Great piece by Chris Booker in yesterday’s Telegraph:

Looking back over my columns of the past 12 months, one of their major themes was neatly encapsulated by two recent items from The Daily Telegraph.

The first, on May 21, headed “Climate change threat to Alpine ski resorts” , reported that the entire Alpine “winter sports industry” could soon “grind to a halt for lack of snow”. The second, on December 19, headed “The Alps have best snow conditions in a generation” , reported that this winter’s Alpine snowfalls “look set to beat all records by New Year’s Day”.

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Ever shriller and more frantic has become the insistence of the warmists, cheered on by their army of media groupies such as the BBC, that the last 10 years have been the “hottest in history” and that the North Pole would soon be ice-free – as the poles remain defiantly icebound and those polar bears fail to drown. All those hysterical predictions that we are seeing more droughts and hurricanes than ever before have infuriatingly failed to materialise.

Even the more cautious scientific acolytes of the official orthodoxy now admit that, thanks to “natural factors” such as ocean currents, temperatures have failed to rise as predicted (although they plaintively assure us that this cooling effect is merely “masking the underlying warming trend”, and that the temperature rise will resume worse than ever by the middle of the next decade).

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month’s Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and “environmentalists” gathered to plan next year’s “son of Kyoto” treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for “combating climate change” with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Suddenly it has become rather less appealing that we should divert trillions of dollars, pounds and euros into the fantasy that we could reduce emissions of carbon dioxide by 80 per cent. All those grandiose projects for “emissions trading”, “carbon capture”, building tens of thousands more useless wind turbines, switching vast areas of farmland from producing food to “biofuels”, are being exposed as no more than enormously damaging and futile gestures, costing astronomic sums we no longer possess.

As 2009 dawns, it is time we in Britain faced up to the genuine crisis now fast approaching from the fact that – unless we get on very soon with building enough proper power stations to fill our looming “energy gap” – within a few years our lights will go out and what remains of our economy will judder to a halt. After years of infantile displacement activity, it is high time our politicians – along with those of the EU and President Obama’s US – were brought back with a mighty jolt into contact with the real world.

Matt Lewis points out that Bush’s latest list of 19 pardons leaves off three major names we’re looking for in the waning days of the Bush Presidency.

The two we’re looking for closest, the ones who deserve it, perhaps more than any Presidential Pardon has been deserved in any of our lifetimes, are Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. Ramos and Compean are currently looking at 20 years in prison because (get this) they shot a drug dealer who was shooting at them in a cross border bust gone wrong.

As Matt puts it, this is a “no-brainer.” The case itself is a terrible miscarriage of justice (the drug dealer lived, though its doubtful he deserves to), and puts a damper on our ability to enforce our southern border.

So… as the President pushes out another batch of pardons, the question has to be asked – why not Ramos and Compean? We’re pardoning dead guys who helped Israel become a nation, but not two guys who help protect our own nation? (FYI: I have nothing against pardoning Charles Winters, especially since he’s already moved on to the Great Weapons Depot In The Sky, and since Reagan and Clinton have already pardoned his two fellow smugglers… but I digress.)

Forcing these two agents to spend another Christmas in prison is not justice, and President Bush should be ashamed on this one. Hopefully these two are released before the end of his term, but this does ask the question – what is he waiting for?

As Matt tweets, “If Marc Rich can be pardoned…” I couldn’t agree more.

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The other name we’re waiting for is Scooter Libby. Scooter doesn’t deserve prison either, in my estimation, as we already know he wasn’t the source of the leaks (Richard Armitage was.) Yet, he gets nailed for perjury (on an unrelated matter) and the prosecutor gets his scalp. Libby is less important to me than Ramos and Compean, simply because they were in the line of duty, and Libby is “just” a political appointee. Still, it’d be awfully nice if these three guys got out in time to celebrate a New Year…

Bill Kristol, writing in the Weekly Standard:

Is this smart politics on Obama’s part? Sure. Does it mean Obama has studied the mistakes of his predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton? Probably. Obama may have learned from their examples that, even though everyone says the economic crisis has put social issues on a far back burner, mishandling those issues can severely damage one’s presidency: Recall gays in the military under Clinton and the IRS ruling on Christian schools under Carter…

No conservative should kid himself about what the Obama administration is going to be like. Many of its key policies will be anathema to social conservatives. But social conservatives need to persuade some social moderates, and social undecideds, and social conflicteds, and social uncertains of the reasonableness of conservative concerns, and the sincerity of conservatives’ claims that they seek progress in these areas, not merely conflict. There will be plenty of occasions to draw lines with the Obama administration. For now, it might be a good idea to offer a few olive branches to Obama as well.

And the selection of Rick Warren may turn out to have significance beyond short-term political maneuvering. One can see this from the hysteria on the left and among gay activists. They sense that Obama isn’t willing to sign on to their campaign to delegitimize, to cast out beyond the pale of polite society, anyone who opposes same-sex marriage–and in particular, anyone (like Warren) who supported Proposition 8 in California, the initiative that overturned the California Supreme Court’s legalization of same-sex marriage.

The assault on Prop 8 supporters has been extraordinary in its mean-spiritedness and extremism–but the left knows what it’s doing. The purpose has been to intimidate people with an opposing point of view from defending their position. To be against same-sex marriage, even against the judicial imposition of same-sex marriage, is to be a bigot. As one leftwinger said on CNN, Warren is a “hatemonger” comparable to “the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.” Or, as the Human Rights Campaign’s Brad Luna told Byron York of National Review, dismissing the fact that the benediction will be delivered by the Reverend Joseph Lowery, who is more friendly to gay marriage: “I don’t think any Jewish Americans would feel much comfort in knowing that an anti-Semite is starting the inauguration with an invocation, but we’re going to end it with a rabbi.” So the claim is, opposing same-sex marriage is tantamount to being a racist or an anti-Semite.

Making that charge is at the heart of the agenda of the gay lobby. They don’t want to debate same-sex marriage. They want to demonize its opponents. Ironically, Lowery himself, who is a (somewhat equivocal) supporter of gay marriage, refuses to equate the gay rights and the civil rights movements: “Homosexuals as a people have never been enslaved because of their sexual orientation,” he told the Associated Press. “They may have been scorned; they may have been discriminated against. But they’ve never been enslaved and declared less than human.”

…Conservatives have to be ready to stand up for themselves–and for each other–if and when the left comes at them from the academy, Hollywood, and the media. Obama’s invitation to Rick Warren doesn’t mean his administration won’t put a heavy thumb on the left side of the scale in our cultural conflicts. It doesn’t even mean that organs of the federal government, over which Obama will of course be presiding, won’t try to stifle nonconforming opinions. But the Warren invitation means that one can at least appeal to Obama’s own precedent against suppressing out-of-favor views.

The left senses that the invitation to Rick Warren is a blow to their effort to establish a soft tyranny of “correct” opinion, to enforce society-wide political orthodoxy, on social issues. They’re right. This isn’t the time for conservatives to snipe at Obama’s motives. It’s time to welcome him into the American mainstream, to salute the president-elect’s progress from Reverends Wright to Warren.

Some days politics and theology intersect – and this is one of those days. For those of you who have somehow missed that I’m an Evangelical, this may be a difficult post, but please bear with me – there’s a political twist here, I promise.

In the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, Greece, he writes:

Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.

In other words, people who are defined by their sin do not enter the kingdom of God.

This makes sense in context with another passage, in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.

So here’s the context – for those of us who have become Christians, it is not our sin that defines us any more, but our life in Christ. We are no longer listed under “sinner” (though in our imperfect human nature, we will continue to sin – just less and less as we surrender to Christ and are changed), but we are now listed as “Christian” or more literally – “Christ-follower.” This is borne out in the next few lines of the Corinth letter:

And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God….For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.

In other words, God loves us too much to leave us in the sin we started out in, and He loves us so much He sent His son (whose birth we celebrate at this time of year) to die as a replacement for us, His death the penalty we would have paid if we were to die without that forgiveness. In the process, our identity is changed – from being identified with our sin to being identified with Christ. We are to love the sinner (because we all were there before we were “washed” and “bought with a price”), even as we hate the evil of the sin itself, whether it be murder, theft, extortion or homosexuality, as Paul lists above.

This does get tricky sometimes. In our modern world, Hollywood culture often tries to make these sins feel acceptable – whether the violence of the Godfather or the Sopranos, the adultery of Desperate Housewives or Dallas, or the theft/extortion of Leverage or the Italian Job.

There are Christian leaders who have gotten this issue right – and Rev. Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, California is one of them. Now, I must admit I’ve had my issues with Pastor Rick (I think his “seeker-sensitive” church model waters down the Bible, I think his “40 Days of Purpose” book was a bit thin, and I think he gets off on tangential environmental issues a little too much). But all in all, Rick’s a good guy trying to do his best. Rick is known (among other things) for an outreach to the homosexual community that loves the individual while condemning the sin – because God loves the sinners He came to save from their sins. To love the sin is to hate the sinner – because it condemns them to continue in their sins (and without God).

In that light, Pastor Rick worked hard for the passage of Proposition 8 in California this year, a proposition which reaffirmed a past decision of California’s voters (on DOMA – the Defense of Marriage Act) by constitutionally defining marriage as solely between one man and one woman.

I also think Rick was the best debate moderator in the 2008 Presidential cycle. But I digress…

So, yesterday we learned that President-Elect Barack Obama, continuing his headlong rush towards the middle of the political spectrum, has tapped Pastor Rick to do the invocation at the inaugural. I happen to think this is a good thing – and I pray that Rick Warren is one of the voices the new President will listen to in the coming Administration – especially on the policy issues relating to abortion and homosexuality, which Rick is strong on, as mentioned above.

Not everyone is so happy, though, reports Ben Smith of Politico:

“Your invitation to Reverend Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at your inauguration is a genuine blow to LGBT Americans,” the president of Human Rights Campaign, Joe Solomonese, wrote Obama Wednesday. “[W]e feel a deep level of disrespect when one of architects and promoters of an anti-gay agenda is given the prominence and the pulpit of your historic nomination.”

 

…“It’s a huge mistake,” said California gay rights activist Rick Jacobs, who chairs the state’s Courage Campaign. “He’s really the wrong person to lead the president into office.”

…“His presence on the inauguration stand is a slap in the faces of the millions of GLBT voters who so enthusiastically supported him,” (the editor of the Washington Blade, Kevin) Naff wrote, referring to gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgendered people. “This tone-deafness to our concerns must not be tolerated. We have just endured eight years of endless assaults on our dignity and equality from a president beholden to bigoted conservative Christians. The election was supposed to have ended that era. It appears otherwise.”

The people who have allowed themselves to be defined by their sin (in this case, homosexuality) are lashing out at the one who is defined by Christ. In another of Paul’s letters – this one to the church in Rome – he explains why this is to be expected.

For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.

The logical flow of this section? That those who practice homosexuality do so because of a conscious rejection of God and His natural order. In response to that rejection, God “gives them up to vile passions.” (Note how similar this passage is to the list in the Corinth letter – people defined by their sin rather than defined by their new life in Christ.)

So, it makes sense that the people who define themselves by their sin (“LGBT/GLBT voters”) would lash out at “bigoted conservative Christians” like Rick Warren (who are defined by Christ). It is impossible for people of faith to stay true to God (and His Word) and make those folks happy as long as they remain in opposition to God by choosing to be defined (and defiled) by their sin. (They say “Open minds”, Paul says “Debased minds”; I’m with the Apostle Paul on this one.)

Our choice as Christ-followers then, must be to continue to love them, while standing against their attempts in the culture and government to legitimize their lifestyle of sin, whether redefining marriage or adoption or employment rights or using tax dollars for certain tourism promotions.

So (for the first time) I give kudos to President-Elect Obama for his choice for the inaugural invocation. I fear it will be the last time, but hope it won’t – as I hope and pray that the reasonable (and frankly moderate) voice of Pastor Warren is one that the new President will listen to and hear, as Rev. Billy Graham was (at least in name) to Obama’s Democrat predecessor, Bill Clinton. We pray this with the words of Solomon, the author of Proverbs, in mind:

Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.

President-Elect Obama could do far worse than Pastor Warren, and frankly not much better.

All Scriptures quoted above in New King James Version.

Not too much comment needed on this, other than to say, I think Karl Rove in today’s Wall Street Journal is right on point. Anyone running for RNC (or SCGOP) Chair needs to clip this out and remind themselves of it at regular intervals… Emphasis is mine.

What a difference a month makes. Since November’s election, the GOP is three wins, no losses.

The first win came in Georgia, where Sen. Saxby Chambliss crushed his Democratic opponent by 15 points in a run-off election on Dec. 2. The other wins came in Louisiana congressional races on Saturday. One was in a Republican-leaning district in the state’s northwest corner. Democrats outspent the GOP three to two and still lost. In the other, Republican Anh “Joseph” Cao defeated nine-term Democrat William Jefferson in a district where John McCain received 24% of the vote.

These victories have boosted Republican spirits. So has Sen. Norm Coleman maintaining a narrow lead in the Minnesota recount, leadership elections that injected new blood into the GOP congressional hierarchies, and a positive race (so far) for Republican National Committee chairman. Republican governors emerged from meeting in Miami energized, optimistic and eager for the 38 gubernatorial races in the next two years.

But many challenges lie ahead. Much of the GOP’s work is away from Capitol Hill, governor’s offices and party committees. In recent years, Democrats have done a much better job of tending the networks, initiatives and institutions important to political success. There are at least seven important functions, communications channels or institutions the GOP must launch or strengthen.

First, Republicans need something similar to Democracy Corps, a James Carville and Stan Greenberg creation that uses polls that are made public to help party leaders pick themes likely to resonate with voters and draw attention to the Democratic narrative on issues.

Second, while it’s the responsibility of all, someone must take the lead on training candidates and party leaders and nurturing their focus on ideas. Under its founder, Newt Gingrich, GOPAC once did this. It needs to be revitalized or its original mission taken up by a fresh group.

Third, more than one out of five Americans eligible to vote is unregistered, meaning there are millions of unregistered Republicans. The RNC once used sophisticated “micro-targeting” to develop a list of 291,000 unregistered Texans who voted in the GOP primary or were registered Republicans in the state or community where they last lived. There were 1.3 million more likely Texas Republicans with no primary voting history. The GOP needs to take this nationwide. New ways must be found to encourage party organizations and independent efforts to focus on registration.

Unions and third-party groups spent $194 million on independent ads for Democrats over the past two years, giving them a five-to-two advantage over similar third-party assistance to GOP candidates. This doesn’t include hundreds of millions in unreported expenditures by unions.

So fourth, GOP fund-raisers and allies must create cost-effective independent expenditure groups for House and Senate races, or Republicans will sink under the weight of negative ads, mail, calls and canvassing.

Fifth, there must be a special focus on state legislative races. Legislators elected in 2009 and 2010 will redistrict Congress and themselves in 2011. Today, there are 25 state Senates where either party’s majority is smaller than 10 seats and 21 state Houses where the majority is less than 20 seats. In eight states, legislative control is divided, with one party controlling the Senate and the other the House. State parties and congressional delegations have a vital stake in recruiting, training and funding effective legislative campaigns over the next two years.

Sixth, new media require attention. Younger voters are increasingly getting their information from the Web — twice as many 18-24 year olds get their news online than from newspapers. Political Web 1.0 was about faster and easier communications and Republicans had the advantage. Political Web 2.0 is about networking and Democrats grabbed the lead. The party that figures out where Web 3.0 goes will grab the decisive high ground in high-tech warfare.

Finally, ideas are always the most important currency of politics and never more so than after a party loses. The relationship between GOP policymakers and conservative policy thinkers should be strengthened.

It’s not just conservative think tanks. There are independent scholars, academics, staff in governor’s offices and state legislatures, and knowledgeable people throughout the country who can help make the party’s conservative principles relevant today.

To do this effectively, candidates and party leaders must remember who they need to reach — young voters who tilt Democratic; Hispanics and Catholics; and suburban and exurban families who were bedrock Republicans, but who have become disenchanted with both parties.

The GOP has the right principles to become the majority party again. What it must have are fresh, energetic voices who apply those principles to meeting the needs of American families. And it must put in place the infrastructure that will take that message and amplify it.

Those are challenging tasks — but the last month has reminded us that the GOP remains formidable. The age of Obama may have begun, but so, perhaps, has the GOP comeback.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

When I was SC Communications Director for the Fred Thompson campaign, there were only three journalist blogs worth following in the state – Dan Hoover, David Stanton, and Brad Warthen. Hoover was “let go” last week, Stanton this week; can Warthen be far behind? (They do “go in threes”, y’know…)

In all seriousness, losing Hoover and Stanton (on the heels of the retirement of Lee Bandy) leaves this state with no senior leadership in the journalistic community. The AP’s Jim Davenport now inherits the title of “SC’s best political reporter” (followed by the Young Guns: John O’Connor of The State and Ian Leslie in Beaufort; Jason Spencer in Spartanburg ranks a distant third in that group…); none of those three have the institutional knowledge that Davenport has (or that Hoover, Stanton, and Bandy had, for that matter), but Jim gets lost in the process stories a little too often for my liking (probably because he works for AP – I blame the system not the man – Jim’s a good guy). The new generation of journalists has its work cut out for it, and Jim has his work cut out for him as the new Leader of the SC Pack.

Now, Adam Fogle over at the Palmetto Scoop revels in the blogosphere’s resilience, but misses the point entirely. Political blogs (especially consultant driven outlets like Fogle’s) can never fill the void that honest journalism should have been filling (but largely hasn’t in years) – unbiased, unvarnished truth-telling (and we’ve had it better in SC because of Hoover, Stanton, Davenport and Bandy than the MSM in most states).

On the internet front, FITS comes closest in this state – and anyone who reads that has had too many eyefuls of Chargers cheerleaders and Pam Anderson to consider it a serious, long-term, unbiased news outlet – traffic or no traffic. SCHotline is the state’s Drudge Report – but that’s not reporting stories, that’s collecting stories. I don’t think we’ve seen where an honest internet news outlet can go in this state – but I hope we get the chance soon…

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Note: I’m an opinion writer. I’ve never claimed to be a journalist.

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Speaking of Adam Fogle, he’s tearing up Governor Mark Sanford again today. Adam, you do realize he’s not running for re-election, right? That second term is safely locked away…

Does make you wonder why Adam’s so hung up on the Governor (though at least he’s not as mean-spirited about it as the unhinged (and new leading Indigo Girl) Ross Shealy). I think you could almost hear Adam’s head getting ready to explode when Attorney General McMaster dropped Sanford’s name as potential Presidential material the other day…

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Speaking of Presidential candidates – here’s my early line on the 2012 Republican nomination:

Sanford: 4-1
Jindal: 4-1
Palin: 4-1
Pawlenty: 10-1
Huckabee: 20-1
Romney: 20-1
Giuliani: 25-1
Field: 100-1

It’s got to be a proven, reform-minded, socially and fiscally conservative Beltway outsider with experience as an executive this time, boys and girls; Senators and Congresscritters need not apply. Those who lost in 2008 probably also need not apply, though I’m sure some will try.

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Unsolicited advice for Gov. Huckabee: lose the TV show. All you’re currently providing is an excellent reason to look elsewhere in ’12, as well as taped fodder for future opponents.

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While I’m laying odds, the early line on the 2010 Rep. Governor nomination:

Prohibitive Favorites:
Barrett: 4-1
Bauer: 4-1
McMaster: 4-1

Longshots:
Jimmy Merrill, Tumpy Campbell, Jake Knotts, Dr. Oscar Lovelace, and the long rumored but as yet “unnamed businessman” putting $2M of his own money to build name ID…

Winner to face the survivor of a Rex/Tenenbaum/Jimmy Smith brawl on the D side. Should be a fun cycle to watch.

Chance of Rep hold: 75%

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Not on this list: Bobby Harrell. After last week’s performance (stripping committee assignments from two Lexington County conservatives – Nikki Haley and Nathan Ballentine), he’ll never be able to set foot in Lexington County again and be taken seriously, and certainly not as a candidate for statewide office. Somebody needs to spend the next two years figuring out how to replace the Speaker.

To bring the discussion full circle – when Mark Sanford runs for President, he can point to his relationship with Speaker Harrell as a reason to be supported. The Speaker’s actions this week validate all of the criticism he has taken (by FITS, the Policy Council and elsewhere) for being part of the “Big Government Republican” problem. Just as Palin can say she stood up to the Murkowskis and the Stevens of the world, and Jindal to the corruption of the LA legislature, Sanford will say he stood up to the Bobby Harrells of the world – and voters will get it, because they’re hungry for fiscal sanity – including the kinds of accountability and openness in government that Harrell has now proven himself so firmly deadset against. Honestly, it makes me wonder why Harrell’s ear is so tone-deaf on this issue – he’s a smarter politician than this.

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Of course, if he stays Speaker, he’s still the most powerful man in the State… Mayor of Importantille, indeed…

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Great week for Corrupto-crats. First Dollar Bill Jefferson gets voted out, now Gov Blagojevich gets outed by the US Attorney for “auctioning off the Senate seat”… Nice to know Chicago is the same (cesspool of corruption) town it’s always been.

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So, today is a “Day without a Gay?” (and this impacts my life, how exactly?)

If we’re really, really lucky, the firm of Vierdsen, Lydecker, Mattheus and Prozac takes the day off from blogging… (notverybright having vacated the sphere last month)

…Yeah, I don’t actually think we’re that lucky either…

…though one wonders with unemployment numbers running where they are right now, how many businesses who have people call in homosexual today decide tomorrow is a good day to lay off that particular headache and recruit a more stable workforce from the currently unemployed (and probably more desperate for – and willing to – work). Just sayin’…

Economists say we’ve been in a recession for nearly a year now, and for many this has come as no surprise. South Carolina’s economy, not necessarily one of the most robust in the nation, is more susceptible to dramatic effects of the downturn than most.

Case in point… $625 million in budget cuts.

It has taken nearly 7 years for us to recover from the economic punch of the 2001 recession, and now that we’ve barely gotten back on our feet, we’re taking another blow to our economic gut.

Darla Moore drove home this point earlier this week at a meeting of the Upstate chambers of commerce.

In two studies on South Carolina’s tax structure commissioned by the Palmetto Institute the experts noticed, with regard to previous recessions, that South Carolina’s revenue performed worse than the national average in two of the last three recessions since 1980….

To emphasize the point, Sales Tax Revenue in FY 2001 was $2.7 billion. Seven years later, it is essentially the same. That tells me that the current trend in lagging income and sales tax revenue is likely to be the case for the next several years.

It doesn’t help that two years ago the Legislature passed a tax-swap “reform” package – Act 388 – that essentially made state tax coffers overwhelmingly dependent on the most fluctuating revenue source – sales tax.

Now state leaders in Columbia are prepping for a third round of budget cuts this month. It wouldn’t be surprising if we face a fourth before we end Q1 of 2009.

Darla Moore brings up a valid point in recommending a BRAC-style commission to reform our state’s taxing structure. Hopefully, leaders in Columbia will take her recommendations to heart and realize that piece-mealing a tax system together just won’t work.

Here’s what she had to say…

A few thoughts while I watch the Prez-Elect introduce his new National Security team…

It’s funny (and somewhat encouraging) to me to see how quickly Obama has stuck the knife in the collective back of the Left in his headlong dive towards the middle. Iraq War? Hey, looks like the surge worked and we won – oh, and we’re keeping Defense Secretary Gates. (Interesting, isn’t it? that Democrats two Administrations running have chosen Republicans to run the Defense Department… Even Democrats know you can’t trust Democrats to run the military.)

Hispanics in the cabinet? Probably, but not that pesky Bill Richardson as Secretary of State – we’ll put Hillary in for that one. (That has to be the most stunning stab in the back of the lot – Richardson is the most qualified Democrat to be SecState; he backs Obama over Hillary; Obama thanks him by… overlooking him for Hillary? Wow…)

Overturning don’t ask, don’t tell? Too soon to talk about that… Freedom of Choice Act? Well, we’re not sure there’s a consensus… Undo the Bush tax cuts? Y’know, a recession might not be the best time to do that…

The exhilaration at electing Obama is already wearing off for the left – making this perhaps the first administration whose honeymoon is ending before the inauguration.

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Of course, that’s if there is an inauguration. This pesky birth certificate thing is getting more steam than it should – and now we hear the Supreme Court might hear it this week? A few days before the Electoral College meets? Granted, very little news reporting is going on with this story, so much of what’s going around is by email, (or WorldNetDaily) and of questionable repute. Still – this is a story that just won’t die – even after the reprinted copy of the birth certificate was released by the campaign. (And was immediately attacked as a fake by critics.)

Dan has already posted the link to the Kenyan ambassador’s unbelievable blunder in telling a reporter that Obama’s Kenyan birthplace is already a national attraction, and that Obama’s paternal grandmother insists he was born in Kenya. (Notable – Obama’s maternal grandmother insisted he was born in Hawaii.)

Personally, I still can’t get past the Honolulu Advertiser announcing the birth the next day (August 4, 1961). Many questions still arise (why is the hospital still unknown, why seal the records, where’s the original), and Obama should put this behind him by coming clean about this whole thing. In my own estimation though, the preponderance of the evidence suggests Obama was born in Hawaii, to an American citizen mother, when he says he was, and is therefore Constitutionally allowed to be President.

***

…which may be more than we can say for Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, as it turns out. Pete Williams (NBC analyst, and former State Department spokesman) notes Article One, Section Six from the US Constitution:

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

Since the salary for cabinet secretaries has been increased while Clinton was a Senator, she would be constitutionally barred from serving. Question: do Senators decide not to confirm her over this, or does this one wind up in Court? I’m guessing the latter – the politically expedient thing to do is confirm her “in a spirit of bipartisanship” (blah blah, etc), and let’s face it – the Senate isn’t known for doing things that are anything other than politically expedient. Still – it will be interesting to see this one wind up before the Supremes.

Our friends at Palmetto Family Council just unveiled a new blog for women, by women.

Palmetto Family Life centers on Christian parenting, marriage, family and missions issues. Here’s what Oran Smith had to say in a recent email he sent out…

For our fifteenth anniversary year (2009), Palmetto Family will be introducing a number of new services to our constituents and to the people of South Carolina.

The first of those new initiatives we are launching a little early…today in fact.

Announcing Palmetto Family Life blog.

With the Palmetto Family Life weblog, Palmetto Family is reaching out and connecting with families all across the state in a brand new way.

Palmetto Family Life is written for women, by women.

With a light and engaging tone, Palmetto Family Life covers such topics as Christian parenting, marriage, children, world missions, and even recipes.

The blog will ultimately feature writers of various ages and stages of life, including newlyweds, mothers, singles, and grandmothers. Presently, the blog’s primary writers are Janet Scouten and Hope Lanier.

I am confident that their friendly and refreshing perspectives on life and family in South Carolina will draw you in and you will want to share their perspectives with the women in your life and other friends.

Log on to PalmettoFamilyLife.com today!

The mainstream media have brushed off this story, but it’s one worth telling, especially when the federal government is being asked to bail out auto companies and states.

Gov. Sanford requested a $15 million loan from the federal government because the South Carolina Employment Security Commission ran out of money. But he did it with a gun pointed at his head. The good bureaucrats at ESC didn’t bother to tell the governor about the problem until five days before the deadline for the request, even though they acknowledged discussing the problem with legislators for weeks. That’s playing Russian roulette with the unemployed and it stinks.

Anyway, the governor wrote a blunt letter to the head ESC bureaucrat telling him how much he thinks the agency stinks, and the head bureaucrat responded in kind. Here are the letters so you can judge for yourself who’s right. Just remember: South Carolina’s jobless rate is higher than at any time in 25 years, and the ESC is responsible for making sure all those people get their unemployment checks. Read the letters and tell me if you have confidence in this agency.