Boxer pot aide should have gone with different drug.

You have probably read or heard by now that one of Senator Barbara Boxer’s used-to-be-senior-aides got busted for trying to bring pot into Capitol Hill. I say ‘used-to-be’ because they fired him, of course: aside from the bad image generally, as the Politico article notes Sen. Boxer is currently being a War on Some Drugs warrior when it comes to pot legalization. Now, I will not pretend that I do not have a certain rough sympathy for the fellow, coupled with a healthy contempt for his underlying arrogance. As someone privately commented to me on the matter, it must be pretty bad having to got to work for a Senator like Boxer every day: you’d almost need a painkiller. And/or a powerful anti-nauseant. As this is thus only indirectly Sen. Boxer’s fault, I’m not inclined to rake her personally over the coals for this.

However, I would like to know why she’s buying her own contraband – to wit, purchasing the endorsement of a woman who is up on ethics charges for using her position to profit family members. And no, I’m not joking or exaggerating. Continue reading Boxer pot aide should have gone with different drug.

America and the Two Tables.

I think that Marco Rubio will forgive me if I quote extensively from his testimonial to his late father.

I realize everyday, and today more than ever, that every opportunity I have had is the result of the selfless decisions he made, even before I was born.

We, his four children, were the purpose of his life. And our accomplishments were not just a source of natural parental pride, they were and are affirmation that he mattered. That his life had real purpose. That his sacrifices were not in vain.

My dad was proud of all of his children and grandchildren. And he would have been proud of me no matter what I chose to do. But I think what made him especially proud of the career I have chosen is because of how far it is from the one he had.

For years, my dad would work banquets at hotels. Many times, these events featured a well-known figure giving a speech. At these events, there are usually only two people standing behind a table.  The speaker who is behind a podium, and a bartender behind the bar.

My dad was the one behind the bar. But he worked all his life so that his kids could make the symbolic journey from behind the bar to behind the podium.  And in fact, I literally did.

That journey is a testament to the greatness of America. And that journey was the purpose of my father’s life.

Marco and his family have requested that well-wishers contribute to The League Against Cancer, in lieu of flowers. Continue reading America and the Two Tables.

Meet Eric Wargotz (R CAND, MD-SEN).

Eric is one of the candidates running in next week’s primary: he’s the one who did the (accurate) Barbara Mikulski as ‘Political Insidersaurus‘ campaign ad recently.  We interviewed him yesterday on the primary and the race:

Eric’s site is here, and his Political Insidersaurus site is here.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

#rsrh Why partisans should care about governors’ races.

This passage (from a Froma Harrop article on, apparently, why partisan Republicans shouldn’t read anything into the NJ and VA wins from last year) is right, for the wrong reason:

Professional partisans see every race as a mark on their team’s scoreboard. But these activists err in treating the win of a state governorship and U.S. Senate seat as similar victories.

Indeed, they do. Governorships are in many ways more important. Continue reading #rsrh Why partisans should care about governors’ races.

#rsrh Content of their character.

The worst prejudices and preconceived notions are the ones that you don’t even realize you have.  Take this story about African-American Republican candidates in 2010 – particularly Tim Scott, who is well on his way to winning his district in South Carolina handily.  A feel-good kind of tale, right?  See if you think that after you read this section:

With black unemployment at 15.6 percent, African-Americans are questioning what Democrats have done for them. What’s more, this year’s black Republican candidates were far from being upper-middle-class racial mascots. Scott grew up in a poor Charleston neighborhood with a divorced mother who worked double shifts as a nurse’s assistant. Vernon Parker (who lost his August primary) was born to a single mother in Houston, and grew up in California with his grandmother, a housekeeper.

Still, black Republicans will have to face four decades of skepticism about GOP bona fides on race, not to mention the opposition of a Democratic party with the first African-American president as its head.

Why the heck should anybody expect candidates like Scott to have to deal with that? Continue reading #rsrh Content of their character.

Democratic hypocrisy on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac.

This is a copy of a letter from 2004 House Democrats and sent to then-President George W Bush. In it, the signatories complained that the administration had taken a hard line with ‘housing-related government sponsored enterprises’ (GSEs) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by insisting on emphasizing fiscal prudence and responsible lending over increased affordable housing access. The relevant section?

We have been concerned that the Administration’s legislative proposal regarding the GSEs would weaken affordable housing performance by the GSEs, by emphasizing only safety and soundness. While the GSEs’ affordable housing mission is not in any way incompatible with their safety and soundness, an exclusive focus on safety and soundness is likely to come, in practice, at the expense of affordable housing.

Needless to say, this letter more or less completely subverts the narrative – lovingly created during the 2008 campaign, and kept up ever since – that the entire housing meltdown was really the (racist) Republicans’ fault.  Barney Frank is particularly outrageous, here: he’s gone from being Freddie Mac’s most devoted patron to calling for its dissolution without once explaining (or apologizing for) his own role in the mess.  Which is a strategy that worked fine in 2008; but it isn’t 2008 anymore.

Several additional thoughts on the matter: Continue reading Democratic hypocrisy on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac.

#rsrh QotD, friendly advice edition.

(Via Instapundit) I almost agree with this:

Obama came into office drunk on his own hype. He thought that he was bigger than the job; that his charisma and cool alone could shape history. (“This campaign is about you,” his campaign’s website said. That’s a good tip-off: whenever someone says that it’s not about them, it’s always, always about them.) Now, he’s a human being: nobody — not me, not you, and not Barack Obama — can be anesthetized from the egomania that must come with reading about how his words and deeds can shape a generation’s legacy. But whose idea was it, after all, to send a man with such an astonishingly thin paper trail to lead Western civilization during a period of war and recession? Well, it was his. It was Obama’s idea. The thing about our system is this: you don’t inherit the job. It doesn’t fall into your lap. In the final analysis, you nominate yourself for the job. Obama kicked off his own campaign from Illinois in January 2007. He’d been in high office for two years, and already he’d decided that he was such an important figure that he really ought to be president.

Continue reading #rsrh QotD, friendly advice edition.