Setting aside the unpleasantness which characterizes so much of our political discourse today, I’d like to turn my attention to something which we can all celebrate together, as it has absolutely no potential downside.

If you live in a city with a good metro system, you’re probably used to having a swipe card system of some sort – load up money on the card, swipe it as you enter the station and as you exit, and your card is deducted the amount that ride cost…. [W]hat if your swipe card were based on carbon emissions instead? That’s the idea proposed by designer Nick Hunter for this wearable carbon emissions tracker.

Rather than a key or a card, the carbon meter would fit on your hand and glows a particular color – green, yellow, orange or red – depending on how well you’re using your public transportation allowance. Are you saving more carbon by hopping onto a train for a short ride, or would the hybrid bus have actually had the smaller footprint? The meter would let you know. But there’s more…it’d give the government insight on how well the public transportation systems are being used.

Isn’t that great? No longer do we need to debate the complicated trade-offs of energy use versus freedom in regard to an individual’s personal transportation decisions (let alone worry about the tedious science underlying hundred year climate forecasting based on projected human carbon emissions… bo-ring!). The government will take all of that burden off our hands, providing us a rating from “nice” all the way to “naughty” without requiring us to fill out a single form or stand in any lines! All we need to do is put on our government issued “wearable carbon emissions tracker.”

Here’s a picture of what the new wearable emissions device might look like. Prepare to see the future…

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Mark off the evening of Saturday, August 22.  The fifth annual Minnesota Organization of Bloggers (MOB) Summer Gala will be at Keegans, from 6:30 until 10:48.

Please RSVP, either at yahoo dot com email address “feedbackinthedark”, or in the comment section, or on Facebook.

So as I was on my way home from work last night, I was listening to “Marketplace Money” on MPR last night.  The interminably smug Khai Riszdahl teed up a story about the town hall protests:

“Protests this big have to take a lot of money to coordinate.  Find out who’s paying the bill, up next on Marketplace Money.”

“Hmmm”, I thought.  “Maybe, after all these months of hearing lefties yapping about how grassroots conservatism is really all coordinated from “faux” news and asking for some actual names and proof and evidence and stuff, we’ll get some actual names!”

So I listened.

And learned that “as many as 3/4 of lobbyists don’t have to be registered”, and that “you don'[t have to be a registered lobbyist to arrange demonstrations”.

Registering as a lobbyist to arrange demonstrations?  So the problem, according to the relentlessly left-leaning Marketplace Money, isn’t that they have proof that Richard Mellon Scaife is paying big money to bring people out to demonstrate against Obama’s agenda.  It’s apparently that the Administration doesn’t have a written record of who its critics are.

Yet.

Question, lefties:  What if a conservative organization were ponying up to help channel populist anger against Obama’s minions?  ACORN pays for mobs; Citizens for a Supine “Safer” Minnesota pays for tiny demonstrations; Media Matters manufactures outrage; the Center for “Independent” Media supports “grassroots” lefty media and tells them what to write, and resists disclosing that it’s financially related to all the above.

Even if it were true that some Rove-ish figure on the right is providing financial and logistical support to these demonstrations, how is that any different?

At any rate – the left wants it to be true.  Which is all that matters to the likes of Khai Ryszdahl and “Marketplace Money”.

“…or any -ism for that matter. -Ism’s in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, “I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.” Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I’d still have to bum rides off people.”

John Hughes, who produced one of my all-time favorite movies, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, died today at age 59.

Planes Trains and Automobiles (“Those aren’t pillows!”) is one of the few movies that makes you cry almost as hard as you laughed – same as Home Alone and Uncle Buck.

Hughes didn’t just make movies in the 80’s. He made the 80’s.

I would have liked to see what he and John Candy would be doing now.

It’s not exactly what The White House said:

White House: ‘War on terrorism’ is over

…but it is the headline that Americans (and GOP strategists) will remember when the next terrorist attack occurs, here or abroad.

“The President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism,'” said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a “new way of seeing” the fight against terrorism.

So its not the end of the war, just the end of calling it a war…on terrorism.

Are we trading in semantics here, or are these people really that effected by Academentia^®?

What a beautiful setup for a campaign slogan – for the other guys: “Remember back in 2009 when the Obama administration said the War on Terrorism is over?”

I shan’t be surprised.

After all, this is an era when borrowing more money to fix a crisis caused by excessive borrowing can be called a “Stimulus Package” and where Success!!! is declared in the wake of a mismanaged program, using yet more borrowed monies to subsidize the purchase of new cars, mostly foreign, for rather marginal improvements in economy and emissions.

Mr. Brennan’s speech was aimed at outlining ways in which the Obama administration intends to undermine the “upstream” factors that create an environment in which terrorists are bred.

Translation: We intend to give them free health care.

As for the “war on terrorism,” Mr. Brennan said the administration is not going to say that “because ‘terrorism’ is but a tactic — a means to an end, which in al Qaedas case is global domination by an Islamic caliphate.”

“You can never fully defeat a tactic like terrorism any more than you can defeat the tactic of war itself,” Mr. Brennan said.

…and yet we can “defeat” the equally abstruse Global Climate Change?

*Title courtesy of The Hives

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I have a thing for biting off big, long-form projects – multipart series that take months, even years, to get through.  My “Twenty Years Ago Today” series, which is currently somewhere north of 110 episodes, is just the most egregious example.

Blogs are an addiction, and the monkey’s been pummeling me for a long time.

Most telling part?  If Roosh, Doug and I got hit by a bus tomorrow, there’d be material popping up periodically on this blog – stuff I’ve already written – until sometime well into 2012. 

At the moment, it’s mostly a few series that I’ve actually been writing for a long, long time.

1. We’re coming up on the seventieth anniversary of World War II.  Indeed, we’re four weeks away from the anniversary of the invasion of Poland, which made it all official.  I have a long series of posts about the invasions of each of the nations that started out the war – Poland, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries and finally France – and the historical myths about each of them.  The stuff fascinates me – which is, indeed, all that matters, although if it fascinates you, that’s fine, too.
2. We’re close to the thirtieth anniversary of one of the most amazing periods of music in western pop music history.  I’ll be commemorating the thirtieth anniversaries of a couple dozen albums that set off the entire era. 
3. And – late-breaking news, here – I got wrapped up the other night in thinking about how much mainstream music from the seventies, which I hated hated hated when I was a kid, that I’m listening to now and thinking “dang, it wasn’t that bad”.  I might hit that one pretty quick, here, once a week or so, kinda like my “Stuff I Am Supposed To Love/Hate, but Can’t Stand/Love” series.

And the kicker is, both of those series are largely already written. 

Now, if only I had something stacked for tomorrow, already, so I could sleep in…

…in County Ramsey as a yoong lad; loife was guid.

Of cairse, we were coovered in scabs and coal dust and usually doused in me Da’s vomit – he drank a wee bit – but loife was guid.  We lived oof the boonty o’ the land – the scallion, the arugula, and o’cairse, the staple crop – the tomato.  Acres ‘n acres o’ them, the staff of loife.

Oy remember as a lad, we had tomaters for ayvery meal; tomato toost for breaykfast, boiled tomayters for loonch, tomato bisque with a shot of whuskey for dinner.

Then?  Then came the Greet Tomato Bloight of ’09:

Yes, the same virus that caused the six-year Irish Potato Famine has struck our own tomato crops. Indeed, said blogger has actually found blight on her plants.

The late blight has also shown up in the UK.

More here and here.

Unsurprisingly, the cold and wet summer we’ve had isn’t the best weather for tomatoes (or peppers), but it’s great for a lot of fungi and virus that attack these plants.

It got all the tomayters; the ‘ayrluims, the Bootcher Boyos, the Big Boyos, all of ’em.

We troyed.  We ate endive, mint, even jicama.  But eventually, we couldn’t goo on.

So we emigrated, by the millions.  We sailed to Oirland, where the tomatos practically grow on plants.

And every year, for Saint Barack’s Day, we get droonk and have a parade and vomit in the streets.

But sometoymes oy woonder aboot those oy left behoyd…

(more…)

The DFL, stricken as they are by Bachmann Derangement Syndrome, are throwing one of their more promising lights at Michele Bachmann in the Sixth District.

Sen. Tarryl Clark (DFL-St. Cloud) announced officially last week that she was running for the DFL endorsement to face Rep. Michele Bachmann in the MN-06 race. Yesterday, her path became much simpler; Elwyn Tinklenberg shuttered his campaign leaving her and Maureen Reed vying for the endorsement. This development makes Tarryl the frontrunner for the endorsement.

Of course, Patty Wetterling and E-Tink immolated their political careers against Bachmann. 

But according to Eric “Big” Pusey at Minnesota “Progressive” Project, this time it’s different.  See if you can spot the catch:

DFL activists throughout Minnesota know Tarryl as a rising star in the party. She’s worked with at-risk teens and for the Girl Scouts. She helped start Habitat for Humanity in the St. Cloud area. She attended an accredited law school [Not just a law school, but an “accredited” one?  Yowza.  Does she want a cookie? – Ed], William Mitchell in St. Paul, and worked for Legal Aid for seniors focusing on their healthcare issues.

The legislators I’ve spoken to all speak highly of her, she was appointed Assistant Majority Leader in the Senate and probably most importantly, she claims that she already has a decent volunteer base that’s been growing rapidly since her announcement.

That’s right – DFLers just loooooove Tarryl Clark.  In a district that’s conservative enough to buck two Democrat flood tides and elect the feisty, controversial (because she’s female and conservative) Bachmann, that is a dubious distinction in the best of times.

In 2010?  When the American hinterland is clutching their chest and reaching for the nitro pills for the sticker shock on all of that Hope and Change?  With a record like Tarryl Clark’s – as a tax-and-spender with less grace than Marie Antoinette, albeit arguably more than Cy “When you win, you keep your money; when we win, we take your money” Thao?

Yes, DFL.  Please.  I beg of you.  Nominate Clark in the Sixth. 

“All of a sudden all the lights went out and I turned around, he started firing. I turned around and I saw him holding a gun,” she said. She ran out of the room and into the parking lot, bolting into a restaurant where she told the workers to call 911.

Will this event serve as a call for more restrictions on gun ownership?

My neighbor Peter over at Growing Things (he’s a garding machine) writes about an encounter with some Minneapolis panhandlers:

Unlike most Twin Cities panhandlers, their faces didn’t bear the wear and tear of decades of addiction.

While two lounged in the shade of a small tree, one held a hand-lettered sign which read:

If you voted for OBAMA, you owe me some CHANGE.

I regret that I left my camera at home.

Oh, me too.

Car dealer who got national attention last year for giving away handguns with new car purchases ups the ante.

Note the talkingpointbot CNN chick.

Hopefully it’ll lead to “G3s for Clunkers” next year…

…the other day, I tried to place some world events during the year.

The Mayaguez incident, of course; the fallout of Watergate; the fall of Saigon, of course…

…and Squeaky Fromme’s attempt on Gerald Ford.

And, blow me down, but Frommeis finally out of the joint:

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme was a 26-year-old disciple of the cult murderer Manson when she aimed a semiautomatic .45- caliber pistol at Ford in September 1975 in Sacramento, Calif. Secret Service agents grabbed her and Ford was unhurFromme, now 60, is scheduled to be released on parole from the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth on Aug. 16, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the court-appointed attorney who represented her at trial.

Fromme, who got a life term, became the first person sentenced under a special federal law covering assaults on U.S. presidents, a statute enacted after the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Any dibs on being her counselor?

Rumors of her imminent appointment as the Obama Administration’s Mental Health Czar are, at this juncture, unconfirmed.

Robert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp might be losing it.

Chairman Rupert Murdoch said Wednesday that the company intends to charge for all of its news Web sites. “Quality journalism is not cheap, and an industry that gives away its content is simply cannibalizing its ability to produce good reporting,” Murdoch said.

First off, it’s a long time since I’ve heard anyone say “quality” and “journalism” in the same sentence with a straight face. Second, News Corp doesn’t “give” anything away. Murdoch has built an empire by attracting viewers to content tailored for a target demo, and selling their attention to advertisers.

It’s a decades-old formula premised on the fact that you can’t possibly charge viewers, readers or surfers enough to pay for the content and make a profit.

Unless Murdoch is able to effect some sort of collusion among media conglomerates to form a near monopoly, I don’t see how he can decommoditize news content.

Then again, News Corp owns half the media industry on their own:

All the “Fox” Channels including Fox Sports, FX, Fox Business Network, Fox Movie Channel, Fox News Channel, Fox College Sports, etc.

Print Media and Publishing including The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Barons, The Sun, Dow Jones, and Harper Collins.

Entertainment and Web properties including American Idol, AskMen, hulu.com, MySpace, Rotten Tomatoes and 20th Century Fox.

Still, each property has a direct and equally viable competitor.

Assuming each News Corp property carries News Corp news content (with some exceptions, for example the movie studios), charging for the content will put each at a disadvantage as most consumers of news content don’t care so much about the quality and/or have long since discounted the media as a source of truth or truly useful information.

Case in point: ever noticed traffic and weather reports are never accurate or useful?

People won’t pay for what is essentially a diversion from the rigors of daily life. Shaving in silence is out of fashion. People read the news on their Blackberry because they can. Quantity of information trumps quality.

If News Corp starts charging a fee, clients will find what they need elsewhere. That cat’s been out of the bag a long time.

What say you?

Do you know Kim Carlson, the “footprint blogger” at the Star Tribune? No? You don’t think so? I believe you’re mistaken. You may not know Kim Carlson by name or by her Strib blog, but you certainly know Kim Carlson. As evidence I submit the first line of her latest post:

I was feeling a bit virtuous as I was bringing my recycling to the curb this morning.

Not many people can summarize their entire personality in a single phrase, but I think Kim did a terrific job of it here, don’t you? I mean you absolutely know this person after reading that sentence. Kim is the kind of person who believes she’s “saving the planet” by her own everyday activities. Recycling makes her feel virtuous. But it doesn’t end there, as you well know. No, when you’re Kim Carlson life is little more than a quest for the next guilt trip.

Then I decided to look up some recycling facts and was quickly deflated. According to RethinkRecycling.com, the average Twin Citian still produces 7 pounds of waste per day and one-third of what we throw away at home is recyclable through curbside programs. I suppose it is no surprise that nearly 30 percent of our trash is packaging – urgh!

Urgh! indeed! Why oh why didn’t we compost our packaging or use it as feed for our backyard chickens?! Why oh why didn’t we… oh heck, let’s stop guessing and see where she decides to run with it. It’s bound to be as entertainingly goofy as anything we might invent.

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…when you could count on Shot In The Dark to react to this sort of “news” with incompetently-concealed ennui.  I’ve never cared for AmIdol much; if overwrought, over-ornamented Mariah Carey knockoffs were money, America would have no deficit already.  But for Kelly Clarkson, Jordin Sparks and Chris Daughtry, I doubt I could pick out a single winner, much less contestant.

But now, the news that Paula Abdullah has left the show means something.  Before, I’d have yawned…

“With sadness in my heart, I’ve decided not to return to #IDOL. I’ll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all…being a part of a show that I helped from day1 become an international phenomenon,” read two tweets posted shortly after 7:30 p.m.

Fox confirmed the news shortly afterward

…but now, with the addition of Bogus Doug – perhaps America’s foremost Idologist – Shot In The Dark leaps to the forefront of AmIdol coverage.

Which is good, because I was wondering who the cute valley girl was, sitting with the gay british guy and the guy who replaced Ross Valory in Journey.

This…:

…is deft satire, but this…

…is a racist attack and call to murder?

I hadn’t thought of this almost zen-like contradiction:  why is it that the people who are most in favor of forcing all Americans to turn their healthcare and healthcare records – the most sensitive, personal data there is – over to huge, lumpen, stupid government…

…are the same people who yakked to high heaven to defend the right to privacy of people getting phone calls from terrorists?

Over the past week, congresspeople have been running into grass-roots anger over Obamacare.

And yesterday, it spread to Cash For Clunkers:

Rep. Russ Carnahan was clobbered by tea party protesters at his Cash for Clunkers rally today in St. Louis.

The protesters who disagreed with Carnahan were forced outside of the dealership.

KSDK has video from his event today at McMahon Ford in St. Louis City.

Make sure the White House hears about it.  Wonder how many of these protesters are on Janet Napolitano’s list?

To:  President Obama and his Administration

From: Mitch Berg – human ATM machine

Re: Your Stasi

Mr. President,

Before we get down to business:

For the record, the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them. He has even proposed eight consumer protections relating specifically to the health insurance industry.

Ah.  “For the record”.  Well, that makes everything totally different.

Look: paper protections mean exactly as much as the paper prediciton that “Cash for Clunkers” funding would last a month.  Oh, the paper “protection” might be there – but there is no way for the private insurance industry to compete with a government-subsidized plan over time.  The market distortion and its’ “Unintended” consequences count for a lot more than any paper “guarantee”.

OK.  Let’s get down to business:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Flag this.  Like most criticisms of Obamacare, it’s not “misinformation” in any way.
Mitch.  Berg, with an “e”.

You can come on the Northern Alliance Radio Network and “set the record straight”.  Have your people call our people.

A while ago, I wrote a post about Gordon Lightfoot.  As the comment thread wound on, I noted a moment in my past:

So there’s a Lightfoot mystery; while driving across southern MN in about 1988 or ‘89, I heard a song in the distance on an AM station out of Long Prairie; it was late at night, and the music was slightly garbled and distorted by atmospherics, but I heard a Lightfoot song from the era that sounded, in the distance, almost like a Big Country song, with what sounded like big, skirling guitars keening in the background almost like bagpipes. It was one of those moments you only got on AM radio; a little four minute ephemeral snippet of beauty that disappeared (seemingly) never to return again. Or so it seems, having looked for close to 20 years for the song…

As often happens with these things, I didn’t have to wait long for a completely unbidden answer:

The Gordon Lightfoot song with “big guitars skirling like bagpipes” sounds like the title track of the 1983 album “Salute”. The album has since been released on CD.

Dave, Melbourne, Australia.

So I went out, and found the song.  Dave in Melbourne was right; “Salute” was the song.  Mystery solved.

And on the one hand, it’s cool; I got a 20-year-old mystery solved with less effort than it took to think about it.

And on the other, I thought “kids today are missing something”.

Today, with the internet, anyone can see or listen to anything, pretty much anywhere.  Most questions can get answered in less time than it takes to formulate the question.  The world has gotten very, very small.  And I have no idea what it’s like to be a kid from age, say, seven through 17, today with access to pretty much everything, everywhere, I sometimes wonder – what do kids wonder about?

One of the signal experiences of my early-mid teens, growing up three doors down from the edge of the earth in rural North Dakota, was getting hold of my first radio, and carefully tuning around the dial to find news, sports, music, accents, sounds…stuff from places outside my hometown.  Dialling the twitchy little radio very, very carefully, I heard about shootings in Minneapolis (via, what else, WCCO), concerts in Chicago (via WLS and WBBM), unintelligible Spanish nighttime show conversations from Juarez (XEROK), weather in Denver (on KOA), corruption scandals in Cincinnati (WLW), and above all, music. 

And all of it was ephemeral – little audio shooting stars that flashed across the ether to my memory – and very, very low-fidelity, just the way God and Marconi intended radio to be.  Everything was washed through a layer of AM frequency compression and clipping, mild (hopefully) static, and occasional atmospheric harmonics that made it seem that I was listening to transmissions from another planet. 

Which, it seemed sometimes, I was.

And the sounds of music via AM radio – flat, mid-rangey, with a garnish of high-end fuzz and the occasional wave of high-pitched static washing across it like a bright audio searchlight in the dark – are some of the most intense memories I have of those years.  I associate it with almost everything from those years; discovering the world, friendship, love, boredom, antsiness, intoxication, loss, late-night burrito missions, leaving; for every one of those, I can recall a night in my room or in a car out on some prairie road, tuned in to WLS or KFYR or KOA, with some song in the background, more poignant and memorable for being scratchy and distorted, as much a part of the memory of the situation as the situation itself.

And for a kid who was 19 before he saw a city bigger than Fargo, it was the stuff that launched a thousand dreams.

Maybe I’m being provincial or curmudgeonly – I’ll cop to it – but I don’t see that happening with an IPod.

I was cutting my grass over the weekend when I was approached by a late-fiftysomething couple bearing clipboards and carrying a briefcase.  She was prematurely gray, ponytailed, wearing a faded “Don’t Park The Bus” t-shirt and a peasant skirt.  Come to think of it, so was he.

The following conversation happened:

WOMAN (Prematurely gray, ponytailed, wearing a faded “Don’t Park The Bus” t-shirt and a peasant skirt): “Excuse me, sir…”

MITCH: Yes? 

WOMAN:  Have you heard about the government’s “Moola for Mowers” program? 

MITCH: Er…no?

MAN: We offer…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP!  (Man shinks).  We offer people $5,000 to get rid of their energy-inefficient lawn mowers.

MITCH: Er – Five thousand dollars?  For lawn mowers?  Like this one?

MAN:  Exactly like…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP!  (Man cowers as if he expects to be struck) Yes, sir.  Exactly like that one.

MITCH:  Um…OK?  So what do I do?

(MAN pulls ball-peen hammer from briefcase).

WOMAN:  We give you $5,000 in cash, and Bhill here will destroy it.

MITCH:  But I got this mower at a rummage sale for like $30…

MAN: Not a…

WOMAN:  SHUT UP AND STOP UPSTAGING ME!  (Man falls mute, looking like a dog that’s been beaten too much) Sir, that’s really not the issue here.  We need to get this mower off the street.  Would you like $5,000, or not?

MITCH: Sure!

(WOMAN peels off fifty $100 bills.  MITCH takes them, stuffs them into wallet).

WOMAN: Yes!  The program is a success!  Bhill?

MAN (trudges to mower, like he spends half his time just covering up, and beats it weakly about the cylinder head)

MITCH:  So…you getting a lot of takers?

WOMAN: Oh, yes!  Everyone we’ve talked to has taken the $5,000 for their mower!  Indeed, one man told his neighbors, and the all brought out mowers and snowblowers!  It’s the most successful government program ever!

MITCH:  I’d imagine…

MAN: (Smacks the head until the spark plug breaks off).

WOMAN:  Yaaaaaay!  Total success!  Complete proof that Obama has brought hope and change!

MITCH: Why?  Because I got $5,000 in taxpayer money for a $30 mower?

WOMAN (happily):  Yes!

MITCH: And because all my neighbors got the same for mowers that maybe ran $50-200?

WOMAN (ecstatic): Yes!

MITCH: But whomever is funding this “program” just got ripped off to the tune of about 99.4% of their “investment”, which…

WOMAN (nonplussed):  But…a gas-guzzling mower is off the street!

MITCH: Right – for 100 times what it could have cost!

WOMAN: (Silent for a moment):  Why do you hate children?

MAN (glares at woman demonically)

If you can’t remember the seventies, it’s hard to remember what a dismal time it was for Second Amendment rights.  Gun control was at flood tide.  There was serious talk of society-wide gun bans.  Poliiticians could seriously and openly discuss repealing the Second Amendment without fear of electoral reprisal.  Many states that’d never had problems with firearms imposed stupid gun laws to keep up with the Joneses; Minnesota, which until 1974 required no permit for the law-abiding citizen to carry a handgun, imposed a cranky “might-issue” law (and what exactly has happened to crime in Minnesota in the past 35 years?  I don’t wanna keep seeing the same hands, here…)

Starting in the late seventies, that changed.  One of the greatest grassroots political uprising in American political history turned the story around.  Within 25 years of the mid-seventies nadir, gun control was a third rail, onto which not a few Democrats electorally whizzed, to their chagrin.

And it was the National Rifle Association that was the fulcrum of this movement.  And ever since, the left has been trying to find a way to neutralize the organization.

And it’s shifting into high gear:

The National Rifle Association‘s threat to punish senators who vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor has been met with a shrug by Democrats from conservative-leaning states and some Republicans who are breaking with their party to support her.

The gun rights group is used to getting its way by spooking lawmakers about the political consequences of defying its wishes. But it never before has weighed in on a Supreme Court confirmation battle. It was cautious about breaking that pattern, and it looks like a losing a fight to defeat President Barack Obama‘s first pick for the court.

Sotomayor is expected to easily win confirmation in a vote this coming week that could deflate the long-accepted truism in Washington that you don’t cross the NRA.

It could deflate the NRA – as indeed, every crisis it’s faced in the past thirty years could have.

But the media has declared the NRA’s political influence “on the wane” and “dead” more times than Tokyo Rose declared the USS Enterprise sunk during World War II.

The thing the story’s writer misses is that the NRA’s power isn’t making sure you can’t get good restaurant reservations; it happens at election time.

That’s what the Democrats’ apologists for Obamacare continue to assure us.

As usualy, they’re full of it.

As we noted last month, some states – and legislators in more states, including Tom Emmer here in Minnesota – are getting just a tad uppity on behalf of the Tenth Amendment. 

(For the benefit of the liberals in this audience who may have been told that the amendment legalized slavery, it actually reads as follows:  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.  In other words; “If the Constitution doesn’t say a power belongs to the fed, it does not belong to the fed!”

The continuing battle in Nebraska over a resolution (not even a bill!) that would push Nebraska’s government to issue a non-binding objection to federal intrusion into the state’s sovereignty highlights the highs and the depraved lows of the subject:

“My goal here is to shine light on the fact that the federal government is overstepping its bounds,” said State Sen. Tony Fulton of Lincoln. “We would be making a statement on behalf of Nebraska.”

The tension between states’ rights and federal authority has been a repeated theme in U.S. history, starting with arguments among the founding fathers.

The struggle turned bloody when Southern states seceded, citing states’ rights on the question of slavery, and the Civil War ensued.

Of course, slavery was an issue that cut straight through to the founding of this nation, the meaning of its constitution, and the legal definition of humanity.  It was an issue that was going to have to be resolved one one extraordinary means or another – splitting the nation, fighting a war, or an unprecedented-in-human-history rapprochement between rival points of view that changed not only attitudes, but laws on the subject, by national consensus, virtually overnight by political standards.

As opposed to, say, enforcement of federal wetland easement requirements.

But there’s no way of telling that to those who cling to the notion that the Tenth Amendment is just…plain…wrong.  Note to the wise:  if you’re looking for a way to get me to beat you about the head with a baseball bat (rhetorically – and literally, maybe), this is a good way to start:

State Sen. Bill Avery of Lincoln said the proposals sound disturbingly similar to the states’ rights arguments made in defense of racial segregation and laws blocking blacks from voting.

“The history of this movement is rife with racism in the name of states’ rights,” he said. “I’m not saying that the people making the case now are racist, but I don’t think Nebraska needs to be getting in bed with these kinds of resolutions.”

On this issue as few others, liberals are stuck on stupid.  Tying every affirmation of state sovereignty makes as much sense as equating mundane government spending (let’s say “the Farm Bill” for a nice boring example) with the Gulag.

Colleagues denied links to that history. Fulton, an Asian-American, said he has no intention of promoting racism or segregation.

Right, but as everyone knows, no expression of racism or sexism is unacceptable if the target is a conservative minority or woman…

When your opponents act like Jamie Gertz’ character on Square Pegs, if she’d been doing meth, rather than engage your point.