National Politics
If you missed it last week, Daniel Henninger’s Thursday column makes some interesting points: It has been argued in this column before that the origins of our European-like polarization can be found in the Florida legal contest at the end of the 2000 Bush-Gore presidential campaign. That was a mini civil war. With the popular…
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell writes: While most of the media were busy covering the latest developments on the Iraq funding bill or the bipartisan immigration proposal, congressional Democrats on Thursday quietly passed a budget creating the framework for the largest tax increases in American history… Everyone takes a hit. Forty-five million working families with two…
Yup, they sure are changing things down there in D.C. Drudge reports: After losing a string of embarrassing votes on the House floor because of procedural maneuvering, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has decided to change the current House Rules to completely shut down the floor to the minority. The Democratic Leadership is threatening…
The Heritage Foundation has done an analysis of the new House Budget crafted by the Democratic majority in Washington and concluded that it means higher taxes across the board. Their reasoning: The House leadership has proposed to increase spending over the next five years. Given the leadership’s avowed commitment to paying for spending increases, tax…
Not exactly. There are, however, potential Electoral College ramifications for states that choose to participate. The Interstate Voting Compact is an attempt to bypass the Electoral College and elect the President of the United States through a direct popular vote. A state legislature signing on to the compact agrees to disregard the choice made by…
Michael Barone in the Wall Street Journal: It has become a commonplace to say that population has been flowing from the Snow Belt to the Sun Belt, from an industrially ailing East and Midwest to an economically vibrant West and South. But the actual picture of recent growth, as measured by the 2000 Census and…
Jim Baron has an op-ed in today’s Pawtucket Times where he discusses a possible improvement to the Presidential primary system (and once again, Rhode Island Secretary of State Ralph Mollis seems to be at the cutting edge of reform)…Secretary of State Ralph Mollis, a Democrat, has embraced a plan put forward by the National Association…
Andrew spoke for all of us at Anchor Rising when he made a vow to not discuss a certain political event, and those who aim to be deeply involved in said event, until the actual event was much closer. It seems we are not alone. Here’s The Anchoress (no relation ;): I resent like hell…
In addition to talking about Iraq with Dan Yorke, Congressman Langevin also talked about Speaker Pelosi’s recent botched Syrian excursion and said she was following the precepts of the Iraq Study Group report (PDF). While Langevin condemned the regimes of both Iran and Syria, he also offered that–as per the Iraq Study Group–pragmatic diplomacy was…
Some proponents of having the Electoral College replaced by a National Popular Vote to elect the President write: In today’s climate of partisan polarization, the current system shuts out most of the country from meaningful participation by turning naturally “purple” states into simple “red” and “blue.” The result is a declining number of Americans who…