Waldo’s Virginia Political Blogroll

Democrats in the House of Representatives are purportedly considering some parliamentary trickery to get ObamaCare passed:

House Rules Chairwoman Louise Slaughter is prepping to help usher the healthcare overhaul through the House and potentially avoid a direct vote on the Senate overhaul bill, the chairwoman said Tuesday.

Slaughter is weighing preparing a rule that would consider the Senate bill passed once the House approves a corrections bill that would make changes to the Senate version.

I cannot see how this could possibly be Constitutional given the clear provisions of Article I, Section 7:

“Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law”

Without a direct vote on the Senate bill, I fail to see it could be legally considered a law under the Constitution.

But, you know, these are the win-at-all-costs Democrats we’re talking about, I doubt something as pesky as the Constitution matters to them.

Similar Posts:

• Harry Reid Backs The D.C. Vote Bill
• White House Opposes D.C. Vote Bill
• Memo From The Washington Post: Ignore The Constitution, Just Vote Already
• House Passes Auto Bailout Bill
• Senate Rejects Retrocession Amendment

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Nice discussion of the needle that McDonnell is trying to thread. McDonnell is trying to back away from Cuccinelli, but his "directive" doesn't go nearly far enough. The reality is that the McDonnell administration is on a discernably homophobic pathway.

McDonnell is hoping that his token action yesterday will distract critics, but I suspect that McDonnell is going to remain the focus of this discussion going forward.

So it seems that the Senate has unanimously passed a modified Iran Sanctions bill, and plans to conference with the House in order to hash out the differences.

Not to endlessly rehash this, but this it’s pretty clear — from years of experience — that sanctions are a particularly ineffective means of inducing coercion. Especially if our long-term goal is to induce regime change in an authoritarian country. As I wrote not too long ago:

…sanctions are far more likely to strengthen the hand of the ruling class, either through strengthening their control over the distribution of resources (as was the case in Iraq), by providing a convenient scapegoat, or by heightening nationalistic sentiment. In all likelihood, ordinary Iranians will focus their ire on the UN and the United States for the sanctions, not their own government.

Beyond that, it is hilarious (as well as worryingly arrogant) to think that there is anything we could to do to move Iran off of its path to nuclear weapons. The strategic benefits of a nuclear weapon notwithstanding (power projection!), the mere ability to produce a nuclear weapon is a point of national pride, and mostly explains why even the “Green” reformers are firmly in favor of pursuing a nuclear program. The reality is that vanishingly few Iranians are in favor of abandoning nuclear technology, and there is very little we can do to convince them otherwise.

It’s also worth considering this: the United States has an extraordinary amount of leverage over Israel, in the form of political, economic and military support. But even with the deck stacked completely in our favor, the Obama administration has had little success in pushing Israel to abandon further settlement construction. Given we can’t even make our allies fall in line with our goals, what exactly makes us think that we would have any success with our adversaries?

I must confess a bias that I have developed when reading recipes for venison in particular and wild meat in general. If I see the words 'juniper berry' in the list of ingredients then I run screaming.

Juniper berry has long been utilized in recipes for venison because it is helpful in covering up the flavor of gamy meat. 'Gaminess' is a word which arguably describes the taste of badly handled and possibly slightly spoiled meat. Many hunters and cooks have convinced themselves and others that wild meat is inherently gamy. This is utter nonsense. If meat tastes gamy then the blame should be placed squarely on the hunter and/or the butcher.

Waiting too long to field dress the meat, failing to cool it down quickly, or allowing bacteria-laden material from the digestive system to contact much of the surface area of the meat will cause a gamy flavor. If people handled beef the way that many hunters handle their venison then cows would taste gamy as well.

The common practices of handling venison in Europe and in the US reflect oral traditions that pre-date both refrigeration and an understanding of what bacteria are. Hanging a whole, often ungutted animal outside in fluctuating temperatures for a week or two will result in spoiled meat. If you like the taste of spoiled meat then have at it. But most of us do not enjoy this taste, which is why so many old recipes for wild game are elaborate means of hiding the delicate funk of roasted e. coli.

We don't need to keep doing this. We don't need to handle our venison like a sack of potatoes. Personally, I quarter all of my deer in the field, stripping all of the meat off within an hour or two of the kill. It goes straight into a cooler and then into the fridge or freezer, resulting in meat that is not unlike lean beef.

If you are handling your meat properly then I say its time to toss out these old legacy recipes and start cooking your venison like something that you actually want to taste. Even some otherwise great chefs have fallen into this trap. Hugh Fearnsley-Wittingstall is constantly guilty of this. I love everything about his 'Meat' book, except for his chapter on wild game that is right out of the dark ages. Look at this recipe for venison that he wrote a couple of years ago. Not only does he throw the juniper at poor Bambi but he's hitting it with almost 2 pounds of bacon as well. Bacon is the classic 'lets cover up the taste of this meat with something overpowering' ingredient.

Hmm, Hugh. Why is it that you need to cover up the taste of your meat with juniper and bacon? Oh right, because you leave the stuff out to hang and rot on your back porch for a week.

Just walk away from these types of recipes. Roll up your sleeves and start experimenting with venison and other wild meat for what it is, instead of what it was.

[Photo used courtesy of John Athayde through a Creative Commons License]

Lots of things, as always, going on throughout Virginia, but here are a few posts to note.

Bob Holsworth at Virginia Tomorrow describes what he sees McDonnell attempting to do by holding yesterday’s press conference regarding the state’s anti-discrimination policies, in particular, the class of “sexual orientation”

Holsworth believes McDonnell is “Reasserting Gubernatorial Priorities, Extricating Himself from the Pelosi Maneuver, and Controlling the Virginia Model”.

McDonnell’s Executive Order places the highest office in Virginia on record as noting that discrimination based on sexual orientation is inherently protected by the U.S. Constitution and, by implication, suggests that the Governor has reconsidered his own previous statement that “Cuccinelli’s legal reasoning” was accurate.
Even more importantly, it is a message to both the broader business and political communities that Virginia remains a forward-looking state that can be a model of where conservatism is moving.

Jim Riley at Virginia Virtucon has a great take on the WaPO doing it again – bringing up the most sourced and discussed college paper in the history of the World – Bob McDonnell’s thesis.

The WashPo is turning itself into a bad joke with this….McCartney is either being disingenuous for partisan purposes or else is a fool.

Brian S at Too Conservative discusses Eric Massa based on his personal dealings with the man:

Don’t trust a word he says. He’s not the good guy here. He’s just another Democratic politician with zipper problems who got caught and is willing to say anything as he heads out the door.

And, the RTD Virginia Politics blog reports that Dave Mills will be the new executive director at DPVA. Mills is married to Del. Jennifer McLellan and “was selected by a group of political and grassroots leaders from across Virginia, according to the party.” Congratulations, Dave. You don’t authorize tire slashing, do you?

Bart Stupak (D-Michigan) is a crooked congressman who has been taking free rent and expenses amount to tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars for years, but refuses to identify who has been bankrolling his lifestyle in Washington, DC.  Well good news, Bart Stupak now has a primary challenger in Michigan's first congressional district: Connie Saltonstall.
 
I'll be digging up additional information on how you can donate to Saltonstall and support her in her effort to force this crooked congressman out of office.

Similar Posts:

• Ron Paul Talks To The Public
• Ron Paul Talks Drug Legalization On CNN
• Ron Paul Talks Health Care Reform
• Ron Paul Talks About The Financial Crisis, 20 Years Ago
• Ron Paul Talks “End The Fed” On The Daily Show

Commonwealth of Virginia
Office of Governor Bob McDonnell

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 10, 2010

Contact: Stacey Johnson
Phone: (804) 225-4260
E-mail: Stacey.Johnson@Governor.Virginia.Gov

Governor Bob McDonnell Congratulates Former Attorney General Bill Mims on Appointment to Virginia Supreme Court

RICHMOND – Governor Bob McDonnell today issued the following statement regarding the appointment of former Attorney General Bill Mims to the Virginia Supreme Court:

“Bill is an extraordinary public servant and a longtime personal friend. He has long been one of my closest co-workers in nearly 20 years in public office. I first met Bill when we served together in the Virginia House of Delegates. I later asked him to serve as my Chief Deputy Attorney General when I took office in 2006. Upon my resignation to run for Governor Bill was appointed to serve as Attorney General of Virginia and did so with excellence. We need individuals of Bill’s character and intelligence in public service, and while he may have thought his time serving Virginia was over, today’s appointment is welcome news to all of us who know just how uniquely qualified and decent a person he is. The overwhelming support for Bill’s appointment to the highest court in Virginia is a reflection of the high regard in which he is held by leaders from both parties. Bill will make a tremendous Supreme Court Justice, and I congratulate him on yet another accomplishment in a life dedicated to serving the citizens of Virginia.”

###

George Will's column makes an interesting comparison between President Obama and that earlier progressive, Woodrow Wilson. Regarding the President's year-long health insurance obsession, and his regret that he couldn't simply have a panel of experts put something in place rather than submit the whole thing to the messiness of politics, Will suggests Obama is being positively Wilsonian:Wilson was

Shad Plank: Live from Richmond

Via the Tax Foundation, we learn that taxes really can spur economic development. In other states. Like Idaho, where the Governor is taking advantage of moves in Washington and Oregon to raise taxes:Last month, for example, Oregon voters approved their legislature’s decision to raise taxes on the wealthy and on many businesses by $727 million. The immediate result was that my phone started

From Pam’s House Blend:

“What we see here is a PR maneuver, not actual change in philosophy or policy. There is no guarantee that a witchhunt will not occur with McDonnell/Cuccinelli at the helm.”

Read Entire Post

This seems to be the general opinion for supporters of non-discrimination against LGBT peoples in Virginia in response to Bob McDonnell issuing his Executive Directive One. Not only did the directive not cover all LGBT people, but the directive seems to be legally meaningless…even less so than former Governor Tim Kaine’s executive order prohibiting non-discrimination, which did not stand up in court.

Unfortunately, the mainstream media is reporting the directive as if the problem has been solved. The reality is that this is far from over.

Related posts:

1. McDonnell Issues Non-Discrimination Directive
2. Smoke Screening Discrimination?
3. Elections Matter: McDonnell Leading Conservative Swing

Join political writer Kimball Payne and state editor Dave Hendrickson at 11 for their weekly online chat, Shad Plank Live. Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has been the headline, and punchline, grabber this past week with his letter to state-supported colleges telling them that they were out of bounds if their anti-discrimination policies included gay people. Gov. Bob McDonnell overruled that yesterday. After McDonnell issued his new directive, Cuccinelli released this statement: I applaud Governor McDonnell for the tone he is setting for the Commonwealth of Virginia. I will remain in contact with the Governor and continue to work with him on issues important to Virginians. I expect Virginia’s state employees to follow all state and federal anti-discrimination laws and will enforce Virginia’s laws to the...

The combative NoVa congressman apparently penned a letter to Gov. McDonnell warning him that any royalties from offshore drilling would be years away (and, under the current regime, perhaps non-existent) and why would he want to doing some foolish thing like drill offshore anyway?Nothing new here. Except for this:The only problem is Moran spelled the governor's name wrong in the letter dated

If you subscribe to the Virginian-Pilot, you likely know of the major testing issues that have come to light with at least one public school in Norfolk. In Virginia, the Standards of Learning standardized tests are high-stakes tests. With these tests are significant protocols that must be followed. These tests are Virginia’s connection to the No Child Left Behind legislation supported by former President George Bush.

A commentor on the online article from the Pilot left a link from NPR that I thought was well worth the read, so I’m passing it on through VBP.

In 2005, former Assistant Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch wrote, “We should thank President George W. Bush and Congress for passing the No Child Left Behind Act … All this attention and focus is paying off for younger students, who are reading and solving mathematics problems better than their parents’ generation.”

Four years later, Ravitch has changed her mind.

Read Entire Article

Related posts:

1. The Clinton Bush Haiti Fund: Immediate and long term effort to aid Haiti

Election season is approaching in Washington again, which means it’s time for the biennial focus on earmarks:

Facing an election-year backlash over runaway spending and ethics scandals, House Democrats moved Wednesday to ban earmarks for private companies, sparking a war between the parties over which would embrace the most dramatic steps to change the way business is done in Washington.

Earmarks, which lawmakers use to direct federal money to specific projects, have long been a target of reformers seeking to limit spending abuses. Wednesday’s announcement is considered a way to block no-bid federal grants to private firms that can afford to hire well-connected lobbyists to plead their cases, and although it will not have a major impact on overall spending, Democrats hailed it as a key step in restoring trust in Congress.

“It ensures that for-profit companies no longer reap the rewards of congressional earmarks and limits the influence of lobbyists on members of Congress,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, linking the move to earlier decisions to ban gifts from lobbyists and forbid privately financed travel.

Democrats made the move to bar earmarks for for-profit entities despite fierce resistance from many rank-and-file lawmakers who rely on them to spread federal money around their districts and consider them crucial to their political fortunes.

Republicans responded immediately by proposing a moratorium on all earmarks, even those for nonprofits such as universities. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said voters would reward Republicans in the November midterm elections for taking on special interests.

“Are we really willing to put it all on the line to win this thing?” he told reporters Wednesday. The House Republican Conference is slated to debate the idea Thursday.

The moves will have little effect on reducing spending — earmarks account for less than $16 billion of the more than $1 trillion a year Congress spends

Or, since a picture is worse 1,000 words:

In an era of $ 12,000,000,000,000 national debt, and CBO projections of an additional $ 10,000,000,000,000 in debt over the next ten years, there’s something silly about arguing over such a trivial part of the Federal Budget.

Let’s take the Omnibus Spending Bill passed early last year as an example.

Out of the approximately $ 400 billion in spending that the bill authorized, only $ 8 billion constituted “earmarks” — that’s a mere 2% of the entire bill. For the Federal Budget as a whole, the number is close to 1 %. Eliminate earmarks and the Omnibus Bill would’ve been $ 392 Billion; and eliminating earmarks would have no real impact on a $ 3.6 trillion Federal Budget.

So, why all the attention paid to such an insignificant part of the budget ? Personally, I’ve got to believe that there’s no small degree of political opportunism going on here. Earmarking is easy to criticize because it seems like pork-barrel politics at it’s most petty level. And, for an up-and-coming Congressman, or a Senator with dreams of moving down Pennsylvania Avenue to a larger, more oval, office, it’s an easy target to pick and claim that you’re “fighting government waste.” In reality, of course, you’re

There’s another aspect to the earmarking debate that I touched upon in this comment to a post last year over at Jason Pye’s blog which discussed this post by a liberal blogger on the issue:

The other argument that Flack doesn’t really mention is the idea that if Congress wasn’t earmarking these appropriations, then it would be faceless bureaucrats in the Executive Branch who would be deciding which money went where.

Viewed that way, one could say that earmarks are a weapon Congress is using to assert it’s authority over the Executive Branch.

I don’t know. Personally, I’ve never been able to get myself as excited about earmarks as some others. The problems we face are far bigger than whether some fruit fly researcher in Iowa gets a grant.

That’s the reality of the situation; if Congress weren’t earmarking the appropriations bills, then all of the decisions about where the money would go would be left to the Executive Branch.

When you look at it that way, it really becomes a question of whether you want that decision in the hands of democratically elected legislators who will, at some point, stand for election, or by faceless bureaucrats in the Executive Branch doing the President’s bidding. As little regard as I have for Congress, I’d rather have that decision in their hands.

On the whole, though, I just can’t help thing that all this angst over earmarks is much ado about very little. If you’re really serious about cutting spending and stopping (and reversing) the growth of government, it’s time to start talking about the things that really matter.

Or, as I put it on Twitter this morning, fighting earmarks is the fiscal equivalent of swatting at gnats while being attacked by a swarm of Killer Bees.

It’s much ado about nothing, and any politician who tells you it amounts to anything is lying.

Similar Posts:

• Is Ron Paul Right About Earmarks ?
• Because, What’s Another $ 400 Billion Between Friends ?
• The Truth About The Stimulus Bill
• What’s Another $ 410 Billion Between Friends
• Meet The New Big Spender, Same As The Old Big Spender

The American Conservative’s Austin Bramwell goes hard on John Stossel and murks his misguided defense of suburban sprawl (via Yglesias):

It’s odd that self-described libertarians such as Stossel are so slow to grasp that government planning makes sprawl ubiquitous. You would think that libertarians would instinctively grasp the deeply statist nature of suburban development. First of all, with a depressingly few exceptions, virtually every town in America looks the same. That is, it has the same landscape of arterial roads, strip malls, and residential subdivisions, accessibly only by car. Surely, given America’s celebrated diversity, you would also see a diversity of places. As it turns out, all but a few people live the same suburban lifestyle. Government, as libertarian assumptions would predict, is the culprit.

John Stossel, like a lot of self-descrbed libertarians*, isn’t so much “libertarian” as he is an anti-liberal. He is reflexively opposed to anything that liberals favor, even when there is significant overlap in goals and implementation. Which is how he finds himself in the strange place of defending a status quo that is just as statist, if not more so, than the imagined alternatives. If liberals like it, then it must be bad, regardless of the merits.

*A similar dynamic exists among some of the folks at Reason Magazine.

From The Onion:

Similar Posts:

• Washington Post To Partner With The Onion
• Trekkies Against Star Trek
• Apollo 11 In The Headlines
• The Most Important Issue In 2008
• Diebold Releases Election Results Nine Months Early

Kudos to Senator Yvonne Miller (D-5th) for speaking up for the importance of funding Virginia’s public schools first, and considering the experiment of charter schools after.

Watch Video

“Education is the great equalizer…before considering charter schools, we should first fund the public schools…just the accident of birth in Virginia often determines the quality of the schools that children will attend. If you are born in a rich locality, your public schools are very, very good. If you are born in a poor locality in Virginia, your education may be substandard…These bills are saying, let’s not educate all the children of all the people, let’s select a few children and educate them very well.” - Senator Miller

Even Delegate Bob Tata (R-85th) questioned the wisdom of focusing on charter schools as a solution to education, saying that he believes in public schools and doesn’t think that charters or any of the alternatives in current legislation will be the solution to the problems in education.

This is another move by Republican Governor Bob McDonnell that will weaken education in Virginia and make Virginia a less favorable place to work and raise a family.

Sen. Yvonne Miller

Related posts:

1. Elections Matter: McDonnell Leading Conservative Swing
2. Deeds WAPO editorial clarifies his transportation plan

Saturday, March 13, 2010 from 12:00 to 2:00PM

At Savor Cafe in the Corrugated Box Building
201 West 7th Street
Richmond, VA 23224

For more information, click here.