Redstate

The Court is infinitely better than it was before Roberts and Alito made their way to the court - but with Kennedy getting into his 70s now, Stevens at 86, at Ginsberg in her mid-70s, we still need one more 2-term president committed to restoring the judiciary in order to really put the court away for awhile and get a majority willing to undo some of the court's most egregious errors. Once Kennedy has lost his status as the court's "moderate" fulcrum with a conservative appointment to replace Stevens or Ginsberg, I think he'll find his job to be relatively less glamorous and exit soon thereafter.

Roberts is more or less a Rehnquist clone plus charisma, and Alito is solidly to the right of O'Connor.

>>Roberts is more or less a Rehnquist clone plus charisma,

We will see. We have heard predictions before about the way Republican appointees would vote. Let's wait and see how they *actually* vote.

>>and Alito is solidly to the right of O'Connor.

I don't care about his political views. I want to know how he will vote on the Court. Which right do you mean? He might be against Roe; he might be against affirmative action. Let's wait and see.

I would be *amazed* if he is as strong on federalism as O'Connor was, but then, I doubt that Bush appointed him with that in mind. The administration was, after all, the winning party in the disgraceful Raich vs Gonzales.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

There could easily be two Court appointments next year. Stevens will pass 90 before Bush's term elapses. He was rumoured to be thinking of retiring in 1999 to avoid the chance of a Republican appointing his replacement. Then he hung on for 2005, but that didn't work out for him. I am sure he would love to hang on for 2009, but may be physically unable. I suspect he is hoping the Democrats take the Senate in November, to at least dilute the impact Bush will have on his replacement.

He has already been observed to fall asleep in Court sessions.

Ginsburg is much younger, but a cancer survivor. She too may be hoping that the Democrats win the Senate.

But either way, both may have resolved to pack it in next year.

Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net

Right now a hunk of the base is in an uproar over spending. If we revived zero baseline budgeting, it ought to pacify those people.

Isn't that what the party does all the time these days: pinpoint the right part of the message for each individual person and group talked to? You mail zero baseline stuff to people who read sites like Red State and Cato, and just don't bother talking about it to everyone else.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

...but the education has to start sometime. Perhaps ruminations about it now, and then start the education in earnest after the 2006 election to get geared up for 2008.

And combine it with a flat income tax proposal to lower all income taxes down to the lowest current rate. :-)

the education has to start sometime

Might as well start right now. Zero-based budgeting was introduced in the federal government in 1977 by president Jimmy Carter. Like everything else Carter did, it was a rousing success. Federal spending was soon brought under control and we lived happily ever after.

Now you tell one.

Drink Good Coffee. You can sleep when you're dead.

The wrong man can wreck any good idea, especially when backed by a Congress still heavily influenced by the Watergate class.

One big reason, though, that I want to see 0BB in place: to take away an excuse to curb growth in some programs. Under the existing system, holding spending in place counts as a 'cut' and the press reports it as such. So if we want to make CPB take no more than it got last year, we're cutting Big Bird's ears off.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Maybe we need to come up with a new name for it, but it is certainly not a hard thing to understand. It could be easily explained to the masses, if we had any interest in doing something about it. That is where the real problem lies.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

As is, the first year of a new president, the government is still running on the budget of his predecessor. Among other things, this is why people blame Bush for the deficit; even though the 2001 budget was Clinton's and ran a deficit, people think 'Bush was the president, he's responsible'.

Two-year budgeting would mean that a new president would be dealing with his predecessor's budget for half his term, instead of just a quarter of it. Otherwise, I agree, it's a good idea.

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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

If Clinton passed budgets in 93, 95, 97, and 99, then the last budget would carry over only one year, same as now.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

I think that's a part of the Pence Plan, too. But I think I've also read that they've found a way to hack these cards - John McCain's promises that they are unhackable aside (as soon as he said that, I knew that they'd be hacked - he was just inviting trouble when he declared them to be unhackable. LOL)

You should need these cards in order to vote, also, and they indicate whether or not you are licensed to drive so you don't have to carry around multiple forms of ID.

There are no plans that I know of to introduce a biometric ID for all Americans. It's not in the Pence proposal, which is the House plan with some objectionable amnesty and guest-worker provisions tacked on.

I can't see a national biometric ID getting through the political system. Too many people would oppose it, for different reasons.

Nobody has proposed issuing cards to American citizens. That makes these "biometric card" proposals completely pointless. Given a choice between making an "unforgable" biometric green card or a SS card that a 4 year old could almost forge on his Speak N Spell, they will go for the latter.

I have no problem with a national ID since we effectively already have one with our state driver's licenses and SS numbers.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

so I don't think we should make a national ID card a drivers license as well. Leave that function with the states, and let driver licenses be what they started out as: a license to drive and not much more. Private businesses could still accept them as ID (for liquor sales etc.) if they were so minded but for all security and citizenship related matters a national ID or legal alien card should be used. (On the other hand this ID must not display any info except the bearer's full legal name and a photo-- not addresses, birth date and certainly not SS#. They must not become a gold mine of info for any ID thief that finds or steals one.)

That the driver's license cannot be integrated into the card. Your DL status could still be controlled by the state you live in... that card number would simply be the key the state uses to keep track of your record and status... so when a cop goes to verify your license status, endorsements, etc, they will be able to do it with the national ID. I don't see the problem there.

I don't have a problem with addresses and birth date on the card or anything else we have on DLs right now. I agree that SSN should not be on the card. It does need to be verifiable with the card, but that could be done with public key cryptography.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

give tattoos to citizens. On the back of the right hand or maybe on the forehead, if they're willing. We could make it so that they have to present this tattoo if they want to buy food or something.

Man is free at the moment he wishes to be. --Voltaire

Or just tinfoilhattery? Do you have a SSN and a DL now?
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Revelations 13:16-17 --

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

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Internet member since 1987
Member of the Surreality-Based Community

Anything that makes the budget process more transparent and spending more politically difficult is a good thing. It isn't like "socialism" in any way. It might not be a 100% solution, but it is certainly better than what we got.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

but it's only weakness is political. It assumes that every budget unit starts with zero dollars and has to justify its budget request from that, not from last year's "base," or from some built in inflation base.

The two things you have to overcome are, first, every program in existence had fifty percent plus one at some time and has a constituency, so the people who supported it want it to keep running and usually want more money for it; and, secondly, the real weakness of incremental budgeting is the fact that it punishes good managers. If you bring your program in under budget, your budget for next year gets cut, no matter your needs for next year. That's the reason for the end of the fiscal year spending frenzy in government; if you lapse money (don't spend budgeted money) either the budget office in the executive branch or the legislature or Congress says, "well, you got by on $X last year, so that's all you get this year. No 'crat is going to let that happen if he/she can help it.

In Vino Veritas

It's not entirely true that every program had 50% + 1 support previously. Some programs get in by compromise either immediately within a bill, or by various vote trading schemes.

Two programs each with 25% + 1 can piggyback (heh) to meet the threshold, theoretically. Of course, in practice, it's easier for two programs near 50% to get over the top. Alaska and Hawaii's own congressional delegations have such a deal in effect, do they not?

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

By whatever means the bill establishing the program passed. Every bill has all sorts of horse and vote trading. While I agree with you that a program on its own might not have majority support, I know how to walk a legislative hall with a chit sheet, and so do lots of other people. There's a reason for that thing about sausage and laws.

I think the AK and HI thing has more to do with Stevens and Inouye's personal relationship than anything else; they served together in WWII or something. AK and HI don't have much in common other than hatred of the Jones Act.

In Vino Veritas

I'm thinking that the GOP doesn't think that the judge issues is a winner in the majority of the districts where the GOP is really in trouble (the northeast, especially NY, CT, PA, & RI) and where they are credibly challenging (WA, MI, MD). It's probably a winner for the GOP in Missouri, Montana, and Ohio, though.

...thanks to the efforts of John McCain and Lindsey Graham to block the imminently qualified and superb nominee William Haynes to the Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, it's more difficult to use it as a purely partisan wedge this election cycle - all Democrats will have to do is point to that in order to deflect a lot of heat from themselves.

To say that the Congress is more concerned about banning gay marriage than {insert whatever issue is deemed to be more important}, is to parrot a liberal canard. Congress devoted a few days to trying to stop a handful of activist, leftwing judges from redefining marriage, and the media and the Dems act as if all other issues would be solved if not for this 'distraction' and exercise in 'wedge politics of division.'

Why does trying to return the judiciary to its proper role annoy you? Marriage and abortion are two of the best examples to illustrate the difference between the perverse, absurd, ludicrous living constitution nonsense of the Left/Dems and the pro-democracy, conservative vision of restraint, strict constructionism, and originalism. Yes, Kelo is also a good example, but you do realize that the Sup Court justices lined up pretty much the same in that case as they do on your dreaded social issues.

I get that many libertarians support gay marriage and abortion rights, and that's fine, but what I don't get is how they can actually believe that the Constitution in any way contains a right to abortion or requires the recognition of same-sex unions. If one believes that, then it would make no sense to oppose a completely open-ended interpretation of the General Welfare Clause in pursuit of ever-larger government.

And with regards to these social issues, what exactly is a 'moderate, mainstream, Republican'? Most people, let alone most Republicans, at least oppose abortion on demand, while the mainstream nature of opposing gay marriage is beyond dispute considering polls, and more importantly, its overwhelming rejection everytime the people have voted on it.

As someone else said, highlighting the judge-issue on social issues may not play well for vulnerable Republicans in more blue parts of the nation, but there is no reason not to make a big deal of it in red states where Republicans are in trouble; and unfortunately, there are way too many of them this time.

The best way to finally be rid of these social issues on a national level every two years is to finally right the Courts. Then most of the battles would be at the state level, where they belong.

There are not many of the so-called "fiscal conservative/socially liberal" folks left. Most people who are really focused on fiscal policy wind up being more socially indifferent than socially liberal - the issues are simply not going to decide their votes.

Not only that, but most politicians that are described as such are not "fiscally conservative" at all. Arnold, for example. Or any Democrat that is called "fiscally conservative."
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Hyphenated conservatism is a lot like hyphenated Americanism: if you have to qualify it, you're missing the point.

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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

Well said.

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"I don't know." -- Helen Thomas, when asked by White House spokesman Scott McClellan, "Are we at war, Helen?"

in this calculus. I don't think the West is socially liberal other than the strip from SD to SEA and west of the mountains, but it is pretty much socially libertarian; people don't much care what you do as long as you don't try to get them to do it or pay for it. For the most part, the Western states are fiscally pragmatic. Because of their huge areas and relatively sparse populations, the people accept that there are many things that must be done by either the state or federal government, so they are not averse to government spending on things where there is a political consensus regarding the need. The "do it with local money" small government mantra that works in the Eastern and Southern states doesn't really work in states that have counties bigger than lots of those states.

The GOP has a tenuous hold on the mountain West; all it takes is a Democrat that isn't rabidly pro-abortion, anti-development, anti-gun/military, and pro-gay marriage, and Ds can get elected most anywhere in the mountain West. Here in Alaska, Tony Knowles' liberal challenger in the D Primary had a 100% NRA rating and sponsored the "carry unless prohibited" legislation that the Republican legislature passed.

In Vino Veritas

Somethings are a matter of timing. Sure Social Issues are important, mostly when Liberals are in power because they always work to undermine them, However, Right now the looming domestic problem is our runaway costs and an impending fiscal crises.
I think that is where the focus should be right now.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

When you take progressive ideology and apply it to conservative ideas, that's a neo-con to a T. And yes, I do think neo-cons have a place in the party, having been part of the tide that has taken Republicans to a national majority.

Doesn't mean I have to agree with them though, heh. I just have to live with them.
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If you're seeing shades of gray, it's because you're not looking close enough to see the black and white dots.

As someone who tends to fall on the party line of God agys,a nd guns, let's not forget that it was not the Fiscal conservatives that won the 2004 election for the GOP-but us.

It takes everybody to win elections. If Bush had raised taxes instead of cut them, he would not be in the White House right now. Even if he didn't raise them but also didn't get his cuts through it would've been enough to lose him the 2004 election. Taxes are a huge issue and always will be.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

And I like my taxes lowered as well, and I think we all know raising taxes is political suicide for any pol. I think Dubya learnede from his father's mistake on the tax front. But I think it would be sorely mistaken to not see the SocCons and the Neo-Cons as the new driving forces behind the GOP. Post 9/11 Buchanan like paleoconservatism is dead, with good reason, and fiscal conservatism, quite frankly doesn't turn out the base like the social iissues do. Certainly I would agree you are punished for ignoring it, but I don't know how much you are rewarded for putting being a fiscal conservative at the top of your agenda-just think about the major issues facing the GOP nominees in 2008. Romney, McCain, Guliani, even Allen-the biggest questions facing them are where do they stand on the social issues like gay marriage and abortion, not so much where do they stand on taxes. IMHO, I think that's a reflection of the direction of the GOP.

"When possible we are bringing terrorists to justice. And when necessary, we are bringing justice to the terrorists."-Secretary Rice

I don't know about all these terms, but paleocons *are* socially conservative. They are not fiscal conservatives. They generally like high taxes (punative tarrifs, high income tax). They don't seem to care much about spending. They just take the traditional social conservative agenda and add on isolationism and a leftist/socialist view on taxes, economics, and regulation.

The definition of neocon seems to depend greatly upon who is using it. On the left it is often used as a synonym for the Joooooooos who are secretly running our foreign policy for Israel's benefit to the detriment of US interests, or, as you pointed out, because it reminds them of neonazis.

Fiscal conservatism is often used by people who like to raise taxes and use the ever-present budget deficit or lack of money for "x" as an excuse.

Most conservatives are just conservatives, with elements of both social and fiscal conservatism. The priorities will vary by individual, but most of the party (and almost the entire activist portion) is supportive of the whole package... low taxes, small government, and social conservatism.

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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

Was the death of isolationism in a post 9/11 world. I'm a government major, and I took a class on the rise of conservatism last year; we looked at paleoconservatism and neo-conservastism only in terms of foreign policy; I would agree that the activist wing is composed most of the people you mentioned. My basic point has been that in terms of turnout, our sexiest issues that turn out voters are in the Social Conservative arena; tax revolts are great, but the are few and far between. Our trump cards right now are immigration, national security and judges. Why we have failed to trumpet any of those(aside from the factt hat we can't get a concrete position on immigration) is beyond me.

"When possible we are bringing terrorists to justice. And when necessary, we are bringing justice to the terrorists."-Secretary Rice

But it seems to me that more people are getting sucked into it now than have been since the 70s. It is a alluring idea to many... All we need to do is spend money on the next new magical oil replacement (bio fuels, hydrogen, electric cars, whatever). Then we can just pull out of Iraq, Afghanistan, the Middle east, Asia, Africa and the rest of the world and hide. Turn off the lights and pretend that nobody is home and the Islamofascists will take their terror somewhere else. Of course it won't work, but that doesn't stop people from falling for it.
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"I am a great believer in luck. The harder I work, the more I have of it." -- Thomas Jefferson

That part of winning the GWOT involves coming up with a new source of energy, because cutting the terrorists financing devastates their operation. My solution is to go nuclear, which is actually underway in Europe and has only been screwed up once-in Chernobyl-by the Soviets, who were so dysfunctional they could have screwed up running water. However, after replacing an energy source, we go for the knockout blow with a no holds barred military campaign that the Islamofascists would never be able to recover from, especially with no financial backing. But I agree with you, 9/11 for us, the Madrid bombing and the London attacks should remind everyone that these people's desire cannot be appeased, for their desire is an Islamic empire from "Spain to Iraq." This is war-it's past time we gave them one.

"When possible we are bringing terrorists to justice. And when necessary, we are bringing justice to the terrorists."-Secretary Rice