By: Chuck Muth
Citizen Outreach

FOUNDING FATHERS TO THE RESCUE

“Freedom has had its best week in many years. On Tuesday, Massachusetts put a Senate check on a reckless Congress, and yesterday the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision supporting free political speech by overturning some of Congress’s more intrusive limits on election spending. In a season of marauding government, the Constitution rides to the rescue one more time.”

– Wall Street Journal editorial, 1/22/10

FREE SPEECH FREED

“The Supreme Court’s sweeping decision invalidating parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law will also invalidate the laws of some 22 states that restrict political expenditures of corporations and unions.”

– John Fund, 1/22/10

LIBERAL TALK RADIO: RIP

“Air America Media is closing its doors, with the company set to file for Chapter 7 soon and wind down its business. The last live programming was set to air Thursday afternoon. In a memo that went to to Air America Media staff on Thursday, company Chair Charlie Kireker…said the company’s ‘painstaking search for new investors has come close several times right up into this week, but ultimately fell short of success.’

“…Air America launched in 2004 with now-Senator Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo among its headlining personalities and during its eventful history saw frequent financial troubles and a previous Chapter 11 filing, in 2006.”

– Radio Ink Magazine, 1/21/10

SOMETIMES GOOD THINGS COME IN THREES

“Bad news for liberals appears to come in threes this week. First the political earthquake in Massachusetts. Then yesterday’s news that the Supreme Court was eviscerating portions of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, an icon of liberal statism. Finally, word arrived that Air America, the uber-liberal talk radio network set up in 2005 by sympathetic investors, was going into Chapter 7 bankruptcy.”

– John Fund, Political Diary, 1/22/10

TEABAGGERS AND REPUBLICANS WHO HATE BROWN PEOPLE

“Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a Democratic strategist and founder of the left-wing blog ‘The Daily Kos,’ told reporters Thursday that ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ legislation providing a ‘pathway to citizenship’ for illegal aliens has a good shot at passage this year. But Moulitsas said ‘teabaggers’ and Republicans who ‘hate brown people’ would try to push back against it, and he said the issue would expose a rift within the Republican Party.”

– CNS News, 1/22/10

SEISMIC SHIFTS

“President Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points on Nov. 4, 2008. Fifteen months later, on Jan. 19, 2010, the eve of the first anniversary of his inauguration, his party’s candidate lost Massachusetts by five points. That’s a 31-point shift. Mr. Obama won Virginia by six points in 2008. A year later, on Nov. 2, 2009, his party’s candidate for governor lost by 18 points—a 25 point shift. Mr. Obama won New Jersey in 2008 by 16 points. In 2009 his party’s incumbent governor lost re-election by four points—a 20-point shift.”

– Columnist Peggy Noonan

NUTS VS. CREEPS

“If you were a normal human sitting at home having a beer and watching national politics peripherally, as normal people do until they focus on an election, chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the bed, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps. The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency.”

– Columnist Peggy Noonan

“DUH” – ANOTHER INTELLIGENCE BLUNDER

“Earlier this month, White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan wrote a damning memo on the government’s failure to ‘connect the dots’ in the days before Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded a Christmas day flight to Detroit. On Wednesday, Dennis Blair delivered an equally damning verdict on the government’s handling of the terrorist after he was apprehended.

“The Director of National Intelligence told the Senate that by immediately handing Abdulmutallab to the civilian justice system, the government all but slammed the door on its ability to interrogate him thoroughly. Specifically, the feds failed to avail themselves of a unit called the High-Value Interrogation Group, or HIG, which Mr. Blair says was created ‘to make a decision on whether a certain person who’s detained should be treated as a case for federal prosecution or for some of the other means.’

“’We did not invoke the HIG in this case; we should have,’ Mr. Blair said. ‘Frankly, we were thinking more of overseas people and, duh, you know, we didn’t put it [in action] here.’

“That’s our emphasis, and we put it there to underscore the scale of the intelligence blunder that was committed when Abdulmutallab was remanded to FBI custody, where he reportedly talked to investigators until advised by counsel not to. Now the government’s only hope for Abdulmutallab to say a bit more is via a plea bargain, by which time his intelligence leads will likely have run cold.”

– Review & Outlook, Wall Street Journal, 1/22/10

WANNA CREATE MORE JOBS?

“Democrats, generally, have never launched and run a small business in today’s smothering regulatory environment. Most of them don’t even know, for example, that the withholding tax is twice what you see on your paycheck stub — your employer could otherwise by paying YOU the tax known as the ‘employer match.’ What is the justification for this penalty, imposed on anyone who dares create a job, right down to the smallest pizza shop?

“If Democrats want to launch a ‘jobs program,’ why not just repeal the ‘employer payroll withholding match’? In fact, what is the justification for forcing any employer to serve as an unpaid tax collector? Why not just repeal any and all ‘payroll withholding’ obligations, instead requiring each worker to simply mail in a check for his or her $10,000 — or whatever — each April 15?”

– Columnist Vin Suprynowicz

ADDITIONAL READING

  • Citizens United v. FEC – Opportunities for Participation Grow (Benjamin L. Ginsberg) – American campaigns and elections will change dramatically as a result of Thursday’s Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC. The opinion provides new opportunities for many players in the process, but includes some large pitfalls for candidates and the political parties.
  • The Lessons of Massachusetts (Newt Gingrich) – Scott Brown had the courage to serve for years in a small minority in the Massachusetts legislature. He had the courage to serve for 20 years and become a lieutenant colonel in the Massachusetts Army Reserve. He had the courage to run for the Senate seat which no Republican has won since Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. in 1946.
  • Unions Support Obama’s War Against Banks (Warner Todd Huston) – According to The Hill, “several union officials” plan to make Obama’s newest attack on America’s banking industry part of their criteria for determining which candidates to support for 2010. So, the unions want to use support for this economy killing tax as a criteria for supporting a candidate.
  • Conservatives: Beware of McCain Regression Syndrome (Michelle Malkin) – Pay attention: In the afterglow of the Massachusetts Miracle, there are flickers of peril for the right. Conservatives have worked hard to rebuild after Big Government Republican John McCain’s defeat. But after a career spent bashing the right flank of the party, McCain is now clinging to its coattails to save his incumbent hide.

FAMOUS LAST WORDS

“I believe there is a limit beyond which free speech cannot go, but it’s a limit that’s very seldom mentioned. It’s the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy. I don’t think there are any other conditions to free speech. I’ve got a right to say and believe anything I please, but I haven’t got a right to press it on anybody else … Nobody’s got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors.”

– H.L. Mencken