That King George was a right bastard:

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such disolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
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.

We’re better off without him.

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

Need a fresh start? Want to live like Jason Bourne? Or just need a backup plan in case everything goes all to hell?

Apparently, one way to do that up until now has been to get a fake birth certificate from Puerto Rico, then leverage that into a United States passport.

“There are so many [Puerto Rican birth certificates] floating around… a lot fall into the hands of unscrupulous individuals,” said State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs spokeswoman Rosemary Macray. “We’ve uncovered many cases of people posing as Puerto Ricans” in applying for U.S. passports.

For whatever reason, Puerto Rican birth certificates were seen as easy to forge. So easy, in fact, that the government of Puerto Rico is taking a radical step: invalidating every birth certificate issued on the island before July 1, 2010. Everyone entitled to Puerto Rican documents will have to re-apply and get new ones issued.

Obviously, the government must have been moved to desperation to even consider such a bold move. Two big problems with it:

1. You’ve got until June 1, 2010 – just over a month – to apply for a U.S. Passport now using your not-yet-invalid – but perhaps fraudulent – documents. Got a real one? A fake one? Get your application in now. (Is the island still issuing birth certificates even though they’ll have to be re-issued in just a few weeks? Pity the kid born on May 31.)
2. The massive wave of re-issues offers its own opportunity for fraud. Someone who was born on the island, but left long ago, might have difficulty proving that fact. Government officials are going to have to err on the side of caution. lest they accidentally strip someone of citizenship. And with that implicit leniency, comes the opportunity for fraudulent applications, possibly supported by fraudulent witnesses.

Reminds me of something I read when I was younger:

“When a place gets crowded enough to require ID’s, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere.” – Robert A. Heinlein

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

Last year, I promised: “Next year, I’m writing about prison rape.”

Close your eyes and think of America

It’s tax time, and as always, our thoughts here turn to the forcible penetration of our wallets and our privacy by a government in full tumescence, turgid and needy, far too large for its proper place in our lives.

Taxes are…

While Oliver Wendell Holmes famously stated that “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society,” not everyone agrees that we’re getting our money’s worth, or even that the extraction is justified. “Taxes are theft!” they cry – if you don’t voluntarily pay, the government will use force – arrest, imprisonment, or just simple seizure – to make sure you do.

Of course, it’s not enough to say merely that taxes are theft – in some ways, taxation resembles a much more personal crime. Under our system, it’s not simply the extraction of property that our government seeks. All government do that, and have various ways to do so. But every April, our government compels its citizens not merely to pay, but to file. This filing involves the forced labor of millions of people, compiling information demanded by our government, figuring out complex forms and formulas, and confessing to the authorities virtually every type of activity we’ve been involved in during the previous year. Get married? Have a kid? Tell the feds. Move to a new state? Get dumped by your spouse? Tell the feds. Get an embarrassing STD and rack up a lot of medical bills? Uncle Sam wants to know. And Uncle Sam will make you tell – just ask Wesley Snipes.

In most relationships, if one party feels taken advantage of, they can simply leave – pack up, seek shelter elsewhere, even get a restraining order if one is necessary. But you can’t do that with your Uncle Sam. You’re trapped in that relationship just as surely as if Uncle had the top bunk in your cell. He can get a hold of you any time you like, and you can’t get out. (You can’t escape because U.S. citizens are subjects of the IRS no matter where in the world they live – and even renouncing your citizenship may not relieve you of your tax obligations to the federal government. )

Like a good cellmate, Uncle Sam will protect you from other threats in the prison yard, and may provide other signs of favor. But still, there is that price to be paid, whether you want to or not.

And don’t forget to look at the bright side: next time, it’s going to hurt worse.

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

The First Amendment does not permit laws that force speakers to retain a campaign finance attorney, conduct demographic marketing research, or seek declaratory rulings before discussing the most salient political issues of our day.

Citizens United v. FEC 558 U. S. — (2010) [PDF]

The Supreme Court’s decision striking many of the regulations of McCain-Feingold has been harshly criticized by proponents of campaign finance restrictions. Some have even called it the “worst decision since Dred Scott.” But when you actually read it… well, it’s pretty well-reasoned.

The part of the decision that has drawn the sharpest criticism is, ironically, the least controversial from a legal standpoint: the notion that corporations are “persons” under our constitution, with constitutional rights that the government may not infringe. This idea, controversial on this day the opinion was released, has been established as a matter of law since at least 1885. (I was too lazy to search beyond that.)

So why the outrage? Corporations are easy to hate. “Money in politics” is easy to hate. For some people, any conservative legal thought is easy to hate. (Free speech for me, but not for thee…) The ends – reducing the influence of the wealthy on political debate – justifies the means – legally prohibiting core political speech.

Now, at least for a little while, speech can breathe a little bit freer.

A jury of your peers

The right to trial by jury is so precious in our legal system that there are not one, but two amendments in the Bill of Rights that protect it: The Sixth Amendment for criminal matters, and the Seventh Amendment for civil trials. The flip side of that jury right is the obligation of citizens to serve on juries when summoned.

A few weeks ago, I got summoned. Today was the date I was to report.

Who picks a lawyer to be on a jury?

Frankly, I knew it would be long odds that I would actually get picked. Few lawyers want someone on the jury second-guessing their every move. But it was certainly possible – after all, the lawyers on the case get a limited number of strikes, and there just might be someone one the panel they liked even less than me.

I was interested, though, to see the process from the inside. If not actually to be on a jury, to see what it was like from the other side of the rail. As it turned out, my experience was very limited but still somewhat informative.

The pool’s warm, come on in!

I showed up at the duly-appointed time this morning, and made my way back to the jury pool room. I showed my summons, got checked in by the very courteous and helpful courtroom staff, and sat down. There were about a hundred people there, out of more than two hundred summoned. (I was number 213.) Many people must have gotten excused, some others may have just not shown up. The people who were there were mostly white; the women were of all ages, but the men seemed to skew slightly older – more retirees. I have no idea how that reflects the demographics of eastern Pasco County, but it matches other juries I’ve seen in Florida.

At the front of the room, a large display screen played some early-morning news show apparently geared towards the slow-witted and easily entertained. Some were able to block out the noise enough to read; I put down my book and mostly observed. There was one thing I saw that stunned me.

A few minutes after 8:00 am, the jury administrator made a few announcements, then plugged in a DVD with the local clerk’s jury informational video. We learned all about the importance and history of the right to a jury trial – even invoking the Magna Carta – before explaining one-by-one who would be present in the courtroom. So far, so good.

Then the real trouble started.

One in four quadrillion

After the video, they turned the TV back on. To daytime TV.

Uh-oh.

First up: one of those fake TV-judges who mediate disputes between trailer trash of various types. The case on today’s show involved $538, an ex-girlfriend, cross-accusations of rape and prostitution, and a general sullying of what purports to be our legal system. Not exactly what you want prospective jurors to be seeing, if you’re a party on either side, right? To make matters worse, fully 2 out of 3 commercials were for local personal injury attorneys whose views on insurance companies were made very clear… not exactly something a defense lawyer wants to have fresh in the minds of his jury.

Then it got worse. A true crime show, about a cold case involving a rape/murder and one police department’s efforts to get a surreptitious DNA sample from a suspect. (Hint: it involved the police sending a fake letter from a fake law firm inviting the suspect to participate in a class action lawsuit against the city for parking tickets.) It concluded with a DNA expert talking about the “one in four quadrillion” odds that the sample donor could be anyone else but the suspect.

I hope no one watching that was about to go into a trial involving DNA evidence… because they’ve just been tainted by outside information.

Then, more lawyer ads.

Out of one hundred, fourteen.

When all was said and done, I was never even empaneled, let alone picked. There were only two trials, needing only 7 jurors each (six plus an alternate) and about a hundred of us had shown up. So most of us were dismissed.

Even though I was never called, I found my brief experience with jury duty to be educational. The biggest concern of most jurors is first the inconvenience of being called, then the boredom they suffer while waiting to be picked or released. The court staff makes it as pleasant as possible – after all, the clerk is an elected official and wants to leave these potential voters with a good impression – but there are limits to what they can do.

Any lawyer facing a jury should recognize these two concerns that juries have, and keep in mind that you never know what’s being shown on the TV screen in the jury room. I know that, for my next jury panel, I want to make sure that I’m not the one boring them anymore, that I acknowledge the sacrifices they have made to serve, and perhaps most important of all, I’m going to ask what they were watching in the jury pool room.

( Photo Source / Photo Rights )

How has the legislature screwed Florida homeowners yet again?

In what can only be called a blunder of colossal proportions, the Florida legislature has imposed new fees on Florida foreclosure defendants that make it all but impossible for them to fight back against lenders who commit fraud, ignore federal lending regulations, or commit any other kind of wrongdoing.

The Florida Foreclosure Fraud weblog has the details, but here’s the nutshell version. Any foreclosure defendants who wants to file a counterclaim against a dirty lender – one who commits fraud, packs the loan with unlawful fees, fails to make all the required disclosures, or breaches the agreement with the borrower in any way – those homeowners have to pay a $1,900 filing fee before they can proceed with their claim.

Shutting the courthouse door on foreclosure fraud victims

You read that correctly – one thousand, nine hundred dollars. That doesn’t include attorney’s fees or any other cost of filing suit – that’s just the fee you pay to the court for the privilege of sticking the papers in the court file. Those who have fallen victim to foreclosure fraud – the ones most likely to have the kind of counterclaims that would be affected – are the least likely to have that kind of cash sitting around, waiting for the government’s outstretched palm. And if you don’t have the money? No pay, no play.

The lawmakers’ slush fund

To make matters worse, the money doesn’t go to the court system, to help hire more staff to offset the record glut of foreclosure cases. It goes into the state “general fund” – meaning that lawmakers can spend the money on just about anything they want. It’s basically a giant slush fund, built on the backs of the people who can least afford it.

To read the rest of the story, or to see the newly juiced-up fee schedule for non-foreclosure cases, head over to the Florida Foreclosure Fraud weblog.

(Photo source ) ( Photo license )

You’ve got a dirty little mind, don’t you?

As tax time approaches, we watch our government borrow more heavily than ever to soothe the economic chafing caused by, well, borrowing too much money, ultimately increasing the amount of money we’re going to have to send to Uncle Sugar next year at this time, some of you seem to be a bit upset.

And, a little twisted. (You freaks.)

Three years ago, I wrote “Getting the Switch,” an allegory about the cruelty our government foists upon us every April 15. Not so much the payments, but the paperwork. (Ok, the payments, too.) That’s become one of the most popular posts ever on this website.

The search results that have spawned from that entry are, to say the least, disturbing.

But willow-switch spankings were so 2006. In 2009, the new style is Boston Tea Party re-enactments. Anti-tax protesters around the country mail tea to their Congressional representatives (sometimes shutting down the offices in the process) and otherwise distribute tea in its most common commercially occurring form – the tea bag.

Which means, of course, that the current tax protests are now known as “teabagging.”

Tax time, it seems, brings out the hidden pervert in all of us, bringing our most aggressive perversions to the core: flogging with branches, forcing one’s genitalia in someone else’s face… apparently, we’re not only mad, we’re also, well, stimulated.

So next year, I’m writing about prison rape.

A good friend of mine has started blogging about politics. His site? Keep 1600. Only a few posts are up now, but it looks like the bug has bitten him hard.

NOTE: I’m writing more about this at the Florida Foreclosure Fraud weblog.

Florida’s new Foreclosure Rescue Fraud law

Last week, Florida Governor Charlie Crist signed a new law which imposes broad-ranging restrictions on so-called “foreclosure rescue” service providers. The well-intentioned bill is meant to curb the worst abuses by bottom-feeding predators who use foreclosure as an opportunity to bilk money and property out of desperate homeowners. But some unintended consequences of the bill may leave homeowners out of luck when it comes to seeking legal representation.

Some of the protections in the new law will prevent con-artists from “rescuing” homeowners by signing them into predatory loans, getting them to sign over their property unwittingly, or just pocketing a fee to negotiate with the lender and then disappearing. Unfortunately, the broad scope of the law also means it applies some strict new regulations on Florida lawyers who are actually trying to help these homeowners – regulations which may prevent these homeowners from having access to any lawyer at all.

Scope of the new law

The new law, Fla. Stat. § 501.1377, [pdf] applies to all “foreclosure-rescue consultants” who provide homeowners with “foreclosure-related rescue services.” Those services include any service related to “Stopping, avoiding, or delaying foreclosure proceedings concerning residential real property” or “Curing or otherwise addressing a default or failure to timely pay with respect to a residential mortgage loan obligation.”

This broad definition appears to include lawyers who would represent homeowners defending a foreclosure suit; it may also encompass bankruptcy attorneys who help homeowners file for bankruptcy during foreclosure proceedings.

Disclosure and cancellation requirements

Among the requirements in the new law, these attorneys who may fall within the definition of “foreclosure-rescue consultants” would have to provide their prospective clients with written agreements containing certain disclosures – in uppercase type, no less – and also state “the exact nature and specific detail of each service to be provided,” and “the total amount and terms of charges to be paid by the homeowner for the services.” The “consultant” must also provide a copy of the agreement to the homeowner “not less than 1 business day before the homeowner is to sign the agreement.” The homeowner also has a three-day right to cancel the agreement after signing it.

The written disclosures and cancellation rights are minor impediments, but still, they present problems for the lawyer who might represent a foreclosure defendant. First, without spending time reviewing the documents, it may not be possible to determine in advance the “exact nature” of the services to be provided. And for lawyers who might bill hourly, it is not at all possible to calculate the total charges to be paid until the work is actually done. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for many lawyers to take on new clients if they had to comply with these requirements.

Also, the one-day advance copy requirements and the three-day cancellation requirement, effectively mean that any homeowner facing an immediate deadline may not be allowed to hire a lawyer. Have a court deadline tomorrow? Sorry, you can’t hire a lawyer until a full business day has passed. Have a court deadline in two days? Sorry, but most lawyers won’t enter a case until after the three-day cancellation notice has passed. (Otherwise, the court might not let them out of the case if the client cancels.) A homeowner who needs a lawyer in a hurry will have a hard time hiring someone before time runs out.

Deferred fee requirements

Besides the written agreement, the new law also forbids the consultant from asking for or accepting any fees from the homeowner “before completing or performing all services contained in the agreement for foreclosure-related rescue services.” What does this mean? It means that a lawyer who takes on a foreclosure defense case can’t even ask for a retainer – a deposit – until after he has already done all the work on the case, which may be months or even years later. It also seems to suggest that a bankruptcy lawyer cannot ask for or accept any fee from their client until after the bankruptcy case has concluded – which, my colleagues in that field tell me, means that bankruptcy attorneys effectively waive their right to collect any fees, whatsoever.

What effect would this have on the willingness or ability of lawyers to represent homeowners in foreclosure cases? For most, it means they can’t. To defer a fee on a foreclosure defense until the end of a case not only means they have to wait to get paid, in most cases it means they won’t get paid at all. Once a lawyer has provided his services, he can’t take them back – he has no leverage to persuade a cash-strapped homeowner to pay the bill for services that have already been provided. Faced with the choice of taking a long-deferred fee that might never be received, or refusing to take the case, most lawyers will refuse the case. And then the homeowner has to face foreclosure alone. This is helping?

Aiming at the wrong target

And the worst part is, there’s no need at all to apply these restrictions to lawyers who represent foreclosure defendants. Attorneys who, in good faith, take on these cases and litigate them can provide an enormous benefit to their clients. The rare attorney who takes a fee, pockets it, and disappears, is subject to the strict discipline of the Florida Bar. And, despite the rash of foreclosure rescue scams in Florida and across the nation, I know of none that involve lawyers representing homeowners in court proceedings. By lumping these lawyers in with everyone else, the legislature tried to fix a problem that doesn’t exist.

Is there any hope for the future?

I hope I’m wrong about the scope of the bill, but I’m afraid that it means exactly what I think it means. No doubt the consumer law bar will eventually figure out a way to modify these restrictions, but until then, homeowners seeking legal help are getting the short end of the legislative stick.

CONTACT: Those wishing to reach me about this article can use this web form to send e-mail.

UPDATE: Jacksonville bankruptcy attorney Chip Parker sees this bill the same way.

Nader voters are not necessarily Dem voters

Common wisdom blames Ralph Nader for swinging enough Florida votes to cost Gore the election in 2000. The underlying assumption that Nader drained votes from Gore is just that – an assumption. Nader got voters to the polls who, in all likelihood, wouldn’t have bothered but for Nader. In the days running up to the 2000 election, I wrote:

there are a great number of Nader supporters… who would rather shave their eyeballs with a rusty blade than vote for Gore. Nader, like Jesse Ventura, appeals to many who would stay home otherwise. Without Ralph in the race, that six, seven, or eight point margin doesn’t shift to Gore – it shifts position on the couch and watches the whole thing on TV.

In this cycle, Nader’s supporters – while far less numerous – are less likely to be liberal Dems than truly out-there Green fringers. The folks who prefer Nader to Obama in this cycle are probably further on the fringe than Ron Paul supporters, and likely to believe that there is no substantive difference between Obama and McCain. (I know, I know. Hide the sharp objects.)

Nader gives Obama cover on his biggest vulnerabilities

Besides the attack on his inexperience – which hasn’t worked for Hillary and won’t work any better in the general – Obama’s biggest liabilities arise from his substantive positions on the issues. He’s one of the most liberal members of the United States Senate – in 2007, he even beat out socialist Bernie Sanders for the title of most liberal senator – and has several key policy positions that could hurt him in the general.

But Ralph Nader gives him cover in two ways. First, he makes Obama look like a moderate. Obama is liberal; Nader is anti-capitalist. Obama wants to regulate our economy; Nader wants to burn it to the ground. Obama thinks corporations are useful if properly restrained; Nader thinks them the root of all evil. And have no doubt about it – there are enough idiot savants out there, who, despite supporting Nader, are clever enough to put together a viral YouTube campaign that stakes out the very far left for Nader… leaving the “left-of-center” label for Obama.

But won’t Obama’s actual liberal positions prevent him from appearing too moderate? Not if Ralph has his way, and that’s point number two: Nader gives Obama cover by attacking him from the left. Even though few will support Nader by voting for him, many will hear his message that Obama is “no different” from McCain. That message will reach some percentage of voters, perhaps some in swing states, and will help inoculate Obama from attacks from the right on his liberalism. The effect may not be large, if but if it resonates with a handful of voters in the right states just strongly enough to blunt the “Obama’s too liberal” charge, it’s not hard to see that it could decide the race by relieving the consciences of centrists who might not otherwise vote Obama. Stranger things have happened in politics.

How to handle a Nader run

The good news in all this is that Democrats still suffer from Nader Derangement due to his perceived effect on the 2000 race. They will do everything they can to keep him off the ballots, even though that will not blunt his message one bit. This can play to the GOP advantage, because it gives the GOP cover to lump Nader in with Obama. “Why are the Democrats trying so hard to keep Ralph Nader off the ballot?” the 527 ads could say. “They’re afraid of him draining liberal votes from their liberal candidate.” Perhaps follow up with a laundry list of how Obama and Nader are exactly alike in various positions they support. Someone with more skill than I can take that theme and run with it. But the one thing the GOP cannot do is what they are currently doing – gleefully sitting on the sidelines with buckets of popcorn watching the left do battle. Someone needs to remind the public that Ralph Nader and Barack Obama are two peas from the same lefty pod.

(Cross-posted at RedState)

Florida allows voters to march into select centralized polling places days before the scheduled election and cast their votes. Today, because I won’t be able to vote on the scheduled date next Tuesday, I did just that.

I haven’t spent a lot of time writing about the primary this year, in part because until a couple of days ago, I still wasn’t sure who I’d want to vote for. Like past cycles, I began with a process of elimination.

First rule of thumb: Stop Voting For Evil. I will not vote for the “lesser evil” just because. If I cast my vote, it is a show of affirmative support. So, who have I ruled out as a contender for my vote? (Note: I’m registered as a Republican, and Florida has closed primaries, so I’ll only be discussing the GOP candidates here.)

I won’t vote for anyone who espouses an isolationist foreign policy. That eliminates Ron Paul, who effectively advocates that we disengage from the world and retreat to our own shores. I won’t today rehash why this is unrealistic, except to say that the United States by its very nature in entangled in world affairs and cannot reasonably disentangle itself. This is a global society, and we are a global player. Refusing to acknowledge this is not a sign of a reasonable candidate.

I won’t vote for someone if I don’t believe their current positions are sincere. That eliminates Romney. Running for president in 2008, he has tried to hold himself out as a social conservative, despite a decades-long record as a moderate on most issues that conservatives care about. His conversion may be genuine, but there’s no way to tell. And even though I don’t fall neatly into the conservative box, I won’t vote for a man who appears to have changed his stripes solely to suit the political landscape.

I won’t vote for fiscal populists, dropping Huckabee from the list. Huckabee is the worst of both worlds, issue-wise: he’s a nanny-stater on social conservative issues, and a tax-and-spend liberal on fiscal issues. I can’t think of a single issue on which I agree with Huckabee.

Who’s that leave? Ironically, the same two I was thinking about four years ago – Rudy and John.

What’s to like about these guys? Both are strong on national defense and practice fiscally responsible policies, and neither is known for taking a hard line on social issues that, to me, ought to be outside the purview of the federal government. Surely, neither one is perfect – McCain sees big holes in the First Amendment, Rudy takes a dim view of the Second – but as Ronald Reagan once said of his days as California’s governor, “If you got seventy-five or eighty percent of what you were asking for, I say, you take it and fight for the rest later.”

So after all this time, for me it has still come down to the Mayor and the Senator. I think I’d be equally happy with either administration – at least, pissed off only 10-20% of the time – but in order to pick one over the other, I now need to look at the tiebreaker: Electability.

Which of these two men is best poised to carry the Republican banner, and beat whichever liberal the Democrats put up this fall? Judging by the primaries, it’s pretty obvious that one candidate is better equipped to run for President than the other.

Rudy made a tactical decision to win the nomination by winning major primary states in which he was running strong – Florida being the first. His entire campaign strategy is built around him taking Florida, and winning it so convincingly that he’d easily mop the rest of those delegates. The only problem with that strategy is that it’s too brittle – lose Florida and it’s over. But there was a way to make it work: pour time, money, and energy into Florida, and convert those resources into votes.

So where has Rudy been? Now that the voting is already taking place he’s running some so-so TV ads, and he’s been making appearances in the state recently. But he completely failed to make waves here while the opponents – and apparently, all the media – were distracted elsewhere. Now, recent polls show him riding as low as third place, in a state he needs to win in a walk.

John McCain, on the other hand, has run for President before. He’s learned through bitter experience how to defend his campaign against the kind of political knife-fighting that derailed him in South Carolina in 2000 – and what he would likely face in the general against the Clintons. He’s managed to take a campaign that many considered dead a few months ago due to his position on certain immigration proposals and come back as a front runner if not the front-runner as the primaries approach their peak.

In short, John McCain can win the general election, and is more likely to win than any of the other choices the GOP could make. So, once again, I have voted for John McCain and encourage all prospective Florida voters to do the same.

As Lewis Black once said:

The only thing worse than a Republican or a Democrat, is when these two pricks work together! Basically how it works in congress is that a Republican stands up and says ‘Hey, I got a really bad idea’, and a Democrat stands up and says ‘And I can make it shittier.’

Here’s one way in which the new Democratic congress has taken a really bad Republican idea and made it even worse. This week the House of Representatives passed – with only two dissenting votes – H.R. 3791, the “Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act of 2007.”

This new legislation would require anyone providing an “electronic communication service” – that’s your ISP, MySpace, the internet cafe down the street, and your neighbor who failed to secure his wireless network – to report to the authorities the identity of any person they believe to be involved in child porn or “transferring obscene matter.” Failure to make the report could result in fines as high as $300,000.00… and, oh, yeah, seizure of all your computer equipment and data for “investigative” purposes.

Now, it might not be easy to define child porn, but it’s a safe bet that most of us know it when we see it. (Um…. would know it. If we saw it. ) But what to figure out what might be obscene matter and not obscene matter is pretty tough even for the Supreme Court to figure out, let alone the untrained layperson. (Um… non-lawyer.) So, in the interests of educating the public, I’ve decided help those of you running “electronic communications services” (lock down that wi-fi, people!) sort out what kinds of “obscene” material you are likely to encounter on your network, and would therefore have to report to the authorities:

Five Terribly Obscene Things Americans With Open Networks Must Report to the Authorities Under H.R. 3791

1. Video depictions of University of Hawaii football players watching a one-loss team play a two-loss team for the BCS National Championship
2. Photographic depictions of Kevin Federline’s ex-wife’s genitalia
3. Uwe Boll not getting knocked the hell down.
4. Digital transmissions of Kevin Federline’s ex-wife’s new album
5. Any depiction of a Member of Congress engaged in the explicit act of supporting legislating like H.R. 3791

Hat tip to Engadget for the story and to Merlin for 5ives.

I haven’t been one to do video here, but I thought this well-presented opinion warranted an exception. A response to Senator Obama’s criticism of the recent partial birth abortion ruling by the Supreme Court:

This neatly sums up the debate between liberals and conservatives on the judicial function. Via RedState.

In honor of today, exercise your freedom. Make it stronger by learning something new about a candidate or issue that helps you decide how you, as one of The People, want from your elected leaders.

Then go have a beer at your neighborhood barbecue.

Jadell Kerr, a regulator with the Hillsborough County Environmental Protection Commission, has been suspended for two weeks from her six-figure job with the county due to comments she made on local blog Sticks of Fire. Tommy notes it here.

She said, of the county commission’s action to shift wetlands regulation from the county to the state, that : It was obvious to me and by all the emails, obvious to you, that the whole thing was rigged.

She’s got her First Amendment right to protest, of course, and I’m sure she’ll find herself a lawyer to handle that. Still, the accusations of “rigging” seem to come dangerously close to slander. I’m not surprised they took action on that. I’ll be interested to see how that works itself out.

Courtesy of Redstate comes this very helpful how-to guide on getting federal funding for your own pet project through earmarks, written by the influential folks over at Venable, LLP.

You might have questions about the earmark process. The lobbyists have answers:

What can get earmark funding?

Just about anything for which the federal government provides funding, which is lots and lots and lots and lots of things.

Sounds like my four-year-old son asking for cookies…. lots and lots and lots and lots of them.

Who can get funding?

…anyone who wishes to sell something to government, or engages in an activity that is government-funded.

Wow. Given the grotesque size and scope of our government, there’s just about nobody who’s ineligible under those criteria. I drive to work over government-funded roadways. I work in a government-owned building (transportation funding, baby!). I litigate in government-funded courts. I use government-subsidized Internet. I have a government-sponsored marriage. I have government-regulated health care. I eat government-subsidized food and crap in government-regulated toilets.

Maybe I can get the feds to pay for a maid. After all, a well-maintained toilet uses less water, right?

Earmarks are surprisingly similar to computer programs, with instructions and variables and everything:

…it is not unusual for a appropriations bill section providing funds to an office (“For the Office of [name of program], $X,000,000.”) to be followed immediately by a limitation on a portion of that money (“Provided further, That of the funds appropriated under this heading that are available for [name of program], $Y00,000 may be used only for [subcategory within that program].”) Within this basic framework can be plugged in the names of the office or program, integers in place of “X” and “Y,” and the right number of zeroes.

And of course, it all comes down to greasing the skids:

Earmarking, like everything else that happens in the Congressional funding process is political. That is, to obtain an earmark it is necessary to give the Appropriations committees of the House and Senate a reason to fund your client’s project rather than the thousands of other requests they receive.

(Emphasis original). Of course, that means hiring a lobbyist – paying their firm or one just like it a pile of cash to get the earmarks you need. Nice racket.

Twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan stood at the Brandenburg Gate of the Berlin Wall, extolling the virtues of freedom and challenging the world to follow us. (over the objections of virtually the entire foreign service bureaucracy.)

Via RedState.

Muhammad.

Still think immigration policy doesn’t matter? It does: it can change the shape of a nation.

Hat tip: Freaks.

Finally! U.S. Rep. William Jefferson, indicted:

The charges came almost two years after investigators raided Jefferson’s home in Washington and found $90,000 in cash stuffed in his freezer.

In. His. Freezer. And they said Republicans were corrupt?

Originally uploaded by CypherXero

According to Wired newly proposed legislation in Congress would lower the threshold for criminal prosecution (and, I think, for civil liability) for computer intrusion under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1030.

Watching Monday’s Colbert Report, I couldn’t help but notice that Tennessee’s Congressman Steve Cohen bears a striking resemblance to a better-known representative of the dead.

I ordered a few things from a large online retailer. Yes, that one. They emailed me a receipt, which contained the following:

Please be aware that items in this order may be subject to California’s Electronic Waste Recycling Act. If any items in this order are subject to that Act, the seller of that item has elected to pay any fees due on your behalf.

WTF?

The state of California requires you to pay a fee to the state to buy stuff. Now, taxes, tariffs, excises and the like have always been part of the economy. But now we – by this, I mean the “we” that lives in California – have to pay the state a fee on top of all that for the privilege of participating in the American economy.

I’m just glad I don’t live on the Left Coast.

Sen. Bayh has dropped out of the 2008 Presidential race. He’s not alone:

Bayh is the third Democrat to pass on a presidential bid in recent months. Former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner announced this fall that he would not run for national office. Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.) took his name out of contention shortly after the midterm elections.

To me, this seems to be the big story of 2008 – not who’s in, but who’s out, and why. So far, we haven’t heard a really good reason why all these potentially viable Democrat candidates have opted out so early. Do they have skeletons in the closet? Are they being pushed out or bought out? Are we seriously looking at a 2008 Dm field that includes only Hillary and a bunch of not really serious contenders like Edwards, Obama, Gore, and Kerry?

In 1941, the children’s author we know as Dr. Seuss was a political cartoonist. He had a lot to say, graphically, about the events of that time. He was particulalry harsh on appeasers and isolationists.

Browse the entire archive.

Just posted on RedState:

As DNC Chair, Dean didn’t disappoint… his opponents. He said things like, “I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for…” and accused the President of playing “hide the salami” with Supreme Court nominations. He even felt compelled, during an “interesting conversation” about “dog pee,” to warn a class of 8th grades not to drink urine. Dean as DNC Chair was the gift that kept on giving.

But never fear, the Stupid Party, as Bob Novak called the GOP, would even the score in 2006 by putting Mel Martinez as the face of the RNC. After a string of skilled persuaders like Marc Racicot, Ed Gillespie, and Ken Mehlman, the party could have chosen someone like Michael Steele, another skilled persuader, or possibly dozens of others. In the wake of voter repudiation of Congress, we could have gone for someone outside of Washington. There were probably dozens of excellent men and women to choose from. Instead, we chose Mel Martinez.

Read the whole thing.

In the wake of the elections it is now apparent that, even insulated from any potential electoral consequences, the outgoing Senate majority – of the President’s own party – will not even give him the courtesy of an up-or-down floor vote on John Bolton, the President’s nominee for U.N. Ambassador. This has more to do with the arcane rules governing the Senate than it does any act of political will, but I have no doubt that Senator Frist and his Republican colleagues could, if they really wanted to, get Bolton to the Senate floor. (For example, by replacing Lincoln Chafee on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.)

In the wake of that failure by the Senate to even take a vote on whether or not they want to confirm Bolton, the President has limited options. He seems to really want Bolton to be his man, and the past year Bolton has served in that post by recess appointment have belied Bolton’s critics and pleased his supporters. If the President wants to keep Bolton at the helm after his current appointment expires this year, he has two options: designate Bolton as “acting” Ambassador or give Bolton a second consecutive recess appointment.

The first question has been discussed more thoroughly elsewhere; as a lawyer I was drawn to the issue of consecutive recess appointments. The Constitution does not expressly address the issue, and prior to the mid-1800′s, the practice was not unheard of. But the widely-reported catch to a second appointment is that Bolton cannot be paid out of the U.S. Treasury. (Apparently, such folks don’t qualify for a “living wage.”)

Some folks advocate paying Bolton out of private funds. But like the good patriots over at TPMCafe, I’ve conducted a legal study and in my opinion, that would be totally unnecessary. If the President wants Bolton as his man, and the Senate won’t give him an up or down vote, he has some very powerful options.

First, let’s look at the law in question, Title 5, Section 5503 of the United States Code. It says that:

Payment for services may not be made from the Treasury of the United States to an individual appointed during a recess of the Senate to fill a vacancy in an existing office, if the vacancy existed while the Senate was in session and was by law required to be filled by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, until the appointee has been confirmed by the Senate.

This is the provision widely mentioned by the media and our anti-Bolton patriot friends. But the statute does not end there; it goes on to say:

This subsection does not apply—

(1) if the vacancy arose within 30 days before the end of the session of the Senate;

(2) if, at the end of the session, a nomination for the office, other than the nomination of an individual appointed during the preceding recess of the Senate, was pending before the Senate for its advice and consent; or

(3) if a nomination for the office was rejected by the Senate within 30 days before the end of the session and an individual other than the one whose nomination was rejected thereafter receives a recess appointment.

If the President can trigger one of these three exceptions, he can appoint Bolton to a second recess appointment and even pay him for his work. The first exception doesn’t apply here, since the vacancy has existed for some time now. But what about two and three? Neither of them apply now, because they require the President to appoint someone other than Bolton to fill the vacancy first.

Well, we know the Senate’s not going to confirm Bolton. Why not withdraw that nomination and put someone else forward? If the President does this less than 30 days before the end of session, one of three things happens:

1. The session ends with an appointment pending. Exception two applies and Bush can use a recess appointment for Bolton with full pay.

2. The Senate rejects the nominee, within 30 days before the end of the session. Exception three applies and a reappointed Bolton gets paid.

3. The President’s other nominee gets confirmed.

No matter how you slice it, the President wins. Legally speaking, the President could use this technique at the end of every session where the Senate has refused to act on a nomination, and keep every vacancy filled until the end of his term. This technique could not only be used to get the President’s picks in the their slots, it could also be used as a tactic to induce the Senate to give a nominee an up-or-down vote. As long as the actual nominee is more palatable to the Senate than the prospective recess appointment (imagine U.S. Ambassador Robert Bork), the Senate would be under pressure to move expediently on the pending nomination, and by confirming the more palatable nominee eject the unpalatable recess appointment. Properly used, in the long term this technique could be a powerful antidote to the Senate’s structural tendency towards inaction. And in the short term, it could keep John Bolton in the U.N. and keep him in the money.

Not sure why I didn’t know this, but it explains darn near everything about the politics of the minimum wage:

…union contracts are often pegged to the minimum wage…

So the legendary single mom with two kids scraping by on five bucks an hour really has nothing to do with Democrats’ enthusiasm for jacking the rate up every so often. It’s the unions. It’s been the unions all along.

Lince Chaffee now says that he may not be a Republican going forward. Those of us who can count on one hand (the left hand, of course) the times he’s actually vted with the party, are pretty sure he hasn’t been a Republican for years anyway.

In the wake of the Democratic victories int he House and possibly the Senate last night, a few things come to mind, both good and bad.

A Self-Inflicted Wound

The root causes of last night’s Republican loss will be debated for quite some time. Without a doubt, though, the Democrats could not have won last night but for one essential fact: Congressional Republicans abandoned their core values, both as a group and individually.

As a group they voted for runaway spending, creating massive new entitlements and producing jaw-dropping waste and pork by the metric ton. Bridges to nowhere. Hoemland security funds spent on everything but. Prescription drug benefits, which benefited no one so much as the producers of precription drugs. The caucus also abandoned conservatives on hot-button issues like immigration. Mostly, though, it was the spending without end that enraged their base and convinced the independents that Republicans were hypocrites.

Individually, the incumbents succumbed to their vices, and those vices were ultimately their undoing. They choked mistresses and seduced teenagers. They took money for favors, and sometimes took money without even returning the favors. Some of them went to prison, some just ended up in rehab. But they’re gone now, and they took their party down with them. The egregious and salacious nature of their deeds served as a catalyst, driving news of Repubican failures deep into the psyches of voters who might not otherwise know or care about issues like pork or entitlement programs. The deeds of the individuals – especially the deeds which came out in October – were the final nail in the coffin the GOP had built for itself.

Shooting the Messengers

Not every incumbent who lost last night abandoned their core values – Rick Santorum comes to mind as a powerful counter-example. But they were brought down largely by the faults of their colleagues. Last night’s election was not about a rejection of conservative values, but a rejection of the incumbent’s rejection of conservative values. Race after race, Democrats with conservative positions on key issues, or with carefully-cultivated conservative images, beat or badly scared incumbent Republicans. Ford. Webb. Tester. Casey. Even independent Lieberman won because liberal Connecticut rejected the anti-war candidate Ned Lamont. If Connecticut can send a pro-war incumbent back to the Senate, then the problem with Republicans in this race wasn’t the message, it was the messengers.

It’s Just a Flesh Wound

Any surgeon understands the difference between a cut that maims and one that heals. A cut can excise a cancer or it can lacerate an artery. Today, the Republicans have been cut, and they bleed. The good news is that this cut probably is of the healing kind. These losses have cut away the worst of what afflicts Republicans – the Neys, Cunninghams, Foleys, and Sherwoods. Getting rid of the cancer oftern means taking healthy tissue from around it, and Republicans have suffered that, too. It’s too early to give the patient’s prognosis, but we know that the gains made by Democrats last night – especially in firmly Republican areas like Florida’s 16th district and Texas’s 22nd – could be reversed in ’08 with a strong Republican candidate leader atop the ticket. Even under the rosiest Democrat scenarios for the currently undecided seats, their gains don’t come close to the fifty-four seat Republican surge in 1994. And every seat gained by the Democrats this cycle will be a vulnerable freshman in the next. So if anything, this is a time for Republicans to regroup around core values and keep looking ahead to the next election.

Jonah:

I for one welcome our new Democratic overlords.

The joke was inevitable.

Glenn sez:

My prediction: If they’re bad for the GOP they’ll leak early. If they’re good for the GOP, they won’t.

And what do we hear this lovely afternoon? Crickets.

Scott McClellan never would have said this:

Senior aides to Mr. Bush scoffed at suggestions that the announcement of the verdict had somehow been orchestrated by the White House.

“Are you smoking rope?” Tony Snow, the White House spokesman, said Saturday in anticipation of the verdict. “Are you telling me that in Iraq, that they’re sitting around — I’m sorry, that the Iraqi judicial system is coming up with an October surprise?”

Unknown whether the “rope” was a double-entendre referring to the designated execution method, hanging.

If you’ve read Enders Game you know that Orson Scott Card has a thoughtful, balanced, and human approach to the horrors of war. In his column today, Card turns his gaze on our foreign policy challenges in Iraq. The result is educational and compelling. If you read only one thing today, skip the polls and the horse-race journalism and read this:

[I]f the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America’s role as a light among nations.

But there are no values that matter to me that will not be gravely endangered if we lose this war. And since the Democratic Party seems hellbent on losing it — and in the most damaging possible way — I have no choice but to advocate that my party be kept from getting its hands on the reins of national power, until it proves itself once again to be capable of recognizing our core national interests instead of its own temporary partisan advantages.

…

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target.

…

Critics of Bush love to cite the many “mistakes” his administration has made. Most of these “mistakes” are arguable — are they mistakes at all? — and when you sum up the others, with any kind of rational understanding of military history, the only possible conclusion is that this is the best-run war in history, with the fewest mistakes. And most of the mistakes we’ve made are the kind that become clear to morning-after quarterbacks but were difficult to avoid in the fog of war.

…

Tyrannies only continue in power when they can give the order to kill their own people and be obeyed.

In Iran, there have been several incidents in the past months and years where troops refused to fire on demonstrators. This is huge news (virtually unreported in the West, of course), because of what it means: The ayatollahs’ days are numbered.

…

What really scares me is the 2008 election. The Democratic Party is hopeless — only clowns seem to be able to rise to prominence there these days, while they boot out the only Democrats serious about keeping America’s future safe. But the Republicans are almost equally foolish, trying to find somebody who is farther right than Bush — somebody who will follow the conservative line far better than the moderate Bush has ever attempted — and somebody who will “kick butt” in foreign policy.

So if we get one of the leading Democrats as our new President in 2009, we’ll be on the road to pusillanimous withdrawal and the resulting chaos in the world.

While if we elect any of the Republicans who are extremist enough to please the Hannity wing of the party, our resulting belligerence will likely provoke Islam into unifying behind one of the tyrants, which is every bit as terrifying an outcome.

I hope somebody emerges in one of the parties, at least, who commits himself or herself to continuing Bush’s careful, wise, moderate, and so-far-successful policies in the War on Terror.

Meanwhile, we have this election. You have your vote. For the sake of our children’s future — and for the sake of all good people in the world who don’t get to vote in the only election that matters to their future, too — vote for no Congressional candidate who even hints at withdrawing from Iraq or opposing Bush’s leadership in the war. And vote for no candidate who will hand control of the House of Representatives to those who are sworn to undo Bush’s restrained but steadfast foreign policy in this time of war.

This is only a fraction of Card’s analysis. Go read the whole thing: The Only issue This Election Day.

Heard a little something this morning:

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Let me say that again.

Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein’s scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a year away.

Wait just a minute. The New York Times buries a paragraph like that in a story criticizing President Bush for releasing sensitive information on the web?

If this is true, the failure to find any checmical weapons in Iraq is irrelevant. Saddam was building a nuke, and was just a few months away from getting one.

Shouldn’t that be the lede paragraph? Shouldn’t that be a nice big headline on the front page? Shouldn’t that be something everyone ought to know aobut the Iraq war? Apparently, not in the opinion of the New York Times.

I’ll be unsurprised, but very disappointed if this does get the attention it deserves.

UPDATE: It appears that these “experts” may have been referring to Iraq’s weapons program from 1991. The article doesn’t really give us enought to be sure.

What if the Democrats can’t even win the House race that has Mark Foley’s name still on the ballot?

The Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee had a stiff primary challenge, and looked vulnerable for perhaps the first time in his long career. A wave of scandals had dogged his party in the previous year, and rumor had it that the feds would be indicting him for corruption. If only he could win his primary race, the conventional wisdom said he would be re-elected without a problem in his heavily partisan district.

The year was 1994 and the Chairman was Democrat Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois.

We all know what happened: Rosty won his primary, and then got hit with 17 federal indictments that would later result in a guilty plea and a lengthy prison stay. The Republican nominee, little-known long shot Michael Patrick Flanagan, beat Rosty in the general election and joined history as one of the members of Republican Revolution of 1994.

I worked for Flanagan’s D.C. office for a short time; my friends on the Democratic side of the aisle joked that it was a “temp job.” Sadly, they were right. Flanagan was a solid guy, one of the smarter members of his class and a straight shooter, but he was unfortunately a stranger in a strange land – a Republican on Democratic Machine turf. The Machine took a bead on him in 1996, and took him out at the ballot box. Flanagan now works as a lobbyist, while the man who beat him now serves as the scandal-plagued Governor of Illinois. The seat is currently occupied by DCCC Chairman and former Clinton advisor Rahm Emmanuel.

Ten years after Flanagan’s loss, the Democrats seem poised to make substantial gains in the House and Senate. On the House side, they stand to gain anywhere between 10 and 20 seats. The question s not whether they will advance, only whether it will be enough to take control of the chamber.

If the Democrats do take a large number of Republican seats this cycle, they will find themselves on the defensive in 2008, because the Democrat gains this year are washing in on a wave of Flanagans: one-term winners who don’t fit the partisan bent of their districts, taking advantage of temporary weakness of individual incumbents.

Democrats hope to win Mark Foley’s old seat. Katherine Harris’s old seat. Bob Ney’s seat. Henry Hyde’s old seat, for cryin’ out loud. They want to knock off incumbents like Thelma Drake. Deborah Pryce. Chris Chocola. Jean Schmidt. Mike Sodrel. They’ll probably take at least a few of these, if not more.

Many of these districts are places that 2004 Presidential candidate John Kerry underperformed his own national average by more than 9% of the vote – in other words, these are places that are exceedingly unfriendly territory for Democrats. Almost all of them are places where Bush at least won, and many of them were firmly in Republican grip in the last Congressional election as well. (Otherwise, they couldn’t be Democratic gains this year.)

The Democrats will no doubt win a number of races this year in places they could not win in the last few decades and might never win but for some serious incumbent missteps. What does this mean for Democrats measuring the drapes for their new leadership offices? Keep your receipts.

I never for a moment imagined that we’d be able to get through the month of October without some major scandal or stumble by Democrats. Even then, my wildest dreams never approached what actually happened — John Kerry insulting our troops in Iraq:

If the Republicans were worried last week about the base turning out, I don’t think they need to worry anymore.

Just this afternoon, in a move that could forever change the course of this nation’s history, Duncan Hunter announced that he will be taking the first step on a long road – his quest to win the White House in 2008.

Although it is tempting to pledge our fealty now to this candidate this afternoon, getting in before the inevitable hordes who will triumphantly chant his name in the streets, there are a few critical questions that we must have answered first.

Questions like, “Who?”

Here’s what we know about Duncan Hunter:

He is a Republican, and U.S. Congressman from California. He currently serves as the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee and would serve another two years in that capacity if the GOP keeps its hold on the House.

This much I know from watching a few seconds on Fox News; as it happens, this is more about Hunter than 99.99% of the voting population know about him today. (That number may be low.)

He is also announcing his candidacy mere days before a predicted nationwide repudiation of the GOP at the ballot box. His sense of political timing, therefore, is a wee bit suspect.

So what’s all this about, then? Does Duncan Hunter really think that he can win his party’s nomination for President?

Although Congressman Hunter has had up to now what we will charitably call a “low profile” in the presidential horse race, some of the other factors make his run remotely plausible. First, he is the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, responsible for oversight of the Department of Defense and defense-related programs of the Department of Energy. This gives him a more than plausible claim to expertise in the national security arena. Second, he is from California, and a Republican candidate who can deliver California in the Electoral College is all but unbeatable. Third, he appears to be free of major scandals and would presumably be smart enough not to run if there were any skeletons in the closet. Fourth, his only real competition for the nomination are Sen. John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. If either of these makes a misstep, it could be a wide-open race.

But… all those factors suggest that Duncan Hunter is not really running for President. He’s running for Vice President. He’d be a good fit for either McCain or Giuliani, both of whom would run on a platform of strong national security. He’d put California at least nominally in play – a double threat if New Yorker Giuliani gets the nod. If he’s free of scandal, that will make him a very tempting selection in the summer of ’08 no matter who gets the Republican nod.

Ladies and gentlemen, behold Duncan Hunter, seeker of the 2008 nomination for (Vice) President.

Frank J. on the Tennessee Senate race:

When a dog whistle blows, only dogs hear it and start barking. When someone “blows a racist whistle” only the racists should hear it and start making noise. But, when each of these ads first appeared, the only barking I heard was from the nutroots.

Link via RedState.

In a move that demonstrates both political cynicism and the difficulty of true anonymity on the Internet, the people behind the website Stop Sexual Predators (the site that first publicized the emails, innocuous compared to the messages revealed later, from then-Congressman Mark Foley to former Congressional pages) have been revealed.

At least, their computers have. No surprise – they belong to the Human Rights Campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.