Although I disagree with the junior Senator from Oklahoma on a handful of issues, I have always admired Tom Coburn as one of the few men of principle in Washington.  He was a small government conservative before it was cool to be a small government conservative.

In the spendthrift George W. Bush era (an era parsimonious by Obama’s standards), he challenged his own party to take a tougher line on federal spending.  Now, he’s come out with a budget proposal of his own.  Unlike Republicans, he’s calling for eliminating “tax breaks.”  Unlike Democrats, he’s put forward a detailed plan which spells out specific cuts.

Among the tax breaks he seeks to eliminate is the “mortgage interest deduction on second homes”.  Apparently, he also wants to limit that deduction “to homes worth $500,000.”  That may allow middle class families in Oklahoma to maintain that deduction, but would deprive many such families in cities like Los Angeles (where the cost of the average home is higher) of its benefits.

That said, his plan merits consideration.  According to the AP, Coburn told reporters that he had ”no doubt that both parties will criticize portions of this plan, and I welcome that debate. . . .  But it’s not a legitimate criticism until you have a plan of your own.”  (Emphasis added.)

Indeed, how many of his Democratic colleagues (and their allies in the MSM) demagogue his plan as demagogic when they have yet to offer one of their own?  Kudos, Senator Coburn, for putting forward a plan to put us on a path to fiscal sanity.  Would it that your good friend from the Senate class of 2004 could do the same.

UPDATE:  I’m concerned he’s back to backing the Gang of Six Plan — even if the plan’s details remain murky.

Today in 1993, President Clinton signed one of the most landmark anti-gay rights laws ever passed in the United States of America — the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law.

Gay leftist revisionist history types like to blame Republicans in Congress for *making* Clinton sign a law.

FACT: Democrats controlled the US House under Bill Clinton until 1995

FACT: THE leading elected official advocating for outright ban of gays in military and then DADT was US Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA)

FACT: Bill Clinton ran radio ads in his 1996 re-election campaign heralding his support of DADT and the Defense of Marriage Act

Facts are stubborn things.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Tired of the rat race in New York City, Jonathan and Marc, respectively a designer and lawyer, decided to convert a Victorian mansion in the Hudson Valley into a bed and breakfast.  They’d always wanted to convert an adjacent barn into a banquet and reception facility.

With the state legislature passing a law recognizing same-sex marriages, they decide to do so and bill their place as a facility celebrating such unions.  With his legal background, Marc will even facilitate the paperwork for out-of-state couples.

Given Jonathan’s skill as a designer, soon their facility gains a name for itself.  Couples from across the country flock there.  Soon, a straight couple see pictures of a gay couple’s ceremony and wants to have their nuptials performed there.  Jonathan balks, preferring only to accommodate gay and lesbian unions.  Marc agrees with the sentiment, but warns of the legal consequences, saying that if they refuse the straight couple, they would run afoul with the state’s non-discrimination law.

And this is where laws designed to further equality limit our freedom, even that of gay and lesbian individuals. Marc is probably right.

Just as Jonathan and Marc should be free to choose the types of unions they celebrate at their private establishment, so too should a Christian photographer in New Mexico be free to refuse to photograph a same-sex commitment ceremony.  We may not like their choices and may contend that their preferences do not represent sound business practices, but allowing them to choose for themselves how to run their own enterprises is essential to free enterprise.

Those who would demand that the hypothetical New York gay couple — and the very real New Mexico photographer — be required to serve certain individuals manifest their own authoritarian streak, that they can better decide for these individuals how to run their business than can the proprietors themselves.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  Rob Tisinai, with whom I don’t always see eye to eye, offers a “counter-example” which echoes my point:

. . . a gay wedding photographer who doesn’t want to shoot a wedding held in a church that works hard to deprive him of his marriage rights — forcing him to photograph such a wedding is adding insult to injury. As it happens, many people don’t believe me when I tell them the same laws that forbid a photographer from discriminating based on sexual orientation also forbid photographers from discriminating based on religion (and vice versa, of course). But it’s true.

Exactly.

“Why,” Jennifer Rubin asks, “do we think the Senate Democrats never put forth their own budget?”

They have a batch of members up for re-election in red states. These senators certainly don’t want to be on record for a tax hike. And hence, in their minds, it is better to do nothing than reveal that sentiment in their ranks.

*And where’s the media outrage at their dereliction of duty?

“Clearly, Jefferson’s own conception of individual freedom,” Joseph J. Ellis wrote in his study of the Virginian, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson in the decade after Ronald Reagan’s presidency and before the rise of the New American Tea Party, “was more restricted than modern day notions”:

His vision was essentially negative:  freedom from encroachments by either church or state.  It was all a piece with his antig0vernment and therefore incompatible with our* contemporary conviction about personal entitlements, whether it be for a decent standard of living, a comfortable retirement or adequate health care, all of which depend on precisely the kind of government sponsorship he would have found intrusive.  His was the freedom to be left alone, which has more in common with twentieth-century claims to privacy rights than more aggressive claims to political or economic power.

That vision closely parallels my own — and I would daresay that of many conservatives today, including a certain Mr. R. Reagan and many who join the various Tea Party protests.

* (more…)

Both an Angeleno gay libertarian (with whom I have become recently acquainted via Facebook) and one of my favorite bloggers Jim Geraghty have taken note of Wynn Resorts CEO Steve Wynn’s “passionate criticism” of the president’s economic policies:

And I’m saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration.And it makes you slow down and not invest your money. Everybody complains about how much money is on the side in America. . . .

Pretty much sums up, though in a far more colorful fashion the standard critique fiscal conservatives have been leveling at the incumbent administration, that it has created a climate of regulatory uncertainty, if not outright anxiety; the job creators don’t know what the government is going to do next.  And they fear its next move may make it more difficult for them to innovate, expand and hire new employees.

RELATED: Carter: Economic Stagnation Explained, at 30,000 Feet

According to Fred Barnes, instead of using his meetings with congressional leaders to craft a plan to solve the national debt crisis, the president has been lecturing Republicans:

In the private talks, he’s dominated the discussion with the eight most senior members of Congress in an overbearing way not likely to lead to compromise. He’s been argumentative. He’s come across as President Blowhard.

After [Gene B.] Sperling [Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President] briefed the group on the deficit cap proposal, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi addressed another subject. When a Republican participant criticized the deficit cap, Obama interrupted with a monologue. When the Republican tried to speak a second time, the president quickly cut him off and delivered another sermon on why the criticism was wrong.

Obama has taken the tack that he must respond to everything that’s said, whether by a Republican, a Democrat, or even Biden. And his responses, like those in his press conferences, are never brief. But who’s going to complain about Obama’s verbosity, at least in his presence? He’s the president.

As if the issue were Obama’s “honor” not what he once called “our Government’s reckless fiscal policies“.

A reader alerted me to something a Senator B. Obama said in 2006 when, during a Republican administration, a Republican Congress was considering raising the debt ceiling.  I googled the expression and found it here:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better.

Since uttering those words, that Senator has risen to become President of the United States.  And under his leadership, federal debt increased at a faster pace than under the much-maligned George W. Bush.

You’re right, Mr. Obama, Americans do deserve better.  At the time, you made that statement, federal deficits had been declining.  And now they’ve skyrocketed.  Guess the buck doesn’t stop with you, given that we haven’t seen your plan end our Government’s reckless fiscal policies.

In a thoughtful critique/commentary of my post on On Marcus Bachmann and “conversion therapy”*, Jim Burroway explores those programs’ supposed one-third success rate.  Let me stress that in my post, I provided multiple caveats because I believe it to be inflated.

While I don’t agree with everything Burroway says in that post, I do recommend it as he raises a number of important issues.

In his first paragraph, he writes that I “didn’t exactly defend ex-gay therapy per se”.**  I trust he recognizes that my expression about the right of Christian groups to set up such programs stems from my basic libertarian principles, the rights of individuals to establish their own organizations and associate with whom they please.

That said, as per my previous post, I remain dubious about the effectiveness of these programs.  I believe it is an open question whether their “therapy” is even effective in the handful of successful “conversions.”  Were they successful in changing these individuals sexuality or would that change have occurred organically, that is, without their intervention?

Given the complexity of human sexuality, I lean toward the latter view, that some people have a more “fluid” sexuality than others.  And these individuals seek out such programs because they feel that while the word “gay” once described their emotional/sexual longings, it no longer works to describe their changing emotions.

* (more…)

Another smart move from our friends at GOProud.

Instead of demagoguing Michele Bachmann’s stance on gay issues, Chris Barron, chairman of the group’s board, who like yours truly, is “concerned about comments Bachmann has made about gay people and . . . troubled by her support for a federal marriage amendment“, is requesting a meeting with the outspoken Minnesota Republican:

As gay-issue advocacy groups increase pressure on Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann over her views about homosexuality, the gay conservative group GOProud is requesting a meeting with the Republican presidential candidate to possibly lend a hand. . . .

“We have requested a meeting with Michele Bachmann,” LaSalvia told The Ticket. “We’ve made this request, as with the other requests, in good faith.” He said GOProud officials intend to “discuss issues important to gay conservatives” with Bachmann and “anything she wishes to talk about.”

Well, let’s hope that the line about lending a hand was a bit of reporter Chris Moody’s rhetorical embellishment.

Perhaps, if gay people approach Mrs. Bachmann with a mind to civil discourse (instead of berating her in a demagogic fashion), they might succeed in changing her views on homosexuality.   Yeah, maybe it’s just a hope that a civil meeting could effect a change, but, heck, Democrats based an entire political campaign on such sentiments.

It could also help for her to learn that gay conservatives, like those Tea Party members who have made her their heroine, support small government and personal freedom and don’t turn to the state to solve our problems or resolve social issues.

ADDENDUM:  Oh, and one more thing.  To those who criticize this move, do you have a better plan to try to get Mrs. Bachmann to change her views on homosexuality?

As Democrats continue to demagogue the debt ceiling debate, we need to do things to see exactly where the president’s party is coming from.

First, we should bear in mind that when Congress considered the debt ceiling in 2006 with a Mr. George W. Bush was in the White House, not one single Senate Democrat (yes, you read that right), not one single Senate Democrat voted to raise the debt limit.  Guess having the federal government default is just jim-dandy (and also possibly peachy-keen) when a Republican is in the White House.

Oh, and, a Mr. B.H. Obama was then a member of the Senate’s Democratic caucus.

The second thing we need do is to ask a simple question. And for this question (via Gateway Pundit), I turn to the junior Senator from the Sunshine State, a Mr. M. Rubio:

OK, so where’s the plan? Where’s the president’s plan? I’ve never seen a piece of paper with the president’s name on it that’s his plan to solve this crisis. I’ve seen press conferences. I’ve seen lectures that he’s given to the Congress. I’ve seen these press avails where the camera comes in and takes a bunch of pictures. I haven’t seen a plan. Where is the president’s plan?“

Oh, and remember that 36-hour deadline the president was giving House Republicans to come up with a plan, a deadline which they wisely did not meet? Why did the president not come up with his own plan in that timeframe?

He was asking Republicans to do something that he himself refused to do. Guess that’s what you call leading from behind?

On Facebook, my friend Kelly Young asks a good question:

So what exactly is the difference between Brit tabloids stealing voicemails for their stories and U.S. media happily accepting WikiLeaks docs that everyone knows have been stolen? “It’s not my pot, Mom. I’m just holding it for a friend.”

Maybe it’s that the owner of said tabloids is high on the left’s list of approved demons?

Ever since I got caught in the Cahuenga Pass when the Hollywood Bowl was exiting, I have striven to find alternative routes when returning to my apartment from evening events in the Valley (when the Bowl is in season).  Similarly, I try not to drive up Highland (toward the Bowl) when heading out on evenings when I know there will be an event there.

In short, when the Bowl is in season, I search for alternative routes to the San Fernando Valley.

And so it is with all of us who live in LA.  If we know there’s going to be traffic in a certain region at a certain time, we either avoid travel at that time or find an alternative route.

That is why the so-called Carmageddon was not the catastrophe that many forecast — and feared.  People made alternative arrangements.  The roads, as many of my friends reported, were no worse than on any other weekend (and in some cases, traffic flowered more smoothly.)

A friend experienced heavier-than-usual traffic on the Thursday before the alleged traffic nightmare.  Perhaps that’s because people were running errands — or getting out of town — so they wouldn’t have to be on the road when portions of the 405 closed.

So maybe all the hype served its purpose.  It kept us off the roads this past weekend.

RELATED:  L.A.’S “CARMAGEDDON:” A big nothing?

Rudy Giuliani, my guy for 2008, reminds Republicans where our focus should be:

“I think the Republican Party would be well advised to get the heck out of people’s bedrooms and let these things [e.g., gay marriage] get decided by states,” Giuliani said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’d be a much more successful political party if we stuck to our economic, conservative roots.”

It does seem that the one upside of Obama’s big-government ways is that it has kept the GOP, by and large, centered on the small-government ideas that have defined the American conservative movement at least since the ascendancy of Barry Goldwater in 1964.

The Tea Party has certainly helped out*.

My only quibble with the former NYC Mayor’s comment is his use of the conditional, “We’d be,” he said, “a much more successful political party if we stuck to our economic, conservative roots.” (Emphasis added.)  I’d use either the present or past tense her, to note how the GOP has been more successful when it sticks to those roots, as many Republicans were in the 2010 elections.

*RELATED: Gay marriage not priority to NH Tea Party Protesters

Yesterday, while doing cardio at my gym, I received yet another lesson in the bias of CNN.  When I looked up from my book, I found Wolf Blitzer breathlessly reporting on the latest controversy swirling around Michelle Bachmann’s campaign.

Now, let me make clear (yet again) that I have some serious concerns about Mrs. Bachmann and do not back her bid for the Republican presidential nomination. I do, to be sure, appreciate her commitment to small government ideals and her ability to articulate her convictions.

Yet, as I watched Blitzer detail the allegations against her husband’s “Christian counseling business”, that, as per my previous post, allegedly  ”uses a controversial therapy that encourages homosexual patients to change their sexual orientation“, I wondered at the media obsession with this charismatic politician.  At this point in the 2008 election cycle, indeed at any point in that cycle, did Mr. Blitzer — or anyone at CNN for that matter — engage in such critical scrutiny of then-Senator Barack Obama, then a candidate for the Democratic nomination?

The CNN report was not about Mrs. Bachmann’s activities, but her husband’s.

Now, as I recall, Mr. Obama did succeed in securing an earmark (i.e., money from the federal government) for the hospital where his wife worked and subsequently received a substantial raise.  There appeared to be a pretty clear connection between his wife’s professional advancement and his official duties.

This is not to say that this information about Mr. Bachmann is irrelevant.  It is indeed relevant.  And it relates to one (of the many) concerns I have about his wife’s bid for the White House.  But, this is simply to point out the bias of CNN, more interested in allegations against the husband of a Republican presidential candidate than in evidence of a Democratic presidential candidate using federal money to help his wife. (more…)

Before I post on the accusations leveled against the “Christian counseling business” of Michelle Bachmann’s husband Marcus, an outfit that (allegedly) uses “a controversial therapy that encourages homosexual patients to change their sexual orientation,” let me reiterate my views on such outfits.

First, Christian groups have every right to set up such companies, provided they do not coerce anyone to enter treatment.

Second, critics of such outfits continue to have the freedom to question the methods of said companies and should continue to exercise that freedom.

While many programs do claim some success in “converting” their charges, they are dealing with a self-selected group; those who have “succeeded” in changing their orientation may have already been disposed to such change, that is, their sexuality is more fluid that it is for most of us.  Whereas in their youth, they found themselves drawn to their own sex, as they age, they find themselves drawn to the other sex.

Could it be that they didn’t so much convert them as they helped them accept the change that has already taken place? (more…)

Briefly caught the president’s presser. He seemed very defensive and subdued, almost as if he was trying to conceal a certain anger.

Toward the end, he seemed to be dwelling on the need to make investments in infrastructure. Um, Mr. President, wasn’t that what that $800 billion “stimulus” was supposed to be about? You know those shovel-ready projects (that we learned later weren’t really shovel-ready)?

He also, nearly two-and-one=half years after George W. Bush left the White House, blamed his predecessor for the mess we’re in, saying that we cut taxes without paying for them. Well, Mr. President, you signed off on continuing the tax rates set in the Bush years.

And he didn’t offer any specifics of the cuts he wanted.

He was concerned that we had pushed this so close to the deadline. Well, if he was so concerned about default, why didn’t he ask Congress to increase the debt limit when he signed onto their “stimulus” plan which ramped up federal spending?

And she’s far more biased that Bret Baier.

What was it all the Bush-critics said about how W just couldn’t tolerate dissent.   Just caught this in the Huffington Post, White House Emails Show Staffer Calling Fox News’ Bret Baier A ‘Lunatic’:

A cache of emails released by a conservative watchdog group on Thursday shows White House staffers complaining about Fox News and calling one of its anchors a “lunatic.”

Judicial Watch released 81 pages of email correspondence from October 2009 that it obtained through a FOIA request. The emails mostly show the back-and-forth between various White House aides, Treasury Department staffers and members of the media over a series of interviews with Kenneth Feinberg, who had been tapped to provide oversight of the TARP bailout program.

One email shows a White House staffer emailing a Treasury colleague, saying it would be better “if you skip Fox News” in a group of media outlets that was conducting a pooled interview with Feinberg.

Kudos to Huffington Post (which normally flacks for the White House) for publishing this stuff.

Does seem that a lot of stuff we heard about George W. Bush and his team better applies to that good man’s successor and his team.

As I’m sure you can imagine, I have a good deal to say on my governor’s signing legislation “requiring public schools to include the contributions of people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender in social studies curriculum.”

But, I’ve got a lot on my plate right now.  And a lot on my mind.   So, I’ll just offer some quick thoughts and excerpt a post that pretty much echoes my thoughts.  Basically, we shouldn’t include such contributions just because they were made by gay and lesbian people, nor should we exclude contributions just because they were made by gay and lesbian individuals.

The issue is not the group to which the individual who made the contribution belonged, but the value of the contribution.

That is, we shouldn’t include some minor, insignificant poet in school curricula just because he’s gay, but, shouldn’t exclude Walt Whitman because he was drawn (emotionally, sensually, sexually) to individuals of his own sex.  We should study Whitman because he’s a great poet (perhaps indeed the greatest American poet).

And when teaching Whitman’s poetry or the prose of Oscar Wilde, teachers could reference these artists’ sexuality so that students can better appreciate their work.  Indeed, knowledge of these two writers’ sexuality provides both a window into their creative process and a means to deepen students’ understanding of the stories they tell, the imagery they use and the ideas they convey.

But, is legislation necessary to do that?  I’m skeptical.  So too is my pal Sonicfrog who knows what it’s like to teach students.  He thinks ”this is absolutely NUTS!”

What exactly are they going to teach?

Harvey Milk?

OK. I have no problem with giving him a mention. That was a somewhat landmark election.

Stonewall Riots?

That’s already taught in the Civil Rights curriculum and was included in the text book I was using while student teaching my social sciences classes.

Read the whole thing.

. . . , a friend of mine said tonight, that because I’m gay, I’m also a Democrat.

It does seem a lot of people make that assumption.