PolitiFact.com Confirms Virginia AG Cuccinelli's EPA Claim

On January 17, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli was speaking at a political rally about a number of the EPA's job killing regulations.

In that speech, Ken said:

"[Tailpipe emissions rules], if fully implemented with all the regulations that go with it, they will keep the temperature from rising nearly five one-hundredths of a degree Fahrenheit by 2050."

Since his speech, the regional and national media has taken issue with AG Cuccinelli's statement and claimed that it is false, as the press has done with many of his other statements regarding the environment and EPA. 

Thankfully, PolitiFact.com, a non-partisan fact-check organization started by the St. Petersburg Times to help find the truth in American politics, completed a review of AG Cuccinelli's statement and confirmed its validity.

PolitiFact said:

"The EPA said the reductions would be between 0.011 degrees Fahrenheit and 0.027 degrees Fahrenheit and would occur by 2100. The agency's claim is even more modest than Cuccinelli suggested."

What's the big deal with this?

According to PolitiFact: "The agency says these new rules would add about $950 to the price of each new car but that the higher price would be offset by lower fuel costs over three to five years."

Let's recap:

The EPA wants to impose $950 per car in regulatory costs - to affect a change of, at most, .027 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2100.

Click here to see the entire PolitiFact article.

FactChecking President Obama's SOTU Address

From our friends at FactCheck.org regarding last night's SOTU:

We found no outright false factual claims in Obama's State of the Union address, but we did note some that were arguable, and some promises that may prove unrealistic.

* He called his Race to the Top initiative "the most meaningful reform of our public schools in a generation." That's debatable. Some independent experts say Bush's No Child Left Behind program had a greater impact.

* The president set a goal of generating 80 percent of the nation's electricity from "clean" sources by 2035. That's ambitious. The first large-scale "clean coal" plant has yet to begin operation. And Obama counts nuclear energy as a "clean" source, despite the unresolved waste issue.

* He set a goal of giving 80 percent of the U.S. population access to high-speed rail in the next 25 years. But the U.S. only has one high-speed rail line in operation now.

* He said his new health care law will slow rising health care costs. But the office of Medicare's chief actuary estimates the law won't have much impact on costs, and there will be a slight rise in total spending as more people gain coverage under the law.

* He said "exports are up" since he set a goal of doubling them in five years, which is true. But the rise so far falls short of the pace required to meet his goal.

Teach Your Children Well

There is a new tool available to teach others -- especially kids -- conservative principles.

"All great change in America begins at the dinner table.  So, tomorrow night in the kitchen, I hope the talking begins.  And children, if your parents haven't been teaching you what it means to be an American, let them know and nail them on it.  That would be a very American thing to do." -- Ronald Reagan

Whether you need a refresher course in the principles of conservatism or you are teaching them to others, especially your children, "What Am I Conservative?" by Melanie Angell Elliott is an alluring choice.

The book contains a series of 24 principled and well-reasoned sections, each based on a particular tenet of conservatism.

You'll identify with the principles and use them to craft a conservative ideology.  It's certainly no tome -- quick quotes from famous conservatives and the Founding Fathers induce a brisk yet enlightening reading pace. 

If you have a family, this book is perfect -- you can ready a chapter per day with your children or use it as a refernce to counter liberal teachings at school.

To order "Why Am I Conservative?", click here.

President Obama Delivers a "Mr. Compromise Goes to Washington" SOTU

Following last November's tidal wave that destroyed the Liberal monopoly in Washington, President Obama delivered his most centrist speech of his presidency last night at the State of the Union address.  He appealed to the public that he has the right answers for our country, beyond those proposed by the far right and far left in office.  He delivered himself as "Mr. Compromise".

He proposed discretionary cuts to the operations of the federal government, consolidation and elimination of similar federal programs, health care tort reform, and holding teachers accountable -- all traditional Republican ideals.  Sadly, these were all issues that he either spoke against or ignored during his first two years in office.  In the next few months, President Obama will submit his FY 2012 budget and government reform packages to Congress.  We'll watch closely to see if his words last night match the words on the draft legislation.

Based on his centrist promises made last night, the re-election campaign (Obama '12) is now underway.  He knows that he needs to run a different campaign than the one that got him elected into office.  The American people have voted against his radical reform measures taken during his first two years.  It will be interesting to see how attractive it is to the far left, whom he has now abandoned, the African American community, who voted in record numbers for him in 2008, and the broad independent voting base.

Ryan's Rule

From today's National Review Online:

Under a new rule, Paul Ryan can set budget levels for 2011.

All eyes will be on President Obama this evening as he delivers his much-anticipated State of the Union address. But it’s a momentous day for House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) as well. Not only has he been tapped to deliver the GOP response to Obama’s speech, but by the time the president arrives at the Capitol, the House almost certainly will have passed a rules resolution giving him unilateral authority to roll back the budget to 2008 levels. This, as you’ll recall, was a central component of the GOP’s “Pledge to America.”

To be clear, the rule itself does not cut spending; it merely gives Ryan the ability to set limits that the House Appropriations Committee must respect when it passes a spending resolution for the remainder of fiscal year 2011. These limits are usually set by a “concurrent” resolution — that is, one passed by the House and the Senate but not approved by the president — but Congress failed to pass one last year. Defense spending and entitlements are not included. And of course, to take effect, a spending resolution that passes the House under Ryan’s policy will also have to go through the Democratic Senate and President Obama.

But today’s vote on the rule will force all House members to go on the record on spending cuts and — because most Democrats will likely oppose the measure — set up a contrast between the two parties ahead of the president’s address. It will also serve to highlight Ryan’s remarks. All considered, today will mark the opening salvo of the showdown over the budget.

Predictably, House Democrats are up in arms over the new rule. They say that in addition to excluding the Senate from the budget process, it puts too much power in the hands of one person. And not just any one person. Ryan’s reputation as a perennial budget hawk has many on the left in a frenzy over the prospect of deep spending cuts. Many are already sounding the alarm over entitlement programs, which Ryan dared to single out for reform in his much-maligned (by the Left) “Roadmap for America’s Future” — despite the fact that, again, these are not included in Ryan’s new budget powers. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said that simply by selecting Ryan to give the SOTU rebuttal, House Republicans were “doubling down on their disastrous plans to gamble Social Security funds on Wall Street and dismantle Medicare.” The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein predicted that elevating Ryan in such a way could come back to haunt the GOP by highlighting the “Roadmap,” which Klein called a “timebomb” for Republicans.

As for the vote itself, Democrats contend that it is little more than a publicity stunt — an attempt to steal the president’s thunder on the day of his address. Rules Committee ranking member Louise Slaughter (D., N.Y.) chided Republicans for trying to “cut spending with a press release.”

Republicans, on the other hand, point out that similar authority was given to the budget chairman in 1999, after Congress had similarly failed to adopt a budget resolution the previous year. “It strikes me as an odd communications strategy for House Democrats to devote considerable time and energy to draw attention to their own historic budget failure,” Ryan spokesman Conor Sweeney tells National Review Online. “They oversaw an unprecedented breakdown in the budget process for fiscal year 2011, and are now complaining that fiscal year 2011 has deviated from the normal budget process.”

In a hearing last week, House Rules Committee chairman David Dreier (R., Calif.) emphasized that Republicans, contrary to some Democratic claims, would not be “gutting” any programs simply by returning to 2008 levels, and that the new rule was “merely the very first step in an ongoing effort to bring our federal budget back into the black.”

The House Appropriations Committee must draft a spending bill to fund the government for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 (through September) once the current continuing resolution expires on March 4. Appropriations chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) has welcomed the new rule. “As I have said before, it is my intention to craft the largest series of spending cuts in the history of Congress,” he said in a statement. “My committee is working diligently on this right now.”

Another looming deadline is February 15, when President Obama is due to release his budget for fiscal year 2012. That’s when Ryan will get his first crack at drafting his own annual budget. The bulk of the budget fight will consist of efforts to reconcile these competing proposals. “I expect our numbers will be slightly lower than his,” Ryan joked at the National Press Club earlier this month. Another obvious point of contention will be Republican efforts to exclude from the budget any funds slated for the implementation of Obamacare.

Today’s vote, Obama’s address, and Ryan’s response will lay the groundwork for the struggle ahead. In fact, a war of words is already underway, as early reports indicate the president will be discussing the need for “investments” in areas such as infrastructure, clean energy, and education. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R., Va.) says that’s a “code word for more spending,” but added that Republicans are eager to hear what Obama has to say. After a series of moves suggesting that the White House intends to embrace the political center, they hope to find out just where he stands on fiscal issues. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) called the speech “a trust-but-verify moment” for the GOP. Either way, don’t expect an overabundance of applause lines designed to appeal to Republicans.

Of course, a bitter fight between the two parties over budget cuts is to be expected. But there have also been signs of a conflict brewing within the GOP itself. The conservative House Republican Study Committee released a proposal last Thursday that would cut a whopping $2.5 trillion over the next decade. The plan would cap federal spending at 2006 levels — significantly lower than 2008 levels — and was seen by many as a direct challenge to the House Republican leadership. “This is the day we stop kicking the budget can down the road and get our fiscal house in order,” Rep. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.) said at a press conference introducing the plan.

The Rules Committee has already made efforts to shore up its proposal. The resolution the House is voting on today includes an amendment from freshman member Rep. Tim Scott (R., S.C.) that changes the original text authorizing Ryan “to reduce spending through a transition to non-security spending at fiscal year 2008 levels.” It now reads: “. . . to fiscal year 2008 levels or less.”

The measure is certain to pass the House, so Democrats will quickly turn their attention to Ryan’s response to the president. Now that his party is in the majority, the new budget chair will be under much greater scrutiny. On the left, he’ll be criticized no matter what — he’ll either “destroy the middle class” by cutting too much, or break campaign promises by cutting too little.

Conservatives, meanwhile, are thrilled to have Ryan in charge of setting spending limits and responding to the president. Republicans believe that few are better suited than Ryan to make the case for — and then implement — fiscal prudence.

— Andrew Stiles is a 2011 Franklin Fellow.

Abortion Debate Returns, But Now in a Pro-Life Nation

Great piece from Chris Stirewalt at FoxNews.com...

The abortion debate has returned with vigor to Congress after many years of dormancy, and the result may be different this time around. That's because while Washington wasn't watching, America became a pro-life nation.

House Republicans are taking up the issue in a variety of ways. First, they're looking to close the loophole in President Obama's national health-care law which they say could provide federal subsidies for elective abortions.

They're also looking to strip funding for Planned Parenthood, as part of their general move for budget austerity. And we can expect more moves on this front in the weeks to come.

Part of this is Republicans doing the bidding of the people who put them back in the majority. Pro-life groups are a huge bloc of the Republican coalition and activists demand results in exchange for all the help they provide. Even if the GOP doesn't succeed in changing laws right away, it's good base politics.

And for all the talk about the 2010 elections being all about taxes, spending and the size of government, the issue of abortion played an unmistakable role on both sides.

Of the 22 pro-life House Democrats who voted for Obama's health-care law, despite concerns among pro-life groups about the federal subsidy loophole, only five returned to Congress this year. Some would have lost or retired anyway, but there's no doubt that the issue, and the pressure from pro-life groups, turned some races.

For many swing-state voters, especially moderate, Catholic Democrats, abortion is a make or break issue. John Kerry's 2004 presidential defeat in Ohio could be attributed to Catholic voters who preferred his policies to those of George W. Bush on almost every issue, except that one.

One of the other notable trends of 2010 on abortion was the number of Democrats who used the issue as part of a bid to paint their Republican challengers as "extreme." Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado rallied socially liberal Denver suburbanites to his side by running ads casting challenger Ken Buck as an abortion hardliner. House candidates across the country used the same approach to varying degrees of success.

And while Republicans will continue to be at risk of the extremist label, especially in suburban districts, the last decade shows a remarkable shift in public attitudes on abortion.

FOX News polls show a 20-point shift on the subject in the past 14 years. In 1997, 50 percent of respondents considered themselves "pro-choice," while 40 percent considered themselves "pro-life." In the poll out last week, the numbers were reversed. Half of the respondents said they were "pro-life," while only 40 percent embraced the "pro-choice" label.

Gallup has been tracking the issue since the 1970s, and what their polls reveal is that in the 37 years since the Roe v. Wade decision, Americans became at first more and more pro-choice but, starting in the late 1990s, moved against the concept of elective abortions.

The high-point for the pro-choice movement was in 1990 when Gallup found 31 percent thought abortion should be unrestricted, 53 percent thought that it should be allowed under only certain circumstances and 12 percent thought it should always be illegal.

In Gallup's last poll, taken in the summer of 2009, only 21 percent were pro-choice absolutists, 57 percent thought the practice should be limited and 18 percent favored a total ban.

So how did America become a pro-life nation?

Part of it is generational. For Baby Boomers, the right for a woman to choose to have an abortion was a central battle in the fight for gender equality. The issue was all tied up with the Equal Rights Amendment, women's liberation and other political fights of the 1970s. Being pro-life was equated with being anti-equality.
For the children of Baby Boomers who were not there for the creation of this confusing political hybrid, the issue doesn't seem to fit. Plus, equality isn't as grave a concern for women today. The battles of previous generations seem like remote concerns.

Part of it is also technological. The ultrasound machine has had a huge effect on the debate over when life begins. The mysteries of "quickening" and gestational development have given way to 3-D pictures of little people with little fingers and little toes. Proud parents get these pictures framed and keep them on their desks now.

Add to that the revolutionary advances in care for premature births and in-depth studies of fetal development and you have badly damaged the case that abortion does not end a life.

Social conservatives are usually on the losing end of societal trends. Gay marriage seems increasingly likely and gays will soon serve openly in the military.

Social conservatives have lost their stands against no-fault divorce, gay adoption, smutty television shows and other bright-line social issues. America has a more permissive culture than it did 10 years ago and history tells us that it will likely be even more permissive in another decade.

But on abortion, it is possible that in the long term, the right may win the battle. One day, Democrats may have to do on abortion what they have done in the past decade on gun control and cede the issue.

Chris Stirewalt is FOX News' digital politics editor. His political note, Power Play, is available every weekday morning at FOXNEWS.COM.

Father-Daughter Conversation....

A bit of light humor provied by Kip P.:

She was deeply ashamed that her father was a rather staunch conservative, a feeling she openly expressed. Based on the lectures that she had participated in, and the occasional chat with a professor, she felt that her father had for years harbored an evil, selfish desire to keep what he thought should be his.

One day she was challenging her father on his opposition to higher taxes on the rich and the need for more government programs.

The self-professed objectivity proclaimed by her professors had to be the truth and she indicated so to her father. He responded by asking how she was doing in school.

Taken aback, she answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain, insisting that she was taking a very difficult course load and was constantly studying, which left her no time to go out and party like other people she knew. She didn't even have time for a boyfriend, and didn't really have many college friends because she spent all her time studying.

Her father listened and then asked, "How is your friend Audrey doing?" She replied, “Audrey is barely getting by. All she takes are easy classes, she never studies and she barely has a 2.0 GPA. She is so popular on campus; college for her is a blast. She's always invited to all the parties and lots of times she doesn't even show up for classes because she's too hung over.”

Her wise father asked his daughter, “Why don't you go to the Dean's office and ask him to deduct 1.0 off your GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0. That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair and equal distribution of GPA."

The daughter, visibly shocked by her father's suggestion, angrily fired back, “That's a crazy idea, how would that be fair! I've worked really hard for my grades! I've invested a lot of time, and a lot of hard work! Audrey has done next to nothing toward her degree. She played while I worked my tail off!”

The father slowly smiled, winked and said gently, “Welcome to the conservative side of the fence.”

RSC Proposes Welcomed Changes to Federal Budget

Much praise from the R.C. Blog to Rep. Jim Jordan and the rest of the Republican Study Committee for yesterday's budget proposal to eliminate more than $2.5 trillion in non-security discretionary spending by the federal government. 

The proposal does what Republicans have been talking about for two years -- "repeal" of remaining stimulus funds (now $45 billion), privatizing Fannie and Freddie ($30 billion), repealing Medicaid' FMAP increase ($16.1 billion), and what they estimate at $330 billion in discretionary spending cuts. Highlights of these projected annual savings:

- Cutting the federal workforce by 15 percent through attrition, and do this by allowing only one new federal worker for every two who quit.

- Killing the "fund for Obamacare administrative costs" for $900 million

- Ending Amtrak subsidies for $1.565 billion

- Ending intercity and high speed rail grants for $2.5 billion

- Repealing Davis-Bacon for $1 billion

- Cutting annual general assistance to the District of Columbia by $210 million, and cutting the subsidy for DC's transit authority by $150 million.

Reforms that go after their own perks:

- Cutting the Federal Travel Budget in half, for $7.5 billion

- Cutting the Federal Vehicle Budget by 1/5, for $600 million

- Halve funding for congressional printing - $47 million annual savings

- Ending the death gratuity for members of Congress

And cuts that get revenge for Juan Williams: $445 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, $167.5 million from the NEA, and $167.5 million from the NEH.

For a copy of the Spending Reduction Act, click here.

EWTN Acquires National Catholic Register Newspaper

EWTN Global Catholic Network today announced that it has signed a letter of intent to acquire the National Catholic Register, the nation’s leading Catholic newspaper.

“I am very pleased and excited that the Register will now be a part of the EWTN family,” said Michael P. Warsaw, the Network’s president and chief executive officer. “All of us at EWTN have great respect for the Register and the role it has played throughout its history. It’s a tremendous legacy that deserves to not only be preserved, but also to grow and to flourish.”

“I believe that EWTN will be able to provide the stability that the Register needs at this time as well as to give it a platform for its growth in the years ahead. We’re proud to be able to step in and carry on both the Register’s name and its tradition of faithful Catholic reporting on the issues of the day,” noted Warsaw.

Under the terms of the transaction, no cash will be exchanged between the parties. EWTN will take over the ongoing operational expenses of the Register and will assume the paper’s future subscription liabilities.

The acquisition of the Register is the latest in EWTN’s efforts to expand its news presence in the global Catholic digital and multimedia market. At the start of 2010, EWTN entered into a partnership with the Catholic News Agency (CNA), a Denver-based independent Catholic news media outlet with bureaus in North and South America and Europe. Under that agreement, EWTN and CNA are sharing news resources and have created a joint news service found at www.ewtnnews.com. That arrangement was recently expanded to include a new original Spanish-language news service, EWTN Noticias, (http://www.ewtnnoticias.com/) launched in January 2011.

EWTN Global Catholic Network provides multimedia services to more than 140 countries and territories. The Network transmits nine separate television channels in several languages to audiences around the world. It also operates multiple radio services including a network of hundreds of AM and FM stations, a Sirius satellite radio channel, and a global shortwave radio service. EWTN’s main website, http://www.ewtn.com/, draws more than 20 million unique visitors annually.

The National Catholic Register (http://www.ncregister.com/) grew out of Denver’s Catholic Register, which began on Aug. 11, 1905. Under the leadership of Msgr. Matthew Smith, the Register System of Newspapers was developed, with the first national edition appearing on Nov. 8, 1927. It was acquired by the Legion of Christ in 1995. To find out more about the Register, go to: http://www.ncregister.com/info/about_the_register.

Dick Morris: There are No Politics In Murder

Another great article on the Left's immediate blame of the Right for Saturday's tragic killings....

THERE ARE NO POLITICS IN MURDER
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN
Published on DickMorris.com on January 10, 2011

The conventional wisdom of the media establishment that strident and outspoken political debate catalyzes violence is an absurdity! Telling people to "kill pigs" as the sixties radicals did, in fact, encouraged violence. But vigorous political debate and strongly or even passionately held views have nothing whatever to do with the decision of some nut to kill a Congressman or a president.

Fantasies about Jodie Foster, instructions from Son of Sam, or delusions of omnipotence all can cause violence, but heated political debate doesn't. To stigmatize strongly articulated opinions on the left or the right and blame them for the insane attack on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords is outrageous.

Oklahoma City was an act of political terror, incited by resentment against federal tactics at Waco. It was not some speech that ignited Timothy McVeigh but a massive act of violence.

Ft. Hood was an act of political terror. No speech incited the attacks, but a culture of violence spawned throughout the Islamic world. The same is true of the shoe bomber, the Detroit airplane bomber, the Times Square bomber and, indeed, the terrorists of 9-11.

Neither the left nor the right should confuse political terrorism with the random insanity of a crazed gunman. The attack on Giffords had as little to do with ideology as the attack on the students of Virginia Tech or Columbine High School.

Daniel Greenfield makes a key point:

There has not been a single act of Muslim violence in the last two years that the media was willing to identify as motivated by Islam. Each and every time they had to be dragged kicking and screaming, past their cover stories, through groundless claims that the attackers were motivated by psychological problems, bullying, imaginary medical conditions or financial problems-- to some adjunct of the truth. And at the same time over the last two years, each prominent act of violence by non-Muslims was followed by an attempt to identify the attacker or attackers with mainstream Republicans in a cynical attempt to demonize and criminalize the political opposition.

But what if the killer had been a political conservative? What if he had attended Tea Party rallies or - for that matter - been active in Moveon.org or a left-leaning union? Would the killings have made the movement fair game? Would it be right to cast aspersions on tens of millions of nonviolent citizens exercising their democratic rights in the name of discouraging violence?

Since the shootings, I have gotten e mails from the BBC and Sky TV in the UK and Der Spiegel in Germany requesting interviews. How much they would like to link conservative opinions with the attempted assassination of a Congresswoman! Suddenly, they are all ears.

But their attempts at linking this insane killer to any political movement are ridiculous and preparatory to an abridgement of free speech.

Will: The Charlatans' Response to the Tucson Tagedy

Following the tragic events of this weekend in Tucson and the reaction of the Left's political hacks and media operatives to immediately place the blame on the laps of the "gun-crazy Tea Partiers", George Will posted the following op-ed in today's Washington Post.  It says it better than I could ever hope to communicate it...


The Charlatans' Response to the Tucson Tragedy
By George F. Will
Monday, January 10, 2011

It would be merciful if, when tragedies such as Tucson's occur, there were a moratorium on sociology. But respites from half-baked explanations, often serving political opportunism, are impossible because of a timeless human craving and a characteristic of many modern minds.

The craving is for banishing randomness and the inexplicable from human experience. Time was, the gods were useful. What is thunder? The gods are angry. Polytheism was explanatory. People postulated causations.

And still do. Hence: The Tucson shooter was (pick your verb) provoked, triggered, unhinged by today's (pick your noun) rhetoric, vitriol, extremism, "climate of hate."

Demystification of the world opened the way for real science, including the social sciences. And for a modern characteristic. And for charlatans.

A characteristic of many contemporary minds is susceptibility to the superstition that all behavior can be traced to some diagnosable frame of mind that is a product of promptings from the social environment. From which flows a political doctrine: Given clever social engineering, society and people can be perfected. This supposedly is the path to progress. It actually is the crux of progressivism. And it is why there is a reflex to blame conservatives first.

Instead, imagine a continuum from the rampages at Columbine and Virginia Tech - the results of individuals' insanities - to the assassinations of Lincoln and the Kennedy brothers, which were clearly connected to the politics of John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Sirhan, respectively. The two other presidential assassinations also had political colorations.

On July 2, 1881, after four months in office, President James Garfield, who had survived the Civil War battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga, needed a vacation. He was vexed by warring Republican factions - the Stalwarts, who waved the bloody shirt of Civil War memories, and the Half-Breeds, who stressed the emerging issues of industrialization. Walking to catch a train in Washington, Garfield by chance encountered a disappointed job-seeker. Charles Guiteau drew a pistol, fired two shots and shouted "I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be president!" On Sept. 19, Garfield died, making Vice President Chester Arthur president. Guiteau was executed, not explained.

On Sept. 6, 1901, President William McKinley, who had survived the battle of Antietam, was shaking hands at a Buffalo exposition when Leon Czolgosz approached, a handkerchief wrapped around his right hand, concealing a gun. Czolgosz, an anarchist, fired two shots. Czolgosz ("I killed the president because he was the enemy of the good people - the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.") was executed, not explained.

Now we have explainers. They came into vogue with the murder of President Kennedy. They explained why the "real" culprit was not a self-described Marxist who had moved to Moscow, then returned to support Castro. No, the culprit was a "climate of hate" in conservative Dallas, the "paranoid style" of American (conservative) politics, or some other national sickness resulting from insufficient liberalism.

Last year, New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained that "the optics must be irritating" to conservatives: Barack Obama is black, Nancy Pelosi is female, Rep. Barney Frank is gay, Rep. Anthony Weiner (an unimportant Democrat, listed to serve Blow's purposes) is Jewish. "It's enough," Blow said, "to make a good old boy go crazy." The Times, which after the Tucson shooting said that "many on the right" are guilty of "demonizing" people and of exploiting "arguments of division," apparently was comfortable with Blow's insinuation that conservatives are misogynistic, homophobic, racist anti-Semites.

On Sunday, the Times explained Tucson: "It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman's act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But . . ." The "directly" is priceless.

Three days before Tucson, Howard Dean explained that the Tea Party movement is "the last gasp of the generation that has trouble with diversity." Rising to the challenge of lowering his reputation and the tone of public discourse, Dean smeared Tea Partyers as racists: They oppose Obama's agenda, Obama is African American, ergo . . .

Let us hope that Dean is the last gasp of the generation of liberals whose default position in any argument is to indict opponents as racists. This McCarthyism of the left - devoid of intellectual content, unsupported by data - is a mental tic, not an idea but a tactic for avoiding engagement with ideas. It expresses limitless contempt for the American people, who have reciprocated by reducing liberalism to its current characteristics of electoral weakness and bad sociology.

The Reading of the Constitution on the House Floor

This morning, starting at 10:30 a.m., the U.S. House of Representatives will read, in its entirety, the U.S. Constitution.  What a novel idea!

I almost threw up listening to FORMER Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pontificate on the Senate floor yesterday about how his life has been devoted to defending the Constitution and how he treasures a copy of the document provided to him by former Senator Robert "KKK" Byrd.  Give me a break!

Perhaps we could get the Supreme Court justices to read the Constitution at the start of its next session.  Perhaps reading and hearing it will remind at least four of the justices what they are supposed to do.

Americans spend 6.1 billion hours on their taxes

More proof that something needs to be done about the current tax code.  Hopefully, the 112th Congress will begin to address this problem.


NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Filing taxes takes too long, costs too much money and is far too overwhelming a process for taxpayers.

That's the message from national taxpayer advocate Nina Olson, the watchdog charged with monitoring the Internal Revenue Service.

"There has been near universal agreement for years that the tax code is broken and needs to be fixed," Olson said in statement that accompanied her annual report to Congress released Wednesday."Yet no broad-based attempt to reform the tax code has been made."

Olson said the need for reform is clear.

Her analysis of IRS data shows that taxpayers and businesses spend 6.1 billion hours a year complying with tax-filing requirements.

"If tax compliance were an industry, it would be one of the largest in the United States," the report says. "To consume 6.1 billion hours, the 'tax industry' requires the equivalent of more than three million full-time workers."

Olson is a government official whose job is to highlight for Congress the most serious problems facing taxpayers. While it's probably not news for most Americans that the tax code is confusing, the report also points to serious problems with IRS enforcement of the code.

What A Great Day!

A picture is worth a thousand words!