Dan McLaughlin's blog
Posted at 12:05pm on Jun. 26, 2008 Supreme Court Quotes of the Day, Non-Heller Edition (Or: A Good Day For The First Amendment, Too)
By Dan McLaughlin
Justice Alito's opinion this morning in Davis v. FEC won't get as much attention as Heller, and breaks a lot less new ground, simply holding that Congress can't set up one set of contribution-and-expenditure campaign finance rules for everyone and then a second set of rules giving an unequal advantage intended to 'level the playing field' for candidates whose opponents are able to self-finance all or part of their campaigns (the so-called "Millionaires' Amendment," one of the more egregiously incumbent-protective features of McCain-Feingold). The Court's 5-4 majority (you can guess the lineup) didn't tinker with any of the existing and misguided structure of campaign finance regulation that's existed since the 1976 Buckley v. Valeo opinion, as Justice Alito was careful to note that the parties had not asked the Court to reconsider Buckley. Instead, the Court rather pointedly told Congress that if it had made a mess of campaign finance regulation, that's Congress' problem, not the Court's.
Read on . . .
Posted in bcra | campaign finance reform | Justice Alito | Law | mccain-feingold — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 4:34pm on Jun. 13, 2008 Who Said It? No Artificial Timetables For Withdrawal From Iraq.
By Dan McLaughlin
He was against it before he was for it. H/T. This was April 2004. Note that he moved in the direction of calling for precipitous withdrawal just as the Bush Administration was moving in the opposite direction, increasing our active troop presence.
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | Obamafiles — Comments (11) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 8:19pm on Jun. 10, 2008 Tancredo Backs McCain
By Dan McLaughlin
For those of you still suffering heartburn over McCain as the nominee, Tom Tancredo feels your pain, but he's got his priorities in order:
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., has reluctantly come to the conclusion that he will have to vote for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose immigration reform bill Tancredo blasted as amnesty.
Posted in 2008 | John McCain | Sigh. I Guess I'm For McCain. | Tom Tancredo — Comments (8) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:22pm on May 21, 2008 MN-SEN: Stripping The Bark Off Al Franken
By Dan McLaughlin
If you have been thinking of throwing some money towards a GOP Senator who stands a chance of winning a tough election in 2008, you could do worse than contributing to Norm Coleman, who has led by as much as 7 points in an April Rasmussen poll over the odious Al Franken. These three ads from Coleman are a good example of why:
Posted in 2008 | Al Franken | Norm Coleman — Comments (4) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:58pm on May 9, 2008 Barack Obama has already been "Swift-Boated"
By Dan McLaughlin
This was originally posted as a comment to this.
You know, one of the funny things about watching the Democrats is their alternation between fear and bravado about whether Republicans will "Swift Boat" their candidate this time around. Orwell once said that "The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable.'" This is roughly the way the Democrats use the term "Swiftboating" to suggest a political attack of thoroughgoing fraudulence and impropriety concocted out of whole cloth. Never mind that each and every one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth was a combat veteran, including a number of highly decorated veterans; it's casually accepted that they were all liars, knaves and pawns.
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama | John Kerry | Swiftboating — Comments (26) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:52am on May 2, 2008 The Primary Process Works: Revealing Obama's Character in Crisis
By Dan McLaughlin
I was reading over Moe's roundup of the commentary on Obama's belated and disorganized response to the Wright flap, including the specific point that he ended up having to face the response to Wright's National Press Club performance belatedly and alone because his campaign didn't get him the facts quickly enough and doesn't seem to have been able to organize surrogates and supporters to put out a coordinated response. As reader Uma Richie commented:
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 11:11am on Apr. 30, 2008 Second Circuit Dismisses Bloomberg Gun Lawsuit
By Dan McLaughlin
Opinion in Bloomberg v. Beretta U.S.A. here. Basically, the court found that the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is a constitutional exercise of Congress' Commerce power, doesn't violate the 10th Amendment, and bars New York City's lawsuit seeking under state law to enjoin gun manufacturers' lawful firearms sales on the grounds th
Posted in Commerce Clause | Federalism | gun control | Law | Mike Bloomberg — Comments (24) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:13pm on Apr. 22, 2008 You Can't Ask Me That!
By Dan McLaughlin
So the left-blogosphere, mainly the Obama supporters, has erupted in characteristically unbounded fury at the questions asked in Wednesday's debate - the fact that so many were pointed questions, the fact that they were heavily tilted towards recent controversies around Obama, the fact that the first 45 minutes of the debate covered those controversies before moving on to debate the candidates' positions on the issues. Obama himself has whined and complained and moaned about the debate and cancelled the next scheduled debate, leaving in doubt whether there will be any further debates even if this race goes on for another six weeks of voting.
Posted in 2008 | Barack Obama is like Jesus but cooler | Nutroots | Whines and the whining whiners who whine them — Comments (3) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:39pm on Apr. 21, 2008 Kinda Like That "Parallel Public Financing System"
By Dan McLaughlin
The NY Times on the "Millionaires' Amendment" case:
On Tuesday the Supreme Court will hear a legal challenge to the so-called millionaires’ amendment. It should uphold Congress’s modest effort to help candidates who rely on outside contributions to get their messages out to the voters.
Posted in bcra | mccain-feingold | Sigh. I Guess I'm For McCain. | The Courts | The New York Times — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 1:03pm on Apr. 21, 2008 Heads I Win, Tails The Coin Was Loaded
By Dan McLaughlin
As consumer, employee and other groups carefully build momentum in Congress for changes in the nation's arbitration landscape and business groups just as carefully organize their opposition, a new empirical study reports a "disturbing trend" at the state level: state courts vacating many arbitration awards for employees, but not for employers.
Posted in Mandatory Arbitration | The Courts — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 12:51pm on Apr. 14, 2008 My Beliefs, Your Prejudices
By Dan McLaughlin
Mickey Kaus absolutely nails what's so condescending about guys like Obama:
He doesn't patronize everyone equally. Specifically, he regards the views of these Pennsylvanians as epiphenomena--byproducts of economic stagnation--in a way he doesn't regard, say, his own views as epiphenomena.** Once the Pennsylvanians get some jobs back, they'll change and become as enlightened as Obama [and] the San Franciscans to whom he was talking. That's the clear logic of his argument. Superiority of this sort -- not crediting the authenticity and standing of your subject's views -- is a violation of social equality, which is a more important value for Americans than money equality. Liberals tend to lose elections when they forget that.
Posted in 2008 | Mickey Kaus | Obamafiles | Rube-gate — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 10:03am on Apr. 11, 2008 Toxic Bulbs
By Dan McLaughlin
I've thought from the very beginning that the move to outlaw Edison's great invention, the incandescent light bulb, was basically foolhardy and possibly just a ploy to force consumers to buy $7 lightbulbs that (in my experience, at least) don't necessarily last much longer than regular bulbs. But that was before I really started to focus on the extent to which (as discussed here and here) the mercury in the bulbs presents a real health hazard that wasn't previously present in the home, and which - like the now-infamous introduction of MTBE into gasoline (also, at the time, claimed to be an environmental measure) is probably going to end up getting pulled off the market after the plaintiffs' personal injury bar gets done with it.
Posted in CFLs | Energy | Environmentalism | Light Bulbs — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 9:45am on Apr. 11, 2008 So Much For Katie Couric
By Dan McLaughlin
CBS, besides defending a $70 million lawsuit over the dismissal of its last Evening News anchor, is now pondering dumping Katie Couric, who has failed to earn her own $75 million paycheck.
Posted in CBS News | Courage! | Couric | Liberals — Comments (5) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 7:33pm on Apr. 9, 2008 Treating The Homebuyer Like Sheep
By Dan McLaughlin
See, when you have a stack of legal forms in front of you, and a realtor and a seller, and you've put no money down, and you're buying the house at a price twice what it was a few years ago, and you're getting an adjustable rate mortgage where the monthly payments skyrocket after a short period of time, and you have either exaggerated or lied about your income and savings, and/or not provided any documentation to verify them, and you're about to sign the contract, Washington is supposed to jump in and stop you.
Posted in 2008 | Obamafiles — Comments (7) / Email this page » / Read More »
Posted at 5:35pm on Mar. 28, 2008 Department of Bad Photo Ops
By Dan McLaughlin
Whoever set up the President of the United States to look like he has been demoted to working from a cubicle in a phone bank should not have a long career in public relations:
That's from an appearance today in Freehold, NJ, and I seriously had to double-check that these were not satirical photos from The Onion or something. We even got the "Bush tries to feed the cube-dwellers" photo:
Posted in George W. Bush | The White House — Comments (2) / Email this page » / Read More »
