The Ed Morrissey Show: Guy Benson, Scott Hennen

Today on The Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), Guy Benson starts us off with a look at the hot issues of the day, including the Mitch McConnell proposal on the debt ceiling and the food fight on the Right over it. In the second half, conservative talk show host Scott Hennen joins us during his own broadcast! Yes, TEMS will be simulcast for the final 30 minutes on KNOX 1310 in Grand Forks, ND, while Scott and I talk about his new book, Grass Roots: A Commonsense Action Agenda for America.

The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page — be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too!

We’ll also cover the the case of Marizela Perez, who has been missing in the Seattle area for more three months. Marizela’s case has a connection here at Hot Air, as she is the cousin of the Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin. Michelle is trying to spread the word through Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle. We want to encourage prayers for Marizela’s family, and also try to reach anyone in the area who knows where Marizela might be and ask them to contact the police.

The search has its own website now, Find Marizela, for the latest in the efforts to bring Marizela home. There is also a fund for the family to keep the search efforts going. Be sure to check there and at Michelle’s site for further developments, and keep the family in your prayers.

America’s Most Wanted is now on the case, too.

Michelle had an update last week:

Four months ago today, my cousin Marizela Perez disappeared from the University District in Seattle, Washington. I am devastated to tell you once again that there are no new leads or breaks in the case. Her parents have exhausted their work leave and have had to return to the East Coast. The family is weighing various legal and investigative avenues to pursue. As I reported in May, the quest to obtain Marizela’s online/text info has been an uphill battle. After months of pressing, we finally received a search warrant two weeks ago related to the case. It had been signed by a judge on April 22; we gained access to it in late June. …

Marizela’s Google web history was not included. The Seattle Police Department will not disclose the actual Google records to her parents so that they could pursue the search for Marizela on their own.

RSC still fighting for a balanced budget amendment

Against the backdrop of the ongoing drama of deficit reduction negotiations, the House of Representatives next week will vote on a balanced budget amendment that would require supermajorities in both chambers to run a deficit, raise the debt ceiling, raise taxes or spend more than 18 percent of GDP.

In a column today in The USA Today, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) explain why such an amendment is necessary to ensure the country doesn’t run up against a debt ceiling deadline time and time again:

While the federal government has consistently collected revenue of about 18% of U.S. economic output, federal spending has consistently been even higher. The debt resulting from these budget deficits builds up until the debt limit is reached. And rather than fight the spending lobby, politicians have taken the easy route of raising the limit without cutting spending. …

Near-term spending cuts are necessary to alter the course, but they will not be enough without long-term changes. Likewise, promises of cuts 10 years from now mean little without a way to enforce them. The only way to truly guarantee delivery from future politicians is if the Constitution demands it. That’s why the House will vote next Wednesday on a balanced budget amendment that would require supermajorities in both chambers to run a deficit, raise the debt ceiling, raise taxes and spend more than 18% of GDP.

With the balanced budget movement gaining momentum, members of the spending lobby want to argue that Congress and the president already have the ability to control spending. Ability and discipline are not the same. If Washington actually had the discipline to live within its means over the long term, every American citizen would not owe $46,000 toward the national debt.

The Republican Study Committee also released a video that depicts just how precarious and politicized the debt and deficit issue will continue to be without a balanced budget amendment:

Even as I’ve begun to feel cynical about the debt limit negotiations, I find myself feeling encouraged by this — not because a balanced budget amendment is likely to be adopted any time soon (the hurdles for constitutional change are quite high, of course), but because House Republicans aren’t giving up. They’re introducing and reintroducing ideas that could actually put us on a path to real fiscal reform. Even more importantly, the ideas they’ve introduced suggest they are listening to the American people, who say both that they favor a balanced budget amendment and that they oppose a debt ceiling increase. Republicans continue to run up against the difficulty of controlling just one branch of government, but their efforts haven’t gone unnoticed — and it will surely pay to have the ideas in place should they take back the Senate or White House or both in 2012.

Bachmann would consider debt limit increase — in exchange for Obamacare repeal

A sample of the ideological purity that some say makes Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) a surprisingly compelling contender for the GOP presidential nomination: Bachmann yesterday said she would support a debt ceiling increase if and only if the deal included the defunding of the new health care law, “the largest entitlement in the history of the country,” as she put it.

During an appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, Bachmann stated her conditions for an increase: “They’d have to cut an enormous amount [of spending], including they would have to defund Obamacare.”

When Bill O’Reilly reminded Bachmann that repeal isn’t even on the table, she agreed and said, “No and that’s why I can’t go for [a debt limit increase]. I can’t go for it because never will we be able to balance our books ever in the future.”

She also pushed back against O’Reilly’s insistence that no debt ceiling increase would mean default. She stopped short of accusing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner of lying about the probability of default, but didn’t hesitate to repeat adamantly, “He’s wrong, he’s wrong, he’s wrong.”

“Well, of course, it’s not true that anyone wants to see the United States government default on its debt,” she said. “We don’t have to because the fact is we have sufficient revenue coming in to pay off the interest on the debt. We don’t have to default. … All you have to do is look at the books. We have sufficient revenue coming in. We can pay off all of those obligations first — and we must. We always have and we always will.”

What the nation can’t afford, Bachmann says, is another $2.4 trillion in debt or “wasteful Washington programs.”

Bachmann’s position on the debt ceiling — what O’Reilly called the “renegade” position — is a prime example of the way she favors the fight against big government over any kind of so-called legislative accomplishments (which all too often amount to bills passed for the sake of being passed) that could fill the gaps in her congressional record — the “nonexistence” of which has lately taken so much criticism. Of course, to some, that fight she’s been waging — all those “no” votes — amounts to its own kind of record — a record the other candidates lack.

Is debating one’s record in a Presidential primary an unfair attack?

Yesterday, my blog partner Tina Korbe scolded Tim Pawlenty for making an argument that Michele Bachmann didn’t have executive experience or a record of Congressional accomplishment in her three terms in Washington as a comparison to his own experience as a governor in Minnesota. Even though Tina says that Bachmann’s record in Congress is “admittedly a little thin,” she writes that Pawlenty looked thin-skinned for pointing it out. My friend John Hinderaker wrote last night at Power Line that while he thinks that Pawlenty would make a better President than Bachmann, but that he “crossed a line” by pointing out why:

It is easy to sympathize with Pawlenty’s dilemma. I have supported both candidates’ campaigns financially and consider them both friends, but my own view is that Pawlenty would make a better president. (Either would be a hundred times better than Barack Obama.) Still, he is in a difficult situation, and did not improve it by going on the offense against his fellow Minnesotan. It is a fine line, sometimes, between touting one’s own credentials and denigrating those of a competitor, but Pawlenty crossed it. Unfortunately, most Iowa voters’ takeaway will be that Pawlenty is desperate because of his failure to gain ground in the polls. He will be well advised not to repeat his attack on Bachmann.

Holy buckets, as we say here in Minnesota! Just what awful thing did Pawlenty say about Bachmann that crossed a line? John and Tina offer the same quote, which John casts as taking the gloves off:

“Well, I like Congresswoman Bachmann. I’ve campaigned for her. I respect her, but her record of accomplishment in Congress is non-existent. It’s non-existent,” Pawlenty told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” …

“We’re not looking for folks who just have speech capabilities, we’re looking for people who can lead a large enterprise in a public setting and drive it to conclusion,” Pawlenty said, touting his own experience as a two-term governor of Minnesota.

Pardon me, but this seems like exactly the kind of criticism most of us launched at Barack Obama in 2007 and 2008, and which we wished John McCain would have more often launched at Obama during the general election campaign.

John says he likes and respects both candidates, as do I, and both of us know the two Minnesota candidates a little. I also get that Republican primary candidates should save their most passionate critical salvos for Obama. However, in a primary, the candidates have to campaign against each other, too — and experience and records of accomplishment have to be fair game, especially as close as most of the candidates are on policy (with a couple of exceptions). Experience matters, and one of Pawlenty’s strengths is his executive experience.

Republicans want to make the case in 2012 that Obama is incompetent thanks in part to a lack of previous executive experience and any track record of accomplishment in the Senate. That case will be hard to make if Republicans nominate someone from the House with no executive experience and no track record of Congressional accomplishment. That’s as true of Bachmann as it is of Thad McCotter and Ron Paul (and Herman Cain, for that matter), but those candidates aren’t threatening to win the Ames straw poll next month, which is why Pawlenty compared his experience to Bachmann’s.

Frankly, this is exactly what is supposed to happen in primaries — contrasting experience and track records, arguing over policy, and eventually nominating the most effective candidate for the general election. Bachmann needs to have an answer for this valid criticism — and she did provide one. The supporters of individual candidates (and the candidates themselves) have to get used to taking some heat in a primary campaign, because if they can’t handle it now, they’ll fold when it comes to a general election.

The Ed Morrissey Show: Andrew Malcolm

Today on The Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), we return with our Tuesdays with Andrew Malcolm, the Prince of Twitter, on the intersection of media and politics. We’ll talk about the Minnesota shutdown, Nina Totenberg’s warning about the government-media complex, Larry O’Donnell accusing Newsweek of selling out for Saarh Palin, and much, much more. We will also take your questions in our Lightning Round in the final 20 minutes of the show — so make sure you’re registered at Ustream to be one of our Chatizens!

The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page — be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too!

We’ll also cover the the case of Marizela Perez, who has been missing in the Seattle area for more three months. Marizela’s case has a connection here at Hot Air, as she is the cousin of the Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin. Michelle is trying to spread the word through Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle. We want to encourage prayers for Marizela’s family, and also try to reach anyone in the area who knows where Marizela might be and ask them to contact the police.

The search has its own website now, Find Marizela, for the latest in the efforts to bring Marizela home. There is also a fund for the family to keep the search efforts going. Be sure to check there and at Michelle’s site for further developments, and keep the family in your prayers.

America’s Most Wanted is now on the case, too.

Michelle had an update last week:

Four months ago today, my cousin Marizela Perez disappeared from the University District in Seattle, Washington. I am devastated to tell you once again that there are no new leads or breaks in the case. Her parents have exhausted their work leave and have had to return to the East Coast. The family is weighing various legal and investigative avenues to pursue. As I reported in May, the quest to obtain Marizela’s online/text info has been an uphill battle. After months of pressing, we finally received a search warrant two weeks ago related to the case. It had been signed by a judge on April 22; we gained access to it in late June. …

Marizela’s Google web history was not included. The Seattle Police Department will not disclose the actual Google records to her parents so that they could pursue the search for Marizela on their own.

The Ed Morrissey Show: Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tina Korbe, Matt Lewis, Belinda Keiser

Today on The Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), we won’t have Duane “Generalissimo” Patterson to kick around, as usual. He’s presently undergoing Special Forces psychological training by spending 8 hours on the new Little Mermaid ride at Disneyland’s California Adventure with Hugh Hewitt. I’ll partner with Duane tomorrow for my NARN show, at least for a little while.

We have a great lineup today in place of our Week in Review. First we’ll meet Belinda Keiser of Student Access Student Choice to discuss new regulation described as “scandal ridden” by the Daily Caller last month. Next, Rep. Marsha Blackburn joins us for a short chat about the incandescent light-bulb ban that Republicans want to repeal. In the second half hour, Matt Lewis and I will discuss the new job numbers, and in the final 30 minutes, we’ll talk about the rest of today’s news with my blog partner Tina Korbe!

The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page — be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too!

We’ll also cover the the case of Marizela Perez, who has been missing in the Seattle area for more three months. Marizela’s case has a connection here at Hot Air, as she is the cousin of the Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin. Michelle is trying to spread the word through Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle. We want to encourage prayers for Marizela’s family, and also try to reach anyone in the area who knows where Marizela might be and ask them to contact the police.

The search has its own website now, Find Marizela, for the latest in the efforts to bring Marizela home. There is also a fund for the family to keep the search efforts going. Be sure to check there and at Michelle’s site for further developments, and keep the family in your prayers.

America’s Most Wanted is now on the case, too.

Michelle has a new update this week:

Four months ago today, my cousin Marizela Perez disappeared from the University District in Seattle, Washington. I am devastated to tell you once again that there are no new leads or breaks in the case. Her parents have exhausted their work leave and have had to return to the East Coast. The family is weighing various legal and investigative avenues to pursue. As I reported in May, the quest to obtain Marizela’s online/text info has been an uphill battle. After months of pressing, we finally received a search warrant two weeks ago related to the case. It had been signed by a judge on April 22; we gained access to it in late June. …

Marizela’s Google web history was not included. The Seattle Police Department will not disclose the actual Google records to her parents so that they could pursue the search for Marizela on their own.

Happy Independence Day

How will you celebrate our nation’s independence? We have a rather traditional day laid out for ourselves. We’ll start the day out with our city parade and a brunch with our extended Minnesota family. Later, I’ll do some grilling, and late in the evening, we will join friends to watch fireworks in St. Paul. In between, the First Mate and I will continue watching the miniseries John Adams, starring Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney as John and Abigail Adams. The story stretches from the Boston Massacre to Adams’ death on July 4, 1826, and presents a brilliant warts-and-all look at the man known as the Colossus of Independence in his day. The series includes this dramatization of the approval and publication of the Declaration of Independence, a stirring recitation:

My wife and I have spent the last few summers watching documentaries and dramatic recountings of the American Revolution period. Last year, we discovered The Founding of America, a collection of History Channel presentations that are worth so much more than the modest sale price of the set. I reviewed it last year, and the price has dropped considerably since then, which makes it a steal. But if you can’t get your hands on either for today, the History International channel will play the miniseries The Revolution all day, which is one of the programs included in the set, and a fine way to get into the spirit.

However you celebrate our independence, have a happy and safe day with family and friends, and take a moment to remember the men who risked all for our freedom and liberty.

Three ways to bolster liberty on Independence Day

Earlier today, I prescribed a blend of civic and personal for celebrating Independence Day. Glenn Reynolds, better known as Instapundit, offered a more active plan for both celebrating and promoting liberty today and in the future in his Washington Examiner column yesterday. Besides e-mailing New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg a photo of yourself eating a hotdog (brats here in the Upper Midwest, natch), Glenn writes that Americans can declare their independence from those who want to keep us dependent on an out-of-touch federal nanny-state government in three ways:

* Attack the funding. Many of the most anti-liberty activities of state and local governments are driven by federal funding — either direct funding, or grants. …

* Stop supporting the enemies of freedom and start supporting your friends. Cancel your subscriptions to cable TV channels, magazines or newspapers that support big government over individual liberty.

* Join Together. It may seem contradictory to assert your independence by banding together. But our Founding Fathers didn’t set America free by acting alone.

The first two points are rather clear, although Glenn offers good advice in how to carry out both. He provides some interesting food for thought with the third. The nature of American liberty and independence is not isolation, but in voluntary associations, as Glenn references Alexander de Tocqueville’s observation:

In fact, voluntary association, as de Toqueville observed, is part of the particular genius of the American republic. So get involved.

You might join a political party — many small-government activists are trying to take over the Republican (and some even the Democratic) Party at the grassroots level and work from the bottom up, from the precinct to the state level.

It’s surprisingly easy to get involved in politics locally, and you can acquire responsibility and influence quite rapidly if you’re good with people and willing to put in the work.

Alternatively, you might join a Tea Party group. Those are still springing up all over, and are already having a dramatic influence on both national and local politics.

Every group is different, as the Tea Party is a movement, not a party, and has no main office. Find one that suits you, or start one if you can’t.

If there’s one issue you care about a lot, get involved there. Gun rights activism crosses party lines, but has had a major influence in expanding liberty — over the past decade, the growth of Second Amendment rights has been one of the major Bill of Rights success stories. There are lots of other causes, ranging from fathers’ rights to tax fairness. Pick one.

And if you’re not a joiner at all, well, you can always start a blog. For some people, that works out pretty well!

It worked out well for us, quite obviously, and that didn’t come from simply writing a blog from a log cabin in the wilderness. Success for people like Glenn and others came from networking with people of similar interests and passions, linking together (literally and figuratively) to advance arguments and inspire action, and work to build momentum for policies that advance liberty and freedom. It’s a modern version of the pamphleteering that advanced the American experiment, both before and after the Revolution.

It is an amazing privilege to live in a country where such power still remains in the hands of its citizens, a good point to remember on this day of all days.

Update: Apropos of celebrating independent, Mitch Berg, Kevin Ecker, and I will be staging a MOB On The Range Day to celebrate our Second Amendment freedoms (MOB stands for Minnesota Organization of Bloggers). The event will be a benefit (more later on that), and will be held in the near future. If you’re in Minnesota near the Twin Cities — or can make it here — stay tuned for more details.

Hot Air Candidate Survey: 4th of July Weekend Results

With over 6000 ballots cast, we have results. Monthly Presidential chart is below. Then I’ll go into some of the hard realities facing Hot Air’s front runner. Send your questions and comments to me here.

Sarah Palin has returned to almost her highest vote take since the survey began, at 36.94% of the vote. Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry run closely together, coming in second (19.95%) and third (18.91%) respectively. Herman Cain takes fourth at 6.68%, continuing his downward movement since his May highs. Mitt Romney takes fifth, at 6.3%.

Palin may still be on top of the overall results, but she is in major danger of being eclipsed in the primaries by Bachmann and/or Perry. The following pie chart should make Palin supporters very, very uneasy.

(Palin beats Perry by 10 points, with unaffiliated voters breaking roughly 3-to-2 to Perry. The situation I lay out below is the more serious situation of the two for Palin.)

Hot Air is a site that, as these surveys consistently show, has a very strong and organized Palin following — and Hot Air tilts toward the Grassroots Right anyway — yet from her baseline vote to her head-to-head vote against Bachmann, Palin ekes out only a four point win, gaining 16 points from her baseline vs. Bachmann’s 28 point gain. If Bachmann takes that sort of ratio of unaffiliated voters in a head-to-head primary, I don’t see how Palin overcomes Bachmann, let alone overcomes whoever makes it out of the establishment primary of Romney, Pawlenty et al. If Palin’s overall Hot Air numbers again drop back to 32% or so, she will likely lose to Bachmann in the Hot Air head-to-head match-up.

There’s a protective instinct in play here, too, and it appears that even grassroot-ers see Bachmann as a safer option to Palin. The 2nd choice Perry vote hammers this home pretty clearly.

But Bachmann’s pathway to the nomination is not a cakewalk and is complicated by Perry’s candidacy: Perry is not only the second choice for Palin, but for Bachmann as well.

Which pretty well explains this outcome:

Whoever emerges between Perry and Bachmann will have the electoral advantage on Palin, who it appears has serious electoral maneuvering problems even among the base. Palin’s strength is the excitement of her supporters and the high commitment of those supporters to her. Her weakness is, simply, that there won’t be enough of them to carry her through the current field of primary candidates. I wrote back in 2009 that Palin’s most likely role in the 2012 cycle would be as a coronator. I still believe that’s basically right.

Two other tidbits: The new Hot Air leader for the vice presidential nomination is Michele Bachmann, unseating Allen West from his long-running spot atop the VP results.

The new Hot Air second choice for president leader is, also, Michele Bachmann.

Lots here. Feedback welcome.

Quotes of the day

“The story concludes, ‘The Constitution serves the nation; the nation does not serve the Constitution.’ The connotation is that we shouldn’t be too slavish in our fidelity to the Constitution.

“Like the rest of this article, its conclusion misses the point. The Constitution serves the American people as an unbreakable constraint on those in power, dictating their duties and the limits on their authority. The Constitution serves We the People by requiring every government official to take an oath to obey its every word.

“The picture art at the outset of Time’s story shows the Constitution cut in dozens of narrow vertical strips. Clearly it had been run through a paper shredder.

“Evidently this is wishful thinking for some on the far left. The only problem is that it’s false. Interest in the Constitution is resurgent, and that renewed interest is the key to America’s renewal in our third century.”

***

“Any discussion of invoking the Constitution’s 14th Amendment as a way out of the debt-limit impasse is ‘crazy talk,’ Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said on ‘Fox News Sunday.’

“Some Democrats have been pointing to the 14th Amendment, which states that federal debts ‘shall not be questioned,’ as a legal argument for why President Barack Obama could continue to pay the country’s debt even if the limit is not raised…

“‘It is not acceptable for Congress and the president not to do their job and say basically the president has the authority to do this by himself,’ Cornyn said.”

***

“The great respect George Washington had accrued during the fighting of the Revolutionary War argued for making the president commander in chief of American forces. But which branch would decide when to go to war? Because members of both the House and the Senate represented the communities from which soldiers and sailors would be drawn for future conflicts, wisdom dictated that the power to make war be put in their hands.

“Keeping those two powers — declaring and waging war — separate involved an engineering feat Madison tellingly described as pitting the officeholders’ ambitions against each other.

“Obama not only acted according to original expectations in his reluctance to have his authority curtailed, but so did Congress. Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans have dropped their differences for the moment and joined together to check presidential power. Instead of acting like partisans, they are trying to chart a course of action to preserve their constitutionally mandated authority.

“Madison went on to say that relying on personal ambition to maintain the separation of powers might seem to reflect on human nature, but what then, he asked, is government itself if not ‘the greatest of all reflections on human nature.’”

***

“The question is, has the congressional power to regulate interstate commerce been so loosely construed that now Congress can do anything at all, that there is nothing it cannot do.

“Let me ask the three of you. Obviously, obesity and its costs affect interstate commerce. Does Congress have the constitutional power to require obese people to sign up for Weight Watchers? If not, why not?”

Quit being a party guy, President Obama, says … Evan Thomas?

So much for being “sort of God.” In this week’s press conference, Barack Obama blamed eeeeeeeeeeevil corporate jet owners and oil companies for the federal budget deficit in an attempt to play class-warfare games to fire up the base. Former High Priest of ObamaMania Evan Thomas (who also sidelines as a Newsweek editor) became an apostate by noting that demagoguery wastes time and makes it harder to find solutions. Thomas “applaud[s] the energy,” but wonders when Obama will start presidenting instead of being a party hack:

On “Inside Washington,” host Gordon Peterson asked his panel to suggest a way to overcome the current impasse and get Congress and the White House moving on a budget deal. Thomas offered up a solution, but also expressed his frustration with Obama.

“Yeah, because it’s happened before – Obama has got to be President of the United States,” Thomas said. “He has to be two things. He has to make a public case of how bad is this, because he is not doing that. He’s not being honest about just how bad this is going to be — no, he was partisan. He was God [bleep] Democrat! He was just, you know – being a party guy. I applaud the energy but it wasn’t getting me anywhere. He has got to rise above that and then in private, in private – he’s got to make a deal.”

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer’s sentiments fell in line with Thomas’s.

“Instead of saying, as a president ought to say, is that we have a problem — it is a serious problem, it’s a growing problem, it’s a structural problem and we have to do something, he says, as in the sound bite you showed, it is a choice between helping the elderly on Medicare and corporate jets and oil tax breaks,” Krauthammer added. “That is pure demagoguery and that is not leadership.”

When acolytes start tossing criticisms instead of hosannas, I’d say we have consensus. Barack Obama … uniter?

NEA Convention 2011: A New Reality

I’m blogging all weekend long live from the National Education Association Representative Assembly in Chicago.

That’s what National Education Association Secretary-Treasurer Becky Pringle called the situation in which the union finds itself this year. It won’t come as a surprise to readers of this blog that NEA has a $14 million budget shortfall, or that it has lost more than 39,000 active members. Pringle stated that the deficit is closer to $17 million due to increased costs to the union’s legal services program, which subsidizes each state affiliate’s attorney referral program and other litigation-based actions for individual members.

Plus, Pringle said, “We have to assume we haven’t hit bottom yet.”

What might surprise you, given NEA’s aversion to staff reductions in the public schools (to the point where California just passed a law under cover of darkness to save teachers’ jobs even without the money to pay them – a move pioneered in Detroit and Los Angeles), is that the union plans to partially cut the deficit with $4.8 million in staff reductions.

Asked how many staffers would be lost, Pringle replied, “about 20.” If anyone in the audience did the math, that’s $240,000 saved per staffer, which tells you all you need to know.

Who knew Ms. Pringle could be such a fiscal hawk? She described to the delegates present how difficult it was to make budget cuts, since each program had a constituency arguing to protect it. She declared, “I will not support an increase in dues” to close the budget gap because “our members are hurting.” And she detailed the budget committee’s work on staff costs, saying, “We’ve worked to reduce benefits.”

Indeed, Pringle’s words are coming out of the mouths of school board presidents across the country.

There were also indications that while there may be red states and blue states, the only color that matters is green.

NEA Vice President Lily Eskelsen spoke excitedly of receiving funding for NEA’s English Language Learners program from Western Union.

Pringle defended NEA’s business relationship with Bank of America, saying the union has been able to exert influence over the bank in the area of credit card rate hikes for members, and saving the union money on electronic fund transfers for dues.

Is a shutdown the Democratic plan to recapture the legislature in 2012?

On yesterday’s NARN show, Mitch Berg and I had the opportunity to speak with the two leaders of Minnesota’s legislature, Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch and House Speaker Kurt Zellers, as well as our friend and former NARN band member Rep. King Banaian. Mitch and I asked them all why the government shutdown occurred — a question none of them could quite answer. The budget comes in nine bills, and Republicans had reached substantive agreement with Dayton on six of them, were close on two more, and only had difficulties on one, tax policy. The last biennial budget spent just under $31 billion; Republicans wanted to reduce that spending, but ended up offering a budget that came in at over $34 billion for the next biennium, an increase (after adjustments) of 6% in real spending. At the end, as Dayton refused to sign any of the budget bills, Republicans offered a “lights on” bill (a version of a continuing resolution in Congress) to keep government open while they struggled to reach agreement on policy.

Dayton refused to agree to the special session that would have considered the lights-on bill — and which will need to get called eventually to resolve the government shutdown anyway. Why did Dayton refuse to negotiate in good faith? Via my friend Scott Johnson at Power Line, Katherine Kersten accuses Dayton of trying to torpedo this session in order to give his party an opportunity to win back control of the legislature in 2012:

Did Dayton intentionally try to provoke a shutdown? We can only say that if he had wanted to, he would have acted precisely as he has in recent months.

Throughout the budgetary process, Dayton refused to give legislators the details they needed to take his priorities into account in crafting their own budget bills. He refused to negotiate on individual bills until he had seen them all.

The Legislature sent its bills to Dayton six weeks before the session ended, but he frittered away the time for negotiation. He vetoed all nine bills at the end of the session, so legislators had no chance to rework them to address his concerns.

As shutdown loomed, Dayton refused to resolve small differences and sign major portions of the budget, such as K-12 education, judiciary and public safety, on which agreement was close. The Pioneer Press called this “hostage taking,” not “compromise.”

But Minnesotans need to understand the bigger picture here. Behind Dayton and out of the limelight, DFL legislators have been playing for much higher stakes than a $1.8 billion spending increase.

In recent weeks, DFL minority leaders Paul Thissen and Tom Bakk have been glued to Dayton’s side throughout budget negotiations. Why? If Dayton — with the help of DFL legislators — could parlay a shutdown into a DFL legislative takeover in 2012, the political payoff for the party would be huge.

Dayton won’t face reelection until 2014, and the public’s memory of the current fiscal train wreck will be long gone by then.

But the Legislature is up for reelection in 2012 — just around the corner. If Dayton gets egg on his face for the shutdown, DFL leaders may view it as a small price to pay, so long as irate voters can be led to spread the blame to Republicans and to transfer legislative control to the DFL next year.

A 6% biennial increase seems like a pretty good offer of good will by Republicans in this environment; we heard from a couple of callers who were unhappy that the GOP increased spending at all. One e-mailer wondered aloud how he should vote in future elections if both Republicans and the DFL were determined to continue spending increases (answer: vote for the party that increases it least, I guess). What did the GOP get for its attempt to find a middle ground with Dayton, who wanted to increase the biennial budget to $37 billion and institute higher tax rates in the state already ranked 43rd in business tax environment? An utter refusal to negotiate and a state shutdown that Dayton at one time promised not to pursue.

I’d say Kersten is on the right track here.

Video: Should law enforcement be able to track vehicles without a warrant?

They certainly can now, but the Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether law enforcement should place tracking transmitters on the vehicles of suspects without first seeking a warrant. The test case will come from an appellate court that threw out a drug-distribution conviction and life sentence, ruling that the failure to get a warrant for the device violated the Fourth Amendment rights of Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner in Washington DC. As MSNBC reports, though, Jones was not the only suspect to have unknowingly carried an FBI tracking device:

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

I’m surprised that this hasn’t happened before. With most vehicles requiring an oil change every 3,000 miles, cars get racked on a regular basis. Perhaps other law enforcement agencies do a better job of hiding the transmitter that they did with Afifi. The report doesn’t indicate what the FBI’s interest was in surreptitiously tracking the American-born college student, but they didn’t mind making their presence known to get the transmitter back.

Maybe they were tracking Afifi for a study on a federal mileage tax, eh?

The Jones case involved the police, not the FBI:

The appeals court threw out the conviction and the life-in-prison sentence for Antoine Jones, a nightclub owner in Washington, D.C., for conspiracy to distribute cocaine.

Police put the GPS device on Jones’ vehicle and tracked his movements for a month during their investigation. Evidence obtained as a result of using the GPS device played a key role in his conviction.

The appeals court said prolonged electronic monitoring of Jones’ vehicle amounted to an unreasonable search.

The argument that law enforcement needs no warrant to track vehicles on public roads doesn’t make a lot of sense. They can’t search the vehicles themselves without permission, a search warrant, or probable cause (which strongly suggests an emergent situation as opposed to a chronic issue) even if the vehicle is on a public road at the time. Why, then, can police or FBI use tracking devices without the same restrictions, especially for long periods of time?

Drivers might not have a right to privacy in the act of driving on public roads, but that applies mainly in the moment. For instance, if police observe someone smoking a joint or drinking Jack Daniels while driving, they have the jurisdiction to pull the car over and arrest the driver, and few if any would dispute that. That’s a far cry from the government at any level compiling a list of travels and destinations over any period of time, which really does fall into Big Brother territory. If the government has probable cause to collect that kind of information, then law enforcement has enough information to get the search warrant to start collecting that kind of data.

Poll: What was the Obamateurism of the Week?

Time once again to take a flier on the Obamateurism of the Week, and this will be another tough choice.  I’d reduce the entries, but we apparently can’t cut our way to prosperity, so we’ll have to enjoy the bounty.  But, like any cash-strapped family, we’ll save by looking for dinner specials, even if we have to speed up the birthday cake.

What was the Obamateurism of the Week (7/3)?

“But we can’t simply cut our way to prosperity.”Says he will handle federal budget "like any cash-strapped family" while Treasury Secretary says "Government is not like a family" regarding budgetsRaffle for Presidential dinner escalates to 2-1 special with BidenMistakes his daughter's age during press conferenceSix references to tax breaks for "corporate jet owners" as reason budget isn't balanced

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Previous 2011 “winners”:

• Identifies wrong soldier as non-posthumous MoH recipient
• “You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM; you don’t go to a bank teller.”
• Uses restaurant as example of success of auto bailouts, closes two weeks later
• Goes for 70th round of golf on Memorial Day
• Obama botches toast to Queen Elizabeth
• “Israel must be able to defend itself – by itself – against any threat“
• WH gripes that immigration debate too often uses caricatures after Obama says, “Maybe they’ll need a moat.”
• White House issues Earth Day proclamation, skips Easter
• Can’t name a mistake at townhall in which he made three in one sentence
• Accuses GOP of trying to hurt seniors after lecturing them not to demagogue on entitlement reform
• “If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know, you might want to think about a trade-in.”
• Obama accepts his transparency award in secret, no-press meeting
• “War” first changed to “kinetic military action,” then “time-limited, scope-limited military action”
• Obama telling people it would be easier to be President of China because “No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.”
• Obama tells group that there is a “subterranean” racially-based agenda in opposition to his presidency
• Ferry for Americans in Libya comes three days late — and with a bill for passengers
• WH says Obama not addressing Libya because of “scheduling issue“
• After saying he hadn’t followed the Wisconsin issue, says Walker’s plan “seems like more of an assault on unions.”
• Businesses have “obligation” to create jobs and “pay decent wages”
• After losing verdict on first ever federal mandate to purchase private-sector product, accuses judge of “overreach”
• Obama bogarts Newt Gingrich’s book title for his “Winning the Future” SOTU speech
• 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner holds state dinner for man who has 2010 winner under house arrest
• After telling Boehner and McConnell that “there will be plenty of time to campaign for 2012 in 2012,”announces March start to re-election bid
• “I really want to figure out a way where I can spend more time outside of Washington listening and learning and engaging the American people.”

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me atobamaisms@edmorrissey.com with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

Illustrations by Chris Muir of Day by Day. Be sure to read the adventures of Sam, Zed, Damon, and Jan every day!

The Ed Morrissey Show: Kerry Picket, Steven Crowder

Today on The Ed Morrissey Show (3 pm ET), Kerry Picket of the Washington Times returns to give us the inside skinny on Capitol Hill. Steven Crowder will join us in the second half to talk about his upcoming documentary on … Keith Olbermann? All this, and much much more!

The Ed Morrissey Show and its dynamic chatroom can be seen on the permanent TEMS page — be sure to join us, and don’t forget to keep up with the debate on my Facebook page, too!

We’ll also cover the the case of Marizela Perez, who has been missing in the Seattle area for more three months. Marizela’s case has a connection here at Hot Air, as she is the cousin of the Boss Emeritus, Michelle Malkin. Michelle is trying to spread the word through Facebook and Q13Fox/KCPQ in Seattle. We want to encourage prayers for Marizela’s family, and also try to reach anyone in the area who knows where Marizela might be and ask them to contact the police.

The search has its own website now, Find Marizela, for the latest in the efforts to bring Marizela home. There is also a fund for the family to keep the search efforts going. Be sure to check there and at Michelle’s site for further developments, and keep the family in your prayers.

America’s Most Wanted is now on the case, too.

Michelle has an update from last month detailing the difficulties of working with the police on cases of missing adults. Be sure to read it all to understand what this family faces — and many other families as well.

In case you care: Bill Clinton thinks GOP should pick a “more moderate” candidate

On Good Morning America this morning, former President Bill Clinton had (kind of) kind things to say about GOP presidential frontrunners former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, he said, is “doing a better job as a candidate this time than he did four years ago. [He] comes across as more relaxed and more convicted about what he did do, less willing to just be forced into apologizing for it because it violates some part of his party orthodoxy.”

He claimed not to be surprised by the early success of Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn, because, “I’ve been watching her speak, you know, she comes across as a real person. … The story that they tell is pretty compelling, all those foster children she’s taken in, and children she’s raised and the work she’s done.”

Not surprisingly, he also had praise for the MSM favorite, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (you know, because, polling at an average of 1.7 percent, he makes a natural addition to any assessment of “the leaders of the pack”).

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, he said, “did a very nice, a good job for America as ambassador to China. I think he’s quite an impressive man. He’s got an impressive family. I had the honor of meeting one of his children once and having a conversation with her. I think that he’s refreshingly, kind of, unhide-bound. Just comes across as non-ideological — conservative, but non-ideological, practical.”

Earlier in the segment, Clinton highlighted what he’s looking for in a GOP candidate. “The ones I liked are the ones that you think are more moderate,” he said, “’cause I think they’re a little more connected to the real world. And I think they’ll be — they’d be formidable. … But I’m afraid if I say anything nice about them, they’ll lose, for sure.”

Obviously, electability is both tricky and critical: The GOP has to pick a candidate who can win in the general election. But to gauge who can win, I’d rather the GOP look to the electorate and not to somebody like Clinton, the ultimate politician, whose agenda doesn’t exactly match the conservative platform.

After all, Clinton’s not actually afraid moderate candidates will lose the GOP nomination — he’s afraid the GOP will pick someone who can unseat Obama (and that person, I’d argue, is unlikely to be a milquetoast moderate — and very likely to be whichever candidate most clearly articulates a message that resonates with the values of American voters). If Democrats like Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could only pick our candidate, they’d pick whoever will bow to Obama most obsequiously, whoever will surrender most readily.

Interestingly, Clinton said nothing about former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, whose position in the polls arguably most resembles Clinton’s at this point in the 1992 Democratic primaries. Perhaps he kept silent because he knows better than anybody Pawlenty could come from behind and win over the public with solid likability, a consistent message and true conservative credibility.

So, two very obvious ideas Clinton should keep in mind if he plans to comment moving forward: 1) The GOP primaries are for GOP voters to decide and 2) Romney and Bachmann might be at the top, and a Huntsman nomination might be on libs’ wish list, but those three aren’t the only candidates in the race.

Get-to-work Obama suddenly uninterested in work

Old and busted: Leading leaders and the leadership they display by meeting with leaders. New hotness: The worthlessness of leaders meeting leaders. Yesterday, Barack Obama insisted that leadership meant meeting with opponents and getting serious about finding compromise and making a deal:

And I’ve got to say, I’m very amused when I start hearing comments about, well, the President needs to show more leadership on this. Let me tell you something. Right after we finished dealing with the government shutdown, averting a government shutdown, I called the leaders here together. I said we’ve got to get done — get this done. I put Vice President Biden in charge of a process — that, by the way, has made real progress — but these guys have met, worked through all of these issues. I met with every single caucus for an hour to an hour and a half each — Republican senators, Democratic senators; Republican House, Democratic House. I’ve met with the leaders multiple times. At a certain point, they need to do their job.

And so, this thing, which is just not on the level, where we have meetings and discussions, and we’re working through process, and when they decide they’re not happy with the fact that at some point you’ve got to make a choice, they just all step back and say, well, you know, the President needs to get this done — they need to do their job.

Now is the time to go ahead and make the tough choices. That’s why they’re called leaders. And I’ve already shown that I’m willing to make some decisions that are very tough and will give my base of voters further reason to give me a hard time. But it’s got to be done.

And so there’s no point in procrastinating. There’s no point in putting it off. We’ve got to get this done. And if by the end of this week, we have not seen substantial progress, then I think members of Congress need to understand we are going to start having to cancel things and stay here until we get it done.

So what is Obama’s idea of leadership? Declaring himself uninterested in such mundane matters as budget negotiations:

The White House effectively turned down an invitation by Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell for President Barack Obama to visit his members on Capitol Hill on Thursday to discuss raising the debt limit.

Jay Carney told the media earlier today that McConnell’s invitation was “not a conversation worth having.” Sounds a lot like Obama’s own press conference. It also highlights a particularly Democratic approach to bipartisanship, which is usually defined as Republicans agreeing to Democratic demands, which is more or less how Obama defined the supposedly bipartisan process that produced ObamaCare and Porkulus, both of which were written by Democrats without Republican input.

Obama tried painting himself as the “adult in the room” yesterday, according to sources at the White House. Don’t you have to actually be in the room to qualify as such?

Dems to spin Fast & Furious probe into gun-control rally

After yesterday’s news of the deal between Senators Pat Leahy and Charles Grassley to get documents and testimony from ATF chief Kenneth Melson on Operation Fast and Furious, it seemed as though Democrats might finally take the scandal of the gunrunning fiasco seriously. Alas, Elijah Cummings and House Democrats appear uninterested in abuses of government power, incompetence, and potential cover-ups at AFT and the Department of Justice. In fact, they want to turn the probe into an argument for expanding government control of firearms:

The top Democrat on a House investigative committee is broadening an inquiry into a botched gun-tracing operation, called Operation Fast and Furious, to include a look at American gun laws.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the leading Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, released a report early Thursday titled “Outgunned,” that details how Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents say gun laws need to be tightened for them to fight organized crime along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Why, yes! The right response for Congress to a fiasco where the ATF and DoJ refused to stop guns from flowing over the border is to give them more power to stop American citizens from buying guns in the first place! Certainly, the federal law-enforcement agencies have proven their worth in Operation Fast and Furious and should be given even more opportunities to intervene in the exercise of Second Amendment rights!

That’s the World According To Elijah Cummings, anyway.

The tactic here is transparent — Cummings and his fellow Democrats want to stage a distraction from the stupidity and incompetence that Fast and Furious revealed at the ATF and DoJ. They don’t want the public to focus on how high up the approvals went on this gunrunning operation conducted by the Obama administration, nor whether the stupidity and incompetence led to obstruction and perjury before Congress on the part of Obama appointees in the DoJ. They would much rather pretend that the real reason at least two American agents are dead from weapons the ATF allowed to cross into Mexico is that Americans can buy and use guns in a lawful manner in the US.

If they’re that desperate for a distraction, then Darrell Issa must be close to exposing something rather significant in the DoJ.

Mika: Palin and Paris Hilton have a lot in common

Is Sarah Palin as “significant” as Paris Hilton? So says Mika Brzezinski in what has become a rather notorious episode of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. My good friend Matt Lewis appeared on the show this morning to discuss his new book, The Quotable Rogue: The Ideals of Sarah Palin in Her Own Words, and made the argument that Palin has “driven the debate” on a wide range of public policy for the last two years, especially with her Tea Party activism. Brzezinski scoffed and said that Palin might be no more significant than a lightweight celebrity more known for a sex tape than deep political thinking:

Joe Scarborough read Brzezinski out for her comment, noting that Palin is only one of two women to have run on a major-party ticket for Vice President:

GEIST: You said a minute ago, Matt, she’s the most significant woman of the 21st century. I can just hear our viewers screaming at their TVs. What about Hillary Clinton? Do you really think she’s the most significant, more so than Hillary Clinton?

BRZEZINSKI: I can’t, I can’t –

LEWIS: I said arguably, and I think you could make a case for Nancy Pelosi, as well, by the way, and Hillary Clinton and I’m sure some others. But I think you could make a good case for Palin because of the way — look at the Tea Party movement, which she was sort of at the forefront of. I think you could make a good case that Sarah Palin was in fact the most significant woman in terms of driving the debate, and certainly in terms of media coverage Sarah Palin has dominated it.

BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, but so does Paris Hilton, but that doesn’t mean they’re significant.

SCARBOROUGH: Hold on one second, don’t — let me stop right here. Don’t compare her to Paris Hilton.

BRZEZINSKI: I didn’t. I’m just saying –

SCARBOROUGH: You said so is Paris Hilton. You put her in the same category.

BRZEZINSKI: No. I’m saying there are people who get media coverage that maybe shouldn’t?

SCARBOROUGH: She’s one of two women — hold on a second, Matt.

LEWIS: The death panel comment is –

SCARBOROUGH: Hold on, hold on, hold on. Okay, let’s put it in perspective. I’m tired of her. People ask, “Why do we bring her up.” They’ll ask, “Why are we talking about her here.” You talk about Paris Hilton. I think that feeds into that narrative. Here’s the bottom line: She is one of the two only women who have ever been nominated for vice president of the United States of America. That ain’t nothing. It’s just like Dan Quayle for four years after he was vice president –

BRZEZINSKI: Okay, you’re going to have to let me respond.

SCARBOROUGH: — garnered more attention than that. That is why she remains significant.

BRZEZINSKI: No. I’m going to tell you there already was one and given the women that we have on the global landscape today, like Hillary Clinton, I mean, my lord. I’m sorry.

SCARBOROUGH: She’s in the top 10. I’m not saying she’s the most significant. You compared her to Paris Hilton.

BRZEZINSKI: No. I compared his statement about media coverage to Paris Hilton, okay? So, you know, you can jump on that like some of the –

Scarborough’s right, and even undersells his point. Her significance started as governor of Alaska, and then progressed as a national-party nominee for VP. But she’s done even more since then. Her PAC supported a number of Republicans in the 2010 midterms, most of whom won their elections in part due to her support. Palin has done as much as anyone has in the past two years for political organization in both grassroots and traditional party structure, all while being ridiculed by media figures like Brzezinski, whose main claim to fame is … being on television, and being the daughter of a former National Security Adviser in the Carter administration. If anyone has less standing to make a point about superficial celebritydom on Morning Joe, I’d like to know who it might be.

Besides, let’s not sell Paris Hilton short, either. She managed to sound more coherent than Barack Obama on economics during the 2008 campaign.