Since it’s been brought up:  all local left-wing bloggers have been cleared of suspicion of arson in the early-Tuesday fire that destroyed my garage. 

Well, no – that’s putting it a little prejudicially.  Let’s be a little more accurate; Saint Paul’s arson investigator ruled out arson, bright and early in the process.  So no left-wing bloggers are currently under suspicion…

…Dammit!  OK.  Let me try again.  There was no arson at all.  Period. 

A number of leftybloggers were brought up in the comment section – jokingly – as mock “suspects” in the incident.  For what it’s worth, I try to abjure linking people, even public or “public” figures, with abhorrent behavior (like, say, photoshopping them into Nazi uniforms or comparing gettogethers with Nuremburg rallies); it’s a rhetorical low blow akin, at best, to asking when one stopped beating one’s wife, at least when the humor is not clearly understood.  Since politics inflames the passions like few other things, attempts at humor often fall flat across the ideological divide. 

Even if they are good.

So nope.  No arson here.  Nothing to see here but a new garage starting on Monday.  I hope.

We may know very soon.

Hillary is having a hard time with the strenuous (and ironically ineffective) staff vetting procedures of the Obama administration.

Clinton again rips into vetting process

“It’s hard to explain in my position to our foreign counterparts that we don’t have positions filled that would be the natural interlocutors or their counterparts in other countries,” she said Thursday.

Methinks Obammy and Hillbillary are about to have a little picnic table sit down to discuss the administration’s pecking order:

1) Winfrey

1) Axelrod

2) M. Obama

3) B. Obama

4) W. Clinton

5) H. Clinton

Condemn is in the Teleprompter’s database.

I strongly condemn the attacks that occurred this morning in Jakarta, and extend my deepest condolences to all of the victims and their loved ones.

Whooda thunk? Is Evildoers next?

My posse and I are heading to Wisconsin later today and decided to jump in last-minute with a bunch of other colleagues that are going on a seven-hour tour bike tour of the Milwaukee area tomorrow morning. Normally, the three of us are Harley guys but the dealership didn’t have enough units due to our late entry.

So we’ll suffer along on these three machines…

…a 1203cc V-Twin Buell Ulysses XB12XT

…an 1125cc V-Twin Buell 1125R

…and a Harley Street Rod.

You won’t be hearing from me for a few days.

…how about stopping by the CarCraft Summer Nationals at the Fairgrounds this weekend!

The Northern Alliance will be out there this weekend from 11AM to 5PM tomorrow, at our posh digs on Dan Patch just inside the front gate. We’ll be checking out the cars – kinda like the MSRA Back To The Fifties event, except that cars after 1964 are allowed – and talking about the week that’s been.

Hope you can make it!

It’s not a new observation – modern environmentalism has become a religion.  It’s got many of the worst aspects of “organized religion”; skepticism and questioning are chastized by those who cloak their insecurities in the trappings of faith; apostasy is condemned; dogma is defended without mercy and, by the less-intelligent adherents, thought.

Bogus Doug has another angle on the issue:

I don’t find that explanation quite satisfactory. It’s not that environmentalism is a religion. It’s that environmentalism is motivated by the same basic need in mankind to understand their importance. This makes it attractive, not only to atheists and other kinds of unbelievers, but to anyone finding insufficient explanation for the importance of mankind in their other beliefs.

There’s good reason you see a strong Green presence among the more progressive churches. It’s not that they have abandoned belief in God. It’s that they’ve abandoned those teachings that made mankind seem particularly important in God’s grand scheme of the universe. Modern environmentalism provides that. This has practical importance for its adherents that can be summarized in one word: meaning.

You oughtta read the whole thing.

Tarek Ibn Ziyad Academy – an Islam-based charter school in Inver Grove Heights – is  taking the state education bureaucracy to court over its curious penchant for choosing bureaucratic ticket-punching over children, education and results:

Officials at the Minnesota Department of Education told Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TiZA) last month that they would recommend withholding $1.4 million in public funding from the school as a result of licensure violations, according to a lawsuit filed by the school Thursday in Ramsey County District Court.

But TiZA claims that state officials have refused to provide the school with public records related to the state’s investigation of the alleged violations, and that without them the school can’t properly defend itself as it appeals the decision.

About a dozen TIZA teachers are not, it is claimed, properly licensed.

Well, shut that place down.

Of course, in the last round of No Child Left Behind testing, 93% of TIZA’s kids passed the Math competency test – about double the rate at the Saint Paul or Minneapolis public schools – and 68% the reading test (compared to about half in Minneapolis and Saint Paul) – even though they’re all duly licensed, just like any good plumber or barber.

And yet 93% of TIZA’s students passed the Math test, and 68% the reading test – compared again to Saint Paul (46 and 52% for math and reading) and Minneapolis (48 and 51%).   And yet 80% of its students are low-income, and 68% speak English as a second language – vastly “worse” than both of the major metro school districts.

But who cares about results, when the big secret – teachers licensing is worthless – could be getting out?

Ever cooked a marshmallow over an open flame, and had it get too hot, and catch fire?  You know that look – the marshmallow wrapped in a smooth, all-consuming sheet of flame?

That’s what my garage looked like when I woke up early Tuesday morning.

I am a fairly heavy sleeper.  I heard some sirens – and they didn’t go away.  So I opened my eyes, and saw an orange-ish flickering on the leaves outside my windows, and distinctly thought “there’s at least a 50-50 chance this can’t be a good thing”.

I jumped out of bed and looked out the back window, and saw my garage – already fully consumed in flames, looking like that marshmallow in the story above.  I was too shocked to move for a second.   The wildest part?  I felt the radiant heat from the blaze all the way up in my bedroom, 40-50 feet away.  It was warm.

I ran downstairs to try to call 911 – but the phone was out; my phone, internet and cable lines run right in front of the garage. I was dashing to find my cell phone when I heard a banging on the door.  My neighbor, occasional commenter PeterH, was pounding on the door; better yet, I saw firetrucks pulling up outside.  The cavalry were already there.

Whatever else I can say about Saint Paul’s government, we’ve long had one of the best big-city fire departments in the business.  It’s one of few parts of a Better Saint Paul I’ve always been happy to pay for.  There are stories of guys doing hitches in the US Marines to get ready to take the SPFD entrance exams.  Anyway, it took ’em maybe twenty minutes to knock down the flames.  There wasn’t much they could do, but they did it well…

The garage was a total loss – nothing but flinders.  And while I’ve heard what damage radiant heat can do, this was amazing; it wiped out my garden, killed a lilac bush, crisped leaves on my black walnut tree 25 feet away, scorched grass along the driveway at least that far, and burned an abutting fence in my neighbor’s yard.

I was lucky, of course, on many levels.  Insurance should cover the replacement (knock wood).  The garage was nearly empty – I’d actually carted off a bunch of storage last winter to make it, um, less of a fire hazard.  And my car – which is usually in the driveway, five feet from the doors – was parked in front that night; I’d felt lazy, and parked on the street.  Most importantly, nobody was hurt.

A million thanks to my neighbors, of course, a good half-dozen of whom called 911 before I woke up.

And so let me remind you – test your smoke detectors!

Jim Ramstad is officially out of a gubernatorial race that he never actually announced he was in.

Ramstad’s a good guy.  He’s a fellow Jamestown, ND native, so he has a huge head start.  And his nine terms in the House made him one of Minnesota’s most experienced politicians.

And I’d never have voted for him.

Oh, that’s not true.  If the DFL had nominated a typical “East Is Red” crypto-Maoist and the Ventura “Indy” party had nominated pretty much anyone in their party, I’d have held my nose and voted for the Rammer, after having joined with whatever pressure group was out to drive him to the right a la Brian Sullivan vs. Tim Pawlenty in 2002.  At least with an “R” in front of the name, there’s a fighting chance there’s a working brain trapped in there somewhere.  It doesn’t always work (ipse the Congressional GOP caucuses since 2000), but I am pragmatic enough to know a Jim Ramstad, “moderate” as he is (his ACU rating is a point or two to the left of John McCain) will make a better governor than a Susan Gaertner or a John Marty or whatever other indistinguishably-“progressive” hamster the DFL throws up. 

But in the weeks before Ramstad bowed out, you started to hear the most dreaded sentence anywhere in politics; DFLers saying “I’d vote for Ramstad!”  With some,  you knew they meant it, more or less. 

But I remember when McCain was every Democrat’s favorite Republican, putatively a “maverick” who’d as soon take on the conservative establishment as vote with it.  He was “the Good Republican”…

…until he got through Super Tuesday.  And then, out came the knives.  Overnight, he became Karl Rove’s spawn.  He “ran to the right” and “embraced the theocrats”, supposedly – I keep asking, but nobody can exactly tell me how he did any of this.  But no matter.

Just remember – whenever the left sets up a “good Republican”, it’s for the sole purposes of tearing them down when and if they become a threat. 

Had Ramstad won the nomination, he’d have been labelled as “Pawlenty Lite” overnight (ironic, since Pawlenty is hardly a rock-ribbed movement conservative – although he’s delivered in the clutch on taxes and spending, and gotten the labels from the local left and media to prove it.  Pardon the redundancy). 

Republicans can not win if we don’t present an alternative to the Democrats – in Minnesota or nationwide.

Violinist wiht the National Symphony makes a violinin out of a baseball bat.

And danged if it doesn’t sound pretty cool…

Grace Kelly at Minnesota Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis “Progressive” Project lets us in on a key facet in the liberal psyche:

They really do believe money grows on trees! 

She assails Governor Pawlenty’s unallotment process:

Perhaps here is why many people thought that unallotment was an empty threat! Balancing the budget through unallotment would violate the rules under which federal dollars match state dollars, resulting in loss of federal matching dollars beyond the unallotment. In this case that meant $72 million of lost federal funding beyond the unallotment.

Right.  That means there’s $72 million dollars that taxpayers in Rhode Island, New Mexico and Mississippi won’t have to fork over to be spent here in Minnesota.

The amount of $72 million comes from Commissioner Hanson’s letter. Check out the copy of MN Government letter from Hanson. An short excerpt is highlighted here from Appendix A.

In a dismal budget year, there’s $72 million that America’s hard-working men and women can keep and spend on things that actually help the economy.

All Republican Governor Pawlenty had to do was come to the bargaining table and give up something to reach a better overall outcome to keep that $72 Million in federal matching funds. I guess what was best for Minnesota would not have made a good sound bite in Pawlenty’s 2012 campaign speeches!

This is one of those things that astounds liberals; it never occurs to them that anyone would want or need to behave differently than a liberal.

Grace (and everyone like her)!  Governor Pawlenty was elected because he was an alternative to irresponsible, economy-leaching, blood-sucking tax-and-spenders!

And then re-elected – almost alone among his GOP constitutional officers – on exactly the same platform!

And if he has any Presidential ambitions, it’s not going to be as someone who grabs his ankles when the DFL tells him to (in the interest of “bipartisanship”, after all); it’ll be because he’s a sharp alternative to the Democrats nationwide.

Thank you, Governor Pawlenty.  If we could hitch heat collectors to the collective brain of Minnesota’s DFL to catch the exhaust heat from all that cognitive dissonance, we could all cut our heating bills 25%.

…and she’s pretty good at it too.

I spent a fair amount of time watching video excerpts of the Sotomayor hearings last night.

Initially, her cool, calculated and over-enunciated responses disarmed me and left me thinking if we have to live with a SCOTUS appointee borne of Comrade Obama’s rule of the administrative branch any way, I can live with this.

…and then I slapped myself.

She’s good…or her coach is.

Sotomayor: “No, sir. As I’ve indicated, my record shows that at no point or time have I ever permitted my personal views or sympathies to influence an outcome of a case. In every case where I have identified a sympathy, I have articulated it and explained to the litigant why the law requires a different result. … I do not permit my sympathies, personal views, or prejudices to influence the outcome of my cases.”

Her repeated assertions that forging policy remains the domain of Congress flies in the face of…

“Court of appeals is where policy is made…and I know, I know this is on tape and I should never say that”

I found her responses in sharp contradiction with the record she ironically kept referring to and moreover with her own widely-publicized statements of the past.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor said President Barack Obama didn’t ask her about abortion before her U.S. Supreme Court nomination, as she renewed her promise to lawmakers that she would interpret the law impartially.

“I was asked no questions by anyone including the president about my views on any specific legal issue,”

True or not, this is really immaterial. He didn’t have to. Her record and public statements are well documented. She is likely a token appointee. Furthermore, vetting has not been a strength of the Obama administration.

She is by no means unqualified – but is she suitable? Did President Obama select the best candidate at hand, or the best “Wise Latina?”

I’d like to hear what our crew of commenters think of Sotomayor and her confirmation hearings.

1. Do you think it’s a waste of time (she’s going to be confirmed any way)?
2. Do you believe her assertions these past couple of days or is she just reading from a prepared inventory of talking points?
3. Does she really disagree with the president who said “[in] 95 percent of the cases, the law will give you the answer, and the last 5 percent legal process will not lead you to the rule of decision. The critical ingredient in those cases is supplied by what is in the judge’s heart.? Eighty percent of judging is the law”?
4. Does her judgment of the New Haven, Connecticut firefighters race-bias lawsuit, subsequently overturned, unwind her repeated “look at my record” plea?
5. How would the court (or your life) be impacted by the addition of Sotomayor, judging by her record and not her testimony?

Posting is going to be light today and likely tomorrow. 

Lefties – many of them, anyway – chalk all dissent from the right up to “hate” or some other form of character flaw.

Naturally, that rarely-to-the-point-of-almost-never the case.  There’s – what’s the word?  Nuance.

Mr. Dilettante writes about that gut feeling some of us get from Stuart:

The problem that most conservatives have with Franken is that when he entered into the political arena, he was an especially vicious guy. I’d even be willing to forgive him that, though: as they say in Chicago, politics ain’t beanbag. My problem with Franken is that he has a history with someone I know personally. That someone is Evan Montvel-Cohen. The story of Franken’s involvement with Montvel-Cohen, and the scam Montvel-Cohen pulled on the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club to get funding that was instrumental to the founding of Air America ,was much downplayed during the election cycle, but it was to my mind the most damning thing about Franken. Montvel-Cohen and I both attended the same college. I know him. He was a shifty character then and most everyone on our campus recognized it. Franken did not, apparently. More importantly, Franken didn’t do much of anything to make the situation right after he became aware of it. To me, the incident speaks to Franken’s character and judgment. And it speaks quite badly.

Read the entire post, if you don’t mind…

…whilst blogging one encounters a piece that’s just so full of good stuff, it’s impossible to come up with a meaningful excerpt.

So just go and read the whole thing.

Another Obama “promise” bites the dust:

A few weeks ago, the Obama Administration officially abandoned the President’s “Sunlight before Signing” campaign pledge that the White House would post all legislation passed by Congress for at least five days before the President would sign it.

Naturally, the Administration maintained that they’d keep their promise even though they’d abrogated the formal commitment.

But since they were only talking to peasants, they had their fingers crossed:

When the New York Times published the story, five bills had been presented to the president and were awaiting his signature. Four more were presented to him after the story’s publication. All nine are now law.

And for the life of me, I can’t find where any of them have been posted on Whitehouse.gov. Surely it was clear to the White House that the five bills it had and the four soon to come would reach the president’s desk.

I disagree with arguments for releasing President Obama from his pledge to sign bills only after he has posted them for a full five days after receiving them. It would have the same effects as the 72-hour hold the Sunlight Foundation is seeking from Congress — also a welcome legislative process reform.

OBAMA APOLOGIST:  “But it’s just to haaard…”

Well, no:

And it’s becoming more clear that the five-day promise could be implemented. At this point, only one of 39 bills that the president has signed has been posted for five days in advance. (The DTV Delay Act was actually not held five days after formal presentment, but the White House posted it after the final version had passed Congress.) Twenty-four other bills have been held at the White House five days or more before the President has signed them. They just haven’t been posted.

To repeat, over 60% of the legislation coming out of Congress waits five days for the president’s signature as a matter of course. The only thing preventing implementation of the president’s promise as to these bills is the White House’s inexplicable reluctance to do what it says it will do.

So let’s get this straight; after promising a “transparent” governent, he runs an opaque administration.  Six months after ramrodding through a “stimulus” putatively aimed at saving and creating private-sector jobs, he’s only slowed the hemorraging at the government level.  And after promising to buff America’s allegedly tarnished image around the world, he’s cuddled up to dictators and slipped them all kinds of tongue.

Change!

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Joe Soucheray has been for over 20 years one of my favorite columnists in the Twin Cities, first as a sports writer, then as a general columnist.

And I certainly like the idea of a talk show that’s focused on “conservative” principles like common sense and deflating the puffery of some of the more cliched, insufferable parts of Minnesota liberal society, while upholding the obverse.  Soucheray is sort of a curmudgeonly centerish-right retort to “Lake Wobegone”, in a way.  This is good.

And one can not argue with success; while Soucheray’s original rise to prominence probably had something to do with having Rush Limbaugh as a lead-in (at a time when talk radio was exploding from moribundity to prominence), there’s no arguing that he’s built a talk radio juggernaut.  At KSTP’s peak, Soucheray was one of an unstoppable ratings 1-2-3 piledriver punch; Limbaugh, Souch, Jason Lewis.

Today – after five years of KSTP-AM listening to consultants who assure management “Conservative talk is dead!  Really!  Honest!  Any day now!”, and having shed Limbaugh, Lewis, Bob Davis, Dave Thompson and the rest of the leftovers from the station’s glory days – Soucheray is carrying the station pretty much singlehandedly.

That ain’t chicken feed.

And Soucheray’s on-air foil and sidekick, The Rookie, has done what precious few people in the radio industry get to do anymore; developed from an annoying backslapping yahoo into one of the wryest, funniest, most talented sidekicks in the business.  Anywhere. 

So what’s the problem?

Part of it is that it feels Soucheray has been repeating the same show for over a decade now, with the same components plugged in over and over and over and over.  When the Northern Alliance got started, I tired to kick off a parody of GL’s endless, ongoing bit where guys call in from their garages, and turn on and rev engines on the air.  I wanted to have it go something like this:

CALLER: “Hey, Joe…:

MITCH:  “It’s actually Mitch, but go ahead…”

CALLER: “I got an engine from a 1974 Charger for ya…”

MITCH: “er…OK, start ‘er up?”

[Caller starts a small chainsaw: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”]

MITCH: “Er, thanks, caller…”

(TWENTY MINUTES ELAPSE)

———-

MITCH: “You’re on the air…”

CALLER:”Hey, Joe, yeah, I got Don Garlits’ original 451 hemi top-fuel rail rod, there!”

MITCH: “Um, it’s still Mitch, but OK – kick it…”

[Caller starts a small chainsaw: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”]

(TWENTY MORE MINUTES ELAPSE)

———-

MITCH: “You’re on the air…”

CALLER:”Yeah, Joe, I got me a 1952 MIG-15 jet fighter”

MITCH: “Er, I’m…ah, who cares.  A MIG-15?  Cool.  Go ahead, rev ‘er up”

[Caller starts a small chainsaw: “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE”]

And so on.  Note to Joe: all engines sound the same over the phone.

And the bit about ‘Foghorning” kids’ names that, apparently, aren’t what you’d find in a Catholic Parish in 1955?  Yeah, Joe, try insulting kids’ names to their parents’ faces, m’kay?

But the worst – and by worst, I mean “most objectionable to a conservative” – part of Garage Logic is the constant invocation of “The Mystery”.

Sit down for a minute, Garage Logicians.

If someone were to present to you an overweight, shrieking single mother of five wearing a “Wellstone Action” button, who were to say “I and my people are being disempowered and kept in poverty by racism that wants to keep us down!”, what would you say?

“Take some personal responsibility”, right?

So replace a few words. 

Change the sentence to “I and my people  common sense and traditional values are being disempowered and kept in poverty  marginalized by racism a huge impersonable, undefinable but inescapable “mystery” that wants to keep us down!”, then what’s your response?

That the comparison has escaped “Garage Logicians” for almost two decades amazes me.

To balance the state budget, Governor Pawlenty has “unallotted” – pulled the funding for – hundreds of millions of dollars of state spending…

…including the state program that refunded campaign contributions to people.

Naturally, Lori Sturdevant is painting campaign donors as  victims of unallotment:

The Campaign Finance Institute, based at George Washington University in Washington, issued a statement Wednesday noting that its studies have found that small donors play an unusually large role in Minnesota’s elections for legislative and state constitutional offices. The state leads the nation in the share of campaign funds raised in increments of less than $100 — the maximum contribution amount from a married couple that the refund program would reimburse.

Well, not. If that trend survives this unallotment, then that will be true.

If it does not, then the State of Minnesota will have led the nation in campaign funds raised in small doses.  In other words, all of Minnesota’s taxpayers have been subsidizing Minnesotans’ political habits.

“Eliminating the rebate would remove an important force for democracy in Minnesota government,” said the institute’s executive director Michal Malbin. In most states, campaign donations come in larger amounts from fewer donors, many of whom expect to gain influence with their contributions.

That is right – and whether the donation is small or large, that is the way it should be.  If I give $5 to the NRA, it’s because I want to “gain influence” in Saint Paul or Washington when my contribution forces NRA-endorsed candidates over the top to win elections.

So in what ethical universe is it right for Greta Hellemoen in Fergus Falls to subsidize my political donations?

Common Cause Minnesota is urging the 2010 Legislature to restore the program,

Another good reason to cut it.

and Republican activist Robert Carney of Minneapolis has threatened to initiate a class action lawsuit to stop Pawlenty’s unallotment. His argument is that depriving taxpayers of a promised refund sets an unwelcome precedent for the next time the state faces money woes.

Perhaps, arguably.

Allowing the DFL to spend money like crack whores who’ve rolled their johns is even more “unwelcome”, one might think…

Do you remember when lefties insisted President Bush, at the head of a “theocon” conspiracy, wanted to take dictatorial control of the whole nation, assume the power of life and death, and impose its awful agenda by force?

As always with this sort of thing, I refer you to Berg’s Seventh Law.

And then this piece in the Hot Air Green Room by Jim Treacher:

It turns out that John Holdren, Obama’s new “science czar,” has expressed some unusually radical ideas about stemming population growth. Or to put it more simply, he’s a totalitarian eugenicist:

Forced abortions. Mass sterilization. A “Planetary Regime” with the power of life and death over American citizens.

The tyrannical fantasies of a madman? Or merely the opinions of the person now in control of science policy in the United States? Or both?

These ideas (among many other equally horrifying recommendations) were put forth by John Holdren, whom Barack Obama has recently appointed Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology — informally known as the United States’ Science Czar. In a book Holdren co-authored in 1977, the man now firmly in control of science policy in this country wrote that:

• Women could be forced to abort their pregnancies, whether they wanted to or not;
• The population at large could be sterilized by infertility drugs intentionally put into the nation’s drinking water or in food;
• Single mothers and teen mothers should have their babies seized from them against their will and given away to other couples to raise;
• People who “contribute to social deterioration” (i.e. undesirables) “can be required by law to exercise reproductive responsibility” — in other words, be compelled to have abortions or be sterilized.
• A transnational “Planetary Regime” should assume control of the global economy and also dictate the most intimate details of Americans’ lives — using an armed international police force.

Please read the whole thing for the details, along with photographic proof that Holdren’s book, Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment, exists. Holdren really did say all that stuff, and he even lists the book in his cirriculum vitae. If he’s changed his mind about these things in the last 30 years, now might be a good time to say so.

If this is true – and it’s the kind of thing that passes as normal among a certain strain of scientists, like Robert Ehrlich (who advocated international triage to deal with the population and famine bomb that was going to kill billions by 1990) or some of the radical environmental crowd (who believe the worldwide human population should drop down into the tens of millions, living as hunter-gatherers) – then Holdren is going to need to do something radical.

Like take the media out for cheeseburgers and talk about John and Kate’s divorce.

All those who dissent from The One and His Ones must not only be defeated; they must be chastened pour le descouragement les autres:

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who’s at the center of Sotomayor’s most controversial ruling.On the eve of Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the “troubled and litigious work history” of firefighter Frank Ricci.

Dissenters must be taught; obedience is the only solution.

Step into line, peasants.  Your betters have spoken.

It’s Orwell 101; a dictatorship must have an enemy, to take the peoples’ minds off their own domestic woes.

Now, Obama’s not a dictatorship (knock wood).  But Rick Moran notes that he’s got reasons for putting Goldstein Bush Administration figures on trial that have a whole lot less to do with the law than with public relations:

A distraction like this is just what the doctor ordered to take people’s minds off the fact that the stim bill isn’t working, that there is a growing call from Obama’s left flank for a second stimulus measure, that his cap and trade bill is in big trouble in the senate, and that it is far from certain that his his health care plan will come out the way he wants – with a public option that will be paid for without taxing the middle class.

Rallying his base to the cause of prosecuting Bush administration officials for torture will also take their minds off how he has betrayed them on a host of issues from gay rights to his agreement to indefinite detentions of terrorists.

So might this unleashing of Holder on Bush era torture crimes be nothing more than a distraction from the woeful economy that is resisting the president’s importunings to improve? Obama wouldn’t be the first president to use the tactic and he wouldn’t be the last if that is his game.

The One wouldn’t be that cynical – would He?

A good old fashioned investigation with strategic leaks and the spectacle of Bushies marching into the Justice Department to testify would serve as excellent bait for the media who no doubt would go overboard in their coverage of the hated Bush administration’s torture policies.

Bread and circuses worked for the Roman pro-consuls who used the spectacles to distract a populace constantly on the verge of starvation.

When you see it popping up on the “E” Network and Oprah, you’ll know you’re onto something.

I would never bet against it.

I’ll be cross-posting at Hot Air’s “Green Room” when the occasion warrants.  My maiden effort was yesterday.

A zillion thanks to my radio colleague Ed Morrissey for the opportunity to reach a whole new audience!

On the Northern Alliance broadcast this yesterday, Ed and I talked with Minnesota State Representative Tom Emmer.  Emmer is seeking the GOP nomination to run for governor in 2010, and at first meeting he seems like a great candidate; I’m looking forward to meeting the rest of the GOP contenders (and in cases, meeting them again).

But he wasn’t on the show to campaign this time.  He was there to promote his latest legislative initiative, House File 2376 – also known as the Firearms Freedom Act.

And I think that there is genius in this initiative – not just in strengthening our Second Amendment rights, but in re-establishing the Tenth.

Work with me, here.

Thirty years ago, the Second Amendment was practically dead in the United States.  Gun control was sweeping the nation.  The courts accepted a vapid and fraudulent interpretation of an otherwise-insignificant case as the primary legal precedent dealing with the Second Amendment.  The rights of the law-abiding hit ebb-tide by the mid-seventies.

And then a grass-roots movement germinated, and took hold; the plebeians, infinitely wiser than their putative masters on matters of liberty, started fighting back.  And starting in the early 1980s, they started turning the tide – one vote, one town, one legislature at a time,

“Shall-Issue” concealed carry laws – which put the burden on the state to prove that the citizen sould not have the ability to bear the arms they keep – are a useful bellwether.  In 1983, there were all of eight states with these laws.  But the movement – a force of workadaddy, hugamommy citizens who squeezed activism into their spare time between work and family – started organizing movements, city by city and state by state, to change the laws.  And now, 26 years later, 39 states are either shall-issue or have no restrictions on the law-abiding whatsoever; only two states (Wisconsin and Illinois, which has such a peaceful place) still pay unthinking, lobotomized fealty to the orc ideal that a disarmed, passive citizenry is best.

And this victory was won one voter, one street, one bill at a time.  From the “bottom”, “up”.

And Tom Emmer’s bill – actually borrowed from similar bills that have become law in Montana, Tennesee and South Carolina – is part of a national, grassroots effort to start that same dynamic for the second-least-appreciated amendment in the Constitution, the Tenth.

The Tenth Amendment has fallen on hard times since the 1930’s; the Fed, operating under the cover of several key court cases, has been able to insinuate federal power into a range of places and subjects that would have made the founding fathers blanche.

(For the benefit of the Obama supporters in the audience, the Tenth Amendment reads “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people,” where “the people” mean exactly what Heller says it means; you and I).

The overreach of the Obama Administration casts this effort into stark relief; it underscores the urgency of the mission.   The Tenth Amendment is supposed to help protect the people from gross overreach by the federal government.  The implications of a weak Tenth Amendment are obvious; the government can claim almost anything is “interstate commerce” as a pretext for regulation.

The benefits of a strong Tenth?  The implications everything from taxation to Roe Vs. Wade.
And I think the Firearms Freedoms acts being introduced in other states (as Emmer’s is being introduced in Minnesota) are a great way to marry the power, passion and grassroots savvy of the most freedom-loving people in America with the need to push government back out of huge swathes of American life, and to do to the Interstate Commerce Act what the Right to Keep and Bear Arms movement has done to Gun Control.

If you live in Minnesota, get on your phone, call your legislator, and let them know that the same groundswell of people that pushed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act through to law after eight years of trenchfighting is still out there, looking for more notches on its belt.

If you live elsehwere?  Your mission is clear; let your legislators know that the Tenth Amendment isn’t (overregulated, over-taxed) chicken-feed.  Support the Firearms Freedom Act in your state.

It’s not just about guns.

A fifteen-year-old girl is texting while walking along a sidewalk with a friend and falls into an open manhole that workers were just about to cone off (allegedly).

She’s okay. Her parents want to sue. But who is really at fault here?

Now the important questions here are:

1. How did both people miss an open manhole directly in their path?
2. Did the text “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Ooof! OMG! Mother.” make it to the other party?”
3. Would cordoning off a manhole with “Men Working” signs and orange cones have stopped an iPhone-thumbing teen any way?
4. Why are street-level utility portals called manholes? Why not personholes?

These are questions for all mankind.

Watch the video and discuss.

In related news: Oprah Spares Two Entire Families from Falling Down a Personhole

The “Broadcaster Freedom Act” may come up for a carefully-hidden vote – and if you support freedom of speech, we need your help:

There’s a chance to get the newly expanded Broadcaster Freedom Act (BFA) tacked on as an amendment to the Financial Services appropriation on Tuesday. The BFA is currently being redrafted to prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from not only reimposing the Censorship Doctrine – also mis-known as the “Fairness Doctrine” – but also to address the new censorship threats – inc“localism” and “media diversity.”To get it a full, fair up or down vote, we need to act over the weekend and all day Monday.

We need to get as many people as possible to call their Representatives and have them tell Speaker Nancy Pelosi to add the BFA as an amendment.

Contact your representative…