Tales of the Heliosphere

From a government press release.

"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration today alerted Lexus and Toyota owners about conditions that could cause the accelerator to get stuck open under certain conditions. The agency strongly recommends taking out removable floor mats on the driver’s side in certain models and not to replace them with any other mat, either from Toyota or any other brand. ... NHTSA said that Toyota has announced that it will soon launch a safety recall of various model year vehicles to redress the problem." (Here.)

-tdr

Labels: Cars, Iran, Politics

Has tea-party political incivility spread to California's state politics? A University of California Board of Regents meeting was held up yesterday by protesters holding signs and shouting. Board members had to leave the meeting until the protests were quieted down. Things were so bad, 12 people had to be detained. During the meeting, angry statements and question were hurled at the board members by people complaining about California's cuts to higher education. (Here.)

Wait a minute here. The angry and rude protesters were complaining about government spending cuts? They weren't angry, anti-government, conservatives? They were liberals? Never mind. Liberal protesters have always been uncivil jerks. It's how they are. No news here.

-tdr

Labels: California, Education, Politics

This flyer in the neighborhood is a timely reminder that when liberals organize using paid workers of an advocacy group, it's still a grassroots campaign. No astroturfing here. Move along now.

-tdr

Update: Even better, Grassroots Campaigns is a paid political consulting, fundraising, and field organizing organization. Welcome to Wonderland, Alice, where words mean what we say they mean.

Labels: Politics

Tax-happy Californians --- those few, those unhappy few --- are beside themselves with frustration over the revised state budget.

After the recent special election, in which California's voters overwhelmingly said "no, no, no, no, no" to more taxes and spending, Arnold Schwarzenegger recovered from his political amnesia and remembered why we elected him the Governator in the first place. He forced the Legislature to cut expenditures, reform social programs, and hold the line on taxes. Thanks, Governor!

Not everybody is as grateful. For instance, Dean Calbreath, business columnist for The San Diego Union-Tribune, wrote this after passage of California's revised budget:

"Nor did the Legislature slap a tax on the Big Oil companies, which have been taking petroleum out of the ground in California since 1861 without paying royalties. Every other oil-producing state imposes royalties, but heaven forbid that we should follow the lead of Alaska, Wyoming and Texas.

"Thanks to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's pledge to cut services instead of raising taxes, Occidental Petroleum – which generated $6.9 billion in profits last year – won't have to pay royalties on that new, 150 million-to 250 million-barrel field it discovered in Kern County." (Here.)

Calbreath may be on to something. Perhaps California should follow the lead of Alaska, Wyoming, and Texas. California has one of the highest income taxes of all the United States. Alaska, Wyoming, and Texas don't tax personal income at all. (Here.) Now that's the kind of tax policy California needs.

-tdr

Labels: California, Politics, Taxes

Newsweek's Evan Thomas stirred controversy and debate after he said about President Barack Obama's Cairo speech, "In a way, Obama’s standing above the country, above-above the world, a sort of god." Thomas sort of complains that he is being taken out of context, which prompted Peter Wehner to write on Commentary magazine's Contentions blog: "So I would ask: Mr. Thomas, in what context can you call Barack Obama a 'sort of God'?" (Here.)

The correct context would be when Mr. Thomas is describing how President Obama's followers view his place in the world.

The apotheosis of Barack Obama to god-President begins with his name. Obama: the name's first letter is an "O," a circle, the perfect shape in nature, symbolic of unity. O-ba-ma is three syllables long, a magical and divine number, powerful in rhetoric. (See "the rule of three" here.) Say his name: Obama. To Western ears his name is exotic. A magic word, chantable: Obama, Obama, Obama. Don't think for a moment his marketers don't know it.

The apotheosis continued with his campaign. There were the creepy YouTube videos by will.i.am and others, the iconic posters, the proliferation of news photos with strange halo effects around Obama’s head, the Obama speeches attended by swooning and crying listeners, the campaign's instructions to volunteers to steer away from policy talk and testify about their own "come to Obama" moments, the thrill running up Chris Matthews’s leg, the cable news hype leading up to the inauguration. Need we go on?

An aspect of Barack Obama’s appeal is that he seems a sort of god or prophet. He has been sent to America to redeem its past sins and transform the country into something better than it’s ever been. He isn't just a messenger of hope and change, he is the very personification of hope and change. A man of humble means born from the union of an American white woman and an immigrant black African man who grows up to become President. In crisis he is calm, unflappable, cool. He stands above it all. He is a font of wisdom who sees the flaws in both sides of any issue or dispute and is able to show us the perfect middle way. His mere words are believed to have the power to effect miraculous change: Obama speaks in Cairo; an electoral miracle happens in Lebanon.

There is rhetorical exaggeration in all this, of course. But not much. There is no god but Obama, and Obama is his prophet. Peace be upon his name.

-tdr

First published in slightly different form as a comment to the Contentions blog on Commentary.org.

Labels: America, Politics, Religion

Only 1381 days to go. January 20, 2013, cannot come too soon.

-tdr

Update: Okay, I added wrong. That's 1361 days to go. Even better.

Labels: America, Politics

Could Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner be an alien? Here's Geithner.



And here's Metalunan scientist, Exeter, from the classic 1955 scifi movie, This Island Earth. (Here.)



It's a forehead thing. We report, you decide.

-tdr

Labels: Politics, Science Fiction

California's government irresponsibly spent too much money during the housing and stock market bubbles. This year, when the economy tanked, California's tax revenues fell but government spending didn't. Instead of passing pro-growth measures to revive the economy and making adjustments to this year's spending in order to close the relatively small deficit this year, government officials ginned up a crisis. They inflated the size of the deficit by combining the real deficit from this year with the projected deficit for next year.

The state controller stopped paying California's bills, the governor declared an emergency, and legislators were locked in the capitol building until they passed a budget. The governor conspired with the Democratic majorities in the legislature to push a budget loaded with tax increases, a few token spending cuts, and not much else. Three Republican legislators in each chamber gave the votes necessary to secure passage. Declaring victory, the governor and legislative leaders claimed this budget would solve California's fiscal crisis through the 2010 fiscal year. The new budget would spare Californians from the legislature's annual budget fiasco this summer.

Not so fast. It doesn't take a genius to realize that increasing taxes in a recession will not increase revenues much and will slow the economy's recovery. The solution to California's budget crisis will involve real and significant cuts in state spending. California's politicians won't do that because real spending cuts will mean laying off state workers and taking on the most powerful political force in this state: the government employees unions.

Nice try, Sacramento, but no cigar. The day of reckoning has been delayed not avoided.

The state controller just issued a press release announcing that California will begin paying its bills again and refunding income tax payments. Buried at the end of the press release is this ominous warning.

"'While progress was made, this recent budget deal does not put California’s fiscal house in order. Revenue erosion of nearly $900 million in the month of February alone, coupled with numerous indicators that California’s economy has not yet turned the corner, demands vigilance over the State finances during the months ahead,' [Controller John] Chiang said. 'While current-year cash flow problems appear to be manageable, early projections indicate the recently-enacted budget did little to guarantee there would be sufficient cash solutions to meet the State’s payment obligations for the coming fiscal year. If the Governor and lawmakers do not take action before July, we could be accelerating towards the very cliff that we just stopped short of falling over.'" (PDF here.)

What kind of action do you think he has in mind? California's taxpayers had better hold on to their wallets.

-tdr

Labels: California, Politics

California's budget is woefully out of balance and the plan to fix that includes four different types of tax increases. The plan is stuck because Democrats don't have enough votes and they need to peel off 3 Republicans in the Assembly and in the Senate.

The Republican caucus in each house is holding firm against tax cuts. Their initial plan to ameliorate the budget problem without raising taxes went nowhere. (Here.) But several individual Republican legislators are lining up to provide the votes necessary for the Democrats, and our RINO governor, to get their budget and their tax increases.

The Democrats argue that taxes are necessary to solve California's budget crisis. Who knows if that's really true. The news stories about the budget never state the actual budget number being voted on. The stories only describe the dollar amount of the so-called budget cuts and the four tax increases. Without knowing the actual amount of the proposed budget there is really no way for an average taxpayer to know whether the tax increases are really needed.

This taxpayer is skeptical. For most of the past decade, California's general fund budget grew at about 1 to 2 percent per year. But in 2005, the budget grew by a whopping 15 percent from $79 billion to $91 billion. Then in 2006, the budget grew another 11 percent to $101 billion. From 2007 to the present the budget has grown to $103 billion, again a small increase in keeping with increases early in the decade.

California's overall expenditures, which include special funds and federal money, are even higher. But those too grew slowly during the early part of this decade increasing from $99 billion in 2000 to $105 billion in 2004. But in 2005 overall expenditures increased to $117 billion, and in 2006 they increased to $131 billion. Expenditures increased even more in 2007 to $145 billion and then declined in 2008 to $144 billion.

California's budget numbers tell a sorry tale of government profligacy. From 2005 to 2007, the state government was awash in cash from the housing and stock market bubbles. Instead of wisely putting money away for down times, spending the money only on capital improvements, or returning money to the taxpayers, the government instead used that money to increase continuing programs, thus locking in future spending based on revenue from two unsustainable bubbles.

If California had set aside the excess revenue from the bubbles into a reserve fund and increased its budget at 2 percent per year from 2005 to the present, the general fund budget for this year would be about $86 billion. Anticipated revenues for this budget year are just over $87 billion. (Here.) California would have a balanced budget and a significant sum of money in reserves to tide it over during this recession. Instead, the government went on an irresponsible spending spree and California's taxpayers are expected to foot the bill and save the day.

How much is that bill going to cost? The Sacramento Bee newspaper has a nifty little calculator for Californians to figure out how much their taxes will increase under the budget plan. (Here.) The most interesting aspect of the tax plan is that taxpayers with children will see their taxes increase more than taxpayers without. An odd policy.

Given the sorry history of California's budget, you'd think legislators would be ashamed of having to ask taxpayers to save the state from the government's irresponsibility. You'd be wrong. Here's what the Democratic Senate President Pro Tem Darrel Steinberg said to Republican legislators opposed to tax increases the other day: "I just wish you could deviate just a little bit from your philosophy, from the endless mantra of no new revenue, no new revenue ever, and be a participant and partner with us in solving this problem." (Here.)

Don't worry Senator. We'll be participating in solving this problem. But it's not the problem you think. The problem isn't a budget shortfall. The problem is controlling irresponsible and spendthrift legislators.

Long ago when property taxes skyrocketed out of control and the legislature did nothing about it, the voters revolted and passed Proposition 13 to roll back property taxes and make it nearly impossible for the legislature to increase taxes. More recently, Governor Gray Davis was recalled from office over the car tax. This year, the Democratic legislature is going to increase the sales tax, the gas tax, the income tax, the car tax, and decrease the dependent tax credit for children. Don't think for a minute that Californians will let this happen without a backlash.

-tdr

Budget numbers in this post were compiled from the websites of the California Department of Finance website (here), the Legislative Analyst's Office (here), and the Senate Committee on Budget and Fiscal Review (PDF here). A useful overview can be found at California Budget webpage of Sunshine Review. (Here.)

Labels: California, Politics, Taxes

Tonight I prepared and e-filed my tax returns. I did the long form and declared all my income and took no unlawful deductions. Heck, I even paid a use tax on my state return for online purchases I didn't pay sales tax on at the time of purchase. Joe Biden would call me a patriot, more patriotic than Tom Daschle or Tim Geithner.

But I feel like a chump. Not because I did my duty and paid my taxes. No, I'm a chump because I live in California. In this state, the government can't get its act together and pass a budget that works. Instead, California's government is running out of money and the state's controller has threatened to delay paying state tax refunds. Already, the controller has notified some vendors that the state will delay payments for services rendered for at least 30 days.

There is no solution in sight. We have a legislature gridlocked by partisan division. The parties are united in one thing only: their stubborn refusal to face facts and deal with the state's funding catastrophe.

The governor has no political clout whatsoever. He's a Republican (well, in name only) in a state where every other statewide elected official, but one, is a Democrat, and where both houses of the legislature are dominated by strong Democratic majorities. Arnold is a leader without followers and supporters. As a Republican he gets no support from Sacramento Democrats. He came in as a Republican conservative on money matters and liberal on social issues. Over time, he's morphed into a Republican, still liberal on social issues and no longer fiscally conservative. That has lost him the support of Republicans in the legislature. His political one man show has left him as weak as a girly man.

But the governor has done one thing right. He's tried to save money by cutting state payroll costs. First, he tried to cramdown state employee salaries to the federal minimum wage when the state entered its new fiscal year back in July without a budget. It's a measure of the strength of this state's public employee unions that the governor's plan went nowhere.

Now the governor has ordered state employees to take off two days of unpaid leave each month. This amounts to a 10 percent pay cut, albeit at 10 percent less work. But it's a measure of the governor's weakness and this state's immense partisan division that employees who work in departments run by elected state officials have been told to report to work by their bosses.

For example, employees of the state controller's department have been told to report to work. The controller won't save any money by reducing his employees' salaries. Instead, he saves money by withholding money from vendors and taxpayers.

So, that's California. In the middle of a terrible recession state employees get to keep their jobs, a small percentage are forced to take a 10 percent pay cut by getting two unpaid days off per month, but most get to keep their full salaries. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in the state is around 9 percent and taxpayers who overpaid the state have to wait for their refunds. Chumps. We're a state full of chumps. But we've got the best weather in the country.

-tdr

Labels: America, California, Politics, Taxes

Tom Daschle has been forced to withdraw from consideration for Secretary of Health and Human Services because of his tax evasions and conflicts of interest. (Here.) Yes, we can!

-tdr

Labels: America, Politics, Taxes

President Barack Obama promised change when he ran for President and change he brought. When Republicans were in charge, there was a culture of corruption in Washington. Now there's a culture of tax evasion: Timothy Geithner (here), Charles Rangel (here), and now Tom Daschle.

Daschle, former million dollar "special policy advisor" to the lobbying firm of Alston and Bird (here), visited Capitol Hill to make the case for his nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Because he's the second tax cheat nominated by President Obama for a cabinet position, Daschle had to spend the day dealing with his personal tax problem. Or as the Associated Press put it:

"Fighting to salvage his Cabinet nomination, Tom Daschle apologized from morning to night on Monday for failing to pay more than $120,000 in federal taxes." (Here.)

Sorry, morning to night is not enough. Even apologizing from now to April 15th won't cut it, although there would be poetic justice if he did.

Vice-President Joe Biden said during the campaign that it's patriotic to pay higher taxes. Not to question Daschle's patriotism, that's apparently a job for Vice-President Biden, but Daschle's tax dodge suggests that, when it comes to taxes, he believes dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

-tdr

Labels: America, Politics, Taxes

When George W. Bush was President, his opponents were beside themselves with fear over the Imperial Presidency. There was hyperventilation over the so-called unitary executive and alleged suppression of speech and dissent. Fear-driven opponents of President Bush took to calling him names, Bushitler, for example.

Even government officials were not immune. Lawrence Wilkerson, an aide to Colin Powell, once accused President Bush and Vice-President Cheney of running a "cabal" that had hijacked America's foreign policy. (Here at my former blog.) Think about that. The only two nationally elected officials in the United States government were accused of hijacking foreign policy. But that's what elections are about. In a democracy, if we don't like what the present government is doing, we elect new leaders to take charge and do things differently.

That's what happened in 2008 and the country chose Barack Obama to take over and do things differently. One change that hasn't come to America, however, is cutting back on the power of the Imperial Presidency. On foreign policy, President Obama is following a similar path to that walked by President Bush. The new President has appointed special envoys, George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke, answerable directly to him, to handle the Middle East and Afghanistan, respectively. This tactic allows the new President to bypass Congress because neither envoy requires Senate approval. This tactic also allows the new President to bypass the State Department, run by his former rival, Hillary Clinton. This tactic ultimately allows the new President to have direct control over these foreign policy matters.

I have no problem with this. I believe in the oh-so-scary unitary executive theory. All that theory holds is that the entire executive power defined by the Constitution is granted to the President. (Here.) It's not granted in pieces to lesser officials in the Executive Branch. Whatever authority lesser officials in the Executive Branch may have comes to them through the President from the Constitution. So, if the new President wants to retain direct hands-on control over foreign policy by appointing special envoys and bypassing the Cabinet, well, that's his prerogative.

The Politico.com has a very good analysis of President Obama's executive power play. (Here.) He's not just bypassing the Cabinet in foreign policy. Every issue that matters to him has a policy czar in the White House.

But don't hold your breath waiting for the brave dissidents against Bush's presidency to start accusing the new President of executive overreach. Their tasks today are to disparage Congressional Republicans for not supporting the President, and to demonize talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. From 2001 to 2008, dissent was the highest form of patriotism. In the new era of hope and change, it's now the lowest.

The more things change ...

-tdr

Labels: America, Elections, Obama, Politics, Society

There's one good thing to say about the President's decision to close Guantanamo Bay's prison for war criminals. Candidate Obama campaigned on the promise that he would close the facility. Ordering the closure fulfills a central promise of his campaign.

But closing Guantanamo is meaningless because the detainees have to be held somewhere. The significant decisions yet to come are how the detainees will be tried and what kind of access they will have to America's court system. Also, what will be done with those who belong to Al Qaeda but who end up not being tried in court because the evidence against them would not be admissible in court or is too secret to reveal publicly?

There is no need to close the facility. Guantanamo is as good a place as any to hold the detainees. It's better, in fact. Guantanamo has the advantage over any prison on the American mainland as being completely under the control of the United States military and it's in the middle of nowhere. Escape from there is nearly impossible. The facility is not the hell hole that common knowledge would have us believe.

The Boston Globe's Big Picture website did a tremendous service in December 2008, when it published a set of pictures showing the conditions at the prison. (Here.) It's eye opening.

Photo number 8 shows a stencil written on concrete of the word Mecca, in Arabic, and an arrow pointing to Islam's holy city. The better for inmates to pray. O, the humanity!

Photo number 9 shows a literacy instructor preparing for a lesson. The instructor is at the facility as part of a US Government program "to improve educational opportunities for the detainees." O, the humanity!

Photo number 13 shows a beautiful gold-embossed Koran that belongs to a detainee. O, the humanity!

Photo number 14 shows a detainee exercising outside during his 12 hours of outdoor recreation per day. O, the humanity!

Photo number 20 shows a copy of a Harry Potter novel in Arabic, one of 7,500 books in the circulating library available to detainees. Apparently, Harry Potter books are especially popular among the inmates. O, the humanity!

Photo number 26 shows a group of detainees praying, 27 shows a beautiful prayer rug owned by one of the inmates, and 29 shows a sign telling American guards to be quiet during prayer time. O, the humanity!

On the other hand, maybe putting the detainees among the general population of the type of violent criminals who populate maximum security prisons in the United States is just the punishment the detainees deserve. It worked for Jeffrey Dahmer. (Here.) O, the humanity!

-tdr

Labels: America, International, Politics, War on Jihad

Duty called for work today. But thanks to a 20th Century VCR, I'm able to watch the 43d peaceful transfer of power in the United States tonight. Here's what struck me.

Barack Obama walking the hallway to the stage is a supremely self-confident man. It's still more than a bit off putting to hear Obama's supporters chanting his last name, but seeing them wave the American flags was a beautiful sight. I didn't vote for the new President, but if electing him is what it takes to get liberals to start waving the flag, well, maybe his election is a good thing.

Dianne Feinstein of California, my Senator, is a great master of ceremonies. Why can't she be majority leader of the Senate instead of that worm from Nevada? Her remarks put today's exciting event into a nice historical context of the civil rights struggle. It would have been even nicer if she had hearkened back to the Civil War when hundreds of thousands of Americans died to remove the blight of slavery from this country and from our constitution.

Pastor Rick Warren's prayer stumbled in the beginning but ended powerfully. His unapologetic Christianity, and the subtle ecumenical references in the speech, were refreshing to hear. A people committed to true diversity doesn't need to steer expression to the least offensive denominator. A people committed to true diversity listens silently and respectfully to a prayer that expresses a faith not shared by all. A people committed to true diversity understands that diversity of thought is the hallmark of freedom.

John Roberts screw up of the oath of office did not look so bad on TV. When I heard it on radio this morning, it sounded catastrophic. Even so, you've got to wonder why he didn't just read the oath from a card like the one John Paul Stevens used for Joe Biden's oath.

The President's speech comes off better on TV than it did on radio. On radio, it sounded pedestrian and banal. On TV his presence infuses the speech with a power beyond its words. President Obama's speech was at its weakest when he argued against straw men, attacked his predecessor, and asserted that his own plans are something new beyond today's partisan divide. But his speech was most powerful when it reached into history to put our task today into the context of America's work over time to make a better world for succeeding generations. Our generations alive today are links in a chain of progress. It also had power when he assertively defended the greatness that is America, told the world that we will not apologize for who we are, that we will fight to defend ourselves against those who would destroy us, and that our enemies will be judged by their people for what they build not what they destroy. Finally, his concluding analysis of the American character and his call to service showed a powerful understanding and appreciation of this country's people.

The new President clearly loves his daughters. That big smile cracking his stern visage when he greeted them after his speech spoke volumes.

Elizabeth Alexander is reciting her poem. Sorry, but here's a thought, how about we have no more inaugural poems, okay?

Reverend Joseph Lowery's benediction is a poem. That old guy at 87 years old still has what it takes. What a beautiful prayer with coy and delightful final lines. Lowery's prayer was a fitting conclusion to the inauguration's speeches.

The final ritual of the inaugural ceremony is the most practical one and the least public. After the speeches, and as everybody is leaving the inaugural site, the President walks the former President to a helicopter waiting to take the former President out of the capital city. There's a powerful symbolism to that. The new President essentially shows the former President the door as if to say, "there's only room in this town for one President. That's me, not you." It's all very polite and friendly but it is firm, final, and humbling. The formerly most powerful man in the world is now a private citizen with no authority and no place in the capital.

And so now our country moves forward with a new leader freely chosen by us, toward a destiny uncertain, but one we still have the power to shape. May we choose our path wisely.

-tdr

Labels: America, Politics, Religion

This weekend while America prepared for the Presidential Inauguration of its first living god, it was good to get away and view some of the handiwork of Thomas Jefferson's creator.

A gull floats over the Pacific off the coast of Imperial Beach, California.


A hummingbird hovering in a San Diego backyard.


Reflections in a vernal pool at Mission Trails Regional Park.


A mule deer at Mission Trails.


A white-tailed kite at Mission Trails.


-tdr

Labels: Animals, Birds, Environment, Photography, Politics

United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has been preventing Roland Burris from taking a Senate seat because the Illinois Secretary of State had not signed Burris's appointment order. Reid's legal position was farcical.

The other day the Illinois Supreme Court helpfully explained to Burris that he could pay to get a copy of his appointment order to the Senate from the Secretary of State. That copy would be affixed with a seal and signed by the Secretary of State, all official-like. It appears that Burris may have taken the court's advice.

"Yesterday, Burris' lawyers carried to the Senate an additional document bearing a state seal, an affirmation of the appointment and a mass-produced signature of Secretary of State Jesse White. Those documents, combined with the governor's original papers, led the secretary of the Senate to deem Burris' credentials satisfactory. Burris would be eligible to serve through 2010." (Here.)

How much was that signature? Who knows? The news story doesn't say. Who cares? Getting to watch Reid's embarrassing failure of leadership on this issue was worth any price.

-tdr

Labels: America, Elections, Politics

The Illinois Supreme Court ruled, on January 9, 2009, that Roland Burris's appointment to the United States Senate did not require the signature or seal of the Illinois Secretary of State to be valid. (PDF here.) So Burris's appointment is valid and the Secretary of State's refusal to sign, or affix a seal to, the appointment order has no legal effect.

The legal analysis on the last page of the opinion is entertaining and ironic, especially since Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is being impeached over "pay to play" politics. It turns out that if Governor Blago and Burris want a copy of the appointment order signed and sealed by the Secretary of State, they can pay for it. So says the Illinois Supreme Court on page 9 of its decision.

"There is one final point we feel constrained to mention. While the Secretary of State has no duty under Illinois law to sign and affix the state seal to the certificate of appointment issued by the Governor, he does have a duty under section 5(4) of the Secretary of State Act (15 ILCS 305/5(4) (West 2006))

'to give any person requiring the same paying the lawful fees
therefor, a copy of any law, act, resolution, record or paper in
his office, and attach thereto his certificate, under the seal of
the state.'

"The registration of the appointment of Mr. Burris made by the Secretary of State is a “record or paper” within the meaning of this statute. A copy of it is available from the Secretary of State to anyone who requests it. For payment of the normal fee charged by the Secretary of State in accordance with this statute, Petitioners could obtain a certified copy bearing the state’s seal. Because such relief is possible, no order by this court is necessary or appropriate. See People ex rel. Devine v. Stralka, 226 Ill. 2d 445, 450 (2007) (for mandamus to issue, the petitioner must be without any other adequate remedy)."

-tdr

Labels: America, Elections, Politics

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has an online civics test. Go to its site at americancivicliteracy.org and take the test. (Here.) When you're done read the ISI's depressing press release and compare your score to the scores of your fellow Americans. (PDF Here.)

Apparently, Americans don't know much about their own government. My favorite finding? A college education doesn't help. My second favorite finding? Elected officials scored worse than the general population.

I took the test and scored 32 correct out of 33 questions, for a percentage of 96.97 correct. I answered question 33 incorrectly. My excuse is that I misread the multiple choice answers for that question. Or maybe it was the last question and I saw the open barn door, lost my focus, and broke into a gallop. Whatever, it was still a wrong answer, dammit.

-tdr

Labels: America, Education, Politics

Sarah Palin's faith and her expressions of it have rankled the Christophobes in this country. This quote from her about a possible future run for higher office will no doubt push more buttons among them:

"'I'm like, OK, God, if there is an open door for me somewhere, this is what I always pray, I'm like, don't let me miss the open door,' Palin said in an interview with Fox News on Monday. 'And if there is an open door in '12 or four years later, and if it is something that is going to be good for my family, for my state, for my nation, an opportunity for me, then I'll plow through that door.'" (Here.)

The AP story interprets Palin's quote this way:

"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin says she wouldn't hesitate to run for the presidency in four years if it's God's will ..."

That's not exactly what she's saying. What she's actually saying is that she'll run for higher office again if she concludes that it's good for herself, her family, her state, and her country. When she talks about God, she's talking about God showing her the right path. She's talking about enlightenment.

Palin's prayers are for enlightenment so that she can make a decision that will do the most good. She's praying that God shows her when an opportunity arises so that she can seize it, if it's the right thing to do. She's not saying that she'll run for President if God wills it, nor is she saying that if she does run for President it will be because God wills it.

-tdr

Republished once to fix egregious grammatical error.

Labels: America, Elections, Politics, Religion