I’m seeing some real panicked shouting online about CISPA, a new bill that some are calling “the new SOPA.” It’s absurd. The bill may not be perfect. It could have flaws. But the argument being hammered against CISPA again and again is that it may be used against copyright infringers who abuse networks. So? The only reason to oppose that is if you wish to destroy copyright property rights entirely, as the radicals do.

I warned about this way back during the SOPA debate. I predicted that the left side of the anti-SOPA coalition would try to hijack the movement into a general one against copyright, as the anarchists over there tend to do, and the shrieking over CISPA is proving me right. CISPA is not a bundle of mandates. It is an avenue to information sharing. Note that everything in CISPA is “totally voluntary,” per The Hill.

If someone and disprove that, and point to one or more mandates in CISPA, I’d like to know. Until then, the burden of proof is on the radicals to prove they’re not really out to protect Anontards and copyright infringers.

For now, it’s looking like CISPA is a solid response to The plans by the President and Democrats to expand government online, by regulating the Internet. Double regulating in fact, as every ‘critical’ industry is already regulated. So this whole “critical infrastructure” thing is more pretext than anything

Speaking of copyright, Adam Theirer suggests a parallel between copyright over-regulation and privacy over-regulation. I can see what he’s getting at, but there is one key difference between the two: copyright is a Constitutionally-enshrined principle. The nebulous concept of privacy, which in practice often amounts to buyer’s remorse of people who give away their information in exchange for free services, but then regret it, is not.

That said, when Obama talks about a huge new Privacy regulatory scheme, I worry. FCC is already grabbing power online through Net Neutrality. The administration and Lieberman-Collins are trying to bring DHS online. Now Obama wants FTC online, too?

Remember that “retransmission consent” scuffle between Jim DeMint and the ACU? DeMint is supporting a bill that would deregulate the process by which cable companies negotiate to retransmit over the air broadcasts. Here’s a defense of ACU’s position. I would suggest that we remember the fundamental reason for retransmission consent rules: a desire to have government protect over the air broadcasters from being stepped around by cable companies. All local broadcasters have to do in order to keep their feeds from being swiped entirely, is to include copyrighted content that would be illegal to be rebroadcast.

So that’s not the fear. The fear is that cable companies will negotiate directly copyright holders to rebroadcast the specific works, without keeping the Local News at 11, shutting out the local broadcaster entirely. The fear is an open market and free wheeling competition. So I support the DeMint plan. Defang the FCC.

So let’s have some more FCC: Bloomberg apparently wants Cable Neturality against Comcast, demanding government regulation of channel lineups. Give me a break. I don’t want Nanny FCC dictating channel numbers.

FCC seems to be doing the job of GSA by trying to facilitate potential government contractors. Now why would they do that? Oh right, the Obama GSA is corrupt.

Attention Brian Bilbray, Joe Pitts, and Lindsey Graham: You are allying with John Kerry. Pull up now before it’s too late. Defense came out against the LightSquared plan. FCC ruled against it. The combination of the two seems pretty conclusive, particularly when FCC is obstructing Chuck Grassley on the matter of favoritism in favor of LightSquared.

Trademark Wars: Rosetta Stone goes after Google. I don’t know, if your name is Rosetta Stone, that’s a pretty generic name for translations. There may or not be a legitimate case for calling AdWords shenanigans trademark dilution, but a generic name like Rosetta Stone, based on an actual historical object, seems like a bad case for me.

Jim DeMint sounds skeptical on the matter of a sales tax interstate compact. DeMint suggests that the compact is a way for high tax states to avoid having to compete for jobs, and that the net effect is a tax hike. I think that’s a reasonable position, but I disagree. I think if we reform sales tax in this way, and add careful safeguards to avoid a true national sales tax, this could broaden tax bases and allow states to have simpler tax regimes. Tax simplification has benefits as well, as Ronald Reagan saw in 1986.

It’s on: The Holder DoJ is suing Apple for working with book publishers to try to rig the online book market against Amazon and book purchasers, as buyer and seller tried to rig the market for the agency pricing model to prop prices up higher.

There may be facts that haven’t come out, and the law against this may or may not be good, but as it stands, they sound pretty guilty to me. It doesn’t help that the key information about this seems to have come out in a post-mortem Steve Jobs biography.

Monday night, as promised, we still have some catch up work to do. So let’s start with those Amazon Taxes, those Internet sales taxes of dubious Constitutionality. Colorado’s got tossed in federal court and Illinois’s didn’t raise any money. Obeying the Constitution counts, folks. Pass a true interstate compact through the Congress first.

Also as promised, there’s the matter of the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act. This is the one where ACU has come out against Jim DeMint, and that caught my attention. I have to side with the bill DeMint is sponsoring. I think ACU simply misunderstood what’s at stake here and had good intentions, but the excessive complexity of the regulations defeated them here.

The bill does not let cable providers become free riders, retransmitting others’ streams for free. It just stops the law from trying to dictate the parameters of the negotiations on retransmissions. I see no harm in that, and potentially much good.

Here we go again. Apparently we’re supposed to be unhappy with the CISPA information sharing bill by Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger because it potentially could be used against copyright infringement. And SOPA is invoked against that. SOPA wasn’t defeated because everyone hates copyright. It was a power grab. Take your anti-copyright anarchy battles home, Reddit kiddies. You and your Anontard buddies.

More cybersecurity still: We cannot and must not have DHS start regulating the Internet. Government can’t even secure itself yet and so has no standing to dictate to others. Information sharing in the private sector, without government gatekeepers, is far more useful for protecting our country’s Internet resources. Further, with the irrationality and secrecy of TSA and its regulations, how can we trust them at all?

Going back to SOPA, Comcast was apparently for it, which doesn’t surprise me. Comcast is an ISP particular vulnerable to Bittorrent users flooding the network with high volume copyright infringement dragging down service for everyone.

Is a problem with tech patents, including software patents, that the system isn’t scaling well? Size, not just speed?

Apparently all the fuss over FCC reform, using white spaces as an excuse to oppose all FCC reform out of the Congress, was resolved with white space use marching on. This could be interesting. We’ll have to watch and see how it works, or whether we just get a tragedy of the commons.

An interesting development in the Do Not Track saga: Radicals and businesses are interpreting them differently, but frankly, the interpretation of the radicals is stupid. There already is a way to not be tracked at all, and not just exclude third parties: Disable cookies, dummies. The radical agenda apparently to be promoted by the FTC is out of touch with the actual technologies involved.

Apparently the FTC folks don’t understand that if you don’t want tracked by, say, Amazon’s recommendations, then you simply shouldn’t log into Amazon all the time.

LightSquared may be on the verge of bankruptcy, but Chuck Grassley is still fighting tenaciously for FCC transparency with respect to LightSquared, and is going to maintain his holds on the new FCC appointees. Go Chuck Go!

Here’s a potentially huge deal in the tech/copyright nexus that I hadn’t heard about at all Google is under concerted attack by a number of copyright holders in a move that potentially risks undermining the whole DMCA safe harbor system. Google has taken many steps to curb copyright infringement on YouTube, but they’re being dogpiled upon anyway by firms going after those deep pockets. If being a rich and popular website that gets taken advantage of by copyright infringers is enough to knock down the Safe Harbor, then it seems to me that the entire Safe Harbor system of the DMCA is at risk. That’s not good, as that was a careful balancing of interests in that bill. We cannot let the scales get tilted one way.

If the Youtube case goes too far, new legislation may be needed, and that’s going to be a big old mess. Especially when the MPAA and RIAA interests will inevitably be comingled with legitimate international concerns of Chinese and other foreign firms ignoring US copyrights

While there seem to be a large number of people active on Facebook and other social media swearing they won’t vote for one or another of the candidates if their own choice is not the winner of the GOP presidential primaries, Rick Santorum’s new string of victories will surely make him the top target of the naysayers in the next week.

The Santorum victory in Alabama and Mississippi simply means that, whether it is Santorum or it is another candidate, Mitt Romney’s trouble with the conservatives and the “values voters” isn’t fading or going away.

The pundits and pols continue to echo this myth that to win a GOP presidential primary you “run to the right’ in the primary and then as soon as you have it locked up  you swing “back to the middle” (ie. to the left).

The proponents of this view never suggest this idea to liberal Democrats and that’s funny… they ARE liberal Democrats.

With a few exceptions, the people who buy into this “run to the right, then go left” idea are either liberals or people who do not have an enormous capacity for intellectual discussion, to put it as gently as I can.

So if you swing over to MSNBC TV you get the usual suspects there giving their “advice” to the Republicans, and what are they advising us?

As usual, they say that women don’t like conservatives.  And most especially, they aver, women don’t like Christian conservatives.

They insist that the government has to pay for their contraception or else it diminishes or eliminates their constitutional right to sex before and after and for those who unlike Rachel Maddow are engaged in heterosexual marriage, marriage-sex with your own partner.

Therefore, women have to be against Santorum because he is a Catholic trying to take away their ability to have sex, and their rights to have a healthy life.

This really is the level of discourse on the left, going past the theatre of the absurd..  And it reminds me of what people used to say about Jerry Falwell, the first major “social conservative” or “values voter” leader from over 30 years ago.

Falwell and his “Moral Majority” they said, were (also) trying to tell people how to live their lives, and using the power of the government to make people do what they believe is right.

Like the Taliban terrorists, which the Rachel Maddows of MSNBC and the hate-sites of the left always love to say, the Christian rightwingers or “wingnuts” as MSNBC’s Christopher Matthews likes to call us, are on a fresh new campaign to steal away all of our rights, trash the Constitution and impose our religion on everybody and run the government and everybody’s lives.

The liberal left and their witting and unwitting allies within our GOP and conservative ranks continue to say that only a more reasonable “moderate” like Mitt Romney has a chance to beat Barack Obama.

I wonder: who are the people with a handicapped ability to reason, who think this repeated argument that the left has made forever and ever, is one we should listen to?

Of course many of the people supposedly within our ranks, actually hate all Republicans and conservatives who they view as “neocons” and apologists for the liberal Republicans.

These are the people who have within their ranks the Ronald Reagan haters, and those people who love to repeat that mantra “there’s no difference” between GOP and Democrats they are all the same.

While these anti-GOP advocates get a serious hearing from people who are frustrated with how things have gone for our cause in Washington, there are a few of us who know how absurd this “Dem-GOP the same” argument is – which don’t forget goes all the way back to the 1968 “not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two parties.

I’ve yet to hear a good answer from these anti-conservative, anti-GOP partisans, as to which political party has 19 U.S. Senators with a 0% rating from the American Conservative Union, and which party has 9 U.S. Senators with a 100% rating last year – and why wouldn’t we want to switch that around so there’s twice as many 100% conservatives as there are 0% conservatives?

And which party has a Marco Rubbio, a Jim DeMint and a Jim Inhoffe in the Senate?

Which party has an Al Franken, Harry Reid and a Chuck Schumer in the Senate?

I do know why some keep saying “I cannot see any difference” between the parties.  They have an anti-GOP, anti-conservative axe to grind.  Or they are a little slow on basic logic and short of essential facts.

And why do so many people – supposedly within our GOP and/or conservative ranks, echo the “party line” of the Huffington Post, Media Matters, the New York Times, Rachel Maddow, Daily KOS and their ilk, claiming that candidates like Rick Santorum are trying to “make” people do anything?

These are the same people, groups and websites who “cannot tell the difference” are most often, the very same people expressing the same visceral hatred of Rick Santorum and setting up strawman arguments against him.

They have the same purpose, the same design, and they are fired up to stop evil – which is to them, those of us who are supporting Rick Santorum or any more conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.

And of course, some of them are the same old liberal-progressive forces within the GOP which we have nicknamed “RINO’s” (Republicans in Name only) like Senator Olympia Snowe.

It is a strange alliance between the RINO’s, the anti-GOP group within the Tea Party and within the GOP, and the liberal-left.

Increasingly, the top target of this group which has been the historical opponent of conservatives within the GOP, is Rick Santorum.

Meanwhile, as Santorum continues to rack up victories against all odds, Newt Gingrich continues his role as Mitt Romney’s best friend, siphoning off enough votes so that even with his 2nd and 3rd place finishes he prevents a “blowout” win for Santorum over Romney again and again, as he did tonight.

I have no doubt that Mitt – and certainly the good people supporting him – means well.

The books and videos of Newt Gingrich – which I have purchased and highly recommend – will continue to sell well because Newt stays in the public eye as a candidate.

But in my view they would continue to sell well because they are masterpieces of wit, logic and fact and very well put together.  Newt doesn’t need to continue as a candidate and as an inadvertent spoiler for Mitt Romney for his books and videos to continue to sell.

But more and more of us are wondering: do his supporters not feel worried that his continued presence in this close contest will enable Mitt Romney to emerge as the winner with less than 40% of the primary votes but a possible majority of delegates?

Many states are like Pennsylvania, where you have a “beauty contest” where you vote for your choice of Presidential nominees, but it is a separate deal who you vote for as the delegates.

That means that Santorum may win a contest but some Ron Paul delegate candidates run a stealth campaign and are elected as convention delegates, who will ignore the election results and vote for Ron Paul.

Others will be people put forward by the GOP establishment who will run and win, and vote for Romney.

That means you cannot expect to defeat Mitt Romney with a bare minimum of delegates.  You need a large number of “not-Romney” delegates.

I believe the only hope for conservatives right now is enough of the Newt Gingrich supporters do what I would be doing if I saw Rick Santorum losing again and again – as a donor and supporter of Rick I’d be writing and begging him to withdraw as Rick Perry graciously did, and endorse a candidate with a better chance of defeating Mitt.

I do believe this question is in the hands of the supporters of Newt Gingrich more than anything.  I pray they will use their influence because I think that is the ONLY way that Newt would withdraw as a candidate and endorse Rick Santorum.

At one time and in two different primaries (going into South Carolina and again going into Florida) I said on my facebook wall that I endorsed and would support Newt Gingrich if I lived there at that time, despite my earlier support for Rick Santorum.

I thought at that time that Newt had the best chance going into both primaries to derail Romney.

A clear majority of self-described conservatives in both states did do that, including a 2-to-1 margin with self-described “values voters” who ignored the earlier endorsement by 2/3 of the Christian-right group leaders meeting in Texas to endorse Rick Santorum.

I hope Gingrich supporters will do the same thing now – switch, do it publicly, write it on your facebook page, post a message here, write to Newt Gingrich, and get behind Rick Santorum to stop Romney.

Not because he is the most stalwart conservative.  Not because he is a Christian.  Not because his track record is so much better than Newt.  Not because you like his ideas better (personally I like Newt’s ideas about colonizing space so go ahead and expel me from the Tea Party).

These views may or may not be yours.  They are irrelevant.

The reason to get behind Santorum is that this is the very best way we have right now to get a better deal than Mitt Romney as our nominee.

I’ll vote for Romney as the nominee if he wins.  I’m delighted Ron Paul has become totally irrelevant to this contest earning less than 5% of the vote, the same that libertarian-anarchists running as pro-drug and anti-war candidates do here in Pennsylvania (yes I like libertarians like John Stossel and many at the CATO Institute despite disagreeing with them on some things).

I’m delighted and thrilled with many of the speeches I’ve heard from both Santorum and from Gingrich and even listening to Mitt Romney is a real treat after several years of President Obama speeches.

But tonight’s victories in Alabama and Mississippi totally demolish the aura of inevitability and of invincibility for Mitt Romney, end any need for anyone to take Ron Paul seriously any longer, eliminate any chance that Newt Gingrich can be a viable candidate, and show that Rick Santorum has the horsepower to seriously challenge Mitt Romney and emerge as the GOP nominee.

I hope enough Gingrich supporters step up to the plate at this critical time and thank Newt Gingrich for his many years of service, for his wonderful work as a candidate for President (well, at least most of the time), and urge him to withdraw, while openly switching to Rick Santorum for President.

And most of all, I pray that conservatives will not let differences over their choice of Presidential nominee block them from cooperating and working together on the host of important issues our country faces in the future.

HanoverHenry is Pat Henry on Facebook, and I’m on the lookout for new friends there, https://www.facebook.com/HanoverHenry

Links to my RED STATE articles at my Facebook NOTES section.  

Update: All 4 amendments were defeated, meaning we won 2 and lost 2. DeMint’s devolution amendment failed 30-67; Stabenow’s green energy pork amendment failed 49-49; DeMint’s repeal of all energy subsidies failed 26-72; the Menendez-Burr handouts for natural gas cars failed 51-47.  We’ll provide links to the roll calls later.  This might seem like a stalemate, but the natural gas subsidies only failed due to the 60-vote threshold.  It is also appalling that only 26 Republicans support the free-market in the energy sector.

Today is D-day for the Senate highway bill and all its amendments.  We must oppose this highway bill, which will raise taxes, engender future bailouts, and preclude much-needed devolution of transportation responsibility to the states.  Before voting on final passage of the bill tonight, the Senate will vote on several other important amendments.  We should support the two DeMint amendments and oppose the other amendments.

• DeMint #1756: At noon today the Senate will vote on DeMint’s amendment to abolish the federal gas tax and devolve transportation spending to the states.  His amendment will only need 51 votes to pass.  This is a seminal vote for conservatives.

After 2:15, the Senate will vote on 20 amendments.  Here are the amendments related to energy subsidies that conservatives must watch carefully.  Each amendment will require 60 votes to pass.

• DeMint #1589: This amendment would repeal all subsidies and tax credits for all energy companies.  This amendment would not only prevent the expired green energy tax credits from being reinstated, it would repeal existing ones as well.  This is one of the most important votes for conservatives.  It will separate the men from the boys.
• Stabenow #1812: This amendment is the antithesis of DeMint’s bill.  Her amendment would extend all of the green energy credits and subsidies, including many of the new provisions enacted in the 2009 Stimulus.
• Menendez-Burr #1782: This amendment would pass the T. Boone Pickens natural gas subsidies.  Boone Pickens’s plan would grant a $4,000 tax credit per car produced by all manufacturers of natural gas vehicles.  It would also give consumers a $7,500 tax credit for purchasing one of these vehicles.  Companies that install commercial fueling stations for these vehicles would be entitled to a $100,000 subsidy per station!

Please call your senators  and kindly request that they support the DeMint amendments and oppose the Stabenow and Menendez amendments -  if they are really sincere about ending corporate welfare.

Finally, let’s urge all senators to vote no on the underlying highway bill.  Democrats admit that they don’t even know how they will pay for the deficit in the Highway Trust Fund (they won’t).  Moreover, by helping Democrats pass the Obama/Boxer stimulus, Senate Republicans will help jam House conservatives by putting them on the hook to pass this terrible bill before the March 31 reauthorization deadline.  Unfortunately, Minority Whip Jon Kyl would only commit to not whipping up votes in support for the bill.  They won’t do the right thing by whipping up opposition to the bill and coalescing around DeMint’s devolution plan.

We’ll keep you posted on the vote tallies and take names at the end of the day.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

Update: All 4 amendments were defeated, meaning we won 2 and lost 2. DeMint’s devolution amendment failed 30-67; Stabenow’s green energy pork amendment failed 49-49; DeMint’s repeal of all energy subsidies failed 26-72; the Menendez-Burr handouts for natural gas cars failed 51-47.  We’ll provide links to the roll calls later.  This might seem like a stalemate, but the natural gas subsidies only failed due to the 60-vote threshold.  It is also appalling that only 26 Republicans support the free-market in the energy sector.

Today is D-day for the Senate highway bill and all its amendments.  We must oppose this highway bill, which will raise taxes, engender future bailouts, and preclude much-needed devolution of transportation responsibility to the states.  Before voting on final passage of the bill tonight, the Senate will vote on several other important amendments.  We should support the two DeMint amendments and oppose the other amendments.

• DeMint #1756: At noon today the Senate will vote on DeMint’s amendment to abolish the federal gas tax and devolve transportation spending to the states.  His amendment will only need 51 votes to pass.  This is a seminal vote for conservatives.

After 2:15, the Senate will vote on 20 amendments.  Here are the amendments related to energy subsidies that conservatives must watch carefully.  Each amendment will require 60 votes to pass.

• DeMint #1589: This amendment would repeal all subsidies and tax credits for all energy companies.  This amendment would not only prevent the expired green energy tax credits from being reinstated, it would repeal existing ones as well.  This is one of the most important votes for conservatives.  It will separate the men from the boys.
• Stabenow #1812: This amendment is the antithesis of DeMint’s bill.  Her amendment would extend all of the green energy credits and subsidies, including many of the new provisions enacted in the 2009 Stimulus.
• Menendez-Burr #1782: This amendment would pass the T. Boone Pickens natural gas subsidies.  Boone Pickens’s plan would grant a $4,000 tax credit per car produced by all manufacturers of natural gas vehicles.  It would also give consumers a $7,500 tax credit for purchasing one of these vehicles.  Companies that install commercial fueling stations for these vehicles would be entitled to a $100,000 subsidy per station!

Please call your senators  and kindly request that they support the DeMint amendments and oppose the Stabenow and Menendez amendments -  if they are really sincere about ending corporate welfare.

Finally, let’s urge all senators to vote no on the underlying highway bill.  Democrats admit that they don’t even know how they will pay for the deficit in the Highway Trust Fund (they won’t).  Moreover, by helping Democrats pass the Obama/Boxer stimulus, Senate Republicans will help jam House conservatives by putting them on the hook to pass this terrible bill before the March 31 reauthorization deadline.  Unfortunately, Minority Whip Jon Kyl would only commit to not whipping up votes in support for the bill.  They won’t do the right thing by whipping up opposition to the bill and coalescing around DeMint’s devolution plan.

We’ll keep you posted on the vote tallies and take names at the end of the day.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

The House is out of session this week. Tthe Senate will be in session to finish work on a bloated two year $109 billion highway bill. 

Big fight this week on judicial nominations with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) expected to file cloture on about seventeen nominees today.

Also, expect a fight when the Senate tries to use a House passed Small-Business bill to pass the big business Export-Import Bank reauthorization bill.

The Senate will spend most of the week on a highway bill, but will commence a fight over the filibuster later in the week.  The Surface Transportation Act, S, 1813, has become an opportunity for for Senators to load up this bill with pet projects over the past week and a half.  Expect this bill to be burdened with items unrelated to transportation before the Senate passes the bill mid week.  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today announced his intention on filing cloture on seventeen judicial nominees.  This will be an attempt by Senate Democrats to paint Senate Republicans as “obstructionists.”  Ironically, this comes in the wake of President Obama’s unconstitutional recess appointments of  Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Richard Griffin, Sharon Block and Terence Flynn to be on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  Republicans probably should be obstructionists in the face of the President’s unconstitutional actions, yet they have rolled over and allowed Reid to confirm nominees at a rapid pace over the past few weeks. 

Cloture is a mechanism to stop a filibuster.  A filibuster is when a Senator, or a couple of Senators, take to the floor to talk long enough to prevent a vote on an nominee.  On these seventeen nominees, there has been no debate and no filibuster.  The seventeen nominees expected to be the subject of Reid’s cloture petitions will be the subject of a Republicans filibuster in the Democrats eyes, even thought there are no Senators on the Senate floor blocking a final vote on any of these nominees.  Don’t believe the false claim that Republicans are filibustering these nominations.

It is also important to note that Democrats engaged in whole scale filibusters in 2005 to block Bush Administration nominees.  There was nothing wrong with that then and there is nothing wrong with conservatives in the Senate slowing the process of approving nominees now.  The President does not have the right to appoint nominees without the “consent” of Senators, unless if the Senate is an an extended recess.  There is nothing wrong with a filibuster and conservatives should not be afraid to use it and it.  Abolishing the filibuster would be unwise for Democrats and some conservatives worry that Reid may be setting the table for a procedural strong arm tactic to abolish the filibuster.

The Export-Import bank may come up in the Senate later this week.  Many conservatives lament the unfair lending processes used by the federally chartered Export-Import Bank.  Erick Erickson wrote on March 5 that this Export-Import Bank is the functional equivalent of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Export-Import Bank is a federal agency whose sole reason for existence is to use your tax dollars to subsidize sales of American manufactured goods to foreign buyers. It is nothing short of corporate welfare, and its business model (providing loans and loan guarantees at below market rates) is virtually identical to that of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In Human Events today, I wrote that “Conservatives Stalk Congress.”  Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio of the House Republican Study Committee and Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina of the Steering Committee are fighting for limited government, free markets, traditional values and a strong national defense.

Today, the RSC is lead by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). The Senate also has a similar group of conservatives who fight the big-government ideas of both parties: the Senate Steering Committee. The Steering Committee was also founded in the early 1970s as a non-partisan place for conservatives to network. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has led the Steering Committee since January 2007.

We need more Jordan’s and DeMint’s in the House and Senate.

The House is out of session this week. Tthe Senate will be in session to finish work on a bloated two year $109 billion highway bill. 

Big fight this week on judicial nominations with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) expected to file cloture on about seventeen nominees today.

Also, expect a fight when the Senate tries to use a House passed Small-Business bill to pass the big business Export-Import Bank reauthorization bill.

The Senate will spend most of the week on a highway bill, but will commence a fight over the filibuster later in the week.  The Surface Transportation Act, S, 1813, has become an opportunity for for Senators to load up this bill with pet projects over the past week and a half.  Expect this bill to be burdened with items unrelated to transportation before the Senate passes the bill mid week.  

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today announced his intention on filing cloture on seventeen judicial nominees.  This will be an attempt by Senate Democrats to paint Senate Republicans as “obstructionists.”  Ironically, this comes in the wake of President Obama’s unconstitutional recess appointments of  Richard Cordray to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Richard Griffin, Sharon Block and Terence Flynn to be on the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).  Republicans probably should be obstructionists in the face of the President’s unconstitutional actions, yet they have rolled over and allowed Reid to confirm nominees at a rapid pace over the past few weeks. 

Cloture is a mechanism to stop a filibuster.  A filibuster is when a Senator, or a couple of Senators, take to the floor to talk long enough to prevent a vote on an nominee.  On these seventeen nominees, there has been no debate and no filibuster.  The seventeen nominees expected to be the subject of Reid’s cloture petitions will be the subject of a Republicans filibuster in the Democrats eyes, even thought there are no Senators on the Senate floor blocking a final vote on any of these nominees.  Don’t believe the false claim that Republicans are filibustering these nominations.

It is also important to note that Democrats engaged in whole scale filibusters in 2005 to block Bush Administration nominees.  There was nothing wrong with that then and there is nothing wrong with conservatives in the Senate slowing the process of approving nominees now.  The President does not have the right to appoint nominees without the “consent” of Senators, unless if the Senate is an an extended recess.  There is nothing wrong with a filibuster and conservatives should not be afraid to use it and it.  Abolishing the filibuster would be unwise for Democrats and some conservatives worry that Reid may be setting the table for a procedural strong arm tactic to abolish the filibuster.

The Export-Import bank may come up in the Senate later this week.  Many conservatives lament the unfair lending processes used by the federally chartered Export-Import Bank.  Erick Erickson wrote on March 5 that this Export-Import Bank is the functional equivalent of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Export-Import Bank is a federal agency whose sole reason for existence is to use your tax dollars to subsidize sales of American manufactured goods to foreign buyers. It is nothing short of corporate welfare, and its business model (providing loans and loan guarantees at below market rates) is virtually identical to that of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In Human Events today, I wrote that “Conservatives Stalk Congress.”  Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio of the House Republican Study Committee and Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina of the Steering Committee are fighting for limited government, free markets, traditional values and a strong national defense.

Today, the RSC is lead by Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). The Senate also has a similar group of conservatives who fight the big-government ideas of both parties: the Senate Steering Committee. The Steering Committee was also founded in the early 1970s as a non-partisan place for conservatives to network. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) has led the Steering Committee since January 2007.

We need more Jordan’s and DeMint’s in the House and Senate.

If I were pressed to offer one anecdote exemplifying our failure to elect consistent conservatives to Congress last November, the story of Senator Jerry Moran and Big Wind would be at the top of the list.

In 2010, then-Congressman Jerry Moran beat former Congressman Todd Tiahrt for the Republican nomination for Senate in Kansas running as a red meat conservative.  He easily won the seat in this solid Republican state and summarily joined the ‘Tea Party Caucus’ in the Senate.  Nothing emblematizes the convictions of the Tea Party more than its fervent opposition to special interest handouts and government interventions in the private sector as a way of picking winners and losers.  Yet, Senator Moran let the cat out of the bag last week that he has absolutely no compunction about picking winners and losers, or in the case of Big Wind, big losers.

Last week, Senator Moran announced that he is submitting an amendment to the terrible Senate highway bill (S.1813) that would extend the 2.2 cent/ per kilowatt-hour Production Tax Credit (PTC) for another 4 years.  This special interest handout to Solar and Wind is slated to expire at the end of the year.  What happened to Moran’s Tea Party views?  Well, he unabashedly threw them under the solar-powered bus:

Asked about opposition to extending the credit expressed by Rep. Mike Pompeo of Wichita, Moran said: “There are members of Congress who feel we ought not to pick winners and losers, to let the markets decided. I believe it’s better to get this industry up and running, then let the country decide… rather than pull the rug out overnight.”

Wow!  At least he’s honest.  I wish we had known that before the election.

The PTC is the corporate version of the Earned Income Credit for green energy.  It is among 51 ‘tax extenders’ that have either expired last December or are slated to expire this December.  The PTC offers a 2.2 cent/per kilowatt-hour refundable credit for wind, solar, or geothermal.  According to the Heritage Foundation, if the oil industry received a commensurate subsidy, they would get a $30 check for every barrel produced.

Headed into the November elections, one of our most potent and popular arguments we have is to paint the Democrats with the Solyndra economy –an economy where the government intervenes to pick winners and losers, at the detriment of consumers and taxpayers.  How can we effectively articulate an alternative free-market vision when we have a member of “the Tea Party Caucus” supporting Obama’s policy of picking losers in the energy sector?  Talk about pale pastels!

Folks, this is not how we win elections.  Moreover, this type of special interest peddling – from energy subsidies to farm welfare – creates dependency in some of the reddest states.  This is not a winning message for the future of conservatism, especially when it emanates from such a Republican state.

There is a better way.  Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) introduced legislation (HR 3308) to sunset all targeted energy tax credits and grants, including those for fossil fuels and nuclear power.  The bill would use the savings from the repeal of these credits (roughly $90 billion over ten years) to lower the corporate tax rate on everyone.  Senator DeMint has introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S.2064).

Every member of Congress who seeks a clean break from a centrally-planned Solyndra economy must cosponsor this bill.  Additionally, as we look for more congressional candidates to endorse, it is these issues – energy and farm subsidies – that will separate the men from the boys.  We must fight this election by offering voters a choice, not an echo.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

If I were pressed to offer one anecdote exemplifying our failure to elect consistent conservatives to Congress last November, the story of Senator Jerry Moran and Big Wind would be at the top of the list.

In 2010, then-Congressman Jerry Moran beat former Congressman Todd Tiahrt for the Republican nomination for Senate in Kansas running as a red meat conservative.  He easily won the seat in this solid Republican state and summarily joined the ‘Tea Party Caucus’ in the Senate.  Nothing emblematizes the convictions of the Tea Party more than its fervent opposition to special interest handouts and government interventions in the private sector as a way of picking winners and losers.  Yet, Senator Moran let the cat out of the bag last week that he has absolutely no compunction about picking winners and losers, or in the case of Big Wind, big losers.

Last week, Senator Moran announced that he is submitting an amendment to the terrible Senate highway bill (S.1813) that would extend the 2.2 cent/ per kilowatt-hour Production Tax Credit (PTC) for another 4 years.  This special interest handout to Solar and Wind is slated to expire at the end of the year.  What happened to Moran’s Tea Party views?  Well, he unabashedly threw them under the solar-powered bus:

Asked about opposition to extending the credit expressed by Rep. Mike Pompeo of Wichita, Moran said: “There are members of Congress who feel we ought not to pick winners and losers, to let the markets decided. I believe it’s better to get this industry up and running, then let the country decide… rather than pull the rug out overnight.”

Wow!  At least he’s honest.  I wish we had known that before the election.

The PTC is the corporate version of the Earned Income Credit for green energy.  It is among 51 ‘tax extenders’ that have either expired last December or are slated to expire this December.  The PTC offers a 2.2 cent/per kilowatt-hour refundable credit for wind, solar, or geothermal.  According to the Heritage Foundation, if the oil industry received a commensurate subsidy, they would get a $30 check for every barrel produced.

Headed into the November elections, one of our most potent and popular arguments we have is to paint the Democrats with the Solyndra economy –an economy where the government intervenes to pick winners and losers, at the detriment of consumers and taxpayers.  How can we effectively articulate an alternative free-market vision when we have a member of “the Tea Party Caucus” supporting Obama’s policy of picking losers in the energy sector?  Talk about pale pastels!

Folks, this is not how we win elections.  Moreover, this type of special interest peddling – from energy subsidies to farm welfare – creates dependency in some of the reddest states.  This is not a winning message for the future of conservatism, especially when it emanates from such a Republican state.

There is a better way.  Congressman Mike Pompeo (R-KS) introduced legislation (HR 3308) to sunset all targeted energy tax credits and grants, including those for fossil fuels and nuclear power.  The bill would use the savings from the repeal of these credits (roughly $90 billion over ten years) to lower the corporate tax rate on everyone.  Senator DeMint has introduced a companion bill in the Senate (S.2064).

Every member of Congress who seeks a clean break from a centrally-planned Solyndra economy must cosponsor this bill.  Additionally, as we look for more congressional candidates to endorse, it is these issues – energy and farm subsidies – that will separate the men from the boys.  We must fight this election by offering voters a choice, not an echo.

Cross-posted from The Madison Project

Right to work issues, mostly.

Moe Lane (crosspost)