I was originally going to pair this with the Pete Stark video but someone named "Ace" showed up and stole my thunder.

Let me just start by saying that as a practical matter, Stark is right. Slap the words "Under the authority granted to the Congress by the Constitution's Commerce Clause...." on just about any piece of legislation and the geniuses in black robes yawn and say OK.

The fact is, conservatives are fighting an up hill battle (to say the least) to get people to accept the idea that the federal government was never meant to be this large and intrusive. For almost 80 years leftwing programs have been heaped on top of the rather limited structure the Constitution actually provides for. Now this expansive view of government is considered the norm and limits on the expansion of federal reach are the exception.

While there may be few, if any, political or legal checks on the growth of the federal government we have reached the point Margaret Thatcher identified as a major problem for socialists...eventually they run out of other people's money.

That's the cue for Paul Ryan and his "Roadmap" for dealing with the nation's looming Death by Entitlement problem.

Instead, Ryan is running a campaign of a different sort, one his party has so far refused to adopt: He is determined to persuade colleagues to get serious about eliminating the national debt, even if it means openly broaching overhauls of Medicare and Social Security.

He speaks in apocalyptic terms, saying the debt is "completely unsustainable" and warning that "it will crash our economy." He urges fellow politicians, and voters, to stop pretending that this problem will go away on its own.

He administers his sermons with evangelical zeal. He will go anywhere and talk to anyone who will listen. When he is not writing op-eds and appearing on television, he can often be found speaking to liberal and conservative audiences alike about his "Roadmap for America's Future," a plan he says would fix the problem.

"Political people always tell their candidates to stay away from controversy," said Ryan, 40. "They say, 'Don't propose anything new or bold because the other side will use it against you.' "

While he does not name the "political people," they no doubt include many Republican colleagues, who, even as they praise Ryan for his doggedness, privately consider the Roadmap a path to electoral disaster. Unlike most politicians of either party, he doesn't speak generically about reducing spending, but he does acknowledge the very real cuts in popular programs that will be required to bring down the debt.

His ideas are provocative, to say the least. They include putting Medicare and Medicaid recipients in private insurance plans that could cost the government less but potentially offer fewer benefits; gradually raising the retirement age to 70; and reducing future Social Security benefits for wealthy retirees.

Of the 178 Republicans in the House, 13 have signed on with Ryan as co-sponsors.

The article is more gossipy than a hard look at his proposals but it does highlight a very real problem for him, his plan isn't very popular with a lot of Republicans running for office. No, the article doesn't name names or have any top GOP figures coming out against him, but in a world where action (or inaction) counts the fact that only 13 Republicans have co-sponsored his plan shows the lack of interest the GOP has in running on something other than "Democrats suck!".

On one level I don't think that's a very bad thing at this point. Even if the Republicans win the House and the Senate (still a long shot), it will be hard for them to really do anything with Obama in the White House. They won't have anything approaching 60 votes in the Senate, let alone a veto proof majority in either house. They'll just spend 2 years getting smacked down by Obama so that by the time '12 comes around Democrats will run on 'failed and extreme budget plans of the GOP' and some of that will stick (unfairly to be sure but life isn't fair).

Ryan, like Jack Kemp pitching tax cuts in the late 70's, will have to spend some time building the case for his course of action and slowly trying to change minds.

The challenge Ryan will have is he's selling something hard and unpopular...spending cuts. And not just any cuts but cuts in entitlements. Let's be honest, the liberals have won the war on things like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

more...

Posted by: DrewM at 09:04 AM | Comments (185)
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Gerrymandered to the point they have too high a number of absolutely safe districts. Too high, because while they have enough voters in those Districts to own them, those voters aren't out in more competitive districts.

I'm pretty sure this is a byproduct of the racial gerrymandering of oddly-shaped districts to well-nigh guarantee a minority Representative. By creating so many minority-majority districts, reliable Democratic voters are stuffed into weirdly-shaped highly-concentrated Districts... leaving a lot of swingy or Republican-leaning districts. (I.e., the browner the racially gerrymandered districts, the whiter the others.)

Barone's doing some number-crunching to determine the effect of the Democrats' misallocation of voters problem.

One of the asymmetries of American politics is the Republican advantage in the House of Representatives. Evidence: in 2004, George W. Bush, winning 51% of the national popular vote, carried 255 of the 435 congressional districts, while John Kerry carried only 180. In 2008, Barack Obama, winning 53% of the national popular vote, carried 242 of the 435 congressional districts, while John McCain carried 193.

To try to get an idea of how many districts Republican and Democratic candidates would carry if they got the same percentage of the national vote...
[f]irst, I estimated the number of districts Bush would have carried in 2004 if he would have won 53% of the vote... Result: Bush would have carried 15 more districts than he actually did. Second, I estimated the number of districts Obama would have carried in 2008 if he had won 51% of the vote, by assuming that his percentage fell 2% in every district and McCainÂ’s percentage rose by 2%. Result: he would have lost 18 districts that in fact he won.

Using those estimates, I constructed the following matrix, showing the number of congressional districts carried by each president actually and hypothetically:

Republican with 53% of the vote: 270 Democrat with 53% of the vote: 242

Republican with 51% of the vote: 255 Democrat with 51% of the vote: 224

The results are rather striking. Had Bush won the same percentage of the vote that Obama did, he would have carried 270 districts to only 165 for his Democratic opponent. ThatÂ’s a big, big majority. No party has held as many as 270 seats in the House in the last 30 years. In contrast, if Obama had won the same percentage of the vote that Bush did, he would have carried only 224 districts, not very much more than the 211 his Republican opponent would have carried.

Barone notes this structural advantage is now piled upon the general polling advantage Republicans (seem to) enjoy.

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Posted by: Ace at 08:25 AM | Comments (79)
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He refused a motion to dismiss.

A judge on Monday refused to dismiss the state of Virginia's challenge to President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare law, a setback that will force his administration to mount a lengthy legal defense of the overhaul effort.

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss the state's lawsuit which argues the law's requirement that its residents have health insurance was unconstitutional...

I don't know if this report is as sanguine as it seems -- this is a novel question, and a big, important one; it would have been unseemly for any judge to dismiss it out of hand, as if there is no argument remaining whatsoever about the power of the federal government to puppet-master citizens' lives.

It should be borne in mind that the judge who stayed the Arizona law feigned skepticism about the federal government's case in her questions. (Something I had guessed.)

Pete Stark was asked about constitutional limits on federal power, and he offered a very clear statement about the "mainstream" Democratic view of that -- such limits simply do not exist.

It's pretty astonishing to hear that put so plainly. The Democratic Party certainly doesn't believe the Constitution has no power to restrain. They support the Constitution blocking lots of laws (abortion the most important among them).

It's an odd thing -- the Constitution has so very much to say about a procedure never mentioned in it, and nothing at all to say about subjects it mentions quite frequently and prominently -- states' rights, taxation, enumerated powers, powers reserved for the people, seizing of property without just compensation. All of those clauses are apparently dead, while invisible clauses are potent.

Posted by: Ace at 07:59 AM | Comments (96)
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Hokay. Here's de Earth. Dayum, that is a sweet Earth you might say.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 05:18 AM | Comments (214)
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Does the large man make so much sense that the commies are listening?

HAVANA (AP) — Raul Castro said Sunday that his government will scale back controls on small businesses, lay off unnecessary workers and allow more self-employment — significant steps in a country where the state dominates nearly every facet of the economy

This in a country where 9 in 10 people (who are actually working) are employed by the government. And little brother says 20% of them are "redundant".

He's probably guessing low, but wouldn't that be an interesting target for, say, California? The list of things apparently being considered: "Cuban officials plan to reduce state control of small businesses, authorize more Cubans to become self-employed and build a new tax structure that will compel state employees to contribute more."

That's pretty interesting rhetoric from one of the last outposts of 20th century Marxism.

Despots don't do anything that doesn't keep them in power. Is this what they think they need to say to hold onto it?

Posted by: Dave in Texas at 05:54 PM | Comments (49)
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Okay I'm going to be out most of the day and evening and I've got a ton of videos built up so that all equals Video Sunday.

The Mystery of the Racist 'Tea Party' Comics

A long running narrative on the left has been that the Tea Party is filled with racists. It just has to be true despite the lack of any evidence of this. So recently lefty blogs have been a flutter over recently found racist 'Tea Party' comics. Supposedly they were discovered by comic book blogger Ethan Persoff who bought a few copies somewhere in Corpus Christi, TX and put scans up on his website. As you can see below they're done in black an white and mock Obama using recreations of famous comic book covers. But so far the only link to the Tea Party movement is just the title, 'Tea Party Comix' - Tea Party leaders disavow any knowledge of them and no one seems to know who the author was or if they were widely distributed.

Having looked through them it's clear that whoever did them was quite familiar with well known vintage comic book covers and their drawing is fairly good. But my impression is that the overall tone is slightly off - it reads more like an outsider's view of how Tea Partiers are supposed to think rather than their actual viewpoints and it has the look and feel of something from an alternative weekly rather than a Tea Party handout. Plus there's a decided lack of humor and cleverness. So barring further evidence I see this as being most likely a plant by an anti-tea Party leftist. But with just enough over the top irony that if caught, they can claim that they were really just spoofing Tea Partiers.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:17 PM | Comments (455)
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He's out there.

Original news footage is linked at the end of the video, but I don't think you really need to see it to get the gist.

Thanks to Mesablue at Powerful Connecticut Stringpullers.

Posted by: LauraW at 04:23 PM | Comments (92)
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Ooof.

Nevada has gone from Toss-Up to Lean Democrat; Pennsylvania from Lean Republican to Toss Up; Washington state from Toss Up to Lean Democrat. (Missouri went from Toss Up to Lean Republican, the sole happy change.)

Could just be some bouncing around, I guess. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:33 PM | Comments (268)
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OK, I'm a sport, I can accept quite a bit when it comes to goofy pageant costumes, but this one is flat out bizarre, and quite a few Aussies think so too it would seem.

What the oddball costume contains, appears to be perfectly acceptable, perhaps even ummm...exceptional.

Pic below the fold. more...

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 02:26 PM | Comments (46)
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Why were Republicans balking?

Because Democrats thought no one could vote against a bill that funded first-responders, and so attached pro-illegal-immigration measures to it.

More Detail: James Richardson explains in an editorial.

The House leadership had suspended typical procedures—requiring a simple majority—on the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2009 in order to prevent GOP-offered amendments that they feared might compromise the votes of endangered Democrats.

Senior Democrats were concerned that Republicans might offer a motion to recommit — sending the bill back to committee with instructions to pay for it with funds from the president's health care reforms.

The Democrats’ procedural tack meant the bill needed two-thirds majority to pass — a large coalition that senior Democrats surely knew was untenable.

...

Instead, Democrats adopted a crudely partisan, morally repugnant tack by hiking the vote threshold for passage.

...

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who represents many of those who survived 9/11, summed up the situation: "They're afraid of taking a tough vote and as a result of that, they're willing to let cops and firefighters die."

I don't see any mention of illegal immigration measures -- I'm writing to him to clarify that.

Clarification: Richardson tells me the Democratic bill didn't forbid illegal aliens from qualifying for the aid contained in the package, and perhaps some Republicans wanted to block that from happening with an amendment. It was not, however, one of the stated objections the House Republican caucus floated.

Posted by: Ace at 02:18 PM | Comments (41)
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