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Americans Shouldn't Have to Pay for Bailout of Greece
Tweet Share on Facebook May 13, 2010 Comment (12)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In response to growing concerns that the United States will end up on the hook for the mess that is now the Greek economy, Rep. Mike Pence and several of his colleagues have introduced legislation to bloc U.S. tax dollars from being used by the International Monetary Fund to bail out Athens or any of the other troubled European economies.
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Elena Kagan Reverses Course on Supreme Court Nominee Testimony
Tweet Share on Facebook May 11, 2010 Comment (7)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
So much for the “Kagan Standard.” Our nation’s newest Supreme Court nominee has already reversed herself.
Back in 1995, as written here previously, Kagan wrote of her belief that nominees to the nation’s highest court should have to answer questions about “the votes she would cast, the perspective she would add (or augment), and the direction in which she would move the institution.”
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Elena Kagan is the Ultimate Stealth Nominee to the Supreme Court
Tweet Share on Facebook May 11, 2010 Comment (3)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama has found the ultimate stealth nominee. Typically, the judicial confirmation process for those selected for the U.S. Supreme Court consists of an examination of a nominee’s prior legal decisions, speeches, articles written for prominent legal journals, and other examples, presumably, of their thinking about the law and the U.S. Constitution.
Kagan, the former dean of the Harvard Law School, is a policy wonk and an academic with very little practical legal experience. As a result, the record available for examination is very thin.
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American Flag Shirt Fight Illustrates New American Intolerance
Tweet Share on Facebook May 7, 2010 Comment (63)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Five students at the Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, Calif., were given an unexcused absence earlier this week because they chose to wear clothing ornamented with images of the American flag on May 5 or, as it is also known, “Cinco de Mayo.” School administrators, fearing their attire would be a provocation on the day Mexican-Americans commonly proclaim their heritage ordered the students--who are white--to change their clothes. When they refused they were sent home early.
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First Democratic Defection From Nancy Pelosi?
Tweet Share on Facebook May 5, 2010 CommentBy Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Given the depths to which the public’s feelings about Congress has sunk, it was only a matter of time before a Democrat running for Congress determined it would be a good idea to separate himself from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. West Virginia State Sen. Mike Oliverio, who hopes to unseat veteran Rep. Alan Mollohan in the May 11 Democratic primary, said this week that he hoped “there will be a better candidate than Nancy Pelosi” running for the speakership when the House votes to organize itself next January, according to Politico.
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Poll: Independent Voters Deserting the Democrats in Droves
Tweet Share on Facebook May 5, 2010 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There are a number of interesting things about Resurgent Republic’s one-year anniversary poll, conducted at the end of April among 1,000 registered voters nationwide, but none more so than the clear evidence it provides that independent voters are deserting the Democrats in droves.
By a margin of better than 2 to 1, self-identified independents agreed that an increase in the number of Republicans in Congress is necessary in order to bring about “a check and balance on runaway Washington government.” Independents also agreed that the country is on “the wrong track” by a 65 to 25 percent margin.
Most surveys, including this one from Resurgent Republic, show the GOP electorate approaches the upcoming election with much greater intensity than the Democrats. Sixty-four percent of Republicans now say they are “absolutely certain to vote” in November.
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On Citizens United, Democrats Demagogue Free Speech
Tweet Share on Facebook May 3, 2010 Comment (10)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Democrats appear to be so afraid of free speech, applied equally in the political arena that they have taken to—let’s be charitable—misstating the facts about the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in the Citizens’ United case. Case in point is the assertion, which President Barack Obama himself made in his most recent State of the Union address, that the court’s ruling in Citizens’ United would “open the floodgates for special interests--including foreign corporations--to spend without limit in our elections.”
The idea that foreign interests might subvert the nation’s independence by interfering in the U.S. electoral process is a concern almost as old as the nation itself. It’s one reason the Founding Fathers included in Article II of the U.S. Constitution the provision that “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”
As applied to the Citizens United decision, the idea that foreign dollars are suddenly going to pour into U.S. campaigns is big lie No. 1. Nevertheless, as my bloleague Linda Killian wrote here Saturday, the Democrats have made a prohibition against it the centerpiece of their legislative proposal to overturn the court’s decision. Such a move is unnecessary and demagogic.
