South Dakota Politics

Volesky

From my hometown daily, the Mitchell Daily Republic, back on Nov. 2nd:

To hang your candidacy on a new tax is highly questionable, but Volesky rarely has employed traditional strategies - and consequently has had trouble attracting a statewide following.

His candidacy against incumbent Gov. Mike Rounds represents the same challenge for Democrats as Republicans face with Rep. Stephanie Herseth. Rounds is highly popular, and with all due respect to Volesky, the Democrats have yet to identify a candidate who could win next year’s gubernatorial race. Similarly, Republicans have yet to come up with a name who could unseat the popular Herseth.

HT to SD War College.

"[D]o they enjoy being punching bags at the White House?"

That's what Bill Kristol is wondering.

In fact, the administration has done amazingly little to confront, and discredit, attacks from antiwar Democrats. It was a shock last week when White House spokesman Scott McClellan emerged for a few moments from his defensive crouch to point out that Clinton administration officials and Senate Democrats also believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Will he, and others in the administration, return to this theme? Will they call the now antiwar Democrats on their disreputable rewriting of history? Incidentally, are the Democrats ready to defend the proposition that we should have left Saddam in power? Is it okay with them if Zarqawi drives us out of Iraq? Will the administration challenge them as to what their alternative is? Will the administration take the time to put spokesmen forward, and recruit surrogates, to make the case for victory? Or do they enjoy being punching bags at the White House?

Daschle Takes on Bush

Daschle is sounding more like he's running for President:

Daschle argues Bush presidency ''is essentially over''

By MIKE GLOVER
AP Political Writer

The Associated Press DES MOINES, Iowa

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) _ Former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said Saturday that President Bush's presidency ''is essentially over'' but warned that Democrats can't count solely on Republican troubles to win in the next election.

''I don't think it's enough for us to watch the Republicans self-destruct,'' Daschle said in an interview with The Associated Press. ''I think it's important for us to set forth some ideas that give the party an opportunity to define itself and to contrast with Republicans.''

Daschle focused on increasing the use of alternative fuels and energy efficiency, and on repairing a health care system that he said is ''the biggest single domestic problem facing our country today.''

In addition, he said Democrats should confront President Bush on his policies in Iraq, calling for immediate withdrawal of 80,000 troops, bringing National Guard troops home and having all troops out of the country by the end of 2007.

Daschle, who lost his Senate seat in the last election, keynoted the Iowa Democratic Party's annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, the party's biggest annual fundraiser. He said Democrats can make real gains if they can sharpen their contrast with Republicans.

''It's not a given than 2006 and 2008 will be good Democratic years, but I think that given the direction and the environment, the backdrop is far more conducive to Democratic victories than we've had in a long time,'' Daschle said. ''This doesn't guarantee them, but it does give us a leg as we start looking at these elections more seriously.''

The troubles rocking the Republican party include the indictment of Vice President Cheney's top aide, the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, an investigation of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist's finances and growing public disfavor about the war in Iraq.

Those forces have combined to create an environment that's as favorable for Democrats as any in the last 20 years, Daschle said.

''You've got a lot of sense of drift and just sort of an anxiety level that has been mounting in recent months,'' he said.

''My message is that the presidency of George Bush is essentially over,'' Daschle said. ''They are self-destructing and careening from failure to failure.''

The potential for victory stretches to Congress, where Democrats have had a much better recruiting year than two years ago, Daschle said.

''I honestly do believe that there is a better than even chance that we're going to take back the House and Senate,'' he said. ''Two years ago in the House, all they could do was recruit 10 Democrats to run in competitive races. This year, so far, they've got 53 Democrats running in competitive races. They've actually raised more resources than Republicans to date.''

Daschle said the message he offered on energy prices, health care and the war in Iraq will resonate with voters.

He offered specifics, such as a five point energy plan that includes an increased focus on renewable energy, but coupled it with energy efficiency and forcing oil companies to rebate some of the excessive profits they've reported as gasoline prices soared

''These kind of things are something this country has needed for a long time on energy,'' Daschle said. ''I think this is just one example where government can specifically give this debate about the future of the country some meaningful direction.''

The Democratic fundraising dinner comes as both parties begin girding for a midterm election that looks to be one of the most intense in years. In Iowa, the governor's office is coming open with Gov. Tom Vilsack not seeking a third term, and there are heated primaries in both parties.

At least two of the state's congressional races are shaping up as competitive, and both parties vow to compete for control of the Legislature.

In addition, potential presidential candidates are already beginning to visit Iowa, where precinct caucuses launch the presidential nominating season.

''I think we need a little wind at our back, but we've recruited well and it's shaping up to be one of the most exciting political years that we've seen in a long time,'' Daschle said.

Thune secures "largest construction project in South Dakota's history"

Today's Argus Leader reports on the big new railroad ("largest construction project in South Dakota's history and the biggest rail expansion in a century") for SD that Senator Thune has been working on:

The railroad's chief executive officer, Kevin Schieffer, will travel around the state today unveiling plans to pursue a federal loan to cover the cost of the project. That money is from a program that Sen. John Thune had amended to be tailored to the railroads' needs. That means the prospects of getting the money are bright.

Schieffer and Thune say the railroad is uniquely qualified to secure such a loan because its plan to haul coal from Wyoming to midwestern and eastern coal-fired utilities fits the nation's energy priorities.

The possibility of the huge federal loan came about only after Thune was able to get new provisions the railroad needed into the $286.4 billion transportation bill that Congress passed last summer and President Bush signed into law in August.

"To a huge extent, this was his initiative. He knew what we were trying to do and spotted the opportunity," Schieffer said of Thune.  ...

The project will bring several thousand construction jobs to the affected states and will add about 2,000 permanent DM&E jobs to a railroad that currently employs about 350, Schieffer said.

Many of those jobs will be in Huron, which is struggling with economic development and has supported the project from the beginning while other communities opposed it. Huron will be the site of a new operations center, Schieffer said, where cars and locomotives will be serviced and fueled. Other centers will be near Wall, the Wyoming border and New Ulm, Minn. The exact locations of those have not been decided, Schieffer said. However, "Huron is not subject to change."  ...

Thune said the resistance was there early on. "But I just think what it means to have a $2.5 billion investment in your state. It dwarfs anything we've ever seen in the state of South Dakota," he said.

So, in some combination of mutual thinking, Schieffer and Thune determined what would be needed for the DM&E to get another railroad administration loan for the coal train project.

Previous transportation bills carried railroad titles, Thune says, and he looked at the bill Congress was putting together last year as a possible vehicle for the changes DM&E sought that would make them eligible for the loan and for the loan to work for them.

He brought proposals to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who led the appropriate subcommittee, and after the changes became part of the Senate transportation bill that went to a conference committee, "We were hawking it pretty closely," Thune said. "We had a lot of moving parts in that highway bill."  ...

"We've got to think in a big, bold way what we can do to create a better future and more economic opportunities in the state," Thune said. The DM&E's expansion "generates momentum," Thune said. "It creates a culture of success, a culture of opportunity."

The Ten Second Clock of the Democratic Party

It is astounding that so many positions of contemporary Democrats require a very short memory span.   For example, the vociferous criticisms of Halliburton only make sense if you forget that it was Al Gore's reinventing government that was responsible for outsourcing many military functions to private enterprises like Halliburton.  Al Gore's great work has to be entirely forgotten in order to place all the blame on Bush. 

Much the same is true of the current full court press that the Democrats are mounting concerning the beginning of the war in Iraq.  Did the President present misleading information to Congress, as Tom Daschle now alleges?  Here's Jonah Goldburg writing in the National Review:

Just how big a threat was Saddam Hussein? Let’s reprise what our leaders had to say on the subject. First, here’s the president:

If he refuses or continues to evade his obligations through more tactics of delay and deception, he and he alone will be to blame for the consequences. … Now, let’s imagine the future. What if he fails to comply, and we fail to act, or we take some ambiguous third route which gives him yet more opportunities to develop this program of weapons of mass destruction…? Well, he will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And some day, some way, I guarantee you, he’ll use the arsenal. And I think every one of you who’s really worked on this for any length of time believes that, too.

Here is the vice president:

If you allow someone like Saddam Hussein to get nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, chemical weapons, biological weapons, how many people is he going to kill with such weapons? He’s already demonstrated a willingness to use these weapons. He poison-gassed his own people. He used poison gas and other weapons of mass destruction against his neighbors. This man has no compunction about killing lots and lots of people. So this is a way to save lives and to save the stability and peace of a region of the world that is important to the peace and security of the entire world.

Here’s the hitch: That was Clinton and Gore in 1998, not Bush and Dick Cheney in 2002.

President Clinton offered his assessment in February 1998. Gore made his observations the following December, defending the military strikes Clinton had ordered against Iraq. These were not off-the-cuff remarks but vetted statements by the two highest officials of the United States.

If President Bush mislead us into invading Iraq, the way was well prepared by his predecessor in the White House.  You have to forget all that to lay the blame on Bush.  But the Democrats have become very good at forgetting. 

 

Bookosphere

Next on my books-to-read list (sometime between coursework and classes) is Nation of Rebels:  Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture by profs. Joseph Heath and Andrew Potter.  The Claremont Review of Books has a review of it by Willaim Voegeli.

Daschle & Blogs

ABC News:

2008: Democrats:
Fresh from his Northwestern University speech calling for the withdrawal of 80,000 of the more than 150,000 American troops from Iraq next year and a complete withdrawal by the end of 2007, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) will be in Iowa on Saturday to address the Democratic Party's "Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner." LINK

About 40 South Dakotans are driving to Des Moines to hear Daschle's speech, including two couples who are driving the 8 hours from Aberdeen, the former Senate Democratic Leader's hometown.

Two South Dakota progressive bloggers will be blogging live from the Des Moines Events Center: www.cleancutkid.com and www.sdprogressive.com Keep a look out for stories generated from interviews Daschle will be holding at the Waveland Café and the Drake Diner.

The Roots of Muslim Rage

Francis Fukuyama has an astonishing knack for writing something interesting just ahead of some event that makes it vitally interesting.  Or just as it breaks.  As Paris burns, he has a piece in the Wall Street Journal that is vital reading.

We profoundly misunderstand contemporary Islamist ideology when we see it as an assertion of traditional Muslim values or culture. In a traditional Muslim country, your religious identity is not a matter of choice; you receive it, along with your social status, customs and habits, even your future marriage partner, from your social environment. In such a society there is no confusion as to who you are, since your identity is given to you and sanctioned by all of the society's institutions, from the family to the mosque to the state.

The same is not true for a Muslim who lives as an immigrant in a suburb of Amsterdam or Paris. All of a sudden, your identity is up for grabs; you have seemingly infinite choices in deciding how far you want to try to integrate into the surrounding, non-Muslim society. In his book "Globalized Islam" (2004), the French scholar Olivier Roy argues persuasively that contemporary radicalism is precisely the product of the "deterritorialization" of Islam, which strips Muslim identity of all of the social supports it receives in a traditional Muslim society.

The identity problem is particularly severe for second- and third-generation children of immigrants. They grow up outside the traditional culture of their parents, but unlike most newcomers to the United States, few feel truly accepted by the surrounding society.

This story, of the 2nd or 3rd generation immigrant, whose father drives a taxi and drinks beer, but who suddenly converts to the most radical and militant form of Islam, is pretty familiar in London and Paris.  I doubt that the teenagers hurling firebombs at cars are really motivated by radical Islam.  But they are surely a fertile medium for it.  It is worth asking why we do not have quite as much trouble with radical Islam among American Muslims.  Try this, from Froma Harrop, in RealClearPoltics:

The welfare benefits in France are still pretty nifty, and yet the immigrant neighborhoods around Paris are exploding in fury. Something else must be going on. The popular explanation from official France is that the rioters are mostly impoverished Muslims, whipped up by an extremist clergy.  There's truth in that, but there's a deeper root cause, which is harder to fix: racism. The immigrants and their children feel like foreigners in a country that will never accept them as truly its own. The French want them to quietly clean their toilets, then disappear at night.

A similar story unfolded after this summer's London bombings. The perpetrators were Muslim radicals, but the real shock was that the bombers were not immigrants.  They were their British-born children, who had received all the  public benefits of being British, but felt only rage toward their country. All the bennies in the world won't cover a sense of being reviled.

Americans may have something to teach their European friends. The United States absorbs immigrants by the millions. The immigrants don't riot. They work, and they assimilate. It could be that Americans' devotion to working--often ridiculed by leisure-loving Europeans -- translates into greater respect for people who work. Ours is a more open society.

Another -Gate

Jeffrey Rosen, the highly respected legal affairs writer for The New Republic, borrowing from John Tierney, dubs the indictment of former Cheney Chief-of-Staff Lewis Libby "Nadagate."  It's the investigation about nothing.  See Rosen's piece here (free registration required).  Rosen argues persuasively that the indictment of Libby represents prosecutorial overreach.  I think this paragraph sums it up nicely:

Just as Democrats were right to denounce Starr for criminalizing insignificant and immaterial lies, Republicans are right to denounce Fitzgerald for the criminalization of political differences. It's been clear from the beginning that Libby, Karl Rove, and Dick Cheney were trying to discredit a critic of the administration, not trying to disclose the identity of a covert agent. But what makes Nadagate even worse than Monicagate is its effect on the First Amendment. Never mind whether Judith Miller of the Times is a trustworthy journalist: She and Matthew Cooper of Time were correct to fear the spectacle not only of having to appear before a grand jury but also of being charged themselves with violating national security laws. And, as the columnist Walter Shapiro notes, they were also correct to fear the costs of appearing in a public trial talking about their previously off-the-record conversations with their sources--costs that might make national security reporting far harder in the future.

Krauthamer on Alito

Charles Krauthamer has an extraordinarily good piece on Judge Alito's opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.  This case is being used by liberal critics to show that Alito is far to the right of Justice O'Connor on abortion restrictions.  What it in fact shows is the he was more like O'Connor than O'Connor ever was. 

Pop quiz: Which of the following abortion regulations  is more restrictive, more burdensome, more likely to lead more women to forgo abortion?              

(a) Requiring a minor to get the informed consent of her parents, or to get a judge to approve the abortion.

(b) Requiring  a married woman to sign a form saying that she notified her husband.    

Can any reasonable person have any doubt? A minor is intrinsically far more subject to the whims, anger, punishment, economic control and retribution of a parent. And the minor is required to get both parents involved in the process and to get them to agree  to the abortion.

In other words, the marital notification requirement is less restrictive than the parental consent requirement.  If the latter is constitutionally permissible, by logic the former ought to be. 

Why is this the relevant question? Because when in 1991 Judge Samuel Alito was asked to rule in Planned Parenthood v. Casey on the constitutionality of Pennsylvania's spousal notification requirement, Supreme Court precedents on abortion had held that ``two-parent consent requirements''  for a juvenile with ``a judicial bypass option'' do not constitute an ``undue burden'' and thus were constitutional. By any logic, therefore, spousal notification, which is far less burdensome,  must also be constitutional -- based not on Alito's own preferences, but on the Supreme Court's own precedents.

Alito, in affirming the spousal notification restriction, was simply following the precedent that O'Connor herself had laid down. 

Ah, say  the critics, but when Casey ultimately came up to the Supreme  Court, O'Connor disagreed with Alito and found that spousal notification  is indeed an undue burden.

To which I say: Such is Alito's reward for having tortuously tried to follow O'Connor's logic. Brilliant Alito is, but alas not brilliant enough to divine O'Connor's next zigzag -- after Alito had blown hundreds of neurons trying to figure out the logic of her past (pre-Casey) rulings.

What this shows, I think, is that Alito is committed to the rule of law.  That is what we should look for in a Supreme Court judge.

 

Chirac Urges Calm as Rioting Spreads

Or so the International Herald Tribune announces.  Am I the only one who thinks that this is the wrong strategy?  Alienated youth are going to be contemptuous of anything the government says, and will generally try to do just the opposite.  What Chirac ought to do is urge the young to run screaming down the streets burning cars and blowing things up.  Your average Tunisian teen would probably reply: "screw that, man, I'm going to go home and go to bed!"

Les Francais used to be famous for being clever.  Of course they were speaking French, so no one could really tell.  Translated into English, Chirac sounds merely conflicted.

Chirac waded into the debate on Wednesday by calling for a firm response to the violence. But in an apparent effort to ward off criticism of police heavy-handedness, the president also urged dialogue.

Ok.  Chirac advocates a "firm response" but wants to avoid "heavy-handedness."  Maybe there is a French noun for what comes in between those genuine policy choices, and its probably twenty letters long when you write it but consists of a consonant and short, weird vowel when you pronounce it.  But I bet it doesn't help much.

At least you could expect a reasonable assessment of the Parisian situation, but that seems beyond the President as well. 

"Tempers need to cool," Chirac said at a cabinet meeting Wednesday. "We can't have a law-free zone in the Republic. A lack of dialogue and an escalation of disrespectful behavior will lead to a dangerous situation."

After seven nights of burning autos and store fronts, the rioting is spreading to more Paris suburbs.  Wouldn't it be fair to say that France is in a dangerous situation?  Frankly, an escalation of disrespectful behavior is the last thing they need worry about.  It's an escalation of molotov cocktail targeting I'd be worried about, if my derrière was in Gaul.  But then there is Abdel Srhiri's reaction.

Srhiri, 52, a Moroccan immigrant, said that when he was taking a walk with his family after dinner on Tuesday, he saw riot police firing rubber bullets at local teenagers, who in turn hurled bottles at the officers.  "Bullets were flying through the air and there was broken glass - it was war, right here," said Srhiri, pointing to a commercial center. He said in 28 years in France, he had never seen anything like it.

If Mr. Srhiri thinks that firing rubber bullets is war, well I suppose that's what 28 years in France does to one.  Most Parisians have no confidence that the government knows how to restore order.  I have no confidence that the government knows how to talk about it.   

Daschle Dancing, Part II

Building on the previous post, perhaps it is possible that Daschle was duped by the Bushies.  Via Instapundit, here's what Bull Moose has to say to that:

The Moose does not have to trust George W. Bush to hold that view. He believes Tony Blair. For that matter, most of the Clinton national security team was convinced that Saddam posed a threat to American interests and security. It was hardly a vast neo-con conspiracy that brought us to war.

Will the American people have faith in and trust a party that claims that it was gullibly duped, or as George Romney claimed about another war - that it was "brainwashed."? Moreover, should the objective be re-fighting the reasons to go to war and making the Democrats the official anti-war party or should the goal be achieving reasonable success in Iraq? If you believe in the former than you would encourage more efforts like the one Senate Democrats undertook yesterday. If you believe in the latter, you want the opposition party to present a better plan for winning this war.

While the war is increasingly unpopular, the Democrats should be careful that they are positioning themselves as a party that is gullible, feckless and indecisive on national security. It may provide immense partisan satisfaction to flummox the Republicans on a procedural maneuver, but beware of the long-term impact on the party which already suffers from a perception of being weak on national security.

Powerline exposes the myth that the Bush administration cooked the intelligence to justify war, and via Powerline Dafydd ab Hugh discussed the WMDs we have found in Iraq. 

As Jeff Jacoby notes, there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic about Iraq.  The United States has done a great and noble thing for the people of Iraq.  It'd be a pity if we let left-wing "America Firsters" betray the brave people of Iraq. Faithful reader Donna notes the irony of the "the newly aggressive chorus of Democrats," including Daschle, who are calling for retreat from Iraq.  If the America First left-wing shared half as much aggression for fighting terror and liberating Iraqis as they do for their rhetorical war against George W. Bush, we'd all be better off.  Remember Harry Truman?  Remember John Kennedy? Remember "we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty"?   Remember when liberal America was in favor of fighting global evil, as opposed to appeasing it? 

Daschle Dancing

Where does Tom Daschle stand on Iraq?  Well, it depends on the day of the week and it depends on what is in his perceived political interests.  Via a February 2003 article in the Weekly Standard by Stephen Hayes we are reminded that this is what Tom Daschle believed in 1998 when Bill Clinton threatened war on Iraq over non-compliance with UN weapons inspections:

Not content merely to offer rhetorical backing to President Clinton, Daschle tried to rally his fellow Democrats to support the use of force. He reiterated the administration's argument. "'Look, we have exhausted virtually our diplomatic effort to get the Iraqis to comply with their own agreements and with international law. Given that, what other option is there but to force them to do so?' That's what they're saying. This is the key question. And the answer is, we don't have another option. We have got to force them to comply, and we are doing so militarily."

Here's Daschle Fall 2002:

As Daschle said on the floor of the Senate on October 10, 2002: "We know that Iraq maintains stockpiles of some of the world's deadliest chemical weapons including VX, sarin, and mustard gas. We know that Iraq is developing deadlier ways to deliver these horrible weapons, including unmanned drones and long-range ballistic missiles. And we know Saddam Hussein is committed to one day possessing nuclear weapons."

But by February 2003 Daschle had gotten the anti-war religion:

Daschle is primarily concerned that President Bush has not proven that Saddam Hussein presents, in Daschle's words, "a very imminent threat." That's a high bar. It seems less a realistic request of the Bush administration than a deliberately unattainable standard of evidence. For, as Daschle surely knows, if President Bush had proof that the Iraqi threat were imminent, to say nothing of "very imminent," the president wouldn't waste time publishing the evidence. He would eliminate the threat.

Hayes notes how Daschle in February 2003 had suddenly changed his tune:

[In 1998] Daschle didn't insist that the Clinton administration obtain congressional approval. Neither did he require the president to go to the U.N. In fact, the Clinton administration's position, as articulated by National Security Adviser Sandy Berger, was that both steps were unnecessary. Tom Daschle said nothing in protest. Similarly, Daschle never demanded evidence proving Saddam to be a "very imminent threat," and he never called for "proof to the world" that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He now insists on both from the Bush administration.

What changed between 1998, Fall 2002, and then February 2003?  Maybe by February 2003, a Senator Daschle with presidential ambitions concluded that being anti-war was the smart way to get his party's nomination in 2004. Of course he decided against running for president in 2004.  But maybe this is what he's thinking now about 2008. 

 

The French Are Revolting.

Now in another sense.  For seven days straight young immigrants have been burning houses and buildings.  This from Fox News, which up until yesterday was one of the few networks that thought the story newsworthy.

The caption reads

Nov. 3: Riot police secures a firefighters truck in Paris suburb, Le Blanc-Mesnil.

And highlights from the text of the article:

AULNAY-SOUS-BOIS, France  — Rampaging youths shot at police and firefighters Thursday after burning car dealerships and public buses and hurling rocks at commuter trains, as eight days of riots over poor conditions in Paris-area housing projects spread to 20 towns.

Youths ignored an appeal for calm from President Jacques Chirac (search), whose government worked feverishly to fend off a political crisis amid criticism that it has ignored problems in neighborhoods heavily populated by first- and second-generation North African and Muslim immigrants.

Its funny how, just a short while ago, the alleged breakdown in social order in New Orleans was thought to be evidence of what was wrong with Bush's America.  Of course, it took a category four hurricane to do it.  And in fact most of the breakdown in social order never occur ed.  There was no epidemic of rape and murder, as the press at first reported, let alone cannibalism.   Stories of shots fired at police and fire fighters turned out to be unconfirmed. 

The French have now managed an authentic breakdown in social order without requiring any natural disaster, thus revealing the superior capabilities of the European social model.  You'd think the free health care and lavish social benefits, not to mention the absurdly long vacations, would have somehow uprooted the root causes of injustice and inequity.  But health care doesn't seem to be such a big deal when you are young, and long vacations are not much use to someone who doesn't have a job.  This is what French unemployment looks like.

That's one quarter of all job seekers under 25.    No wonder the U.S. Press tried to bury the story.

UPDATE:  Apparently the unemployment rate among immigrant youth is even higher than that reported above.  It is somewhat over 30%. 

Daschle Watch

From today's edition of The Hotline:

DASCHLE: This Will Involve No Strategery

Speaking at Northwestern 11/2, ex-Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) urged the withdrawal of 80K troops from Iraq next year. Noting that he wishes he could "share ... the misleading information I personally was provided in September and October of 2002," Daschle said that fixing foreign policy will require "strategic redeployment" of forces in Iraq. An important part of that plan includes removing 80K of the 150K US troops from Iraq following the 12/05 elections there. Next, 20K troops should be "redeployed" to Afghanistan to stop drug flow; he added that those 20k "ought to have one other mission: to find Osama bin Laden." The 70K remaining troops in Iraq would work with other nations to help the U.S. and its allies to get rid of terrorists. That group of 70K would be removed by 12/07, Daschle explained. He argues that strategic redeployment "is the kind of wise and trusted stewardship of the military that America was used to until October 2002 - and which it deserves again." he argued that the Bush admin will "at some time next year acknowledge they cannot sustain the current level of troop commitment in Iraq, and that will necessitate a change in policy."

Daschle said in an interview before his speech that he was "not surprised" by the maneuvers of Senate Dems 11/1 to hold a secret session. Daschle: "I think (now) there is a recognition that a lot of the intelligence information we were given was grossly inaccurate. The question is was it inaccurate totally because of incompetence, or was it inaccurate, in party, by design" (Kuczka, Chicago Tribune, 11/3).

Railroad

This Saturday, John Thune has an historical announcement coming: 

Senator John Thune will host a series of press conferences this weekend to announce a major new transportation development initiative in South Dakota. If approved, this initiative would represent the largest private investment in South Dakota’s history and would result in the creation of thousands of jobs.

Who:  Senator John Thune
           Dakota Minnesota & Eastern Railroad President Kevin Schieffer

What:  Press Conferences / Announcement

When / Where:  Saturday, November 5

                                9:00 a.m. CST
                                Sioux Falls
                                Holiday Inn City Centre
                                Embassy Rooms II & III

                   11:30 a.m. CST
                               Huron
                               Crossroads Hotel and Convention Center
                               Prairie Ballroom A

                    3:30 p.m. MST
                                Rapid City
                                Rushmore Plaza Holiday Inn
                                Hammon's Room

It's Getting Scary

Perhaps Prof. Blanchard has noted a trend.  Check out this story from Minnesota:

He was antlered and dangerous — and he almost took out Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

As Pawlenty arrived for work at the Capitol Thursday, he and his entourage heard shattering glass and then saw a big buck charge past about five feet from them. The deer broke two windows at the Capitol before bounding off.

Is the Star-Tribune making sly digs at Gov. Pawlenty?

It's the mating season for deer, when rutting bucks sometimes charge their own reflections in windows.

Update: I sure hope National Review found this story on their own.  If they got it here, I'd want attribution. 

And you thought the deer ticks were bad

From USAToday:

Wayne Goldsberry was at his daughter's home when he heard glass breaking. He went back to check on the noise and found the deer.

"I was standing about like this peeking around the corner when the deer came out of the bedroom," said Goldsberry. The deer ran down the hall and into the master bedroom — "jumping back and forth across the bed."

Goldsberry entered the bedroom to confront the deer and, after a brief struggle, emerged to tell his wife to call police. After returning to the bedroom, the fight continued. Goldsberry finally was able to grip the animal and twist its neck, killing it.

So what did he do with the deer?  You guessed it. 

Goldsberry intended to have the deer processed for its meat.

 

Daschle Watch

Dave Kranz:

Tom Daschle sounded like something more than a former senator Wednesday when he called for the beginning of troop withdrawal from Iraq next year.

His speech at Northwestern University in Illinois, in which he urged that the United States remove 80,000 of its 150,000 troops by the end of 2006, seemed more tailored for a presidential candidate.

"Included in those 80,000 troops should be all of the Guard and Reserve forces still active in Iraq," Daschle said. "We learned the hard way with Katrina that we do our homeland security a disservice if we keep the National Guard tied down in Iraq when their governors - and their families - need them here at home."

And this, from the Chicago Tribune:

Adding his voice to the newly aggressive chorus of Democrats calling for changes in the U.S. conduct of the war in Iraq, former Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle urged withdrawal of 80,000 of the more than 150,000 American troops next year.

Speaking Wednesday at Northwestern University, Daschle also said he had been given "misleading information" by the Bush administration about Iraq's weapons before the war, but said he could not go into specifics.

"I wish I could share with you the misleading information I personally was provided in September and October of 2002," he said in remarks scheduled for delivery at Northwestern University in Evanston.

The misrepresentations, Daschle said, underscore the need for Congress to repair the nation's foreign policy initiatives in order to restore the public's trust in the use of U.S. military power.

Remember that Daschle voted FOR this war.  What is interesting is that Daschle seems to be positioning himself to be another George McGovern, which makes sense because Daschle's hero is McGovern and Daschle use to hold McGovern's Senate seat.  If not McGovern, then he is beginning to look like Howard Dean of the next presidential race:  the most left-wing candidate.

Tracey Schmitt says it all:

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Tracey Schmitt, described Daschle's comments as "a transparent search for relevance."

Daschle Still Obstructs the Senate!

Like Dracula in those old Hammer Horror films, Count Daschle reaches out from the political grave to constipate the Senate yet again.  This from the Washington Post:

It took Democrats about five seconds to trigger the parliamentary move that forced the Senate into a rare closed session this week, but it was more than a year in the planning.

The final decision to employ the tactic, which infuriated Republicans and exacerbated partisan animosity, was made in the Democratic leader's second-floor Capitol office Monday night, in a small gathering of his lieutenants. Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) considered the strategy to be so sensitive that only four of his colleagues knew what he intended when he entered the Senate chamber at 2:25 p.m. Tuesday, party aides said yesterday.

But Reid did not have to start from scratch. His predecessor, former Democratic leader Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.), had considered going into closed session to discuss intelligence use and to spur the inquiry launched in early 2004. But he wanted the cooperation of Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.).

"For the past couple of years, Senator Frist and I had agreed to hold an executive session," Daschle said yesterday. But Frist "kept putting it off." Daschle said several Democratic senators "threatened to do it over his opposition during that time, but it never got to that point."

Daschle's staff researched exactly how Rule 21 might be used, aides said, and its findings were at Reid's fingertips when he convened the weekly meeting of his leadership team at 6:15 p.m. Monday.

Republicans can complain all they want to.  I for one am impressed.

Alito to South Dakota?

Joe Knippenberg sends along this story.  It includes lots of important details such as:

Alito, bespectacled, hair askew, suit rumpled and ill-fitting, walked into Sen. Tim Johnson's office this week to pay a courtesy call on the South Dakota Democrat. Sitting in an armchair in the senator's office, Alito forgot to unbutton his suit jacket, causing his tie to stick out and his jacket to bunch up. The judge's pant leg hiked up as he sat, revealing an untied shoelace.

"Ever been to South Dakota?" Johnson asked.

"No," Alito replied, adding quickly, "but I've always wanted to."

Alito's professed desire to see the Badlands -- evoking images of the robed jurist on a cattle drive -- would not have been easy to predict from his background.

I think the most important detail in this highly revealing article is this:

Leaving the office of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) yesterday, Alito caught his foot in carpeting and briefly stumbled while getting in the elevator.

I'm glad the press is covering the important stuff. 

Book Review

I've reviewed the book Loud Hawk: The United States versus the American Indian Movement by Kenneth S. Stern over at my AIM research site.  Go check it out.

You can also read the same review on Amazon.com.

Year in Review

It's been one year since John Thune unseated Tom Daschle from the Senate.  Here are some of the major things Thune has accomplished in his first year as Senator.

1) ELLSWORTH:  Thune's work to save Ellsworth Air Force Base was a huge victory for South Dakota. 

2) TRANSPORATION BILL:  The transportation bill alloted a record number of funding to South Dakota: $255 million dollars.  Furthermore, South Dakota has Senate protection over the formula for funding, which guarantees that our state's funding will not decrease over the next five years.  At the current rate, South Dakota will receive about $1.3 billion over the next five years.

3) ETHANOL BILL:  On March 16, 2005, Thune's Ethanol Bill passed the Senate.  Previous attempts to pass this bill stalled in the Senate under Daschle, who did nothing to prevent other Dems from blocking its passage.  It established a renewable fuels mandate that required refineries to blend 6 billion gallons of ethanol into gasoline by 2012.  This increases the use of biofuels produced from agricultural commodities.

4) NATIVE AMERICANS:  A number of items have gone through for Native Americans.  The Tribal Parity Act bill was introduced on February 14, 2005, and provides compensation to the Lower Brule and Crow Creek Sioux Tribes for damage to tribal land caused by Pick-Sloan projects along the Missouri River  Two grants, totaling $1,194,911, went to the Pine Ridge Reservation and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe for educational funding.  Additional grants for healthcare, housing, rural development, environmental, and educational programs have also been awarded.

5) 2006 DEFENSE APPROPRIATIONS BILL:  This bill provided South Dakota with over $30 million to various defense-related projects in South Dakota, with another $26 million in upgrade or development for the B1-B and Airborne Laser System that ultimately benefits Ellsworth.

6) JUDGES:  Justice John Roberts was approved of with ease.  The six federal court of appeals judges that were blocked under Daschle have also been approved.

7) GUN LAWSUITS:  Another bill that was once blocked by Daschle.  This bill was great news for South Dakota gun companies since it exempted them from frivolous law suits. 

The Liberal Plantation, Part II

A couple weeks ago I noted a couple stories where left-wing authors made horribly racist comments about African-American Republicans.  Today it gets worse.  Look at this story about Michael Steele, an African-American Republican running for Senate in Maryland.  Here is part of the story:

Black Democratic leaders in Maryland say that racially tinged attacks against Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele in his bid for the U.S. Senate are fair because he is a conservative Republican.
    Such attacks against the first black man to win a statewide election in Maryland include pelting him with Oreo cookies during a campaign appearance, calling him an "Uncle Tom" and depicting him as a black-faced minstrel on a liberal Web log.
    Operatives for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) also obtained a copy of his credit report -- the only Republican candidate so targeted.
    But black Democrats say there is nothing wrong with "pointing out the obvious."
    "There is a difference between pointing out the obvious and calling someone names," said a campaign spokesman for Kweisi Mfume, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate and former president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
    State Sen. Lisa A. Gladden, a black Baltimore Democrat, said she does not expect her party to pull any punches, including racial jabs at Mr. Steele, in the race to replace retiring Democratic U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes.
    "Party trumps race, especially on the national level," she said. "If you are bold enough to run, you have to take whatever the voters are going to give you. It's democracy, perhaps at its worse [sic], but it is democracy."
    Delegate Salima Siler Marriott, a black Baltimore Democrat, said Mr. Steele invites comparisons to a slave who loves his cruel master or a cookie that is black on the outside and white inside because his conservative political philosophy is, in her view, anti-black.

Is this now the position of members of the Democratic Party?  "Party trumps race"?  Does that mean that it is OK to hurl the most vicious racist insults at a black man, if that black man is a Republican?  You can throw hateful insults at African-Americans so long as it helps the Democratic Party?  Do you see what Lisa Gladden is saying?  She has no problem with "democracy at its worst" as long as it benefits her side.  It's OK to engage in vicious racial demagoguery as long as you are working for the Democratic Party, which presumably means you are on the side of the angels and therefore anything you do to win is fine.  When did the Democratic Party become the home of racial demagogues?  This is language that would make Jesse Helms blush.  Here is what an honorable party does:

This week, the News Blog -- a liberal Web log run by Steve Gilliard, a black New Yorker -- removed a doctored photo of Mr. Steele that depicted him as a black-faced minstrel.
    However, the blog has kept its headline "Simple Sambo wants to move to the big house." A caption beneath a photo of the lieutenant governor reads: "I's Simple Sambo and I's running for the Big House."
    A spokesman for the Maryland Democratic Party denounced the depiction as being "extremely offensive" and having "no place in politics or in any other aspect of public discourse,"

Good for the Maryland Democratic Party.  Now if it will only denounce one of its candidates for Senate, Kweisi Mfume, for stoking the racial fires.  Remember when the National Republican Party, including President George H.W. Bush, read David Duke out of the Republican Party when he ran for governor of Louisiana as a Republican?  Remember when Trent Lott was forced to resign as Majority Leader when he said all too kind things about Strom Thurmond's run for President in 1948, not noting that Thurmond ran as a pro-segregationist candidate?  Lott was trying to make nice comments to an old man on his 100th birthday, and look what happened to him.  I don't think Lott is a racist, but I think his comments were dumb enough to warrant his removal as Majority Leader.  Will the Democratic Party do the same?  Will they denounce those members of their party who call African-American Republicans "Uncle Toms" and "oreos"?  Will they strip Rep. Mel Watts of his leadership of the Black Caucus for supporting an undisputed racist?  Will Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton be disgraced for doing the same?

Update: Peter Schramm makes some comments at No Left Turns.

Update II: Evidently Al Sharpton sat next to Louis Farakhan at the Rosa Parks funeral.  Disgusting. Did Rosa Parks fight so that those who believe in racial supremecy are allowed in decent public company?  And at her own funeral, no less. 

Filibuster

Political Wire:

Looming over the pending nomination fight, however, is the filibuster, which "can cut both ways. To block the White House nominee could play well with the Democratic Party base but it also could expose vulnerable incumbents to the same kind of obstructionist charges that helped bring down former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota in 2004."

Tim Johnson would be wise to remember what happened to his compatriot in the Senate in 2004.

Daschle Watch

From today's edition of The Hotline:

Daschle, Front And Center

According to an adviser, Daschle plans in his address to "state very clearly" that "Washington's priorities are wrong for America." He'll also focus on health care, energy and Iraq and will "offer ways to redirect our priorities." Daschle will sit at the table of Des Moines atty Ed Skinner that Sat. night. On Sun. morning, Daschle hosts 30 South Dakotans and prominent IA Dems at breakfast. Daschle's trip to IA comes on the heels of a major foreign policy speech, to be delivered tonight at Northwestern U in IL.

AL

The Argus Leader is doing what it does best: leaving out information if it hurts the Democrats.  Here's the story:

Sen. Tim Johnson was one of the first two U.S. senators to meet with Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito on Tuesday, and he took the opportunity to question his philosophy on issues relevant to South Dakota.
...
Johnson said he told Alito he won't come to a conclusion on how he will vote until after the judicial committee hearings. But he also said his reputation as a moderate Democrat and one of 22 who voted for John Roberts to be named Chief Justice might have been the reason Alito met with Johnson right after he had his first meeting with Sen. Mike Dewine, R-Ohio.

Johnson said he is not dismayed Alito is fundamentally conservative.

"The only thing debatable is whether his views are within the broad mainstream of contemporary thinking," the senator said.

The Argus, however, fails to mention that Johnson has contemplated using the filibuster.

And note this from the LA Times:  "Johnson, who rarely attracts national attention, seemed to relish being the first Democrat outside the party's leadership with whom Alito met."

Alito Bandito III

John Podhoretz, writing in the New York Post Online, confirms what I wrote earlier about the Alito confirmation. 

ABOUT that "all-out political war" — as an MSNBC anchor dubbed it — that has supposedly broken out over the nomination of Samuel Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court: There isn't going to be one.

Why not?  Podhoretz makes a strong case. 

No Supreme Court nominee has been rejected by the Senate since Bork, during Ronald Reagan's second term. Bork's defeat came in a Senate controlled by Democrats. Today's Senate is dominated by Republicans, 55 to 45.

And though a few liberal Republicans may consider voting against Alito, on the key question of abortion his record is complicated. He voted in 2000 to void a New Jersey law limiting the noxious practice of partial-birth abortion, because he believed a prior Supreme Court decision required him to do so. And when he voted to uphold a Pennsylvania law requiring a wife seeking an abortion to notify her husband of her intent to abort their child, Alito did so on the basis of opinions by . . . Sandra Day O'Connor.  And that's just what he'll tell Chuck Schumer during his hearing . . .  .

I suspect there's enough ambiguity in Alito's record to allow a liberal Republican to vote for him — and three Democratic senators fighting for their lives in red-state elections next year (the two Nelsons, Florida's Bill and Nebraska's Ben, plus Louisiana's Mary Landrieu) will want to support the nomination.

Of course, there is the question of the filibuster. 

Will Democrats try to block Alito with a filibuster? Almost certainly no. Why? Because in that circumstance Republicans led by Sen. John McCain will be forced to support the president by voting for the so-called "nuclear option" to change the filibustering rules. That takes only 50 Republican votes and one from Vice President Dick Cheney, who can break a tie vote in the Senate.

Triggering the "nuclear option" would be a huge defeat for Democrats — a defeat far greater than letting a distinguished jurist like Alito get through, no matter how much grumbling they do.  They won't risk it. Barring some shocking revelation, Alito is in by Christmas.

When Alito joins the court, Bush will have succeeded in shifting that body of nine a bit toward the right.  A plausible prediction can be found in Charles Lane's piece in the Washington Post. 

That doesn't mean that the process won't be ugly.  Indeed, its ugly already.

It took only two hours for the anti-Alito rhetoric to overheat, courtesy of New York's own Sen. Chuck Schumer. He decided, in a pretty amazing display of bad taste, to use the late Rosa Parks' corpse as a weapon.

"The real question today is whether Judge Alito would use his seat on the bench, just as Rosa Parks used her seat on the bus, to change history for the better or whether he would use that seat to reverse much of what Rosa Parks and so many others fought so hard and for so long to put in place," Schumer said.

Now, it's one thing for a senator to say that Alito should not be confirmed because he is too conservative. That's been Schumer's stance on GOP judicial nominations, pure and simple, and while it may be wrong-headed, it's not disreputable. It's quite another for Schumer to oppose a conservative jurist by suggesting his views are implicitly segregationist. That's just a lousy and rotten thing to do.

I agree with Podhoretz on both counts, though I have argued that for a Senator to oppose a court nominee because he or she is too conservative, or too liberal for that matter, is a breach of Senate traditions.  Justices Bryer and Ginsburg were confirmed with strong Republican support even though both were regarded as certain votes to confirm Roe.  To oppose nominees simply because they are on the other side of the judicial spectrum threatens to derail the nomination process. 

But to suggest that conservative nominees want to reverse the civil rights revolution is nastiness on a whole 'nuther level, as we would say back in Arkansas.  It is simple slander. 

 

 

SoDak

The Political Economy Research Institute has ranked South Dakota the 10th best place to work.

Tantrum

PowerLine's comments on the Democrats' temper tantrum today:

The Democrats must feel that they are losing momentum now that the Republicans have their act together on the Supreme Court, and Fitzgerald did not indict Rove. That the Dems see throwing a temper tantrum as a way to regain momentum, rather than as reminder to the public that they are unfit to govern, speaks volumes.

Byron York nails it (HT to Malkin):

Perhaps the best explanation for the Democrats' decision to virtually shut down the Senate today can be found in one passage from CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's news conference last Friday:

This indictment is not about the war. This indictment's not about the propriety of the war. And people who believe fervently in the war effort, people who oppose it, people who have mixed feelings about it should not look to this indictment for any resolution of how they feel or any vindication of how they feel....The indictment will not seek to prove that the war was justified or unjustified. This is stripped of that debate, and this is focused on a narrow transaction. And I think anyone who's concerned about the war and has feelings for or against shouldn't look to this criminal process for any answers or resolution of that.

Fitzgerald's statement, and his decision to confine the indictment of Lewis Libby to charges of lying and obstruction, threatened to dash the Democrats' hope of using the CIA leak case as an opportunity to re-debate the reasons for going to war in Iraq. So the party, or at least its leaders in the Senate, has decided to use another route, the shutdown of the Senate, as a way to achieve that goal.

Antiwar Movement

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of the re-election of George Bush (and the removal of an obstructionist).  How is the antiwar movement going to celebrate?  By skipping school!

Sheehan

Village Voice:

Cindy Sheehan for President
Or Senate. The anti-war left seeks a challenger for Hillary Clinton

Cindy Sheehan, a/k/a the "peace mom," probably never intended to sound like a candidate, but she did. Sheehan, the activist who became the face of anti-war sentiment after camping outside President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, last summer, had just mounted the podium at the Brooklyn Peace Fair on October 22. And already she was getting political.

Johnson the Obstructionist

Has Johnson learned nothing?

But some Democrats were contemplating just such a move as the 55-year-old Alito began courting senators on the second day of his Supreme Court candidacy. Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota refused to rule out supporting a filibuster.

"I would leave all those options on the table," he said.

Alito Bandito II

I am, as usual, cautiously optimistic about the Alito nomination.  First, I think he will turn out to be just the kind of judge I would like to see on the court: committed to the rule of law rather than legislation by other means.  As Professor Schaff pointed out in an earlier column, principled conservatives do want judicial conservatives appointed so that Roe will be overturned; they want Roe overturned because they are judicially conservative.  It is the idea of following the law, rather than the outcome on specific issues, that is most important to us.

Second, I think that Alito will be hard to defeat.  Unlike Roberts, the Senate Democrats will probably make a real effort.  But Alito's record will be ambiguous enough that no sharp picture of him as a right wing ideologue will come into focus.  Or at least it won't if the Republicans are on the ball. 

Moreover I think the gang of 14 who settled the filibuster crisis last time will mostly stand behind the principle that competence and qualifications are relevant to judicial confirmation and that ideology is not.  If the Democrats try to filibuster, the nuclear option will be back on the table. Just as I argued earlier, the filibuster settlement was a significant victory for the Republicans.

Quote of the Day

HT to PowerLine:  "Of course, he's against abortion," 90-year-old Rose Alito said of her son, a Catholic.

Alito

The AP seems to have a curious obsession with the religious affiliations of Supreme Court justices and nominees.

Minnesota

I'm sure by now most of our readers have seen previews for the movie North Country, which takes place in northern Minnesota and involves a big sexual harassment lawsuit brought by some women against a big mine on the Iron Range (Jenson v. Eveleth).

Watertown native John Hinderaker won't be seeing it.

Churchill

The Denver Post has the latest Ward Churchill update.

Schumer

Hugh Hewitt, author of Blog (which you should buy), is noting that civility has gone out the window:

Chuck Schumer just argued that it is possible that Judge Alito, as Justice Alito, would roll back the achievements of Rosa Parks. That can only be understood as Schumer's belief that Judge Alito could find segregationist policies acceptable under the constitution. While it is undeniable that the nomination of Robert Byrd would have raised such a question, it is preposterous and indeed base to even hint at such a thing about a distinguished judge and public servant.

Schumer's argument for delay is as predictable as it is unpersuasive. Chairman Specter needs to knock down this nonsense today.

The New McGovernites

Excerpt:

The editor of “the new republic” suggested the other day that “the new liberal political culture emerging on the Internet” looks a lot like the McGovernite revolution that descended on the Democratic Party in 1972. In a lecture at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, Peter Beinart said the mostly young Internet activists are clearly taking over the party. If so, this would be the first ray of sunshine for conservatives and Republicans in almost a year. The McGovern movement severely damaged the party, pushing it toward four presidential defeats in five tries, until Bill Clinton won by dragging the party back to the center in 1992. If the Internet people had prevailed in 2004, Howard Dean would have won the nomination and then been buried in an enormous landslide, just like George McGovern.

The Alito Bandito!

You heard that one first here at SDP! 

No sooner am I back from St. Louis than the President rolls the dice a second time. 

Judging (if you will forgive the term) from early reactions, I suspect that the nomination process will be very lively.  I am not sure that the nominee will get no Democratic votes on the committee, as P. Schaff suggests.  I expect one or two.  It will be a matter of whether the consensus that formed during the Roberts hearings-that qualifications, not ideology, were releveant-has survived the Miers nomination.  I think that it probably has, since it is glaringly obvious that Miers's chief weakness was her lack of preparation.  If Alito has no skeletons in his judicial closet, he probably will win confirmation by a small but comfortable margin.

Hey Jason

Nice call on the Great Pumpkin picture.  Maybe this year is the year that Linus actually gets a visit from the Great Pumpkin. 

Is Alito Pro-life?

I swear, last Alito post for a few hours at least.  Shannen Coffin reports that as a federal judge Sam Alito has not always been a friend to the pro-life community.  But he has always been a friend to the law, but, again, this is not enough for the Democrats.  For them, if the law doesn't get you what you want, then simply invent a tortured interpretation to make the law say what you want it to say. Here's Coffin:

Kathryn already hit a little on this in Bench Memos: Several media outlets have already begun breathless reporting suggesting that Sam Alito is reflexively "anti-choice." When asked "what we know about Sam Alito" by Imus this morning, Andrea Mitchell immediately reported that "we know that he was a dissenting judge on the issue of spousal notification" in the case that became Planned Parenthood v. Casey. What she didn't report was that he also concurred in an opinion striking down New Jersey's partial birth abortion statute because he felt he had an obligation to follow the Supreme Court's decision in Carhart v. Stenberg, and that he held that a Clinton administration policy prohibiting states from adding additional conditions to Medicaid funding of abortions properly invalidated a Pennsylvania state law that required women seeking state-funded abortions in the cases of rape to report the crimes.

If media outlets are going to report on the Casey opinion, they need to review all of Alito's opinions that relate to the abortion issue. What they show, in toto, is a careful jurist committed to the rule of law, not a "pro-life" judge or a "pro-choice" judge

More Alito

Here's a decent profile of Alito. 

Alito

Samuel Alito is Bush's pick for the Supreme Court.  I predict he is savaged by Democrats for being insensitive to women because he doesn't believe in Court imposed abortion on demand.  He will also have to answer criticisms that he's just too darned Italian Catholic, just like Scalia.  After all, when you think of the Supreme Court as nothing but a super-legislature, those kinds of things are important.

Update: Here is Ed Whelan on Alito.  Whelan convincingly argues that Alito is even more qualified for the Court than was Chief Justice Roberts.  But we all know qualifications don't matter to the Democrats.  What matter to them is that a Justice decide based on left-wing policy preferences. Alito is more qualified than Ruth Bader Ginsberg was and he is no more conservative than she is liberal. She was confirmed 96-3.  I'll be surprised if Alito gets any Democratic votes in committee and he'll get no more than five on the floor.  Indeed, the Democrats seem likely to filibuster his confirmation vote.  Alito will expose how dishonest the Democratic Party is when it talks about the courts.  They just want another vehicle to impose their left-wing social agenda, since they rarely get that agenda endorsed by the public.   Here's Whelan:

In selecting Third Circuit judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the Supreme Court, President Bush has made a truly outstanding nomination that deserves widespread acclaim. By any objective criteria, it is doubtful that there is anyone now or in recent decades (yes, not even Chief Justice Roberts) whose experience and qualifications better prepare him for the Supreme Court.

Judge Alito’s entire career since graduating from Yale Law School in the mid-1970s has been devoted to public service in the law. His range of experience dealing with difficult questions of federal law is unmatched. After a prestigious clerkship on the Third Circuit, he worked as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey for four years. Then, as assistant to the Solicitor General, he briefed and argued cases before the U.S. Supreme Court for four years. He next served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel—the office that was previously headed by Rehnquist and Scalia and that advises the White House Counsel’s office and the entire executive branch on the proper meaning of the Constitution and other federal law. In 1987, Alito became United States Attorney in New Jersey. In that capacity, he was responsible for all federal prosecutions in New Jersey for three years (including the successful prosecution of a Libyan-sponsored terrorist who planned to attack various New York targets). And for the past 15 years, Alito has served with great distinction on the Third Circuit.

Just as the Left attacked Roberts, it will attack Alito. But President Bush has again selected an outstanding nominee whose intellect, character, experience, and, not least, proper understanding of the role of the courts will earn the deep respect of the American people and of all fair-minded observers.

 

Happy Halloween!

Update:  Check out SD War College's tales that are "scarier than a Ron Volesky Gubernatorial Candidacy!"

Bush Picks Alito

President Bush has nominated Samuel Alito to be on the Supreme Court:

The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to preview Bush's remarks, said Alito was virtually certain to get the nod from the moment Miers backed out. The 55-year-old jurist was Bush's favorite choice of the judges in the last set of deliberations but he settled instead on someone outside what he calls the "judicial monastery," the officials said.

A former prosecutor, Alito has experience off the bench that factored into Bush's thinking, the officials said.

While Alito is expected to win praise from Bush's allies on the right, Democrats have served notice that his nomination would spark a partisan brawl. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, said Sunday that Alito's nomination would "create a lot of problems."

Unlike Miers, who has never been a judge, Alito, a 55-year-old jurist from New Jersey, has been a strong conservative voice on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals since former President George H.W. Bush seated him there in 1990.

Alito has been dubbed "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite" by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. But while Scalia is outspoken and is known to badger lawyers, Alito is polite, reserved and even-tempered.

Volesky

Dave Kranz:

Gov. Dick Kneip wanted an income tax, and he was still elected governor. Now Ron Volesky is supporting it, and he also wants to be governor. In fact, it will be a centerpiece of his 2006 campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination.

“As long as Republicans are in charge of government, we will never have tax reform in South Dakota,” Volesky said. “I am going to hit hard, hard, hard and say we need tax reform. And I have no problem defining it. We need a state income tax and a corporate tax.”

Income tax often is considered a dreadful alternative for taxpayers, but Volesky, a Huron lawyer and former state legislator, says it is time they faced the facts.

To make sure people know what they are dealing with, Volesky says he would want to see the income tax placed in the constitution.

“I would dedicate it primarily to fund K-12 education,” he said.

His ultimate objective is to rid state taxpayers of other burdens.

“With an income tax, we can repeal property taxes by 50 percent, repeal the hideous tax on food and get rid of this dragon of insanity, the gambling addiction,” Volesky said.

Republican Gov. Mike Rounds is expected to seek re-election next year, and Volesky says his candidacy will offer voters a clear choice.

Volesky formally announces his candidacy Friday at a meeting of the Minnehaha County Democratic Forum at the Holiday Inn City Centre in Sioux Falls.

Jim Meader of Sioux Falls, a political analyst, says Volesky’s plan is a bold proposal and makes some sense since he is challenging a popular governor.

“I don’t think this plan will resonate with a majority of South Dakota voters, especially the income tax idea. The corporate tax probably has more initial support but will immediately run headlong into the criticism that it will cost the state jobs,” Meader said.

It's clear that many Democrats in South Dakota want an income tax (a tax levied on the financial income of a person or corporation), which doesn't help them politically.  The lack of an income tax is a huge selling point for South Dakota when recruiting businesses, so I doubt Volesky's plan will go anywhere.

AAN

Excerpt:

Democrat Stephanie Herseth of South Dakota, elected to a full U.S. House term from a decidedly red state one year ago, says she learned a valuable lesson from former Senate Leader Tom Daschle: Make friends on both sides of the aisle.

Daschle, the South Dakotan who was the Democrats' top man in the Senate for a decade, lost his bid for a fourth term in that same election. But not before he had become one of the most powerful men in Congress.

If Herseth has similar ambitions, she won't say. But the 34-year-old has spent her first year in the House getting to know powerful people - many of them Republicans - who in turn could help her become a major Washington player.

"If you are a freshman and you are in the minority party, you are smart to do that because it's hard to get a lot of leverage," said Rep. Tom Osborne, R-Neb., who agreed to help Herseth secure money for a new bridge over the Missouri River at Yankton. "I know she has reached out to Republicans, and in many cases Republicans have helped her."

Fire Thunder

From SD War College:

Ceceila Fire Thunder, the Oglala Sioux Tribe President now under suspension had an interesting quote with regards to her suspension this week in the Lakota Journal:

"Sometimes I feel like George Bush. I feel like I'm the Republican President, and my council are Republican/Democrats. So as the president of this tribe - I will continue to be attacked and continue to be scrutinized."

Sympathy for the president. Courtesy of a member of the South Dakota Democratic Party's Executive Board.