And also, oddly, exempt from the normal reporting requirements for lobbying organizations.

Mike Flynn writes of the NCSL at Big Government.

You're paying for it, so you might as well know what your tax dollars are buying you.

I'm going to do an extended quote here. If Bretibart.com objects, I trust they'll let me know.

In 1975, Congress created the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) to provide a vehicle for state legislatures to jointly lobby Congress. Ideally, it could serve as a bulwark against further federal encroachment on state government. Like any organization that isn't explicitly conservative, however, NCSL soon became a hard-left institution. Run by a very liberal staff, with the nominal bi-partisan membership dictated by Congress--every member of a state legislature is automatically a member of NCSL--it has leveraged support from labor unions, leftist foundations and rent-seeking corporations, combined with taxpayer support from every state, to lobby to expand the role of government in our lives. It is the most effective lobby to expand government that no one has ever heard of. That changes today.

While it provides some technical training for legislative staff across the country, NCSL's most important work is in drafting hundreds of "policy positions" on virtually every issue touched by the federal government. These are crafted by state legislators and staff, with significant input from unions, corporations and interest groups. NCSL staff use these "positions" to try to shape federal legislation. While NCSL strives to appear bi-partisan, virtually all of its positions have a leftist tilt. It generally opposes federal legislation that imposes a conservative policy, e.g. tort reform, and supports legislation that imposes liberal policies, e.g health care mandates. In 2009, it shrugged off its bi-partisan veneer and came out strongly in support of ObamaCare and the "public option" for health insurance. And, you paid for it.

Remember, this is a "bipartisan" outfit that supposedly represents state legislatures -- 26 of which have filed suit to overturn ObamaCare.

NCSL's main stream of revenue comes from appropriations from state taxpayers. Each state is "accessed" dues based on a formula correlated generally with the size of the state. This stream from state taxpayers provides NCSL with around $20 million a year. It also collects a significant amount of revenue from federal grants. It has created a non-profit foundation, where labor unions, corporations and foundations can become "sponsors."

Flynn goes on (read the whole thing, you've already read 2/3rds of it) to find out about their secret meetings (paid for by you, but the public isn't invited) and to promise Breitbart.com will be exposing it.

He also makes a crucial point: We play games according to the rules that exist. Games proceed according to the rules that exist.

Football became a very different game when, for example, the flying wedge was outlawed in the 20s. Suddenly the game went from a bunch of guys running down the field -- like rugby, but with hard hits and serious injuries (sometimes deaths) -- to a game more like the one we know today, with linemen taking a three point stance before hitting the other guy, rather than running full-tilt for ten yards before hitting him.

If you want to change the game, change the rules.

Organizations like NCSL are why the game operates as it does. If you think it seems that there's a perpetual bias in this country for expanding government, then look at the rules that cause this.

One of the rules is that left-wing organizations tend to be funded by taxpayers -- they seek our rents, in order to lobby for further rents -- so the game is substantially rigged to produce this very outcome.

If you want to change the game -- not merely eke out a few yards here and there, while giving up touchdowns left and right -- you have to change the rules.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 AM | Comments (151)
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Buh-bye.

A U.S. official confirmed that a Monday drone strike in Pakistan killed al Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, the most serious blow to the battered terror network since the death of its leader Osama bin Laden, CBS News correspondent Bob Orr reports.

Al-Libi's death, which came on the third consecutive day of CIA drone strikes in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, is a serious knock to what remains of al Qaeda's Pakistan-based core leadership.

Al-Libi was among a handful of surviving senior advisers from bin Laden's inner circle, Orr reports.

"Abu Yahya was among al Qaeda's most experienced and versatile leaders -- operational trainer and Central Shura head -- and played a critical role in the group's planning against the West, providing oversight of the external operations efforts," a U.S. official told Orr, referring to al-Libi by his first name.

Abu Yahya? Um, ok.

Either way...Dead.

Posted by: DrewM at 11:12 AM | Comments (89)
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Posted by: andy at 10:18 AM | Comments (332)
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In case you're unclear on what's at stake both today in Wisconsin and again in November, Jimmy P. provides a chart from CBO that sums it up nicely:

That red arrow is where the CBO's forecasting model breaks because it can't handle a 250% debt to GDP ratio.

The blue social model has failed both here and abroad, and we are now in a race to kill it before it kills us.

Students of democracy from Alexis de Tocqueville to Mancur Olson have pointed out that the greatest threat to self-government comes from the tendency of democracies to become barnacled with special interests that vote themselves more benefits than society can afford. This is the crisis of the modern entitlement state, which is unfolding from California to Illinois, Greece, Italy and even Washington. Wisconsin is a critical test of whether democracies can reform before the crisis becomes debilitating.

The ball's in your court, Cheeseheads.

Update: Bonus content from the RNC detailing King Putt's miserable economic record.

Update 2: Monty emailed this to me the other day with a subject line of, "If I were still writing my DOOM posts, this would be a headliner...." Nice knowing you, Spain.

Posted by: andy at 06:58 AM | Comments (342)
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Wisconsin morons and 'ettes, I don't need to remind you what to do today.

If you have already voted, let us know how the line was, any voting issues, etc.

Posted by: CAC at 05:35 AM | Comments (427)
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It's only Tuesday morning and this week is shaping up to be the tipping point to despair and desperation for the President and his supporters. Obama's campaign is publicly bracing for it and that may be doing more than anything else to drive home just how far off the rails the campaign has gone.

Yesterday morning, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina had a special video message for supporters that simply reeked of flop sweat. This is an actual quote:

We knew this was going to be a tough race. And we knew that, once Mitt Romney locked up the nomination, Republicans would get behind him and this race would be tight just like we always knew it would be.

What did you know, Jim? Tell us, we're not sure yet. Also, Messina is not an actor; you should see him shake his head when he repeats for the third time in two sentences that they knew it would be tough. Guys, this is a scripted message and that's the best they could do? He sounds ridiculous while protesting that the campaign is all going according to plan. Indeed, he claims:

We're following the strategy we've had since day one. And we can't afford to lose focus on that.

Please, Jim, from this Republican and with utmost sincerity, don't change a thing.

Later in the day, Obama advisor David Axelrod held a conference call with reporters in which he exhorts them to stop giving Gov. Romney a free pass. Axelrod is, of course, living in a fantasy world where Romney hasn't been closely scrutinized by the media and the voters. Out here in the real world, Axelrod's pleas for the media bullies reporters to pick on someone other than the President are laughable, pitiable, forgettable, stupid. Only idiots would buy this. Greg Sargent rushed to repeat Axelrod's line at WaPo, as did Steve Benen at MSNBC's Maddow blog.

The icing on the cake is that no reputable reporters seem to have bought Axelrod's argument. They have, however, noticed the scent of desperation on the campaign and that makes for compelling television. ABC World News ran this segment last night (watch the whole thing, it's brilliant):

There are several tried-and-true tropes of television news used here, but my absolute favorite has to be when the camera pans a long line of people standing outside what we are to assume is an unemployment office. My other favorite part of the segment is the observation that Obama's remedy after "reeling from the economic bodyblow of Friday's jobs report" is to fly home to Chicago and take a walk.

While Obama was walking around Chicago this weekend, he wasn't campaigning in Wisconsin, since he doesn't want to associate himself with what looks like a losing campaign to unseat Gov. Walker. But he's not fooling anyone. Remember the nationwide protests that followed Walker's reforms? This recall election was supposed to serve national Democrats as a vocal rejection of conservative governance. Instead, Obama is hiding from it.

It's Tuesday morning. Obama's week is going to get worse from here.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 03:24 AM | Comments (235)
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Happy Tuesday.

The Michigan Supreme Court has approved the language of a Detroit referendum question to legalize possession and use of up to 1 ounce of marijuana, on private property, by those 21 and older.

Colorado will also have a ballot question on marijuana legalization this fall and supporters are talking up how Obama is losing them. I'd take it with a grain of salt. Among other things, the idiot reporter apparently never read Obama's book because she thinks that he's merely confessed to using weed and cocaine in college, rather than high school too.

The runoff primary between Dewhurst and Cruz got real nasty, real fast. Their latest antics involve goading each other to speak Spanish, which gives the Texas Democratic Party it's own chance to get nasty.

Researchers say the Flame virus spreaded by faking a Microsoft Windows update. The attackers actually generated "signed" (that is, authenticated), but actually faked Microsoft code-certificates.

Breitbart digs up a 1990 review of Elizabeth Warren's 1989 book, which accused Warren and her co-authors of "repeated instances of scientific misconduct."

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (141)
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Is Obama Not So Smart?

That may be the consensus on the right based on some juicy quotes about his time as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School - quotes that I've even covered myself.

But John Steele Gordon of Commentary commits journalism and goes to the source - the dean of the law school while Obama taught there who also happens to be Gordon's cousin - and gets the straight scoop:

...The idea that Obama had lousy grades is demonstrably untrue. He graduated magna from Harvard Law, which means that he was at least in the top 15 or 20 percent of his class at HLS. Most of the exams are blindly graded. I don't want to argue about the relevance of grades, but the idea that they weren't very good is just not right.

To say that some professors hated him because he was unqualified is mystifying. His credentials (president of HLR and magna) are completely traditional law professor credentials. His classes were consistently popular. He spent relatively little time schmoozing with faculty or hanging out with them (and this, at least in retrospect, has made at least one conservative colleague speak ill of him), but this is different from him being unqualified.

Someone who says Obama is not smart is someone who hasn't met him. I'm completely confident you wouldn't like him if you met him and you would think him ideological and not warm and fuzzy, but I would be stunned if you didn't think he was smart.

Now I've always assumed that Obama was at least fairly intelligent - but never quite as brilliant as he's made out to be nor the genius he sees himself as. But he's been able to skate by in life based on his verbal glibness, his race, and people's willingness to imagine great qualities (including brilliance) on what is actually a blank slate. And that's made him lazy and arrogant about his intellect.

As Gordon points out a rigid ideology and limited knowledge of the world are enough to make functional idiots of even the smartest people. So at a certain point it's no longer relevant whether he is in fact a mega-brainiac or merely Biden-esquely borderline average - his polices are failures and his judgment is foolishly bad and smart or dumb that's more than enough reason to toss him out.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:46 PM | Comments (721)
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The Vetting continues.

Remember: Bill Ayers was just a guy he knew vaguely "from the neighborhood."

Posted by: Ace at 04:09 PM | Comments (243)
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Sorry I've been away.

This is good stuff.

Barack Obama took the time to tweet for Barrett...

@BarackObama: It's Election Day in WI tomorrow & I'm standing by Tom Barrett. He'd make an outstanding governor. -bo

"-bo" means he actually wrote it, rather than his staffer.

@FirstTeamTommy immediately asked him: "Then why no visit?"

Of course, the answer is Obama doesn't need to be associated with more failure & repudiation.

That's why they sent Clinton -- not running for anything.

Posted by: Ace at 03:25 PM | Comments (134)
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