Franken “vows to honor Wellstone”

He will sit at desk No. 94 — the one left by his political hero, Paul Wellstone.

Senate leaders have told Al Franken that they have kept the desk open for him. Its significance will not be lost.

OK, not that it was a huge surprise.

But the significance that Democrat leaders believe a seat in the Senate “belongs” to a person or a party, rather than the people?  No.  The significance will not be lost.

Franken shares Wellstone’s politics and passion. It was Wellstone’s death in a plane crash in October 2002 that spurred Franken to run.

“Paul looked at his job as improving people’s lives and that’s what I want to do,” Franken said Tuesday, one day after winning an epic battle against the man who had replaced Wellstone in the Senate, Norm Coleman. “I’m not Paul,” Franken said. “I’m not going to be able to fill his shoes. But I’m going to work as hard as I can to fulfill that goal, which is improving people’s lives.”

Which is a fine goal in a human, and (generally speaking) a terrible one for a politician.  Government that wants to get into peoples’ lives “to help them” “for their own good” is, ultimately, a terrifying thing.

Still, taking after Wellstone might not be the worst thing that could happen (other than that whole “sixty-vote majority” thing); Wellstone was politically insignificant, and marginalized himself and his constituents at every turn.

Wonder why the 2010 elections are going to be important for conservatives to mount a real opposition?

Margaret Anderson Kelliher wants to gut the last protection Minnesota taxpayers have under Minnesota law  (emphasis added):

I am going to say for the record that I believe you and the governor have taken the unallotment statute far too far. And in fact I believe it is going to be necessary for the Legislature to change the law next year to modernize the unallotment law in accordance with what other states do.

Y’know – all those states that are also way over budget…

No one could have imagined before this point that a governor would veto a balanced-budget bill in order to go it unilaterally and go it alone in balancing this budget.

Sadly, it is all too easy to imagine that a DFLer would call the tax-hiking, pork-laden abomination the DFL rammed through with fifteen minutes to go in the session before anyone had had a chance to read it a “balanced budget bill”.

“And so I think it’s very necessary at this point to put on the record that there will be a bill–there have already been two bills introduced, but I believe there will be a bill that legislators bipartisanly can hopefully support, so that this never happens again, whether the governor’s a Democrat or a Republican or an Independent. This has been a move that I believe is out of step and illegal in many aspects.

Watch for the DFL to keep harping on the unallotment being “illegal”.  It’s an ugly word, and sticks in peoples’ minds easily.  It’s straight out of Alinski.  It’s also a lie.

Kelliher, like every DFLer on the budget issue, is lying.

We will maybe never know if it is not challenged in court.

“If”!

But I do think the Legislature must retain the power of the Legislature has to change the law. And I think it is necessary to say that at this point that it is absolutely imperative that the Legislature curb the power of a chief executive in terms of impinging on the legislative powers of this state.”

On the off-chance that Kelliher has an intellectual point, and that unallotment is excessive power for an executive?  That might intellectually be true…

…provided we ever had a more responsible legislature.

That’s not going to happen with a DFL legislature whose intellectual marching orders come from Cy Thao:  “If you win, you get to keep your money.  If we win, we take your money!”

Wonder if Kelliher will show up at the Tea Party on Saturday?

…is only a matter of time.

BREAKING: Minnesota’s highest court rules for Al Franken

The unanimous opinion ruled that Franken “received the highest number of votes legally cast” and is entitled “to receive the certificate of election as United States senator from the state of Minnesota.”

Minn. rules for Franken in Senate fight

Franken, a former Saturday Night Live star making the leap from life as a left-wing author and radio talker to the Senate, planned a news conference later Tuesday and didn’t immediately comment.

With credentials like that, it’s official:

Wellstone

Dayton

now Franken.

It’s a threepeat of embarrassment.

Sadly, Mr. Franken will provide bloggers plenty of antics to write about; hardly a silver lining.

“…the President said in an interview not that long ago ‘We are out of money’ with all due respect Mr. President, if we’re out of money, quit spending it!”

…also, at about nine minutes in, Pawlenty shares what he thinks of the President’s performance six months in and calls out the “Stimulus” Bill and the Federal Government’s encroachment into private industry.

Its easy for the rest of America to disassociate with the fiscal crisis in California. After all, it represents a bigger-than-life culture of Hollywood, celebrities, extreme lifestyles and a Bush-era “conservative” Guvernator. Even more so in Minnesota where our culture and demographics make us an unlikely analog.

Nonetheless, we are subject to national policies now mirroring those of California and to think the results will somehow be different on an national scale is a predictable exercise of liberal insanity.

California, too, spent lavishly in the fat years and issued bonds when state revenues did not cover the costs, bringing its once-sterling credit rating down to the nation’s lowest. So, too, U.S. Treasury bonds, T-bills and the American dollar are now increasingly suspect.

California, like Minnesota has a mandatory budget-balancing provision in force and watching California comply is going to be a lesson in fiscal responsibility – the hard way.

with the state under a constitutional mandate to balance its budget, yet facing a $24 billion deficit this July, a chainsaw is about to be taken to state government.

At arms length (a 2000-mile arm that is), California’s issues hold little import for Minnesotans, and probably won’t have an immediate effect on us here. We should count ourselves fortunate that our Governor is willing to take the heat by refusing to hike taxes and un-allotting what our legislature wouldn’t un-budget. What is troubling is California’s microcosmic prognostication for the rest of the country.

California and it’s economy are faced with the fallout of massive over-spending, immigration, health care and arbitrary and burdensome emissions regulations – which have failed by the way. Sound familiar?

Some 38,000 of 168,000 state prisoners may be released. As Barack Obama is pushing universal health insurance, California will cut Medi-Cal for the poor. Education will be slashed, resulting in a shortened school year, thousands of laid-off teachers, school closings and an end to summer programs in a system that has plummeted from the nation’s best to one of its worst, as measured by dropout rates and academic achievement.

The Obama administration represents the worst of fiscal liberalism as evidenced by the climate bill passed by the House, massive bailouts and a stimulus package that is nothing more than a veiled attempt to enlarge the federal government. Obama is making all the wrong moves, belying the lesson California’s fiscal train wreck offers the rest of us, and deservedly drawing comparisons to Jimmy Carter.

Under George W. Bush and Obama, the U.S. government has undertaken huge new responsibilities: No Child Left Behind, Medicare prescription drug benefits, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the takeovers of banks and auto companies, bailouts without end and national health insurance.

The “We Inherited it from Bush” plea will provide little cover as the Obama administration and virtually the same Congress that was in place during much of the Bush administration continue to ignore the signs. In six months they have done more damage to our nation’s solvency than Bush and Company did in eight years.

Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan carried California nine times. But the state is now a fiefdom of liberalism. John McCain’s share of the vote was smaller than Barry Goldwater’s. California today believes in Big Government, open borders, diversity, multiculturalism and the politics of compassion. But what liberalism has wrought in California, its native-born are fleeing.

The rest of us have nowhere to flee. We can’t all move to Florida.

HT [click pic]

Bawney Fwank, the Fenator who did mowe than anyone to bwing us the mowtgage cwisis and economic mewtdown bedeviwing us today, is back at it again:

In March, Fannie Mae (FNM.N)(FNM.P) said it would no wonger guawarantee mowtgages on condos in buiwdings whewe fewer than 70 pewcent of the units have been sowld, up fwom 51 pewcent, the papew said. Fweddie Mac (FRE.P)(FRE.N) is due to impwement simiwar powicies next monf, the papew said.In a lettew to the CEO’s of bof companies, Wepresentatives Bawney Fwank, the chaiwman of the House Financial Sewvices Committee, and Anfony Weinew warwed that a 70 pewcent sawes fweshold “may be too onewous” and could wead condo buyers to shun new devewopments, accowding to the papew.

And keep your spiwwit and dewwing-do to youwsewf, ow you shaww be fwown to the fwoow.

C’mon, Democrats.  It’s just sex.  Between consenting adults.  It’s a private matter.

Move On.  Just Move On.

Here in Minnesota, we – at least those of us that pay attention – have long known that the “Minnesota Poll” can be counted on as nothing more than a reliable shill for the DFL.  The MNPoll always overpolls DFL voters, and strips that fact out of its headlines, which – especially on the eve of elections – always show DFL and Democrat candidates polling much higher than they turn out in the final polling (at least in contested elections where things are close).  One has to suspect that their reason is to drive down Republican turnout, although obviously they’ll never cop to it.

But it must work; the NYTimes is borrowing the trick to shill for Obamacare.

I saw the first polling results  – in which Americans purportedly support Obamacare by a crushing margin, even as Obama’s polling descends to merely human levels and dissatisfaction with his economic program mounts – and thought “check the polling numbers”. 

No surprise:

Out of 895 respondents, 24 percent were Republicans, 38 percent Democrats, and 38 percent were independents, according to a June 20 release from CBS News. While the release says the sampling was conducted at random, those numbers are significantly below the 32.6 percent who identify themselves as Republican according to a May survey from the nonpartisan Rasmussen Reports.

Similarly, the Times/CBS poll said 48 percent of respondents had voted for Obama, versus 25 percent for McCain, a nearly two-to-one advantage for Obama supporters. 

Had those results been reflected in the November presidential election, Obama would have garnered 66 percent of the vote to McCain’s 34 percent, Conway, president & CEO of “the polling company,” told CNSNews.com.
 
“Was the vote 66-34? You tell me,” Conway said.

No, Mr. Conway.  It was not.

And no – no media bias here.  Why ask?

One of the biggest challenges ahead for the GOP is to reclaim the Fiscal Conservative ribbon from…well actually nobody has it now…which is probably why we are enjoying a hiatus from the trappings of low unemployment, prosperity and economic growth right now.

“Paying for what you spend is basic common sense. Perhaps that’s why, here in Washington, it’s been so elusive”

True.

Who said that? Wait for it…of course…Barack Obama; filling the vacuum left by Republicans with more wholesome teleprompter goodness. The most liberal former Senator in recent history defines audacity once again.

Republicans marvel at his skill in stealing their clothes. Democrats retort that, under George Bush, Republicans left their clothes unguarded while they cavorted in a hot tub of borrowed cash. Sure, they talked about fiscal responsibility. But instead of choosing between tax cuts, wars and social spending, they chose all three—and left the bill for future generations.

True (although picturing Dick Cheney in a hot tub is a wee bit unsettling).

Whenever Republicans accuse Mr Obama of fiscal profligacy, Democrats have three easy answers. The first is to accuse them of hypocrisy—why did they not speak up when Mr Bush was splurging red ink?

True (although a few of us did speak up).

Americans stopped trusting Republicans with their money in part because some were caught trousering bribes or peddling influence.

and True…although Republicans have no monopoly here. Sadly, the public’s attention has been drawn from  Republicans…because there are so few of them in power right now.

Republicans think they see an opening. Although Mr Obama is still very popular, Americans have doubts about his fiscal stewardship. In a recent Gallup poll, 51% disapproved of his handling of federal spending. Since this is the only area where most people disapprove of Mr Obama, Republicans are enthusiastically prodding it.

But will middle America believe them this time?

Joe Biden opens his mouth and out comes humor, drivel or drool.

“Everyone guessed wrong,” Vice President Joe Biden said Sunday, on the impact of stimulus legislation.

Not everyone. And by the way, they weren’t guessing – they were siezing an opportunity to not unwaste a crisis and transport America quickly to the left under the cover fire of Obama’s Doom and Gloom speech.

Some 330 economists signed a statement last winter saying that President Obama’s claim — that “there is no disagreement that we need action by our government, a recovery plan that will help to jump-start the economy” — simply “is not true.”

The economists were not crackpots but respected scholars, including Nobelists James Buchanan, Vernon Smith and Edward Prescott, as well as Reagan Office and Management of Budget Director James Miller, Walter Williams and John Lott.

Also opposed to the stimulus are the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and a core of U.S. representatives and senators, too small unfortunately to change the outcome, who saw through the smoke and weren’t fooled by the mirrors.

The result is now a soon-to-be total debt per American household of several hundred thousand dollars, the result of which will soon weigh heavily on the shoulders of liberal Democrats and our facist President when Republicans ask in 2012 “are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

I sat in on “Radio Free Nation”, Marty Owings’ Blogtalkradio show last Saturday night.

Marty had booked Minnesota Fifth District representative Keith Ellison.  Ellison appeared for about 45 minutes.  For the first 25 minutes, the Representative talked about his economic platform:

• “Reform” of regulations for financial services companies
• “Strengthening Union Rights”, as he referred to it, via the Empoyee Free Choice Act
• Changing Capitalization requirements for bank assets.

So if you leave out the odd reference to Sean Hannity being a “bigot”, and conservatives “winking” at Von Brunn (the Holocaust memorial murderer), and his line that the US needs to stop “toeing the line for Israel” if we want peace in the Middle East?  Fairly uneventful.

Sorta.

I got my chance to ask questions about 36 minutes into the netcast.

I asked my first question: since, in his response to a previous panelist about the solution to the Palestinian/Israeli problem, Representative Ellison said that it was (closely paraphrasing) up to the people to push a solution (and the people wanted the solution!), I asked, given that the charter of the Hamas government that the people of Gaza elected to power in a landslide calls in as many words for the destruction of Israel as a nation and people, how we could expect “the people” of Gaza to really want “peace”?

Well, I tried to ask.

His immediate response?  “How many Palestinians do you know?”, followed by a fairly peevish little tirade.
I’m not sure if he wanted me to respond “some of my best friends are Palestinians”, or if he was just acting like a lawyer and trying to buffalo my question or what.  You can listen, if you’d like, to try to pick apart the tirade that follows.  I don’t want to say Ellison is “typical” of Minneapolis DFLers in being unable to hold a civil conversation with a dissenter (after all, I had a great time interviewing RT Rybak).

But I don’t think Ellison appreciates us peasants questioning our betters one little bit.

But we’ll find out – maybe.  If you recall, about a year ago – responding to Andy Birkey’s observation that Michele Bachmann only appeared on conservative media (which the last year has pretty well belied in any case), I sent invites to a slew of regional DFLers – Senator Klobuchar, Candidate Franken, Representative McCollum, Mayor Rybak…

…and Keith Ellison.

Only Rybak responded (as noted above).  Ellison’s press people didn’t even give us the courtesy of a “screw you, peasant”.

So I took the liberty of asking again.

We’ll see how that turns out.

Obama has apparently lost the Roseanne Barr vote.

Libtalker Stephanie “Like Laura Ingraham, But Lefty And Not Very Good” Miller asked Barr what she thought of the latest Obama speech:

BARR: I don’t at all. I just don’t at all. If you want to know what I think, go to read my blog, rosanneworld.com. And I don’t at all. Basically his speech, his you know joke of a speech.MILLER: Why?

BARR: Huh? Because it’s just Bush Doc… continuing, Bush Doctine with absolutely no change at all. It’s very frightening.

MILLER: How do you figure? I thought the tone was completely different.

BARR: He said nothing.

MILLER: He said nothing?

BARR: He said absolutely nothing. No, he didn’t.

MILLER: What were you hoping for?

BARR: I was hoping for you know some change.

He’s not radical enough!

Al Qaeda’s second-in-command urged Egyptians not to be seduced by the ‘polished words’ of…Barack Obama

Dude. Where were you in November?

Chris Truscott is not a dumb guy.  Indeed, among regional leftybloggers, he’s one of the better ones (“in the land of of the blind, the one-eyed man knows enough not to write for Minnesota Progressive Project”)

But he does write for MPP in  this bit here – entitled hopefully “From Winning Elections to a Governing Majority, in a piece in which he seems to believe the DFL’s press releases (AKA Lori Sturdevant):

In recent years in Minnesota we’ve watched Republicans render themselves irrelevant through blind adherence to the failed policy of “no new taxes” and by placing the question of “who can get married?” ahead of things like “who can go to college?”Meanwhile, as the GOP mired itself somewhere in between the disproven Reganomics of the 1980s and the Salem Witch Trials of two centuries earlier, DFLers built sizeable majorities in both chambers of the Legislature.

Now, there is a useful point for Republicans buried in there, one I alluded to in my “What The Hell Is Wrong With The MNGOP” series a few months back: the GOP, being the genuine big tent (Ron Paul supporters and pro-lifers in the same party? Hello?) needs to quit beating itself to death over the things it disagrees about, and learn to focus on the places where we do agree.  Because when we do, we win.

What were the only real bright spots for the GOP in Minnesota this past two elections?  Places where conservatives held the line.  It wasn’t a panacaea; Phil Krinkie lost, after all (by 50-odd votes, but there ya have it).  But in two election cycles, at a time when people were sick of earmarks and backpedalling on spending, who were the Republican candidates who did win?  Michele Bachmann, who ran twice as an unrepentant conservative, in a district (MN-6) that is very much in play; Erik Paulsen, in the MN-3, which the Conventional Wisdom said was “purple” at best; Keith Downey, a genuine fiscal conservative with more than a passing physical and political resemblance to Phil Krinkie, in a district that Lori Sturdevant said would require a mushy moderate hamster for the GOP to have a shot.

And, let us not forget…

There’s something wrong when opinion polls, with questions phrased in the neutral language of scientific study, indicate at least modest support for the party’s agenda, but we’re not seeing that transfer into actual political capital when it comes time to put pressure on Gov. Pawlenty and his legislative allies

….our governor,who won during a terrible mid-term for Republicans, and held onto superhuman approval ratings during the Obama surge last year and, while he’s still no darling to Minnota’s hard-core conservatives, remains the most conservative governor in memory, if only because he stuck to his no-new-taxes pledge.  And let’s not forget – sticking to the pledge won him his recent victories, and burnished his cred for whatever his future holds.   Not accomodation with some fictitious “progressive” surge.

For DFLers to parlay their success at the ballot box into the kind of sustainable governing majority needed to defend our heritage as a great place to live and do business and position Minnesota as a leader for the new century…

…the DFL will need to ensure that a not-very-conservative GOP with spend-a-holic Congress is always in power, to cause the conservative base to walk away in disgust.

Which – let’s not kid ourselves – is exactly what happened.  The conservative zeal of 1994 – which led Republicans to talk in exactly the same terms Dems are using today, about “permanent governing majorities” – dissolved by 2006 in Bush’s Democrat-like spending spree; his only pre-9/11 policy “victory”, his education plan, was the kind of thing only a liberal could love; he signed it with Ted Kennedy looking on approvingly!  Add in the rest of Bush’s domestic legacy – Medicaid part D, entitlement addiction –  and no wonder the Democrats won big in ’06 and ’08; the GOP didn’t present a credible alternative.

Pawlenty’s vetoes show Minnesota’s mainstreet that there is an alternative; conservatives, out of power, are starting to take back the GOP.  And it’s showing in the polls; there are more identified conservatives than liberals; if the GOP puts out a message that drags them to the polls in 2010, Truscott’s talk of “governing majorities” will look as quaint as the GOP’s talk of the same 13 years ago.

If “lack of conservative alternatives” is behind the DFL’s surge since 2006, then the DFL should pay attention to the example of the GOP in Congress tis past eight years in critiqueing their own party’s performance in Saint Paul.  Because they’re showing some of the same signs of befuddled complacency.

And I think some of the smarter DFLers know it.  Truscott:

It’s time to change the way we look at the world and talk about the issues that matter

But what does that mean?

We don’t want to “tax the rich.” That’s neither a good policy nor a good slogan. Everyone pays taxes and should. We just want to ensure everyone pays their fair share so we have the resources needed to support good schools, a modern infrastructure and universal health care. Nothing more, nothing less.

We have to understand the language of competition and speak it freely. Good schools, affordable college, solid infrastructure and health care aren’t just entitlements. Yes, there’s a moral component to our policies, but on the whole they’re not “feel good” initiatives or something we do to kill time during the annual legislative session. World-leading schools, 21st-century infrastructure improvements and affordable health care make Minnesota an attractive place to live, a better place to do business and a leader in a country in which too many states have long ago accepted merely treading water as opposed to boldly moving forward on these fronts.

In other words, the DFL needs to find ways to cloak statist, interventionist policies in terms that don’t make the slightly-conservative majority toss them en masse when the nation wakes up for the Obama hangover.  My words, obviously, not Truscott’s.

Look – the whole thing (and this is something I’ve never said before, and may never say again, about the MPP) is worth a read.

GM should have been allowed to go bankrupt months if not years ago, and without the “help” of Congress or the Obama administration. Now that it has finally come, an analysis of the distribution of the spoils reveals both method and motive.

GM’s bankruptcy pushes bondholders aside in favor of the U.S. government and the UAW. Though bondholders hold $27 billion in debt, they’ll get just 10% of stock.

How’s that compare with the other “stakeholders?” For spending $50 billion to bail out GM, the government will get 60% of the equity in the new GM; the UAW, which along with other unions gave millions to Democrats, will be repaid for its loyalty with 17.5% of the stock for $10 billion of unsecured debts.

Not unlike our nation’s financial crisis, those that caused the crisis employ more of the same and escape with the plunder.

They call it “restructuring.” We call it theft. Never in our memory has there been a more thorough, systematic effort to disenfranchise the shareholders and bondholders of a major American firm.

Has this happened before? Yes – well, almost. But these are different times – and a different judicial climate.

…in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman tried to seize control of the U.S. steel industry during a debilitating strike, the Supreme Court made him back down. And Truman had a real emergency on his hands: the Korean War.

By what authority is the Obama administration orchestrating this expedited bankruptcy and government takeover of a global corporate enterprise?

We pored over Article II of the Constitution, known as the Executive Powers Clause. Nowhere is the White House granted the right to override the time-tested bankruptcy process, to use Treasury money raised by taxing Americans to buy or bail out companies, to fire CEOs, to micromanage corporate policy, or to abrogate lawful contracts made by private parties.

Arrogance and incompetence have taken the place of justice and precedent. Where’s the outrage now?

Let’s go through Sonia Sotomayor’s purported qualifications for being on the Supreme Court:

• She grew up in a Bronx public housing project without a father: Well, that’s interesting, but hardly unique, and not much of a qualification in and of itself for anything, now, is it?  If the point is “she rose above all that” – again, good.  She set a great example.  Cue the applause.  But again, it’s hardly unique, even on the Supreme Court.
• She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton: Which shows that she played the paper chase from an early age.  A perfectly fine thing – but the only thing it really tells us about her, or anyone, is that she had a jones for getting grades early in life.  Which is fine, but again, merely a sign of what she was like in her late teens and early twenties.
• Edited the Yale Law Review: This is one of those things that makes lawyers all tingly.  It means she could write and edit coherently and brown-nose fluently, as near as I can tell. What does it mean to one’s skill as a jurist, as opposed to “law student?”
• First Latina appointed to a Federal court in New York: So are we to believe that being Hispanic is an obstacle when combined with being a Yale Law grad?
• Bipartisan Support!  Appointed by Bush I, promoted by Clinton!: Well, that’s half right.  George HW Bush may have been a Republican, but he was no conservative. He also appointed Justice Souter, for crying out loud; he was obviously pretty clueless about judges.
• First Latina SCOTUS nominee: So we year.  It’s been in all the papers.

So is that, alone, supposed to tell all of us dissenters to just sit down and shut up about the rulings she’s made to which we object?  Do we peasants get to exercise our First Amendment rights, still?

Remember when Robert Bork’s allegedly imperious nature became an issue during his confirmation debacle?  When his “un-judicial temperament” was suddenly an issue on which the Republican would rise or fall?

Say hello to Sonia Sotomayor – imperious harpy in a fancy robe:

Although the same lawyers who chastised her temperament gave her high marks on her legal abilities, Judge Sotomayor was the only member of the 2nd Circuit to receive a universally negative review of her temperament.

“She really lacks judicial temperament. She behaves in an out-of-control manner. She makes inappropriate outbursts,” one lawyer told the almanac. Another said she “abuses lawyers.”

While in most circumstances abusing lawyers is an objectively good thing, it seems an odd trait for a SCOTUS judge…

…that a wise young Latina would  write a better set of observations about Sotomayor than some yapping liberal cracker would.

In this case, Laura Elizabeth Morales:

As a Hispanic girl, I think it’s awesome that we are finally breaking the barriers whether it is in Congress, in movies, in music or in the judicial system…but, too quickly we rally our support behind ANY fellow Hispanic, merely because they share in our background, our struggle and our story.

I don’t want the debate on Sotomayor to focus on her background, her empathy or her story. Her comments and her record prove that she has poor judgment when it comes to her rulings and she is a judicial activist. That is all.

Silly Ms. Morales.  It’s only not racist if you agree with them!

CAFE standards and the UAW hobbled the US auto industry…Barack Obama is here to finish the job.

Apparently, it involves writing endless spurious “ethics” complaints against Republicans – especially uppity women and minorities.

They’re running 0 and 13 against Sarah Palin, but then they were only meant to have shelf-life until the first Tuesday of last November, now, weren’t they?

Michael Geraghty, investigator for the State Personnel Board, concluded that there is no need for a hearing on the complaint filed in March by Andree McLeod, who has been a vocal critic of the governor since being denied employment with the state last year.This is the 13th ethics complaint against the governor or her staff that has been resolved with no finding of a violation of the executive ethics act. A few more are pending.

“While the complaint process under the ethics act can be a useful tool for holding state officials accountable, it’s obvious that political opponents of the governor have been abusing the system, attempting to turn their resentments into legal issues,” said Bill McAllister, the governor’s communications director. “We’re grateful that the personnel board and its investigators have taken a rational approach to these matters, finding that the vast majority of the complaints did not even warrant the collection of evidence because they failed to assert any violation of the law.”

But it gave them a shrieking point – “Governor Palin is under investigation!” – to sway the ill-informed and gullible during the campaign.

And that’s all the really matters, isn’t it?

Jay Reding notes that Sotomayor’s main qualifications seem to be political:

It would be hard to find a less qualified nominee than Harriet Miers, but Sotomayor does not strike me as a strong candidate. She is, to be sure, qualified for the position, but a seat on the Supreme Court is the pinnacle of the American legal profession. The Supreme Court has housed some of the greatest minds in the practice: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Felix Frankfurter, Hugo Black, Robert Jackson, and even the current Court has incredibly talented judges such as Stephen Breyer (on the “left”) and Antonin Scalia (on the “right”). Does Sotomayor match up with those legal minds? Her record, at least on a cursory glance seems to suggest not.Judge Sotomayor is not widely considered to be an expert or leading light on a particular field of law, as Stephen Breyer was in administrative law.

(Digression from a non-lawyer: Isn’t “expert in administrative law” the very definition of “damnation by faint praise?”  I know – law is complicated stuff, and Admin law is all the moreso, since it lives at the intersection of Too Many Laws Street and Too Many People Who Get Their Jollies Making Rules For Other People Boulevard, and so I’m probably shorting Admin Law’s importance to our society.  But admit it; you do, too, don’t you?  Especailly since if you’re a non-lawyer, Admin Law has most likely caused you vastly more harm or at least irritation than good.  Am I right?)

She has not shown the intellectual caliber of someone like Antonin Scalia or Ruth Bader Ginsberg. Instead, she seems to have been picked because she is a female Hispanic with an interesting life story that meets the basic qualifications.

Sotomayor’s main benefit seems to be as an intellectual and social cudgel; “Not supporting Sotomayor?  Why? Whaddya have against Latinas,huh?”

But as others are saying – she might not be the one to burn off all our ammo against.  As Reding and many others have noted, she’s a liberal replacing a liberal, Souter.  It’s not like the court’s decisions are going to get any more off-the-charts-left with Sotomayor on the bench.