Whenever I see Paul Ryan speak, I have hope for the future of the GOP.  This intelligent young (he just turned 40) conservative can both articulate broad conservative principles and explain the details of various legislative proposals.  In short, he can apply conservative ideas to the process of governing.

Fewer legislators have so favorably distinguished themselves in the the health care debate than has this fetching Congessman from Janesville, Wisconsin.   With his state’s junior Senator Russ Feingold’s favorable rating on a steady downward trend since the dawn of the Obama Administration, seeing his his approval fall below 50%, now barely above his disapproval, that liberal Democrat is looking increasingly vulnerable in a state which appeared to be moving away from the Democrats in the early 200os.

Why not replace that principled liberal (and apparently very decent guy, being one of the few incumbent Democrats to show respect for his constituents holding different political views than he) with a principled conservative?

Why isn’t Ryan running to replace Feingold?

It appears instead that former Governor Tommy Thompson is readying a Senate bid, preparing to replace Feingold.  While Feingold edges Thompson in the most recent poll, Thompson has led in a number of polls going back to last October.  And while Tommy Thompson would make a fine Senator, Ryan would make a better one.  And as a younger man, he would present a better image of the GOP as the party of ideas for the current and coming generations.

Well, at least with Thompson, we get a leader with  a real record of reform; as Wisconsin’s long-serving Governor, he all but pioneered welfare reform.  But, in a choice of two reformers, I’d prefer the younger, the one who has so distinguished himself in the current debate.

Well, well…

Turns out Barack Obama is either a liar or never read the health care bill he so insisted the House pass this weekend before he opened his big yap about it in the first place.

Comes news today that his Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010 actually doesn’t cover children with pre-existing conditions after all.

He touted yesterday in his signing ceremony:

This year, tens of thousands of uninsured Americans with preexisting conditions, the parents of children who have a preexisting condition, will finally be able to purchase the coverage they need. That happens this year.

But according to the AP:

Under the new law, insurance companies still would be able to refuse new coverage to children because of a pre-existing medical problem, said Karen Lightfoot, spokeswoman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, one of the main congressional panels that wrote the bill Obama signed into law Tuesday

Got an idea: Next time President Obama chooses to ram through a 2,700-page piece of legislation, how about reading it first!
-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

Of the open gubernatorial seats currently in Republican hands, I thought that those in Hawai’i, Rhode Island and Vermont were most likely to flip.   All three are pretty much blue states, with none, save Vermont, having gone Republican in a presidential election since 1984.

Well, the state which has only elected one Democrat to the United States Senate in the past 150 years maybe be returning to its Republican roots.  Republican Jim Douglas, elected to succeed Howard Dean in 2002, is stepping down.  And now his Lieutenant Governor, “Brian Dubie leads all five of his potential Democratic opponents in the first Rasmussen Reports Election 2010 survey of this year’s race for governor in Vermont.”  And, in each case, by comfortable margins.

Well, technically, Dubie is not Douglas’ lieutenant governor as the Governor and Lt. Governor are elected separately.

Now, this may not be a sign of the Green Mountain State returning to its pre-1980s form, but merely a reflection of the popularity of Mr. Dubie.  Or that of Mr. Douglas who holds a 64% approval rating.  (Memo to Governor Douglas:  Patrick Leahy’s Senate seat is up this fall.)

In any case, here’s something from Vermont which corresponds to polling date from other states:  ”The Republican hopeful holds double-digit leads over all of the Democrats among voters not affiliated with either major political party.”  In the Buckeye State, the Republican hopeful holds a 23-point lead over that state’s incumbent Democratic governor among independent voters.

Just like Massachusetts in January and New Jersey and Virginia in November, independents appear to be breaking the Republican ways in bellwethers like Ohio and left-leaners like Vermont.

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is backing my gal, Carly Fiorina, to replace Barbara Boxer in the United States Senate:

California needs a representative in the U.S. Senate who is prepared to make the tough decisions necessary to address our most pressing challenges, including job creation and national security. Based on my personal experience, I know Carly is the best person to send to Washington to advocate for the people of our great state in the Senate. . . .  Carly is an experienced and respected leader who has delivered results for those she has served in the midst of immense challenges. I am proud to endorse her today.

In other Carly news, she igned the Club for Growth’s Repeal It pledge, committing to sponsoring and supporting legislation to repeal the government takeover of health care and instead institute reforms that actually lower health care costs without growing government.

Nice to see how my gal has consistently opposed big government initiatives and stood for Reaganite principles of smaller government, individual freedom and reducing regulation in order to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit which made California the Golden State.  A spirit which has been slackened by excessive regulation.

Despite all the hulabaloo in the media about the racist and anti-gay epithets Tea Party protesters allegedly hurled at African-American Congressmen and the unhappy Barney Frank, we could find only one corroborated report of such slurs; a POLITICO reporter overheard someone in the crowd yelled “faggot” at Frank.

And yet some in the MSM continue to peddle this nonsense about the movement being racist and anti-gay.

Yes, we do have that one example of a random person in the crowd, yelling a hateful slur.  But, when a Congressman uses a sexual slur her fellow partisans (in the Democratic Party and in the MSM) regularly use to describe these protesters, the same people who can’t contain their outrage at alleged racist epithets remain silent.

Note the contrast?  A citizen yells a hateful slur and the media get their panties all in a bundle.  An elected Democratic Congressman uses a sexual slur to deride citizens protesting big government and they yawn.  If it’s bad enough (and it is bad) when one citizen uses hateful rhetoric, wouldn’t it then be worse that it’s become commonplace for Democratic officials and their allies in the MSM and blogosphere to use a deliberately derogatory term to describe the most important and energetic political movement to emerge in the Obama era?

Routinely, I read comments either caught in our spam filter or which appear with our posts where readers describe the Tea Party movement a racist and/or anti-gay.  Yet, I wonder how many of those folks have ever actually been to a Tea Party.   These critics are not describing the Tea Parties that are, but conservatives as they see them.  They’re describing an image in their own mind, not the protests taking place in town squares and public plazas across our country–and certain to increase in the coming days, weeks and months.

No matter what we say or do, it’s unlikely to change the narrow views of these prejudiced critics of our movement.  The reality of the situation won’t change the perception conjured up by their imagination.  They want Tea Parties to be racist and anti-gay, so racist and anti-gay they shall be.

Perhaps, to prove them wrong, we should bear signs proclaiming that we’re “Lesbians for Liberty” or “Homos for Freedom” the next time we attend Tea Parties to see how our fellow protesters react.  Wait, our readers did just that:

And they weren’t taunted or asked to leave, indeed, they were made welcome, quite welcome.  Their experience kind of defeats the narrative.

ADDENDUM:  Glenn Reynolds has a great roundup on the determination of Democrats to brand the Tea Parties as racist–despite a paucity of evidence.

According to the most recent CBS poll (a survey which skews left):  Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s favorability rating stands at 11%. Now, only 37% of Americans have an unfavorable opinion, but then again, 36% haven’t heard enough of the San Francisco Congressman.

In short, of those Americans who have an opinion about Mrs. Pelosi, three times as many have a negative view as those who have a positive view of the woman who pushed Obamacare through the House.

Now, I know then-Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich was not particularly popular in the mid-1990s when he served, but then he did push through the Contract with America, a series of proposals so popular that Democrat Bill Clinton campaigned on several in his 1996 re-election campaign, even touting a few in his speech accepting the Democratic nomination that summer.

(H/t:  Gateway Pundit.)

No matter what national affairs writers for Yahoo! may say, the GOP’s real dilemma is not  appearing “to be a respectable party capable of governing while also providing political shelter for the highly motivated, though vocally disruptive, protest wing of the party associated with the Tea Party movement,”* it’s how to go about repealing an unpopular piece of legislation with a number of popular and several beneficial components.

Should they just repeal the whole thing and start over (as the American people wanted) or once it’s become established law, repeal only those most egregious provisions (the better part of the bill) and leave in place the popular and beneficial reforms?

While driving my Dad to the airport today (he was in town for a meeting), I had a brainstorm:  the GOP should pursue a policy of “Repeal and Reform.”  As soon as Speaker Boehner takes the gavel next January, his fellows in the majority should introduce a bill to repeal all but a few provisions of the recently enacted health care bill and include in the package a number of health care reforms that Republicans have long advocated (and have put forward in the current debate, only to have the MSM and Democrats pretend they don’t exist).

Personally, I believe Wisconsin’s Paul Ryan should do it, but I am secretly hoping he’ll make a last minute decision to run for the Senate.  If he could win in 2008 with 64% in a district Obama carried by 51%, in a Republican year, he could win in a state where John Kerry barely mustered a majority in 2004.

That digression aside, it seems I’m not the only one to favor such a plan of repeal and reform.  When I got home, I caught David Freddoso’s piece in the Washington Examiner: ‘Repeal’ is Not Enough:

When President Obama signs his signature health care bill into law a few hours from now, he will be trading a dysfunctional and excessively costly health insurance system that is crippling the economy for an even more dysfunctional and even more costly system that goes further to encourage rent-seeking by the drug and insurance industries that wrote and backed it. (more…)

Hm:

“When there’s a bill that ends up on my desk as president, you the public will have five days to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so you know what your government is doing.”

Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010:
Passed House, 21 Mar 2010, 10:49PM EDT
Signed by President Obama, 23 Mar 2010, 1:33PM EDT
Time “you the public” had “to look online and find out what’s in it before I sign it, so you know what your government is doing”: Five Days 1 day, 14 Hours, 44 Minutes

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

With all the hoopla in Washington this past week, many folks aren’t even aware that there’s a special election coming up in just a few weeks in Florida. Robert Wexler, thankfully, retired last year, leaving the state’s 19th Congressional District seat open.

The Democrat (in this 2-to-1 D-over-R registered district), Ted Deutch (I’ll pronounce that any way I please, thank you) is heavily favored. You know, kind of like that one lady was.

But…

Lots of old folks down there, and they’re all getting the shaft from Obamacare (of which Deutch is a big fan).

What’s more, Deutch was one of only two state Senators to vote last week against a law that recinds the policy of asking potential adoptive parents if they own firearms. The law passed the house unanimously, and the Florida State Senate 38-2. Apparently he doesn’t consider the Second Amendment as important as socializing our entire health care industry.

Oh, but there’s this: He also attempted to kill in committee a bill that would have held liable those who kill or injure a pregnant woman for the death of her unborn child. No exception, I suppose, if that woman might have planned to put the child up for adoption by parents who at one point or another owned a gun.

The election is April 13th, and Deutch’s opponent is Edward Lynch. You can donate to his campaign here.

Well, It is Done.

President Obama signed his Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010 to thunderous applause this morning, and in so doing, subjugated our Nation to third-world socialist state status for the ensuing future (unless, of course, we take it back).

Happy Dependence Day.

Oh, and hope you don’t have any problems that ever need cutting edge medical technology. Byron York lines out just one of many medical device companies who will, thanks to this historic legislation, basically be run out of business. Yay, progress!

Zoll is the nation’s leading manufacturer of heart defibrillators, which save thousands of heart attack victims each year
…
“We believe that the tax will cost us somewhere between $5 million and $10 million a year,” says Richard Packer, Zoll’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Our profit in 2009 was $9.5 million.”

Fortunately, however, thanks to Obamacare, we’ll all have equal access to the defibrillators that will not exist in the future.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

I’m beginning my first road trip for work under the Era of Obamacare this morning.  I start in Charlotte, head to Baltimore, then off again to spend the night and most of Wednesday in Pittsburgh.   And yes, as Dan mentions below, PatriotPartner and I are headed to Los Angeles on Thursday for a long weekend.

How will this new Era of Socialism Utopia treat me as I travel the TSA-mandated skies of America?  Will people be nicer now that they have a new bloated entitlement program that will bankrupt this and successive generations?  I haven’t seen it yet.  The TSA agents and US Airways ticket agents had the same scowl on their faces as they did last week.

But haven’t they heard that we are in the Era of Sunshine, Unicorns and Lollipops?  I mean first Obama raised his hands and single-handedly stopped the 15 foot Chilean Tsunami from ravaging Hawai’i.  He did tell us the seas would fall after he was elected!

And now everyone is walking around with the statisfaction that we all have healthcare coverage.  Nevermind that our taxes will go up significantly.  Nevermind that the cost of healthcare will continue to rise.  Nevermind that the premiums that the middle class pays for their health insurance will also go up.  And nevermind that those who are covered by Domestic Partner benefits will be the first to be dropped when the Individual Mandate is enforced.

Nah, what is really important is that the Obama Presidency was saved!

Funny, the Americans walking around the Charlotte, NC airport this morning look as worried and stressed and anxious as they did last week.

I guess it really isn’t funny at all.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Please join Bruce and me at a brunch for blog readers this coming Sunday March 28th at 1 PM at the home of one of our readers. 

Please drop me an e-mail by this coming Friday if you’d like to attend.

In the past 24 hours, the mood among my fellow conservatives seems to alternate between hope and despair, with some feeling that the Democrats’ overreach these past 14 months will lead to a reinvigorated conservative movement, able to recapture the congressional majority and repeal burdensome regulation and shut down meddlesome federal programs while others insist that Obamacare, like entitlements before it, are here to stay.

I tend to belong to the latter camp, (yet admit to feeling part of the former at times).  I looking at polls which show a remarkable consistency:  the American people don’t want bigger government.  Indeed, Obama seemed to recognize this his successful bid for the White House when he promised a “net spending cut.”

According to a CNN survey this past weekend, 56% of Americans believe the health care bill creates “too much government involvement in the nation’s health care system.” Last September, Gallup found that a near identical percentage of Americans, 57%, believe “the government is trying to do too many things that should be left to businesses and individuals“. Only 38% thought it should do more.

After all the effort Democrats put into passing this bill–and by the barest of majorities–Democrats may well have expended all their political capital and be unable to push new programs through. Obama still feels he needs to sell the program to the American people.  (Isn’t that kind of link a used car salesman coming to your house and continuing his spiel about the quality of the car he sold you, as if his words alone will overcome the problems with the vehicle you were all but forced to buy?)

Just take a gander at the CNN poll. 62% of Americans think their health care bills will go up under the new plan. 70% say it will increase the deficit. 47% think their families will be worse off, while only 19% think they’ll be better off. And this despite Obama’s incessant shilling of the program, overwhelmingly favorable media coverage and tens (hundreds?) of millions of dollars in TV ads by allied special interests. (more…)

One reason I have so much fun lampooning Barney Frank is that he is almost the perfect caricature of the self-important politician, saying one thing while behaving in the exact opposite reaction. If the media didn’t feel they needed hold this unhappy Democrat in such awe, they too might see through his bluster.

To be sure, he’s a smart guy who often tosses out some clever quips. And is certainly more interesting than the great majority of his colleagues. He doesn’t mince his words, something which might, in the ordinary course of events, be a good thing, but when that failure to mince becomes occasion to insult, then, well, he’s gone too far.

And Barney often, very often indeed, goes too far, deriding the intelligence of his Republican colleagues, misrepresenting (often in malicious terms) their ideas, accusing them of all manner of prejudice. And then, when one or two conservatives behaves badly, he runs for the cameras and tells us how horrible, no good and very bad Republicans are.

So, I find it particularly rich when reporters uses the mean-spirited Massachusetts Democrat as a primary source, indeed, quoting him in their headline on protesters’ boorish behavior, as did Politico’s Marin Coogan & Meredith Shiner in their article, Barney Frank: ‘Mass hysteria’ on Capitol Hill.

Note how they cover a protester ejected by Capitol Police from the House gallery after yelling:

Frank was visibly angry with his GOP colleagues, whom he believed goaded the protester who slipped inside the House chamber.

“Did you guys see the Republicans encouraging the disruption?” Frank left the House floor to tell about 15 reporters. “These clowns are out there encouraging violation of the law and making the job of the guys up there harder. It’s really disgraceful.”

The hyperpartisan Democrat is their only source for the notion that his Republican colleagues goaded the protester. Said protester should have been ejected. He behaved badly. Yet, Barney doesn’t respond in a civil tone, instead, calling his Republican colleagues “clowns”! Wonder if he’ll be asking Democrats colleagues to “differentiate” themselves from him.

One Politico reporter did overhear someone in the crowd yelling “faggot” when Barney walked by–this being the only corroborated (that I could find) case of a hateful epithet being hurled by a tea party protester in Sunday’s demonstrations. It’s sad that someone would use such a term. (more…)

Why is it that the news media suddenly becomes fascinated with civil discourse when conservatives are protesting a liberal Administration?  Just caught this story on Yahoo!’s front page under the headline, Heckler’s Outburst Reveals Dilemma:  Rep. Randy Neugebauer’s stinging words during the health vote debate may say a lot about the GOP.

But the “Baby killer!” furor highlights a far more serious, long-term political dilemma for the Republicans: how to appear to be a respectable party capable of governing while also providing political shelter for the highly motivated, though vocally disruptive, protest wing of the party associated with the Tea Party movement. While many commentators are forecasting trouble ahead for Democrats identified with the health care bill, the GOP faces some major issues of its own.

Just look at the past weekend: Thousands of Tea Party protesters descended on Washington in an attempt to “kill the bill.” It was an impressive turnout for a quickly organized protest—but coverage of the event soon was dominated by reports that some demonstrators had hurled racial and homophobic epithets at Democratic lawmakers as they entered the Capitol.

Emphasis added.  Wonder where Yahoo! News’ national affairs writer Brett Michael Dykes was during the Bush Era when the Number Two Senate Democrat compared U.S. troops to the Soviets, Nazis and Pol Pot.  Or, more recently, when Barney Frank accused Republicans of having a “psychological disorder.”  Or when left-wing protesters marched down streets in major cities, bearing posters comparing then-President George W. Bush to Hitler?

Did Dykes find it a political dilemma for Democrats to appear as a respectable party capable of governing while also providing political shelter for the highly motivated, though vocally disruptive, protest wing of the party associated with the anti-war movement?  The problem, Mr. Dykes, isn’t the tea party movement, the problem is just how you identify it:  coverage was dominated by wat you call reports, most of them unsubstantiated. (more…)

I expressed my disappointment yesterday immediately after Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Kerioth) announced that he’d been satisfied by a promise made on some piece of paper by the most pro-abortion president we’ve ever had—a president, one of whose first acts after being inaugurated was to repeal the Mexico City Policy which had restricted our funds for overseas abortions—that is overruled by the same legislation he would later vote for (and about which he had written a letter to Sen Ben Nelson (D-His Own World) expressing how it wasn’t good enough for him—at the time).

I was very disappointed at the time and said so. I classified Stupak as having been the dupe of the president and Nancy Pelosi. I gave him the benefit of the doubt but pondered how he could be so gullible. Since then however, I have become much more educated on Congressman Stupak’s history, and feel I formally owe our readers an apology. (I had issued this as an update to the original post, but I feel so betrayed that I feel the need to make a seperate post here, the original having been buried in the tons of writing Dan and I have done last night and today.)

Bart Stupak betrayed me, all pro-life Americans, and frankly the entire Nation. Not simply because he voted in favor of this assault on our Constitution and our liberties (he joins 218 of his disrespectful friends in this alone). No, he lied to us this entire time. We all knew he was in favor of the Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010, but we had been led to believe, based on his genuine-seeming demeanor and earnest-sounding words that this whole thing was eating him up inside.

As I reflected that nobody could be so credulous, or frankly, so stupid as to fall for Obama’s latest lie, I concluded that he must not be that stupid after all, and that he knows well that this is an empty promise from someone who doesn’t mean it and who can rescind it at any time. This led to further consideration of the character of Stupak. If, as all evidence shows, he knows that this is no way of stopping taxpayer-funded abortion, it calls into question not only his dedication to the unborn in the first place, but also the contemptible nature of the charade he acted out over the past several months. Stupak made himself the poster-boy of principled dissent, standing athwart Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the Infanticide Cabal, even to the point that he tortured himself by opposing a piece of legislation that he fundamentally wanted to see passed lest it fund abortions with taxpayer dollars. But we were had. Comes the evidence:
(more…)

As promised, here is the roll call from the House vote last night. Sorry for the quick hit-and-git here, but I have too much crap to do tonight.

Rest assured, however, I’ll soon be culling this list, Googling like mad, and producing for you a comprehensive list of the “Ayes”‘ opponents.

I’d love for anybody who wants to help out to email me (my address is in the bar at the right) if you already know of any opponents.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)

The contempt I feel right now for President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, while not quite as intense as it was last night, may well match that the American patriots felt for King George and Parliament 235-odd years ago.  That king, like this president, trampled on our liberties and sought to expand the power of government in clear contravention of the will of the people.

The pressure against this bill came from the grassroots, even in such states as Massachusetts.  The pressure to pass it came from the White House, the Democratic congressional leadership and their allied special interests.

A recent CNN survey (and their surveys tend to skew left) finds that by a margin of 3 to 2, Americans oppose the Democrats’ health care bill–that margins is even greater than the one found by the supposedly Republican pollster Scott Rasmussen.   And here’s an interesting tidbit from that poll, “56% say the bill creates ‘too much government involvement in the nation’s health care system,’ 28% say about the right amount, while 16% say not enough.”

According to Gallup, a near identical percentage of Americans, 57%, believe “government is trying to do too many things that should be left to businesses and individuals“.  And the Democrats’ health care bill does just that.  In yesterday’s Investors’ Business Daily, David Hogberg detailed 20 Ways ObamaCare Will Take Away Our Freedoms.  No wonder we’re up in arms.

In an underhanded manner, House and Senate Democrats rammed through an unpopular bill which takes away our liberties. As Robert Zelnick writes: “Everything about [that] House-passed bill smacks of political excess rooted in ideological purity.”  (Via Jennifer Rubin.)

Under the leadership of President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have divided our nation even further and decreased our liberties while increasing the size and scope of the federal government.

This is not what the Founders fought for.  Not by a long shot.  Nor what the American people want.  In his successful campaign for the White House, Obama tapped into popular discontent at the growing cost of government, telling us that we had been living beyond our means.  And now, despite clear majorities of the American people opposing increased government intervention in our lives, he works overtime to increase the level of that intervention.

While Barney Frank demands that Republicans “differentiate” themselves from mean-spirited insults allegedly hurled at him by citizens disgruntled with the Democrats’ health care overhaul, he still has yet to apologize for, on the floor of the House, telling Republican colleagues they suffer from “a psychological disorder.”

Today, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R., Texas) ‘fessed up to being the Congressman who called his Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), a “baby-killer” and apologized:

Last night was the climax of weeks and months of debate on a health-care billthat my constituents fear and do not support. In the heat and emotion of the debate, I exclaimed the phrase “it’s a baby killer” in reference to the agreement reached by the Democratic leadership.

While I remain heartbroken over the passage of this bill and the tragic consequences it will have for the unborn, I deeply regret that my actions were mistakenly interpreted as a direct reference to Congressman Stupak himself.

I have apologized to Mr. Stupak and also apologize to my colleagues for the manner in which I expressed my disappointment about the bill. The House Chamber is a place of decorum and respect. The timing and tone of my comment last night was inappropriate.

It’s been nearly a year since Frank made a comment which was equally inappropriate.  That Democrat has yet to apologize.

If it is true that some Tea Party protesters hurled anti-gay insults at the unhappy Barney Frank, then we should condemn the individuals spewing the bile.  Even though Mr. Frank may himself issue much mean-spirited invective against his Republicans adversaries, accusing his Republican colleagues, in one memorable instance, of having a “psychological disorder,”  it is wrong (and counterproductive) to level anti-gay attacks against him–or any gay individual for that matter.

Given Mr. Frank’s partisanship and the scorn he has expressed for conservatives and their ideas, please forgive me for remaining skeptical of his accusations.  It was particularly rich yesterday when the self-righteous Massachusetts Democrat demanded that “his GOP colleagues . . . do more to ‘differentiate themselves’ from the hateful speech spewed in the healthcare debate’s final hours.”  This from a man whose own staff deemed it a “useless conversation” to discuss whether or not the career politician had ever criticized anti-Bush hate speech during the previous Administration.  (I called Mr. Frank’s office earlier today to ask if they had any record of such statements.)

Not one reader responded to my challenge to provide examples of his standing up for civil discourse and against anti-Bush invective during when we had a Republican in the White House.  For Barney Frank and the media ever eager to echo his plaints, this is not about civil discourse, but about his favorite past time, attacking Republicans.

In Barney’s mind, only Republicans can be guilty of hate speech.  That’s how this mean-spirited man can get away with demanding Republicans differentiate themselves from statements they never made while he refuses to apologize for hateful statements he actually did make.