With the Chambliss win in the Georgia runoff Republicans retain the ability to challenge votes in the Senate.
Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss is an unlikely hero for the Republican party. His record has just enough questionable votes on key issues to make religious conservatives nervous, but not enough strong positions on civil liberties issues to make libertarian Republicans entirely happy. He's often dismissed unfairly as a moderate, despite a record of fiscal and social conservatism. All that was forgotten when a very close election in Georgia put Chambliss in a runoff for what could have been the 60th Senate seat giving Democrats a filibuster-proof majority, reducing Senate Republicans to near-irrelevance.…
Article comments
— go to most recent comments26 - Dave Nalle
Yes, Bliffle. And if you can't figure out why, go read some of the legislation which hasn't passed which was authored by Democrats over the last few years.
Dave
27 - zingzing
clavos: "In my visits [to minnesota], I've noticed that summer is July 3, 4, and 5."
well then you haven't been paying any attention. or you consider summer to mean "miami summer," which is a totally different thing. but one would expect that, being that minnesota is NEARLY 2,000 MILES NORTH of miami, eh?
28 - Eric Dondero
Dave, you're now Vice-Chairman of the Republican Liberty Caucus? When did that happen? Congrats! Makes me rather happy to see a Pro-Defense libertarian in that position, versus ahem - Bill Westmiller and some of the other leaders of the RLC.
I founded the RLC in 1990 specifically to be a Pro-Defense libertarian group, and have been disheartened to see the left turn it has taken in recent years. Hopefully, you can bring it back to where it was originally.
29 - bliffle
What I remember most is that the southern racists used filibuster to stymie passage of civil rights.
30 - Dave Nalle
Eric, a good portion of the membership and board of the RLC still believes in maintaining a strong national defense of some sort. Even Bill Westmiller believes in national defense. The dividing line is really on whether we should have a primarily defensive policy or a more interventionist policy, and very few in the RLC are strongly pro-intervention, myself included.
I think that while there are certainly justifications for interventionism, a Wilsonian foreign policy of nation building and promotion of democracy is a mistake. We should be promoting capitalism which is the best way to lay the groundwork for representative government and our interventions should be rare and surgical in nature.
One positive effect which the Ron Paul movement has had is to largely discredit and marginalize the extreme isolationists and really drawn a line between the more reasonable libertarianism of the RLC and the unrealistic extremism of the Paulbots and the left-libertarians.
Dave
31 - Baronius
I can't imagine a filibuster is ever going to be used. Well, "used" is the wrong word. Usually they're just threatened. But with Republicans like Specter, Snowe, and (let's be honest) McCain, the Democrats will be able to do anything they want.
Then again, Specter is weird. He's militantly partisan but moderate-liberal. On the other hand, you've got guys like Hatch, who are conservative but bipartisan. So as I see it, the Democrats will be able to find allies for their more partisan actions and their more liberal ones. And they only need allies on the rare times that you need 60 votes. Most actions only require 51.
32 - REMF(MCH)
"Chambliss is reluctantly becoming the new Jesse Helms. The mainstream media have become obsessed with this guy. There's no limit to the smears they'll make against him."
What's good for the goose, is good for the gander, considering Saxby (5 deferments) Chambliss' sliming of a dismembered combat vet's (Max Cleland) patriotism in 2002.
33 - Baronius
MCH, I don't think that's a fair assessment of the Chambliss campaign. Have you watched the ad that supposedly smeared Cleland? Follow the link and tell me what's so bad about it.
34 - Baronius
some of the ballots that are being challenged in Minnesota
Don't follow the link if you have any respect for either party, or if you're prone to suicidal thoughts.
35 - Dave Nalle
That's a fantastic resource they StarTribune has put online, Baronius. I went through as many ballots as I could stand to read. Most of them were Franken challenges. All of them were ridiculous. Challenging ballots because someone folded them or scribbled in the margin or did an X instead of a blob in the oval or because someone wrote in Jesse Ventura on a down-ballot race, even when the vote for the Senate race was 100% clear. If the 20 I looked at were representative, these challenges are a complete waste of time.
Dave
36 - Baronius
Dave, both these guys are asking for a house-poxing. My sympathy is with Coleman for partisan reasons, but also because Franken is trying to derail what was probably a fair initial count. It's back to what I was saying a month ago, that the Democrats are typically more likely than the Republicans to harm the institutions rather than accept a loss. The ultimate expression of that attitude was the group that Baritone doesn't want us to talk about, the Weathermen.
37 - Dr Dreadful
Baronius @ #34:
Thanks for the link. I can always use a good laugh.
I must regretfully inform you, however, that I am challenging your #36 as invalid due to ambiguous commenter intent and the fact that I woke up late this morning.
38 - Glenn Contrarian
Dave -
I'll reply tomorrow - don't think I've backed down from this one whit....
39 - Baritone
Bar,
I believe you are the one who claimed that Republicans are in general "better people" than Democrats, and now you claim that Dems are more likely to do harm to the nation's institutions than the Reps. That's very magnaminous of you.
Democrats are just a bunch of stupid, hateful, slime bags all of whom wunder-bitch Ann Coulter believes should be arrested, jailed and tried for treason. I do believe that Coulter should have her crotch ripped out with a grappling hook, but that's just me, not really a Democrat thing.
Oh, btw, knock yourself out about the Weathermen. They are every bit as relevant as Ayres and Dorhn.
Also, Dave invites anyone to look at Democratic legislation that he feels needed the threat of a filibuster to thwart. One, then, is to assume from Dave's suggestion that the same could never be said regarding any Republican proposed legislation. Democrats are pus oozing lying bastards, and Republicans are all fucking Roy Rogers. What a load of partisan crap!
B
40 - Dan(Miller)
Baritone, you see fault in this thesis: Dems are more likely to do harm to the nation's institutions than the Reps. With two of the three branches of Government coming under control of Democrats, and possibly the third, their potential to do harm seems substantially greater than that of the Republicans -- unless one adheres to the fantasy that Democrats are incapable of doing harm.
I will not delve into your views as to what should be done to Ms. Coulter's crotch.
Dan(Miller)
41 - Baritone
Dan,
"...that the Democrats are typically more likely than the Republicans to harm the institutions rather than accept a loss"
Baronius' statement isn't predicated upon "potential." At least as I read it, it is a general indictment of Dems and what he perceives to be our proclivities.
What the Weathermen have to do with it is a total mystery to me.
It seems to me that the most recent, failed Rep presidential candidate pretty much did just as Bar claims to be the province of Democrats. McCain threw out any supposed rule book that he may have had a pretense to campaign by in his unswerving drive to win at any cost.
Rove and his co-horts in their efforts to get W into the WH pretty much tore the Republican party to shreds. That, coupled with the ineptitude of the Shrub and his posse put not only the party, but the country's economy and all the rest of it -our credibility and reputation abroad, Iraq, Afghanistan, healthcare, etc., etc., etc., into the dump. It is the Republicans who have done severe damage to this country and its institutions over the past 8 years.
Frankly, if I were Barack Obama, I'd demand a recount. Looking at the cluster fuck being handed to him by Messrs. Bush and Cheney would give anyone pause. If the Obama administration manages to keep it all from going to hell in a hand basket, it may well be a fucking miracle.
Approximately 30 thousand people lost their jobs TODAY!
B
42 - Dave Nalle
Also, Dave invites anyone to look at Democratic legislation that he feels needed the threat of a filibuster to thwart. One, then, is to assume from Dave's suggestion that the same could never be said regarding any Republican proposed legislation.
One COULD assume that, but not based on anything I actually wrote. But one could assume anything one wants based on nothing at all. That's why assuming things is so foolish.
The fact is that with Democrats dominating House, Senate and Presidency, most legislation with any hope of passing will come from Democrat authors. In such a circumstance they will bring back pet ideas which were defeated in past Republican-dominated eras, because now they have a chance of getting them passed. The only thing left to stop those bills is the filibuster. So for those of us who don't want a draft or socializd medicine or a gun ban, it's a damned good thing Chambliss won.
Dave
43 - Baritone
Dave,
As supposedly careful as you claim to be about what you write, you seem to have no awareness of how the reader takes much of it. Your writing often leaves a lot of possibilities hanging out there which is far from being concise. It never fails to piss you off when anyone interprets something you write differently than you intended. Could it be that the problem lay with you, the writer, rather than the reader?
If you intend to be vague, make inferences, use innuendo, or to let the reader take from your writing what he or she chooses, then you shouldn't get all pissy when they do so. If you don't, then you should perhaps refer to a writer's handbook to buck up your skills.
As to the magic "Senate 60." I suspect that in a number of cases, the Dems will find at least a couple or more moderate Reps to fall in line with them on many issues - perhaps even good ole John McCain, because he'll be wantin' to get all "mavericky" every now and again.
B
44 - bliffle
Erroneous Baronius (#36) gives us another laugher:
"...the Democrats are typically more likely than the Republicans to harm the institutions rather than accept a loss."
He says this with a (rhetorically) straight face after the way the reps prostituted the Supreme Court in 2000 with a ruling that included the proviso that it could NEVER be used as a precedent.
45 - Georgio
After the Florida disaster I thought maybe we should adopt the Canadian method of paper ballots but after seeing how stupid ppl can be that they can't even fill in a circle ...that's scary !
46 - Dave Nalle
Baritone, my comment about the filibuster which you initially responded to was totally unambiguous. You just made an assumption of partisanship which had no basis in what I actually wrote. I should not have to qualify my statements in order to forestall your expression of prejudice.
Whether I'm a republican, a democrat or an anarcho-syndicalist has no bearing on the basic fact that the filibuster preserves at least a tiny element of bipartisanship in an otherwise very unbalanced distribution of political power.
Dave
47 - Baronius
I wasn't talking about which party currently has more power to do damage, Dan. I meant it more or less as Baritone read it.
I stated this case earlier, comparing Nixon's willingness to step down to Clinton's unwillingness (and the behaviour of the senators during Nixon's and Clinton's terms). I compared the Republican reaction to this loss with the Democrats' lies about the validity of the prior two elections. I also made a guess that the Bush people would neither steal furniture nor vandalize offices when they leave the White House, unlike the Clinton people. Time will tell.
You could go back to FDR, and his breaking with tradition to hold the presidency for unprecedented terms as well as his attempt to negate the independence of the Supreme Court.
There's a counterargument that you could make. (I think it's weak, though.) LBJ walked away from power, the only thing he'd ever cared about, rather than drag the country through any more turmoil. We don't typically think of him as a heroic figure, but he really did step up. There are also some disgusting bad-loser Republicans who are claiming that Obama wasn't born in the US.
The core of my argument lies in the bias of the modern liberal toward overthrowing things, and the modern conservative's inclination to preserve our institutions. It shows up in a lot of ways, like the recent discussion about how Republicans don't threaten to leave the country if their candidate loses. This desire to destroy rather than build is exemplified by the 1960's radical movements, including black liberation and the Weathermen.
48 - Baronius
Bliffle, this is getting stale. Might I suggest "Moronius" or "Buffoonius"?
49 - Baronius
This is bad form, posting three times in a row, but I've got a couple of things to add.
First, Bar, I reread your post, and you don't quite get my position (and it's partly my fault). Let me restate it: Democrats are more likely than Republicans to undermine the institutions of power when they find themselves out of power. A case in point came early in 2000, when there was talk about Bush winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote. No one said a peep. When the results turned out to be the opposite, Democrats declared that the popular vote really matters, and that the electoral college should be done away with.
Second, the usually antagonistic Michelle Malkin used her latest column to denounce the "Obama's birth certificate" conspiracy theorists. She's putting country before party, which is what I expect out of Republicans.
50 - El Bicho
"Nixon's willingness to step down"
you must be joking. His own party told him he was going to be impeached if he didn't leave. spare the revisionist history. you'll need it for the current President
51 - Dr Dreadful
Isn't it interesting how pleased the Republicans are about having preserved the filibuster option, especially considering how keen they were on doing away with it for Supreme Court nominations a couple of years back, when they were the majority party?
Funny how one's perspective changes after an election defeat or two...
52 - Baronius
Exactly, Bicho. His own party showed him the door, and he left rather than being impeached. Clinton's party defended him, and he dragged the country through his impeachment.
If Clinton stayed on truly to defend the office, then good for him. He should have been removed, but good for him. If Democratic senators supported him because they believed he shouldn't have been removed for office, good for them. But I don't believe any of it. I've got no respect for any Republican who voted for Clinton's impeachment for political reasons, either.
53 - Glenn Contrarian
Baronius -
It's not a Democratic thing or a Republican thing, but a human thing.
In every election, the side that is losing has a tendency to call 'foul' on the side that is winning, and then they try by hook or by crook to steal away what was lost.
Case in point: the plethora of frankly ludicrous lawsuits going forward even now to try to declare Obama unfit for the presidency due to citizenship issues, one of which may or may not be accepted by the Supreme Court this next week.
You can see the same thing in nearly every election overseas as well. How many times have you seen the news how one side wins and the other side claims outright election fraud?
If you really want to complain about someone undermining the institutions of power, perhaps you should examine more closely the damage done to the balance of power between the executive and congressional branches in the past eight years. What other president has wielded as much power as Bush, and has done so with almost no oversight by Congress?
54 - Baronius
Glenn, these lawsuits over Obama's birth certificate were filed by Philip Berg (a Hillary Clinton supporter) and Leo Donofrio (a Ron Paul supporter). I'm telling you, that's just not the kind of thing that blue-blood Republicans do. We lose politely. The fact that a supporter of the nominee for Secretary of State is suing to get the election overturned should tell you something about their party's mentality.
55 - Dave Nalle
No. No. No.
The filibuster is good no matter who wields it, and anyone who ever said otherwise was an idiot, regardless of political party.
And you're all missing the real flaw in Baronius' argument about impeachment. Nixon left office because he had been involved in serious felonies and gross abuse of the constitution and the powers of his office. Clinton had sex and lied about it, so even though he was impeached it was unreasonable to expect him to step down. His crimes were trivial.
Dave
56 - Jet
Baronius, your "Blue-blooded" Republicans tried to relentlessly sink their teeth into Bill Clinton with the "Whitewater Affair", the moment he took office and they would not give up.
You remember Clinton-the man who led this country during one of the most peaceful 8 years we've seen in a long time and we had to coin the phrase "surplus" in describing our budget? A time when most Americans said they'd allow a tax increase if it meant not passing the national debt down to the generation to come?
When they couldn't get mud to stick to him, they kept up with murder accusations, and when that didn't work they tried to impeach him over a blow-job that he wouldn't admit to his wife. (that no husband would)
In the end the Clintons endured 6 years of hell from a GOP led congress and not one charge was brought against him that could be found valid towards taking him from office.
What we did wind up with eventually is a GOP led congress that snuck immunity from War Crimes to Bush hidden in other legislation, freedom fries and freedom toast, bringing everything to a screeching halt in order to subpoena a comotose woman in Florida, and the financial mess we're in right now.
... and don't insult our intelligence by saying that the dems did all this in just two years in power. After The Dems took over congress they didn't have enough votes to override Bush's veto of just about any legislation that might have helped us before it was too late.
57 - Jet
As for the "birth certificate", you forgot to mention the idiotic Alan Keys. If the supreme court does look at that insult to the American public that elected Obama, it'll be because we were stupid enough to elect Bush a second time, so he could stack the odds in the Supreme Court, by putting someone at its helm that hadn't served in that hallowed hall a few years first, but instead installed one of his cronies that he knew he could sneak past a GOP rubberstamp congress, after failing to get his personal texas lawyer in the job.
58 - Jet
amazing
59 - Baritone
Dave,
Bullshit! It's just as I said. You always blame the reader. Your writing skills just may not be as great as you apparently believe.
B
60 - Baritone
Baronius lives in this idyllic place where he can believe in the purity of his beloved GOP and the contrasting lack of ethics and honor of the dastardly Dems.
Bar, if it helps you get through the day, then you go right ahead and believe it.
You do, of course, live with conveniently revisionist history. You look upon the Democrats and their attempts to prevail in the 2000 presidential election as harmful to our institutions and aparently less than honorable. Nevermind that the election WAS IN FACT STOLEN by the Reps. Regardless, I guess in your mind, the Dems should have just quietly slipped off into the night accepting the results with respectful resignation.
Also, as the 2004 election turned on the outcome in Ohio, the fact that Republicans managed to disenfranchise around 200000 voters in the state which they wound up winning by considerably less than that, seems to again, conveniently slip your memory. And, again, you apparently believe that Dems were being bad sports in calling attention to it.
No doubt, as you say, Republicans "loose politely" they would have never made a fuss about being cheated out of an election. They are just far too classy for that. of Of course they are.
Just one question, Bar. What planet do you live on?
B
61 - Jet
your-anus?
Uranus
62 - pablo
Regarding the allegations about where Obama may or may not have been born, and all of the whining, with particular reference to those of you saying that it is either sour grapes or absurd, it seems a rather easy thing to prove one way or another should the court decide in plaintiff's favor, to hear the case.
I would assume (probably incorrectly) that even Obama sycophants such as Baritone the classic liberal would want the US Constitutional requirements upheld as a matter of law and principle.
Or maybe it is ok for him do criticize the republicans trampling of the constitution, but when it comes to something as trivial as where a person was born to be of no import. It is, it is the law of the land, and thusly should be upheld.
In the event that Obama is found to have been born abroad, it will be a constitutional crisis, and could have been averted long ago when certain citizens made a claim, and the courts held that they had no standing.
I recall certain liberals on here of having been some of the biggest whiners regarding a legitimate question of Obama's legal qualifications to hold office.
My own take on it is that the court will refuse to hear it, being the rubber stamp agency it has become in defense of the globalist agenda, of whom Obama is one of their main players.
63 - Clavos
Or, the court will refuse to hear it because it HAS NO MERIT...
64 - Jet
Pablo, you do know Hawaii is a state right? Please stop substituting the word "liberal" for "boogyman" until you really know what the word means.
65 - Dave Nalle
Bar-bar. Feel free to abuse Baronius all you want on other grounds, but the evidence doesn't support your assertion that the 2000 election was stolen, so you might want to stop repeating that particular bit of lame propaganda.
Dave
66 - Ruvy
With respect to Obama's citizenship, he muscled the state of Hawaii, and several of the schools he attended into silence. He has not been open, and he has not been candid and all of his supporters on this list cannot wish away this fact, as hard as they try, stamping their feet, screaming asserting that the claims have no merit etc. For as long as he is president, his secretive behavior will keep the question alive: "what is the bastard hiding??!"
That is what makes all these lawsuits so believable. The fact that the emoluments clause of the constitution of 1787 is being ignored, and the fact that Obama is making himself look like a liar regarding his citizenship is what convinces me that he is acceding to the White House by fraud. The fact that his name is encoded right after that of Gog in Ezekiel 38:2-4 convinces me that he will succeed. That, according to our sages is one of the attributes of Gog.
67 - Dr Dreadful
Ruvy, you can't prove any of what you're saying, and with respect, it's extremely difficult to muscle anyone into silence. The frickin' CIA can't even do it!
And Jet, in all fairness, the suit re Obama's citizenship is being brought by one Philip Berg, who besides being a complete and total mooncalf is a disgruntled Clinton supporter, not a Republican. He was also the guy who tried to have Dubya and Darth indicted for war crimes... so I suppose you could also say he's an attention whore.
68 - Jet
Ruvy, you just can't stop throwing rocks at the beehive can you?
69 - Dan(Miller)
Doc,
Therefore, we won't know until Monday, at the earliest, what is going to happen, when.Although it had appeared that the Supreme Court would decide on Friday, 5 December, whether to consider procedural matters involving the context in which questions as to Senator Obama's Constitutional qualifications to become President can be raised, that did not happen. The case before the Court is not the one brought by Mr. Berg, but a different one.
It would, in my opinion, be far better for everyone were Senator Obama's status as a natural born U.S. citizen to be finally resolved sooner rather that later, on the merits. That will almost certainly involve fact finding by a lower court and appeals; and the process could take a long time for final resolution. The questions will remain until there is a final resolution, and can arise in contexts where "standing" is undeniable and an on the merits resolution is required.
In the unlikely event that it is determined later that Senator Obama was sworn in as President without the requisite Constitutional qualifications, there will be a really big mess. Messes are best dealt with before they become really big ones. It is unfortunate that this has not already happened, but it has not.
Dan(Miller)
70 - Dan
John Lott--
"...the 504 total new votes for Franken from all the precincts is greater than adding together all the changes for all the precincts in the entire state for the presidential, congressional, and state house races combined (a sum of 482)."
Even if the number of "presidential, congressional, and state house races combined" only amounted to 10 candidates, the statistical probability would be similar to the result of reapeatedly reaching into a hat of 10 marbles, and pulling out a Franken marble 504 times and only getting 1 of the other nine, 482 times.
Ever been dealt a Royal Flush off of the top of an honest deck?
It's attempted fraud folks. Please have the intellectual honesty to admit it.
Or, just fall back on the standard Democrat mantra of; 'itgoesonallthetime-bothsidesareguilty-onesideisasbadastheother-moveon'.
71 - Ruvy
Ruvy, you can't prove any of what you're saying
Until the court decides otherwise, I don't have to prove a damned thing. It is Obama who has to cough up a birth certificate, AND prove that he did not renounce that citizenship as a child in Indonesia. His lawyers are asserting the no standing issue to avoid having to face the fact that they can't prove that Obama is a citizen within the definition of the constitution of 1787.
If the conference of judges decides not to hear this case on the grounds that it has no merit, the issue will not go away. The suspicions of many have been aroused, and Obama's refusal to be open and forthright about his provenance will cause a large cloud of doubt to hang over his head. If I was willing to cough up MY birth certificate to prove who I was to the Israel Ministry of Absorption, Obama can cough up HIS birth certificate for a far more important reason. His opponent did without hesitation.
And Jet, from now on it won't be rocks thrown at the beehive, it will be boulders - to knock it out the damned tree.
72 - Dave Nalle
Dan, I assume that your previous post is referencing something from economist John Lott? Do you have a link to his article? If anyone's analysis of the Minnesota recount is going to be believable it would be Lott.
Dave
73 - Baronius
Dave - Let Baritone speak. I sometimes wonder if my politics distort my perception, but when I see the left showing such disregard for the truth it improves my self-confidence. There's no doubt, Coleman's people are a speck in the Republicans' eye, but that doesn't change the fact that there's a 2x4 in the Democrats'.
Pablo - Be honest. If Obama did get disqualified because of citizenship issues, you'd blame that on the internationalists too. And you consider Biden, McCain, and probably Palin to be part of the circle too, so whatever happens, you'd say it was all part of the plan, right?
74 - Christopher Rose
Baronius, I can't follow the logic of you saying that if the left shows disregard for the truth, it gives you confidence that you are not letting your politics distort your perception.
How on earth do the actions of others have anything to do with what is going on in your head?
For the record, anyone who believes absolutely in arbitrary rules, such as dogmatists or faithists, suffers from distorted perception. This would obviously include anyone who always supports one political party or politician, regardless of the issues.
75 - pablo
Baronius,
Yawn, surely you can do better than that.