Now I am not endorsing any candidate for College Republican National Committee, but this is the first hard proof of just downright ugliness. The letter above went out to people across the country, and I know the classic line of “everyone” does it. But to make some old lady thinks she is getting mail from the White House is just welll… wayyy below ethical standards.

I know people will say that if we live up to standards we’ll lose money. I guess, maybe that’s true though certainly people raise money without being 100% misleading about it. Just my 2 cents.

A classmate informed me there was an “event” for Howard Dean last night (Ash Wednesday) at Capitol City Brewery in DC. Byron York chronicles it here. I asked if it was a fundraiser or a rally, and they informed me that it was “essentially party for his unopposed victory as DNC chairman.” The Democrats sure love to booze, feast and boogy down on a sacred religious day that observant Catholics spend fasting. But then again this was a party for a man who said his favorite book of the New Testament was Job.

Fellow “Democrat” Jim Jeffords was there in attendance as well.

Must read National Review article here.
Some excerpts:

Phillip Longman’s new book, The Empty Cradle, features a striking comparison between fertility rates in Utah and Vermont. According to Longman, in Utah, where 69 percent of residents are Mormon, 90 children are born every year for every 1,000 women of child-bearing age. Longman pointedly contrasts this to Vermont, “the only state to send a socialist to congress, and the first to embrace gay unions,” which produces only 49 children per 1,000 women of child bearing age. But Riley’s study makes me wonder how long the discrepancy will be this large, and how many states other than Utah it will apply to. Maybe Longman’s comparison is a bit misleading, since Mormons seem to stress early marriage more intensely than other religious groups. Again, I think the religious red states will continue to out-reproduce our secular cities. But it could well be that the degree of difference — and with it, America’s overall fertility rate — is destined to fall.

So long as women continue to pursue graduate education and serious careers in large numbers, the fertility rate will go down. From the third world to the United States, nothing correlates more closely with reduced fertility than greater education for women. And worldwide, the trend toward more education for women and falling fertility rates cuts across all cultures and religions. The red states may slow this trend, but in the absence of a demographically induced economic crisis (all too possible), the direction of fertility seems to be downward. Even so, if falling fertility precipitates the sort of economic-cultural crisis I discuss in “Demography and the Culture Wars,” traditional religious ideas about marriage and family will still be around — and could easily enough be revived.

All the signs of late are not good for Social Security Reform as the political headwinds seem to be blowing heavily against it. Sources on the hill note that most offices are getting flooded with calls opposing reform with few if any pro-reform calls. The Club for Growth and Progress for America are supposed to begin running ads in favor of Social Security relatively soon and are looking to spend multi-million dollar budgets on pushing for reform. On the flip side Rock The Vote has teamed up with AARP to screw over young people. (If someone doubted the idiocy of Rock the Vote prior to this, it should confirm our fears). Bottom line is Bush is facing a serious up hill fight.