Speaker "Boner"

Apparently, our classy former President "Dubya's" nickname for now-Speaker of the House John Boehner was the overly-clever "Boner." This is one of the great anecdotes contained in the latest slasher piece by the Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. It's a lengthy piece that is well worth a read, including great little bits such as this:

The fact that Boehner supported TARP and No Child Left Behind and mega-handouts to the pharmaceutical industry and a range of other federal subsidies is hardly surprising, for this is what mainstream Washington politicians of both parties do — they take great buttloads of money from giant transnational companies, play golf with the CEOs of those same companies ("If someone I've gotten to know on the golf course comes into my office with a good argument," Boehner once said, "I tend to want to listen"), and deliver taxpayer money back to their buddies when the need arises, or sometimes even when the need doesn't arise. In this regard, Boehner has had a lot more in common with campaign-contribution-devouring Democrats like Chris Dodd and Harry Reid than he has with the Tea Party Republican voters he now ostensibly represents.

Taibbi sets out Boehner as the anti-Tea Party leader of the Tea Party folks in Congress, which as dobber has already suggested, should provide us with fantastic blogging fodder. One thing is for certain, you'll want to have your Kleenex handy. And you'll want to watch and see if the Tea Party changes "Boner" or if "Boner" changes them:

The new speaker represents an increasingly endangered class of Beltway jobholders who know how to raise money and get elected, but not much beyond that. He now finds himself the party's last line of defense against millions of angry voters who, for the first time in recent memory, are at least attempting to watch what Congress is up to. The tee times are over.

This scenario could have a lasting impact on the interaction between Congress and the people they represent, or the people could once again turn their eyes from the incestuous orgy that has been Washington for 40 plus years.

(Hat Tip: A.L. Burns)

When the Constitution Gets in the Way of the Right's Agenda

I think we're all familiar now with how the right fawns over the Constitution. They even went so far as to mark their property the other day by reading it into the Congressional record, just not all of it. It kind of reminds me of how my dog pisses on trees when I walk him to mark his territory. Except sometimes that damn document just gets in the way of hating foreigners and loving church in public. Slate ran a great piece on how the right absolutely loves the Constitution, except for the 1st, 14th, 16th, and 17th amendments (I'll throw in the Supremacy Clause for good measure):

This newfound attention to the relationship between Congress and the Constitution is thrilling and long overdue. Progressives, as Greg Sargent points out, are wrong to scoff at it. This is an opportunity to engage in a reasoned discussion of what the Constitution does and does not do. It's an opportunity to point out that no matter how many times you read the document on the House floor, cite it in your bill, or how many copies you can stuff into your breast pocket without looking fat, the Constitution is always going to raise more questions than it answers and confound more readers than it comforts. And that isn't because any one American is too stupid to understand the Constitution. It's because the Constitution wasn't written to reflect the views of any one American.

The problem with the Tea Party's new Constitution fetish is that it's hopelessly selective. As Robert Parry notes, the folks who will be reading the Constitution aloud this week can't read the parts permitting slavery or prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment using only their inside voices, while shouting their support for the 10th Amendment. They don't get to support Madison and renounce Jefferson,then claim to be restoring the vision of "the Framers." Either the Founders got it right the first time they calibrated the balance of power between the federal government and the states, or they got it so wrong that we need to pass a "Repeal Amendment" to fix it. And unless Tea Party Republicans are willing to stand proud and announce that they adore and revere the whole Constitution as written, except for the First, 14, 16th, and 17th amendments, which totally blow, they should admit right now that they are in the same conundrum as everyone else: This document no more commands the specific policies they espouse than it commands the specific policies their opponents support.

The most recent offensive the right is taking up against the Constitution is birth right citizenship. The 14th Amendment clearly reads: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." Nevertheless, right-leaning state legislatures in three states want to strip citizenship from children born to illegal immigrants in this country. Too bad the Constitution, which they so dearly love, says these babies are citizens. According to the state legislatures, the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" means these babies do not have to become citizens. The Constitutional Law Prof Blog explains why their wrong in a fascinating article for us legal nerds:

They seem pretty confident in their interpretation, but there's good evidence against them. Start with the congressional debates over the Fourteenth Amendment--a debate eerily similar to that today. The debate in the 39th Congress focused on Chinese immigrants in California and Gypsies in Pennsylvania (among other groups), with opponents of birthright citizenship claiming that Chinese and Gypsies would take over those states. Opponents of birthright citizenship in the Amendment (obviously) lost that debate in the 39th Congress.

The article is definitely worth the 5 minutes it will take to read. It really underscores how the right will urinate all over the place claiming to own the Constitution and then at the same max volume (turn it up to 11) disclaim many of the parts that affect us most. This is why Charles Krauthammer's most recent column angered me and caused me to tell to Burnsy that it was "utter trash." But that's a column for another time.

Love America...

I found this video to be absolutely fascinating:





(Hat Tip: The Daily Dish)

Home School Tax Credits

Professor Paul Caron of the TaxProf Blog wrote today about a proposal to give tax credits to home schooled students:

The new Republicans in Congress have vowed to challenge Washington's role in American public education, and said they will seek to turn more power over to the states on many fronts. But one of their priorities is a new federal rule: to give parents in every state tax credits if their children are home-schooled.

Previous efforts in Congress to adopt a nationwide tax break have failed, and currently only three states -- Illinois, Louisiana and Minnesota -- allow some benefit for home schooling

I really don't see why the federal government would give tax credits to pay for someone to not use their local schools? It does sound like the typical Republican proposal though - more spending with no effect on most of the country. Additionally, its an area the states should handle, especially since your local taxes pay for schools. Am I missing something?

Those Phantom Budget Cuts

I've been saying this since before the election, but the Republicans are bound to upset the Tea Partiers when they're unable to actually make any significant cuts to federal spending. I remember Chris Matthews on election night asking Republican leaders what programs they would cut, and not a single one could name a program they would cut, including mumbling nonsense from Michele Bachmann and Eric Cantor. The only thing we knew they were against was the Affordable Care Act, which, according to the CBO would reduce the federal deficit by a significant amount. In other words, the Republicans would increase spending.

Now, we have evidence that the Republicans never had a plan to actually reduce spending:

Many people knowledgeable about the federal budget said House Republicans could not keep their campaign promise to cut $100 billion from domestic spending in a single year. Now it appears that Republicans agree.

Now aides say that the $100 billion figure was hypothetical, and that the objective is to get annual spending for programs other than those for the military, veterans and domestic security back to the levels of 2008, before Democrats approved stimulus spending to end the recession.

It was hypothetical? I don't remember hearing that word during the campaign or any tea party rally. Funny timing.

I Wonder if the Rules Will Still Apply

A combination of the President's vacation in Hawaii, the end of the 111th Congress, and our own vacations have brought this blog to a screeching halt. But as the 112th Congress returns, we're going to see some hilarity coming out of the House. I'm really wondering if the Republicans will keep harping about their "deficit reductions" and "new rules" in the House when it's fairly obvious they are merely words with no meaning behind them. Case in point:

CAF's Bll Scher makes what would be a very good point about the House GOP's new "cutgo" spending rule.

The House Republican leadership has announced it will enact two things immediately upon taking control of the House this week: a new "CutGo" rule to require revenue offsets for any increases in spending, and the repeal of the Affordable Care Act health reform law.

The Republicans might want to pass health reform repeal first.

Because if they install "CutGo" rules first, they won't be able to repeal health reform without also finding $1 trillion in spending cuts over the next two decades to make up for the taxpayer savings they'll be throwing away.

Which would have been the case had they not already blown a big ol' loophole in their own rule

This should be rich. No pun intended.

"You don't say 'Creep, Creep' unless you're quoting TLC..."

The title to this post is simply an excuse to quote the Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg film, "The Other Guys," which I watched and quite enjoyed over the weekend. Though, it's not entirely irrelevant to the latest piece by Krauthammer. Charlie and George Will have been writing about the President's latest liberal designs and how he attempts to circumvent the half-Republican congress through regulation:

On Dec. 23, the Interior Department issued Secretarial Order 3310, reversing a 2003 decision and giving itself the authority to designate public lands as "Wild Lands." A clever twofer: (1) a bureaucratic power grab - for seven years up through Dec. 22, wilderness designation had been the exclusive province of Congress, and (2) a leftward lurch - more land to be "protected" from such nefarious uses as domestic oil exploration in a country disastrously dependent on foreign sources.

The very same day, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that in 2011 it would begin drawing up anti-carbon regulations on oil refineries and power plants, another power grab effectively enacting what Congress had firmly rejected when presented as cap-and-trade legislation.

For an Obama bureaucrat, however, the will of Congress is a mere speed bump. Hence this regulatory trifecta, each one moving smartly left - and nicely clarifying what the spirit of bipartisan compromise that President Obama heralded in his post-lame-duck Dec. 22 news conference was really about: a shift to the center for public consumption and political appearance only.

I think the regulatory scheme is largely the prerogative of the executive and that, so long as the implementation of legislation does not exceed the scope of the legislation, then the executive does not run afoul of the constitution. I also think that this complaint by Krauthammer is alarmism over an alleged creeping of the executive power. I think that perhaps the fear is legitimate but that the complaints regarding the Obama administration are, at best, premature. How much regulation is permitted under our scheme? What is an acceptable level of regulation by the executive.?