Sen. Barbara Boxer (D, California) cuts and runs.

“Prepare the viands, prepare the foods, prepare the strange wines, for tonight is indeed a great night!” – The Martian Chronicles.

Barbara Boxer is retiring.  If you listen, you can hear the faint sounds of Democratic politicians all across California as they get up from their breakfasts and calmly go to open up their weapons caches. For there will be a Democratic war in the primaries over this.  A California Senator’s seat?  Oh, my, yes, but there will be a Time Of Troubles.  Lots of people want that job, and they won’t be shy about trying for it.  I cannot wait to see how far the Democrats involved will go…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: The Republican party of California needs to do precisely two things, here.  One: it must limit the viable candidates for this seat to two, no more, no less, and I don’t care if the CA GOP has to enforce this with a club with a nail in it.  Two: those two candidates must absolutely resolutely ignore each other before the jungle primary.  If they can’t say anything nice about each other, they shouldn’t say anything at all. I do not say that following this advice will ensure victory: but I will say that following this advice could not hurt.

QotD, Senator Ma’am edition.

Dinging Senator Barbara Boxer for saying something stupid is cruel.  And vicious.  And viciously cruel; and it’s all because it’s far too easy to do.  I am being lazy by highlighting her flustered response to Senators Barasso’s and Inhofe’s cheerful Hey, you guys have been claiming eco-Apocalypses for forty years now; only back then it was global cooling that was going to kill us all.  Oh, and look!  Obama’s science advisor John Holdren was one of them!

Her response was a thing of Boxer:

“…there were scientists that did call for the Ice Age…”

Watch the whole video, particularly the parts where Democratic Senators scurried around trying to obscure the inconvenient truth that while the tune of DOOM has continued unabated throughout my lifetime, the actual words keep changing to fit the latest academic fad.  Hot Air has more, including this link to Zombietime’s indispensable commentary on Holdren’s shifting attitudes on global warming/cooling/whatever; I’ll just note that this isn’t the only controversial thing that the guy’s ever said, which isn’t actually germane to the conversation but probably is why you’re feeling a bit of mild revulsion about seeing John Holdren’s name right now*.

Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading QotD, Senator Ma’am edition.

Boxer’s Indian casino ties.

Oddly, the original story about Senator Barbara Boxer (D, CA), Boxer’s son, a regenerated Native American tribe, and a rapidly-looming San Franciscan casino seems to have disappeared from The Hill’s site, but a copy can be found here. It’s fascinating reading.

The short version: back in the 1990s, Rep Lynn Woolsey introduced legislation that would reinstate an officially defunct Native American tribe (the Miwoks), with the explicit restriction that said tribe would not be permitted to build a casino (which is a standard revenue generator for Native American tribes, thanks to various federal regulations and exemptions).  When the bill came over to the Senate’s side, however, Senator Barbara Boxer changed the legislation to both remove that restriction and to make the land owned by the Miwoks a reservation.  This was supposedly done without the knowledge of either Rep. Woolsey, or Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Then – shock and surprise! – the Miwoks decided that they wanted to generate a revenue by building a casino.  Just outside of San Francisco.   As The Sacramento Bee glumly notes, the Miwoks can get away with quite a lot along those lines because they have a reservation – including essentially ignoring state environmental laws – and they’ve been pursuing the construction of a casino ever since.  In fact, they’ve just recently finally jumped through the appropriate federal hoops – and if Jerry Brown is governor next year the tribe expects more help on the state level from him than, say, Arnold Schwarzenegger (taking over 700K in campaign contributions from tribal sources can produce that kind of expectation). Continue reading Boxer’s Indian casino ties.

Meet the Fallujah Four.

These would be the four Democrats [Sen. Barbara Boxer (D, CA); Rep. Henry Waxman (D, CA-30); Rep. Dennis Kuchinich (D, OH-10); and Rep. Raul Grijavla (D, AZ-07)] who provided letters of introduction and support to the pro-terrorist groups Code Pink/Global Exchange in 2004. Those groups used these letters to facilitate their delivery over a half a million dollars’ worth of aid to terrorists in Fallujah actively fighting American troops; which is, by the way, treason by any reasonable interpretation of the US Constitution.

Note that I am not accusing these Members of Congress of committing treason, merely the American members of Code Pink and Global Exchange. Rep. Waxman – one of the Congressmen involved – claims that he was not aware that the letter of introduction and support that he provided would be used in support of ‘insurgents*’ (by which Waxman means terrorists shooting at American and allied forces in Iraq); this ignorance is appallingly possible, given that Waxman is a Democrat, and thus defaults to being appallingly pig-ignorant on national security, national defense, and foreign affairs. No word as of yet what the other three Members of Congress were thinking – or, indeed, whether they were thinking at all. No doubt if asked they will likewise deny treasonous intent on their part: it is generally preferable to be thought merely abjectly stupid, instead of guilty of a crime that technically carries the death penalty.

After the fold is a list of the Fallujah Four – and their opponents in the upcoming election. For while being duped by pro-terrorist groups like Code Pink and Global Exchange is not treasonous, neither is it something to reward with a position of trust and responsibility in the United States government. Continue reading Meet the Fallujah Four.

Lt. Col. Orson Swindle on the VFW-PAC endorsements.

I spoke with Lt. Colonel Swindle yesterday on the subject, mostly in terms of Senator Barbara Boxer’s surprising pickup of the PAC’s (NOT the parent organization’s) endorsement.  Swindle was not, shall we say, particularly pleased that the PAC (which he is not a representative of) did this:

The very short version: the VFW membership didn’t authorize this, they are ticked off about this, and the VFW-PAC may not survive. As Ed Morrissey notes, plans are already underway to review the need for a VFW-PAC at next August’s national convention: three guesses how that’s going to turn out, and the first two don’t count.

At any rate, Lt. Col. Swindle would like my readers to check out Combat Veterans for Congress. He also specifically recommended Carly Fiorina, Allen West, and Patrick Murray for anyone looking to make tangible their disapproval of the VFW-PAC’s actions; I’m not sure that Jim Moran (Murray’s opponent) got the endorsement, actually – but Moran’s a Jew-hating son of a… person, so donate to Murray anyway.

Moe Lane (crosspost) Continue reading Lt. Col. Orson Swindle on the VFW-PAC endorsements.

SF Chronicle goes as far as it can to support Fiorina.

Which is not their endorsement of her – then again, an endorsement of the Republican candidate for Senate by the San Francisco Chronicle would be about as likely as my being able to get to the Moon by jumping up and down on the ground hard enough. What they did instead was to give as strong a statement about Carly’s technical campaign skills as possible…

In past elections, Boxer has had the good fortune of having Republican opponents who were inept, underfunded, on the fringe right – or combinations thereof. Her opponent this time, Fiorina, is proving to be articulate, well-funded and formidable.

…then helpfully noting Carly’s (actually mostly mainstream) conservative positions… Continue reading SF Chronicle goes as far as it can to support Fiorina.

QotD, Not Senator Ma’am’s Day Edition.

So, there has been a veritable litany of bad stimulus-related news lately for California:

  • 12.4% unemployment
  • 110 million in stimulus money in LA = 55 jobs, thanks to, of course, red tape
  • National trust in the administration’s ability to help the economy now underwater, 30/33

…and Barbara Boxer’s reaction?  It would’ve been worse without the stimulus (not a direct quote*).  Which caused ABC7 political analyst Bruce Cain to wax sarcastic:

Continue reading QotD, Not Senator Ma’am’s Day Edition.

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.

#rsrh Thank God Mickey Kaus lost the DEM CA-SEN primary…

we dodged a bullet there. Forty grand = 100K votes; he was always one heck of a long shot, but if he had been properly funded he would have been able to more directly confront Sen. Boxer.  There was always that frightening possibility that he could have goaded the Senator into being… well, Barbara Boxer… and this is a year for primary upsets.  If that had happened, we would have been facing a Democrat in the general election who couldn’t be tied to his party’s positions on illegal immigration and public sector unions.  I’m not the only Republican out there who found that prospect unappealing.

Fortunately, it’s no longer even a remote possibility – and I can now go back to linking to Kaus safely.

Moe Lane

PS: Carly Fiorina for Senate.