STOKED to see him go!

The Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Republican Congressman from Arizona Jim Kolbe announced he would not be running for re-election in 2006. WOOT! This ROCKS! Currently, Randy Graf is running unopposed for Kolbe's seat. Rumor has it the moderate scumbag Toni Hellon may throw her hat into the ring, but let's hope she either thinks better of a bruising fight from Graf, or sees reason and runs to the right of Graf. ...that's not likely to happen. Liberals tend to be impervious to logic and reason.

Anyway, Kolbe was an open fudge-packer and voted for gay "rights" all the time. Good riddance, Kolbe! You couldn't leave Congress fast enough.

Hate to see him go

Republican Congressman from California Duke Cunningham admitted to taking bribes, under oath, in court. That's atrocious. To a conservative, nothing could be more eviscerating that compromising your principles and voting how special interestes PAY you to vote. A TRUE conservative votes on principle, consequences be damned.

Cunningham has announced he will not run for re-election, but he's going to serve out the rest of his term. That is also atrocious. Cunningham should step down now. He is guilty of a crime. As an admitted criminal, how, in good conscience, can he continue to serve in Congress in ANY capacity.

Now, Cunningham has received a 95% lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union, but that does not excuse taking bribes. My only hope is that Cunningham steps down now and is replaced by an even harder core right-wing conservative. Last thing we need in Congress is another moderate or even a lefty.

The federal debt

Working as an intern at the American Conservative Union, federal spending has been a HUGE issue for us. For instance, in the Bush administration, we're going to have to raise the debt ceiling (the maximum amount of money that Congress can borrow) for the fourth time. Congress has raised the debt ceiling five times in history. Three of the five times the debt limit has been raised has been under Bush. For fiscal conservatives, this is unconscionable. It's part of the reason why conservatives are still pretty sore with Bush.

Currently, the federal debt ceiling is roughly $8.2 TRILLION. The current federal debt is around $8 trillion and rising. In case you haven't noticed, Congress can blast through $200 billion in a heartbeat. For the next three fiscal years alone, the projected budget deficits are roughly $333 billion...a THIRD of a trillion dollars for each of the next three fiscal years. In otherwords, we're planning on racking up another TRILLION in debt in 3 more years. UN-BELIEVABLE!!

If I were America's libertarian emperor, I'd not only slash spending to meet the most conservative of budget receipts estimates, but I'd ensure that AT LEAST $100 billion per year was spent on debt retirement. Even under my plan, it would take about EIGHTY TWO YEARS to retire all of the federal debt.

Now, some may say, "Who cares about the debt?" In fact, I very clearly remember my corporations professor at the Cardozo School of Law of Yeshiva University say that no corporation bothered to pay off debt, they just kept paying the interest. I believe their ilk is the problem. Why? Simple economics will show the problems they create.

When there's a high demand for money (the desire to borrow and spend), the cost of money goes up (the amount of interest lenders charge for their money). So tons of borrowing drives up interest rates. What's so bad about high interest rates? A TON of things, like high mortgage rates. High mortgage rates prevent people from buying houses, which depresses the construction market and makes construction workers unemployed. High rates also discourage consumers from taking out loans and using collateral to buy things like boats, cars, washers & dryers, etc. If there's less demand for consumer goods, then those markets are depressed and workers are without jobs. Also, if businesses are paying more in interest costs for the loans they take out...where does that money come from? Consumers end up paying more for goods and services to cover businesses increased costs. The high cost of money may discourage a corporation from expanding, or prevent the entry of new competitors to the market. So, high interest rates hurt the common man in the form of unemployment, fewer newly created jobs, and less wealth in general.

There's also only so much money in the economy, even in the world economy. Each lender only has so much to lend, and lenders have little desire to make loans to those who will not repay them. Eash lender also wants to maximize their profit on each loan. So, the federal government is directly competing with businesses and the common man when they borrow. When the money supply is exhaused, or when lenders no longer believe the US is a safe investment, what next? Print more money? Devalue the dollar so much that as in post-World War I Germany we have to carry wheelbarrows full of cash to the store to buy groceries?

Last night, I attended the first of three evenings in a Leadership Institute Capitol Hill Staff Training class. During the class, one student interjected that as long as other countries are willing to buy federal bonds to finance our debt and spending, who cares? Well, I for one have no desire to continue to make China, the next big communist threat, richer by sending them interest payments on top of the principle we owe them. GRANTED, if China lends to us, China has a VESTED interest to ensure our economy does well so we can pay them off...unless they're willing to take the hit and write off the debt we owe them. Don't we make China rich enough already? Just about everything we buy is made in China. We send them our money for their goods, then China sells us our money back so we can go deeper in debt to bludgeon our taxpayers and consumers more. Something is just wrong about this. I'm a free-marketeer, but I can't see the silver lining in this. I believe just about any rational economist should argue that we need strict fiscal discipline in Congress.

But the presenter at the time in the LI class stated that Congress expects to offer about $50 Billion in spending cuts and about $70 Billion in tax cuts. Theoretically, this does not result in another $20 Billion in debt because the tax cuts will result in economic benefit that should raise tax receipts coming into federal coffers. But this is what Congress expects? This cut in spending is PATHETIC!! I've already said that in future years we're going to be running $333 Billion deficits, and Congress plans on, in essence, only spending $283 billion more than they've raped from us in taxes?!! UN-BELIEVABLE! While this should NEVER be done, and it's entirely counter to the First Amendment, we'd be justified if we were to dismiss just about every member of the Senate from office, take the 100 member Republican Study Committee and promote them to Senators, then hold House elections to replace the RSC members. Why?

There's a Republican adage in the House that, "Democrats are your opposition, but the Senate is your enemy". The Senate is the body standing in the way of fiscal responsibility. There are just too many moderates in the Senate for the conservatives in the House to pass a balanced budget that includes debt reduction. In fact, there's not even 218 conservatives in the House. If the RSC is any indication, there's only 100 conservatives in the House. That's dismal.

The soultion? Despite a 98% re-election rate for incumbents, conservatives need to bite the bullet and run primary campaigns against incumbent moderates in droves. If a primary challenger gets a sizeable percentage of primary votes, the incumbent may start to listen to conservatives and tack to the right.

It was Plato that said, "The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." We're paying that price now. Conservatives are pretty active in politics, we vote, we donate, and we volunteer, however, it's clearly not enough anymore. We need to be more choosy about our candidates. We need to research who is running. If no candidate is conservative enough, we need to find a conservative to run in every congressional district, and in every state legislative district, and in every school board district, and in every city ward, and for every county board seat, and in every sheriff's race. We can't just settle for the same old schmoes anymore.

Alito and abortion

The news coverage of late is focusing on Alito's dissent in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case. Alito rightly noted that the requirement to notify a husband of a wife's planned abortion had EXCEPTIONS for abusive husbands, if the woman believed the husband was not the father, and the like! Even under unreliable O'Connor's undue burden test, the Pennsylvania law put no undue burden on a woman obtaining an abortion! Only the most strained arguments could posit that the Casey requirements were an undue burden.

Look, I'm no pro-lifer. I have good friends who won't even vote for dog catcher unless he's pro-life, and I'm not one of their ilk. The point is, as usual, the Left is telling half the story and leading the unwashed proletariat to a faulty conclusion in the socialists' favor.

Let's engage in a hypothetical. The Left is going bonkers, hysterically screaming that single-handedly, Alito is going to overturn Roe v. Wade. Let's say Alito, Thomas, Scalia, Roberts rule against Roe. We know the looney lefties on the Court, Bader-Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, and Stevens, will rule for Roe. That STILL leaves Kennedy as the swing lynchpin. Kennedy, of late, has shown a respect for precedent, most notably in that trash decision Kelo vs. City of New London. So, given Kennedy's decision in Kelo, we can ONLY conclude that he will vote to uphold Roe and Casey. (Granted, I don't have Kennedy's rulings in front of me and he could have been against Roe and Casey, but I HIGHLY doubt it.) So, while the Left acts like Chicken Little for the billionth time, it seems that even with Alito's confirmation, the pro-aborts (I use this term because I've heard the pro-lifers use the term with complete derision and I feel like deriding the Left right now) are safe.

Let's imagine that Kennedy has a personality-altering stroke and he rules against Roe and Casey. So what? Roe is terrible law. With Roe, the Supreme Court violated the Constitution and seized State legislative police power to regulate for the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people. Roe was one of the worst cases of judicial activism, right up there with Marbury v. Madison.

If Roe were overturned, would it mean the end of abortion? Not hardly. It would mean that instead of one fedral abortion regime, we'd have 50 abortion regimes, one unique to each State. This is EXACTLY where abortion laws should be made: the States. Why? Because the police power to regulate for the health, safety, welfare, and morals of the people properly lies with the States, NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. Constitutionally, the federal government has NO police power. Incidentally, how do I know that those who would vote against Roe and or Casey wouldn't impose some regime opposite to Roe and Casey? Easy, it would violate the constitution and such a decision would violate the principles that those justices live, survive, and subsist on. To impose a regime opposite to Roe and Casey, in essence totally outlawing abortion, would be just as objectionable to Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Roberts because BOTH regimes would equally violate the Constitution.

So, by using the 4th Amendment right to choose the State you'd like to live in, you could move to the State that has the abortion regime you like best. There is NO WAY you could have me belive that red communist States like Maryland and Massachusetts would outlaw abortion. So, even if the Supreme Court were to overturn Roe and Casey, there's no reason to panic. Abortion will still be available, safe, and legal.

So, to recap: the Casey law had EXCEPTIONS to notification of a husband before abortion, Alito was right to dissent; the Left is hysterical over Alito; Roe is bad law; each State should be allowed to set its own abortion law; even if Alito is confirmed and Roe and Casey are overturned, abortion will STILL be safe, legal, and available.