Finally – a strict constructionist ruling from the Supreme Court.  Today is a good day and conservatives across the country, especially the legal scholars, need to praise the Court and encourage more rulings on these grounds.

Now, naturally, my first reaction was to hear what the liberals had to say….that’s the political energy that fuels me.  So I listened to Dianne Feinstein’s comments, and Chicago mayor Richard Daley’s comments and others and realized that they have no logical argument…just the propagation of fear.  They fear random gunfights and Wild West shoot outs, meanwhile they have their security teams carrying firearms, and they don’t live in the neighborhoods where you really have to worry about such things.  But the beauty of living in a society where gun ownership is a fundamental right is just that – you should be afraid that everyone has the ability to harm you, and you should feel protected by arming yourself. 

And like all of Barack Obama’s statements, this one appeals to your emotion, but makes no political sense and in no way identifies his position on major public policy.  So does he agree with the Supreme Court?  It’s either a fundamental right to self defense or it’s one the government can snatch away whenever a new sheriff comes to town.  What do you believe, Senator?

A great book is John Lott’s More Guns Less Crime.  He digs into the real statistics and the psychological profiles of criminals who prey on those who are the least likely to defend themselves.  It’s disgusting, but what’s even worse is a government that forces you to rely on their public services – meaning the cops who take 30 minutes to show up, if at all – as your first line of defense.   

Yes, this is frightening – for criminals who should fear breaking into a little old lady’s house who just may have a loaded gun in her nightstand.  This is a major victory but it’s not the end…there are many more fights and we can’t trust liberal politicians who are in charge of turning this ruling into sound law to do an about face just because the Supreme Court says so.  Now I’m going to start working on garnering support for concealed carry in D.C…

Sweetheart Mortgage Loan Deals: Senators Only?

House Republicans, led by Republican Study Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, sent this letter to Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D-MA) requesting a hearing on Countrywide Financial’s VIP treatment on mortgage loans to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (read this letter!) and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad.  And as the Politico has reported, all of the 100 members of the Senate were contacted about the terms of their mortgages, and it looks like they’re not talking.  Now I’ve had to fill out these financial disclosure forms before, and trust me, they leave no stone uncovered.  If you’re looking for financial privacy, public office is the last place you’ll find it.  So it looks like these Senators have figured out the loophole to keep their mortgage rates under wraps, but Senators Cornyn and Boxer have offered an amendment to the (stalled) housing bill that will require these details to be shared.   

Now the Action Points...

Contact (meaning call, don’t email) Chairman Barney Frank and tell him you’ve read this letter and you’d like to see an immediate hearing on the sweetheart loan deals that Senators are receiving while their constituents are supposedly drowning in mortgage debt. 

Also make sure to check in with your Senator and make sure they are providing that information.  If not, you may have reason to be suspicious. 

Rep. Hensarling’s letter after the jump...

 
Read More...

It’s official: House Democrats have gone insane.  And I don’t mean insane like wearing white shoes after Labor Day or thinking of Jimmy Carter as an elder statesman.  I mean the guy on the corner in the sandwich board sign that reads, “Mr. Snuffleupagus Is The Antichrist!” crazy. 

To recap: gasoline now costs $4 per gallon, principally because America, which once consumed the vast majority of the world’s petroleum, now has to compete for the stuff with the increasingly industrialized, two-billion-footed nations of India and China.  More buyers, higher prices, simple as that.  We’re in the midst of what will almost certainly be a long-term struggle, on par with the Cold War, against hostile regimes who happen to operate in the most oil-rich region in the world.  Every year, we pump billions of petro-profits into some of the most unfriendly hands on earth, and in response to all of this, the Democrat majority of the United States House of Representatives demands that we… wait for it… nationalize our oil refineries?

Seriously!  This is their plan.  Not a secret plan, mind you, but something House Democrats – including their supposedly level-headed leaders – believe is within the boundaries of reasonable political debate in this country.  Look:

Maurice Hinchey: “We should own the refineries.  Then we can control how much gets out into the market.”  By “we,” Mr. Hinchey means, “the government.”  Seriously.  Government takeover of industry, 1930s Italy style. 

This isn’t moderate.  This isn’t even liberal.  This is socialism!  It’s crazy o’clock on Capitol Hill!

Think I’m kidding?  Ask Rep. Maxine Waters’ who at one of the star-chamber hearings with energy executives, said, “Guess what this liberal will be all about!  This liberal will be about socializing, uh… will be about… basically… taking over and the government running all of your companies.”  The government running all of our energy companies?  Based on her performance in that hearing, Maxine Waters can barely manage to run her mouth. 

We have the most innovative and efficient energy industry on earth.  The United States is sitting on more than 10 years worth of oil, in Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico, and the Democrats’ response is to… nationalize the energy sector? 

Vulnerable is too gentle a word to describe the Democrats’ position on this issue.  We have the oil.  We have the industry.  We have the technological innovation to tap our reserves without needlessly undermining surrounding eco-systems.  A combination of new exploration, increased production, the creation of nuclear plants, and all the private research into alternative fuels you can shake a stick at will bring down gas prices.  It will bring down electricity and heating bills.  It will solve the problem.

The tin-foil-hat Democrats, on the other hand, want to revisit the failed policies of Marxist and Fascist dictators.  We need to get this crowd back on their meds.  Right away.

The Supreme Court’s decision last week in Boumediene v. Bush has justifiably called down the exasperation, incredulity, and anger of people who have actually read the United States Constitution. In case you missed it, the 5-4 majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by the Court’s four avowed liberals extended for the first time in history habeas corpus rights to captured military combatants.

In doing so, the Court struck down a 2006 law passed by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress, which specified the procedures by which captured terrorists held in military prisons could receive due process. The 2006 law, the Military Commissions Act, was only written, passed, and enacted because the Supreme Court in 2004 demanded that Congress do so. Put another way, as of last week, the Supreme Court – and more specifically, Justice Kennedy – has declared itself the final authority on making war, incarcerating enemy combatants, and, indeed, on the American people’s right to self-government.

This is not judicial activism. It is judicial tyranny.

Neither the United States military, its elected commanders in the executive branch, nor its representatives in Congress are now in control of America’s prosecution of the war on terror. Justice Kennedy is, or he seems to think.

Until he is disabused of this notion by a Congress with the guts to assert itself, the following not only may happen, but will, and very quickly:

- Captured terrorists will refuse to answer any questions without access to a lawyer;

- Captured terrorists will demand the public disclosure of the military’s evidence against them, thus exposing the means and methods employed by our intelligence community to gather such evidence;

- Captured terrorists will demand to confront their accusers, who will be soldiers on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan, in open court back here in the states; and,

- Captured terrorists will go venue shopping, filing their habeas claims in dozens of courts in hopes of getting the most liberal activist judge they can find.

The question isn’t how bad this decision is – it’s an outrage. The question is, what are conservative legislators going to do about it. Beginning in 1996 and continuing throughout the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, we had an aggressive, concrete agenda to combat judicial activism and supremacy.

Because Congress creates lower federal courts, Congress can also set its jurisdiction. Thus, except for the narrow field of cases in which the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction – cases involving individual states, ambassadors, and the like – Congress can simply remove the Supreme Court from the picture. A “court stripping” strategy would reassert the legislative and executive branches’ co-equal status as interpreters of the Constitution. Much of the groundwork has already been set.

In September, 2004, the House passed the “Pledge Protection Act,” which removed the jurisdiction of lower federal courts and the Supreme Court to review any controversies surrounding the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

In 2004 and 2005, House conservatives introduced and vocally promoted similar legislation stripping from federal courts jurisdiction over any question stemming from a public official’s acknowledgement of God as the basis for our laws and government. The House also passed similar court-stripping legislation pertaining to homosexual marriage in 2004.

And all the while, Republican Houses of Representatives passed resolution condemning judicial activism, including judicial mischief such basing decisions on foreign law. Finally, in November, 2005, the House of Representatives passed a bill to break up the consistently radical 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals so to introduce some degree of rational jurisprudence to its jurisdiction.

The principles of that agenda can and should be revived and made a major issue in this year’s general election. Resolutions can be introduced condemning the decision, and these superficial actions are a good start. But Congress has far greater authority to end judicial activism than most people realize.

Contrary to the Court’s liberal majority, the United States is our government and our country, not just theirs.Congress has the power to take it back, and Republicans looking for a clear-cut issue that differentiates us from the Democrats should start taking it back.

As the New York Post and the Politico reported “WE'RE in for taxing times if Barack Obama wins the White House, says CNBC's Maria Bartiromo. ‘He's going to take the capital gains tax at 15 percent right now all the way up to 25 to 28 percent,’ the ‘Money Honey’ tells Avenue. ‘Sell anything, like a home or stocks, and make a profit . . . [almost] 30 percent of the profit will go to the government instead of 15.’ The income tax is also in for a bump. Bartiromo says, ‘Right now [it] is 35 percent, Obama wants to take that to 39 percent . . . We're talking about people who make over $200,000. That's not rich. So it's actually going to impact more people than you may think.’

And check out the stunning response from Media Matters...they can't even defend Obama's tax policy. 

Tom DeLay will be a guest on Sean Hannity's radio show today around 5pm EST to discuss the future of the conservative movement and his interview with the Washington Times.  Tune in!

DeLay warns GOP faces long rebuilding process Aims to get conservative groups to collaborate
Stephen Dinan
Monday, June 9, 2008

Two years after he resigned from the House, former Republican leader Tom DeLay says conservatives haven't bottomed out from their 2006 election losses, Democrats are "cleaning their clock," and it will take years before the Republican Party can compete with the operation Democrats have built.

The conservatives refuse to accept that the left is cleaning their clock, and until you hit some bottom, wherever that is, to where it says, 'Well, maybe we ought to do something different,' little or nothing's going to change," Mr. DeLay told editors and reporters at The Washington Times last week.

"I think it's going to take years to rebuild the party," he said. "It is a party that will try to find itself as to what kind of party it is, and it will depend on what kind of leadership emerges from this rebuilding, as to what it ultimately is."

The Texas Republican resigned from the House effective two years ago Monday, months after he gave up his position as House majority leader - a move he was forced to make after he was indicted in Texas on various campaign-finance and money-laundering charges. Some of those charges were thrown out in pre-trial appeals, and Mr. DeLay still has not gone to trial on the remaining ones.

He has spent the time since his resignation studying the way the liberal movement operates, and says it is far more adept under the new campaign-finance rules enacted in 2002, and championed by Sen. John McCain, the Republican's presumptive presidential candidate.

For the rest of the story and the video, click here.   

Via Drudge Report

Tom DeLay calls Obama a Marxist...

            During the last, miserable years of czarist Russia, Vladimir Lenin, who hoped to capitalize on the opportunities presented by the social chaos, is reported to have quipped, “The worse, the better.”  As usually happens when one thinks of Lenin, Hillary Clinton follows quickly to mind. 

            Earlier this week, political pundits – who have been swooning over Barack Obama for months – once again seemed annoyed that Senator Clinton dared not concede the Democrat presidential nomination to their favored candidate.  How many times, they seem to be asking, does Tim Russert have to climb Mt. Olympus and declare “It’s over,” before Mrs. Clinton accepts her obligatory fate?

            And while it is indeed clear now, as it has been for weeks, that Barack Obama and not Hillary Clinton will be at the top of the Democrats’ ticket this fall, it’s not at all clear that Clinton has given up, wants to give up, or will give up all the resources she has at her disposal.  Or, I would argue, that she should.

            Barack Obama is a phenomenon, to be sure, a fundraising machine whose staff has adjusted admirably to the steep learning curve of political organization.  But no experience or organization his campaign has amassed can compete with the Shadow Party Bill and Hillary Clinton have loosed on our politics. 

            The huge network of top-down, bottom-up, media, lobbying, public relations, and advocacy groups is still out there, still well-funded, and still loyal not to the Democrat Party or its nominee, but to the Clintons.  Sure they will support Obama, and wholeheartedly so, but they won’t forget their roots.  Coordinated liberal donors have pumped enough money into the Center for American Progress, the Thunder Road Group, Media Matters, CREW, America Votes, and The Media Fund (just to name a few) to continue waging whatever kinds of campaigns she pleases without the mantle of the Democrat Party. 

            This seems to best fit any objective assessment of Clintonian politics.  In their worldview, the Democrat Party owes the Clintons its allegiance, not the other way around.  And I think in many instances, they’re right.  

            Hillary Clinton accomplished quite a feat - nearly half of the of the Democrat delegates going into the convention, a record breaking 18 million votes, some cast even knowing she would lose.  Bill Clinton’s not a long term problem – one assumes she’s learned to control him by now and can shut him up when the time is right.  And she retains the levers of a huge, powerful political advocacy network.  If Obama is smart, he will appease her and place her into a role of her choosing and of her design.  But why would she give up her power outside the party structure?  To be Secretary of Health and Human Services?  I doubt it.  To be Vice-President?  Maybe.  To be his top surrogate on the trail?  Eh.  Why fold her hand to accept second banana status in the Democrat Party when she could easily double down and come out on top? 

    Also remember, there’s no guarantee Obama will win, and if John McCain beats him, especially if it’s because Obama fails to win the working class voters Hillary has claimed as her base, the case for her candidacy in 2012 will be undeniable (and, facing a 76 year old incumbent after 12 years of Republican rule, maybe unstoppable). 

    Bottom line – she’s really not going away and her increased muscle in the movement suggests a new kind of political ‘roid rage that makes her the de facto Democrat leader.  And that kind of power cuts both ways – after all, if Obama ends up losing, and she is blamed for not putting enough effort behind his campaign, then she has lost everything they have built.

            Bill and Hillary Clinton are consumed with anger and ambition and a burning sense of entitlement to political power that simply will not be extinguished after one measly loss by a few dozen delegates.  No.  If she holds out, keeps pulling the strings of the Shadow Party she built, and takes the olive branch Obama must respectfully deliver her, she’ll be more powerful and closer to the presidency than ever before. 

Now that everyone’s gearing up to read Scott McClellan’s new book, which I plan to read with a few grains of salt, I thought it may be a good time to suggest a summer reading list for conservatives.  I would also like to hear some suggested reading from my friends at Townhall.  Rather than waste time with preliminaries, here’s an abbreviated list of my “must reads” for Summer 2008:

Red Sky in the Morning by Bill Bright

One should know why and how this nation was created.

How Now Shall We Live by Chuck Colson 

It’s crucial to know what you believe and why so you can fight for that worldview.

Politics of Prudence by Russell Kirk 

How it all comes together.

Silent Spring by Rachel Carson          

No, I am not joining Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi on the couch.  As an exterminator in the 1970s, this book lit a fire under me…for all the wrong reasons, of course.  It’s always good to know the weapons your political enemies are using, and this is chief in their arsenal.

The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater 

Sounds clich?d, I know, but I know many conservatives who never cracked this book.  It’s hard to stand up for conservatism if you don’t know what conservatism really stands for.

The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics by Matt Bai 

For everyone who has been calling me a conspiracy theorist over the last two years, read this and tell me I’m wrong…

The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and Sixties Radicals Seized Control of the Democratic Party by David Horowitz 

David Horowitz is one of my favorite people, and he put more than a million dollars of research into tracking the network Democrat operatives have created.  Check out the latest developments here: www.discoverthenetwork.org.

No Retreat, No Surrender: One American’s Fight by Stephen Mansfield, as told by me

Shameless self promotion, but it’s also one of the few ways I can debunk the liberal lies about me.