…when none of Elizabeth Taylor’s ex-husbands are in the Senate. If Warner gets a speeding ticket on his way home after retiring, I’d pay it. Faster, please.

Apollo posted this at 1:53 AM EDT on Friday, July 4th, 2008 as The Democratic Congress

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According to this report Senator Clinton has secured — almost always with a fellow NY legislator’s co-sponsorship — $340 million in earmarks since the beginning of FY 2008, making her one of the 10 worst earmark abusers in the Senate, and the worst who doesn’t serve on the appropriations committee. That’s $1.12 for every man, woman, and child in the country.

Some other interesting findings:

• Sen. Obama has only $91 million to his name, better than more than 75% of his colleagues.
• Sen. McCain is one of only five senators to not have a single earmark to his name.
• Mississippi Republicans are the worst offenders in both the Senate and the House. Thad Cochoran designated an astounding $837 million in earmarks ($2.78 per American), $289 million of which was for projects for which he was the sole sponsor. And despite the fact that he hasn’t been in the House for two months since being tapped to fill Trent Lott’s seat, Roger Wicker was still able to earmark $178 million ($0.59 per American) in spending.*
• Though a Rep. Jack Murtha was responsible for slightly less total earmarking than Wicker with $176 million, he holds the record for the most as a single-sponsor, with almost $160 of that being for his own pet projects.

It’s also worth mentioning that this list would have been impossible without the reforms passed after the 2006 elections that (albeit imperfectly) forced legislators to disclose their names on earmarks. The Democrats deserve some credit for that, just as Republicans deserve infinite shame for whoring out their supposed fiscal values.

* Next time Mississippi decides to secede, I say we let them go.

H/T: Megan McArdle

Tom posted this at 1:21 PM EST on Friday, February 15th, 2008 as An Insult to Drunken Sailors, Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, The Democratic Congress

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250 representatives and 55 senators filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to hold DC’s gun ban illegal. There are 435 representatives and 100 senators total. That means a majority of both houses want this law overturned. Now I’m not a justice of the supreme court, or even a justice of the peace, but I recall reading that Constitution thingy a while back, and I’m pretty sure it gave Congress the power “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States…”

So if a majority of both houses opposes a law that Congress can overturn…I know: Congress should ask the courts to overturn it so they don’t have to bother voting and can spend more time earmarking and buying votes with “rebates”. Statesmanship, thy name is Congress.

Apollo posted this at 8:56 PM EST on Friday, February 8th, 2008 as The Democratic Congress

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I guess that’s what I’m to take from this tidbit of legislative wizardry. Those compact florescent bulbs give me headaches. Yet the federal government is going to force me to use them within 12 years. Why else would they legislate that I get headaches, unless they hate me?

The solution to me is clear. Hopefully by 2020 this whole law school thing will have paid off sufficiently that I will have the resources to hoard years worth of incandescent bulbs. Enough to last until technology helps me out. But one thing’s for sure: Can you think of any better way to dissuade technological progress than to tell light bulb companies, “The light bulbs you’re making now are good enough to meet our standards for the next dozen years, and we’re going to outlaw competing types of bulbs”? Thanks, government.

Here’s perhaps the best bit.

Proponents of government intervention into the light bulb market argue the change will save consumers money – Davidson reported it will save $40 billion in energy and other costs in the next 22 years.

Let’s see. $40 billion/22years = $1.818 billion/year in savings. Let’s be absolutely ridiculous and say that the population stays at 303,000,000 for the next 22 years. That would be a savings of…6 FRICKIN’ DOLLARS A YEAR. Wow. That’s like 50 cents per month. I can’t buy a can of Coke from a soda machine for less than 75 cents. If I used my savings to buy a stamp, envelope, and piece of paper, I could write the president a thank you note. And then the next month, I could use my savings to send one to Congress.

I guess it’s okay that the government hates me, though. Because I hate them.

Apollo posted this at 7:48 PM EST on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 as George Bush Sucks!, Science & Evolution, The Democratic Congress

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Via the Arm-Flapper-in-Chief, a bit of flaming ignorance from a US Senator (surprise!), the pride of Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse:

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those [Office of Legal Counsel] opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.
3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

[snip]

In a nutshell, these three Bush administration legal propositions boil down to this:

1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”
2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”
3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”

I guess his nutshell is accurate, so far as it goes. It just doesn’t go very far, and it’s not terribly thoughtful. Allow me to demonstrate.

1. There is no such Constitutional requirement because there is nothing in the Constitution about executive orders. They are merely directives for how the president wants laws to be executed. Why a president should be Constitutionally bound to abide by his own previous orders (or the orders of previous presidents) is beyond me. It might be good policy that he generally do so, but if he’s making the rules and it’s his responsibility to enforce the law, then he’s got to have discretion to abandon those rules in particular situations. We have no problem with prosecutors having discretion in who gets prosecuted, and in cops having discretion about whether to give a particular speeder a ticket; is there a good reason to not give the president discretion in how to perform his duties? Even if there is, it most certainly does not appear in the Constitution.

2. Well who else is going to determine such a thing? The Supreme Court doesn’t issue advisory opinions, and the idea of a president asking Congress (or of Congress asking the president) whether a particular action is Constitutional is, to say the least, unorthodox. Would Whitehouse deny Congress the right to examine whether a particular action falls within its Article I powers? Who else would make the decision? The president is nationally elected and takes an oath to protect and defend the Constitution. Wrapped up within the very notion of self-government is the reality that the people we elect have discretion and responsibility. Surely if a court throws out a presidential action as unconstitutional that would limit the president’s powers; I’m pretty sure the OLC wouldn’t deny that. Whitehouse cites Marbury v. Madison as proof that the Court gets to determine presidential power, but the way he uses the case tells me he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Nowhere did the Great Chief Justice ever write that the Supreme Court was the supreme branch of government, as Whitehouse suggests. Each branch is entitled to its own interpretation of the Constitution, which is then limited by the views of the other branches. The Court generally accepts this and often avoids topics as inherently political and nonjusticiable. It is total poppycock when Whitehouse basically says that the president’s views of the Constitution are meaningless.

3. Well, yeah. The President runs the Department of Justice; the Department of Justice does not run the President. The very idea that some career lawyer in the Department of Justice is going to order the President of the United States how to do is job is such a deep affront to the notion of self-government and to the constitutional order of things that I’m utterly shocked that a US Senator, even in a partisan hatchet piece, could write such a sentiment. I’ve read the Constitution several times, and nowhere does it make mention of a Department of Justice, but it does invest the President with “the Executive power.” The Department of Justice only exists because it assists the President with his job. I’m not sure what sort of EU-style technocracy Whitehouse wants us to have, but in America bureaucrats do not tell elected officials how to do their jobs. We the People are the bosses, we elect politicians to do as we wish, and the bureaucrats follow their policies. Anything else is unAmerican claptrap of the first order.

Here’s part of Whitehouse’s discussion of point 3:

We are a nation of laws, not of men. This nation was founded in rejection of the royalist principles that “l’etat c’est moi” and “The King can do no wrong.” Our Attorney General swears an oath to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States; we are not some banana republic in which the officials all have to kowtow to the “supreme leader.”

Well that’s a nifty tirade, and it’s part of the reason why I don’t support the idea of America having a king. But I do support the idea of us having an elected president. Whitehouse seems to value the Attorney General’s oath to the Constitution, but cares not one whit about the President’s. Just reading Whitehouse’s piece, you’d think the Attorney General ran the country, when in fact he is a subordinate officer of the President, not mentioned in the Constitution. I’m uncertain of what his ridiculous talk of “supreme leaders” and “royalist principles” and “Kings” is about, because it is completely irrelevent in a government where we elect a chief executive to perform Constitutional duties.

Imagine a general counsel to a major U.S. corporation telling his board of directors, “in this company the counsel’s office is bound by the CEO’s legal determinations.” The board ought to throw that lawyer out - it’s malpractice, probably even unethical.

If this is how they teach people to make analogies at UVA law, I’m glad I didn’t go there. The purpose of a CEO is to ensure the company makes money; the purpose of the legal counsel is to ensure the company obeys the laws. The purpose of the President is to enforce the laws; the purpose of the Attorney General is to help the President enforce the laws. The two relationships are not at all analogous. An Attorney General who defers to a president’s wishes is not committing malpractice, he’s accepting the fact that an awful lot more people voted for the President than voted for the Attorney General, and that Constitutional officers are superior to their inferior officers created by statute.

Wherever you are, if you are watching this, do me a favor. The next time you are in Washington, D.C., take a taxi some evening to the Department of Justice. Stand outside, and look up at that building shining against the starry night. Look at the sign outside- “The United States Department of Justice.” Think of the heroes who have served there, and the battles fought. Think of the late nights, the brave decisions, the hard work of advancing and protecting our democracy that has been done in those halls. Think about how that all makes you feel.

How many people take their picture in front of the White House? And how many people have a clue where the Department of Justice is? Quick-name me a “hero” who worked at the DoJ. Now name me a “hero” who was President. Despite the fact that tens of thousands of times as many people have worked at DoJ than have been president, there are many more heroic presidents. If Whitehouse is correct and it’s the DoJ that “protects our democracy,” then why do we bother doing pesky and expensive things like electing presidents? What’s even the point of protecting that democracy if we have career lawyers and appointees at the DoJ who then boss around our elected officials? Can anyone remember a presidential candidate campaigning on whom he would appoint Attorney General? But if Whitehouse is to be believed, that’s the most important thing a president does, because the Attorney General then turns around and dictates how the President is to do his job. Whithouse’s DoJ supremacy theory is, upon examination, as laughable as it is weird.

Read the whole thing. It’s an argument for expelling Rhode Island from the union for electing such an irresponsibly ignorant man to the Senate. He took an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, but it’s pretty plain that he does not understand its basic operations. Inverting the relationship between President and Attorney General is perverse, and Sheldon Whitehouse is a perverter of the Constitution.

Apollo posted this at 2:23 AM EST on Saturday, December 8th, 2007 as We don't need no stinkin' Constitution, The Democratic Congress

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This is gobstoppingly jawdropping. If there was any doubt that the Democrats are tying their political aspirations to American defeat, it should be gone by now. After a couple of really crappy years, we’ve finally pulled things together. The chances of us leaving a peaceful Iraq is getting stronger by the day. So of course the Democrats want to put stupid timetables on spending. Why?

Democrats say defense dollars should be used to bring troops home and repair the readiness of the armed forces…

Yes, that’s why we pay taxes. To fund retreats, and keep our military ready. So that the next time we deploy somewhere, they’ll be even more ready to retreat. Because that’s what the military is for. It’s not for killing terrorist and fighting until we win. It’s for retreating.

That the Democrat party has become the party of American defeat should be the crowning achievement on the Baby Boomers’ long list of shame.

Apollo posted this at 11:26 PM EST on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 as Iraq, The Democratic Congress

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