CHANGE: Lobbyists On Pace For Record Year.

I’m writing this on my iPhone with a new WordPress app. If it works, I’ll be blogging more!!

Yesterday, Human Events declared Dick Cheney to be the “Conservative of the Year.” (read the whole thing!)

In Washingtonian “inside the Beltway” terms, the most amazing aspect of former Vice President Dick Cheney’s new clout is that he is achieving it the old-fashioned way: talking about public policy. He is not running for President or any other office. He has not formed a PAC or a D.C. lobbying firm. He is not dishing on former colleagues, not spreading gossip, not settling scores. He is, instead, writing a memoir about his extensive career in public service, and giving occasional speeches and interviews, mostly on national and homeland security policy, long his central focus.

How is it, therefore, that someone who has no political ambitions can cause so much angst at the White House and in the mainstream news media? The irrefutable answer is that what Cheney is saying, primarily on foreign policy, defense and anti-terrorism, makes sense to more and more American citizens growing increasingly worried by the Obama Administration’s insouciance when U.S. national interests are threatened, both at home and abroad.

I’ll go one further. Cheney is without doubt The Conservative of The Decade and perhaps the most important and influential true American Conservative since Ronald Reagan.

Cheney proves again and again that he has core values and principles that are TRULY conservative and mirror the Founding Principles of this nation.

His devotion to individual American freedom and liberty is so pure that he becomes a progressive on the issue of gay marriage.

History will judge Cheney well. He helped make decisions that needed to be made to save the Republic. And I am confident that by 2012, a majority of Americans will only wish that Dick Cheney was our President or Vice President.

- Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan):  The former Vice President is not only, as Bruce noted above, devoted to his country, but also to his family, including his lesbian daughter.  He has treated Mary as we wish all parents to treat their gay children, loving her for who she is, welcoming Heather, her partner, into the family as he has her elder sister’s husband, including that same-sex couple in official events, including three inaugurations.

It is unfortunate that more gay Americans, including the heads of various gay organizations, don’t give this good man his due.  They may not share his politics, but they should at least appreciate his example.

As Senator Harry Reid (D-Mt. Crumpit) rammed the Democrats’ health care overhaul legislation through the Senate, many conservative bloggers, pundits and even the New York Times reported the various payoffs to certain Senators to secure their votes.  Now, some bloggers, pundits and policy wonks (having the time the average Americans do not) have been scrutinizing the actual text of the bills which have cleared the House and Senate to find them stuffed with payoffs to various special interests favored by the Democratic Party as well as provisions of dubious constitutional merit.

And they’re pointing out the coercive nature of the bill itself, stipulating what the soon-to-be “mandatory insurance must cover,” as well as its costs and our penalties for failing to comply with that mandate.  Yep, soon, we’ll have government telling us what kind of insurance we should have.  And if our income is high enough, we won’t be able to comply by buying a cheaper plan offering only catastrophic coverage.  Young people who would rather save up for a house or a car or whatever they believe would best serve their personal interests and professional goals, will soon be forced to spend more on insurance offering benefits they don’t need and likely won’t use.

The nanny state provisions of the legislation are just the start of its problems.  The House bill, for example, includes generous payoffs to trial lawyers who have been generous in rewarding Democrats with campaign cash:

the Democratic majority in Congress has included multiple trial lawyer earmarks in the House version of Obamacare. Section 257 authorizes state attorneys general to sue companies that violate any federal health care provision and to delegate the work of such suits to class-action plaintiffs’ firms. Another trial lawyer earmark in the bill pays states not to enact caps on attorneys’ fees or lawsuit settlements.

Why can’t congressional Democrats let the various states decide to whom they delegate the work of enforcement?  Clearly, Democrats want to steer work to firms which support their candidates, increasing their income so they can keep paying off supportive politicians. (more…)

As more information comes out about the content of the books Kevin Jennings’ organization GLSEN finds appropriate for children in Grades 7-12, I have yet to find any heads of gay organizations or even non-conservative gay bloggers taking Kevin Jennings to task for his lax supervision of conferences he chaired for schoolchildren or for recommending books on or about homosexuality which are not appropriate for the age group.  No one even seem to question his judgment.  Or ask that GLSEN remove certain books from the list.

Perhaps, I’m wrong,  A few google searches surely don’t suffice to explore the universe of gay opinion.  So, maybe some of our readers have encountered criticism and questioning of this Obama official.  If you have seen something, let me know.

But, so far, I have reached a (tentative) conclusion:  the only gay people who receive criticism or censure from gay organizations, blogs or media are those who are open about their Republican politics or conservative views.

We need to do a better job policing our fellows.  Is this how we want to educate teenagers about the reality of homosexuality?

More on this anon, much more.

According to Byron York, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Mt. Crumpit), after forcing the Senate to vote in the dead of night in the middle of the holiday season on bills hacked together in back rooms to meet a deadline that, the New York Times reports, he set, is asking his colleagues to get into the Christmas spirit:

“Let’s try to work through this,” Reid said of the protracted health care struggle. “For those of the Christian faith, we have the most important holiday, and that is Christmas, and we hope everyone would keep in mind that that’s a time when we reflect on peace and the good things in life, and I would hope that everyone would set aside the animosity and focus on that holiday.”

There is, Reid conceded “a lot of tension in the Senate.”

Yeah, Harry, you’re right, there is a lot of tension in the Senate.  Wonder if your evil-mongering rhetoric has anything to do with it.  Can’t remember the last time a Republican Leader, in the majority or minority, took to the Senate floor, telling opponents of a particular piece of legislation they were on the wrong side of history, likening them to supporters of slavery:

Instead of joining us on the right side of history, all the Republicans can come up with is, ‘slow down, stop everything, let’s start over.’ If you think you’ve heard these same excuses before, you’re right. . . .  When this country belatedly recognized the wrongs of slavery, there were those who dug in their heels and said ‘slow down, it’s too early, things aren’t bad enough.’

If that’s not the height of hypocrisy, I don’t know what is.

If Harry Reid wants to inaugurate a new era of comity in the Senate, he could start by apologizing for his mean-spirited attacks, then agree to move up his retirement by a year, making it voluntary and not forced.

Throughout my life, I have enjoyed some wonderful friendships with people on the opposite side of the political aisle.  With some, our conversations never turn to politics.  We focus instead on the passions we share and the activities we enjoy.  With others, we discuss politics, always striving to appreciate the sincerity of each other’s convictions.  Each knows that the other does not promote the ideas that he does, adhere to the ideology to which he subscribes or belong to the party which he has joined (or otherwise supports) out of dark and/or dastardly motives, but because he truly believes those ideas will best promote the general welfare.

Yet, there are some, on both sides of the political aisle and in the current debate, overwhelmingly on one side, with whom you can’t have a conversation.  They doubt the very sincerity of their opponents’ motives, believing they hold their convictions not because of a concern for general well-being of society and the individual freedom of men and women of all stripes, but because they want to put down men and (especially) women of a certain stripe (or stripes).

If someone opposes the policies they support, then that person is not just wrong, he’s racist too, misogynist, anti-gay and, well, a just plain evil-mongering dunce.

No wonder some gay people can’t relate to the conservatives in their midst.  Their prejudices against conservatives are so strong that they can’t imagine we came to our conclusions through a rational thought process.  They believe all conservatives seek to preserve a status quo advantageous to straight white men and, as that “quo” loses its “status,” think we want to return to those days when segregation was the rule and homosexuality was neither discussed nor tolerated.

But, the world has changed since such liberals fixed their views.

Yet, you wouldn’t know it from listening to the Senate Majority Leader or the junior Senator from California.  Or from the junior Senator from the Ocean State.  Sheldon Whitehouse has now joined a growing chorus of Democratic elected officials and liberal pundits comparing opponents of health care reform to Nazis and lynch mobs.   (more…)

The ultimate Washington insider and purveyor of liberal conventional wisdom engages in a little hyperbole: Gergen Compares Senate ObamaCare Vote to Brown v. Board of Education.