Republican Deputy Whip Rep. Eric Cantor lead the charge today against Pelosi and the Democrats who refuse to keep America safe.

House Republicans have walked out to protest the Democrats’ refusal to consider senate-passed FISA legislation that would enable America’s intelligence agencies to effectively monitor terrorists who are plotting to attack. While Democrats can’t find time for that, they did find time to debate the merits of specific individuals on the Administration staff

Even the Senate passed the bill. They didn’t veto it. But Pelosi and her House Democrats have to carry the water for the friend’s of America’s enemies now I guess and have cleared the way for terrorists to plan for their next attacks within America’s borders….. and our intelligence community will be barred from listening to the phone calls before it is too late.
I wonder where Bluedog Rep. Tim Walz (D MN1) stands on the issue?

There’s a backroom brew haha going on about earmarks in Congress. Now most voters will probably remember how they pulled the lever for “Change” in Washington 2 Novembers ago. They also may be surprised that earmarks appear to be on the rise, and more shadowy than the days of Abramoff.

Well, nothing in Washington has changed, well save turning over the gavels to the party of binge spending. The whole ordeal has started with Bush’s signing of the Federal spending bill which included some 9000+ earmarks worth billions and billions and billions of dollars. This was a bill Bush had to sign as it was an omnibus bill to cover all, since Democrats failed to pass spending bills individually.

Well, members of Congress just couldn’t keep their hands out of the taxpayer’s cookie jar. Despite their personal pork projects being excluded from the final bill, they added them post passage in committee and then sent the bill to the President. The President is or has directed Federal agencies to ignore any and all earmarks that were not part of the original passed legislative language.

You see, the committee report added some $7 billion dollars of pork projects (IE appropriations) that were officially voted on by Congress. You may remember the flap over the 35W bridge funding that was promised with in weeks of the collapse, but didn’t officially get appropriated until this bill was passed. Saying it is spent, also requires a vote to actually spend the money.

Well both Democrats and Republicans in Congress are a bit upset that their corrupted absolute power is being challenged, er Checked, by the Executive branch. But there is one Senator who seems to remember that oath they took when they were sworn in.

“I’ve yet to read the part of the Constitution that gives Congress the right to secretly waste billions of tax dollars on a bridge to nowhere and hippie museums,” DeMint

This isn’t getting any mainstream media attention, because this pretty much would prove the “cleaning up Washington” campaign rhetoric from the 2006 Democrats was a bunch of B as in B and S as in S. With the 2008 Elections being so much more about if the Republicans can retake the Congress, it is no wonder that the media is burying this story.

Uber bloggers like Captain Ed are all over it thankfully.

Does anyone know where MN’s bipartisan Senate delegation Coleman and Klobuchar are on this one?

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (Sierra Club MN) has driven that last nail in the coffin for his relationship with the principled conservatives in the base, I think, with this little eco-stunt he pulled up in Ely with fringe environutters.

Governor Pawlenty, joined by Amy Klobuchar and explorer Will Steger, was in Ely Friday to discuss climate changes and how the state may have to deal with them.

So let’s get this straight. Pawlenty has been spending a lot of time in the last weeks in Iowa and New Hampshire trying to get his pal John McCain elected President, avoiding any contact with the SD25 special election that he decided to call. Maybe he should get a ‘Not in the Arena’ award too. And, when he does grace the state with his precence he is doing appearances with Democrat Amy Klobuchar and environutters helping solidify Al Gore’s war against prosperity.In the Strib’s version, you get to see the nuttiness straight up.

“With a doubling of [carbon dioxide], our forests will shift 200 to 400 miles northward,” University of Minnesota forest ecologist Lee Frelich told about 250 people who crowded into the auditorium at Vermilion Community College. “There would be a tsunami of grass from the west. Minnesota would end up without much forest at all.”

Isn’t global warming based on the theory that the Earth is turning into a green house where carbon dioxide is increasing? Don’t plants thrive on Carbon Dioxide, hence that’s why they have them in green houses? And that brings me back to what I was taught in school. Trees used to be all the craze for the Mother-huggers. They used to claim that if we just planted more trees…. everything was gonna be alright. But then it was prairie grasses that were considered, by scientists, as a better was to absorb the Carbon Dioxide and turn it into Oxygen to save the world. In the end, the entire global warming religion is based on destroying the American way of life.And if you didn’t know, Minnesota has had many faces over the years. We used to be buried under glaciers. Go figure, the Earth is changing, and will change no matter what we mere humans do.

The gathering was the first of several Pawlenty and Steger have agreed to host statewide, focusing mostly on the potential local effects of climate change. The Republican governor and the dog-sledding adventurer joined forces last fall on the issue, with Pawlenty declaring it “one of the most important issues of our time.”

That would be one of the biggest manufactured hoaxes simply to destroy our capitalist system and squash freedom under government regulation of our time.

Minnesota should seize the chance to benefit economically from solutions, Pawlenty said, creating “green collar” jobs.

That’s a pretty good example of why he has earned the name Governor Green Jeans with conservatives.

“Finally we’re waking up to the fact that global warming is real, as evidenced by the audience here today,” Steger told the gathering in his hometown of 3,500 people, where “eco-tourism” is a pillar of the economy.

(dumbfounded)

“We’ve brought the world everything from the Post-it note to the pacemaker,” Klobuchar said. “I see this as our next major challenge.”

She still can’t let that silly campaign line go…. a campaign line that helped defeat Pawlenty’s fellow Republican Mark Kennedy. I wonder if the same party leaders and operatives who were livid over Kennedy’s endorsement of Lieberman are upset over Pawlenty’s decision to cozy up to the liberal Democratic freshman Senator?  (or how Sen. Lieberman endorsed Pawlenty’s other friend, John McCain) But that would require them to not be hypocrites, hence, us conservatives are the problem. 

Ely wilderness outfitter Steve Piragis, citing the wind storm that mowed downed millions of trees in the nearby Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness a few years ago and has contributed to major forest fires, said the potential problems from climate change outweigh any potential advantages, such as longer summers.“Can we afford to say the blowdown wasn’t related to climate change?” Piragis said. “I don’t think so.”

That’s right. Pawlenty is joining with a guy who is blaming a storm on man. It can only lead one like me, with principles, to wonder just what the heck happened to the Governor. He is now virtually spitting in the face of his own party, and he has no regrets.

Pawlenty said that in the absence of strong national leadership, action by individual states, combined with multistate compacts, have the potential to become “de facto national policy.”

And that is where it gets very scary. Pawlenty doesn’t just believe the Al Gore hype, he isn’t just paying it lip service to be a populist. He is going to abuse his power to act on it through Government regulation and mandates.

Pawlenty said he still hopes, schedule permitting, to rendezvous with Steger during the explorer’s planned trip to the Canadian Arctic this spring to see the shrinking ice floes that demonstrate the effects of climate change in that region.

And here’s the test for Republicans at all levels. How much longer is it going to be before someone throws Pawlenty off the conservative island or at least fires a few rhetorical warning shots over his bow for abandoning the people who got him where he is? Seriously, this man will destroy the Republican party in Minnesota unless he is stopped. Unfortunately, the people in charge of the Republican party are…. are ….. well, I guess they are perfectly fine with it. 

Money can bye you a lot of happiness over the Holidays, but thanks to Democrats in Congress, there will be no peace of mind over border security in the New Year.

Congress last night passed a giant new spending bill that undermines current plans for a U.S.-Mexico border fence, allowing the Homeland Security Department to build a single-tier barrier rather than the two-tier version that has worked in California.

Pelosi’s do-nothing Congress has finally gotten off their duffs, but unfortunately, making the country more vulnerable and less secure is tops on their ‘to-do’ list.

The 2006 Secure Fence Act specifically called for “two layers of reinforced fencing” and listed five specific sections of border where it should be installed. The new spending bill removes the two-tier requirement and the list of locations.

Merry Christmas America, or should I say?

Feliz Navidad!

Courtesy of Rep. Eric Cantor

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just sent out a quite stupifying email.

Been to the gas station lately? Gas prices have more than doubled since George Bush took office — it’s an outrage.

Thanks to the Republican road blocks in Congress, gas prices continued to skyrocket just in time for the holiday travel rush — ensuring that millions of dollars flowed into the pockets of their Big Oil friends and out of the pockets of America’s hardworking families.

It is liberal Republicans & Democratic policies and actions that have caused Gas Prices to soar. For the past few year, Congress has been limiting Domestic Oil resources and access to them. They have continued to mandate expensive gas and fuel blends, plus new additives and subsidies for Ethanol and bio-fuels that have had devastating results for all Americans through higher prices on everything, from fuel to food for our families.

It is the policies that the Democrats cherish and advocate for, which have led to the high prices we are feeling at the pump and for our food.

Remember the Bush Administration’s secret meetings with their Big Oil friends to develop our nation’s energy policy? We need to make sure the Halliburton presidency is in the past — but with more than 60 Democrats sitting in seats that Bush carried in 2004, this November, Republicans will try to turn back the clock.

Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of the House for 11 months now. Harry Reid has been in charge of the Senate for 11 months too. Both Democrats. Both vehemently partisan and hostile to Bush and his agenda.

Neither of them has been able to do one single concrete thing to lower your prices, and in fact, gas prices have gone up since Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid took control of Congress.

Via Gasbuddy.com

Do you see that low point? Look at that date. Then look at the date where prices started to climb. Yep, January 2007, surprisingly the same time Democrats took back control of Congress.

Clearly, if Bush is to blame for the 6 year average price of gas climbing, as Democrats claim, the Democrats that are in control both Houses of Congress and in charge of making laws, are responsible too. Or at the least, we can prove Democrats really don’t give a darn about actually solving the problem of high gas prices.

In other words:

Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi is calling it quits. He’s going on to bigger and better things. He’s done all he can do in the Senate. He is going to go and make the big bucks before he can’t.

Phrases can’t really capture how disgusting the news reports over why Trent Lott is retiring (before the end of the year) is to me. Local Twin Cities talk radio news is reporting that he is leaving before the end of the year so that the new ethics reforms for Congress won’t bar him from becoming a lobbyist.

Trent Lott may be the text book example of why average Americans despise Washington politicians. This guy was just reelected in 2006 to a 6 year Senate term, and is now going to quit so that he can go make millions as a lobbyist.

I’d call him a greedy scumbag, but that is insulting to scumbags. I’ve never really liked Lott, but now I truly understand why the early 21st Century Republicans were so dismal. If Lott’s Senate leadership of the Republicans was anything like this move, it is no wonder why the Republican base and semi-reliable right leaning independents revolted in recent elections and threw Democrats into the Majority in both Houses.

Lott is further proof why we need term limits. Life forms like this do not belong in Congress.

Oh and this also goes to show that the Democrat’s sweeping reforms to clean up Washington are completely useless. All Pelosi and Democrats did when they implemented the ban on members of Congress becoming lobbyists is ban anyone else from becoming a lobbyist. You see, these old guards of the Washington way, have theirs, too bad for the rest of us.

And people wonder why Congress is thought of so lowly in the average Americans’ eyes.

Well Nancy Pelosi once again failed in her role as leader. Or did she?

The US House failed to override the President’s veto of the Hillary Care-esque SCHIP bill.
273 - 156

Despite IDing 44 RINOs, the 2/3rds majority was not reached.

In Minnesota, the 5 Democrats did vote to expand the entittlement program, along with 1 R(INO)epublican. The soon to be former Rep. Jim Ramstad (MN 3) voted with Pelosi and the Democrats.

Reps. Michele Bachman (MN6) and John Kline (MN 2) both voted to sustain the veto.

I heard a radio clip of Pelosi, and she said it was nothing but “lies” being used against the bill. Well, if they arguments against the bill were all lies, why couldn’t the grand Pelosi manage to override the veto?

I almost have to wonder if Democrats won’t consider making a move in the Speaker of the House, should they manage to maintain control following the 2008 elections.

Today the US House is planning on taking up the veto override vote on Hillary Care’s primmer, SCHIP. Reports are that Pelosi will once again fail to lead Congress in opposition to President Bush, and fall short of the veto override.

Pelosi’s first 10 months as Speaker have been pretty much dismal. She can’t get anything meaningful on the Democratic agenda accomplished, except wasting a lot of people’s time and taxpayer money. She had grand plans of forcing members to be in Washington for the entire week, and take few vacations, but nothing is getting done.

I am one who believes our Representatives should spend as much time in their Districts with constituents as possible. I know the left’s operatives (liberal bloggers) and detractors (stalkerazzi) of Republicans love to chide Republicans who think the 5 day “work” week is silly, but the truth is that it is.

You see, it is impossible for members to properly Represent their Districts when they never have a chance to be there. Now I know this works out beautifully for the Democrats, as they can stay in close contact with their prime constituents, Washington Special Interests and DC money. But that is NOT what the founders had in mind when they dreamt up ‘the People’s House’.

So Pelosi may be running a sweat shop in the House by forcing members to be in Washington all week, but she is not producing the results to match. I guess that is why Congressional Approval is hovering just outside the single digits.

There’s a new project over at the Victory Caucus, Stand by the American Mission in Iraq

Iraq is now the central front in the War on Terrorism - not because Americans want it to be but because America’s enemies have said so and made it so. Al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed militias are determined to drive the United States out of Iraq. Al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups would then use that country as a safe haven from which they can mount attacks on the U.S., its interests and allies.

Go read the whole Petition and sign it.

We need to send a message to our Congressional Delegation that we must stand for Victory against our enemies.

Crossposted from True North