Bill Quick of the Daily Pundit explains what just happened:

In the end, the underdogs crushed the Bush Amnesty, and in the process, came of age as a true power player on the national political scene. Of course many contributed: Conservative think tanks generated reports and analysis, and the righty talkers mobilized their millions of listeners. But in the middle was something new: the Blogosphere, which reacted to every Bush attempt with speed and ferocity never seen before in American politics. The bill was subjected to a merciless spotlight within hours of its release, so merciless that it became impossible for Senators to follow their usual procedure and vote for it sight unseen.

Read the whole thing.

There is an interesting article over at American Thinker by Christopher Chantrill who argues that right now the next generation of conservative thinkers are just starting to emerge from their shells to change the world.

To understand the basic problem of the conservative movement you have only to read the Washington Times by Ralph Z. Hollow on the recent “third force” conservative summit summoned by conservative activist Paul M .Weyrich.

“‘We want to rebuild a conservative movement independent of the Republican Party and of George W. Bush - and to emphasize that it is a third force, not a third party,’ said Phyllis Schlafly, 82.”

“‘The Democrats own the liberals, and the Republicans own the conservatives,’ said Paul M. Weyrich, 64.”

“‘The modern conservative movement has always been a fusion of economic, national defense and religious conservatives…’ said David A. Keene, 62.”

Could there be a problem here? Might it have something to do with the age of the activists?

I don’t know if it is age or experience that seperates the current crop of conservative leaders from the young people they are trying to reach, but I think it might have something to do with the nature of conservative thought.

I know that I have hardly any intention of getting seriously invovled in politics as a career, and certainly wouldn’t think of doing so before I had a career elsewhere and an established family. Chantrill has another theory however:

Maybe it’s even time to skip a generation and go with a bunch of untried rookies. But what do rookies know?

According to Robert Stacy McCain, Luke Sheahan of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education was counseling conservative students recently on forming a conservative campus club. Why not call it a Hayek or a Friedman Society, Sheahan suggested. “The reaction? Blank stares. ‘They had no idea who they were,’ Mr. Sheahan said.”

Virtually everyone who writes on this blog is on the younger side of their 20s and would agree that our generation struggles with the classical aspects of conservative thought. What does this mean for the future?

We Americans have experience of this. In 1775 George Washington was an old man of 43 and John Adams was 40. But Thomas Jefferson was 32, James Madison was 24, and Alexander Hamilton was 20.

Fifty years ago, twenty-something Bill Buckley rashly started National Review. In 1973 Paul Weyrich became founding president the Heritage Foundation at the tender age of 30. Phyllis Schlafly was once a young activist and conservative ghost writer. That’s how today’s conservative movement first got traction: from reckless youngsters that didn’t know their place.

The emerging conservative movement of the twenty-first century is probably forming around us right now. Reckless twenty-somethings are thinking reckless thoughts and planning reckless deeds. Soon enough we’ll know all about them.

So I just was flipping through the channels and came upon Al Sharpton vs. Christopher Hitchens on Hardball debating religion. Al Sharpton was the voice of rationality and Christopher Hitchens was on this tirade about how “religions rots everything.”

It was one of the most amazing displays I have ever seen as Hitchens basically looses it and goes off on how everything American society has been destroyed by religion, how religous people are deluded and dangerous, and how the atheists have the keys to America’s future. Sharpton then goes on to point by point eviscerate Hitchens.

I stood there verbally rooting for Al Sharpton and then stepped back and realized I stepped into some twisted alternate reality. Wow.

Victory on the education front.

In a sweeping decision likely to affect school integration efforts nationwide, the Supreme Court on Thursday threw out programs from Louisville and Seattle that used students’ race as a factor in school placement to build diversity across a district.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced the decision decrying racial considerations in public schools and was joined by his four fellow conservatives. The ruling prompted liberal justices to declare they feared for the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 landmark that set the nation on the path of desegregation.

Maybe now school districts in the South can stop the asinine busing plans that send students to schools far away from their homes.

The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush’s plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.The bill’s supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation, which critics assailed as offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.

Senators in both parties said the issue is so volatile that Congress is highly unlikely to revisit it this fall or next year, when the presidential election will increasingly dominate American politics.

Breitbart

Woohoo! And We the People prevail. According to Senator Jeff Sessions, the switchboard in the Senate buildings went down due to an overflow of telephone calls from angry constituents.