Recently in Capitol Hill Category

And, let's be honest, it really isn't, as long as you have the right quantity of epidermal pigmentation and the correct letter after your name:

Longtime Dallas congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson has awarded thousands of dollars in college scholarships to four relatives and a top aide’s two children since 2005, using foundation funds set aside for black lawmakers’ causes.

The recipients were ineligible under anti-nepotism rules of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, which provided the money. And all of the awards violated a foundation requirement that scholarship winners live or study in a caucus member’s district.

Johnson, a Democrat, denied any favoritism when asked about the scholarships last week. Two days later, she acknowledged in a statement released by her office that she had violated the rules but said she had done so “unknowingly” and would work with the foundation to “rectify the financial situation.”

Here's a question: Why does the Congressional Black Caucus bother with the pretense of even HAVING anti-nepotism rules?  The very purpose of the CBC is to enable "(liberal) black lawmakers" to loot the system in a sort of permananent Viking-style pillaging of collective "whitey" for piecemeal reparations for slavery and the Jim Crow apartheid that followed it.  For that matter, why is EBJ wasting time with excuses instead of climbing on the same self-righteous, moral supremacy black martyr stallion as Good-Time Charlie Rangel and Mad Maxine Waters?  They should coordinate their cases and demand to be "tried" all at the same time in order to maximize the persecutory spectacle of three "black lawmakers" being "lynched" by Nancy "Bull Connor" Pelosi.  Not one of them will be so much as wrist-slapped, but doing it this way would so put the unholy fear of Barack into what survives of the House Donk caucus after November that Rangel would be even odds to be the next House Minority Leader, with Waters and Johnson as his [heh] whips.

Seriously.

While President Obama goes on another vacation (his 6th this year), leading economic figures are warning that the U.S. may face a full blown depression if the Bush Tax Cuts are not fully renewed this year.

As you know, the Bush Cuts automatically expire all at once on December 31st of this year. Your taxes will go up massively -- unless you act.

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have vowed to bring a vote on the Bush tax cuts as early as September.

But they want their version of these "tax cuts."

Pelosi, Reid and Obama want tax increases for the most successful Americans making more than $200,000 a year, with additional hikes on capital gains and dividend taxes for everyone.

They conveniently forget that there is no such thing as a tax on the "wealthy." Such individuals simply stop spending or move their assets to tax sheltered investments.

If Pelosi-Reid-Obama get their way, they could trigger a deep depression.

That's not me speaking but a former Bank of England official who just this week issued an urgent warning, telling Americans to forget about a “double-dip recession.”

He says if we don’t extend the Bush Tax Cuts, a major depression will hit the U.S.

“If we don’t act fast, a plunge into Depression is a growing risk in . . . the U.S.,” writes economist David Blanchflower, in a column for Bloomberg News.

Martin Regalia, an economist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, echoed Blanchflower’s fears.

"That is going to be a bullet in the head for an awful lot of people that are going to be laid off and an awful lot of people who are hoping to get their jobs back," Regalia said.

This is on top of even more bad economic news from the Department of Labor, as new claims for unemployment benefits soared to 500,000 last week, a nine-month high.

As you know, we at the League of American Voters have been fighting to FULLY renew the Bush tax cuts, across the board.

You can't raise taxes in the middle of a terrible recession!

Senator Fred Thompson has led our national petition effort to Renew the Bush Tax Cuts.

I am glad to report that as of this moment close to 300,000 Americans have signed our petition demanding that Congress fully renew the Bush Tax Cuts.

Fred Thompson has been appearing in our TV ads and helping with our online campaign reaching millions of Americans.

We need to do more.

Momentum is gaining in our favor and we need to do more to persuade Congress to fully renew the Bush tax cuts.

Already our efforts are paying off. Three Senate Democrats have called for a full renewal of the Bush Tax Cuts.

We believe many more in the House and Senate will join this bipartisan effort to save our economy and avert a depression.

The League’s campaign has already made incredible progress, with close to 300,000 Americans signing our petition.

Dick Morris, the famous Fox News analyst, says the League "is one of the most effective organizations in America. It deserves your support."

You can continue helping the League in two ways:

1. If you have not signed the Petition, do so today, and also see Fred's TV ad — Go Here Now

2. We need to alert millions of Americans to this tax threat — please donate to our campaign with Fred Thompson — every donation helps us buy TV, radio, print and online ads -— Go Here Now

Thank you.

Yours for America,

Bob Adams
Executive Director

Democrats have tried and failed to pass “comprehensive” federal oceans management legislation five years in a row. The so-called “Oceans 21″ bill, sponsored by Democratic Represenatative Sam Farr of California, went nowhere fast. Among the top reasons: bipartisan concerns about the economic impact of closing off widespread access to recreational fishing. The bill also would have handed environmentalists another punitive litigation weapon under the guise of “ecosystem management.” Instead of accepting defeat, the green lobby simply circumvented the legislative process altogether.

In late July, President Obama established a behemoth 27-member “National Ocean Council” with the stroke of a pen. Farr gloated: “We already have a Clean Air Act and a Clean Water Act. With today’s executive order, President Obama in effect creates a Clean Ocean Act.” And not a single hearing needed to be held. Not a single amendment considered. Not a single vote cast. Who gives a flying fish about transparency and the deliberative process? The oceans are dying!

The panel will have the power to implement “coastal and marine spatial plans” and to ensure that all executive agencies, departments and offices abide by their determinations. The panel has also been granted authority to establish regional advisory committees that overlap with existing regional and local authorities governing marine and coastal planning.

Dallas' top Democratic donors will cut big checks to share dinner later this month with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Most will be motivated by a desire to protect the party's congressional majority.

Lisa Blue will have an extra reason: to say thanks for Pelosi's efforts when her husband, Fred Baron, was dying of bone marrow cancer. His only option was an experimental drug whose manufacturer refused to give permission to use it for Baron's condition.

...

A prolific Democratic fundraiser, he served as finance chief that year for his friend John Edwards, who also made his fortune in court. Baron later acknowledged funneling large sums to Edwards' mistress – a scandal that gave ammunition to those who already despised trial lawyers.

...

Somehow – Blue still isn't sure how – Pelosi cajoled the FDA to find a legal justification that let Mayo administer the drug, even without Biogen's consent.

"Nancy figured out a way," she said.

The drug beat back the cancer for a few days, but not enough.

Blue has no illusion that a typical family could pull such strings.

"There are so many cases like Fred's," she said. "One thing he taught me was politics matters. What a personal experience for me to understand how politics matters."

"Politics matters"  Politics matters.  Indeed it does matter, Lisa, but not in the way you think.  It matters not because your husband happened to bring the rain on the side of the crooks, tyrants, and death panelists, and therefore was deemed worthy of life-saving efforts due solely to his political connections; that only underscores how powerfully he deserved to perish in agony.  Politics matters because it takes a free AND VIGILANT people to keep far, far away from power animalistic, power-mad despots who lust after domestic conquest so they can condemn to misery, suffering, and death the vast masses they deceived into believing they were getting "for free" what they would inevitably be denied in favor of those for whom "Nancy [will] figure out a way".

One little bug, however: The vast masses are not deceived.  They weren't during the O-Care war, they weren't when it was rammed down their throats anyway, and they haven't been in the five months since.  The only ones who have been deceived are those that "matter," and this of their own efforts to convince themselves that what they did to Us, The People, would eventually be rewarded with enthusiastic, heartfelt gratitude.

Maybe Missouri Prop C was the final straw.  Whichever the case, Democrat campaign strategists are (brace yourselves) finally acknowledging that ObamaCare is hugely unpopular.  Because it's been in so much doubt up until now.

Does this mean that Donks are going to get out in front of the repeal bandwagon and compete with the Republicans for that MAJORITY OF THE ELECTORATE?  Well, um, no.  Does it mean that they're going to pretend that ObamaCare does not and never existed and talk about ANYTHING else?  Er, ah, no.  Does that mean that they're going to resume their June 2009-March 2010 tone-deaf, humming-with-fingers-in-the-ears sales pitch that was so smashingly successful at putting over "health care reform" as the single most popular item since the chastity belt?

YES...THEY...WILL!:

Key White House allies are dramatically shifting their attempts to defend health care legislation, abandoning claims that it will reduce costs and deficit, and instead stressing a promise to “improve it.”…

The confidential presentation, available in full here and provided to POLITICO by a source on the call, suggests that Democrats are acknowledging the failure of their predictions that the health care legislation would grow more popular after its passage, as its benefits became clear and rhetoric cooled. Instead, the presentation is designed to win over a skeptical public, and to defend the legislation — and in particular the individual mandate — from a push for repeal…

The presentation also concedes that the fiscal and economic arguments that were the White House’s first and most aggressive sales pitch have essentially failed…

The presentation’s final page of “Don’ts” counsels against claiming “the law will reduce costs and deficit.”

What the public will hear: "The ObamaCare death march ISN'T OVER YET, and by the way, all our promises of cost and deficit reduction were pure, undiluted, Grade A, 100%, USDA-approved bullshit.  So vote for us so we can 'improve' it EVEN MORE!"

There are United States senators that everybody knows.  The ones that get all the face time and interview time and microphone time.  That are always all over the Sunday shows making infernal nuisances and aggravations of themselves.  "Dirty Harry" Reid, of course.  Chucky Schumer, who'd run over his own mother in an Abrams battle tank to get to the nearest mic.  Babs Boxer.  The late Teddy Kennedy.  Diane Feinstein, I suppose, and Fussy Russy Feingold, at least when riding shotgun with Sailor McCain.

And then there are the United States senators that occupy the second tier.  The backbenchers that don't write the big-time legislation, that don't get their names on "controversial" bills, that either aren't allowed co-sponsor even non-binding resolutions celebrating Kansas's rejected designation as "first of the rectangle states" or are simply too lazy to bother.  That are basically told to sit down, shut up, and vote as they're told, in exchange for a mighty inexhaustible river of pork.  John Kerry was, until very recently, the prototype of this breed of senator.  Both my state's lamentable senators, Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, exemplify it.

Then there's Kay Hagan.

I know, I know - "Who?"  I don't blame you.  You figure she must be the OTHER senator from Alaska, or Wyoming, or some non-coastal outpost with a Native American tribal designation.  But in actuality, Kay Hagan is the junior senator from North Carolina.  She is almost a senatorial breed unto herself.  The third tier.  Call 'em "the flukes".  Basically like the second tier except that these poor souls were tomato cans put up against thought-to-be-safe Republican incumbents who got swept into office by out-of-nowhere coattails or incumbent collapses.  In Kay Hagan's case, she was the ultimate "in the right place at the right time" candidate, running in the 2008 "mass voter psychotic hypnosis" cycle.  Her polling matched that of Barack Obama at the presidential level to an uncanny degree.  She trailed Liddy Dole badly from day one until a few days after the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb went off in mid-September and then, otherwise inexplicably, surged into a mid-single-digit lead that she never lost.

I don't recall any Liddy Dole gaffes or scandals from that election.  No Jack Abramoff connections or PMS meltdowns or stories involving words like "coke bottle" and "contortionism" or going on The View and singing a rousing chorus of We Love Our Va-Jay-Jays.  North Carolina voters, like their counterparts across the country, simply lost their minds at the worst possible time, and Kay "Jabrone" Hagan was the hapless beneficiary.

Over the past nineteen months, she has been the perfect tier three senator.  Totally invisible, totally quiet, totally unambitious, and voting dociley and obediently as Dirty Harry commands.  (And when I say totally invisible, I'm talking "phased out of the space-time continuum" invisible.  A search of "Hagan" at Hot Air yields precisely one mention in the past year since an Ed Morrissey post on....milk carton politicians.).

So imagine my astonishment when the PR luck of the senator that successfully clung to her obscurity even in the most high-profile battles of the ObamaCare war finally ran out:

"Conversations with Kay" quickly turned into "Confrontation With Kay" when Senator Kay Hagan visited the Kernersville Senior Enrichment Center.

Hagan has been hosting "Conversations with Kay" across the state of North Carolina, meeting with constituents about their concerns and having her staff on hand to assist people who need help with federal agencies such as the IRS or Veterans Affairs.

Health care became the hot topic during Wednesday morning's event when one mother sounded off about her children's health care needs.

"My children will suffer because of this health care bill," the concerned woman loudly told Hagan . The woman said she's raising two chronically ill children who have been under anesthesia fifty times in the last fourteen years.

Watch Raw Video Of Confrontation

"We live in the hospital. We don't want this," she said.

"I am glad your that children live in our country," Hagan calmly responded.

"I don't want free health care. Because I will sell everything I own to pay for my children because this is America." the concerned parent said.

Be sure to watch the vid to get the full flavor of this mama grizzly's anger. (I'd post it directly, but WXII chinced on embeddability, which is why I helped myself to most of their story text).  This woman is facing the very real probability of her two chronically ill kids suffering and dying prematurely and horribly because this vacantly smiling drone provided the sixtieth vote to ram through ObamaCare.  And notice what, for me, is the money quote: "I don't want 'free' health care....This is America." 

Hagan's not up this time, but her time is coming, oh, yes.  In the interim, she will discover that the only thing worse than being a drone in the majority is being a drone in the minority.  And trying to remain calm and pleasantly smile with mama grizzly bites and claw slash wound scars covering sixty percent of her body.

You know how I frequently make the observation that a person's initial, gut reaction to a question and/or an issue is usually the most honest?  What they really think before they have a chance to think about, craft, sculpt, and finally obfuscate it?

Behold, for your viewing horror, example ten bazillion and three why I call her "Crazy Nancy":

Any acknowledgement (or even knowledge) of the public opposition to the Islamic Victory Monument from NYC-area Donkresscritters?  Nope.  From her counterpart on the other side of the Capitol?  De nada.  From outgoing New York Dem Governor David Paterson?  Negatory.  From Chairman How?  Uh-uh.  Of the fact that the Park51 mullahs ARE organized, DO have shady funding sources, including Foggy Bottom, which is syphoning American taxpayers to send Imam Rauf on a Middle East fundraising junket for this fifteen-story, hundred million dollar extended middle finger to America on the Manhattan skyline, whereas over two hundred million Americans coalesced into vehement, instinctive opposition without any organization or funding whatsoever, while acknowledging that Park51 has the legal right to build it?  Fat chance.

What we are saying is that they do not have the MORAL right to build the GZM on that site.  It isn't necessary; there are plenty of other places to build yet another mosque, and there is no shortage of existing mosques in NYC, including the Ground Zero area - which nobody has every demanded by shut down or torn down.  It would cost "Imam" Rauf and Park51 nothing to exercise a little of the "tolerance" and "understanding" they claim ONLY this Islamist edifice can foster ONLY if it's built on EXACTLY THAT SPOT and build it the heck somewhere else.  

But expressing that widely held view in exercise of our First Amendment right to free speech is now a "crime" violating Park51's First Amendment Right To Impose Sharia Law Everywhere, and we - all two hundred million of us - are to be "investigated" for our "hatred" and "bigotry" and "Islamophobia":

Well, we already knew she considered us "Nazis" for vehemently and instinctively opposing ObamaCare LAST August.  Seems there's a pattern of what Eeyore daintly calls "going after voters. Lots of voters."

But that's what she believes.  She and her ilk think WE'RE dangerous and "extreme" by dint of our opposing them on pretty much anything.  And that entitles them, in her mind, to Gestopoize us.

The GZM is just a pretext, an on-ramp for the pre-mortem leftwingnut temper tantrum the November apocalypse is going to inspire.  But it also underscores how critical it is to get rid of these tyrants.  Exit quote from DrewM:

This, boys and girls, actually is a danger to fundamental rights....dare to oppose the received wisdom of the ruling class and you'll find yourself on the receiving end of a government sponsored colonoscopy. And sorry, due to cutbacks, there's no anesthesia.

If you were going to send out any member of the drastically-shrinking-in-the-very-near-future House Donkus to preach the message, in the face of the towering anti-Dem fury of a crushing majority of the American voting public, that it's all Barack Obama's fault because he's been just too gosh-darn NICE TO GEORGE W. BUSH and HASN'T BLAMED HIM AND THE GOP ENOUGH for the catastrophic economic sabotage that got Dems their profoundly temporary unchecked power, is there anybody who wouldn't send Cap'n Slurps-A-Lot to the podium?:

Forget that whole conciliatory, post-partisan message thing. President Obama’s problem is that he’s not partisan enough…

Frank said Obama made a critical mistake when he took office in January 2009 by being too nice to Republicans and failing to tell the public just how bad things were following the presidency of George W. Bush. That has left Frank and other Democrats vulnerable to Republican attacks that they are to blame for problems facing the nation — from the intractable war in Afghanistan to the economic collapse at home — when the roots of those crises were planted during the Bush Administration, Frank said.

“The president was not partisan enough; he did not put the blame where it lay, and so we’re in a tough fight now,’’ he told roughly seventy attendees at a fund-raiser.

See Ace's stroll down Democrat Financial Logic Bomb memory lane.  Which, ironically, makes Their Boy Lollipop's choice of terminology weasly semi-accurate when he says "the roots of those crises were planted DURING the Bush Administration."  Actually, they were planted during the Clinton administration and nutured by Frank and Senator Countrywide during the Bush years, to explode spectacularly seven weeks before Barack Obama's non-partisan presidential election.  By the time the political mushroom cloud and consequent fallout had dissipated, American voters emerged from their fallout shelters to stare dazedly at a multifaceted wasteland far more "comprehensively" devastated than the detonation that sent them into hiding in the first place.  Not quite the promise they were given by Barry, The Milksop First Responder, which, of course, is why they are now raucously determined to, um, spit instead of swallow.

So the Dems are too nice, too bipartisan, too weak, too compromising, too DINO, and didja also know that Barney thinks Fannie and Freddie - aka his two political "adult novelty appliances" - should be abolished?

This is why we need to keep Ace's post bookmarked, downloaded, and backed up half a dozen different ways.  If there's a worthy political mission left in this life (besides rolling back the disasters of the last nineteen months), it's to do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to make ironcladly sure that the Democrat Financial Logic Bomb never gets stuffed down the historical rathole where B.F. Worthless is trying to send it, but instead resides for ever in the same pantheon of infamy as 9/11 and the Holocaust, with the same warning tattooed on its figurative forehead: "NEVER AGAIN".