June 9th, 2009
U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican who’s often mentioned as a potential candidate for governor or U.S. senator, has a political tin ear. He’s always saying something stupid.
A couple of months ago, Kirk SAID Gov. Pat Quinn’s stance on tax increases might get him shot.
And now Kirk is PROUDLY ADMITTING that he recently told the Chinese government not to trust the Obama administration’s budget figures.
Imagine the howls we’d hear from the wingnuts if a Democratic lawmaker did that sort of thing under a Republican administration. Traitor! Commie!
June 9th, 2009
Attorney Kevin Baine REFUTES the notion — popular among conservatives — that judges should simply interpret law, not make it.
POSTSCRIPT: As I noted here a few weeks ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative by any measure, doesn’t agree that judges shouldn’t make law.
In a 2002 case, Scalia wrote this:
This complete separation of the judiciary from the enterprise of “representative government” might have some truth in those countries where judges neither make law themselves nor set aside the laws enacted by the legislature. It is not a true picture of the American system. Not only do state-court judges possess the power to ”make” common law, but they have the immense power to shape the States’ constitutions as well.
June 9th, 2009
The most rabid of his critics aren’t going to like this — or will dispute his sincerity — but the fact remains that President Obama has shown a GREATER INCLINATION than his immediate predecessor to invoke the name of Jesus in his public pronouncements.
UPDATE: Meanwhile, world-class wingnut Frank Gaffney, has a COLUMN this morning — in the Moonie-owned Washington Times, no less — in which he raises the question of whether Obama is “America’s first Muslim president.”
This is the same Frank Gaffney who once suggested that Saddam Hussein was behind the Oklahoma City bombing.
