sisu

Barney Frank blames Drudge for tightening race?

"GOP unknown in striking range?" headlines Drudge, just below a photo of a goofy-looking Barney Frank and the headline "Barney Frank blames 'right-wing media' for tightening race..."

"The nervousness plaguing Democrats nationwide has touched even Frank," writes Byron York in his latest Washington Examiner column, "GOP unknown in striking range?" We've been blogging and plugging that "GOP unknown," Sean Bielat, ever since we stumbled upon his "Retire Barney" campaign at the Boston Tea Party last April, and Glenn Reynolds — who also links York's piece this evening — has been following the story at least since mid-August. Now Drudge has picked up the scent! Given Sean's opponent's ability to "raise virtually all the money he wants … national support is key" notes York:

But Frank is also one of those liberal Democrats who conservative Republicans love to hate. If GOP donors across the country think there's a chance to beat him, they'll start giving. So far, support has been steady but not overwhelming. Bielat has raised about $600,000; Frank has pulled in many times that.

Click here to help Retire Barney Frank.

Update: Byron York's column trending on Memeorandum.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Biden stumbles into the truth again: "It's not your grandfather's Republican Party"

Vice President Joe Biden waves after speaking in the living room of Lorrie and Robert Cochran in Manchester, N.H. today. He offered supporters a "simple slogan," telling them the Republicans' "Pledge to America" would do nothing but increase the national debt and eliminate government services critical to the nation's health and prosperity. At a Party fundraiser he urged Democrats to "remind our base constituency to stop whining." (Thomas Roy, Pool / AP)

"I spent 36 years in the Senate, serving alongside Republicans of all stripes," says VP Biden, hat in hand, with no sense of the ironic jumble of fabrications and gobbledygook that is his sales pitch in a fundraising letter to the little people that just flew in over the transom. On the one hand it's those shadowy corporate special interests that are out to get us:

We launched the By The People Fund because grassroots supporters have always been the cornerstone of this movement … Reaching our goal of 3 million grassroots donations will help us fight a small but powerful group of corporate special interests who are trying to buy their way back into power.

On the other hand, it's those upstart newcomers that will be the ruination of the Republic:

But some of the Republicans running now are not from your grandfather's Republican Party. They're from the Republican Tea Party.

That's just the point, of course, from a Tea Partier's perspective. Term limits by other means for the fat cats of both parties and their special-interest allies. But Mr. Biden isn't speaking to those of us who've been paying attention and now know, "with real sophistication," everything that happens in the capital. The real quarry is John Kerry's great unwashed "electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening."

Update: Pasadena Phil in the comments at Dan's hits it out of the park:

A lot of politicians will soon be wondering if winning was worse than losing.

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update III: Instalanche!

Update IV: Trending on Memeorandum.

Update V: Cubachi!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Message to Peggy Noonan: Girls just wanna have fun

“Today we completed one pledge and we began another," says Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee: "Many months ago House Republicans committed and pledged to listen to Americans all across this country… We kept that pledge, and it allows us to make another. The Pledge to America starts with the preamble that reminds us that every American citizen is endowed with certain rights from their creator. When our government charts a course that endangers those rights, the people have the right to demand a new agenda from their government."

"This election is more and more shaping up into a contest between the Exhausted and the Enraged," writes Northeast Corridor Conservative Peggy Noonan, once again almost grasping the spirit that animates this Army of Davids. As we wrote last summer, "Tea Party to Peggy Noonan: It's not rage, but disgust!" This time, the former Reagan speechwriter and author of the transcendent "thousand points of light" decided to listen instead of pontificate. Her telephone conversation with Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee is a revelation:

But Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee suggests I have the wrong word for the Republican base. The word, she says, is not enraged but "livid" …

There are two major developments, she says, that are new this year and insufficiently noted, but they're going to shape election outcomes in 2010 and beyond.

"The question is which is to be master," as we blogged the other day, and Blackburn is taking no prisoners:

First, Washington is being revealed in a new way.

The American people now know, "with real sophistication," everything that happens in the capital. "I find a much more knowledgeable electorate, and it is a real-time response," Ms. Blackburn says. "We hear about it even as the vote is taking place" …

The Internet isn't just a tool for organization and fund-raising. It has given citizens access to information they never had before. "The more they know," Ms. Blackburn observes, "the less they like Washington."

It's that effervescent disintermediation of the powers that be via the internet that we are forever flogging here. Blackburn closes in for the kill:

Second is the rise of women as a force. They "are the drivers in this election cycle," Ms. Blackburn says. "Something is going on." At tea party events the past 18 months, she started to notice "60% of the crowd is women."

She tells of a political rally that drew thousands in Nashville, at the State Capitol plaza. She had brought her year-old grandson. When the mic was handed to her, she was holding him. "I said, 'How many of you are grandmothers?' The hands! That was the moment I realized that the majority of the people at the political events now are women. I saw this in town halls in '09 — it was women showing up at my listening events, it was women talking about health care."

Blackburn casts the "rise of women as a force" in terms of "the Rage of the Bill-Paying Moms," and she's right as far as what Noonan calls "a change in national thinking regarding the role of the individual and the government." But don't discount what may be an even more fundamental dynamic at play: "Girls just wanna have fun."

Update: Instalanche! Thanks for the spelling correction, Professor. :D

Message To Peggy Noonan: Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

Want to, want to …

Update II: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link! They just want to, that's all!

Update III: Cubachi links:

SISU: Must read.

Update IV: James Nicholas of What the …?! links:

Boy, do they ever. And few of 'em have more fun than Sissy Willis, whose blog SISU is about as fun as it gets here in blog land. Her latest post is a "once more into the breach" attempt to communicate with Ms. Peggy Noonan, and by my stars, she and candidate Marsha Blackburn of Tenessee seem to have succeeded.

Crossposted at Cloven Not Crested, Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Amazing Grace: Libertarians in bed with Gary L. Bauer?

"Kindness effects more than severity" is the moral of the story of Aesop's Fable "The Wind and the Sun, exemplified in our own day in the coming together without compromise of social and fiscal conservatives (see below for more) in the fight to reignite the lights of the Shining City. Above, a retelling of the ancient tale in The Baby's Own Aesop (verse fables by W.J. Linton) 1887. Illustrations by Walter Crane.

Gary L. Bauer, President of American Values — "Your Voice to Help Protect Life, Marriage, Famly, Faith and Freedom" — is following us on Twitter, an unlikely bedfellow for this Darwinian Libertarian. [See our post of last summer, "The opiate of the dopamine-dependent blogger," for what we mean by that.] We've always shied away from what we took to be social conservatives' impulse to impose upon the rest of us their family values — whether or not we agreed with them, it wasn't government's job to force entry into our private moral universe — a kind of obverse of the left's impulse to impose their politically correct moral-equivalence "values" upon the rest of us. But we're seeing Mr. Bauer & Company with new eyes in the morning light of the Third Great Awakening that is the Tea Party movement, as Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote last February in what we called "one of Instapundit's great distillations of what's 'happening here'":

America’s prior Great Awakenings, in the 18th and 19th Centuries, were religious in nature. Unimpressed with self-serving, ossified, and often corrupt religious institutions, Americans responded with a bottom-up reassertion of faith, and independence.

This time, it’s different. It’s not America’s churches and seminaries that are in trouble: It’s America’s politicians and parties. They’ve grown corrupt, venal, and out-of-touch with the values, and the people, that they’re supposed to represent. So the people, once again, are reasserting themselves.

Back to our strange new bedfellow, Gary L. Bauer, who opens our eyes further with an intriguing thought experiment in his latest Human Events column, "GOP Establishment, RIP?:

Imagine if an inside-the-Beltway consultant met with national Republican leaders and presented an innovative strategy to develop a new political movement that would add millions of voters to the Republican coalition. And what if that consultant assured those GOP leaders that their party would not have to alter its views in order to capture and retain those voters.

He's talking, of course, about the Tea Party itself:

The Tea Party movement has attracted millions of new voters (as well as millions of formerly disaffected Republican voters) to the GOP. And all that Tea Party members ask of the GOP is that it acts according to its own principles by supporting lower taxes, fiscal responsibility and less government. So why are many in the Republican establishment recoiling in horror at the most powerful new force politics has seen in at least a decade? Perhaps it is because these self-appointed leaders are beginning to realize that a fundamental change to the party’s power structure may cause their own political demise.

The Republican establishment’s response to Christine O’Donnell’s surprise win in the Delaware Senate GOP primary was symptomatic of the change. Instead of embracing O’Donnell, the initial reaction of some Republican figures was to impugn her character and write off her chances of victory. This is a page from the same playbook that's been used to marginalize social conservatives.

Not that social and fiscal cons will ever be soulmates. It's a matter of emphasis. O'Donnell herself captured the momentary Zeitgeist — to a standing ovation! — at the Value Voters Summit in Washington Saturday, where Gary L. Bauer was a featured speaker:

But Ms. O'Donnell … has already said social issues won't top her agenda if she wins in November, despite her prior work speaking against premarital sex and masturbation. Instead, the first thing she wants to do is repeal the new health-care law and fend off cap-and-trade climate legislation.

Ms. O'Donnell's appearance …  put a spotlight on the challenge facing social conservatives, prominent in GOP politics earlier in the decade, as they try to hitch themselves to the fiscal insurgents of 2010. They may [or may not!] be ideological soulmates, but that doesn't mean they'd govern the same way.

"My sense of the average tea party-endorsed candidate this year is that what motivates them is their concern over spending and the national debt," said David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute. "If a gay-marriage ban came before Congress, they'd probably vote for it, but that's not what motivates them."

Update: Instalanche!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Tea Party Power: "The question is which is to be master"

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less … The question is which is to be master … that’s all.” The Obama Administration's Orwellian/Emanuelian "rebranding" of the discredited "global warming" as "global climate disruption" comes to mind. (Life Magazine cover of Humpty Dumpty by Maxfield Parrish, March 17, 1921)

"Lotsa Tea Party energy in the air," we twittered Sistah Grizzly Angela Lash this morning, attempting a quick analysis — with "had a great fall" syntax — of the political landscape in "140 characters or less":

All the GOP's fuddy duddies and all the Journolista's men couldn't put the establishment together again!

On a mission to retake the hill and reignite the lights of the Shining City, the "almost chosen people" of our Army of Davids have been gaining ground, disintermediating the powers that be using every medium, old and new, to make our voices heard. The "Krauthammer-Rove Axis of Disdain" was stunned this week to find themselves blinking in the headlights of the onrushing narrative of Sarah Palin and the Tea Party Express. Cubachi has the animation and a nice twist to the irony of "reporters" halfway around the world getting the scoop on Christine O'Donnell and the Delaware upset:

Taiwanese animators have another funny video about the Delaware elections, the main players, and the establishment’s reaction. If only American news [could] be this humorous. Actually, we have MSNBC for that. Although they seem to be unintentionally facetious in their reportage.

A prescient bit of "commentary" from that Taiwanese animation:

The Democrats are happy about the infighting.

But could the Tea Party take them by surprise as well?

Are you listening, MSM? Probably not. The legacy media continue to hear what they want to hear and spin what the Son of Journolist wants them to spin. CNN Senior Political Analyst Gloria Borger's "analysis" last night [h/t News Busters] was typically tendentiously clueless:

The main Republican contenders [Borger's term for the establishment candidates who've been falling under the Tea Party train of late] have got to figure out a way to capture the enthusiasm of the Tea Party voters, without, in a general election, looking like they're captives of the Tea Party voters, and it's going to be a very difficult thing for someone to do because the Tea Party demands you to be ideologically pure, to a certain degree.

"Ideogically pure" is an old-think concept, Ms. Borger. As we twittered Mary Katharine Ham last evening in response to her latest Weekly Standard column, subheaded "Can't all us grizzlies get along?":

I agree sexism is not at issue. My objections in wild twitter nights have been [assertions of] litmus-test straw men.

As I blogged awhile back, those litmus tests or wedge issues are SO yesterday in the clarifying light of The Brown Revolution. [We trust the Values Voter Summiteers now meeting in DC will agree.]

Tea Partiers are focusing on larger issues: Limited government, fiscal responsibility, free markets. Big tent includes Indies & some Dems, BUT …

The powers that be — Rove & Co — don't like being disintermediated by new combos of old & new media.

This just in from Cubachi as we're about to go to "press":

Surprise! Mark Halperin gets it right about the tea parties, Palin.

Can they hear us now?

Update: Dan links in a robust, must-read declaration of our independence:

The message should be, in my opinion, this great growing influence in American politics, often best put in terms of a Tea Party movement, does not demand purity. It does not demand perfection. It demands a healthy respect for our Constitution and a willingness to have and support common sense values and policies which will pull America back from what has been a long, slow slide toward European socialism since the end of the Reagan era …

And we should continue to fight on no matter what the outcome, or challenges that lie ahead. Now, only we can put America back together, again. And we must do just that, not only for ourselves, but for generations of Americans still to come.

Update II: Cubachi links!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Stephen Kruiser at Blog Con: "You don't have the luxury of not 'getting' Twitter anymore"

“I’m not going to do Twitter.  There’s no way to make any money on Twitter. Twitter is just fad type stuff,” Rush Limbaugh famously said last summer. Stacy McCain set him straight in "For the First Time Ever, Rush is Wrong," and now a chorus of top bloggers add their voices to the chorus at Blog Con (see below). Note current languishing stats on Rush's placeholder Twitter page pictured above: Following 1 person. Has 65,558 followers, zero tweets to date.

"You're not here? I was totally walking up to women and asking 'Are you Sissy Willis?'" twittered a disappointed sounding John Hawkins of Right Wing News last evening from the floor of "Blog Con: Taking America Back," a four-day conference at the DC Sheraton Crystal City sponsored by FreedomWorks that climaxes Sunday in a "9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington." "I hope they were all beautiful," we twittered back from our home computer here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea. Thanks to the marvels of modern technology, we were able to set up a Tweet Deck column here on the desktop that streamed every tweet with the hashtag #blogcon in real time. We added our own retweets and a few comments back into the #blogcon stream. This enabled us to follow and participate in the conversation of conferees tweeting from the floor, a lively mix of sound-bite quotes from the formal presentations, together with fun and funny personal commentary like that bit of banter with John Hawkins above. We expect a fuller picture once videos are posted on YouTube. Lots of quotable quotes. A sampling and then an analysis:

Really impressive turnout at the 1st-ever #blogcon. Lots of top-notch conservativebloggers/Tweeters here. [Matt Lewis]

You don't have the luxury of not "getting" Twitter anymore. [Stephen Kruiser via Michael Bates]

Power of Tea Party = no one person = in charge, no one who can be destroyed Alinsky-style [Matt Kibbe of FreedomWorks]

Twitter = powerful way  to influence influencers. Use it. And remember, it's a SOCIAL medium. [MelissaClouthier via Holly Richardson]

I just met @jimmiebjr a few minutes ago for the first time, but oddly enough, I feel like I've known him for years. [Glen Asbury]

Note to #blogcon speakers: Don't worry if none of us is paying attention. We're all blogging and tweeting. [Jimmie]

These activist conservative bloggers who are so at home with each other upon first meeting are the rabble in arms we and our blogfriends Dan Riehl, Melissa Clouthier, Stacy McCain and an army of other Tea Party types — not least Rush, Mark Levin and Tammy Bruce — have been marching beside through our social networks as the election season heats up and we prepare to storm "the biggest hill for me in all this," as Dan writes, "capitalized and in the District of Columbia." The issue for conservatives is the contentious RINO Factor that separates Angelo Codevilla's "Country Class" — us great unwashed — from "The Ruling Class," those Northeast Corridor Fuddy-Duddies who had counseled a "safe" pick for John McCain's running mate back in the fall of 2008. The Republican primary for Joe Biden's old Delaware seat has brought things to a head. In her tour de force "Republicans: 2010 Was The Year To Fight, Not Flee," Melissa gets it down to what amounts to 2 1/4 tweets (311 characters):

But then again, the old-boys' network is all about doing one’s time, being a faithful soldier over years and years (or be born into the right family). In short, the Republican party is not a meritocracy, it’s a political bureaucracy not unlike unions. Do your time, hang in long enough, and you’ll get a bump up.

That's the bottom line. You're either with the Fuddy-Duddies or against them. We know which side we and the bloggers of BlogCon are on, and "getting" Twitter has emboldened us to storm the Hill.

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Update II: Trending on Memeorandum.

Update III: "Sissy Willis You're not here? twitters John Hawkins of Right Wing News:

I was totally walking up to women and asking, "Are you Sissy Willis?"

Update IV: Stacy McCain casts "Are You Sissy Willis" as a Blog Con pickup line and lands an Instalanche!

Update V: Stacy links with a "Stinging Rebuke of Stephen Kruiser's Twitter Philosophy."

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Barney Frank: Politically fat and campaign lazy?

"Barney and his colleagues need to go," challenger Sean Bielat told a group of RetireBarney fans at a Constitution Ride Across America rally at the State House yesterday: "Barney Frank's been at the heart of the financial meltdown and the real estate crisis … As a businessman I understand what it takes to create jobs, I understand the need for fiscal responsibility in Washington. As a Marine, I understand that we achieve peace through strength. And as an American I realize that we need to return to our Constitutional values and the idea of citizen legislators."

"You can call me Congressman," quipped Barney Frank challenger Sean Bielat when we asked permission to call him "Sean" during a cordial and informative phone interview yesterday. Incumbent Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee since 2007 and enthroned upon the "Frank Seat" (MA-4) for nearly 30 years, has grown politically fat and perhaps campaign lazy after decades in office without a serious opponent. We hear he's been looking over his shoulder, polling the popularity of our man Sean since April, when Bielat's RetireBarney campaign started building up steam. And Barney — May we call you Barney? — has started attacking his challenger by name, the surest sign that he's taking Bielat's candidacy seriously. As Framingham lawyer Robert Snider writes in his excellent PJM piece "Might Barney Frank Lose?":

A primary reason Frank has stayed in office since 1981 is that the Fourth is a carefully gerrymandered district [that] connects the Volvo liberals of Newton and Brookline to the Democratic, blue-collar cities of Fall River and New Bedford. It meanders from the Boston city limits south, all the way to the ocean — overwhelming the intervening leafy bedroom communities like Dover and Lakeville …

A legitimate, Republican candidate — with a modicum of gravitas — has not tested Barney recently …

Electoral history seems to support an inference that the Fourth has an intimidating percentage of registered Democrats, but this is not the case: the current breakdown is 38% Democrat, 11% Republican, and 50% independent. Even in the five Democratic cities, registered Democrats do not outnumber the total of registered Republicans and registered independents. In the special election of 2010, Scott Brown won every one of the bedroom communities and failed to reach 50% only in the four urban cities and Sharon.

Bielat told us he didn't expect to change too many minds among the die-hard Democrats who voted for Coakley in the special election last January, but Scott Brown did win the Fourth overall, and Brown supporters and tea party activists have been signing on as early volunteers. Count us among them! Already 20,000 phone calls have gone out, with 3/4 support among what are called "high-performance" Republicans and unenrolleds (the Massachusetts term for Independents). We protested that from our own experience phonebanking for Brown, voters mostly don't like those calls from strangers, but — like negative campaigning itself — phonebanks work. The campaign is up and running on Facebook and Twitter, which is right up our alley.

But given our junior Senator's disappointing, big-government votes on the jobs and financial reform bills, could the great energizer that is the Brown Revolution be a double-edged sword? We asked Sean in a series of written questions and will publish his more extended, written answers as soon as they become available. For now, consistent with his born-and-bred limited-government, free-market philosophy as expressed on his campaign website (click on "Views"), Bielat assured us he would have voted against the jobs and fin/ed bills and has signed the "Contract from America." As Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe wrote in their WSJ op ed the other day, referring to candidates like Sean Bielat across the nation who have signed the "statement of policy principles generated online by hundreds of thousands of grass-roots activists":

These young legislative entrepreneurs will shift the balance in the next Congress, bringing with them a more serious, adult commitment to responsible, restrained government.

Then there's retail politicking. Our phone interview gave us a taste of our candidate's personal warmth and humor. Commercial fishermen in a coffee shop in "The Whaling City" of New Bedford — where unemployment is over 15% — opened up to Sean. They were onto Barney Frank's role in facilitating the financial meltdown. "What about Fannie Mae?" they wanted to know. We don't know how much retail politicking in distressed blue-collar towns Frank's been doing of late, but his pollsters must have picked up the scent. Today's WSJ explains in "Barney to Fannie: Drop Dead:

Barney Frank has been all over the airwaves this week with a clear and — we never thought we'd say this — perfectly sound message about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: "They should be abolished."

Well, praise be. Two years ago next month, then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson put the two government-sponsored mortgage-finance giants into conservatorship, and Congressman Frank declared himself pleased that there was a good chance, according to government bean-counters, that the rescue wouldn't cost taxpayers a dime.

To his supporters, Barney Frank's shamelessness may be one of his most endearing qualities. Talking about the failed "stimulus" bill the other day, he confided to a reporter on the record "we're supposed to call it the 'recovery bill,' not 'stimulus.' That's what focus groups tell us." You're out of touch, and you don't speak for the rest of us, Barney. Sean Bielat is listening with his own ears.

More to come in written responses, including Sean Bielat 's strategy to raise the funds necessary to be competitive with an opponent some would say is "too big to fail." And don't miss the two Seans on Hannity next Monday night!

Update: Too much fun: Barney Frank Freddie Fannie Flip video.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Should a Tea Party candidate run in the 2012 primary if Scott Brown drifts further?

"Retire Barney.com. Sproing! The thought of it set our heart aflutter," we captioned this image in our blogpost "Boston Tea Party Fallout: Retire Barney Frank?" last April: "As a volunteer gathering email addresses for the GBTP at today's Boston Tea Party on the Common with Sarah Palin, we got to chat briefly but intensively with a multitude of good folks from all walks of life and different ethnic backgrounds, ages and sexual orientation who share with us a love and admiration for this Shining City Upon a Hill and want to save it from the ravages of the international progressivist statist impulse represented by the Obama Machine. The vibrant 'new mom' above turned out to be sis-in-law to Barney Frank challenger Sean Bielat" (see below for a proposal).

Interesting email exchange this evening with Professor Reynolds, following up on our earlier post, "Sissy Willis, Scott Brown doesn't want to hear from you":

We: He's getting an earful from us Tea Party people today. Too late for FinReg, but maybe next time?

Glenn Reynolds: Indeed. Somebody should make noises about running a Tea Party candidate against him in the primary if he drifts further …

Barney Frank challenger Sean Bielat poses with newly-minted Senator Scott Brown for this image from Bielat's campaign website.

What if Tea Party favorite, businessman and Marine Sean Bielat manages this November to unseat Barney Frank (MA-4), co-architect of the "Dodd-Frank Financial Fiasco" that passed the Senate this afternoon thanks in part to Brown's vote? He'd have a chance during the next two years to show what he's made of and could be ripe and ready to step into the fray as the kind of Tea Party candidate Reynolds suggests, should Brown's voting record continue to disillusion former supporters. Senator Brown comes up for election to a full term in 2012

We're supporting Bielat this cycle, as we explained last April:

Forget about our useless District 8 Rep Michael Capuano. We've got bigger fish to fry: 4th-District Rep. Barney Frank is in our sights, and Sean Bielat might be just the man to unseat him. Before we decide whether to support the very appealing Mr. Bielat, we'll check out all three Republicans challenging the unspeakably arrogant and destructive Frank, responsible perhaps more than any other one person for the Fannie and Freddie bubbles that precipitated the nation's current economic woes. But the point is, we're going to apply our "Give to strategic small-government candidates, not parties" strategy within our own Commonwealth of Massachusetts, giving time and money to wresting Barney Frank from the Frank People's Seat of Massachusetts 4th Congressional District for the next period of time. This is going to be fun!

Update: "Good way to hand the seat back to the Democrats, I think," cautions twitterfriend Irishspy. Another follower, dmataconis, is more direct:

Dumb idea.

But as we twittered back to Irishspy, "Maybe, but why not think outside the box at this early date?"

Update II: Twitterfriend WooHoo Yoo delights us in the comments:

Retiring Barney to a movement candidate would be delicious and perhaps the best strategy to pulling Brown right. Does Sean yell loudly, cuz Scott is surely deaf to the American people.

Update III: "He's better than Martha Coakley would have been," says Professor Reynolds — thanks for the Instalanche! — citing gs from the comments:

I voted for Scott Brown and gave him a donation when it appeared he had a serious chance, but I’m neither enthused nor disenchanted. I was supporting divided government, not Scott Brown.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

The effete powers-that-be as hapless horned toad

New media as Loggerhead Shrike …

"That's a shrike, commonly known as a 'butcher bird' [AKA Loggerhead Shrike] because it saves its prey (insects, lizards, frogs, small mammals, and other small birds) up for later, hanging them on thorns or barbed wire spikes," writes Thomas W. Knowles in the comments to our earlier post, "Tea Partiers pour it on: We'll start the war from right here!" identifying the mystery bird with horned lizard in beak:

It's the shrew of the bird world, a serious predator — and I wish it had picked different prey rather than that young horned toad, which is an endangered species.

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has more:

A small gray, black, and white bird of open areas, the Loggerhead Shrike hardly appears to be a predator. But it uses its hooked beak to kill insects, lizards, mice, and birds, and then impales them on thorns to hold them while it rips them apart.

It does not have the strong feet and talons of a raptor. It does have a strongly hooked bill for gripping flesh, and a strong notch or "tooth" near the bill tip that helps sever the spinal cord of its prey. It uses thorns and barbed wire to hold large prey while it rips it up, and may wedge prey into a fork in a branch for the same purpose.

… skewering the legacy media as hapless horned toad.

What a way to go. We loved the second part of Thomas W. Knowles's comments, a classic segue from the natural historian's site observations to the political philosopher's cogitations:

And the MSM and most of the dedicated left-of-center, big-government Democrats are delusional re the Tea Party (an alliance of Independents, Libertarians, Democrats, and Republicans who are fed up with the entrenched political elite) and what is going on out here in "flyover" country. Come November, the political elite, especially those big-government types, will find out that they are, politically speaking, an endangered species.

That casts the effete powers-that-be as the hapless toad, bombastically squirting blood from its eyelids and puffing itself up with air to appear too big to eat, caught in the predatory bill of the new media, about to be skewered and ripped to shreds. No wonder Obama & Company are desperately trying to muzzle the internet and "reinvent" old media.

Update: Michelle Malkin "Buzzworthy" link!

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.

Jan Brewer: Massachusetts Repubs' secret weapon?

"Border problems that seem like a world away emerged in Chelsea and Revere over the last few years, and state law enforcement and the FBI are just now unraveling a drug operation here that allegedly had direct connections to Colombian drug kingpins who have set up shop along the U.S. Border," reported our local rag, the Chelsea Record, the other day.

The influx of illegal immigrants has "emerged as a flashpoint in the Massachusetts governor’s race" according to the Boston Globe. Oh, sweet Scott Brown for whom we fought the good fight, you may not be voting as we would have you vote on every bill, but the reverberations of your "term limits by other means" special election are sweet music to our ears:

Staking out increasingly tough stances on illegal immigration, Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles D. Baker and independent rival Timothy P. Cahill said yesterday that they want to give police the authority to arrest people.

As the two candidates battle for conservative voters, Baker said he would reinstate a controversial agreement with the federal government that Governor Mitt Romney signed in 2006 that deputized 30 specially trained State Police troopers to detain illegal immigrants …

The program never took effect in Massachusetts because Patrick rescinded it before the troopers could be trained …

Immigration is currently the province of the federal government, though many critics say Washington has failed to stem the influx of illegal immigrants, and the issue has emerged as a flashpoint in the Massachusetts governor’s race.

Carefully sidestepping association with Arizona's popular but politically incorrectly misrepresented immigration law, "Cahill said residents are fed up with illegal immigration":

“We’re not looking to profile people or prejudge,’’ said Cahill, the state treasurer. “But, if they can’t prove they are citizens, then that should be part of the police work of detaining and eventually deporting people.’’

"Using illegal aliens mostly to handle the drugs, investigators said Pereanez — who had a U.S. passport — kept himself away from the product. Wiretaps led investigators to other alleged dealers," noted the Record.

Despite "a widespread consensus among police chiefs, particularly in the state's urban areas, that they do not want to be in the business of enforcing [federal] immigration law," People's-Seat-energized taxachusetts Republican candidates are reading the tea leaves:

“As a tool for dealing with some really bad actors in some of our cities, they said it was an effective tool, and they were sorry not to have it as a way to protect their communities,’’ Baker said …

He would reenroll Massachusetts in the federal program used by a handful of states, including Rhode Island, that allows state troopers to arrest people determined during the course of an investigation to be illegal immigrants.

Sounds good to us here in crime-ridden Chelsea-by-the-Sea (see captions above), one of four Massachusetts "sanctuary cities" where drug dealing fed by South-of-the-Border connections is huge:

Despite a 1996 federal law [the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act that requires local governments to cooperate with Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement(ICE)], many large urban cities (and some small) have adopted so-called "sanctuary policies." Generally, sanctuary policies instruct city employees not to notify the federal government of the presence of illegal aliens living in their communities. The policies also end the distinction between legal and illegal immigration — so illegal aliens often benefit from city services too.

Interesting. You'd almost think that someone like ourselves, who generally favors local over federal solutions, would be on the side of the sanctuary-city folks. Only problem is it rewards — and therefore encourages — bad behavior.

Crossposted at Riehl World View and Liberty Pundits.