Politics Blog

Here’s an excerpt of a press release that will not be featured by the national press or even covered in various corners of the Internet:

[ICE] agents . . . executed federal search warrants at two facilities owned by a Southern California military subcontrator [Golden State Fencing Company] that has come under scrutiny twice in the last six years for hiring unauthorized workers.

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The investigation into Golden State’s hiring practices is part of Operation Safe Cities, an ongoing local ICE interior enforcement initiative implemented in 2003 to protect sensitive area businesses from possible security breaches. Since the initiative began, ICE agents [in California] have arrested more than 350 foreign nationals working unlawfully at more than 700 businesses.

Today’s arrests are the latest in ICE’s ongoing efforts to target and remove illegal aliens working at sensitive sites and critical infrastructure locations around the nation, including defense facilities, nuclear plants, chemical plants, airports, and seaports . . . . ICE agents prioritize worksite enforcement efforts by focusing on investigations related to critical infrastructure and national security.

While rich liberals in the media have been busy projecting various issues of theirs upon President Bush and Tom DeLay, and perma-depressed conservatives have been dodging the falling skies, the Prez and the GOP caucus in the U.S. Senate have been stacking under the radars several of the nation’s federal appeals courts.

One of those courts is the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals – on which the Prez and Senate have seated four conservative/Republican circuit judges.

One of those judges is Michael McConnell.

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Despite having worked for the Reagan administration and then for Reagan’s Justice Department, and despite being known in legal circles as an outspoken conservative professor at the Univ. of Chicago’s law school, Judge McConnell sailed through the Senate on a voice vote back in Nov. 2002. Yep, right after the MediaCrats got hammered in those mid-term elections.

In this case, a panel of the 10th Circuit threw out a Constitutional claim by an animal rights group related to protest permits at the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics.

Judge McConnell wrote an interesting concurring opinion. Among several money quotes was this gem:

This case is reminiscent of the coroner’s verdict in The Wizard of Oz: It’s not only merely moot, it’s really most sincerely moot.

Yeah, *that’s* the kinda’ attitude I want out of my federal judges, Chuckie.

In this case, Judge McConnell threw out a gender discrimination/sexual harassment claim.

Here Judge McConnell affirmed the dismissal of various Constitutional and statutory claims by a state prisoner.

In this case, Judge McConnell concurred but wrote separately about a dispute in which the appellate panel reversed an injunction a lower court had granted in favor of a claimant under the ADA regarding the {dreaded} Law School Admissions Test.

The money quote:

Unlike some ADA accomodations . . . . it is imperative that standards for [ADA] accomodations [on the LSAT] be uniform and fairly administered . . . . Moreover, assuming [the Plaintiff] establishes that she is entitled to an accomodation, the parties should put on evidence regarding the amount of extra time needed to put her on equal footing, but not give her an unjustified advantage on a test for which every student would benefit from extra time.

McConnell ain’t a bleeding heart “librule,” that’s for certain.

I could go on and on, but I’ll stop right there.

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On a different but related topic, having the ability to nominate *and then confirm* McConnell-style judges is one of the primary reasons why participating in U.S. Senate elections matters a great deal, regardless whether the salient candidate meets each and every possible “litmus test.”

On the flip side of that coin, the media/Democrats/left wing figured that out decades ago.

That’s why they fought so hard in the Senate against Bork, Doug Ginsburg, Clarence Thomas, Owen, Pryor, Rogers Brown, et al. That’s also why they won’t ever stop cheating in U.S. Senate elections, e.g., Corpse of Carnahan/Ashcroft, the “Torricelli Switch,” Landrieu/Jenkins, Thune/Johnson, etc.

Every seat and vote in the Upper Chamber count. The Democrats know that all too well.

But a material percentage of conservatives still haven’t grasped those truisms.

That’s one of several primary reasons why we still get Salazar vs. Pete Coors-style election results in the Senate – 25 years after the “Reagan revolution.” Of course, in the time-honored tradition of all {ahem} “conservative” Democrats, Salazar got elected by a state which twice voted for Prez Bush, but then he started doing such things as: voting in favor of Dianne Feinstein’s proposed tax hikes (defeated by the GOP), voting against spending restraints (passed by the GOP), and voting against the nominations of Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen, and John Bolton.

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I honestly don’t know whether conservative political junkies ever will start voting en masse. Frankly, it might never happen. No matter what the Democrats say or do. Many conservatives are hard-wired to defeat their own causes.

But I can tell you one thing:

Above all others the one person in the country who’s hoping upon hope conservatives continue staying home and not voting is:

{the greatest commodities trader of all time}

Pam at Blogmeister USA has created her own ad in response to that ridiculous Move On.org ad.

Steve Schippert alerted me to the excellent effort, USO Operation Phone Home, toget phone cards to the troops for the holidays. Please feel free to use this comments thread to post links to some of the other organizations coordinating programs for the troops, especially the ones with holiday efforts underway.

Expect there to be lots of activity and violence in Iraq over the next two weeks leading up to the December 15 parliamentary elections there. Although there will be increased terrorist activity over the next couple of weeks, I have no doubt that the “insurgents” will be squashed like bugs and elections will go forward and will be as successful as the last two were.

All Democrats want to cut and run from Iraq. But, at least, in public, they’re very reluctant to say so:

Reactions to President Bush’s Iraq speech yesterday suggest that he has succeeded in dividing the Democratic opposition. “The president’s speech in Annapolis today was a step in the right direction,” said Sen. Ken Salazar of Colorado. But his Wisconsin colleague Russ Feingold said, “It’s a step back.” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi endorsed Rep. John Murtha’s call for an immediate pullout (though both Pelosi and Murtha voted against that proposition when Republicans called their bluff last month. But Pelosi’s deputy, Steny Hoyer, said if his boss had her way it “could lead to disaster, spawning a civil war, fostering a haven for terrorists and damaging our nation’s security and credibility.”

Meanwhile, Angry Left blogger Markos Moulitsas is on the warpath against John Kerry*:

There’s a little kerfuffle inside the Democratic Senate caucus over John Kerry’s insistance [sic] in being part of the official party response to Bush’s hilarious “plan” in Iraq. Reid originally had designated Sen. JackReed to provide the official response. Reed did the “prebuttal” yesterday and had a press conference set up for today.

However, John Kerry stomped over Reed by deciding he was going to hold a press conference this morning as well in a naked bid to steal the limelight. Eventually, Reid was forced to combine the two press conferences to try and maintain a unified Senate Democrat response, but Kerry’s antics have generated some ill will.

Much ado about nothing? Perhaps. But several DC Democrats I’ve spoken to today were not happy with Kerry’s antics. And given 1) Kerry’s continued inability to clearly articulate a coherent position on the war . . ., and 2) the fact that Kerry voted for it (while Reed did not), it’s not hard to see why.

Well, shame on Moulitsas for swiftboating America’s greatest living war hero, though he partly redeems himself by using the word kerfuffle.

Jim Hoft has been having some fun with maps using an idea he got from some liberal bloggers. If you are a Republican, you will love this post.

When typing this post it occurred to me to ask if anyone has coined the phrase “libloggers” for liberal bloggers? If not, let me be on record doing so.

A new Fox News Poll is showing a 9% swing in the President’s job approval. It now registers at 42%, with 48% disapproving.

This should be no surprise, however, because President Bush has always enjoyed a bounce in popularity in November and December.