Category: Government

Via Glenn, I read an article about boomerang kids, and how the economy is affecting young people. Neither Bitter nor I are boomerang kids, but Bitter moved up here partly due to the job situation, and we’re certainly putting off marriage because of the poor economy. Because we’re putting off marriage, child rearing isn’t even really on the radar right now, and I’m not exactly a spring chicken. If the economy doesn’t improve in the next few years, having kids will hinge upon whether or not I want to put a child through college in my 60s. If social conservatives are serious about promoting “family values” they can start by joining us in restraining the Leviathan that our federal government is turning into, which is infecting and sucking the life out of not only our economy, but our private lives. No matter how you look at it, it takes money to start a family, and everywhere I look I see the government looking for ways to make sure I have less of it. That’s not promoting family values, that’s destroying it. It’s doing more to harm the institution of marriage and family far more than any gay wedding ever could. Social conservatives need to start reexamining their demons if they are serious about promoting marriage and family life.

Orin Kerr over at the Volokh Conspiracy takes a negative view of briefs filed at the Supreme Court by legislators:

Amicus briefs written on behalf of sitting legislators strike me as inappropriate. Of course, legislators can influence the judicial process in many ways. They write the legislation that the courts interpret; they control the rules that govern judicial hearings; they can control much of the Court’s docket; and they even control how many Justices are on the Supreme Court. Further, legislators take an oath to uphold the Constitution, and they have an independent (albeit sporadically exercised) duty to ensure that legislation they enact passes constitutional muster.

From a theoretical point of view, I can understand where Professor Kerr is coming from here. But I am not a law professor. I’m a Second Amendment activist, and from my point of view, as long as the courts take an attitude of deference to the elected branches, I have no problems with the elected branches demonstrating for the Court that they have a preference for a certain outcome in a particular case or controversy, especially when such an important and key constitutional issue is at question, such as the case with McDonald. In an ideal world, the Supreme Court would decide cases based solely on what the law and constitution says, and the elected branches would stay out. But we do not live in that ideal world.

Tom Coburn is threatening to read the Health Care Bill before the Senate. I’d be tempted to cheer him on, but what have we come to when reading the bill is considered a threat?

“Did you hear? Coburn is going to read the bill?”

“Read the bill? Dear God! That’ll ruin everything!”

“Surely there’s got to be a way to stop him?”

We are so screwed.

Pelosi barely did it. Only one Republican voted for it. We have to stop this in the Senate now.

The GOP is running a pretty good ad against Pelosicare. Interesting though, it’s not really an exaggeration. Loading her bill in Safari made me have to restart, after it choked on the sheer size of it:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1wCI1PGoiI[/youtube]

Political Math takes a look at the jobs “created or saved” by the stimulus.

Just remember when the government wants to control your healthcare what hoops we now have to jump through to treat a freakin’ cold.

As recently as my college years, I was able to go buy a few pills to pop to ease congestion without dealing with people – except for the cashier. Today, I passed on any pill because I didn’t want to deal with people. (Thanks to self-checkout, dealing with people while sick is entirely optional now.) I also can’t easily see what’s actually in stock since all of the boxes are out of my sight.

Instead, I picked up some cough syrup recommended by my mom who has the same symptoms. Little did I know that even just buying cough syrup that is out on the shelf and going through the self-checkout, I would still have to interact with a cashier. Apparently cough syrup is now age-restricted. Yes, I had to show ID to buy cough syrup.

This is over-the-counter crap that I just want to ease my symptoms, and now government ID is required to buy it. But under Pelosi’s ideal healthcare bill, no such ID would be required to get public healthcare.

How long will it be before I have to show ID to buy my Puffs Plus with Lotion so I don’t have such a raw nose?

Capitol Ideas asks an important question that I don’t think gets asked often enough:

Being an accredited member of the Fourth Estate gives us a bit more insight into judicial candidates than most. But we still can’t help but feel like we’re holding our breath a bit when we enter the voting booth.

And if we feel this way, we have to imagine that many Pennsylvanians feel equally bewildered. And this, of course, leads us to wonder (particularly after the pugilistic state Supreme Court campaign we’ve just witnessed) whether electing judges is such a good idea.

I’ve longed complained that voters really do not have enough information to make informed judgements about judges. I follow this stuff pretty closely, and even I am pulling the lever based on a few criteria I might be able to pick up here and there. I generally will avoid voting in elections where I am just horribly ignorant, like school board elections, which I leave for people with kids (as long as I’m not pissed off about something).

But I also do think that judges who work at a more local level should be accountable to the public they serve. If I got to unilaterally change the system, I’d probably keep district judges elected, but appellate judges should be appointed, with the advise and consent of the PA Senate, just like the feds do it. When it comes to the matter of administering the law, I have little problem with elected judges, but those who get to decide what the law is ought to be a bit more insulated from the political process.

The other big question is whether to allow the people to recall an appellate judge. The judge isn’t really running in an election, per se, so much as asking voters at some determined interval whether they think the judge should be retained. I would probably not have much objection to this, but it gives me pause to think that it might make appellate judges wary of making correct, but politically unpopular decisions. I would probably want to see that subject to a super majority requirement for recalling an appellate judge.

Apparently that results in about 300,000 more people paying the toll over six years. You might have guessed I’m speaking about the number of people who have left.