New Bumper Sticker

The Solution For Bills That Are Too Big To Read

Mark Steyn brings it into focus with this post on NRO (emphasis added):

"Rep. John Conyers can't see why lawmakers should read the laws they make. What's the point? They wouldn't understand 'em anyway:

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

As Betsy Newmark comments:

At least some representative's aides somewhere have read some part of the bill so that should be enough, right? Who says that when you're rejiggering over one-sixth of the US economy and incurring massive future debt that you need to know what it is you're voting on.

Thousand-page bills, unread and indeed unwritten at the time of passage, are the death of representative government. They also provide a clue as to why, in a country this large, national government should be minimal and constrained. Even if you doubled or trebled the size of the legislature, the Conyers conundrum would still hold: No individual can read these bills and understand what he's voting on. That's why the bulk of these responsibilities should be left to states and subsidiary jurisdictions, which can legislate on such matters at readable length and in comprehensible language.

As for optimum bill size, the 1773 Tea Act, which provoked the Boston Tea Party, was 2,263 words. That sounds about right."

H/T Instapundit

Send In The Clowns

Though admittedly an unscientific poll - somehow, it doesn't surprise me in the least. It also explains a lot. H/T Theo.

Any Questions?

Latest Bumper Sticker

Dissent is patriotic, right? From American Digest:

Rights Defined

From Theo:

"I'd like to clarify something that some people seemed to be confused about.

Health care is not a right. (Neither is education, or food, or housing, or a job.)

How can I be so sure?

Anything that requires the labor of someone else cannot be a universal human right.

Our Constitutional, Natural Law rights require only that others leave us alone. They require no labor, action, payment, participation or sacrifice of anyone else on our behalf.

We have the right to NOT be interfered with when we speak, practice religion, gather, or bear arms. We have the right NOT to be imprisoned without due-process, to be searched without cause, to be made to testify against ourselves.

See how that works?"

'Cigarettes, Whisky And Wild, Wild Women'.

The world's oldest man, Mr. Henry Allingham has died at 113 years of age. When he was once asked to what did he attribute his longevity, he is said to have replied 'cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women'.

Iran Update

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Tens of thousands of government opponents packed Iran's main Islamic prayer service Friday, chanting "freedom, freedom" and other slogans as their top clerical backer Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani delivered a sermon bluntly criticizing the country's leadership over the crackdown on election protests.

Outside, police and pro-government Basiji militiamen fired tear gas and charged thousands of protesters who chanted "death to the dictator" and called on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to resign. Dozens were arrested, piled in trucks and taken away, witnesses said.

Smart Puppy

An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard; I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of.

He calmly came over to me, I gave him a few pats on his head; he then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner, and fell asleep.

An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.
The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside, resumed his spot in the hall, and again slept for about an hour. This continued off and on for several weeks.

Curious, I pinned a note to his collar: “I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.”

The next day he arrived for his nap with a different note pinned to his collar: “He lives in a home with 6 children, 2 under the age of 3. He's trying to catch up on his sleep. Can I come with him tomorrow?”

Run For Your Life

Dr. Szasz at The Wall Street Journal:

"The idea that every life is infinitely precious and therefore everyone deserves the same kind of optimal medical care is a fine religious sentiment and moral ideal. As political and economic policy, it is vainglorious delusion. Rich and educated people not only receive better goods and services in all areas of life than do poor and uneducated people, they also tend to take better care of themselves and their possessions, which in turn leads to better health. The first requirement for better health care for all is not equal health care for everyone but educational and economic advancement for everyone.

Our national conversation about curbing the cost of health care is crippled by the vocabulary in which we conduct it. We must stop talking about "health care" as if it were some kind of collective public service, like fire protection, provided equally to everyone who needs it. No government can provide the same high quality body repair services to everyone. Not all doctors are equally good physicians, and not all sick persons are equally good patients.

If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone.

Henry David Thoreau famously remarked, "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Thoreau feared a single, unarmed man approaching him with such a passion in his heart. Too many people now embrace the coercive apparatus of the modern state professing the same design."

CWCID: Maggie's Farm

Nighthawks On The Internet

CWCID: American Digest

Guy Rules

We always hear “the rules” from the female side. Now here are the rules from the male side. These are our rules! Please note...these are all numbered “1” ON PURPOSE!


1. Men are NOT mind readers.

1. Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don’t hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

1. Sunday sports. It’s like the full moon or the changing of the tides. Let it be.

1. Shopping is NOT a sport. And no, we are never going to think of it that way.

1. Crying is blackmail.

1. Ask for what you want. Let us be clear on this one: Subtle hints do not work! Strong hints do not work! Obvious hints do not work! Just say it!

1. Yes and No are perfectly acceptable answers to almost every question.

1. Come to us with a problem only if you want help solving it. That’s what we do. Sympathy is what your girlfriends are for.

1. A headache that lasts for 17 months is a problem... See a doctor.

1. Anything we said 6 months ago is inadmissible in an argument. In fact, all comments become null and void after 7 days.

1. If you won’t dress like the Victoria’s Secret girls, don’t expect us to act like soap opera guys.

1. If you think you’re fat, you probably are. Don’t ask us.

1. If something we said can be interpreted two ways and one of them makes you sad or angry, then we meant the other one.

1. You can either ask us to do something or tell us how you want it done. Not both. If you already know best how to do it, just do it yourself.

1. Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

1. Christopher Columbus did NOT need directions and neither do we.

1. ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

1. If it itches, it will be scratched. We do that.

1. If we ask what is wrong and you say “nothing,” we will act like nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it is just not worth the hassle, besides we know you will bring it up again later.

1. If you ask a question you don’t want an answer to, expect an answer you don’t want to hear.

1. When we have to go somewhere, absolutely anything you wear is fine... really.

1. Don’t ask us what we’re thinking about unless you are prepared to discuss such topics as baseball, the shotgun formation, or golf.

1. You have enough clothes.

1. You have too many shoes.

1. I am in shape. Round IS a shape!

1. Thank you for reading this. Yes, I know, I have to sleep on the couch tonight. But did you know men really don’t mind that? It’s like camping.

Wipe Out Disco In Our Lifetime

I saw the title of this post spray painted on the wall of an elementary school in Queens, New York during the late Seventies. Over at Reason they are discussing the 1979 riot at Comiskey Park as rocks rebellion against disco. After disco's recent rehabilitation the riot may now be considered racist because of its identification as a black, Hispanic and gay music.

As someone who was very musically aware in the Seventies, I can assure you that disco, regardless of its affiliation with any downtrodden social group, sucked - as did the miserable corporate rock of the same era (think Fleetwood Mac). My personal reaction to the prevailing musical tastes of that period was to embrace the Ramones, the Sex Pistols and the Clash. While I never adopted the nihilistic punk lifestyle, I certainly enjoyed the music. Punk had that essential element of all great rock music – it scared you - just a little.

But what really disturbs me is that some revisionist fool feels compelled to explain the music of the Seventies through the lense of white oppression. What total nonsense! Am I a racist because I don’t like rap or hip hop? Am I so ignorant of rock music history that I am completely unaware of the huge influences exerted by Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and the Black Church, just to mention a few? And how are you going to pigeon hole me when you find my sizable collection of John Coltrane?

I once had lunch with a gentleman who was an opera devotee and whose opinion on musical matters I greatly valued. During our conversation, I made the mistake of saying that there were only two kinds of music – good music and bad music. He chuckled and said while he agreed that there were only two kinds of music, he was of the opinion that it was music you liked and music you didn’t like.

Sometimes it really is just that simple.

The Revolution Begins Anew

Over at Instapundit Glenn Reynolds asks the same questions I have been asking and comes up with the same answer (emphasis added):

JEFF JACOBY: Lawmakers, read the bills before you vote.

Hoyer conceded that if lawmakers had to carefully study the bill ahead of time, they would never vote for it. “If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,’’ he said. The majority leader was declaring, in other words, that it is more important for Congress to pass the bill than to understand it.

“Transparency’’ is a popular buzzword in good-government circles, and politicians are forever promising to transact the people’s business in the sunshine. But as Hoyer’s mirth suggests, when it comes to lawmaking, transparency is a joke. Congress frequently votes on huge and complex bills that few if any members of the House or Senate have read through. They couldn’t read them even if they wanted to, since it is not unusual for legislation to be put to a vote just hours after the text is made available to lawmakers. Congress passed the gigantic, $787 billion “stimulus’’ bill in February - the largest spending bill in history - after having had only 13 hours to master its 1,100 pages. A 300-page amendment was added to Waxman-Markey, the mammoth cap-and-trade energy bill, at 3 a.m. on the day the bill was to be voted on by the House. And that wasn’t the worst of it."

If companies that are “too big to fail” are too big to exist, then bills that are “too long to read” are too long to pass. This sort of behavior — passing bills that no one has read — or, that in the case of the healthcare “bill” haven’t even actually been written — represents political corruption of the first order. If representation is the basis on which laws bind the citizen, then why should citizens regard themselves as bound by laws that their representatives haven’t read, or, sometimes, even written yet?

Update - I posted this comment at Tigerhawk this morning:
According to Dr. James McHenry, at the close of the Constitutional Convention Dr. Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman “Well Doctor what have we got - a republic or a monarchy? A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” It has always been a struggle to keep the Republic and our time is no different.

Should we pass laws or constitutional amendments so those elected to conduct the people’s business are forced to actually do it? What, exactly, do our congressional representatives think they were elected to do? Somehow, reading and understanding any bill they vote on would seem to be the least they could do. But as recent events have shown, it does not appear they can even rouse themselves to do that much.

Which brings us back to Glenn Reynold’s point – “If representation is the basis on which laws bind the citizen, then why should citizens regard themselves as bound by laws that their representatives haven’t read, or, sometimes, even written yet?” The answer is self-evident. The process of “keeping our Republic” has begun anew and the only question is how best to accomplish that goal.

I submit that it is not accomplished by petitioning our elected representatives to do their jobs.

Absolutely

From PostSecret.

The Steny Hoyer Comedy Hour

Washington (CNSNews.com) - House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.

Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.

In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.

When The Time For Discussion Is Over

Palin Speculation

Goodbye, Juneau over at Tigerhawk:

"Perhaps as much of a third of Republican voters (maybe equivalent to about 10% of the total electorate) would run through a brick wall for her. Other than President Obama, I don't believe there are any other politicians on the scene today who engender that kind of personal loyalty in that kind of volume, almost at the level of pure chemistry. (The Obama loyalists would actually talk to the brick wall, and then either walk around it or hope that it would fall on its own)."

And over at Instapundit:

READER PAUL LEE thinks that Sarah Palin will try to start a new Tea Party in August.


Pure speculation on my part but this was the very first thought I had when I heard she was resigning. Here’s why I think my theory is valid.

1. Sarah Palin is a fighter and wants payback for her VP run in that she wants to run an unfettered campaign free from internal sabotage.

2. Her speaking points are very much aligned with the stuff coming out of tea parties of late

3. The tea party movement to date has been entirely grassroots but lacking a coordinated national leadership. In fact, to date, it has purposely avoided that to maintain its character and idealism.

4. Palin knows running again as a GOP candidate would be a political dead-end. Her only real choice is to offer her services to raise tons of money for a new party - the TEA Party!

5. In terms of symbolism, the TEA Party would resonate most strongly with middle America - something the Greens and Libertarians never had.

6. She’s resigning now because the road to 2012 first needs to make a stop at the 2010 midterm elections. The only way a new party would have a chance in 2012 is to take a lot of seats in 2010.

7. The tea party movement needs to field its own candidates in 2010 because the last decade has shown neither Republicans nor Democrats can be trusted with power. The only candidates people will be able to truly trust will be those who run on a new platform free from the political influence peddling of the current parties.

8. The only way a new TEA Party can field candidates who will win is if they have a strong national leadership and access to a lot of fund raising power. In other words, Sarah Palin.

9. To win significant seats in 2010 means you have to start organizing now. Hence her unusual timing of her resignation.

10. Palin at the head of a new national party will suck all the oxygen out of the room. This single act will guarantee she will have as much air time as our Spender-in-Chief. Furthermore it will no doubt scare a lot of Republicans (since the leadership is all chickenshit today anyway) into actually taking on the Democrats.

11. And, cranking it up all the way to 11, Sarah Palin declaring the formation of the national TEA Party would be the single most disruptive, and dare I say most revolutionary act in the history of modern American politics. It will totally change the whole ballgame because everyone in a single stroke will be playing by HER rules.

“Higher calling,” indeed.

Hmm. My thoughts: (1) How’d that Ross Perot thing work out? (2) It would be hard — not impossible, but hard — to get enough candidates on the ballot to make a difference, given that state ballot laws are quite deliberately designed to prevent third parties from getting a toehold. (3) Palin’s got a lot of popularity, but she’d draw almost entirely from Republican voters. (4) On the other hand, it would serve the GOP establishment right . . . .

UPDATE: Lee responds:


Also, here are my responses to the questions you raised.

1. Ross Perot, despite having come out of left field, still won 19% of the popular vote. I think Palin could avoid the Perot effect by first establishing a political base for a new party via the 2010 midterm elections. How much stronger would she be as a candidate for a third major political party that manged to win, say, 20% of the contested seats in 2010? Going into 2012, she would have a much bigger advantage than Perot ever had.

2. Yes, I agree getting enough candidates on the ballot would be EXTREMELY difficult. But my counter-argument to this is, what other real alternative is there? My fear is that the tea party movement will fizzle by next year. People can only be angry for so long, and after venting at their elected Republican and Democratic officials for so long, how can the justified anger be channeled into real action? Tea partiers can “throw the bums out” but in order to do that, they have to have strong opposition candidates to actually vote for.

I’m pretty sure incumbents running in 2010 will make just enough pleasing noises to attract just enough votes of tea partiers to retain their seats - only to return to business as usual. I sensed a lot of “I’m glad I’m here to voice my opinions, but I don’t know what else to do” type of attitude in reading some of the tea party articles you posted this morning. What the TEA Party needs now is to be able to say, “Here are our slate of candidates in 2010 - let’s do everything we can to get them elected.”

3. I somewhat agree that Palin’s draw is almost entirely from Republican voters. Which is why heading up the formation of a new national party is the best move for her politically. She gets to ditch the Republican label and the constant internal sabotage. Palin doesn’t need the GOP, and the GOP is too ambivalent to give her the kind of support she needs to run a national race.

In any case, I’m not totally convinced myself Palin would be the BEST candidate for Presidency in 2012. That would be something to decide a few years hence. But the reason I like my theory so much is that Palin is probably the only figure in American politics today who can make a national TEA Party happen. Jim Geraghty noticed this about Palin’s resignation statement:

“She quoted Douglas MacArthur in her resignation announcement, referring to ‘not retreating, but advancing in another direction.’ But the words most associated with Douglas MacArthur in American minds are “I shall return.”

Geraghty is looking at the wrong MacArthur analogy. “I shall return” was MacArthur being forced to leave the Philippines under fire, under circumstances he couldn’t control.

But if my speculation proves to be true, then Palin’s reference to MacArthur is actually a reference to the Inchon landing in the Korean War. Remember that the U.N. forces had been overrun and pushed back to the Pusan Perimeter on a tiny corner of the Korean Peninsula. The war was virtually lost. MacArthur, by landing in Inchon, managed to turn the entire war around in a single action, and within a short period of time, North Korean forces had been pushed back all the way to the northern border with China. It happened precisely because no one expected MacArthur to make such a daring and difficult move from an unlikely direction at an unlikely time. Viewed in this way, doesn’t her sudden resignation make sense?

If Palin does emerge as the head of a new national TEA Party, it will be her version of Inchon.

Is Sarah Palin’s grasp of military history that sophisticated? Oh, well. As long as there’s no trouble at the Yalu. Meanwhile, John Richardson writes:


I think the third party talk is ill advised. I think Palin just needs to try and stick her finger in the eye of the Republican establishment. She can do that by supporting/encouraging challengers to incumbents, where appropriate, in the Republican primaries. Supporting Marco Rubio against the RNSC’s boy Crist would be a good place to start.

You’re right, history shows the folly of third party runs at the national level. The only way I see for the Tea Party to become a third party is to focus on getting people to run in local elections, and establishing themselves at that level.

I think pushing primary challengers — to both Democrats and Republicans — is a more promising approach. But what do I know?

And Ashley Cruseturner thinks she could become “a Republican Al Gore, beloved and admired on her side of the aisle and reviled and ridiculed by her irate opponents. Remember, Vice President Gore has reportedly earned $100 Million during the years following his defeat in 2000. Like Gore, Palin will always have star power and the ability to draw a crowd. We can expect her to use her influence on the party faithful when needed, and we can also expect her, like Gore, to continually dangle the prospect of running for president before the press and her faithful boosters (but my hunch is, ultimately, she will never pull the trigger again on a all-out run for the big prize). All she needs now are a ‘few inconvenient truths.’”

The budget provides plenty of those. But she’d be wise to avoid Al Gore’s weight gain. Meanwhile, a reader sends this post suggesting that a third-party run isn’t as hard as it used to be. Maybe, but I am not yet convinced.

And reader Meryl Jefferson says forget all the third-party drama:


Look, Palin is relatively inexperienced, compared to say, John McCain or Ted Stevens, but she’s not a nutter.

No matter what Maureen Dowd writes.

You don’t go all Ross Perot on the Republican Party and start your own fringe party by trying to coopt the TEA Party movement into a new Party.
Palin isn’t stupid. She knows that the two major parties are the only game in town. She understands that the correct path is to conduct an insurgency within the Republican Party, as Goldwater did.

If she were a loon, she’d be going to Idaho and into the mountains. But she’s not. She’s going to Simi Valley on August 8th to address the 50th Anniversary of the Simi Valley Women’s Republican Club. Seats are $150.00 a ticket for non-members. This is her roll-out speech. I bet the tickets are being snapped up so fast that not even Arnold can get one.

This is not the action of one who wants to go Ross Perot. It is the action of one who’s gone Galt on her own party and has decided to play the game her way.

The way Nixon played it in 1965, and Reagan played it in 1977.

Well, stay tuned. She’s certainly got a plan in mind.

My guess is if Palin stays in politics she is much more likely to use her star power and work from within the confines of the Republican Party. Forming a third party presents a whole host of problems for which she is ill-equipped (money, time, money, organization, money, candidates - did I mention money?). Besides, all she would succeed in doing would be splitting the Republican Party in half and assuring the Democrats free reign for the foreseeable future. You accomplish your goals by taking over the Republican Party from within and leaving the pantywaist country club types no where else to go. The question then becomes how she can harness the Tea Party contingent and draw them back into the Republican Party to do her bidding without being tarred and feathered as just another pol. If you want to use Reagan as the template then think about how he utilized the conservative Christians. But it also makes me wonder just exactly what is so tragically wrong with a political orgainization which requires this many of it's successful presidential candidates to "go Galt" on it.

Greatest. Comment. Thread. Ever.

And the original post isn't bad either. A "must read" over at Sippican Cottage.

Iran Update

From The New York Times:

CAIRO — The most important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment.

A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult — if not impossible.

We Hold These Truths To Be....

For those that have not seen the excellent "John Adams" the people sitting in this room are Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin.

And The Rockets Red Glare....

Quote Of The Day

“It hurts to make this choice, but I’ve given my reasons. I’m reminded of a sign on my parents’ refrigerator, ‘Don’t explain; your friends don’t need it, and your enemies won’t believe you anyway.’”
-Governor Sarah Palin during her resignation speech yesterday.

Oh, Say Can You See....

Happy Independence Day!

Journalism 101

Priceless

This must be seen to truly be believed. Is this the beginning of the Washington Press Corps reawakening? Not that it matters. They are "shocked" to find out that some of them have been manipulated by the White House.

I personally have no use for Helen Thomas strictly because of her unabashed liberalism. But you have to give the old girl credit - she really gives Gibbs a beating. Though if she doesn't get with the program I predict Obama will accomplish what the Bush White House could not - she will be drummed out of the press corp while all of her colleagues watch.



Update: CNSNews.com - Following a testy exchange during Wednesday’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well--for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”

Rock And Roll

Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones sit in with the Foo Fighters at Wembley Stadium June 7, 2008.

Thank You, Thank You Very Much.