H/T Red State 

The Corner reports that there is trouble brewing for tomorrow’s Republican National Committee meeting in Washington, during which Sen. Mel martinez is supposed to be elected “General Chairman.” The Washington Times has the details:

Rebellion is brewing among conservatives on the Republican National Committee over President’s Bush’s attempt to “impose” Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida as “general chairman” of the party, who favors “amnesty” for illegal aliens.

“I will be voting against Senator Martinez if he is nominated for any chairmanship of the RNC,” Tina Benkiser, Texas Republican Party chairman, told The Washington Times yesterday.

Bill Crocker, the elected national committeeman from Texas, says that when the RNC convenes here tomorrow, “Absolutely, I will vote against Martinez.”

The conservatives — one of whom accused the Bush White House of “outsourcing” party leadership — say the general-chairman post does not exist under RNC rules, which can be changed only at the party’s presidential nominating convention.

The Times further reports that the rebellious conservatives have enlisted the help of a certified parliamentarian, to prevent violations of Roberts Rules and the RNC’s own written rules.

Red State story here.

In fact, it’s not clear Tancredo is in line with the mainstream, social conservative wing of the GOP he seeks to align himself with. According to campaign finance reports, one of Tancredo’s biggest financial backers has been the family of Dr. John Tanton, the founder of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). Wall Street Journal editorial-page features writer Jason Riley wrote a devastating piece about the organization back in 2004, in which the group’s pro-abortion and pro-eugenics roots were revealed.

Tanton is also one of the most prominent conservative financiers of Planned Parenthood in the United States, having helped found in the mid-1960s the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies may strike right-wing poses in the press, but both groups support big government, mock federalism, deride free markets and push a cultural agenda abhorrent to any self-respecting social conservative.

FAIR’s founder and former president is John Tanton, an eye doctor who opened the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan. By Dr. Tanton’s own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics.

Board members of FAIR actively promote the sterilization of Third World women for the purposes of reducing U.S. immigration prospects. And if anything disturbs the good doctor more than those Latin American hordes crossing the Rio Grande, it’s the likelihood that most of them are Catholic, or so he once told a Reuters reporter.

CIS, an equally repugnant FAIR offshoot, is a big fan of China’s one-child policy and publishes books advocating looser limits on abortion and wider use of RU-486. CIS considers the Sierra Club, which cites “stabilizing world population” fourth on its 21st century to-do list, as too moderate. And like FAIR, CIS has called for a target U.S. population of 150 million, about half of what it is today.

I post this just as an fyi. I am not taking a position either way, as I don’t think taking money from pro-choicers makes one pro-choice.

Check out the site

In a move pleasing fraternity members and NFL fans all across Georgia, the Georgia Legislature is considering allowing local communities to decide for themselves whether to allow alcohol sales on Sunday.

As an undergraduate student and conservative myself, I favor this bill for practical and ideological reasons - why should the state government tell me what I can and can’t buy just because of the day of the week (especially Sunday, which is clearly religiously motivated)? And, why am I allowed to go to a restaurant, get sloshed, and then drive home but not to go to a store and buy beverages to consume safely in my home?

From Georgia’s Legislative Watch:

Local communities would be able to decide for themselves whether beer and wine sales should be allowed on Sunday. The legislation introduced on by state Sen. Seth Harp, R-Midland, sets up what is likely to be one of the hot battles under the gold dome this session. Georgia, Connecticut and Indiana are the only three states that ban the Sunday sale of all alcohol for off-premises consumption.

Stephen Spruiell has a nice article over at National Review Online detailing the power of the blogosphere (most notably groups like Porkbusters, the Club for Growth, The Sunlight Foundation, etc.) in exposing wasteful and deceiful antics by politicians.  Though STG doesn’t have that kind of power (yet…) it’s pretty amazing when you think of what the blogosphere has been able to accomplish and I’d like to think that we help in that effort, at least in a small way.

So PA-15 goes from Pat Toomey to Charlie Dent… sad sad state of affairs.