Freedom advances in that craziest of places:

Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy won France’s presidential election on Sunday, beating his Socialist rival Segolene Royal by a comfortable margin and extending the right’s 12-year grip on power.

Last week – in between bleating that Sarkozy was a hatemonger – Royal noted that her supporters were getting ready to hit the streets and smash things.

So far so good.

Now there’s the little matter of governing his virtually-ungovernable country.

But Sarkozy’s victory is a sign that maybe France isn’t dead yet.

Perhaps we should be so lucky in ’08.

Learned Foot eulogizes a teacher and Minnesota notable who seemed to excoriate a younger, less learned Foot for a wrong answer in a Civil Procedure class – who then could not find the right answer…:

…I asked a friend who did attend what the damn answer was.

It was the exact same answer I had provided in class, and that the prof declared to be wrong. Apparently, because of his advanced age or whatever, he didn’t hear me correctly. I couldn’t find the right answer because I had already given it, and was looking elsewhere for it.

Amid which he discovered a vital life lesson:

And he taught me that in order to be right, you need to speak loudly.

Granted, with some of us it’s manifested more metaphorically than with Foot, but lessons is lessons.

(Scott Johnson also eulogizes the teacher, former Minnesota judge Donald Lay)

Carnivore from TvM notes:

No Democrat running for president has had anything to say about the ruling. If a Republican candidate, say a former mayor from New York, who needs help on the gun issue, would come out and actually endorse the ruling and say he would appoint judges likes those who decided the case for the majority, he would nearly guarantee picking up the Republican nomination. It would be enough to convince me and I’m to the right of Attila the Hun.

Note to Rudy (or his people):  this is not the kind of flip flop that’s going to hurt  your chances at a nomination.

Remeber during the first four years of the Bush Administration?  When every Democrat, including the ones who’d spent the Clinton era chuckling at the crazies in the Libertarian Party, thought concern for civil liberties (other those to abortion, making poop sculptures and exposing oneself in public) was the mark of tinfoil-hatted crazies?

 Remember how the minute John Ashcroft was sworn in, they became strict constructionists…no, that’s not accurate.  They became not-very-discerning absolutists? 

And when word got out that a group of soldiers mistreated a group of Iraqi detainees, Liberty was the word of the day?

They must have woken up.  The fantasy is over; the leopard’s spots are visible again.  The Democrats want to put free speech on a leash and make it bark like a dog:

Over the weekend, the National Conference for Media Reform was held in Memphis, TN, with a number of notable speakers on hand for the event. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) made an surprise appearance at the convention to announce that he would be heading up a new House subcommittee which will focus on issues surrounding the Federal Communications Commission.

I can hear it now:  “Oh, it’s just that nutbar Kucinich”.

Not at all.  Regulating free speech (by conservatives) is close to the heart for the left for almost two decades, ever since the Fairness Doctrine was repealed, opening the way for conservative alternatives to the left’s smothering hegemony in the media.  Hillary! Clinton and John Kerry have both floated the idea.

Kucinich’s push isn’t the ravings of a crackpot; it’s a trial balloon floated by someone who can’t do the Democrat mainstream any harm.  Their focus groups can poke and prod and see if the issue can move in from the fringe in time for the election.

In addition to media ownership, the committee is expected to focus its attention on issues such as net neutrality and major telecommunications mergers. Also in consideration is the “Fairness Doctrine,” which required broadcasters to present controversial topics in a fair and honest manner. It was enforced until it was eliminated in 1987.

Kucinich said in his speech that “We know the media has become the servant of a very narrow corporate agenda” and added “we are now in a position to move a progressive agenda to where it is visible.”

What Kucinich means, of course, is that he (and the new Democrat majority for whom he speaks) want to explore the idea of using the government to reassert control of the media. 

Here, though, is where the real agenda is betrayed:

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was also on hand at the conference and took broadcasters to task for their current content, speaking of “too little news, too much baloney passed off as news. Too little quality entertainment, too many people eating bugs on reality TV. Too little local and regional music, too much brain-numbing national play-lists.” Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein also spoke at the event.

Of course, Mr. Copps doesn’t note how much Americans’ news and entertainment bypasses the traditional broadcast and print media, today.  The market has been bleeding people away from newspapers, network newscasts, even the Big Three’s entertainment programming for decades…

…and have been proving Copps’ thesis to be void and without merit, lately, inasmuch as we are, right now, in the golden age of the broadcast TV drama.  The networks have had to respond to cable and the internet; some of that response has been Fear Factor, true, but great drama, comedy and writing (24, House, Scrubs, Lost and many more) are all over the place, like never before.

But don’t be fooled.  This isn’t about Fear Factor, or about quality at all; the FCC held full sway during the “glory” years of Laverne and Shirley, Three’s Company and The Love Boat. 

No.  This is about silencing talk radio, neutering conservative blogs, and re-homogenizing all American news content.

If you are a conservative – or a liberal with any integrity – you need to call your congresspeople and set them straight about this.

And if you call yourself a “liberal” but you support this, then you need a new, more honest label.

How about “authoritarian thug”?

(more…)

Well, it looks like you did it. 

Unofficial estimates of the projected revenue surplus through June 2009 range up to $1.2 billion, a far cry from the $4.5 billion shortfall that greeted Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislators in 2003, a hole the state has been digging out of practically ever since.

That heavy lifting has now been completed. More than $1 billion in state treasury reserves have been rebuilt from zero.

Some of the pundits were saying it was going to take a decade or more to unfuzzle the Ventura Deficit – the deficit that happened after a decade of cha-cha spending, including the madness of turning surpluses into permanent entitlement spending.  When the recession of the early ’00s happened, it bit the government in the butt. 

So now it’s time to open the checkbook and satisfy pent-up demand for government spending or tax cuts, right?

Not so fast, say some of the state’s fiscal guardians.

“There’s obviously going to be some good news in the forecast,” said state Finance Commissioner Peggy Ingison, who is scheduled to issue the much-anticipated figures at 10:30 a.m. today. “But we need to be prudent financial managers and increase our reserves so we protect ourselves against the potential downturn that could be just around the corner.”

While that might seem prudent on its face, it’s wrong; the “reserve” is the mass of unnecessary spending that clogs the state budget. 

Governor Pawlenty; you need to move to give part of this surplus back to the people who paid it in.  It might be impossible with the spendaholics in control of the Legislature this session. 

All the more reason to try.