HALF-FULL REPORT 12/17/10

There comes a time upon reaching a certain age when the two most wonderful words you can hear are, "It’s benign."

That happened to me after a surgical procedure yesterday (I had a tumor wrapped round my vocal cord like a snake), and it prompts me to start this week’s HFR with a request.

The TTP Forum has long benefited from the wit and wisdom of "Mae" – Lynda Mae Calhoun.  Like so many other TTPers, I always look forward to her Forum comments and insights on various articles.

Mae lives in Vancouver, Washington (just across the Columbia River from Portland).  Next week – just three days before Christmas on the 22^nd at the Southwest Washington Medical Center – Mae faces major surgery the cause of which may be a malignancy.

She’s going to face this alone, save for a handful of nieces and nephews – and I’d like to ask you to let Mae know via the Forum that she is not alone, that her TTP Family is praying for her.  Prayer is such a powerful healing force, especially at Christmas time.  Let’s be sure she knows:  our prayers are with you, Mae!

*  *  *  *  *
The HFR was in no doubt about who should be dubbed the Hero of the Week – until last night, when another contender emerged.  We’ll get to that in a moment.

I remember when Morton Blackwell, founder of the great incubator of conservative leaders, The Leadership Institute, some ten years ago introduced me to a young fellow Morton said was really going places.  He was barely 30 years old, had a small law practice in Fairfax, Virginia, and was considering running for a seat in the Virginia State Senate.

Since Morton is one of the best conservative talent scouts there’s ever been, I paid attention – and, wow, was he right about this guy.  He won that Virginia senate seat in 2002, won again in 2007 (by 98 votes out of 37,000 cast), and a year ago (11/09) was elected Virginia’s State Attorney General.  His name is Ken Cuccinelli.

We all know his name now – for his brilliant argument won the day in federal court on Monday (12/13) against Obamacare.  Just how brilliant was made clear by legal genius Richard Epstein explaining Cuccinelli’s end run past liberalism’s hitherto impenetrable obstacle to constitutionally-restricted government, Wickard v. Filburn.

(See Roscoe and Roberts from July 2005 on this 1942 Supreme Court decision which forms, according to the Washington Post, "the backbone of the modern regulatory state.")

Obamacare’s claim to constitutionality is specifically based on Wickard.  Rather than going straight up against the precedent, Cuccinelli argued that, as Epstein explains,

"all Wickard stands for is the proposition that if a farmer decides to grow wheat, he cannot feed it to his own cows if a law of Congress says otherwise.  It does not say that the farmer must grow wheat in order that the federal government will have something to regulate."

This is the argument that persuaded Judge Henry Hudson to rule against Obamacare.  Cuccinelli has now put the government, Epstein further explains, "in a real pickle": 

"Virginia has drawn a clear line that accounts for all the existing cases, so that no precedent has to be overruled to strike down this legislation.  On the other hand, to uphold it invites the government to force me to buy everything from exercise machines to bicycles, because there is always some good that the coercive use of state authority can advance."

Because Gov. Bob McDonnell is term-limited, he cannot run again in 2014.  The odds are high that Ken Cuccinelli, now 42, will be Virginia’s next governor.  Here’s more about Ken.  The HFR especially likes the part about "Protecting Virginia from the Power of the Federal Government."  That and the law he sponsored, HB1033/SB602 establishing:

"for the purpose of homicide, the fact that a human infant has an independent and separate existence regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut or the placenta remains attached."

*  *  *  *  *
So who could possibly compete with Ken for Hero of the Week?  GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell, who last night threw Harry Reid under his own Omnibus.

Little Harry had it all figured out, how to snooker the Pubs into falling for his $1.2 trillion 1,924 page Ultimate Porker Bill.  He got Old Danny Inouye, chairman of Senate Appropriations, to add in every single earmark every Pub senator had ever requested over the past year, targeting nine earmark junkies like Thad Cochran (MS), Bob Bennett (UT), Susan Collins (ME), and Lisa Murkowski (AK) with well over $1 billion in pork.

When all nine told Danny and Harry they were in, the Dems popped open the champagne.  The Republican Revolution against them was over before it even started.  Then yesterday, McConnell had a little talk with the Nine Porkers.  Whatever mix of threats and persuasion he used worked, for by the end of the day, all nine told Harry they were out, and wouldn’t vote for cloture (ending debate and allowing a simple majority vote).

Harry had to surrender, and in place of his $1.2 trillion for Dems to spend for another year, there’s McConnell’s single page Continuing Resolution that sustains government funding only through February 18^th – after which Republicans will be in charge of spending.

Mitch McConnell rescued any chance for a pro-American revolution to succeed last night.  The HFR has no choice but to announce two Heroes of the Week.

*  *  *  *  *
There are also two Honorable Mentions.  First is the HFR’s favorite General, David Petraeus.  Check out this report on Afghan Ultraviolence:  Petraeus has more than tripled the air war upon the Taliban and Al Qaeda, going after the bastards big time. 

And to man up about it, the HFR has to give credit to Petraeus’ boss for backing him.

The second HM goes to a guy in Wisconsin named Russ Decker.  The Dem-controlled Wisconsin state senate is currently in a lame-duck session, and trying to ram through sweetheart labor contracts for the state workers’ union before Republicans take over on January 3 and block them.

(The current state senate roster is 18D-15R – on January 3 control will flip to 19R-14D, as will the state assembly from 50D-45R to 60R-38D.  Plus the new governor is a Tea Party Republican, Scott Walker.)

The vote on the contracts came up Wednesday (12/15), with the state assembly passing them 48-47 by the Dems getting the deciding vote, Jeff Wood, out of jail on a drunk driving charge.  But when the senate voted later in the day, the Senate Majority Leader balked, saying it was wrong for lame-duckers to do this after the voters spoke on Nov 2^nd, persuaded another colleague to vote no, and the public workers’ scam went down in flames.

The man who balked is Russ Decker, and yes, he’s a Democrat.  But he’s the senate leader no more, for yesterday the Dems fired him in revenge.  The HFR is pleased to salute an honest Democrat, Russ Decker.  Since, however, an honest Democrat is an oxy-moron, he’s likely to switch parties in January.

*  *  *  *  *
There’s a term coming into use as a more accurate description of the "mainstream media," AKA the "lamestream" or "leftstream" media.  It’s enemedia – as in enemy of freedom, enemy of America, enemy of honesty, truth, common decency and morality.  The HFR will use the term from now on.

The American Dialect Society is unlikely to anoint "enemedia" as its Word of the Year (WOTY) for 2011, an annual award given to the most important word or phrase in wide public use since 1991.  E.g., in 1992 it was Not! (as in "just kidding"), 2003 was metrosexual, 2007 was subprime, and 2009 was tweet.

(The 2010 WOTY hasn’t been declared – the HFR votes for refudiate, the conflation of refute and repudiate coined by Sarah Palin.)

So here’s a prediction – and heads up, Jason (Mitch Rapp on the Forum), this is going to make you happy.  By the end of next year, the WOTY for 2011 will be… defund.

Conservatives like Michele Bachmann (R-MN) are using it:  "defund Planned Parenthood."  But you know it’s catching on when even RINOs like KBH (Kay Bailey Hutchinson – R-TX) use it: "defund net neutrality."

Republicans, with control of Congress but not the White House, are figuring out the Other Golden Rule:  He who has the gold makes the rules.  Further, they seem to be getting the message on Nov. 2^nd of constitutional conservatism. 

Thus, they will be adopting a constitutional test requiring all proposed legislation to specify the enumerated power in the Constitution authorizing it.  Once they get used to this, it’s a quick jump to applying it to Zero’s Executive Orders and Regulatory Agency rules.  Indeed, KBH has already make the jump with the FCC.

To make Jason even happier, the other half of his Defund and Disobey website may take off next year as well.  Take a look at the list of Obamacare waivers 111 companies and unions have received. 

There is no possible rational distinction between them and another 111 organizations picked at random.  Since the waiver is granted arbitrarily (meaning according to political pull), any shareholder in a company not granted a waiver can demand at a shareholder’s meeting that the company grant itself a waiver, i.e., disobey.

Imagine if thousands of Tea Party shareholders showed up at hundreds of company shareholder meetings and did this.  Disobedience to purely arbitrary government edicts lacking any rational or legal basis could really catch on.

*  *  *  *  *
Here’s something nice to look at.  Lots of comparisons are being made between the Republican victories of 1994 and 2010.  Turns out, while 1994 was historic in that it ended 62 years of Dem monopoly control of the House (the ‘46-48 and ‘52-54 interregnums don’t count), 2010 was far more substantial.  Take a look.  This is a state delegation map of the 1994 results (majority of Congressmen in a state: red/GOP, blue/Dem, yellow/split even):

This is the state delegation map of the 2010 results:

And the map will get redder in 2012 (expect Gov-elect Susana Martinez to take New Mexico red for example).  The GOP has been handed a House majority for a generation on a platter – if only it doesn’t slip through its fingers covered in pig grease.

*  *  *  *  *
Isn’t this a thrilling headline?  Cancun Climate Change Deal Falls Flat, Kyoto Protocol on Life Support.  Watermelon Marxism is dying right before our eyes and it’s such a beautiful sight.  Oh, the wailing and gnashing of liberal teeth as they see Warmism as the great substitute for Marxism as their rationale for controlling people’s lives go up in, ah, carbon smoke.

Their bitterness remains dangerous and deadly, however.  It’s a principal cause of the unhinged rage we’ve been treated to lately by the Law Firm from Hell.

This is the legal firm of Hubris, Hate, Fascism, and Envy.  It’s a real firm, it exists, and it’s running our country until its members are dragged out of their office called the Capitol Building on January 4.

Their power and ability to do grave damage to our country is coming to an end and they are determined to have their revenge.  They may get it this weekend, thanks to RINOs Collins, Snowe, Murkowski, and Brown (yes, Downtown Scotty Brown, from hero to bum), who say they will vote to homosexualize the military.

Harry Reid’s legal firm is trying for one last trifecta of evil, for in addition, they will try to castrate our missile defense via the New START treaty, and legalize illegal aliens via their Orwellian-named DREAM Act. 

A treaty requires 67 votes in the Senate, so that’s the least likely to succeed.  It will be touch and go with amnesty. 

The words of Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) come to mind.  What we call a Lame Duck session of Congress, 17^th century England called a Rump Parliament.  In April, 1653, Cromwell addressed these words to such a Rump Parliament, and all America should repeat them now to the Lame Schmucks:

"You have been sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!"

*  *  *  *  *
One week from today is Christmas Eve.  By then – hopefully – the Democrat Nightmare will finally be over.  A final reminder for last minute presents – you can’t go wrong with:

*Dr. Joel Wade’s Pocket Guide to Mastering Happiness

*A Gift Subscription to To The Point

*A copy of The Jade Steps

*  *  *  *  *
We close this HFR with this Christmas present – the stunningly beautiful voices of The Celtic Women singing O Holy Night in concert in Dublin, Ireland: