every appropriation in the emergency defense and Katrina supplemental recently passed by the Senate by 13% in order to bring the appropriations bill down to President Bush’s budget goal:

According to CQ Today, Frist’s top budget aide, William Hoagland has proposed an across-the-board cut in the supplemental spending to bring the bill’s total cost into line with the President’s initial request and veto threat. Just cut everything by the same amount, it seems, and the bill will slide right under the President’s cap. It’s an easy way out and, as Hoagland pitches it, an easy way for Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert to reach common ground. The entire difference between the Senate’s bill and the President’s request could be traversed by a 13-or-so percent across-the-board cut.

But easy and simple aren’t necessarily good. Relative to the President’s request for emergency spending, an across-the-board cut would reduce funding for defense in the supplemental–money for our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to meet needs that are the very purpose of this legislation–by $9.6 billion. An across-the-board cut would also chop $2.6 billion from funding to respond to the actual emergency of Hurricane Katrina. This ploy just highlights the terrible trade-offs that pork-barrel spending leads lawmakers to make.

So where’s the money going if not to our troops and to hurricane victims? There’s billions in farm subsidies when the industry is roaring along. The bill has a bit over $1 billion for the fisheries and seafood industries–classic corporate pork. There’s highway spending, social program spending, and all other manner of non-emergency spending. None of this stacks up to the needs of U.S. troops abroad and our fellow citizens hit so hard by Hurricane Katrina.

Instead of doing the fiscally responsible thing and cutting the pork from the emergency funding bill, Frist and his aides are actually throwing around the idea of cutting everything in the bill by a proportional amount. This included cutting funding for the bill’s primary purpose - to support the troops fighting in the Middle East and provide funding for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery.

Instead of offering leadership when it comes to cutting the pork, Senator Frist has played into the hands of liberal interests and has betrayed the conservative cause.

I’ve been slow to write this week, but not without excuse. College finals and TDY preparation have taken much of my time at home, while blogging has taken a back seat to priorities. However, sitting here at the Denver International Airport waiting for my plane to San Jose, California has allowed me the opportunity to relax and write about my political feelings.

The general feeling in the press these days is that Republicans have no chance in the midterm elections, thus allowing Democrats and “Speaker” Pelosi to take control of Congress in order to raise taxes and start impeachment proceedings against President Bush. Though the conservative body politic is indeed disappointed by the Republican Party this year on various issues like federal spending levels, the deficit, tax code reform, immigration reform, and its pandering to leftist interests, I believe the fears of Democratic control of the House is unfounded.

Historically, one would expect that the opposition party would gain control of the Congress in this November’s midterm elections. However, the last few years have been disturbing in terms of major political and natural events. History has shown the American people are reluctant to elect major political change in a time of war or disaster. The American people elected Franklin Delano Roosevelt to four terms as president, with his reign of governance stretching from the Great Depression to World War II. Abraham Lincoln was elected to a second term as president, though he was constantly called a liar by the then “loyal opposition” and was accused of misleading the American people into an unnecessary civil war.

Another factor allowing me to conclude the Republican Party will remain in power after the midterm elections is the state of the economy. With a 4.7% unemployment rate, the creation of literally millions of jobs since 2003, and an ever rising real GDP and consumer confidence, the economy has never looked better. Even the DOW has reached a six year high and is on course to break its record high later this year. At no time in American history has the rate of home ownership been higher or have so many people in the country been employed.

Finally, conservative Republicans are starting to realize what years of power have done in terms of the discontinuance of fiscal sanity in Congress. Led by Mike Pence of Indiana, conservatives on the House Study Committee have created a renewed “Contract With America,” with the stated objective of reforming Congressional spending habits by cutting spending and making the Bush tax cuts of 2003 permanent. Even more moderate members of Congress, including House Majority Leader Boehner, have attempted to bring a renewed mindset of fiscal sanity to Washington.

Though the Republican Party has definitely demonstrated its faults this year (weak leadership, fiscal irresponsibility, and immigration idiocy) I believe the party will survive the midterm elections and still yield its power in Congress, though perhaps with a few less Republican controlled seats in the House. For this prediction to become reality however, Republicans must return to their roots and promote limited government, low taxes, fiscal conservativeness, states rights, and strength in immigration reform.

In another administration shakeup, Porter Goss, head of the CIA has resigned: 

WASHINGTON — CIA chief Porter Goss resigned Friday to the surprise of many in Washington, although some sources say there have been rumblings of Goss’ departure and that his move is just another part of the recent White House shake-up.

“I appreciate his integrity, I appreciate the honor in which he brought to the job,” President Bush said in making the announcement.

Goss tendered his resignation as the spy agency is trying to recover from a public thrashing of its intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and apparent faulty information that formed part of the U.S. rationale for invading Iraq. The former congressman from Florida left Capitol Hill in September 2004 to take over the reins of the CIA.

Noting that Goss became director at a time of great change at the CIA as the Bush administration tried to shake up the agency, get rid of any bureaucratic red tape that existed and improve intelligence gathering and sharing with other agencies, the president said Goss has done a fine job in executing his five-year plan to shape up the agency.

That plan, which includes a five-year plan to increase the number of operatives and analysts, “is going to help make this country a safer place, and help us win the War on Terror,” Bush said. “He honors the proud history of the CIA.”

It is yet to be seen who the successor to the highest post at the CIA will be or how Mr. Goss’ resignation will affect the Bush Adminstration’s CIA reform goals. Read more at Foxnews.com.

By Shailagh Murray

The Senate ignored President Bush’s veto threat yesterday and easily passed a $109 billion emergency spending bill for war and hurricane recovery costs that also brimmed with favors for farmers, the fishing industry, and the states of Hawaii and Rhode Island.

The two-week debate that preceded yesterday’s 77 to 21 final vote was marked by an election-year surge in targeted spending on behalf of constituents and special interests, despite repeated warnings by fiscal conservatives about a swollen budget deficit.

The Senate added money to rebuild a highway in Hawaii; protect riverbanks in California; upgrade a hurricane barrier in Providence, R.I.; and compensate New England shell fishermen for their losses from a red tide outbreak. The Senate also took steps to make farming less risky by offering compensation for virtually any scourge, including drought, flood, wildfires and pestilence.

The next step for the Senate is a potentially rancorous final negotiating session with the House, where Republican leaders greeted the Senate package with scorn. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) called it “dead on arrival” and said his chamber “has no intention of joining in a spending spree.”

House Majority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) promised a final bill that does not spend “one dollar more than what the president asks for, period.”

-Snip-

“In emergency legislation, we have a lot of things that really aren’t emergencies,” said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who led a largely futile fight to strip extraneous provisions from the bill. “I think we as a body ought to look at that and use self-discipline.”

Link

It seems Congress is full of nothing but rhetoric when its politicians speak about cutting the budget and keeping federal spending to a responsible level. While this bill represents and includes much needed funding for important priorities like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and more hurricane relief for the southern coast, many politicians have let their pork-filled ambitions get in the way of fiscally sound and responsible policy.

With the threat of a veto from President Bush, many conservatives including Trent Lott have no words of support for the president, but merely brush the threat of veto aside - “I don’t take it that seriously, and I don’t think (Bush’s) priorities come down from heaven.” Lott’s words are not only a disappointment, but they are words that represent failing ideals in politicians who cannot and should not be considered conservatives anymore.

Fellow readers, please excuse me for not writing my awesome political opinions these last few days. I have been finishing up finals for this semester, so I’ve been busy. However, do I hope to get back to writing this weekend. Have a great day!

- Adam

Brad Warbiany from The Liberty Papers has written a great article on illegal immigration in terms of a classical liberal/libertarian point of view. I’ve quoted what I think are the best and most important statements in the article:

So immigration isn’t really an easy issue. But simple answers, like “close the borders and deport them all” just don’t cut it. I think we can possibly secure the borders, but politically and ethically can’t just send 12 million people home (if we could even find them). Simple answers like “we have no problem with immigration, just illegal immigration” doesn’t work. I could easily say “driving 56 mph in a 55 zone is wrong because it’s illegal”, and that doesn’t answer the question of whether the policy is right, because the numbers of people who desperately want to come here are much, much higher than our immigration quotas. And simple answers like “give them all amnesty” doesn’t work, because it destroys the incentive for people trying to immigrate here to follow our laws. It rewards bad behavior.

We need to ask ourselves what is the right immigration policy for our nation, because only that will tell us how to handle the millions of illegals we currently have here. And when it comes to designing the policy, we need to ask ourselves what kind of a country we are, and what these immigrants truly represent.

Brad is right on the money in his above statements. It’s just not logical to attempt to deport 12 million illegal aliens, but we can’t just give every one of them amnesty. That type of action would destroy any respect for the rule of law, reward illegal behavior, and start a trend of more unlawful behavior.

Last, we do still have the security issue. But liberal immigration policies and secure borders are not mutually exclusive. We can secure the borders and still find to keep tabs on who is coming into this country and how. Perhaps that’s a guest worker program, perhaps that’s a new take on our INS and its goals. That may include a combination of things, with a guest worker program combined with restricted social services for a worker’s family. Either way, the nuts and bolts aren’t insurmountable. If we focused half the energy we spend screwing around with the tax code for special interests on developing coherent immigration and security policies, we could get it done and still have secure borders.

If immigrants want to come to America, we should welcome them into our land of opportunity, but do it in a smart way. We can secure our borders, while allowing people to migrate to our great country and make a better life for themselves. The Congress could allow more liberal immigration quotas and cut regulatory obstructionism in the form of waiting periods and red tape.

Immigration is a thorny issue. But when we stand around and say “we don’t want you here”, I have to break ranks. When they say “these immigrants are damaging our economy”, I have to break ranks. I don’t have all the answers as to how to fix the problem, but I know that I refuse to close our country to people who want to live the American Dream. We have to enforce our laws, but when our laws are contrary to the very fabric of America, those laws need to change.

I agree with Brad’s conclusion in his article. Immigration is a thorny issue, but it is an issue Americans CAN solve. Americans are very welcoming people and respect those who enter the country in a legal manner, but take offense to those who come here by breaking our laws. By having a sound, secure border and a liberal immigration policy, our nation can improve the illegal immigration situation, but keep our borders protected from illegal entry and other crime.

The last few years, the American economy has been through much, including multiple hurricanes, high gas prices, and two major wars. The argument illegal aliens would flood our country with cheap labor and replace Americans on a mass scale is just absurd. The American economy is the greatest economy in the world and I have no doubt our economy would welcome new migrant workers with open arms.

Read the rest of this common sense article at The Liberty Papers.

Gillian Flaccus has written an article for the Associated Press expressing the motivation of immigrants and sympathizers to keep the pressure on Congress for immigration reform:

Illegal immigrants and their supporters vowed to keep up the pressure on Congress for reforms after more than 1 million people stepped out of the shadows and poured into the streets in a nationwide show of economic clout.

A day after rallies, boycotts and marches in Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Miami and elsewhere, the challenge for immigration advocates was to extend the momentum of Monday’s “Day Without Immigrants” into a sustainable effort to get immigrants more involved in the political process.

“We have far exceeded our expectations,” said Mahonrry Hidalgo, chairman of the Immigration Committee of the Latino Leadership Alliance of New Jersey. “The events are intended to show solidarity and, at the same time, send a message that injustice against the immigrant community is unacceptable. This is not the end of our struggle. It is the beginning.”

On the contrary Mr. Hidalgo, the protests on May Day demonstrated illegal aliens and their sympathizers have no respect for the laws of the United States. Instead of taking the steps necessary to enter this country legally to enjoy all aspects of the American dream, illegal aliens have denounced this country’s laws without speaking, bringing about higher crime and abuse of American taxdollars.

The boycott was organized by immigrant activists angered by federal legislation that would criminalize an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants and fortify the U.S-Mexico border.

What about millions upon millions of American citizens who are angry with illegal aliens for crossing our border illegally? It is the right of the United States to control who comes across the border. For our own safety, we must be able to know who crosses our border and when.

Marchers standing shoulder-to-shoulder sang and chanted and danced in the streets wearing American flags as capes and bandanas. In most cities, those who rallied wore white to signify peace and solidarity and waved signs reading “We are America” and “Today we march, tomorrow we vote.”

In Los Angeles, marchers held U.S. flags aloft and sang the national anthem in English as traditional Mexican dancers and Korean drummers wove through the crowd. In Philadelphia, about a thousand people from different marches converged in the historic area near the Liberty Bell.

Immigrants may try to appear patriotic as much as they please, but it does not excuse the fact that illegal aliens broke U.S. immigration law.

The impact on some school systems was significant. In the sprawling Los Angeles Unified School District, which is 73 percent Hispanic, about 72,000 middle and high school students were absent _ roughly one in every four.

In San Francisco, Benita Olmedo pulled her 11-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son from school.

“I want my children to know their mother is not a criminal,” said Olmedo, a nanny who came here illegally in 1986 from Mexico. “I want them to be as strong I am. This shows our strength.”

Sorry Ms. Olmedo, but the truth is, you ARE a criminal. You’ve broken our immigration laws and Americans are angry about it. Instead of standing up for your illegal actions, it would be wise to teach your children that the rule of law must be respected if you are ever to be a productive citizen. These protests do not show the strength of the immigrant community, legal and illegal alike. It shows those who are protesting have no respect for the United States or the rule of law. We must enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders from illegals such as these.

From Breitbart.com

Young Americans know little about world geography, with the majority unable to locate Iraq on a map and three quarters unable to find Indonesia, according to a study.

The Roper poll conducted on behalf of National Geographic found that most of the young adults questioned between the ages of 18 and 24 also had little knowledge about their own country, with half or fewer unable to identify the states of New York or Ohio on a map.

Moreover, the study said, many of those questioned were not bothered by their lack of geographic knowledge.

“Half think it is ‘important but not absolutely necessary’ either to know where countries in the news are located (50%) or to be able to speak a foreign language (47%),” a report on the survey said.

The report said that despite nearly constant news coverage since the US invasion of Iraq in March 2003, 63 percent of respondents could not find Iraq on a map and 75 percent could not find Israel or Iran.

It added that that nine in ten also could not find Afghanistan on a map of Asia and 70 percent could not find North Korea.

When questioned about natural disasters, only a third (33%) correctly chose Pakistan from four possible choices as the country hit by a huge earthquake in October 2005.

China fared better than most countries, with seven in ten (69%) respondents able to find it on a map. Still, the study found, young Americans have a number of misconceptions about China.

Nearly 75 percent believe English is the most widely spoken native language, rather than Mandarin Chinese, and half think that China is the biggest exporter of goods and services rather than the United States.

The survey was conducted between December 2005 and January 2006 and involved 510 interviews.

Link

It’s pretty sad when today’s young generation can’t locate certain states of our union or point out countries of the world in which major events are happening daily, especially in the case of Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s amazing many students would protest against the war in Iraq, but be unable to point out where Iraq actually is on the map. Instead of focusing on educating themselves and actually learning something, many people depend on 30 second media tidbits to learn about the world and really have no clue about their surrounding environment. My generation is truly in a sad state when young people my age don’t even know the basics about the world we live in.