Rishell says there is no surplus

In a Potomac News Article titled "Miller takes GOP nod for 50th", they interviewed the Democrat candidate for this seat, Jeanette M. Rishell, who said this about spending some of the general fund surplus on critical transportation needs:

Instead of using what Miller said is a surplus of funds, Rishell wants to see a revenue stream dedicated to transportation.

"Miller's calling it a surplus, but it's really not," she said. "Money in the general fund is traditionally used for education, health and public safety."

Well, really, it is. We have a budget for this year, and next, and next, and the revenues we are taking in are higher than the budget allocates to spend. Meanwhile, the transportation fund is hit by a triple-whammy, as higher gas prices drive up the costs of building roads, lower use of gas cuts the money available, and people using public transportation drive up costs more (since it costs us money when people use public transportation).

Traditionally, when the transportation fund had "more than enough money", our representatives had no problem taking money from the transportation surplus and spending it on general funds. Now, they should have no problem doing the opposite.

Our taxes are taken to fund government services. Roads are a government service, and improve the common welfare for EVERY citizen of our state, even those who don't drive. So our income taxes are properly applied to the pressing needs of transportation.

But if democrats like Rishell are elected, there won't be a surplus. We won't get it back, it won't be used for transportation, it will be used as free money and frittered away, while we get hit with another billion a year in taxes for transportation before the trust fund is locked up.

I've taken up residence

at novatownhall.com. What I mean is, I would normally have blogged about a few storys from late this week But instead I spent the morning fixing a computer (part of my hard disk went bad, but for now I've managed to resurrect it) and fixing my network (my wireless simply stopped giving out network addresses -- I ended up hard resetting and reloading).

Meanwhile, yesterday I waded into a conversation over at novatownhall about the marriage amendment, and decided to start arguing the points running around in my head to see how they stood up to opposition. That has turned into a dozen comments most longer than my typical posts. Of course I use too many words.

Anyway, head over to novatownhall to their thread Family Foundation: Marriage Campaign Well Underway , and I'll see if I can get something up before bed tonight here.

Tomorrow I'm spending father's day at Kings Dominion, in the vain hope that I'm the only one who thought of it (I understand that mothers day is a great day for parks, but fathers day probably isn't). In any case I won't be blogging.

Punishing Individuality - Weekly Column Update

The Web Editor at Potomac News took an interest in my column for this week, titled "Where does youthful individuality bump into disruptive behavior?", so it's up on their site, complete with a picture, and they gave me a link from their front page. I've also got a comments section there.

It's a shameless request, but if you have an opinion, please post it to the PotomacNews web site, it shows an interest in my column. Of course, the floor's open here as well.

The column is about one of the basic attributes that make America great, our individuality, and how it is endangered by our Public School system.

I use for examples the boys kicked out of school for showing pride in their heritage, and the girl kicked out of school for her hair color, who also told her story here.

The thrust of the article, told by selective excerpts:

This "individualism" critical to our country's success is passed from generation to generation, father to son, mother to daughter. Responsibility for your own actions, pride in your own work, self-worth and self-esteem, accepting and embracing those different from ourselves -- these are the sometimes hard lessons that make our nation strong.

But today individualism is threatened by the very school system charged with teaching our children those lessons. "Zero-tolerance" policies teach children to blindly follow orders, and to judge perceived harm without regard to individual circumstance. Speech codes in schools teach self-censorship and "group-speak," based not on personal ethics or manners, but on threat of punishment. And then there is the arbitrary imposition of dress codes.

...

But it was wrong to bar my daughter with no evidence of disruption, just as it was wrong to punish the kids for their T-shirts. These arbitrary actions have a chilling effect on both students and parents. Punishing non-conformity out of often unfounded fear of disruption harms our children, and teaches intolerance rather than acceptance.

My daughter's school is an excellent school, and the principal is a good man who I'm sure acted in good faith. But the fact remains my daughter, the T-shirt boys, and probably others have been removed from school for positive expressions of individuality. Mindless conformity is not a lesson we should be teaching our children.

Murtha Cuts-And-Runs from his bid for Majority Leader.

Well, not quite, but he is suspending his bid for the non-existant Democrat Majority Leader post until after the democrats actually have a majority to lead, which could be the same thing.

Last Friday Murtha announced with great fanfare that he would run for Democrat Majority leader:

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative John Murtha, a Vietnam War veteran who has called for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, said he plans to run for majority leader if Democrats win control of the House in the November elections.

Murtha, 73, sent a two-sentence letter to all House Democrats today stating his interest in the post, said his spokeswoman, Cindy Abram.

(Interesting he forgot to add "if he wins his OWN election").

Now, his sudden interest in a leadership post after all these years raised some questions, which he sought to answer in this local Pennsylvania Paper:

...
Immediately, speculation began to arise about whether Murtha’s recent foray into the spotlight was a calculated strategy aimed at improving his political standing. While attending the official opening of Gamesa Inc.’s Fiberblade plant in Cambria Township on Monday, Murtha dismissed the critical speculation as being off target.
...
“I decided I needed to step up because a lot of Democrats were sitting on the fence regarding the war,” Murtha said. “We needed to show the country that something had to be done. We needed to show the country that there are two positions on this issue: President Bush’s and mine.”
...
Murtha said announcing his intentions to run for House majority leader was a difficult one. He said he enjoys his current position of ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.

Of course there are more than two positions on the issue. And assuming he wins his own race, I hope he enjoys his current position.

Anyway, four days later he (or more accurately, he as directed by Nancy Pelosi) was singing a different tune:

WASHINGTON Jun 13, 2006 (AP)— Rep. John Murtha, a candidate for House majority leader if the Democrats oust the Republicans from power in November, said Tuesday will not actively campaign for that post until after the elections.
...
Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi said Murtha was suspending his campaign "in the spirit of unity to achieve our goal of winning a Democratic majority in November."

At least Pelosi told the truth -- The Democrats goal is NOT about what is good for the country, it's not what they will do to make things better, improve our security, win the war on terrorism, or solve the budget problems. It's winning a Democratic majority.

His opponent in Pa, Diana Irey, had a good guess at what may have prompted Pelosi to put the kibosh on Murtha's run for leadership:

“Jack Murtha’s decision to suspend his campaign for House Majority Leader – curiously, announced by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, rather than by Mr. Murtha himself – is just one more example that he is out of touch and in need of retirement from active duty in the Congress.

“Just as he demonstrated that he’s got an itchy trigger finger with his reckless pre-judging of U.S. Marines at Haditha – acting as prosecutor, judge, and jury and convicting them of ‘killing innocent civilians in cold blood’ before any charges had been filed, before any court martial had been convened, before a single Marine had been convicted – this latest episode, in which he announced a campaign for House Majority Leader (an office the Democratic Party doesn’t currently hold) on Friday afternoon, and then, 96 hours later, abandons the effort, leads one to wonder what in the world is going through his head

“Of course, maybe it wasn’t what was going through Mr. Murtha’s head, but what was going through Mrs. Pelosi’s head – to wit: In a year when she had planned to make corruption a key campaign theme, it’s possible she just decided that having a man whose thumbnail bio includes the words ‘Abscam unindicted co-conspirator’ running for a leadership position probably wasn’t such a good idea.

“Perhaps it’s not the Marines who are ‘overstressed,’ to use Mr. Murtha’s word. Jack Murtha has lost his way, and obviously needs a good vacation. It’s time to retire him from active duty in the Congress.”

I disagreed with Diana's press release on one point. Where she said "before a single Marine had been convicted", I would have said "before a single Marine has had his day in court".

Anyway, I think John Murtha has just learned the hard way what the Democrat party generally thinks of him, dragging him out when they need cover on national security, but not wanting to give him real power.

A post from DailyKos about President's Trip to Iraq

DailyKos got a lot of free media this past week, including a fauning set of articles in the Washington Post. A common theme was that they "Kosacks" couldn't understand why they didn't get more respect, given their power and superiority.

Well, I think posts like this are one reason they have a little trouble being taken seriously (well, that and the fact that they are currently 0-20 in getting their endorsed candidates elected).

"Bush Flees for Iraq (1+ / 1-)
Recommended by:ZappoDave
Trollrated by:Wisper

I don't think I've ever seen such a look of misery and dejection on the face of my daughter as I just did a moment ago. She just couldn't understand why the President would be going to Iraq when so many things are wrong in this country. "Doesn’t Mr. Bush care about us anymore?" she asked pitifully.

I sat down with her on the sofa and (as calmly as I could) tried to explain to her why the President seems to be abandoning his country. "Honey, I think his boss, Mr. Rove, sent Mr. Bush out of the country in order to keep himself out of the newspapers. You see, he wasn’t sure if he was going to be arrested today or not, and so he planned Mr. Bush’s trip ahead of time just in case...”

I tried to keep my voice steady, but it became increasingly difficult - the rage and feelings of helplessness were just too much. I think my daughter could tell something was wrong. I found myself at such a loss for words - nothing made any sense; nothing makes sense anymore. I finally had to admit, "Honey, I just don't know - I don't know what's going on in this country anymore..."

When I finished her lower lip started to tremble and her eyes began to fill with tears, "Daddy" she said, "why are the Republicans doing this to the country?" Well, that was it for me: I finally fell apart. She just fell into my arms and we both began sobbing for several minutes.

For once she had to comfort me and get me back on my feet. Sometimes I just think it's too much, but seeing the strength in my young daughter's voice helped me to get through."

It is hard to imagine how ANY President could "reach out and unite" people like this.

Fitzmas is cancelled -- hug a liberal, they'll need it.

If it wasn't bad enough for liberals that Al-Zarqawi was given two 500-pound bombs as a "going-away" present, or that the Iraqi Government is now fully formed, or that none other than the Kossacks hero Paul Hackett attacked John Murtha as recklessly indicting marines as the marines under investigation provide compelling refutation of many of the charges and investigative journalists poke holes in the charges.

Now they must deal with the depressing (for them news that) no indictment of Rove is forthcoming from the special prosecuter who previously acknowledged that no underlying crime was committed when Valerie Plame's employment was reported in the news. Says National Review's Byron York:

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has informed top White House adviser Karl Rove that Rove will not face indictment in the CIA-leak investigation, National Review Online has learned. The word came yesterday, when Fitzgerald told Rove lawyer Robert Luskin that he, Fitzgerald, did not plan to seek charges against Rove.

He reports a press release by Rove's attorney:

On June 12, 2006, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald formally advised us that he does not anticipate seeking charges against Karl Rove.

In deference to the pending case, we will not make any further public statements about the subject matter of the investigation. We believe that the Special Counsel’s decision should put an end to the baseless speculation about Mr. Rove’s conduct.

THe left-wing blogosphere has been abuzz for over a month now about "Rove's indictment", which at last report had already happened but was under special super-secret seal, according to Leopold, the reporter who originally "broke" the story.

Signs of despair are everywhere, as Rove-Indicted memorabilia seems to be going cheap on E-bay.

(OK, that last things fake, but pretty funny).

So, if you know any liberals, be sure to stop by and give them a hug today. With all the bad news, they surely could use one.

What is a Social Conservative?

That is the question Vincent asks over at TooConservatives.

I wrote a two-part answer, but it was so long I thought I'd strip it down and put the longer version over here so it takes up my space and not his.

I will try to summize the original post in it's own words:

What does it mean for a politician to be a social conservative? ... I used to believe three issues defined whether or not a candidate could be properly labeled a “social conservative” : guns, abortion, and gay marriage. ... my definition has changed into defining a “social conservative” as someone who lives morally.
...
Is someone a social conservative who is pro-life but yet has taken bribes? Is someone a social conservative who is in favor of the marriage amendment banning same-sex marriages, when they themselves have cheated on their spouses?
...
it is a persons character which makes them a “social conservative”. For preaching the conservative line, and living a truly conservative lifestyle are often not one and the same.

First, it is certainly true that espousing social conservatism is not the same as living a conservative lifestyle. But moreso, we shouldn't expect them to be the same.

Let me take the most obvious set of examples. A person could support gay marriage on principle, but be a heterosexual who only had sex with his wife and stayed married til death parted them. Personally moral, but not "socially conservative". Or, a person could oppose gay marriage and civil unions, but practice group sex with both sexes -- taking the social conservative government position, while living a personally hedonistic life.

The first man might have more moral "street cred" for his position than the 2nd, but that's because of people's biases, not based on the soundness of the underlying position.

However, it is clear that, if a practicing divorce lawyer thinks government should ban divorce, that would suggest a hypocritic approach to the issue.

There is a danger in taking a policy position/philosophy - "social conservatism", and mixing it with personal behavior, making judgments about other people instead of about the philosophy.

It is a dangerous road, but one that bloggers in particular relish. It's so much easier to attack people for their personalities, their failings, their moral flaws, then it is to debate what the appropriate philosophy is.
People try to live a philosophy, but people are NOT the philosophy, and nobody will perfectly embody a philosophy.

All humans are fallible. But a sound philosophy remains one regardless of whether it's adherants live up to its tenets. NOBODY lives up to the Christian view of morality, NOT ONE of us, but that does not negate Christianity, nor is Christianity defined by how they live up to those tenets.

On the other hand, in deciding whether a PERSON adheres to the philosophy of social conservatism, you would judge by what they espouse or support. So what they believe and say and advocate matters.
If they don't LIVE UP TO those things they espouse, they could well be hypocrits, but it does not mean that social conservatism is what they live, nor does it mean that they do not believe in the values of social conservatism.

We should not be judges of others personal lives. The bible warns against such action -- we should denounce wrongdoing, but should not leap from the righteous identification of wrongdoing, to passing judgment on the soul of the wrongdoer.

Applied to politics, people love to point out he failures of others, and to condemn those they hate for those failures. It is easy to go from recognition of an error, to a condemnation of the character of the person who committed the error.

The definition of a "social conservative" as one who lives a moral life is inaccurate, an attempt by those who do not have conservative social principles to gain inroads among those who do. A person can live a personally moral life but espouse a philosophy that is anathema to true social conservative principles.

The view that "social conservatism" consists of specific position on guns, gays, and abortion, is simplistic -- especially as it substitutes issues for philosophy. A philosophy is an underlying principle, which when applied to a specific ISSUE would lead to choosing one side or the other, or determining a specific solution.

Take for example gun ownership. The principle of strict adherance to the restrictions on government and the freedom of the people espoused by the constitution is not a "social" conservative principle, it is simply a conservative principle. But it is a good proxy for determining whether a politician is likely to engage in social engineering using government to shape society to his/her liking in defiance of the constitution's limitations on government power.

Regarding abortion, the social conservative principle that each life has value leads to the opposition to abortion. Itn allows different social conservatives leeway on the margins as they define what makes a "person". One might oppose birth control pills, while another might be OK with anything that stops implantation of the fetus while opposing further interference.

The post included the following definition of social conservatism:

“Social conservatism is an umbrella term for any ideology that supports a belief in traditional or natural law based morality and social mores and the desire to enforce these in present day society, through civil law, regulation, on the grounds that such social arrangements’ age infuses them with such value”

Social conservatism broadly defined is a belief in morality as found in religious writings. However, it is not the "age" of those teachings that infuse them with value, it is their success in shaping workable societies.

More specifically, "social conservatism" espouses "family values" meaning married parents who put their children and family ahead of personal aggrandizement, believe in discipline, oppose premarital sex/overly physical contact, oppose extramarital sex, divorce, and living together. It advocates the value of children, of churchgoing, belief in things bigger than yourselves, and belief in PERSONAL responsibility and charity, NOT government-funded versions.

It opposes pornography, suggestive movies and lyrics, as well as violence, bad language, and other things that attack the morals of our culture and corrupt our youth. It espouses the work ethic, not the welfare state. It supports public religion, thinks it's OK to pray in public, thinks schools oppose morality because morality is defined in our culture through religious teachings. It opposes situational ethics, believes that people should not steal from other people or use the state to do so.

In summary, it puts family ahead of government, children ahead of personal aggrandizement, espouses public religion, and personal responsibility/charity, not government as Santa Claus. It opposes the attack on societies morals, and believes government should protect the people from these attacks, just as certainly as government has a responsibility to protect the people from physical attack.

"Gods, Guns, and Gays" is a straw man repeated by opponents of social conservatism to belittle it. Evidence is overwhelming that society suffers when we ignore and attack moral values, but rather than open their eyes to facts and truth, the opposition, loving their license to immorality more than the good of society, attack a straw-man, in the hopes of suppressing, making fun of, and marginalizing social conservatives because they can't win in the arena of ideas.

Powell says border walls won't work

According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Powell made the following comments while in Mexico City, Mexico on Thursday:

MEXICO CITY -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Thursday that extending walls along the U.S.-Mexico border will not solve the problem of illegal immigration.

"The Berlin Wall did not work perfectly and the wall that the Israelis are putting up is not going to work perfectly," Powell said. "So, a wall alone is not the answer."

Note that he didn't actually say border walls won't work, he said a "wall alone" won't work. Of course, the Berlin Wall was remarkably effective, even if a few people escaped, and the Israeli wall has done wonders to cut down on suicide bombings in that country -- we would be ECSTATIC to have success like that in combating illegal immigration.

Who said something had to be perfect, anyway. After all, while Powell ran the State Department, it was FAR from perfect, and yet for some reason we are still stuck with it.

Does Marriage Matter to the Nurturing of Children?

In the debate over same-sex marriage, some people argue that maybe the answer is to have the state stop recognizing marriage altogether.

I have argued that state sanctioning of marriage is NOT for the benefit of people who get married, but rather it is a benefit to the STATE -- and therefore the state has the right to sanction only those marriages that provide benefit. As an intellectual exercise, I have suggested starting with a system in which marriage is NOT recognised, and from there thinking about what forms of societal structure we would want to encourage.

My conclusion is that doing so would lead to state recognition of marriage, but that was simply my feeling. Now someone has done an evaluation of studies on marriage, and found that, in fact, marriage DOES matter for children -- to wit, that children who grow up in a household with married parents do better than those who grow up in a household with unmarried parents.

The survey was performed by Robin Fretwell Wilson, a professor of law at the University of Maryland Law school. Her study, "Evaluating Marriage: Does Marriage Matter to the Nurturing of Children?", was published in the San Diego Law review in 2005.

She provided a summary of her article in an e-mail I received:

Dear Colleague,
Policymakers have argued recently that society should withdraw the legal and financial support given to marriage. Obviously, an important consideration in this debate is whether the State's support of marriage matters to the well-being of children. Until recently, social science studies contrasted families that were so dissimilar that nothing meaningful could be drawn from the studies about the importance of marriage. A pair of studies published in 2003 compared how children fare in families that contain biological, married parents with those containing biological, unmarried parents. These studies concluded that "marriage per se confers advantage in terms of" how children thrive and to the extent to which parents are willing to invest in children.
My latest article, Evaluating Marriage: Does Marriage Matter to the Nurturing of Children?, 42 (3) SAN DIEGO LAW REVIEW 847 (2005), evaluates the extent to which these newer, more carefully constructed studies can assist us in isolating the impact that living in a marital home has on a child's well-being. Although various selection effects may color the results, the transformative power of marriage seems to lie first in the greater permanence of marital relationships and, secondarily, in the motivation of the parties to invest in these relationships. In the article, I conclude that these studies provide a compelling justification for state support of marriage. By supporting marriage, the State is supporting children.

The actual article can be found here (pdf format). Seminal quote from the abstract:

Part II examines a pair of studies published in 2003 that compare children’s outcomes and parental investments in children in families that contain biological, married parents with those containing biological, unmarried parents. These studies conclude that “marriage per se confers advantage in terms of” how children thrive and to the extent to which parents are willing to invest in children.

House Republicans Cut 13.5 BILLION from Supplemental

The House/Senate conference has finished reconciliation of the house and senate versions of the supplemental appropriation. The House had previously passed a supplemental relatively free of extraneous items, but the "congenial" senate worked overtime, adding almost 14 billion dollars to the original request.

According to the Washington Post, they have now finished the conference:

House and Senate negotiators reached agreement last night on a $94.5 billion package to pay for Iraq war and hurricane recovery costs, after shaving numerous extraneous provisions that the Senate had wanted to stuff into the bill.
...
The agreement came after long negotiations. Some Republicans in the Senate, including Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran, who represents storm-ravaged Mississippi, had viewed the must-pass bill as an opportunity to address other pressing needs. The Senate bill wound up exceeding Bush's original $92.2 billion request by $14 billion.

Two particularly aggregious items were removed:

One item dropped from the bill: $700 million for a railroad relocation project along the Mississippi Gulf Coast. The compromise package also trimmed $1.2 billion from the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster fund, which provides individual assistance and pays for debris removal. And it struck language that would have compelled the Pentagon to cover hurricane damage to shipyard facilities that would otherwise be covered by private insurance -- a provision that budget watchdog groups have pounced on as a perk for a major Northrop Grumman facility in Pascagoula, Miss.

Instead, the final language included $140 million for the Navy to help with infrastructure improvement costs related to Katrina. This money would be available to shipbuilders in the Gulf Coast who had existing Navy contracts and suffered storm damage.

The railroad provision was to build a new railroad parallel to an existing railroad that was just repaired with $250,000 million in federal money.

It's good to see that, finally, Republicans are showing a little bit of the conservative spirit that was why they were elected in the first place. And it's good to see the Senate once again put in it's place. When the senate is evenly divided, with their rules about 60 votes needed, it's just tailor-made for "compromise" that means taxpayers are constantly under threat.

Oh: The savings from the Senate version amounts to about $40 bucks per american family. So go to your favorite restaurant and celebrate.

Kennedy Sobriety Checkpoints

This was pretty funny. The group "Public Advocate of the United States" set up a "Kennedy Sobriety Checkpoint" in DC over Memorial Day weekend, to make sure no Kennedy's were driving around drunk or under the influence of drugs which might make them run over people on the way to vote.

Video Here.

Story Here. Highlights:

"Citizen volunteers have responded to the call and we have erected checkpoints at several intersections to prevent any Kennedy from driving in an impaired manner on Capitol Hill," said Public Advocate President Eugene Delgaudio. "We selected the long Memorial Day weekend due to the increased potential for a repeat of earlier car accidents."
...
Public Advocate designed the checkpoints to raise public awareness and to discourage impaired driving by Senator Ted Kennedy or Congressman Patrick Kennedy. The ultimate goal is to ensure the roads are safe for all motorists by achieving voluntary compliance of the drinking and driving laws by all Kennedys in Congress. That was accomplished this weekend

Train Show Pictures

Pictures of my train show are uploaded to Brickshelf, and will be available after "moderation" is complete (usually no more than a day).

Here's one:

Democrats say Democrats may win 50th District (Column)

In last week's hectic"ness", I forgot to post my column from last week, which in a rare occurance was an expansion of a post i had made here previously, but included quotes from republicans to answer the democrats in the articles in question.

See it here, "Democrats say Democrats may win 50th District".

California Voters Soundly Reject Universal Preschool

As Kaine attempts to drum up support in Virginia for his first step in bringing Universal Preschool to our schools, voters in the liberal state of California soundly rejected a ballot measure establishing Universal Preschool in their state.

From the Sacremento Bee, "Preschool, library measures falter":

But opponents contended the initiative would create an expensive new education bureaucracy that would mostly benefit families that could already afford private preschools.

"The idea was warm and fuzzy -- everybody wants preschool for children," Amanda Riccetti, a San Francisco Montessori preschool provider and spokeswoman for the now 82 campaign, said as returns showed the initiative losing Tuesday night. "But the reality of Prop 82 is that it wasn't going to target those that it needed to target. And $2.4 billion for a new preschool bureaucracy was too much money for too little."

I addressed Kaine's plan in a column last year titled Universal preschool will come at the expense of private schools and daycare, in which I cited similar concerns:

For example, Tim Kaine (Democrat candidate for governor) supports spending $300 million a year for universal preschool for 4-year-olds. This is a good sound bite - more education for our kids, who can be against it? But this is a bad idea. It will waste money that, if available, can be better used for other education needs. It will harm religious preschools and private daycare centers, and lead to a government takeover of the preschool industry, restricting parental choice. And it will do nothing to improve educational outcomes.
...
Universal preschool not only spends money for children who will gain nothing, it gives tax dollars to parents who already pay for preschool or daycare. And businesses love it, because they don't have to provide daycare solutions for their employees.

We should reject the siren song of universal preschool in favor of refocusing existing programs that target those who truly need help.

I also included a good deal of commentary about how Universal Preschool will largely destroy religious preschools, just as universal public education has marginalized religious education. I note that while Kaine's proposal called for partnerships, it was certain that, once public schools had preschool programs up and running, the same people who oppose vouchers would call for cutting off funding for all religious preschool programs.

I had hoped, of course, that Kaine would lose and we wouldn't have to worry about this again. But he won, and unlike his promise not to propose tax increases, or his promise to back proposals to give local governments tools to stop development, OR his promise to support the marriage amendment, it looks like this bad promise is one he would at least like to keep.

Frankly, most kids don't need preschool. What they need is to be allowed to be kids, to spend time with their parents. We don't need new excuses to give the state control over children.

Hillary Outraged over attacks on 9/11 victims.

Hillary is up in arms over comments made about 9/11 victims and their families.

From the Toronto Star:

(Hillary Clinton) said she found it "unimaginable that anyone in the public eye could launch a vicious, mean-spirited attack on people whom I've known over the last four and a half years to be concerned deeply about the safety and security of our country."

What was Hillary so upset about? A search of the internet turns up this gem:

As to those in the World Trade Center . . . Well, really. Let's get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire – the "mighty engine of profit" to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved – and they did so both willingly and knowingly. Recourse to "ignorance" – a derivative, after all, of the word "ignore" – counts as less than an excuse among this relatively well-educated elite. To the extent that any of them were unaware of the costs and consequences to others of what they were involved in – and in many cases excelling at – it was because of their absolute refusal to see. More likely, it was because they were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cell phones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants. If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I'd really be interested in hearing about it.

Oops. That's not the one -- that's a speech from Ward Churchill.

If you are searching the web for Hillary Clinton's statement attacking Ward Churchill, good luck.

Hillary reserved her outrage for a line from Ann Coulter's new book:

'These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process.These broads are millionaires lionized on TV and in articles about them reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' death so much."

(from NBC's Today Show)

Now, Ann is always too bombastic for my tastes. The problem is, her valid point is lost in the outrage over her over-the-top comments. IN this case -- if you enter the public arena on a political side, your ideas should be debatable, but with these activists, as with Cindy, their supporters would cry foul whenever someone disagreed with them, because of their loss.

But nobody believes they asked for it, or were happy at their loss, any more than Cindy is happy she lost her son, regardless of how she uses that loss, and her son's memory, for her own personal political vendetta.

But the outrage from the left over Ann, and their relative silence about Ward Churchill, is revealing -- as is the almost uniform denunciation of this comment by Ann from the right.

Outrage for political purposes is itself unseemly.

Murtha recklessly indicted Marines

Don't take my word on it.

Murtha is feeding an image of traumatized, out-of-control soldiers like characters in the movies "Rambo" and "The Deer Hunter."

"With one broad stroke, he's recklessly indicted all those Marines ... I don't know if he's gotten addicted to the microphones and the cameras. For him to continue to foam at the mouth, it's irresponsible, it's stupid, it's wrong."

Ann Coulter? Rush Limbaugh? Sean Hannity? Karl Rove? Jean Schmidt?

Nope. Former Democrat House Candidate, and the darling of the left wing, Paul Hackett.

If you are waiting for the house and senate democrats to leap to Murtha's aid, and to denounce Hackett, well, don't hold your breath.

Stop Blaming Others

My latest Potomac News Column, "Stop Blaming Others", is up now over on the column web site.

In this column, I use a specific, particularly outlandish example of a person blaming others for their own actions, to make a broader point that we need to take responsibility for our own actions, and stop looking for someone else to blame when we mess up.

This would apply to many people over the past year who have managed to blame other people for things they had control over.

Are you Free on the 13th?

It seems that the Democrat National Committee isn't taking the Virginia Primary as seriously as one might think. I got this e-mail from them:

Dear Charles,

Governor Dean is meeting on Tuesday, June 13th, at the Capital Hilton with a group of very powerful Democrats who live inside the Beltway (or at least pretty close to it).

While they are indeed powerful, most pundits and powerbrokers still don't understand how and why. They are the small donors giving whatever they can afford to make the Democratic Party and its 50-state strategy successful.

Please join us for this grassroots reception in Washington. If you'd like to attend, you have two options:

Get your Democracy Bond by making a small monthly contribution to the Democratic Party. By joining the Democracy Bonds community you join a group of Democrats committed to our party's future by making possible the long-term financial planning necessary to win.

Make a one-time contribution in the amount of $50.

To RSVP and make your donation, click here: (link deleted -- sorry , democrats)
If you have any questions, please contact call Jen Gonçalves at (number deleted).

Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you on the 13th!

Yours truly,Carl

Carl ChidlowFinance DirectorDemocratic National Committee

I'm thinking the democrats on THIS side of the Potomac might be too busy manning polls, and voting, to spend time on Tuesday driving into DC to meet with Howard. But maybe I'm wrong.

It's all relative -- New York's HS grant.

New York city's grant this year for Homeland Security is slated to be about 75 million less than last year, and they are pretty upset.

Meanwhile, in DC, we are spending THIRTY FOUR MILLION DOLLARS for the Asia Trail exhibit, a set of new "environments" for three pandas, the sloth bears, and a few other current zoo inhabitants.

Kind of puts it all in perspective.

The answer is Exercise.

I've been two three doctors about my current leg pain. I had previously been to doctors for a knee problem, a shoulder problem, and a dizziness problem.

In every single case, the prescription given was -- exercise. Yes, even the dizziness had an "exercise" which reset the stabilizers or something.

I now have a cool picture of my spine with two disks looking a bit droopy, squeezing into the little spine pockets. Years of being overweight do take their toll.

I am now officially down 24 pounds from my first doctor's visit, and have 53 pounds to go before I am no longer "obese", and another 25 or so to be "normal".

But my leg is beginning to feel better, and I now have real hope that one day I will realise that it hasn't hurt in a while.

I'll put the finishing touches on my column tomorrow morning, and then try to get some posts up. To tell the truth, I was afraid to post anything because I don't like to post ahead of time about what I'm writing about (I know I've done that as recently as last week), so when I'm not sure what I want to write about I don't want to post anything.

I've gotten hooked on Digital Cable music, I mostly listen to the contemporary christian while I'm blogging. They are now playing one of my current favorite songs -- just because of the tune's chord changes in the chorus. Music fascinates me. The song "All in the Serve", by Michael W. Smith.

I also plan to put my Train pictures up at my brickshelf site, and will include a link here in case anybody wants to see what they missed. I've got to edit them all for size first.

I can't believe the kids have less than two weeks of school left. Time has really flown by.