Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

[Gamecock does not consider the mere winning of an election to qualify one for person of the year. The "Politician of the Year" award is reserved for election winners. The person of the year is the individual whose actual accomplishments had the greatest impact on the lives of the most people during the year.]

Man of the Year:
Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson

Runners Up: Red Chairman Ben Bernanke, General David Petraeous, President George W. Bush and Cheif Justice of the United States John Roberts

President Bush has been our man of the year most years since 2001 due to his actions in keeping us safe since 911; economic policies that softened the tech bubble and 911 recession and that gave us many years of prosperity; and in liberating over 50 million people from tyranny in Iraq and Afghanistan. The latter task was mostly accomplished last year, with this year and the next few being mostly mop up operations in Iraq and keeping terror havens unsafe in Afghanistan.

Given that the US economy is (was?) mostly governed by the private enterprise of millions, we would rarely consider Treasury Secretaries or individual entrepreneurs for the award unless they have a great impact thru technology or policy.

Bill Gates comes to mind from many years ago.

This year is another such exception where the actions of one man has had and will have in the future a great impact on millions of people here and abroad. His actions were in response to a veritable Econ-911 when bank to bank loans threatened to cease around, ironically, September 11, 2008. Lehman Brothers began to disintegrate the next day with these events coming on the heels of the Bear Stearns debacle months earlier and a year long housing and credit crunch crisis.

Enter Henry Paulson (pictured with Bernanke) to center stage with a series of weekend bailouts of individual firms and a $700B bailout of banks designed to prevent the collapse of the banking system and unclog the banks lending arteries. After many zigs and zags and some $7+Trillion later in equity buy-ins with banks and guaranteed loan bailouts in conjunction with the FED, the financial system stands and some mortgage re-fis loans are being made.

But at what price to our free market system and possible future infaltion, not to mention opening the door for an Obama-Dem dominated government that prefers government to private eneterprise?

Time will tell, but what the time in 2008 already told was that, for good or for ill, the person whose actions had the greatest impact were those of Henry Paulson.

Politician of the Year:

President-Elect Barack Obama

Runners-Up: Bobby Jindal and Sarah Palin

Worst Political Move:

Hillary Clinton’s failure to organize and compete in caucus states.

Best Political Theatre:

Vladamir Putin leaving the Beijing Olympics to direct the invasion of Georgia while President Bush led beach volleyball chears.

Most Underrated:

President Bush for sending in the Armed Forces of the United States by air and sea to Georgian ports and Tiblisi airport and the Secretary of State on the ground in Georgia, Poland and Unkraine to disabuse Russia of any notion that the West would be so intimidated that Russia could hope to gain more land than slivers in Ossetia.

Most Dishonest:

Tie: The Drive-By Media coverage of Obama and Obama’s statements concerning his knowledge of the views of Reverand Jeremiah Wright.

Most Honest:

The Reverand Jeremiah Wright stuck to his views even from under Obama’s bus.

Fifteen Minutes of Fame:

Obama’s brother living in hut in Kenya.

Best Idea:

Senator Bob Corker’s (R-TN) amendments to the proposed Detroit Auto bailout bill that would have required major re-structuring by Ford, GM and Chrysler.

Worst Idea:

Tie: Union card check, higher energy taxes, cap and trade, the banning of Edison’s light bulb and the Interior Department’s decision to put the polar bear on the endangered species list.

Most Over Reported Story:

Alleged man made global warming.

Most Under Reported Story:

Actual non-man made global cooling.

Biggest Government Waste:

The budgets of EPA and the Interior Department.

Best Government Spending:

CIA, FBI, Gitmo, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard

Best Conservative Website and Master

The Minority Report with The HinzSight Report and the design work and daily content provided by Steve Foley

Best Conservative Writers

Mark Steyn, Erick Erickson and Dave Hinz

Best Chicken:

Tie: Gamecock and Foghorn Leghorn

Happy New Year!

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

DeVine Gamecock’s Cockstradamus alter ego (pictured) went into a semi-retirement sabbatical about a month before Election Day due to his observation from the Roost that predictions at that point were being used by fellow conservatives to demoralize the GOP.

Originally published by Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine at Examiner.com

Cock-a-doodle-do! The World’s greatest Chicken seer is back, just in time for 2009 clairvoyance.

Last year we predicted the launch of the FNC “Huckabee” show; that neither Huckabee nor McCain would be addressed as “President-Elect; that the Congressional moratorium on offshore oil drilling would expire and that the Celtics would play the Lakers in the NBA Finals.

In 2009, FNC will launch a new show hosted by Michael Steele; Congress will re-institute oil drilling restrictions and the Celtics will face the Suns in the NBA finals.

Ken Blackwell will be elected RNC chair.

Unemployment will top 10%; inflation will top 6%; the prime rate will top 5%; and regular unleaded will top $2.20/gallon.

The Roberts-Alito court will reverse at least two O’Connor Establishment Clause precedents; limit punitive damage awards in tobacco cases (good for North Carolina); deny liability in “light” cigarette cases (more good news for North Carolina); and President Obama will be caught on film puffing on a Kool outside the Oval Office (huge good news for North Carolina!).

Unions will not see “card check” enacted into law.

Neither comprehensive health care reform nor cap and trade legislation will be passed during the Hundred Days.

Obama first promised to create 2 million jobs in two years, then said he would create or “save” three million. Currently, over 154 million Americans are employed. We do not believe that even the disastrous policies of Obama and the Democrats will force more than 151 million out of work. At the end of 2009 and even 2010, much more than three million jobs will have been “saved”.

Obama will “save” more than 145 million jobs but he will “create” more jobs for lawyers than non-lawyers thanks to his greenism.

Rahm Emmanuel will not be Chief of Staff past the date of December 31, 2009.

Obama will scale back his promised tax cuts in the First Hundred Days, but the Oceans will be lower after the First 300 Days.

Oklahoma will beat Florida in the BCS Bowl.

The Carolina Panthers will defeat the Colts in the Super Bowl.

Tar Heels win March Madness.

Suns play Celtics in NBA Finals.

Yankees do not play in the World Series.

Hillary persuades Turkey and Syria to withdraw from Iraqi Kurdistan.

The Earth has been cooling for a decade. Obama will reap the benefit and change his name to Moses.

Rooster never misses a dawn.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer and Examiner.com columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

For more info: Link will be provided later for all of the DeVine Gamecock’s 2008 Awards which include: Man of the Year (Paulson), Politician of the Year (Obama), Most Underrated (Bush), etc. at The Minority Report

I supported Michael Steele, Ken Blackwell and Katon Dawson for RNC chair, in that order, before current chairman Mike Duncan “blew the whistle” on a non-story about Chip Saltsman, which whistle.

I think no less of Steele or Dawson now, but I think much more of Blackwell (pictured), and I already thought much of him. He is much more advanced into the content of character, color blind America Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of and that I have lived in for more than 20 years of adulthood thanks to the progress in the South.

Blackwell also understands an opportunity to discredit a false liberal lie against Republicans as racists that dare not address race in humor or parody when he sees one. Blackwell has done what gamecock has been begging for, for years since his conservative epiphany (brought about in part by false liberal Democrat Party and MSM false allegations of racism against Republicans, and that I have especially been begging for here at Redstate for days since this story broke.

Blackwell understands, as do I and Rush, that the message of the parody is that it is the left that is race-obsessed; that it is vital for Republicans to smack down that lie; that it is vital that Republicans and conservatives insist upon playing by the same humor, parody and other rules the left enjoys; and that there is no “Liberal Meme” super bowl or debate scheduled so that if we are ever going to combat this huge issue, we must do so in the real world when opportunities, no matter how imperfect, resent themselves.

Gamecock now endorses Ken Blackwell for RNC Chairman. (And for Steele to replace Huckabee on Fox!, although we like his show too.)

Adam Graham writes a brilliant piece on this news at Race 4 2012. Excerpts below. Read it all.

Ken Blackwell issued the following statement on this matter:

Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president. I don’t think any of the concerns that have been expressed in the media about any of the other candidates for RNC chairman should disqualify them. When looked at in the proper context, these concerns are minimal. All of my competitors for this leadership post are fine people.

Chip Saltsman sent a CD by Paul Shanklin that was a compilation of parodies, many of which appeared on the Rush Limbaugh program including the Limbaugh favorite, “Barack: The Magic Negro.”

Numerous myths are floating around about this. This is not a CD that Saltsman “compiled” as one news report said as if Saltsman burned the CD of his favorite songs. “Barack: The Magic Negro” was not even the title track of Paul Shanklin’s CD. It was smack in the middle of the CD at Track 16.

Paul Shanklin didn’t coin the term “Magic Negro.” It was African American writer David Ehrenstein, writing for the LA Times who first referred to Obama as a “Magic Negro” in March 2007 and suggested he was a less authentic Black person than Al Sharpton or Snoop Dogg. Saltsman has correctly pointed out that Ehrenstein’s original piece was not criticized. The song is not so much a riff on Obama as it is Ehrenstein’s column and Al Sharpton.

Mike Duncan and Saul Anuzis: The incumbent RNC Chairman screamed outrage” at the top of his lungs, as did Saul Anuzis. Declared Duncan, “I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction.

Shocked and appalled? Which is worse? That Saltsman sent out a CD with the song on it privately to 168 members of the RNC, or that the biggest conservative talk show in America has played the song, about 1,000 times? Either Duncan is so incredibly out of touch with the grassroots of the party that neither he nor anyone on his staff with good sense knows what’s happening on the Rush Limbaugh program, or he’s saved his outrage for now like a good hypocrite. Take your pick, or maybe it’s a combination of both.

As for Saul Anuzis, he said, “Just as important, anything that paints the GOP as being motivated in our criticism of President-elect Obama by anything other than a difference in philosophy does a disservice to our party.” Only the title of the CD paints this picture. While others haven’t listened to the song, Anuzis, as someone who actually has a copy of the CD, really has no excuse for not knowing what the song’s about. And again, where was this outrage when this was playing non-stop on Rush.

My brother has often told me that conservatives need an answer to the Daily Show, a satirical counterpunch to Jon Stewart.

This story is an illustration of why that is unlikely to happen. While I’ll admit that Shanklin’s parody was beyond the pale, the decision of some on the right to act as if he burned a cross on an African American’s lawn illustrates why there’s a satire deficit. Those who attempt satire on the right are either idiots who think being offensive for its own sake is hilarious, or they’re so banal in their satire they offend no one and entertain no one.

Satirists on the left can get away with far more on the right even with their own side. On Obama’s visit to Germany, Jon Stewart remarked that seeing hundreds of thousands of screaming Germans cheering for a Charismatic leader “gives me goosesteps-I mean goosebumps.” Try making that type of joke on the right and you’ll be drowned in press releases from conservatives calling for you to be imprisoned.

Conservatives need to develop some sense of proportionality.

Blackwell unites the party with this defense of Saltsman, Rush (pictured) and the parody, either expliciely or be implication.

Dittoheads everywhere are happier now, especially given that El Rushbo was on vacation when this story broke last week and is still on vacation through this week. Ken Blackwell has defended our conservative leader. That courageous act, coupled with his already sterling credentials satisfied Gamecock that he is the best man to lead the party for the next four years.

Thank you Ken and God bless you.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Barack Hussein Obama has repeatedly declared his desire to sign a huge economic stimulus package soon after taking the Oath of Office as the 44th President of the United States on “Day One.”

The Speaker of the House and Senate majority leader have promised to oblige their fellow Democrat with just such a bill to sign on that day, January 20, 2009, the day the Constitution of the United States and its non-Messiah citizens refer to as Inauguration Day.

Under ordinary circumstances a minority party would expect legislation anathema to their principles and policy preferences, but, given the extra-ordinarily dangerous financial crisis since the Econ-911 last September; the now 13-month long recession; and dire prospects for at least 6-12 more, a Republican minority should expect and even expect to support some kind of stimulus bill and even some Keynesian proposals like accelerated public works.

But the fictitious “Office of the President-Elect” makes clear that the Obama administration will seek fundamental change and call it “stimulus” lest they “waste” a crisis opportunity, e.g. health care and education reform even on Day One.

It is not clear that even a Franken-enhanced majority could push through such fundamental changes that quickly, but just in case, the GOP must make their Day One a fortnight earlier when the 111th Congress convenes.

Rush Limbaugh-led conservatives in both parties showed, in the Summer of 2007, that they could mobilize Americans to stop illegal alien amnesty legislation favored by both the leadership of both parties, given the time to educate citizens concerning the threat.

Republicans must begin dividing Democrats down being this coming January 6. They must propose a Supply Side stimulus of tax and regulation reductions that worked for Coolidge, Kennedy and Reagan and remind of the failure of government spending to end recessions and depressions under Hoover, FDR and Carter. Republicans must loudly insist upon hearings before enacting potentially permanent reforms as fundamental as socialized health care and which affect so large a portion of the economy. We must insist that any Day One stimulus be confined to public works and the middle class tax cuts the Democratic nominee repeatedly promised.

There are indications that President Obama may delay some of his middle-class tax cuts and accelerate tax hikes amidst divisions between his advisors. It seems the best we can hope for from former Clinton free market Treasury Secretary Larry Summers is a two summer delay in tax hikes on the wealthy, i.e. the impending expiration of the Bush tax cuts that have kept Investors and non-lawyer Job Producers on strike since before the Housing/Credit crunch (see 2006, when it was clear that Democrats would take Congress).

David Axelrod makes clear that two summers is the absolute maximum extent of tax increase forbearance, fore the man that insisted that capital gains taxes must not be cut no matter the effect on revenues due to the “unfairness” of it. No! Taxes on the rich shall go up on the Obama Watch. Period, Paragraph! Next question?

Well, the next question was answered by Paul “Nobel Prize” Krugman, who, perhaps unwittingly, laid the foundational argument for a supply side stimulus:

A more plausible route to sustained recovery would be a drastic reduction in the U.S. trade deficit, which soared at the same time the housing bubble was inflating. By selling more to other countries and spending more of our own income on U.S.-produced goods, we could get to full employment without a boom in either consumption or investment spending.

But it will probably be a long time before the trade deficit comes down enough to make up for the bursting of the housing bubble. For one thing, export growth, after several good years, has stalled, partly because nervous international investors, rushing into assets they still consider safe, have driven the dollar up against other currencies — making U.S. production much less cost-competitive.

Maybe there is some hope, given the above, but it would likely be tried only after a year or so of recession.

In the meantime, the GOP can’t be seen as only a supply side Dr. No merely trying to sabotage the first Democrat president in 32 years to win a popular vote majority. In 2007, we showed that we could divide the Democrats and win even with a large minority of Republicans against conservatives on immigration.

There are even more Blue Dog Democrats now and many issues that unite more Republicans, that divide Democrats and that can divide Obama from his fellow Democrats, before through the FDR-like Hundred Days Obama promises and beyond.

Before addressing the particular issues ripe for Dem-dividing, you may ask why Republicans should hope to divide more than a few Blue Dogs from Obama and the rest of the Donkeys, much less divide a very Liberal Dem President from liberal Dem or Dem from Dem.

No President’s interests are precisely congruent to his party, and there are indications this President sees himself as above his party like an aloof Ike and that his real opposition are liberal Democrat egos in Congress. His choice of conservative evangelical preacher Rick Warren to pray at his Inaugural was a shot across the bow of the far left much as was his voters’ rejection of same sex marriage with the passage of Proposition 8 in California and similar acts in Arizona and Florida.

Speaking of Al Franken, does a President Obama really want to be tied at the hip with near filibuster-proof Democratic Party majorities, or would he be better positioned with some Republican cover?

Does a newly accountable Democratic Party want to put it all on the ideological line, especially during an expected deep recession?

Is it possible that labor union dominated Democrats could split over whether to be scabs crossing an Investor-Job Producer picket line?

Consider the prospect of the very real possibility of a 10% unemployment rate next year after the passage of a huge stimulus, in which the employment rates only rise for eco-lawyers intent on killing jobs to save polar bears.

Will the under- and unemployed blue collar followers of the Messiah appreciate the “lesson” of high energy prices after, much less before his “green” legislation produces or “saves” three million jobs as their standard of living is capped and they are forced to trade/barter for goods and services?

What about the former miners of bankrupt coal companies?

Will Americans used to riding on horses appreciate being railroaded into unions because 50% plus one signed a card in public duress?

Will the increasing percentage of the population employed to take care of the health of retiring baby boomers appreciate the loss of their right to refuse to perform acts that violate their consciouses, not to mention libertarians’ loss of the personal autonomy of choosing Edison’s bulb or an SUV?

We suspect, like Mark Steyn, that a President Obama, before too little time remains before he is on the 2012 ballot, that he may wish to back off the dream of an America with merely 4% of the population, only consuming the 4% amount consumed by Kenya and Indonesia.

The opportunities for diving Democrats down to a manageable size will be legion. We must start the diving in eight days and not stop for more than a 1000. But we must also make sure that we are seen as part of the solution in Washington, lest we miss the boat when Americans bail themselves out through their own hard work. Be on the ready to make the distinctions between acts that will actually stimulate versus those driven by Obama’s desire for leftist “reforms.”

Americans promised jobs are going to ant good jobs and will not be content with flowery words for long.

In that regard, President Obama could do worse than take the advice of, none other than, John Maynard Keynes, given to FDR before the end of his first year as President:

“You are engaged on a double task, Recovery and Reform; — recovery from the slump and the passage of those business and social reforms which are long overdue. For the first, speed and quick results are essential. The second may be urgent, too; but haste will be injurious. … [E]ven wise and necessary Reform may, in some respects, impede and complicate Recovery. For it will upset the confidence of the business world and weaken their existing motives to action. … Now I am not clear, looking back over the last nine months, that the order of urgency between measures of Recovery and measures of Reform has been duly observed, or that the latter has not sometimes been mistaken for the former.”

FDR didn’t listen to Keynes, but he had the excuse that he couldn’t possible understand the lessons of the Great Depression.

BHO doesn’t have that excuse, even on Day One.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Bank bailout bungling, commingling…but did it “work”?

The Carolina Panthers win ugly, but as 12-4 NFC South champions with a first round play-off bye, the key word in the opening phrase is “win.”

In his Inaugural address in late September, newly elected as the first President of the U.S. Economy, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson declared that the $700B TARP bill was needed to save the banking system and unclog its new loan issuing arteries. The bill was titled the “Troubled Asset Relief Program” and Paulson’s testimony urging its passage promised funds would be used to buy up bad mortgages, but the actual terms of the bill endowed the Treasury Secretary with near plenary powers and absolute discretion to preserve the economy (as if that were possible).

Yours truly was “commissioned” at the time to cover the financial meltdown and Paulson Panic Prevention Plan, and after much research and analysis that would fill a small Caroline Kennedy size book, I came out narrowly against the passage of the TARP/PPPP.

I favored a more narrowly focused plan favored by Steve Forbes and others supply side stimulus that would have also included suspension of mark-to-market accounting rules and the repeal of the criminalization of risk-taking capitalism/small business destruction Act a/k/a Sarbanes-Oxley. My four columns written in the wake of the crisis and soon after passage of TARP from September 18-October 9 may be found here at page 4 of my archives.

Since then, Paulson actually heeded some of my advice, i.e. to take action that would maximize the likelihood that new loans would be issued rather than rescue bad mortgages. What Paulson decided to do was to buy equity in Banks, which shores up there balance sheets, which capital forms the basis for new loans at a 10/1 ration, generally.

As an aside, let be debunk the notion that the banks can or even should, report to Congress how they have spent the “TARP” money. Money is fungible. The money transferred is equity money that is part of the total capital of the banks and meant to be so. This is not a case akin to the commingling of personal versus business funds by a small business owner trying to protect assets from a divorce property settlement.

Congress should have thought of this before they passed TARP and, quite frankly, the maintenance of privacy in the banks’ private transactions helps to prevent another socialism/nationalization line.

Also, since the September 2008 Econ-911, Vice-President of the U.S. Economy/Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke has produced an alphabet soup of loan guarantee programs which, together with TARP’s $350B spent so far with the AIG and other “bailouts” added together, add up to possibly upwards of $7 Trillion in U.S. taxpayer funds at risk. Most experts believe most of this money is not at risk, but most do fear the inflationary effect of same once the recession ends. Bernanke, a student of the Great Depression, apparently thinks he can finesse the situation. God help us.

But back to the PPPP, which was devised because banks were unwilling to make loans to other banks in mid-September. The housing recession was in its 11th month and very few mortgages were being re-financed much less new loans issued.

Fast-forward to late December: The banking system did not fail. Bank to bank loans are being made. Mortgages are being refinanced at very high volume since a drop in interest rates in November.

Could all of the above been accomplished absent any action by government in September? No

But could it have been accomplished with a plan differing in kind and scope than the one Paulson and Bernanke have wrought? Probably.

No doubt that PPPP prevented panic in an arbitrary way.

But judging their actions by the stated goals, their way has “worked”, given a narrow definition of “worked.”

I have argued that the American people were in for hard times for the next year or two, at least, in my previous articles (see above links) and so, did not expect for investors to come off their strike due to the FED and TARP. For that, I think we will have to pay the piper for past excess and pass a supply-side stimulus plan.

Therefore, my purpose in this column is a narrow defense of Paulson and Bernanke on the accomplishment of the stated goals thus far. My own business has picked up, given that much of my work is tied to loan turn downs. For that I am thankful.

But for the un-clogged bank loan arteries to flow in greater volume after all the re-fis by sterling credit risks, investors willing and able to apply for loans will be required. For that to happen will require turning the American people loose to bail themselves out, and, unfortunately, much damage control by government gurus to undo the dame they did that led to the need for TARP/FED and from the “cure” of TARP/FED itself.

For now though, like the Panthers, they have “won ugly,” but, unlike Carolina, they don’t get a “bye.”

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The HinzSight Report at TMR.

Looking at my pile of printed out internet and newspaper article equivalent to Rush Limbaugh’s stack of stuff, marked up as fodder for my own dead-tree columns, blogs and book instead of a radio show, I am reminded of the movie, “Paper Chase”.

That title and movie best captured my experience in Law School that any other picture I have seen over the years. Why? Because learning the law, and how to think like a lawyer, i.e. discern the facts relevant to the case from the infinite number of facts available, requires reading every word available. After one class of subjugation to the Socratic method, one then learns that it is necessary to write down many facts and study them. It seems at times that one reads War and Peace to re-write war!

It might seem non-productive to some, but centuries of experience and even new technology haven’t reduced these piles appreciably, at least not for those that pass final exams, pass the bar and actually win cases in front of juries.

And oh yes, the virtual stack of stuff I stare at on my documents, above the paper pile, if printed, would dwarf the pile printed out for immediate use. God knows that had this geek that wants to know it all had internet as a child, I may never have left the house.

Wanting to get out as many columns from all the loose ends before the beginning of the year, including those that relate to year-end reviews and Cockstradamus predictions, in addition to the required columns I am now happily paid to do each and every day, I run across some rare of late these days wisdom from Christian, Southerner and Palin-basher Kathleen Parker in a column about a “Facebook Nightmare” world where anything one says or does can be “news” :

All of the above would be nonsense except that almost nothing any longer is. Nonsense is the new standard for controversy; and even party shenanigans qualify.

Puritans and prohibitionists would adore our brave new world of shutterbug infamy. The fact is, no one’s having fun anymore, especially in the nation’s capital, where one can’t afford to let the tongue slip or risk being caught in the cross hairs of a cell camera.

Political veterans have learned, sometimes the hard way. This new generation — the Obama cohort — needs to review The Rules. Smart grown-ups in Washington don’t get drunk in public. A glass of wine is a prop that rarely gets drained.

At a small, private dinner recently, where wine flowed freely (and no one took pictures), conversation turned to the day when politicos and others routinely enjoyed three-martini lunches. How did they do that? Not just the drinking, but the escape from scrutiny?

It was all about time. In low-tech America, people had time to sober up. There was no e-mail light blinking to demand your immediate attention, no insistent cell phones blasting “Fur Elise” into one’s pocket or purse; no 24/7 news producers demanding instant responses to urgent claims and counterclaims. Several hours — or even a few days — could pass before anyone had to Do Something.

Yes, its all about time. I have had a saying of my own for years, probably constructed after voice mail reduced deniability, and that is that after the invention of the washing machine, all future technology has actually placed greater stress burdens on us than they relieved. Many devices are, or more likely were, originally sold with a pitch that they would free up more personal time by making work more efficiently done.

Poppycock!

All we have done is cram more work into the 24-hours we have per day and no invention will ever give us more that 24.

The closest we came was Leap Day.

How was your February 29th? My stack of stuff just got higher.

Now, the loose ends gamecock will publish (I have to put this kind of pressure on myself) before Jan 2, 2009:

At TMR

…but did it “work”: (Paulson Bailout Post-Mortem)

Splitting the Dems on:

CNN testifies for The Sun vs. Gore

Will Summers only prevent tax hikes for two summers

Obama jobs program for trial lawyers only: the 4% solution

Krugman “gaffe” argues for supply side stimulus

Forget Card Check, Cap & Trade, Bankrupt Coal, Parker SUVs?

Finally Frank(en) Democratic Party accountability

Liberals as Firemen vs Pants on Fire

At Examiner.com and TMR:

End of the Year awards incl Man of the Year

Cockstradamus on 2009

Charlotte Law Year in Review

Civil Rights Year in Review (incl the Overlawyered War)

P.S. You should also see the client legal work and research stack of stuff!

No justice, no peace.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Democrats and, especially fellow republicans in the Palmetto State may wish they could “join Elizabeth” to avoid this chief executive’s wrath.

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Of course, I am referring to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (pictured) as a reverse Fred Sanford, who, when backed into a corner by his lies, resorted to fake heart attacks for sympathy as he shouted at the sky to his late wife, “Elizabeth, I’m comin’ to join ya!”

By contrast, Governor Sanford regularly exposes the Republican majority in his state for their incompetence and love for bigger government. For conservatives, he shows us how we should seize opportunities, even at Christmas:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Three of South Carolina’s leading Republican lawmakers slammed Gov. Mark Sanford on Monday for his reluctance to accept federal money that would keep unemployment benefits for the state’s jobless from drying up at the end of the year.

“I’ve been in the Senate 28 years,” Sen. Hugh Leatherman, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. “Never have I seen a more heartless and cruel act by a governor. … I call upon him to end this reign of emotional trauma and request the loans.”

In the interest of full disclosure when I read the above and the whole AP article, I began my research intending to slam Sanford as the “flake” I often referred to him as when he refused federal dollars for projects in his coastal congressional district, when he served in the House years ago.

I was a Democrat then, but even now am not a big opponent of earmarks given their paltry sum as opposed to massive budget busting entitlements; the usefulness of earmarks for bargaining on larger issues; and my selfishness for my, relatively-speaking, poor native state. My ambivalence for Sanford on the latter was increased by his recent WSJ eschewings of bailouts for states.

But after reading Sanford (and Gov. Perry of Texas) above, and especially his unfiltered by the Associated drive-by Press strategy explanation below, I have changed my mind and now see his actions as fitting into my proposed strategy for the GOP to stop being the Stupid Party and seize opportunities to expose liberalism that hurts liberty and business:

In simplest form, our state is running out of money to pay unemployment benefits, and our office has been drawn into the debate because it’s up to us to request a band-aid loan of sorts so that these checks can continue being issued.

Here are my reservations:

A loan without reforming our unemployment benefits system will mean one thing down the road — a tax increase on businesses. According to the non-partisan Tax Foundation, our state is roughly in the middle of the pack on our business tax climate, except when it comes to unemployment taxes — where we rank ninth-highest in the country, our least business-friendly tax ranking.

So we have simply asked for two things before we sign off on the loan.
One, we’re calling for an independent audit of the ESC.

Since beginning to highlight this issue, we’ve had a number of former ESC employees raise issues to us about the operations of the agency. For example, in order to be eligible for benefits, a person needs to be “actively seeking employment.” We’ve been told that some interpret that to mean making just one phone call in a week to qualify as “seeking employment.” In a 40-hour work week, it doesn’t seem like one five-minute phone call should qualify you as looking for work.

We’ve also been told that some companies are essentially taking advantage of the system, and use the unemployment benefits as a sort of taxpayer-funded furlough. These are the kinds of things an audit could uncover, and in the process help avert a tax increase.

Two, we’re asking for better information sharing from the ESC.

We’ve heard that one of the reasons data can’t be shared effectively is because the agency is operating on a cumbersome, inefficient, and decades-old mainframe computer system. Yet rather than use recent funding increases to upgrade that system to better-serve the people of this state, the money was instead spent on new construction of facilities. I’m a firm believer in fixing what you have before you take on new commitments, but unfortunately too many in government don’t seem to feel that way.

The Governor then asks voters to call their state legislators demanding action. It is a shame that these fiscal matters come up at the end of the year when people are distracted by Christmas holidays that legislators can hide behind and appeal to for sympathy.

We think Sanford’s strategy is to use the need for the federal unemployment compensation loan to try and force conservative reforms and that he will, in the end, not let the unemployed miss a check, so we applaud his strategy and wish that more elected republicans across the nation and in Washington, D.C. would seize opportunities when voters are attentive.

Opportunities are coming during the weeks in January when Congress will be preparing that “sign on Day One” stimulus bill as well as more fundamental “reform” called “stimulus” during the First Hundred Days.

The GOP must be diligent to forge alliances with amenable democrats in the House and use the filibuster in the Senate, to force energy and health care legislation into hearings and/or other delays that We the People can use to shoot down socialism like we did illegal immigrant amnesty in 2007.

[Links above flesh out my proposed strategy to try and seize opportunities and split the Democrats in an economic crisis environment in which we must not be seen merely as Dr. No offering “only” a Supply-Side stimulus. I think such a stimulus of tax cuts and regulation cuts is the fastest way out of the current recession, which will be long no matter what, but just think that we have to have more of a strategy than supply-side. Obama may well resort to supply-side later, when his Keynesianism doesn’t work any better for him that it didn’t for Hoover, FDR, LBJ and Carter, but for now, we need to be savvy in how we respond to specific proposals, like public works and pre-packaged bankruptcies (see link above).]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Aloha: Purpose driven Fitzmas and an Un-gay New Year

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report for submission at Examiner.com.

As Barack Obama dreams of a white-washed “Fitzmas” in Hawaii to replace White Christmas nightmares in Chicago, a mainstream Washington liberal echoes gay hate against traditional marriage Christians.

It seems Hope and Change is still best sought in the resurrected Christ that was born in a manger this date nearly two millennia ago. Merry Christmas!

Purpose Driven Unhappy New Year for Gay activists

With only 29 shopping days left until Christmas, this column documented the vicious hatred of many gay activists towards those against same-sex marriage in the wake of the passage of Proposition 8 in California restoring the exclusivity of traditional marriage in the Golden State. Christians, and especially Mormons, were physically harassed and their property destroyed in numerous incidents in the Golden State and around the country.

We found the story ironic given the drive-by media meme that it is Christians that are the haters for merely wanting to preserve the 5000-year old marriage definition as between one man and one woman; that black and Latino Obama voters were the ones that put Prop 8 over the top; and that the gay activists tactics made a mockery of their self-comparison with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his dignified, Holy Scripture driven, non-violent Civil Rights Movement.

We also went out of our way to recognize the fact that the over-whelming majority of gays do not support the extreme acts we reported, and we still acknowledge that fact.

So, it was with some discomfort that we read a gay-rights driven denunciation of the President-Elect’s choice of main-stream evangelical, Southern Baptist pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life (second in all-time book sales to The Holy Bible) to deliver the invocation prayer at his Inauguration, by a mainstream Washington liberal. Richard Cohen describes his gay sister’s cancellation of an Inaugural party due to the selection of Warren and then states:

I can understand Obama’s desire to embrace constituencies that have rejected him. Evangelicals are in that category and Warren is an important evangelical leader with whom, Obama said, “we’re not going to agree on every single issue.” He went on to say, “We can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.” Sounds nice.

But what we do not “hold in common” is the dehumanization of homosexuals. What we do not hold in common is the belief that gays are perverts who have chosen their sexual orientation on some sort of whim. What we do not hold in common is the exaltation of ignorance that has led and will lead to discrimination and violence.

Finally, what we do not hold in common is the categorization of a civil rights issue — the rights of gays to be treated equally — as some sort of cranky cultural difference. For that we need moral leadership, which, on this occasion, Obama has failed to provide. For some people, that’s nothing to celebrate.

There you have it. Americans, simply by opposing same-sex marriage: “de-humanize” homosexuals; believe they are all perverts; “exalt” ignorance and thus, aid and abet violence against them; and deny gays and lesbian their “civil rights.”

Nothing can make the New Year be happy for those with such notions. The irony is that, clearly, despite Obama’s protestations, our next President favors same-sex marriage. He is for all sorts of hate crimes, domestic partnerships and other legislation based on sexual preference. And, he opposed Proposition 8 which was designed to overturn an activist court ruling that made same-sex marriage legal.

But, the Cohen’s of the world that foment hatred of Christians with the lie that it is we that are intolerant, can’t even abide a prayer from someone that merely wants to tolerate a 5000 year old institutional definition that made civilization possible.

Pastor Warren has made clear that he and his church loves gays and has acted upon that love. Cohen does make some good points about Obama’s religious history in the column, so I do recommend reading the whole thing.

Merry white-washed Fitzmas

Prior to Christmas, our only comment on U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitgerald’s charges of vacant Obama senate seat selling by the President-Elect’s fellow democrat and Governor, was to suggest that the silence of Obama’s designate for Chief of Staff (COS) was deafening and that he would likely not serve one day as COS.

The din of Rahm Emanuel’s muteness continues in public, but given impending subpoenas, it appears same will end in private, if only to plead the Fifth. Given that he was the main public face of the pretentious “Office of the President-Elect” complete with the Tar Heel blue transmogrification of the Presidential seal and given that public faces include lips that need to move, we look forward to the naming a new COS-designate before MLK Day.

But the larger issues of this matter, and especially Obama’s attempt to white-wash the whole thing with a Christmas Eve’s eve dump of “internal investigation” findings, convince us that this viscerally more understandable scandal will make Clinton’s white water seem pale and shallow by comparison.

We note the lack of outrage from Mr. Cool in a circumstance that cries out for righteous indignation. His Governor, Blagojevich (who is constitutionally empowered to choose the next junior senator from the Land of Lincoln) is trying to sell the seat he held. He withdrew the name of his preferred pick for his appointed successor, right before Lawyer Fitz announced the charges, arguably before Blago had actually committed a crime. Coincidence?

We find that Obama didn’t tell us he had spoken to Blago about this matter, only to correct it after investigating himself? He changed pronouns from “I” to “we’ in an early vague news conference, famous for how few questions he would take, followed by one in which he instructed reporters not to “waste” questions.

Before Election Day, we suggested dangers citing the “Chicago Way” and how one would get “A Piece of the Action,” should that way come to The District.

Honolulu is as far as you can get from Chicago and still be in the USA, but when he says Aloha on his way back to the Lower Forty-Eight, Fitzmas may not yet be over.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

[Originally published by TMR Legal Editor, Mike "gamecock" DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com which original column contains all links to supportive references.]

As we promised on Sunday when we revealed, for the purpose of full disclosure, our New Year’s Eve, 2007 predictions for 2008, below are our post-mortems. Today, we also announce that Cockstradamus will end his retirement before the end of the year after a Sabbatical since October.

2008 predictions of Mike DeVine, aka Gamecock aka Cockstradamus, followed by explanations:

1 – Southerners and Christians (including Catholics and Evangelicals) astound the Left by failing to establish the first theocratic “impose our views” State in the United States. Instead, judges in Massachusetts establish a Secular Darwinist, Man-Made Global Warming Church theocracy in the Bay State, joining the non-Christian theocratic City-State in San Francisco. Christians whose churches were invaded and taken over for group orgies with Mayoral consent in the City by the Bay are welcomed with open arms by the ecumenical Muslim-Chaldean coalition in Baghdad.

We were basically right on this one. (1-0)

2 – Pakistan fails to devolve into anarchy.

Still hanging on here, but its too close for comfort. (2-0)

3 – The Taliban fails to take over Afghanistan.

Rooster still right. (3-0)

4 – The MSM fails to report the above and continues to refuse to report the US victory over al Qaeda in Iraq.

Our Foghorn Leghorns have flushed this out on several occasions. We have basically won the War in Iraq proper and against al Qaeda. (4-0)

5 – Chelsea Clinton continues press blackout of nine year old reporters from Scholastic America and expands same to include ten-year olds from Nickelodeon.

Even though this was a fairly obscure 2007 story leading into 2008, we still got it right. (5-0)

6 – Bill Clinton finally utters Hillary’s name at a campaign stop in Chicago on February 4, 2008; loses his voice and suffers a myocardial infarction soon thereafter; is hospitalized at University of Chicago Medical Center; and is served with summons charging him with the crime of bigamy and assault and battery with a stogie by a Nurse Ratched.

We are glad we missed on this one but still request prayer for the former president walking around like The Picture of Dorian Gray. (5-1)

7 – Colts defeat Redskins in Super Bowl.

What year was that? OK, Gamecock is better at sports than Cockstradamus, and this year the owner of the alter ego will handle sports. (5-2)

8 – LSU defeats Ohio State for mythical BCS college football championship. Refuses Appalachian State challenge.

We didn’t know that LSU had already scheduled the Mountaineers before they trounced the Buckeyes. (6-3)

9 – Lakers defeat Celtics for NBA championship.

Ok, we missed the winner, but we picked both finalists months away. (8-4)

10 – Neither Huckabee nor McCain will win SC GOP primary.

McCain’s military and democrat support in a crowded field in which both Romney and Rudy stopped campaigning too soon…(9-5)

11 – Obama wins Democratic Party nomination.

We would remind that we picked this before the Iowa Caucus. (10-5)

12 – Obama loses election to the GOP nominee. Oops (10-6)

13 – Mike Gamecock DeVine is vilified for refusing to predict who the GOP nominee, and next President of the United States, will be.

Unmerciful persecution of our human owner…(11-6)

14 – Neither Huckabee nor McCain will be referred to as President-elect during 2008.

What an oracle! (13-6)

[We also predicted the ending of the oil drilling moratorium even by Democrats, as well, but are not including it given that the President-Elect threatens to re-impose same. Call your congressmen!]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

I (pictured) learned that phrase from my Alabama ex-wife, who would recite it whenever I would wistfully express a desire for something that simply was not going to happen, either in my professional legal career or my personal life.

I bring this up now, in the context of what I see as an increasingly course, vulgar, name-calling, echo-chamber becoming conservative blogosphere, that has been my second home for the past five plus years and through which I have built a second professional career as a paid conservative voice columnist in the MSM.

I acknowledge that I have been somewhat guilty of what now repels me. We are all sinners. I was called-out when the level of my discourse fell below standards earlier this year at Redstate.

Now, I must do some calling out, especially given the dual contexts of our Grand Old Party having been reduced to issuing Minority Reports since Election Day 2006 with the White House soon to follow on Inauguration Day 2009; and the Economic 9/11 paradigm shift that has engulfed us since the financial collapse this past September.

For the record, I want (and have wanted for months if not years) a supply-side stimulus of personal, corporate and capital gains tax rate cuts; an end to oil drilling moratoriums on land and sea; and drastic revisions to the Clean Water, Endangered Species and any other Acts that let trial lawyers kill jobs and energy independence from the building of oil refineries, nuclear plants or a new Shell station.

People in jail want out.

Maybe, after all the Keynesianism America can stand, a President Barack Obama will turn to Freidman and Lafferism. But until then, Republicans have a duty to try and hasten a recovery by responsible damage control. That means trying to make onerous bills less onerous.

Most importantly, we must recognize the paradigm shift that was the economic 911, the first identification of which was expressed by APO in comments and seconded by Dave Hinz in latter comments.

One way to acknowledge this shift is to recognize that we can’t make up for President Bush and the GOP’s ideological transgressions from 2001-2006 in this environment.

Secondly, we of all people should not reduce ourselves to the level of discourse seen at Daily Kos with respect to the character of President Bush.

I wanted Congress to adopt the Corker Amendments or some sort of structured, pre-packaged bankruptcy for Detroit’s Big Three automakers to force them to deal with their legacy costs and over-capacity.

People in jail want out.

But I also recognize, as does Jack Welch, Ben Stein, and many other conservatives, that now (repeat NOW) is not the time for over a million autoworkers to be thrown on the streets. Remember the Eco911 paradigm shift?

And it is not a “sell-out” for a president to support a small bridge loan to prevent a sudden collapse at the wrong time. The problems in Detroit will be dealt with over time. Yes, Obama, Reid and Pelosi will probably make it worse before reality is dealt with. President Bush couldn’t prevent that. He is leaving office. What he did do is trim the amount down by 25-33% with a loan that may last thru March 2009.

President Bush was not engaging in legacy for legacy’s sake. He was engaging in damage control in a crisis. This the federal government must do.

I wish he could have done so in the context of a majority Republican Congress and President Fred Thompson and majority Republican Congress to succeed him.

People in jail wish to get out.

But even a President Hamilton, Coolidge, Wilkie or Thompson would have had to stabilize the banking system. And bailing out millions of workers from immediate unemployment in the midst of an economic crisis is not a sell out.

We can wish that a mess caused mainly by distorting government interventions in free markets for three decades coupled with weaknesses in us born of affluence, could be solved by strict adherence to the conservative first principles we all admire and doing nothing to ease the transition.

People in jail want out.

The main conservative principle is to conserve capacity of the system to recover as quickly as possible, and it is no sell out to deal with the reality of Minority Report status and a crisis environment.

If we want to one day issue Majority Reports again, we must be seen as dealing with reality and part of the solution, even at the risk of being called names by some our own.

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Mike DeVine, esq.
7300 Quail Ridge Drive
Charlotte, NC 28226
(704) 493-2853
mikedevinelaw@yahoo.com

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

How stupid is the elected GOP in D.C.? The next 36 hours will provide the answer.

President Bush will not give a blank TARP check to the Big Three Detroit automakers, as this column and Larry Kudlow indicated last week when the bailout was “corked” by Congress:

The Bush administration is looking at “orderly” bankruptcy as a way to deal with the desperately ailing U.S. auto industry, the White House said Thursday as car makers readied more plant closings and a half million Americans filed new jobless claims.
With Detroit anxiously holding its breath and waiting for federal help, White House press secretary Dana Perino said, “There’s an orderly way to do bankruptcies that provides for more of a soft landing. I think that’s what we would be talking about.”

The GOP missed a golden opportunity to divide the President-Elect from the far left in Congress last month when Obama lofted a “pre-packaged” bankrupSecond chance for GOP to split Dems with “orderly, pre-packaged” bankruptcy
trial balloon.

The President has tossed them an identical softball by another name, i.e. “orderly”.

Wake up GOP and show your public support for an Obama gift for cover against a Drive-by media that loves to paint us as heartless by accepting the Obama/Bush alternative that echoes what conservatives have called for all along (or at least the best facsimile thereof that we can hope for in this environment.

Of course, as usual, many conservatives have already denounced President Bush as a sell out, much like they have over the past seven years on the war, which he went ahead and won anyway.

Will the blowhards ever learn not to underestimate this man?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Those belonging to the:

400,000+ political opponents murdered by Saddam Hussein;

1.5 million+ killed in the three wars of aggression started by Saddam Hussein;

Purple-fingered Iraqi voters;

Iraqi police and security forces fighting side by side with the armed forces of the United States against Baathist, Iranian and al Qaeda enemies of freedom in Iraq;

Members of the Iraqi Parliament that recently voted to establish a permanent alliance with the United States against the enemies of freedom in the Middle East; and

All other journalists present at the shoe throwing by a Baathist enemy of Iraq.

The United States has prevailed in Iraq. Iraq is a budding bastion of freedom in the Middle East.

Media coverage is more of an insult to my intelligence than hurled shoes.

[Inspired by Caleb's Red Hot]

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by our Legal Editor, Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com

This week marks the 217th anniversary of the ratification of the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, collectively known as the “Bill of Rights.” In fact, Monday was designated “Bill of Rights Day.”

I dare say that most Americans are much more familiar with their rights as enumerated in the ten Bill of Rights than they are with the seven articles of the main body of the Constitution proper. Many Americans may also know of the Federalist Papers that were published in newspapers at the time to persuade Americans to ratify the Constitution. Less known are the so-called “anti-federalists” who conditioned their support for ratification of the Constitution on the immediate passage of these bill of rights to ensure that there was no misunderstanding that they retained their Creator endowed inalienable rights confirmed in the Declaration of Independence and to limit the power of the Federal government.

Patrick “Give me liberty of give me death” Henry Pictured) was the leader of the anti-federalists.

What has this to do with the War on Christmas we have been documenting, especially as regards actions taken by federal courts? Everything.

What many Americans don’t realize is that all of the 13 states that formed the federal government via the U.S. Constitution already had state constitutions that protected their civil rights from state action and that the Bill of Rights was only meant to apply to the federal government. There is some disagreement on this, especially after the ratification of the 14th Amendment after the Civil War and the implementation of the “incorporation doctrine” by the U.S. Supreme Court, which we will address later.

But with respect to the First Amendment, which by its terms only applied to the federal government, there could be no such misunderstanding:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

The amendment specifically prohibited Congress and only congress from “establishing a religion.” The framers were specifically and only prohibiting the federal government from establishing a National Church equivalent to the Church of England that had just fought a war to get out from under. As British subjects, they had been forced to pay taxes to support the Church.

Moreover, at the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights and at least until the 1830s, individual states had established state churches, as they were allowed to do under their state constitutions, which were not affected by a First Amendment that only applied to Congress.

In fact, the famous letter from then President Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists that contained the phrase “wall of separation” of church and state, which has been wholly mischaracterized by courts and supporters of War on Christmas type rulings. The letter was a response to a request from the Baptists that the federal government intervene on their behalf against the State established Congregationalists Church of Connecticut. Jefferson said he could not due to Wall between the State (Federal government) and the Church (of Connecticut).

All states had voluntarily dis-established all state churches by 1850, mainly as a way to try and attract more settlers in competition with other states.

But the right to establish a state church remained.

After the Civil War, in order to place freed slaves and all Americans of any ethnicity on the same legal footing as whites, and all individuals, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. (Section One)

Nothing in the amendment required the application of any of the Bill of Rights to the states, much less the “establishment” clause of the First Amendment, and no one thought to do so, until 1947.

In the Everson case, Justice Hugo Black, citing Jefferson’s wall of separation letter, “incorporated” the First Amendment into the 14th and applied same to the states to prohibit the use of public funds with respect to Catholic school bus transportation.

Since that activist ruling, the federal courts have essentially taken over local schools in a way never envisioned by the Constitution. Even if one accepted that no state could establish a state church, the rulings prohibiting Bible Study, prayer, nativity displays, etc, all fall far short of that. In fact, recent precedent allows funding of non-religious activities (like buses) of private schools if such funding is equal to that of public schools.

This type of “nationalization” was the very thing that the mis-characterized anti-federalists sought to prohibit and which the father of the Constitution, James Madison sought to achieve with the Bill of Rights.

Thankfully, with the replacement of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor with Samuel Alito, there is now a 5-4 majority that has been chipping away at case precedents that fueled the War on Christmas.

We will continue to follow the War on Christmas until Santa Clause comes.

Originally published by Mike “gamecock” DeVine as Charlotte Law and Civil Rights Examiner for Examiner.com and at The Minority Report

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Like day follows night, Drive-By Media praise of the return of “smart” people to power in Washington follows the election of a Democrat to the presidency. Given that this has occurred less often than solar and lunar eclipses since man landed on the Moon, you may be forgiven the recollection.

The usual “evidence” given for the characterization of cabinet and other administration officials as smart is their graduate degrees from Ivy League universities. To be fair, conservative columnist wannabe, David Brooks of the New York Times, Wellesley and Stanfordincluded, probably because the Ombudsman demanded diversity.

That Brooks and others in the media cite the President-Elect Barack Obama’s Columbia-Harvard bone fides while ignoring President George W. Bush’s Yale-Harvard equivalent hints at what they truly mean by “smart.”

But it is an unapologetic liberal (given that he only occasionally self-describes as a progressive) Peter Beinart’s “Revenge of the Nerds” that best defines, and at once obscures, what the Left means by intellectualism and which also provides a telling glimpse of their world view:

As Obama stocks his administration with eggheads, both right and left are backing away from the anti-intellectualism that has dominated politics for 50 years.

Anti-intellectualism has dominated politics for 50 years?

Beinart continues:

By electing Barack Obama, the American people have proved a lot of political clichés wrong: that Americans wouldn’t elect a black man…showed that you can win the presidency without appearing dumb…Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama doesn’t temper his intellectualism by embracing his inner Bubba.

Who are the authors of the cliché’ that America was as racist before Election Day 2008 and every day since as they were in 1765, 1865 or 1965? Who considers every President elected since FDR as “appearing dumb”? Who now conveniently forget Obama’s employment of a fake Southern accent and reversal on gun rights during the campaign?

The questions answer themselves.

Beinart further reveals the world view of himself and the like-minded with this elaboration:

In the early 1950s, Richard Nixon slyly fused anti-intellectualism and anti-communism, calling Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson a “Ph.D. graduate of the College of Cowardly Communist Containment.”

Now we are getting to the crux of an aspect of American history that has been covered up by liberals in control of academia, Hollywood and the media for the past 60 years, largely under the rubric of the so-called “McCarthy Era”.

Many Americans that sacrificed so much for Liberty in WWII and Korea, felt betrayed by the surrender of Eastern Europe and North Korea to communism.

Those in academia that advocated such so-called realism toward evil empires and who played down the threat of communist spies that were found to have deeply penetrated the U.S. government thanks to mostly Nixon’s House Un-American Affairs Committee, but also those conducted by “Tail-gunner” Joe McCarthy in the Senate, were publicly discredited. Many liberls still argue that Alger Hiss was innocent, despite irrefutable evidence from Whittaker Chambers, as documented in his “Witness” masterpiece, as well as Hiss’s role in the anti-American structure of the United Nations he helped create.

The 1950’s saw the greatest economic achievement by man in the course of human history. The civil rights movement was begun in this decade by members of the Greatest and Quiet generations contrary to the piggy-backing claims of 1960s baby-boomers.

Yet, historians describe the era as a foreboding dark age of American history in which Americans lived in fear of being asked if they were ever a member of the Communist Party.

The intellectuals had to reclaim their reputations and that of the failed liberal policies they advocated.

This fact gets to the core of what smart and intellectual should mean. Did smart people get good grades in school or, did those that got good grades in school get labeled “smart”? When we say someone is smart, are we passing judgment on the merits of the results of their life decisions or the pithiness of their explanations of whatever results they obtained?

It depends on who “we” is.

For me, in the context of politics and government policies determined by same, it must be directly related to results. But the fact is that even if one accepts the purported criteria of the Left, Republicans come out ahead. Truman and Reagan were much more well-read than Stevenson or Gore. Dubya did better in college that Gore or Kerry.

When it comes to policy, who can deny that the liberal economic and foreign policies of liberals in the 1970s were utterly discredited and the conservative policies of Reagan were proven correct. This is why we picture him above as an example of one worthy of the smart intellectual appelations.

Is it smart to continue to advance policies that are proven failures, no matter your SAT score or the location of one’s matriculation?

Not to this inner Bubba. In fact, some ideas are so stupid that can only be formed by PhD. grads from the Ivy League.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

When, in my ignorance, I thought the “natural born citizen” requirement for the presidency depended one being delivered from the womb within the territorial confines of one of the Fifty States or the District of Columbia, DeVine Law considered state and court refusals to require the production of the President-Elects original long form birth certificate an important issue.

I defended court refusals prior to the election on the grounds of “standing” and “ripeness”, and refusals after the election on the grounds of political questions that could best be dealt with by the Electoral College or Congress.

As I contemplated a serious legal analysis on the issue, other issues came to mind as I conducted some research, especially as the Supreme Court considered a petition for a Writ of Certiorari in the Donofrio case.

Firstly, I considered the “natural born” clause in Article II of the Constitution to be vague and without any enforcement mechanism provided, thereby making it very likely that the U.S. Supreme Court would invoke the political question rule and never rule on the merits of the clause. After all, the American people can enforce the rule at the ballot box, and, as referred to above, in Congress or the Electoral College. And, if newly discovered evidence were produced, via Impeachment.

Secondly, Donofrio and others that accepted his position that situs of birth was irrelevant (which is a very persuasive argument), never addressed the merits of their express or implied claims that either, only the father’s citizenship status at the birth of a child is dispositive; or, that both parents must be American citizens at birth.

As a lawyer, I knew instinctively that Donofrio’s case made some great points but that it contained some fatal flaws based mainly on issues he failed to address and on how superficially it address others. So, after much laziness, I read the brief and concluded that the fatal flaw was the refusal to address in detail, the significance of the fact that his mother was, as far as we know, a citizen of the United States when Barack Obama was born. Moreover, while Donofrio asserted that dual citizenship at birth rendered one un-naturally born, he cited no authority for this position.

Then, just before I was going to do the research I deemed necessary for me to put my legal reputation on the line before I wrote a column, I discovered a column by a courageous non-lawyer that had already done the paralegal work for me.

Vagueness

Let DeVine Law show why the layman deserves an A grade below, but also read the whole piece especially for an explanation of why it was so cowardly for many usual conservative giants to poo poo the whole issue:

Unfortunately, the Constitution does not spell out what is meant by “natural born.” Even more unfortunately, it is not spelled out anywhere in unambiguous terms that we can all agree on. No one can provide a URL, for example, that will lead you to the “official” definition of “natural born.”

Given that, it is up to courts to decide what “natural born” means. There are legal arguments for various definitions, but these are arguments to be heard by courts. The courts have not yet spoken, at least clearly. This is exactly where reasonable people can disagree. Some people might claim to “know” what the definition is or should be. I’m saying no one knows, just as no one knows what “arms” means in the 2nd Amendment or “cruel and unusual” in the 8th.

And here is where it gets interesting. For some not-unreasonable definitions of “natural born”, the location of Obama’s birth is irrelevant, meaning the whole “birth certificate” issue (e.g., “long form” vs. “short form”) could be irrelevant. At one extreme in the definition, Obama is not natural born regardless of the location of his birth. At the other extreme, he is natural born regardless.

Absence of Congressional definition on point.

I do accept that there is a reasonable “weak” definition of “natural born” that applies in Obama’s case, and does not require him to have been born in the US.
I’m willing to accept that the courts, even giving due diligence, could decide to accept some kind of “weak” version without hearing oral arguments, and therefore appearing to dismiss the case without hearing it.

I am conceding no principle here. The Constitution is not defiled. This boils down to the legal definition of a phrase, “natural born”, defined neither in the Constitution nor US law. If Congress does not write a specific statute to define the term, only the courts can define it right now, or allow current interpretations to stand, sketchy as they might be.

That is the nub of the case. I know, quite a “nub.” And I haven’t even gotten to what I mean by “weak” and “strong” definitions of “natural born.”

Weak definition informed by Congressional definition of “citizens at birth” as equivalent to natural born.

US Code 1401 states that “The following shall be nationals and citizens of the United States at birth”:

“(a) a person born in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

“(g) a person born outside the geographical limits of the United States and its outlying possessions of parents one of whom is an alien, and the other a citizen of the United States who, prior to the birth of such person, was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years: Provided, That any periods of [honorable military service outside the US, etc.] may be included in order to satisfy the physical-presence requirement of this paragraph.”

Renunciations may only be effective when one is an adult and operations of law may not strip a mother of same.

If he was born outside the US and even if his father was an alien, he was a citizen at birth as long as his mother was a citizen and “was physically present in the United States or its outlying possessions for a period or periods totaling not less than five years, at least two of which were after attaining the age of fourteen years.” I’ve heard no one dispute that his mother would not meet these physical-presence requirements.

Obama is a “citizen at birth” according to the current USC 1401.

Some of our advanced students might note that Obama might have had dual citizenship or that he later became a citizen of Indonesia. There is nothing in the USC 1401 definition of “citizen at birth” that says simultaneous citizenship elsewhere at birth negates it. And if we dig deeper, into USC 1481 on Loss of Nationality , we find

“(a) A person who is a national of the United States whether by birth or naturalization, shall lose his nationality by voluntarily performing any of the following acts with the intention of relinquishing United States nationality-

(1) obtaining naturalization in a foreign state upon his own application or upon an application filed by a duly authorized agent, after having attained the age of eighteen years; or …”

The law goes on to other cases, but none of which appear to apply to Obama. In Obama’s case, we would require that he relinquished his nationality “voluntarily” and with “intention” and “after having attained the age of eighteen years.” To my knowledge, none of these apply to Obama, who was back from Indonesia and living in Hawaii by age 10 or so.

The case is submitted.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

We saw on September 11, 2001 what a grave threat is Islamist terror to America. Courageous action by President George W. Bush and the FBI, CIA armed forces of the United States have protected us from that threat flawlessly since then.

Many of us believe that illegal immigration could be a long term existential threat if we don’t control our borders. Maybe even more of us see cultural decline as an even more grave threat.

This past September we saw a paradigm shift in the economy that has quickly raised the specter of a huge decline in the economic well being of America in the short term and the long term.

I agree, but the most grave threat that I see is what is likely to be the government’s response to same if it is allowed to be executed without hearings via a “stimulus” bill that a President Barack Obama could sign soon after his Inauguration from a Congress that convenes two weeks earlier.

Obama’s presumptive Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel confessed that they must take advantage of this crisis as an opportunity to make fundamental changes liberals have desired for decades.

The President-Elect this week said that universal health care reform should be a part of the stimulus bill he signs on Day One.

The massive, $700B Paulson Panic prevention bill has changed the landscape. Now, that figure is used to diminish the impact of smaller government spending proposals that would ordinarily require months of hearings and study.

The major difference, of course, is that banks were hours away from collapse due to the pending unavailability of bank to bank loans, i.e. the equivalent of the power company.

Last I checked, hospitals were in no danger of denying treatment to the distressed.

Nothing is more important for the Republicans in Congress to do, than to limit the stimulus bill to public works and other typical Keynesian proposals that do not enshrine fundamental changes in our government and which take away Liberty from We the People and give it to bureaucrats in government to write the details of our lives.

Remember how effective we can be in defending Liberty when Congress must debate issues in public, like amnesty?

We must make sure we have the chance to weigh in on health care reform and the rest of the fundamental changes Obama wants.

Day One must be limited to balls and executive orders.

The 42 in the Senate must unite.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

Larry Kudlow reports:

Senate sources tell me that any TARP-money allocation might include the very same conditions proposed by Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker in legislation that broke down in a marathon session in the Senate list night.

So folks shouldn’t count their TARP eggs before they’re hatched. And nothing is expected to be announced today.

Read the rest at The Corner.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report

The $15B Bush-Democrat Car Csar bridge bailout loan bill failed last night in the U.S. Senate.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said he will not allow a vote on the Corker Amendment bill that would condition a bridge loan to the Big Three on their autoworkers agreeing to compensation equal to that of other American auto workers for companies not seeking money from the taxpayers.

Reports are that the UAW ordered democrats to reject that bill.

So, it appears that they may have to settle for FDR’s New Deal bailout that the rest of us non-UAW workers have been content with since 1935, i.e. unemployment compensation.

Welcome to our world. Welcome to the safety net for the truly needy that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt built and that Reagan endorsed in the 1980s.

Happy UAW?

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

From the diaries. Multiple sources reporting that the bailout officially fell 8 votes short of cloture.

On the Fox News Channel today, Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) essentially endorsed the Corker Amendment while conceding that the current bailout bill did not have the 60 votes required for cloture to end the Republican filibuster of the $15B compromise bill. He suggested that after cloture fails, he would advocate adoption of the Corker Amendment.

Minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) just praised the the junior senator from the Volunteer State for one of the most profound legislative impacts in history.

Six days ago I posted The Corker Challenge on Live Wire which, in pertinent part, stated the following:

Senator Corker (pictured above) of Tennessee has proposed an interesting challenge for GM, which he stated in open session yesterday. He’d like General Motors to agree to a strict set of cost-cutting measures before the end of the first quarter of 2009. If GM fail to meet the objectives, they agree upfront to go bankrupt at the end of March.

What this means is that GM will need to extract a large set of painful concessions from a diverse set of stakeholders, including their bondholders, suppliers, dealers and workers.

Senator Bob Corker’s challenge has won the day, even if rejected.

The Minority Leader:

“Senator Corker has proposed an amendment that would go a long way toward improving this bill. In keeping with the principles I’ve outlined, the Corker Amendment does not just encourage reform, it requires it. And it does so with crucial specificity. First, participating companies would be required to reduce their outstanding debt by at least two-thirds through an equity swap with bondholders.

“The Corker Amendment also requires that labor costs at participating companies be brought on par with companies like Nissan, Toyota, and Honda — not tomorrow but immediately — because it is delusional to think that a company which spends $71 per labor hour could compete with a company in the same industry that spends $49.

“The Corker Amendment would improve the liquidity and cash-flow of automakers by requiring that a portion of the payments made to union accounts consist of company stock.

“And finally, the Corker Amendment would require participating companies to file for Chapter 11 reorganization if any of these conditions aren’t met by a fixed date.

“The Corker Amendment forces necessary reforms, holds companies accountable, and assures taxpayers that these companies won’t be back for more. If legislative action were necessary, the Corker proposal would make many much needed and dramatic improvements to the underlying bill.

“I, like all of my colleagues, want the U.S. auto industry not only to survive but to thrive. And by cutting costs, streamlining production, increasing fuel efficiency, and investing in new technologies and attractive, more competitive designs, American auto companies will once again make cars that people all over the world will want to buy. Then Americans will be able to say again with pride that our cars are the best.

“In addition protecting the taxpayer, this is a goal that Republicans have been fighting hard for in this debate. And in my view, it’s a goal that is well worth our efforts.”

It appears that Democrats will not accept this amendment. That’s too bad.

Senator Corker is a conservative hero. He would not give Detroit a blank check.

Updates to follow. Compromise may still occur.

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer, Examiner.com and Minority Report columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson

Originally published by Mike gamecock DeVine as Legal Editor for The Minority Report under the title: Minority, report for conservative counter-punching crisis duty

The world changed on September 11, 2001. Republicans mostly got it and made GOP electoral history by gaining House and Senate seats in the next two elections. President Bush was re-elected.

Seems so long ago, doesn’t it? This is especially so, since the world changed again on September 6, 2008 when the bailouts of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were announced leading an Election Day triumph that leaves the Democratic Party in control of Congress and the White House with a crisis as cover for “stimuli” enactment of forty year old liberal dreams.

Too many conservatives seem not to get it this time with their knee-jerk objections to any government spending either to stabilize the banking system or put some of the half million unemployed to work on public works projects.

What does this crisis mean for conservatives anxious to re-establish their small government brand after eight years of “compassionate big government” Bush conservatism?

It means that we must adjust our goals and embrace the conservative value of delayed gratification on that issue because the economic crisis is too large to be confronted by small, just say no’s.

For the record, after seven columns analyzing the Paulson Panic Prevention Plan in the 18 days between Fannie Sunday and congressional enactment, I came out against the plan. It was a close call since Republicans did greatly improve the final product and since a failure to act risked a collapse of the financial system. The financial system did not collapse and there are some signs that the plan is starting to work on those clogged new loan arteries, but the jury is still out and probably will be for years as America has hard times for years due to excesses born of an affluent society and many years of bad government policies that have prevented Americans from thriving in a less regulated economic environment.

But the root word of conservatism is “conserve”, and sometimes that requires a big government to fight wars to conserve Liberty and to act to survive economic crises.

Of course, the details matter, whether they are the small details of a public works bill or the huge detail that has relegated Republicans to near powerlessness in Washington, D.C.

Our message and strategy must be tailored to the paradigm shift that is the worst economic crisis since 1929 and our minority status. Clearly, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson have not repeated many of the mistakes made by officials in the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations. They may be making new mistakes of their own as many Democratic Party leaders and the President-Elect are determined to enact their own Smoot-Hawleys and New Deals that caused investors to go on strike for a decade, but those facts do not make a simplistic conservative reactionism electorally viable.

The crisis precludes the small government message for a time, and truth be told, the best we ever did with this message was slow the growth of government. We never devised a saleable plan to actually make government smaller, much less actually reduce it, either under Reagan or Gingrich. Then, we endured President Bush’s massive growth of government for all of the naughts so far.

Now that we are “free” of Bush, we naturally want to re-claim the Republican brand.

Fine, but all branding must now address the crisis. And keep in mind that odds are that the economy will eventually recover, probably before 2012, and we can’t abandon the field for a President Obama and Speaker Pelosi to claim credit.

No, we must seize opportunities to counter-punch with our values as we are seen as part of the problem solving solutions.

On public works, touted by Obama as a jobs program, we can expose the trial lawyer and environmental job killers that have bought the Democratic Party to a crisis inspired attentive public.

When the Democrats refuse to follow up on the expiration of the off-shore oil drilling moratorium, and possibly even re-establish same, we can expose that job killer move to the attentive unemployed.

When Obama seeks to bankrupt the coal industry that electrifies half of America, we can be the champion of his victims.

We must be “yes, and” advocates with respect to much of Obama’s Keynesianism. Fine Mr. President, that’s all well and good, but how about unleashing Americans from the shackles of high taxes and onerous regulations to form small businesses, drill for oil in new areas and build nuclear power plants and oil refineries.

If Obama responds with crocodile tears for saving the planet or snail darters in this crisis, he will accelerate the day he will be a lame duck.

Conservatives have to be smart and attentive to seize opportunities to hold Democrats accountable for their actions and inaction at the behest of the far left that has owned them for four decades.

But we will lose the ear of the American people if all they hear from us is a one-string small government banjo playing a song limited to the lyric of “no”.

We live in a post Fannie world and if we are to save our fannies from perpetual minority status, we must never forget the losses of the 9/10 democrats.
Mike DeVine’s Examiner.com and Charlotte Observer columns

“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson