After a super-majority of Ron Paul supporters captured control of the Republican state convention Saturday, state party officials abruptly canceled the event without electing delegates to the national convention.Early in the day, state delegates supporting Paul’s continued pursuit of the Republican nomination voted through a rules change that forced the state party to abandon its preset ballot of potential national convention delegates and open up the race to the rest of the state delegates.

The Reno Gazette-Journal

I like Ron Paul very much. I think he is one of the best Congressmen in Washington in regards to governing by our Constitution. However, these shenanigans by those who continue to support his failed Presidential bid need to stop.

I think Ron Paul would have made an excellent President and his candidacy was quite impressive, especially the amount of money he managed to raise, but it’s long past time to move on. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that he will be able to get the Republican nomination and people like the ones who crashed this state convention are only attaching a negative connotation to the Congressman and making themselves look like a bunch of asses.

Republicans should sit back and enjoy the Democrats’ current chaos rather than drumming up their own.

In a conversation before the event, Steele said he’s heard the concerns about the economy and the war in Iraq — what he said are the two signature issues in the 2008 elections. He doesn’t discount their sentiments, though he does discount the poll, or “anything that comes out of the New York Times and CBS.”

There are families in distress, he said, but he would like to see “less sky is falling” talk and more about how the country — and his party — will grow and rebuild.

The Republican Party must embrace African American voters, casualties of a Southern strategy by Republicans that won presidential elections but “lost credibility on the one issue that matters most” — the civil rights of all people, according to Steele.

There is still racism, he said. “I don’t remember passing that mile marker saying you are now entering a post-racial era.” But he said Democrats don’t have all the answers.

Charlotte Observer

Steele is referring to the Nixon campaign’s “Southern Strategy” where they basically exploited racial anxiety among white Democrats to win their votes and pull them over to the Republican Party. It worked. The GOP now has close to a solid lock on the southern states and we have won seven out of the last ten Presidential elections, but at the cost of alienating close to 90% of black voters around the country, people who use to be solid Republican voters because of our party’s victory in ending slavery in this country. Things have changed, though. The party is more conservative than in those days and very welcoming to anyone that believes in the principles of small government and personal freedom, but there hasn’t been outreach to pull minorities back in.

Steele sees contradictions between the welcoming words of many Democrats and their actions toward African Americans, which he characterized as: “We’ll let you know when you get to lead; we’ll let you know when you get to take charge.”

“Barack Obama broke through the system,” Steele said; he admires him for that, if not his politics.

Steele said he will advise McCain to not “miss this opportunity” to speak to black voters

In his appearance in Memphis on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King on Friday, McCain apologized for opposing a federal holiday for the civil rights leader. Apologizing was the right thing to do, Steele said.

He said he planned to challenge those at Friday’s dinner to “bring a friend, bring a neighbor, bring someone different” to the next event. In the GOP, “we haven’t been the most welcoming of souls.”

In this year of Democrats making history, Steele doesn’t seem worried that his party has fallen behind.

“History will take care of itself.”

Steele has an excellent point regarding the way the Democrat Party has treated black voters. They use them when they need them at election time and nothing more. After 40 years of practically non-wavering allegiance to the Democrats black Americans are worse off today than they were in the late sixties and seventies, in my opinion. Over 70% of black children are born out of wedlock. The vast majority of inner cities are made up of black Americans and they are over ridden with crime, drugs, and filth. It was the Democrat Party that opposed the Civil Rights movement and they seem to have succeeded. While black Americans are no longer slaves or second class citizens, they have been kept at the bottom of a caste system through race baiting poverty pimps padding their pockets and a government controlled welfare state that has destroyed their families, neighborhoods, and schools.  This was not the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr spoke of.

It is conservative policies that will lift black Americans out of being the poorest socio-economic class in this country. Conservative policies of school choice so they can get their children out of failing and dangerous schools. Conservative policies of low taxation and regulation will spur jobs and development in their neighborhoods and make goods and services more affordable. Conservative policies of a strong family unit would drastically cut down on out of wedlock births and children born into poverty. It should be a no brainer, but the Democrats have done a bang up job over the years of addicting them to the state and convincing them that the Republican Party is a party solely for rich, white men.

The GOP needs to start taking a more active role in doing what Steele suggests. It still irks me that he was passed up for RNC Chairman over Mel Martinez, not because he is black, but because he is a great visionary who can appeal to Americans of all color and creed. Michael Steele is not going away. We are going to see more great things from this man going forward.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit challenging a Michigan law that bans racial and gender preferences in government hiring and university admissions.

The ruling on Tuesday upholds the constitutionality of a measure approved by Michigan voters in 2006. It had been challenged by groups including the NAACP and the pro-affirmative action group By Any Means Necessary.

The latter group says it will appeal the ruling by U.S. District Judge David Lawson.

AP

Apparently, the NAACP’s idea of equality means everyone gets treated the same except for black Americans who get special preference.  American society has evolved well beyond the point of needing the government to dictate integration among the races and genders and institutionalizing discrimination on the majority to give the minority an upper hand is just as bad as the inverse equation.

There will always be prejudice and bigotry as long as human beings walk the earth.  Everybody to at least a small minimum holds some kind of prejudice be it towards different people, different ideas, different lifestyles, etc.  It’s human nature, but  the days of the majority oppressing the rest is long behind us.  The racial and gender barriers in this country came down a long time ago and nobody is kept from fulfilling their ambitions because they are black, or female, or of a minority religion.  In today’s America if you aren’t succeeding it’s through no other fault than your own.

Having broken the story himself, Drudge lay back and, as usual, left it to the mainstream media to report the details via links on his site to Telegraph.co.uk and other news organisations.

Angry internet users have changed an entry on online encyclopaedia Wikipedia to describe the Drudge Report as an “irresponsible and ill-advised ‘news’ website that has seen fit to put the lives of many soldiers at risk by publishing reports of Prince Harry’s deployment in Afghanistan”.

Not one to reveal much about himself or the way he works, Drudge maintained a stony silence about this, one of his most explosive scoops.

Telegraph

I am an avid reader of the Drudge Report, but I found this to be really distasteful on Drudge’s behalf and disrespectful to Prince Harry’s military service. By breaking the news on Harry’s service in Iraq he put the Prince and the lives of everyone in his unit in danger. I’m all for freedom of the press, but with all freedom comes a responsibility and he crossed the line.

As six Republican senators devised a plan to yank $2.3 million in federal funding for Berkeley programs, the mayor of the famously liberal city apologized Wednesday for his hard stance against a Marine recruiting center.

Two City Council members vowed to soften their stance as well.

NCB11

Looks like these “principled” extremists changed their tune once their Federal welfare check was threatened.

DeMint was angered after learning that the Berkeley City Council voted this week to tell the U.S. Marine Corps to remove its recruiting station from the city’s downtown.”This is a slap in the face to all brave service men and women and their families,” DeMint said in a prepared statement. “The First Amendment gives the City of Berkeley the right to be idiotic, but from now on they should do it with their own money.”

“If the city can’t show respect for the Marines that have fought, bled and died for their freedom, Berkeley should not be receiving special taxpayer-funded handouts,” he added.

Fox News

I fully agree, of course, neither Berkeley or any other city in this country should be receiving taxpayer-funded handouts in the first place, but the People’s Republic of Berkeley would be a great place to start stripping from.

In the meantime, a senior Marine official tells FOX News that the Marine office in Berkeley isn’t going anywhere.

“We understand things are different there, but some people just don’t get it. This is a part of the military machine that gives them the right to do what they do, but what they are doing is extreme,” the official said.

DeMint said he will draft legislation to rescind any earmarks dedicated for the City of Berkeley in the recently passed appropriations bill — which his office tallied to value about $2.1 million. He said that any money taken back would be transferred to the Marines.

Sounds like a good arrangement to me. Berkeley can’t throw out the recruiting station anyway because it’s a Federal office. They are just grandstanding because the city is full of attention starved misfits from society. That being the case, I can’t imagine there are too many residents actually signing up for the military anyhow, but that’s not the point. Here is the list of government waste they are slated to receive:

— $975,000 for the University of California at Berkeley, for the Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service, which may include establishing an endowment, and for cataloguing the papers of Congressman Robert Matsui.

— $750,000 for the Berkeley/Albana ferry service.

— $243,000 for the Chez Panisse Foundation, for a school lunch initiative to integrate lessons about wellness, sustainability and nutrition into the academic curriculum.

— $94,000 for a Berkeley public safety interoperability program.

— $87,000 for the Berkeley Unified School District, nutrition education program.

Remember in the past year how egomaniac Michael Bloomberg who in his anti gun crusade got into trouble for sending his spies down into Virginia and South Carolina to see how easy it was to buy a gun in our states? Well the authoritarian fringe of the extreme left strikes again:

CHARLESTON — Attorneys general from eight states have signed a letter asking South Carolina environmental officials to deny a permit to build a coal-fired power plant.

The group says the plant, proposed by Santee Cooper, would release millions of tons of carbon dioxide in the air, hindering efforts to reduce greenhouse gases.

The state-owned electric utility wants to build two 600-megawatt generators along the Little Pee Dee River near Johnsonville.

The letter sent to DHEC was signed by attorneys general from California, New York, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The State

I can’t think of a time where an Attorney General or any other public official of any “red” state has sent off a letter to another state expressing concern over how they run their piece of land, yet the extreme left seems to have no problem telling everyone else what to do.

I hope we build this coal plant. In fact, I hope we build ten of them and then when we’re finished we build a great big fan and point it straight to New England so we can blow all of our smoke straight up the behinds of those granola munching Kum Ba Ya hippies in the People’s Republic of Vermont and the rest of their northeastern elitist brethren.

Your maple syrup sucks and so does Tom Brady!

Kristin Maguire of Clemson was elected today to be the leader of the state Board of Education in 2009.

Maguire, who teaches her four daughters at home, was nominated from the floor during the panel’s regularly scheduled monthly meeting. The 17-member school board historically votes each December to pick a “chair-elect” a year in advance of when the term is scheduled to begin.

No other state school board in the nation is headed by a person who is a home-school educator, according to National Association of State Boards of Education.

The State

I didn’t think this woman had a prayer of being elected Chairman of the State Board of Education because she has received a lot of criticism about home schooling her four kids.  This is awesome.  Now we have someone who is outside of the bureaucracy and the status quo of the failed public education system we have in this country to bring new and fresh ideas.  South Carolina, leading the way.

Is anyone else taken aback by how quickly Bush moved to pardon Scooter Libby, yet won’t pay a bit of attention to the three border guards that have been imprisoned for doing their jobs and protecting our country? Then again, Bush and Gonzales are probably the ones that pushed Johnny Sutton to prosecute them in the first place.

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.

According to Senator James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma), he was in the presence of Senators Boxer and Clinton as they were having a conversation of a legislative fix being needed to rein in talk radio.

Breitbart

Here is pure, unadulterated fascism in action.  Another reason Hillary should not be President, or even a Senator for that matter and why, despite my large amount of disapproval for the way Arnold has governed California, I wholeheartedly support the rumors of a potential 2010 Senatorial run against Boxer.

We received a response from Saul Anuzis under the Saul Anuzis Should Read the First Amendment thread in the form of an open letter he has sent out. I went to the Michigan Republican Party blog site and the same letter is posted there as well, so it would appear to be a genuine reply and not someone just pretending.

RNC Debate Petition…getting lost in the rhetoric

After consulting with my fellow RNC members, I believe there isn’t anything to be gained by advancing a petition aimed solely at removing Congressman Paul from the debates. The primary is and will continue to work itself out.

I do however think we should continue to look at the bigger picture, the problem of how our party is going to adapt to the new realities of this very long primary season.

Congressman Paul’s controversial statements about the United State and who’s to blame for 9-11, combined with the splendid reaction of Mayor Giuliani and then my own heated reaction, stole the spotlight from the bigger point I really wanted to make and still think is important – continuing these “debates” as they are currently structured is not to our benefit, nor to our candidates, not to our party, nor to the country.

This is a very important process and it’s critical that we get a chance to get to know our leading and most viable candidates better. The idea of 10 candidates each getting a little over 6 minutes each and competing for the best “sound bite” of the evening isn’t very helpful in determining who our nominee should ultimately be.

NO one, at NO time, ever implied or said we should censure, restrict or deny any candidate the right to Free Speech. Specifically, Ron Paul, who is a sitting Congressman, will always have the same right as any other American and/or anyone in America has to express themselves. However, there is no constitutional right to participate in a party run debate or forum.

Although my initial response and what prompted me to action were the Congressman’s comments blaming America for 9-11, this discussion should really have NOTHING to do with the positions individual candidates take. We obviously have a difference of opinion on many issues…and I expressed my personal outrage and let that get in the way of the bigger question.

I am and have always been a big supporter of open primaries, open discussion and the sharing of broad and diverse opinions. At the same time, I think it makes sense to at least discuss various options of making these debates/forums more useful and informative. Setting certain standards or criteria for folks to participate is NOT censorship or infringing on anyone free speech. Everyone has the right to run a commercial, put up a website or buy soapbox.

Every candidate has the right to run…some with a chance of actually winning the nominations and others just for the sake of making a point or two. But the party also has the right to arrange their venues in such a way that best serves this interest of the party. We have given 10 candidates 3 hours of national TV time. Our many local and state parties have opened our doors to them. And we have certainly invited all them to help us raise money J. In short, the so called 3rd tier candidates have had their chance to make an impression and if they cannot poll beyond 1 or 2 percentage points of support, they are simply getting in the way of the real debate of how to move our party and our country forward.

Finally, I want apologize to the RNC and our State Committee leadership (and my wife) who received obnoxious, annoying and disruptive emails or phone calls. My best advice to you is to ignore them (and/or just blame me).

There is one thing I disagree with him on and that is on the point that the debates should be limited only to the “viable” candidates. At this point in time, which is pretty early in the election cycle, why shouldn’t all candidates be given equal time to get their message out? The lower tier candidates already struggle against the front runners in terms of money, so what do they do if they are shut out of national debates as well? Diversity of opinion is crucial when determining who we are going to choose to represent our party for the highest office in the land. As it gets closer to the first primary next year the lower tier candidates will drop out one by one and then the debates will become more substantive and specific with plenty of time for people to make an informed decision.

The chairman of the Michigan Republican Party said Wednesday that he will try to bar Ron Paul from future GOP presidential debates because of remarks the Texas congressman made that suggested the Sept. 11 attacks were the fault of U.S. foreign policy.

Michigan party chairman Saul Anuzis said he will circulate a petition among Republican National Committee members to ban Paul from more debates. At a GOP candidates’ debate Tuesday night, Paul drew attacks from all sides, most forcefully from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, when he linked the terror attacks to U.S. bombings.

MLive

I think someone needs to send Chairman Anuzis a copy of the Constitution and bold the part about the First Amendment.  I didn’t realize that shutting someone out of debate because you disagree with their opinion was a conservative viewpoint, let alone one that fosters freedom and liberty.  Sounds more like Stalin to me.

Apparently, there have been several riots erupting across France as the result of Sarkozy’s election win. Why does it seem that all the political violence comes from the Left? You saw it at Columbia University when Left wing protesters rushed the stage shutting down a speech by a member of the Minutemen and causing a scuffle. We saw it just a few weeks ago when Left wing activists threw rocks and other projectiles at Karl Rove’s car following his speech at American University. Conservative pundits such as Ann Coulter and David Horowitz have been attacked while speaking in public. Several Bush campaign offices were vandalized during his reelection bid.

You simply don’t observe this behavior from right wing or conservative groups, yet violent actions are becoming increasingly common by the Left throughout the western world. These same people who claim to cherish free speech and the exchange of ideas under the guise of liberalism are simultaneously undermining those freedoms with their own actions. Their behavior is Stalinist. You frequently hear right wing politicians and commentators state that the Left is just as patriotic as the Right; they just have different views. I think the Right needs to stop fooling themselves and start calling a spade a spade.

This is an annual event coming up next month, which unfortunately I have never gotten the time to attend, but from what I hear is excellent. I get the impression it is like a smaller version of CPAC, but for Pennsylvania conservatives. Being that I am moving out of the state at the end of next month, if I don’t make it there this year it is unlikely that I’ll get there in the future.

Laura Ingraham, one of the most widely recognized, and widely heard political and cultural analysts in America, will be this year’s featured speaker. Laura will speak at the conference’s Liberty Banquet on Friday, April 20, 2007 along with former Congressman Pat Toomey who is now president of the National Club for Growth. Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is also expected to speak during the two-day conference.

PA Leadership Conference

I have to respectfully disagree with my blogging colleagues on the latest Ann Coulter controversy. Coulter was making a joke relating to the recent incident between Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey in which he called Dempsey a faggot on the set during a heated argument. Washington then was more or less forced to check into rehab over the outrage that ensued once the media got wind of it. It is a classic case of political correctness gone amuck. Coulter was not eluding that John Edwards was gay, but rather making fun of his flagrant sissy-like behavior.

I think conservatives are overreacting to this on a major scale. Ann Coulter has a reputation for being a “shock-jock”, so to say. This is and has been her style for a long time now. Was it a sophomoric joke? Sure, but so what? She even admitted that herself last night on Hannity & Colmes. The media, of course, with their vial disdain for the right is capitalizing on that one sentence and making her out to be some sort of hateful bigot. If you listened to her entire speech you would know that she was not making derogatory comments about gays.

The reactions I am seeing here from a great number of conservatives is the result of years of political correctness embedded into our heads by the left.  Either we have free speech in this country, or we don’t.   Furthermore, I am very disturbed by Mr. Keene’s response to the letter sent to him by the CPAC bloggers:

“let me make it clear that ACU and CPAC do not condone or endorse the use of hate speech“

Hate speech? Since when do conservatives acknowledge the existence of hate speech? To accuse someone of “hate speech” you have to know what they are thinking at the time they make the comment and hence condemn them guilty based on their thoughts, just like the idea of a “hate crime.” Enter the “Thought Police.”

The Left in this country despises the Right and excommunicating Ann Coulter from the conservative movement is not going to make them hate us any less. It only plays into their politically correct world they’ve formed for us and will encourage them to come after us even more. I see this as no different than the left claiming we would have peace if we appeased the Muslim extremists in the Middle East and pulled out of Iraq and handed them Israel. Appeasement doesn’t work weather its terrorists or Government Tit sucking liberals.

So to be blunt, get over it already and stop running around screaming like a bunch of 12 year old girls.  She said what she said.  Life will go on.

From Capitolwire:

Toomey told the Union County Republican Committee dinner that by 2006, “Republican voters, and a surprising number of Democrats and independents, still believed in a less intrusive government, more freedom and lower taxes. But they did not believe the Republican Party in Washington was the best way to achieve those goals.”

Toomey, the president of the Club for Growth, which works to advance fiscal conservatism and Republican primary candidates who will work to achieve it, said: “I am extremely optimistic about the conservative movement and the future of the Republican Party. … It was absolutely not a repudiation of conservative principles. It was a repudiation of a Republican Party that in many ways had abandoned conservative principles.”

Toomey said: “The war in Iraq was very unpopular and presidential popularity was very low.”

But Toomey said: “There were factors entirely in the control of Republican House and Senate members and they can’t point a finger anywhere else. …

“First was corruption,” he said, referring to scandals or charges filed against several House members or House-GOP-tied lobbyists. “Let’s be honest: the litany got too long: [lobbyist Jack] Abramoff, [GOP Rep. Duke] Cunningham, [former House Majority Leader Tom] DeLay, [Rep. Rob] Ney, [Rep. Mark] Foley, [Rep. Don] Sherwood, [Rep. Curt] Weldon. This is a problem, because this is too long a list.

“Democrats offered no vision, and no message except ‘we’re not them,’” Toomey said. “In 2006, that was enough.”

Between the unpopularity of the war and the president, and the various scandals, the Republican-held governorships dropped from 27 to 21. The party also lost the U.S. Senate due to a tough climate for statewide Republican candidates, Toomey said.

All of this is stuff that has been echoed by a lot of us since the slaughtering that took place in November.  I still stand by the fact that I am not the least bit upset about the Republicans losing Congress, as retaining it would have only encouraged further ill behavior on their part.  The party can easily take back Congress by listening to people like Toomey.

Asked if he would run for U.S. Senate or governor in 2010, Toomey said he had plenty of time to think about such decisions and had come to no decision yet.

Told that, one supporter said: “Pat is now in a great position to run for governor: he is well-liked, hard-working, and his job nowadays introduces him to rich people across America who give lots of money to conservatives, and puts him in a position where they will like him. And remember, for governor, they can each give him $1 million. For Congress, they can give him about $5,000. That alone has to make a politician think about running for governor.”

Dinner organizer and Union County GOP committee powerbroker Yvonne Morgan said: “He is a candidate, and we hope he’ll be a candidate for governor.”

This is the other point I want to touch on.  Toomey came within one percentage point of unseating Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania Republican Primary of 2004.  It was because of his message of principle and fiscal conservatism that resonated with the voters.  Had he not been fighting against the entrenched establishment along with former Senator Santorum and President Bush, he would have beaten the pants off of Specter in a landslide.

I wholeheartedly hope that Pat will make a run for governor in 2010.  He is the one person that can truly turn this state around and get it back on a positive track.  Pennsylvania is a dying state.  As another young adult who will shortly be another contributing member to the “Brain Drain” by fleeing the state, nothing would please me more than to see someone like Pat step in and salvage the place of my birth and make it a great state to live in once again.

I saw the headline on a Club For Growth blog post: “Coburn Puts The Senate On Notice.” I laughed (squealed?) with delight much like a youngster ripping through the packaging of a Nintendo64 on Christmas morning. I’ve been waiting to see an action from Senator Tom Coburn since the Democrats took over Congress, and he has delivered. He circulated a letter to his colleagues in the upper chamber laying out his intentions for the next two years:

1) If a bill creates or authorizes a new federal program or activity, it must not duplicate an existing program or activity without de-authorizing the existing program;

2) If a bill authorizes new spending, it must be offset by reductions in real spending elsewhere;

3) If a program or activity currently receives funding from sources other than the federal government, a bill shall not increase the federal government’s proportion of the costs of the program or activity;

4) If a bill establishes a new foundation, museum, cultural or historical site, or other entity that is not an agency or a department, federal funding should be limited to the initial start-up costs and an endowment shall provide funding thereafter.

This is not an exhaustive list as I may also object to legislation that I believe oversteps the limited role of the federal government enshrined in our Constitution by our Founders or that violates my own deepest personal convictions.

I wanted to alert you, however, to the basic fiscal measurements that I will use to evaluate legislation. My intent is not to be an obstacle, but rather to give you the courtesy of knowing how we can work together now to advance our individual and collective goals.

[Emphasis mine] The full letter can be found on Coburn’s Senate site here (pdf).

Leadership of both parties in the Senate, I hear Advil is good for headaches… I don’t think Coburn’s going to give you an easy ride.

Since we have hit on this subject, here is an article by Neal Boortz from this past Friday.

http://boortz.com/nuze/200702/02022007.html