I’m a Christian.

But there are few things that make my skin crawl quite like the smug, preening religious left.  (Yes, smug and preening). PJ O’Rourke referred to them as “World Council of Churches types who have sanctimony like other people have halitosis”.

I’ve attacked them in the past; “religious” groups lining up with gun control groups, my own Presbyterians (at least at the hopeless national “General Assembly” level) joining with Hamas in attacking Israel and, here in Minnesota this session, the idea of the “Moral Budget” – groups of left-leaning Christian denominations who are pestering the government to do their work for them.

King Banaian, a member of an ELCA church, has had enough, too,  and tells ’em all about it:

A and Bishop B (and W, X, Y, and Z, in the case of this letter) want to compel nonbeliever C to do for poor D what they won’t ask believers F, G, H &c. to do by the offering plate. They do so under the guise that “a budget is a moral document”.And my budget is, in fact, a statement of the morals of my own family. My church’s budget is a statement of the morals of my church. The government is not a church, or a family. The government’s budget is not a statement of the entire society’s morals. It is a compulsion of the majority upon the minority.

Where, dear bishops, is that compulsion a “moral statement” directed in the Bible?

I recall only that when the rich man heard he could not enter the kingdom of heaven without sacrificing all his earthly possessions, “he went away sad, because he had great wealth” … and Christ let him go. The bishops are not so inclined.

When the Bush Administration took the opposite tack that these disgraceful packs of hamsters are taking – by inviting faith-based organizations to lend their expertise to government social program efforts – the left responded with a zillion dim “reality-based community” japes and a whole lot of nothing else very smart.

So what do we call the opposite – when churches demand government to step in and do their work for them?

The “frogs begging for storks” community?

Read King’s entire, infuriating piece.

Twila Brase writes from the Capitol:

It’s 1:15 a.m. and I want to report the good news. We won! The gavel came down at midnight, the Minnesota legislature adjourned in the nick of time, and the Baby DNA warehousing bill to repeal genetic privacy and DNA ownership rights at birth, never came up for a vote!

This is your success!

Your citizen petitions, the many people who attended the legislative hearings, your emails and phone calls to legislators, the Sue Jeffers show on KTLK, CCHC’s new Protect Baby DNA cards, the Glenn Beck Program, Reps. Tom Emmer and Mary Liz Holberg, Sen. David Hann’s great questions during the Senate hearing, the “Do NOT Repeal Genetic Privacy” stickers we all wore, my opportunity to speak at the Tea Party, our meeting with  Governor Pawlenty, the CCHC report on newborn screening and eugenics, the filing of the lawsuit against the Department, local TV news coverage (esp. WCCO-TV), the prayers of many people, and the unexpected informational hearing on genetic privacy led to this success.

Twila represents the Citizen’s Committee on Healthcare, and she’s been lobbying against the Baby DNA bill – which would allow the state to collect a DNA database from the state’s newborns without any form of parental consent – for years.

Of course, the battle isn’t over.  Check in with the CCHC to get and stay up on this teeth-grinding bit of government arrogance.

Looking at this video, of the final nine minutes of the 2009 Minnesota Senate Sesssion, I notice a couple of things.

First: They look like a bunch of drunks at last call.  Its from the fatigue (previous Legislative drinking o duty scandals probably notwithstanding), of course, but still kinda funny.

Second, and much less funny?  Sit through the whole nine minutes of the video.  The DFL, behind Senate Majority Jefe “Hugo” Pogemiller, rammed through a half-billion-dollar spending bill that nobody had had time to read yet.  At all.  Zippo.

Viva La Junta!

Note to Glenn Beck:

I actually like your TV show, if only because it’s better than most cable-TV methane-fests.

But on the air?

Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Beck.  You’re a conservative, ergo right about everything underneath all the schtick.  Duly noted.

But if people were to take your hyperbole seriously, Glenn, we’d all be moving into bunkers in the mountains; I certainly want to after listening to you for an eveing.

So I say, Glenn Beck; lead the way.

Minnesotans, The Frozen Chosen, celebrate a high quality of life and boast once people move here they never move away. That stickiness is a mystery to others around the nation, especially when viewing our winter weather forecasts in January and February from points even just a click or two South of here.

Residents and business owners have tolertated a fairly high cost of doing business in deference to that quality of life.

As our population ages however, and as our tax-and-spend lawmakers leverage their majority, we will find ourselves waxing nostalgically about the good old days when our economy was strong and diversified, our schools were world-class and our cities safe and clean.

Ever wonder why you see so many Florida license plates on the backs of Cadillac, Mercedes Benz and Lexus cars in Minnesota?

Soak the Rich, Lose the Rich

With states facing nearly $100 billion in combined budget deficits this year, we’re seeing more governors than ever proposing the Barack Obama solution to balancing the budget: Soak the rich. Lawmakers in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York and Oregon want to raise income tax rates on the top 1% or 2% or 5% of their citizens. New Illinois Gov. Patrick Quinn wants a 50% increase in the income tax rate on the wealthy because this is the “fair” way to close his state’s gaping deficit.

A good many wealthy Minnesotans have figured out how to live in Florida – and more recently in my professional experience, South Dakota and Arizona – 181 days of the year, and if we raise taxes again, I’d say a good many more are going to give it a go.

…from 1998 to 2007, more than 1,100 people every day including Sundays and holidays moved from the nine highest income-tax states such as California, New Jersey, New York and Ohio and relocated mostly to the nine tax-haven states with no income tax, including Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire and Texas. We also found that over these same years the no-income tax states created 89% more jobs and had 32% faster personal income growth than their high-tax counterparts.

Examining data from a 2008 Princeton study on the New Jersey tax hike on the wealthy, we found that there were 4,000 missing half-millionaires in New Jersey after that tax took effect. New Jersey now has one of the largest budget deficits in the nation.

Have you seen those commercials and heard those radio ads here that equate the Governor’s directive to not raise taxes with the suffering of students and teachers and firefighters and law enforcement?

Those who disapprove of tax competition complain that lower state taxes only create a zero-sum competition where states “race to the bottom” and cut services to the poor as taxes fall to zero. They say that tax cutting inevitably means lower quality schools and police protection as lower tax rates mean starvation of public services.

They’re wrong, and New Hampshire is our favorite illustration. The Live Free or Die State has no income or sales tax, yet it has high-quality schools and excellent public services. Students in New Hampshire public schools achieve the fourth-highest test scores in the nation — even though the state spends about $1,000 a year less per resident on state and local government than the average state and, incredibly, $5,000 less per person than New York. And on the other side of the ledger, California in 2007 had the highest-paid classroom teachers in the nation, and yet the Golden State had the second-lowest test scores.

Texas, recently threatening secession, seems to have the right formula.

Texas created more new jobs in 2008 than all other 49 states combined. And Texas is the only state other than Georgia and North Dakota that is cutting taxes this year.

The Texas economic model makes a whole lot more sense than the New Jersey model, and we hope the politicians in California, Delaware, Illinois, Minnesota [emphasis mine-JR] and New York realize this before it’s too late.

Given the current economy and already-high taxes, we may be near a tipping point where raising taxes now could accelerate an exodus of the wealthy and more importantly, business owners, taking their jobs and consumption with them.

Surely New Jersey didn’t think they would ever be a cautionary tale. Let’s not let Minnesota be the next.

It’s been over twenty-two years since Tom Barnard took the helm of the morning show at a formerly-sleepy Minneapolis “classic rock” station and made it into the most successful local morning show in America.

We’ll come back to the numbers.

It’s considered a faux pas in polite Twin Cities society to admit liking the KQ Morning show,which is into its third decade of dominating the ratings like no other radio show in the country, including Howard Stern at his peak.   Oh, the show does the nuts and bolts of radio really, really well; the interplay between Barnard and his huge cast is smooth and polished, in a completely amateur-sounding way.  And some of his supporting cast are excellent in their own right; Mike “Stretch” Gelfand, the show’s adenoidal Jewish horse-handicapper is hilarious, and engineer Brian Zepp is to straight lines what an all-star NHL goalie is to pucks; he never lets one past him.

But it’s easy to see why the show doesn’t get any love from the Twin Cities’ self-appoitned intelligentsia.  Even leaving aside the show’s occasional contoversies, the show is often described as a junior high locker room, with the sort of potty mouth language that only Al Franken can get away with, the crude, catty peekaboo sexual banter that only Chelsea Handler is allowed to do, and the sort of constant pr0n references that Twin Cities hipsters will only accept in a Diablo Cody book or in a performance art piece at the Bryant Lake Bowl.

But it’s not a junior high locker room.   It’s more like one of those beer commercials that you see around super-bowl time.

Work with me, here.

On the show, you have a cross-section of America like you see nowhere else in the Twin Cities media.  I mean,  nowhere! Quick; name an audibly-African-American voice on MPR? An identified “out” gay, anywhere in the Twin Cities media?

In those Super Bowl beer ads, you see a vision of superbowl parties around the country, each of which shows a perfect racial cross-section of this nation,with black and hispanic and the occasional asian partier joining all us crackers – a heartwarming vision of racial harmony in 2009 that also exists very rarely in nature.  And it is a rarity in nature at least in part because Americans are panicked at the notion of offending each other; race and gender orientation in America isn’t just a third rail, it’s a foggy midnight in a Newell Park Transfer Yard full of third rails.

And yet Barnard’s show is like that fictional party, with a middle-aged white guy, a “dumb blonde”, a black guy, a left-leaning Jewish guy, a schlemiel from Jersey, a redneck, a slumming news anchor, a dizzyingly-obsessed pr0n nerd and – for a few years – an openly gay guy, all doing what real people would do if this society were remotely grown-up about race, gender and gender-orientation; bagging on each other constantly, with a nudge and a wink and the subtext that we’re all grownups, so just relax and get over yourselves.

If the whole nation got along like the KQ Morning Show does, it’d be a better place.

Plus, all those whinging libs who’ve been threatening to move to Canada probably would have to shut up and just do it. 

But they’re not, which brings us back to the numbers.  Barnard’s show gets, literally, the best market share of any major-market morning show anywhere in the country.  He was the first person since the Great Depression to upset WCCO in the mornings.  In an era where music radio’s audience is collapsing, he and only he still gets Golden-Age-of-WCCO-type numbers.  Which means that it’s physically impossible, in one of the most “liberal” cities in the country, to make up those numbers entirely of third-shifters, white trash from the Brooklyns and Shakopee and Newport and the other usual cliché closet crackers.  It means that some of that audience has to be those irritating, preening libs sitting next to you who claim they listen religiously to Cathy Wurzer or Jim Ed Poole or podcasts of Prairie Home Companion on the way to work.

So now you’re onto them.  So if you’re chatting with ’em by the water cooler, and they make some statement you agree with, just respond by saying “Ex-ACT-ly”, or “HEY now, ain’t nothing wrong with that”, or “EVERYONE’S a winner!”; if you see that muted, panicky, “I’ve been made” look in their eyes, you’ll know it.

And what a wondeful world that’ll be, huh?

I dug out a copy of a commencement speech by leading Holocaust denier Brandon Feltcz, given to the commencemetn for the class of 2006 at Yeshiva Polytechnic Institute in Eilat, Israel.

I thought the parallels were…interesting?

Now, understand — understand, Class of 2006, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding the Holocaust can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most people on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words. It’s a way of life that has always been the Yeshiva Poly tradition. Rabbi Dennis Diesestayn has long spoken of this institution as both a synogogue and a delicatessen.  A synogogue that stands apart, shining with the wisdom of the Jewish tradition, while the deli is where “differences of culture and religion and conviction can sit and gnosh over a knish and coffee with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.” And I want to join him and Rebbe Diesestayn in saying how inspired I am by the maturity and responsibility with which this class has approached the debate surrounding today’s ceremony. You are an example of what Yeshiva is about.

Of course, people who’d dissented to Feltcz’s visit – saying that Yeshiva, a university in a nation founded by survivors of the Holocaust, should have had no interest in civilly entertaining Feltcz’s views (set forth in his books The Treblinka Fraud and Auschwitz: Hot Air, Not Zyklon), much less granting them pride of place at their commencement.

US Department of Homeland Security director Janet Napolitano noted that she’d put those dissenters on her list of potential right-wing terrorists, although critics noted that the dissenters were Israeli citizens speaking in Israel, and not subject to DHS jurisdiction.

Oh, yeah; the story is entirely fake.  But with an an aggressively pro-infanticide President speaking at “Catholic” Notre Dame yesterday, anything’s possible.

Look; I don’t disagree with the President.  People across the aisle should tolerate other points of view on issues, including abortion – when it comes to politics.

But Notre Dame isn’t (supposedly) part of our political process. It is a Catholic school. And while we as Americans have to be tolerant of many different points of view to run a civil society, “tolerance” does not extend to browbeating people into accepting things the consider absolute moral wrongs in their civil, to say nothing of religious, lives.
There are cases for using the bully pulpit to demand tolerance – tolerance of things that one can’t control, at least.  Racism, attacks on gays,things that nobody controls, certainly.

Demanding tolerance of abortion – a 99-percent-and-change-preventable thing that is only on the national agenda because a group sympathetic to the President has elevated it to full symbolhood – from a Catholic university is..

…well, I’m straining to come up with an analogy.

From the “They Eat Their Own” department, Surber notes that Josh Marshall is accusing Maureen Dowd of plagiarism

[Marshall] posted on Thursday: “More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”[Dowd] published today: “More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”

Surber:

Whoa, wait. You are not allowed to do this? D’oh!

Silly question, Don.  They have a Code of Ethics that excuses these things.

This does answer the title to her book, “Are Men Necessary?” Yes. Someone has to write her columns…

Ow. Snap.

I see this leading to a Maureen Dowd/Mary Mapes/Nancy Pelosi tour; maybe call it “See The Oppression Of the Patriarcy?!?”

Kiefer “Jack Bauer” Sutherland gets a little last-minute pub in for tonight’s Day Seven finale, getting arrested for an assault that reads like it was aimed at Tony Almeida:

[Sutherland] has been charged with misdemeanor assault after he was accused of head-butting fashion designer Jack McCollough at a New York nightclub early Tuesday, police said.

Sutherland was charged after he arrived at a New York police precinct Thursday afternoon to answer investigators’ questions about the incident.

Rumors that actress Annie Wersching failed to prevent the assault, as she sized up head-butting Perez Hilton herself, are unconfirmed as this is written.

AFSCME is yanking the DFL’s leashes:

Union workers greeted legislators today with chants of “override” outside the Minnesota House chamber.Members of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Council 5 were anticipating a vote to try to overturn Governor Tim Pawlenty’s recent veto of a $1 billion tax bill. Democrats say the revenue is needed to help erase a $4.6 billion budget deficit and protect schools, hospitals and nursing homes. The Republican governor opposes any tax increase. Union leader Eliot Seide said public employees want a balanced budget solution.

Well, no.  They want a “balanced budget solution” that allows plenty of extra spending, especially on AFSCME pork.

Glad we’re clear on that.

I’m not a big Michael Savage fan.  Never have been.

But when it comes down to something between him and libtalker/idiot Ed Schultz, I’ll cop to it; I’ll close ranks.

Schultz is calling for an “international Weiner ban”, which is the kind of joke that’d lead to half an hour of junior-high-level tittering on Schultz’ daily 180 minutes of hate:

On Thursday, May 14, syndicated left of center radio talk show host Ed Schultz, who has hosted The Ed Show, a daily political talk program (6-7 PM ET) on MSNBC since April 6, devoted his regular “Psycho Talk” segment to Michael Savage…

Having seen Schultz grow red-faced and downright unhinged in debating the cool, professional, civil Michael Medved (and equally unhinged the next day on his show, attacking me, the lowly MC), that whole “Psycho Talk” thing is…

…you know where this is going, right?

I digress:

With a caption over a photo of Savage that read “Pond Scum,” Schultz, who referred to Savage by his birth name, Michael Weiner, which he consistently mispronounced, said:

“Oh, what a sweet irony we have here tonight in the Psycho Talk zone. [Savage] wants Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s help to get him off the UK banned list. This is the same guy who calls her a ‘fraud,’ a ‘yokel,’ a ‘very dangerous person. . .’

“Now here’s an idea: Maybe I should send a letter over to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and say ‘Dear Madam Secretary, Would you please encourage other world leaders to ban Weiner from their countries. . .’

“We’re calling for an international Weiner ban.”

Video of the segment can be viewed here.

Not that you’d want to.

In seven years of blogging, I’ve been linked a lot of places; the San Jose Mercury, both the Twin Cities dailies, Instapundit (about 15 times), Lileks and Powerline and Hot Air, and even the Freep and the DUh.

But Friday was a first; the NYTimes.

Thanks, Old Gray Online Lady!

I feel so much safer with the new administration. Don’t you?

According to a report, while recently attending the Gridiron Club dinner in Washington, an annual event where powerful politicians and media elite get a chance to cozy up to one another, Biden told his dinnermates about the existence of a secret bunker under the old U.S. Naval Observatory, which is now the home of the vice president.

Good news for General Electric, owner of NBC: Saturday Night Live hardly needs to hire writers anymore.

Remember this?

The Car The People have been Waiting For®

Now this:

The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition

HT Dr. Chris

Today is the 104th anniversary of the Norske Revolusjon – when Norwegian patriots rebelled, casting off the brutal, authoritarian hand of the Swedish monarchy in an epic cataclysm that ended with a titanic battle in the hills outside Oslo, ending in a crushing Norwegian victory that sent the demoraized Swedes into a panicked retreat in the short term, and a social tailspin in the long run.

After the battle, and when the treaty was signed that granted Norway its hard=earned independence, General Olaf Haraldsson proclaimed:

Med allmektige Gud som vitne i dag, jeg sverger før du at fra i dag fram til slutten av tid og norsk skal noensinne baugen ned før en svenske. Det er bare galt

Words we cal all live by?  I think we can all agree on this.

So happy birthday, Norway!

(more…)

What is the “Obama Spinning Head Doll”? I mean, other than the hottest phenomenon to hit the NARN since the “Urine-Caked Drunk?”

DISCLAIMER: No hatred was expressed in the posting of this image.
Here it is via the miracle of video. You can check it out at www.obamaspinninghead.com or www.spinningheadstore.com – and, ideally, buy one.

Did we say “buy?”  Yes, we did!  And NARN customers get a discount!  Enter the code “NAR5” for the NARN Discount!
You’ll be happy  you did…

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 11AM-5PM. 

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed is off on assignment, and I’ll have nearly too much show.  Rep. Michele Bachmann joins us in the first hour to talk about ACORN, as well as Andy Cilek from the MN Voter’s Alliance.  And in the second hour, James Lileks joins me for our quarterly whitewater rafting trip down the stream of consciousness.  Join us from 1-3.
• Volume III, “The Final Word” – King is on next, dishing his own personal brand of conservative hurt from 3-5.  Check it out.
• And don’t forget, our long-time colleagues David Strom and Margaret Martin lead things off on the David Strom Show from 9-11AM!

(All times Central)
So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream)
• Podcast at Townhall (usually uploaded by Monday morning).
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!

Join us!

(Title: SLF)

I gotta steal a march on this weekend’s NARN activities.  Ed will be off on assignment, but it’s still going to be a lot of fun.

First – Rep. Michele Bachmann will join me.  We’ll be talking about ACORN, and efforts to check their influence and look into their funding.

Also – James Lileks will join me for our quarterly white-water raft trip down the stream of consciousness.

That’s on the Northern Alliance Radio Network Volume 2, tomorrow from 1-3PM Central!

Gallup poll shows, for the first time since the poll started, that “Pro-Life” Americans outnumber “Pro-Infanticide” ones.

Read the whole, detailed thing.  The most interesting part to me is the crosstab on gender polling (emphasis added):

A year ago, Gallup found more women calling themselves pro-choice than pro-life, by 50% to 43%, while men were more closely divided: 49% pro-choice, 46% pro-life. Now, because of heightened pro-life sentiment among both groups, women as well as men are more likely to be pro-life.

Men and women have been evenly divided on the issue in previous years; however, this is the first time in nine years of Gallup Values surveys that significantly more men and women are pro-life than pro-choice.

The Gender Identity feminists have long hitched their wagon to the idea that abortion is the “women’s right”.  Indeed, their behavior in recent years has confirmed that, given a choice between applauding (much less supporting) any other area of female achievement, the sorts of things that real feminists throughout history would have celebrated as major victories, and supporting white, male, establishment politicians who happened to be pro-“choice” – well, there’s no suspense in that, is there?  I’m fairly convinced that, given a choice between a pro-life woman President and a pro-infanticide white male caricature, the “feminist” “movement” today would not only take “b”, they’d do their best to destroy the woman.  It’s hardly conjecture; it’s recent history.

It’s also good news in that as the American public swings toward support for life, it’ll be less a political issue; Life has been a social-conservative litmus test issue that’s made the Republican Big Tent a contentious place for the past few decades; if we can declare victory one of these days, it’ll make that job a lot easier.

And the fact is, while “victory” is years, maybe generations, away, this is the sort of thing that conservatives need to pat themselves on the back over; along with the erosion of support for Victim Disarmament, it’s a testimony to the grass-roots efforts of millions of workadaddy, hugamommy pro-lifers, winning people over one person, one ultrasound, one day at a time.

Governor Pawlenty – virtually the sole Republican with any semblance of power anywhere near Capitol Hill – drops the “L” word, promising line-item vetoes rather than a shutdown or a special session:

Turning the heat up to a boil in the closing days of the legislative session, Gov. Tim Pawlenty said Thursday that he would use his powers of line-item veto and unallotment to singlehandedly balance a state budget facing a $4.6 billion deficit if a compromise plan can’t be crafted in the next four days.The unusual flexing of executive power seemed clearly designed to make Pawlenty’s adversaries in the DFL-controlled House and Senate blink as the clock ticks toward adjournment.

I’ve criticized the Governor in the past, but I’ll say it now; great job, Governor.

Now, expect the following in the next few days:

• A “Minnesota Poll” showing that Minnesotans oppose this use of the line-item veto (in a poll that’ll oversample DFL voters by 2-1)
• A Lori Sturdevant column bemoaning how Elmer Anderson would be rolling in his grave over this; how he’d have taken the DFL out for beer and lutefisk and cigars and gotten them all together by giving them pretty much what they wanted, but scolding them with a colorful homespun story that left everyone chuckling in that beer/lutefisk/cigar clogged way that old-time pols in smoky back rooms at Jax or Murray’s or the Saint Paul Grill always laughed, and everyone would have walked together into the glorious future.
• Gauzy, soft-focus stories on “the Minnesotans affected by the budget cuts”, which may very well focus on Minnesotans that are affected by budget cuts, but which will certainly ignore reams and oodles of waste, pork and subsidy of things government should not be subdizing.

Blogger reactions?

With dreary predictability (I almost called it word for word), Grace Kelly at Minnesota Preliterate Conspiracy Wackoes With Dubious Senses Of Ethics “writes“:

“Pawlenty’s idea of compromising is “Do it my way!”, each “offer” has been the same offer as before. Pawlenty gave a press conference where he said he will sign bills and not have a special session. Pawlenty announced his intention to use line item vetoes and unallotments to create his own budget without the house or senate involvement. Sounds like we no longer have a three part government, we now have a “dictator” or “king”.”

No, Grace, you deeply dotty little person; we have the governor acting in accordance with a law that was passed by our elected representatives. Elections have consequences.  He’s doing his job.

Zack at MNPublius:

That’s all fine and dandy, except that in the time that Kelliher has been Speaker there hasn’t been a special session (a streak that is only in danger of ending due to Pawlenty’s Presidential ambitions and inability to engage in any kind of compromise).

Notice how often “compromise” is popping up with the leftybloggers?  Pay attention to how often you see it in MSM columns in the near future.  “Compromise” will be the paramount public virtue in this country before long.

This – when they’re defaming you on the one hand, and demanding “compromise” (i.e., silent acquiescence) on the other, is when you know they’re getting frustrated.

Thanks again, Governor.

I’ve never been a huge Adam Platt fan, but he certainly has his moments:

The Minnesota Supreme Court is days away from hearing arguments in Coleman’s election challenge. It comes down to this: absentee ballots were rejected in different counties and municipalities with varying levels of rigor and adherence to the law. I don’t think either side denies this. The election challenge judges concluded that because Coleman could not prove this variance caused him to lose the election, it was not germane.

Because that court refused to reexamine every absentee ballot, we don’t know what they would tell us. (I suspect Franken would still win.) But if the shoe was on the other foot, and Al trailed by 300, wouldn’t Franken supporters be crying for justice? Would Al have bowed out? Let’s be intellectually honest here—no way.

And it’s nice to see at least one of “them” being intellectually honest.

Look – that’s the biggest scandal of this botched Senate election; I doubt one voter out of 10,000, including the various judges involved, could correctly explain how a 200-odd vote Coleman lead turned into a 200-odd vote Franken one.  I doubt even that many of them could come up with a rationale for having different counting stanards in every jurisdiction, for a US Senate race.  And I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who can justify the rate at which absentee ballots have gone miscounted in this race (which is, by the way, further proof of Berg’s Seventh Law; “When a Democrat defames a conservative’s regard for ethics or the law, they are projecting“; remember how the DFL accused Mary Kiffmeyer of “disenfranchising voters”, without ever showing a single, er, disenfranchised voter?).

Hopefully, Minnesota will learn its lessons from this campaign.  Why, if we have a conscientious Secretary of State who can put his partisan urges aside to work on fixing the voting sytem…

…oh.  Yeah.  We’re screwed.

…and the “finish line” is mounted on a moving truck?

Just saying, for the benefit of those of you who’ve been kvetching about the cool weather in the Twin Cities – Logan Adams of the “It’s Good To Be IN ND” blog, affiliated with my hometown’s newspaper the Jamestown Sun, is throwing a “when will all the snow melt” contest.  And he doesn’t have a winner yet.

Because the snow is still melting.

It’s early – but Rasmussen shows Republican Chris Christie is  leading pluto-Democrat John Corzine by nine points in the New Jersey gubernatorial race:

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Garden State voters shows Christie with 47% of the vote and Corzine with 38%.The Governor does better when matched against Republican Steve Lonegan. In that case, it’s Lonegan with 42% and Corzine just a point behind at 41%.

That’ll leave a mark.

Pelosi throws underlings, colleagues and/or predecessors under the bus:

“I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.

What has that woman been doing for the past four years, besides browbeating the Air Force for nicer planes for her trips home?

One nice thing about conservatism, especially the whole “limited government” and “fiscal responsibility” bits; when government runs out of pockets to pick, suckers to borrow from and marks to shake down, eventually conservative policy becomes your only option.

After talking a good game in his first election, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has morphed into a governor that nobody can possibly mistake for a conservative.  But as California’s fiscal doldrums – exacerbated by generations of frivolous, stupid liberal leadership from both parties – spiral toward terminal velocity, Dah Gahvenah is being forced to get real:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today will propose selling San Quentin Prison, the Los Angeles Coliseum and other state-owned properties in a bid to raise cash to counter the state’s daunting budget shortfall.

Ahhold wants to sell a shopping list of state properties, from San Quentin and the LA Colisseum all the way down to the Orange County Fairgrounds.

The sale of those properties would generate upward of $600 million and possibly more than $1 billion for the state, according to a copy of Schwarzenegger’s proposal. But proceeds from those sales would not arrive for another two to five years.

Note to aspiring government leaders: the next step is to not have government buying, building or seizing these sorts of things in the first  place.

No matter what it is; colisseums, heath insurance systems, or anything in between.