Senator Menendez (D, NJ) being recalcitrant over spending bill.

He doesn’t approve of the spending bill’s change in Cuba policy (Via Dan Riehl):

:The Menendez rebellion was a jolt of political reality for Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Obama, signaling that the solidarity of the stimulus debate is fading as Democratic lawmakers are starting to read the fine print of the bills they will wrestle with in the coming weeks and months, and not always liking what they see.

[snip]

Menendez knew that his hard-line approach to Cuba was a minority view within his party, and that it was at odds with Obama’s approach. But he did not expect to discover a significant policy change embedded in the text on an appropriations bill. His policy aides came across the language when the legislation was posted on a congressional Web site.

“The process by which these changes have been forced upon this body is so deeply offensive to me, and so deeply undemocratic, that it puts the omnibus appropriations package in jeopardy, in spite of all the other tremendously important funding that this bill would provide,” the enraged son of Cuban immigrants said last week on the Senate floor. Menendez even slapped a hold on a pair of Obama nominees to draw attention to the issue.

If you’re wondering why a spending bill has in it a provision that would quietly change our Cuba policy, it’s really very simple: the Democrats want to change our Cuba policy, they control Congress, and they can thus put anything in the appropriations bill that they blessed well feel like putting in. “Appropriate” or “inappropriate” doesn’t really enter into it; what’s important is that they can do something, they desire to do something, and so they will do something.

The article also mentions Democratic efforts to keep subsidizing private student loan companies and farmers (at least, the ones in Nebraska and North Dakota). But that’s just ordinary pork from Ben Nelson and Kent Conrad; what makes the Menendez balk interesting is because it’s supposedly based on a moral objection. Continue reading Senator Menendez (D, NJ) being recalcitrant over spending bill.

Democrats attempt to take control of Connecticut Catholic Church.

Why, yes, that does sound like an egregious violation of various constitutions.

Chris Dodd must be annoying people all over Connecticut. The paper didn’t even try to hide political affiliations for this one:

After a priest stole $1.4 million from a church in Darien, state legislators have proposed a law that would regulate how parishes are controlled and operated.

The state’s Catholic bishops rallied opposition from the pulpits at weekend Masses.

The law essentially would strip the dioceses of all financial control of parishes and leave bishops and priests to oversee “matters pertaining exclusively to religious tenets and practices.” A board of elected laypersons would handle parish finances.

The bill, introduced Thursday by the Legislature’s Judiciary Committee, chaired by state Sen. Andrew McDonald, D-Stamford, and state Rep. Michael Lawlor, D-East Haven, caught many Catholics by surprise. They heard about it during Masses.

(Via AoSHQ) Before we go any further, let me quote from Article Seventh of the Connecticut state constitution: “It being the right of all men to worship the Supreme Being, the Great Creator and Preserver of the Universe, and to render that worship in a mode consistent with the dictates of their consciences, no person shall by law be compelled to join or support, nor be classed or associated with, any congregation, church or religious association. No preference shall be given by law to any religious society or denomination in the state. Each shall have and enjoy the same and equal powers, rights and privileges, and may support and maintain the ministers or teachers of its society or denomination, and may build and repair houses for public worship.” Continue reading Democrats attempt to take control of Connecticut Catholic Church.

Rep. McClintock interview with RedState.

As promised, here’s the Tom McClintock interview.

Link here, if that doesn’t work. As you can see, Rep. McClintock isn’t precisely shy about speaking his opinion, particularly when it comes to the religious aspect of global warming. I had originally written “essentially religious aspect” there, but when thinking about it McClintock was pretty unambiguous on that point, so neither should I be when describing him. If you don’t have time for the whole thing, the Congressman’s main theme was that it’s of primary importance that ordinary citizens get involved and stay involved in this issue.

Continue reading Rep. McClintock interview with RedState.

Just a reminder: Democrats wanted Bush to fail in 2006.

Links via Hot Air. Here’s the first question, exactly as it was offered:

Contra Ed, though, the Sister Toldja post actually indicates that a bare majority of Democrats were pro-victory in 2007. Which is nothing to be proud of, considering that we were right and they were wrong, but expect the shouting to start over that. Besides, it’ll keep them from admitting to this:

21. Do you think most Democrats want the Iraq plan President Bush announced last week to succeed and lead to a stable Iraq or do they want it to fail and for him to have to withdraw U.S. troops in defeat?
SCALE: 1. Most Democrats want Bush plan to succeed 2. Most Democrats want Bush
plan to fail 3. (Some want one thing, some another) 4. (Don’t know)
(Some one,
Success Failure some another) (DK)
16-17 Jan 07 32% 48 8 11
Democrats 42% 38 7 12
Republicans 21% 67 7 5
Independents 30% 42 11 17

…translation: even the Democrats were at best evenly divided over whether their party wanted Bush to succeed. The rest of the country was under no such illusions.

Crossposted at RedState.

Preliminary notes from the ICCC breakfast: Tom McClintock.

Congressman Tom McClintock (R, CA-04) started off his comments at the ICCC breakfast session with reminding us about RFK Jr’s comment that global warming skeptics are quite a number of things, up to and including traitors. Not wanting to die a traitor’s death, McClintock then claimed that he came up with global warming long before Al Gore… in the third grade, when he noticed the entire dinosaur / mammoth thing in the local museum. Alas, his grade school teacher never wrote him up for the Nobel Prize. [More…]

That was the general tone of Congressman McClintock’s comments over breakfast; he’s generally a good speaker and not particularly afraid to either say what he thinks, or name names – neither of which will endear him to global warming advocates, specifically including the current Governor of California. We have the video of the speech, and will be hopefully putting it up soon: in the meantime, the Congressman in my opinion hammered two major points home. The first is that global warming is not a scientific issue, but a policy one; the second is that the State of California is currently going through the effects of the policies that are being advocated on a national level. And if people are being amused at the travails that California is going through right now, they should consider that Californians are moving out of the state – which means that these problems are going to be considerably less amusing when they’re starting to affect your local area.

One last note: during the question and answer, when asked about how to influence legislators, McClintock made an interesting point that you don’t call, or even visit their office. Instead, you confront them in public venues, and make them answer in public. Presumably, he’d be all right with people visiting Congressional offices in groups of, say, several hundred or so: when I interview him later today it’ll be one of the questions that I’ll ask him.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.