I don't even know where to begin with this. Start with the fact that the National Enquirer is basing this article on what lefty bloggers are speculating about. (Remember Trig Trutherism?)

They have no facts at all, except that a prostitute was busted in Alaska, something that happens 100 times a day. There are no facts connecting any of this to Palin (or even anyone he knows).

But that doesn't stop the intrepid "political bloggers," nor the Enquirer.

Political bloggers are digging into incredible claims that the "First Dude" - father of the couple's five children - cheated on his wife with a female massage therapist who was busted for prostitution!

The scandal not only has the potential to sabotage Palin's possible 2012 White House bid, but also threatens to destroy her marriage, sources say.

"Sources say?" You mean, sources like, steve_in_hb just told me that if this is true it could compromise Palin's political fortunes? Like a friend guessed about the ramifications if true and so I can now say "sources say" this obvious thing, like I have a scoop?

While the story heats up on the internet, The ENQUIRER has uncovered official documents confirming the woman's arrest, and learned police have confiscated physical evidence that could tie Todd to an alleged extramarital affair.

Um... you know what they mean, don't you? They mean police have confiscated physical evidence about her prostitution business and they don't know what that evidence is, but since they do not know what the evidence is, they cannot exclude the possibility that it has something to do with Todd Palin.

Or me.

Or Barack Obama.

Oh, by the way, National Enquirer-- here's another hot story that "politcal bloggers" are working on: Barack Obama took a DNC fundraiser named Vera Baker to the George Hotel in Washington, DC, when he was down there to talk to AIPAC in 2004, and she slept in his room, wink wink, and then Michelle Obama found out about it and became incensed but luckily a company partly owned by one of the Chicago-machine Daleys set Vera Baker up as a some kind of economic analyst in Martinique, of all places, despite the fact that she had no experience whatsoever in that field and despite the fact that that's a very strange place to do economic analysis from.

Print it. We "political bloggers" are working on it.

Ah, but you know all that.

We have also uncovered documents that show the woman - identified by bloggers as Shailey Tripp - contributed free massages to an anonymous person working for Sarah's campaign for governor of Alaska.

Todd Palin didn't "work" for her campaign.

While representatives for Todd Palin vehemently deny he cheated on his wife, allegations of his extramarital affair surfaced on Jan. 4 when an anonymous tipster sent out messages to news outlets making the allegation using the e-mail address thepalinmorals@hotmail.com.

"My sources reveal that a massage therapist and computer technologist, SHAILEY TRIPP, had an affair with Todd Palin that lead (sic) to her arrest March of 2010," claimed the anonymous e-mail.

Wait, wait, wait -- this allegation came from "thepalinmorals@hotmail.com? No, hold on -- certainly not The thepalinmorals@hotmail.com?!!

Oh, well, that changes everything! I didn't know this came from thepalinmorals@hotmail.com!!! Or, as I call thepalinmorals@hotmail.com, "the Gold Standard of lefty bloggers sending out false tips to the media in an effort to generate media interest." If I had known this came from a respected source like thepalinmorals@hotmail.com, I never would have adopted such a sarcastic, dismissive tone.

But the National Enquirer has an update. You wouldn't think they even needed one, given that thepalinmorals@hotmail.com had already provided the definitive word on the matter, but there's so much more!

Because, the National Enquirer breathlessly tells us -- other outlets are linking its story! Which must therefore mean it's true!

Since the first hours of this breaking story ignited a firestorm of controversy key mainstream media The New York Daily News, Vanity Fair magazine, Yahoo News, The Huffington Post and Forbes Magazine, among others, have cited The ENQUIRER's bombshell investigation into the Palin cheating scandal.

Oh sure, key mainstream media outlets are linking it; but what about key anonymous email tipsters? Is my favorite anonymous email tipster TheBarackObamGettingSexyAtTheGoergeHotel@gmail.com linking it? That's what I need to know.

Heh: The "MFM" comments in the thread below.

The National Enquirer notes that the Palins haven't responded yet about this just-made-up-claim.

You know what the MFM's take will be when they deny it?

Why is Sarah Palin inserting herself into a story about her marriage breaking down?

Posted by: Ace at 02:55 PM | Comments (419)
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Enough about me talking about myself. Maybe you should talk about me some more.

[H]aving Bachmann deliver some sort of “shadow” conservative response to Obama will achieve one of two things. Either it’ll be redundant by duplicating most of the same points that Ryan makes or, if she says something incendiary that the media ends up slobbering over the next day, it’ll overshadow his speech entirely. Or, actually, I suppose there’s a third option — that this will be as much a response to Ryan as it is to Obama, emphasizing that his plan to cut $60 billion this year (and maybe his vote for TARP?) simply isn’t good enough.

Oh, but we've talked about me long enough. Let's find new people to talk about me.

Oh, and speaking about people obsessed with keeping their names in the media even if it damages concrete policy objectives, of course she'll be speaking on behalf of the look-at-me Tea Party Express.

Which, by the way, is founded by a couple of very mainstream old-guard Republican operatives. But like they're totally the fresh faces of the new vanguard and stuff.

Posted by: Ace at 01:11 PM | Comments (479)
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Nnngghh unnnnhh uhhh uhhh unnnhhh:

The Navy has passed a major milestone in its quest to build an incredibly powerful new anti-aircraft gun.

Scientists with the Navy's Office of Naval Research have demonstrated a prototype system capable of producing from thin air the electrons needed to generate ultrapowerful, "megawatt-class" laser beams for the agency's next-generation system.

...

He said the group is hoping to set a world record with the futuristic new weapon -- which could be the Holy Grail of military lasers.

unnh gnnhhaghh unnh ochh... nnnyyahhh yuhhh uhhh ohh:

FEL technology generates powerful laser beams by passing a stream of electrons -- those tiny, charged particles of matter -- through magnetic fields. Using electrons means avoiding the hassle of chemical fuels that are required for ordinary gas lasers, and bypassing the heating issue of electronic lasers.

nhyhuh, nhyuh, huh huh huh hyuhhhhhhhhh: more...

Posted by: Ace at 12:31 PM | Comments (158)
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Taco Bell said the show was not a "fit brand," which I guess is their cowardly way of saying "inappropriate."

Nielsen says that 1.3 12-18 year olds watched it. As 17 and 18 year olds sorta stop watching TV (I did at that age; I didn't start again until I was older), I'm thinking those figures underrepresent how many 12-15 year olds were watching.

And, of course, tweens were watching too! Isn't that great. It would be super if Nielsen could tell us how many tweens were watching.

AllahPundit noted the possible (but unlikely) child-porn angle last night.

Nothing will come from that, I imagine. Christian Slater was like 15 when he did a sex scene in The Name of the Rose (and apparently it was pretty realistic, because the legend is the director told the actress seducing him to really go to town dry-humping him, so he could catch Slater's surprised reaction) and I don't think anyone ever suggested that shouldn't be on HBO or that there should be prosecutions.

But advertiser flight...? That is more likely to produce results.

As Milton Freidman said, in another context, you can't make the evil actually good; we can only change our response to evil to make evil unprofitable.

Posted by: Ace at 12:07 PM | Comments (73)
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I've asked this before. I'll ask it again.

Since we're talking about how absolutist, hard-edged rhetoric can encourage murder, and suggest to the infirm or ruthless that their evils are permissible and even laudatory: Was Kermitt Gosnell encouraged by a "climate of hate" regarding unwanted babies?

Seems like if the media wants to talk about rhetorical incitements to murder, they have a pretty good reason to do so here.

But that's a question they'll never ask; they're not even willing to restate the conclusions of the grand jury, which is that pro-abortion politics caused state officials to turn a blind eye to a horror in plain sight.

I continue to be amazed (I shouldn't be, but I am) that they simply will not report that high government officials have "lawyered up" rather than answer the grand jury's perfectly justified questions.

Michelle Malkin is worth reading. She already noted the go-to meme:

Already, left-wing journalists and activists have rushed to explain that these abortion atrocities ignored for four decades by abortion radicals and rationalizers are not really about abortion. A Time magazine writer argued that the Philadelphia Horror was “about poverty, not Roe V. Wade.” A University of Minnesota professor declared: “This is not about abortion.”

But the grand jury itself pointed out that loosened oversight of abortion clinics enacted under pro-choice former GOP governor Tom Ridge enabled Gosnell’s criminal enterprise – and led to the heartless execution of hundreds of babies. Mass murder got a pass in the name of expanding “access” and appeasing abortion lobbyists. As the report made clear: “With the change of administration from [pro-life Democrat] Governor Casey to Governor Ridge,” government health officials “concluded that inspections would be ‘putting a barrier up to women’ seeking abortions. Better to leave clinics to do as they pleased, even though, as Gosnell proved, that meant both women and babies would pay.”

Are you quite sure it's not about abortion? Because, if'n I have this all right, women sought abortions from an abortion mill and received them from an abortion doctor who performed abortions and is charged with 33 counts of illegal late-term abortions (in addition to other double-secret abortions which have been charged as murder) and the grand jury stated that abortion politics -- specifically pro-abortion politics -- caused the state medical and health bureaucracy to stop inspecting abortion clinics and not pursue complaints about negligence in conducting abortions because of their fear of how such scrutiny about abortions would play within the pro-abortion community.

I'm just an ordinary workin' feller but I'm gonna take a flyer and posit that maybe this had something to do with abortion.

Here's a test: If you are unable to explain the facts and charges without mentioning the word "abortion," guess what, it's a story about abortion.

The Anchoress notes the power of The Narrative here, too:

It[']s funny how framing works. A massacre perpetrated by a deranged man is not about the deranged man; it’s about “rhetoric.” But a massacre perpetrated by an abortion provider whose violations against laws of the nation and of humanity were overlooked for years is “not about abortion.” It’s about criminal behavior, and that’s all. But some of our most prominent politicians have voted against the very bill — the “born alive” bill — that defines such behavior as criminal. Meaning, I guess, that if only enough politicians had voted with Sen. Barack Obama, Gosnell’s behavior would not be “criminal” at all, and therefore we wouldn’t even be talking about it?

A shooting isn't a shooting, it's about right-wing rhetoric, but a story about a gonzo abortion murderer aided and abetted by pro-abortion state officials turns out to not be a story about either abortion or murder or the high government officials the grand jury says aided and abetted the crimes, but about... access to quality health care for the poor.

Posted by: Ace at 11:23 AM | Comments (169)
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I really hope this is nothing more than a bid to get his name back in the news and maybe a few more speaking/consulting gigs.

RUDY GIULIANI: “I will take a look at 2012. It’s really a question of, can I play a useful role? Would I have a chance of getting the nomination? Those are things that I’ll have to evaluate as the year goes along.

LARRY KUDLOW: “But the door is open, that’s what I’m hearing from you tonight?”

RUDY GIULIANI: “Yes, yes, Absolutely Larry.”

No Rudy. Just no.

Giuliani's '08 campaign wasn't just awful, it was awful on historic levels.

He refused to placate anyone on issues like abortion or same sex marriage. That's fine if your Chris Klein (old school AoS bonus points if you get that reference) but if you're running for the GOP nomination for President...not a viable plan.

Even more damning, he simply ran a terrible campaign.

He raised close to $60 million and got one lousy delegate. His plan to skip every race and go all in on Florida was idiotic on its face.

Now he's considering doing it again? Who would donate to that campaign? Who is looking for a candidate that's so out of step with the current mood of the party? My guess is about as many as were looking for that 4 years ago...almost no one.

Maybe it's because I'm generally cynical about politicians and on the whole tend not to find them an impressive lot but I'm just not that excited about anyone who is running or likely to run. I might be able to get excited about Mike Pence but his lack of executive experience bothers me and couple that with the fact that he's not even a given to run, that leaves me out in the cold.

The one thing I'm sure of is that 2008 GOP primary field was not very impressive, I'm not really happy that most of them seem to be giving it a second go.

UPDATE: Some fragmentary bits of interview that will apparently air Monday on CNN.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said he's more likely to run for president if former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin runs.

In an interview on CNN's "Piers Morgan Tonight," Giuliani, who dropped out of the 2008 Republican presidential primary, said running against Palin for the 2012 GOP nomination would show him as a moderate Republican.

"The more Republicans in which I can show a contrast, probably the better chance, the better chance that I have," Giuliani told CNN's Piers Morgan in an interview set to air at 9 pm. ET Monday. Portions of the interview will air Friday (tonight) on CNN's "John King, USA" at 7 p.m. ET.

But if he does run, Giuliani says he would concentrate on winning Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, sites of the first presidential nominating contests. In 2008 Giuliani focused his resources in Florida, a strategy that that led to the demise of his run after he finished third in the state's primary.

Awesome! Really, we were going to have a fight anyone but now we can be sure to inflict as much damage upon ourselves as possible!

I'm not a Palin fan but I'm pretty sure if she runs, she'll get more than one delegate. I'm not sure what Rudy sees when he looks in the mirror but he's the only one who sees it.

CNN story via Ben Smith.

Posted by: DrewM at 10:39 AM | Comments (238)
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Oh that's just special.

essure was mounting on Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie today amid increasing confusion over whether President Obama was born there.

Abercrombie said on Tuesday that an investigation had unearthed papers proving Obama was born in Hawaii in 1961.

He told Honolulu's Star-Advertiser: 'It actually exists in the archives, written down,' he said.

But it became apparent that what had been discovered was an unspecified listing or notation of Obama's birth that someone had made in the state archives and not a birth certificate.

And in the same interview Abercrombie suggested that a long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate for Barack Obama may not exist within the vital records maintained by the Hawaii Department of Health.

He said efforts were still being made to track down definitive vital records that would prove Obama was born in Hawaii.

Ah, liberal competence. I should have known they'd blow this up in their own faces but I fucked up, I trusted them.

Note: I'm quoting this because it's the Daily Mail -- I guess sort of a respectable paper -- but actually, I find their suppositions to be pretty much made up.

WND ran a similar story this week claiming the governor's words "suggested" this; but I don't really see that suggestion in the words they quote, that that they claim suggests this. I really don't know how they're getting from A to B.

The Daily Mail has picked up on this meme, but I still see no connection between what the governor said and the claims made about what he meant.

Posted by: Ace at 10:19 AM | Comments (265)
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One of the joys of being a lefty blogger is being permitted to write glib, insensible things without high risk of contradiction, so long as the glib nonsense you're writing is the sort of thing your readers want to read.

Here's Jill from Feministing simply making shit up:

What Kermit Gosnell tells us about late-term abortion

Absolutely nothing.

No, really. Contrary to what Great Moral Authority On Abortion William Saletan has to say about the matter, I think weÂ’re all pretty well agreed that if the charges against Kermit Gosnell are true, then dude is a criminal and needs to go to jail. Killing a baby after itÂ’s born and has taken breaths? Is not abortion. It should be, and is, a crime punishable by law. And Kermit Gosnell is being criminally prosecuted.

Ah, but Jill, you really should read before you write. Because delivering the baby, and then murdering it, was not Gosnell's only method of abortion. (Which Jill defines, Humpty-Dumpty like (words mean what I say and nothing more), as not including this nasty method.)

It wasn't his only method; it was just his favored method for killing very large, very late term babies. (He joked about one especially large infant that the kid was big enough "to walk me to the bus stop.")

He also employed traditional in-the-womb illegal abortions -- which Jill would know if she read about all the women hospitalized for perforated colons and uteruses and the like. He had his very clumsy (and unsterilized) forceps and probes in a lot of women.

Also, the charges against him are not limited to the seven babies we know (based on his deliberately incomplete records and the bodies found at the site) he murdered. He is also charged with 33 illegal late term abortions, that is, cases in which he did not deliver a live baby and then kill it, but killed the baby in utero, the way Jill prefers it (and accepts as a genuine abortion).

And, just to note the scale of this endeavor: He killed hundreds in this fashion, so many that the plumbing was choked with rotting body-parts; the counts of murder are based only on those bodies left in good enough condition to perform autopsies on and determine cause of death (in this case, scissors to the spine by the head).

So, um... very glib, very semantic, but, even granting the Humpty Dumpty power to just say "these were not abortions" despite the fact that the women showed up for abortions at a place known for late-term illegal abortions and the doctor performed what he called an abortion, in fact 33 counts are about illegal abortions. The eight murder charges are just about the babies he decided it would be easier to deliver and kill.

Jill's distinction places an awful lot of emphasis on whether the baby was delivered or just killed in utero, too. Partial birth abortion -- a technique I assume she supports -- consists of delivering just the body of the infant (and all limbs), then scissoring the head that remains in utero and collapsing the skull by use of powerful vacuum and then finally pulling the baby out the remaining four or five inches; I'm a bit mystified at how that technique is a super-duper legal one and the doctor's "let's cut out the middleman" version of it is illegal, and murder, and not really an abortion.

This is the very stupid meme that's seized upon and repeated at Feministing, by one "Vanessa."

We canÂ’t be surprised that William Saletan jumped on this to propagate his anti-choice bullshit, but it doesnÂ’t make it any less infuriating.

What we do know: A Philadelphia abortion provider is being charged with 8 counts of murder, including the death of a patient and allegedly seven infants. TheyÂ’re pretty horrible charges, and if true, theyÂ’re pretty heinous crimes. But the first thing I thought when I read this story was what Jill at Feministe said: If this doctor delivered these infants, live infants that were breathing and then killed them? LetÂ’s make something clear: That is not abortion.

Again: 33 counts of felony abortion, too. They're just not charging him for murder in those cases.

So, yeah, it does say something about abortion, and pro-choice absolutism, as William Saletan of Slate notices.

The absolutists have been up in arms since October, when pro-choice moderates met with pro-lifers at Princeton University to discuss their differences and possible areas of collaboration. What irks the absolutists most is the notion of restricting second-trimester abortions. But their commitment to reproductive autonomy doesn't end at the second trimester. Implicitly and often explicitly, it extends to the third.

[cataloging of absolutist we-can-kill-it-whenever-we-like position omitted as repetitive]

Ann Furedi, chief executive of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service, goes further. "Is there anything qualitatively different about a fetus at, say, 28 weeks that gives it a morally different status to a fetus at 18 weeks or even eight weeks?" she asks. "Why should we assume later abortions are 'bad'—or, at least, 'more wrong' than early ones?" Furedi rejects this assumption and concludes that "in later pregnancy, too, I believe that the decision, and the responsibility that comes with it, should rest with the pregnant woman. … We either support women's moral agency or we do not. … There is no middle ground to straddle."

Among other things, this means no time limits. Furedi argues that "women should have access to abortion as early as possible and as late as necessary." In her current essay, she writes: "To argue that a woman should no longer be able to make a moral decision about the future of her pregnancy, because 20 or 18 or 16 weeks have passed, assaults [moral autonomy] and, in doing so, assaults the tradition of freedom of conscienceÂ…" In fact, "the delivery of an abortion procedure in the second (and even third) trimester is preferable to its denial."

These essays vary, but together, they capture the absolutist worldview. There's no moral difference between eight, 18, and 28 weeks. No one has the right to judge another person's abortion decision, regardless of her stage of pregnancy. Each woman is entitled to decide not only whether to have an abortion, but how long she can wait to make that choice.

It's one thing to preach these ideas in the lefty blogosphere. It's quite another to see them in practice. That's where Kermit Gosnell, the doctor at the center of the Philadelphia scandal, comes in.

Saletan has a suggestion for such absolutists:

The question for Furedi, Berer, Yanow, Herold, and anyone else who asserts an indefinite right to choose is whether this part of the indictment should be dropped. You can argue that what Gosnell did wasn't conventional abortion—he routinely delivered the babies before slitting their necks—but the 33 proposed charges involving the Abortion Control Act have nothing to do with that. Those charges pertain strictly to a time limit: performing abortions beyond 24 weeks. Should Gosnell be prosecuted for violating that limit? Is it OK to outlaw abortions at 28, 30, or 32 weeks? Or is drawing such a line an unacceptable breach of women's autonomy?

Jill? What say you? You ignore this question, you duck it; you only discuss the eight counts of murder, and pretend the 33 counts of illegal abortion don't exist.

But they do exist. So are you going to agitate for these charges to be dropped? Based upon your writings, it seems you are philosophically committed to this stance; so are you going to have the courage of your convictions, or are you going to continue to live in Pretendistan (Population: You)?

The media continues embargoing this story, over all, though there are begrudging mentions here and there. AP writes a story about it, which MSNBC puts on its Health page yet again (as we saw Time do), pretending this is a story only about the disgusting and dangerous conditions of the abortion mill, and not, as it actually is, about murder, absolutist pro-choice abortion fever, and high-ranking officials in Pennsylvania taking the fifth amendment rather than give testimony against themselves.

Just a health story. That's all it is.

Odds the MFM will cover this except in the briefest way possible, and always focusing on the "one bad actor" Narrative: bumped from 3% to 5% now that a liberal at a webzine writes upon it.

Let's See The Evidence: Jill also postulates, evidence-free, that almost all of these late-term abortions were medically justified.

Also, women don’t get late-term abortions for fun. Seriously. No one is like, “I think I will continue this pregnancy for as long as legally possible before I undergo an invasive medical procedure that is rendered longer, more expensive, and more complicated because I waited six months to have it.” No. It’s actually more like, “I really wanted this baby but now it turns out that there’s a fetal abnormality incompatible with life, and if I continue this pregnancy I risk my own health and/or life to give birth to a baby that either will not live or will only live in extreme pain for a very short while.” Fun stuff like that.

Well, if that's so, I'm sure the good doctor's records will contain all those diagnoses in these women's medical files stating that they had received pre-natal advice that their babies could kill them or that they'd be born dead or such.

Does Jill believe that? Does Jill believe hundreds of poor women received such sophisticated diagnoses of potential future complications and risks? That genuine doctors advised all of them (or even most of them) that their babies were dying on the vine, or that they faced serious consequences some number of months down the road?

See, I don't believe that, because the poor and uninsured tend to show up in emergency rooms when they have present, immediate medical emergencies; as a group, they tend to not receive long-term predictive diagnoses.

If these women did in fact have the long-term predictive diagnoses of future calamity that Jill insists that almost all women seeking late-term abortions receive, the grand jury must have missed that, because I didn't see reference to that.

Did Jill? Does Jill have a scoop she's sitting on? Does she somehow have access to these medical records?

No, I don't think she does; I think she's just making this up, or not making it up, since it's a long-standing claim; she's repeating a received dogma.

Well, we now have an important source of data by which this claim can either be supported or undermined, proved or disproved.

Which way does Jill really expect it to go?

Because I think that almost all of the women in question just showed up for a late-term abortion because they decided they wanted a late-term abortion. I do not believe literally hundreds of women all received the rather rare diagnosis of your-life-is-in-danger-if-you-carry-to-term. In fact, I would hazard a guess that exactly none of them did.

By the way: The Supreme Court has ruled that no abortion law can prohibit an abortion, even a late-term one, if it is necessary for the health or life of the mother. So if these women received such a diagnosis, they wouldn't have had to go to Gosnell's Shop of Little Horrors.

Posted by: Ace at 09:41 AM | Comments (329)
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Let's not notice the states in danger of bankruptcy are those controlled absolutely by liberals.

Before you say "They should be forced to live with their debt," remember (as I failed to) that the states have made contractual obligations to, for example, their unions' pension funds, and states are constitutionally barred from canceling/modifying their contracts. As things stand. (If I have this right: they're so barred by their own constitutions. See the link at the bottom of the post.)

So... I think if states are going to unilaterally change their contracts with unions they will need some escape clause like this. Whether that's Constitutional or not I don't know. It sounds like a "not" but, as I'll quote later, some guy says this is an easy call, and it's quite constitutional.

Policy makers are working behind the scenes to come up with a way to let states declare bankruptcy and get out from under crushing debts, including the pensions they have promised to retired public workers.

Unlike cities, the states are barred from seeking protection in federal bankruptcy court. Any effort to change that status would have to clear high constitutional hurdles because the states are considered sovereign.

But proponents say some states are so burdened that the only feasible way out may be bankruptcy, giving Illinois, for example, the opportunity to do what General Motors did with the federal governmentÂ’s aid.

...

Bankruptcy could permit a state to alter its contractual promises to retirees, which are often protected by state constitutions, and it could provide an alternative to a no-strings bailout. Along with retirees, however, investors in a stateÂ’s bonds could suffer, possibly ending up at the back of the line as unsecured creditors.

Putting aside the constitutional question (just because I don't know the answer), there would be two good effects:

1. There would be no further empty promises of future contributions to state employee pension/retirement funds because no one would ever believe a state again. All further such schemes would have to be cash-and-carry, contributions happening now, and that will tend to limit them, because...

2. States, especially incorrigibly liberal tax-eating ones, will not be able to issue bonds except in small amounts, and they'll have to pay higher rates just to sell those, and they'll wind up being far less attractive to states. No one will trust them. States will be compelled to live within their means, more or less.

On the other hand, this seems likely to produce a crisis of confidence. But then, I think we're already living in a crisis of confidence (and for good reason), so this is mostly just a recognition of reality.

On the constitutional question, this professor writing at the Weekly Standard says the issues are "easily addressed."

When the possibility is mentioned of creating a new chapter for states in U.S. bankruptcy law (Chapter 8, perhaps, which isnÂ’t currently taken), most people have two reactions. First, that bankruptcy might be a great solution for exploding state debt; and second, that it canÂ’t possibly be constitutional for Congress to enact such a law. Surprisingly enough, this reaction is exactly backwards. The constitutionality of bankruptcy-for-states is beyond serious dispute. The real question is whether the benefits would be large enough to justify congressional action. The short answer is yes. Although bankruptcy would be an imperfect solution to out-of-control state deficits, itÂ’s the best option we have, at least if we want to have any chance of avoiding massive federal bailouts of state governments.

Start with the issue of constitutionality. The main objection to bankruptcy for states is that it would interfere with state sovereignty—the Constitution’s protections against federal meddling in state affairs. The best known such barrier is the Tenth Amendment, but the structure of the Constitution as a whole is designed to give the states a great deal of independence. This concern is easily addressed. So long as a state can’t be thrown into bankruptcy against its will, and bankruptcy doesn’t usurp state lawmaking powers, bankruptcy-for-states can easily be squared with the Constitution. But the solution also creates a second concern. If the bankruptcy framework treads gingerly on state prerogatives, as it must to be constitutional, it may be exceedingly difficult for a bankruptcy court to impose the aggressive measures a state needs to get its fiscal house in order.

That bothers me, because I'd like to see conditions imposed here that this guy is saying can't be imposed.

Southern states are famously not completely sovereign as regards their election laws. This is due to federal law, prompted by Jim Crow and then the Voter Rights Act -- the states of the old Confederacy must submit their proposed changes to election law for "pre-clearance" by the Justice Department, which then either certifies or rejects the proposed changes, based on whether the changes (in their opinion) would disadvantage minority voters.

In other words, part of southern states' sovereignty was withdrawn because they did bad things with it.

It's time for some other states to similarly have pieces of their sovereignty withdrawn. Any state which seeks these bankruptcy protections (should they come to pass) should, for decades, until they prove themselves, be required to pre-clear all tax and spending initiatives with some federal agency.

States' rights, you might object. Well, yes, but adults have full legal control of their lives; children and incompetents and mental defectives do not. And these states are children and incompetents and mental defectives.

That will be humiliating for these states and their majority-liberal citizenry; good, it should be humiliating. Deadbeats and spendthrifts ought to be humiliated.

So when this guy says the law and courts will have to "tread gingerly" to avoid usurping state sovereignty... well, if so, that seems very far from optimal to me.

With liquidation off the table, the effectiveness of state bankruptcy would depend a great deal on the stateÂ’s willingness to play hardball with its creditors.

That's the rub, then -- what's being proposed may give politicians beholden to the unions the power to modify contracts, but they might simply refuse to exercise that power -- in which case, what is gained?

Monty's Take:

It's not clear to me if these bankruptcy discussions are actually
serious proposals, though, or just a way to try to scare the unions
into making deals. And the unions aren't stupid; they know that a real
state bankruptcy is very unlikely, and that pension/healthcare
cramdowns for public employees in many states wouldn't survive a court
challenge. So it's going to make for some interesting brinksmanship
going forward.

The professor writing at the Weekly Standard doesn't agree that the cramdown is a problem:

But if they dug in their heels and resisted proposals to restructure their debt, a bankruptcy chapter for states should allow (as municipal bankruptcy already does) for a proposal to be “crammed down” over their objections under certain circumstances. This eliminates the hold-out problem—the refusal of a minority of bondholders to agree to the terms of a restructuring—that can foil efforts to restructure outside of bankruptcy.

I don't know.

I think Monty is right at least about the threat to unions this could hypothetically present, but in reality does not: If liberal politicians in liberal states were serious about reneging on absurd promises made to secure union support, just the threat of bankruptcy could spur renegotiations and restructurings.

But those politicians are not serious about doing that. So... again, I wonder, without taking away their power to decide their spending and tax policy (which the professor seems to believe is completely unconstitutional), what is gained?

Hey, You Know What Might Be Just Swell? Some Punitive, Confiscatory Taxation: The good kind.

What good kind, you ask?

Well, AmishDude has an idea about how to fix the problem with these bankrupting pension fund obligations if the unions won't play ball:

So what? Put a 100% surtax above a certain amount for revenue earned from a union pension fund state employees.

Problem solved.

Perfect! In theory, the state pays out its commitments, but then just taxes that payout above the level its comfortable with at a full 100% so the money goes "out" for half a second and then is immediately impounded again as a tax.

It's using their tactic of "tax 'em hard until we tax our preferred world into existence" strategem against them.

That's kind of brilliant, really.

Isn't it?

Posted by: Ace at 08:40 AM | Comments (233)
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Good luck to him.

From the release.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced today that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) will deliver the Republican address following the President’s State of the Union address to Congress on January 25, 2011. Last year – in an unprecedented failure – Congressional Democrats chose not to pass, or even propose a budget, punting on a duty that represents the most basic responsibility of governing. Chairman Ryan will deliver the Republican address Tuesday night from the House Budget Committee hearing room, where the Democrats’ spending spree will end and the Republicans’ push for a fiscally responsible budget that cuts spending will begin.

In making the announcement, the GOP leaders noted that Chairman Ryan is a leading voice for fiscal discipline and common-sense solutions to cut spending and create jobs. Known for his thoughtful and detailed critiques of big-government policies, Ryan has helped put to rest the DemocratsÂ’ argument that more government spending and higher taxes is the answer to most of our nationÂ’s ills. His commitment to free enterprise and limited government make him the right choice to outline a vision for how a smaller, less costly government will help create the right conditions for the creation of good, private sector jobs.

“Paul Ryan is uniquely qualified to address the state of our economy and the fiscal challenges that face our country,” said Speaker Boehner. “We’re broke, and decisive action is needed to help our economy get back to creating jobs and end the spending binge in Washington that threatens our children’s future. I’m pleased that Paul will be outlining a common-sense vision for moving our country forward.”

A very good choice I'd say. Ryan is an up and coming star who is now head of the House Budget Committee, so yeah, fiscal issues are going to be the main thrust of his talk.

The last time Ryan went up against Obama was at the "Health Care Summit" and he pretty much schooled him.

Still, I wouldn't get my hopes up to much that his response will have much impact. It's really unfair to expect anyone in this spot to look very good compared to any President. The visuals are simply a mismatch. The President is the center of attention in a House chamber filled with members of Congress, the cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Supreme court, the Diplomatic Corps and on and on. The responder is usually someone sitting or standing by themselves, talking into a camera. It's not an even match.

Either way, no one ever really remembers the State of the Union, let alone the response. Unless you're Bobby Jindal and then you wish everyone would.

Posted by: DrewM at 07:28 AM | Comments (177)
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