Riehl World View

License Plate Cameras: Liberals Are Watching You

Of about a million dollars in political donations from Tiburon in 2008, it went to Obama and the other Democrats by almost 8-1. I guess the whole Bush surveillance thing was just a lot of talk, or it's only okay, ... as long as they're doing the watching.

Your presence has been noted.

The posh and picturesque town that juts into San Francisco Bay is poised to do something unprecedented: use cameras to record the license plate number of every vehicle that crosses city limits.

Some residents describe the plan as a commonsense way to thwart thieves, most of whom come from out of town. Others see an electronic border gate and worry that the project will only reinforce Tiburon's image of exclusivity and snootiness.

"I personally don't see too much harm in it, because I have nothing to hide," commodities broker Paul Lambert, 64, said after a trip to Boardwalk Market in downtown Tiburon on a recent afternoon.

Rex Butler: Turning Alleged Rape Victims Into Casualities

It's always nice to know what kind of company people are keeping. Meet the attorney for Levi Johnston and others who have filed ethics complaintsagainst Sarah Palin - link: Rex Butler. Read more about Butler and his PI Tank Jones ... at Conservatives4Palin. Butler appears to be the Al Sharpton of Anchorage in a sense and has been anti-Palin for years.

Sure, it's within the law and he's said to be competent. Sowhat if when he isn't representing people attacking Sarah Palin he makes his money trying to turn alleged 15 year-old rape victims into "casualties" who look like liars, whether they are, nor not? Everyone has to make a living, right?

In 1989, Butler represented one of four young men accused of raping a 15-year-old girl. Then it was discovered that the girl lied about some events during her testimony. Prosecutors offered a mistrial. Butler refused. “I want her to recant before the jury with that same straight face,” Butler said, according to another press account. “And we want to be able to cross-examine her now.”

In the end, one of the four young men went free and the other three pleaded no contest to a minor assault charge each.

“Some cases you can’t win at all,” Butler says now. “You like to take off the head, though, if you can — i.e., the biggest charge — so you’re left with the smaller charges. Sometimes in this business, you can’t win the big one, but you can knock ’em down…

“The rules say you have the right to be zestful and to defend with zeal. To me, defending with zeal means creating casualties. When you can get up there and you can make a person look like they’re lying, it doesn’t matter if they’re truly lying or not. Let’s be real about it. If you can make them look like they’re lying, or even feel like they’re lying, you’re creating casualties. That’s what you have to do sometimes to win.”

As if an alleged teen-aged rape victim probably isn't enough of a casualty already.

Nuclear Realism

Not only do we not need a nuclear weapons free world, we should be building nuclear power plants, as well. Idiot activists. They're just holding America back from energy independence while screaming about that very thing.

Via Donald Douglas.

Why We Need The 2nd Amendment

Because it can happen here?

I never would have believed it, but unfortunately, these days I think it could in some form. It's already a soft tyranny.

Regulation Alert: Yoga Instructors Up In Arms Standing On Heads

Conceive it and the government will regulate, fine and tax it. It isn't like they bother people in airports, or anything. Where have all the Hare Krishnas gone, anyway? Or is it that I haven't been flying as much in recent years? More at Cato at Liberty.

Citing laws that govern vocational schools, like those for hairdressers and truck drivers, regulators have begun to require licenses for yoga schools that train instructors, with all the fees, inspections and paperwork that entails. While confrontations have played out differently in different states, threats of shutdowns and fines have, in some cases, been met with accusations of power grabs and religious infringement — disputes that seem far removed from the meditative world yoga calls to mind.

In April, New York State sent letters to about 80 schools to warn them to suspend teacher training programs immediately or risk fines of up to $50,000 — prompting yogis around the state to join in opposition, and, apparently, to persuade the state to back down.

The conflict started in January when a Virginia official directed regulators from more than a dozen states to an online national registry of schools that teach yoga and, in the words of a Kansas official, earn a “handsome income” in the process…

“If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules,” said Patrick Sweeney, a Wisconsin licensing official, who believes that in 2004 he was the first state official to discover the online registry and use it to begin regulating yoga teaching.

Levi Johnston: Low Life Extraordinaire

Because no one has ever said that before. What an amazing piece of low life trash this Levi Johnston is. This is a guy who is going to take some serious ass whoopings in life before he totally crashes and burns. He'll probably be turning gay tricks on Sunset Boulevard for Crack in three years.

"She had talked about how nice it would be to take some of this money people had been offering us and you know just run with it, say 'forget everything else,'" Johnston said of the one-time GOP vice presidential nominee.

Johnston, who spent time living with the Palin family this past winter before splitting with Bristol, is reportedly seeking to do the very thing he accuses Palin of doing. The high school drop-out, who became famous on the stage of last summer's Republican National Convention, is said to be peddling a book and movie deal.

"It is interesting to learn Levi is working on a piece of fiction while honing his acting skills," Stapleton added in her e-mail.

The GOP Brand And Bush/Palin Hatred

Just a couple of points in follow up to this brief discussion of the future of the GOP brand with Katherine Mangu-Ward and Glenn Reynolds:

Meanwhile, noting the Palin hatred, the Bush hatred and, I suspect, looming Obama hatred, I have a thought on why politics is more polarized than it used to be: It's because people have more at risk. As Jerry Pournelle wrote a while back, "We have always known that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It's worse now, because capture of government is so much more important than it once was. There was a time when there was enough freedom that it hardly mattered which brand of crooks ran government. That has not been true for a long time -- not during most of your lifetimes, and for much of mine -- and it will probably never be true again."

I wonder if those of us who follow media and politics closely don't over read some of the hate meme? For all the supposed hatred of Bush, and Reagan before him, both men did manage to get elected twice to the highest office in the land. I don't believe the average voter follows all this closely enough to come to hate anyone that much. They are more likely to just like, or not like the government they're getting. And right now, there's plenty of reason for concern about DC, including Obama's big changes that will impact people's lives in ways I doubt they understand, or expect.

Also, I agree with Glenn on what the GOP brand should be. True, it may take some time, as it did to set up 1994, as the current faces of the GOP are mostly identified with DC. But there isn't as many of them today as there were thanks to recent losses. To some extent, that should help the GOP in 2010.

New faces and new blood allow a party to at least pretend there's some real change going on. But then, I'd add the Tea Party movement into the mix. Just as citizens are stirred up, hopefully there will be some serious new players on the GOP political side who get the message and will be able to pick up the banner of 1994 - or at least be influenced by that movement to hold it up and be held to it for a time. The banner was dropped, as too many Republicans were in DC for too long. That simply isn't the case, now. To the extent the GOP can brand the Dems as the party of DC every bit as they carve out a new identity for themselves, I suspect they will be positioned pretty well going into 2010.

I'd like to see the party run as a party of small government, individual liberty and fiscal responsibility.

Sarah Palin's Record Of Accomplishment In Office

Via Powerline, who thinks she's running in 2012 but that the resignation will haunt her. Name one of the Republicrats that want to duck her who have accomplished half as much.

Here's some of the things we've done:

We created a petroleum integrity office to oversee safe development. We held the line for Alaskans on Point Thomson - and finally for the first time in decades - they're drilling for oil and gas.

We have AGIA, the gasline project - a massive bi-partisan victory (the vote was 58 to 1!) - also succeeding as intended - protecting Alaskans as our clean natural gas will flow to energize us, and America, through a competitive, pro-private sector project. This is the largest private sector energy project, ever. This is energy independence.

And ACES - another bipartisan effort - is working as intended and industry is publicly acknowledging its success. Our new oil and gas "clear and equitable formula" is so Alaskans will no longer be taken advantage of. ACES incentivizes new exploration and development and jobs that were previously not going to happen with a monopolized North Slope oil basin.

We cleaned up previously accepted unethical actions; we ushered in bi-partisan Ethics Reform.

We also slowed the rate of government growth, we worked with the Legislature to save billions of dollars for the future, and I made no lobbyist friends with my hundreds of millions of dollars in budget vetoes... but living beyond our means today is irresponsible for tomorrow.

We took government out of the dairy business and put it back into private-sector hands - where it should be.

We provided unprecedented support for education initiatives, and with the right leadership, finally filled long-vacant public safety positions. We built a sub-Cabinet on Climate Change and took heat from Outside special interests for our biologically-sound wildlife management for abundance.

We broke ground on the new prison.

And we made common sense conservative choices to eliminate personal luxuries like the jet, the chef, the junkets... the entourage.

And the Lt. Governor and I said "no" to our pay raises.

Top Rate To Over 40%, Millionaires Tax and More

Watch your wallets. Most adults know that when they start talking about taxing the wealthy to pay for health care reform, they invariably end up coming after you. There are several other taxes being considered listed in the article, as well. And that trigger mentioned in the third excerpted graph below is nothing more than a Trojan Horse. They'll pull the trigger as soon as no one is looking. Why not? They're already preparing to shoot us in the back with higher taxes. That's what Democrats have always done and will continue to do. And as the ad states, they have Total Control. 

Much of the revenue burden could fall on a privileged few. The House Ways and Means Committee is close to completing legislation expected to include a surtax of up to 3 percent on households with incomes that exceed $250,000, pushing the top rate over 40 percent, assuming President George W. Bush's 2001 tax cuts are allowed to expire next year as scheduled.

The Senate Finance Committee is weighing a "millionaires' tax," a surcharge on health benefits for top earners and a Medicare tax on capital-gains income. And still on the table is Obama's proposal to limit deductions for wealthy taxpayers.

But the more conservative Senate Finance Committee appears to be settling on a membership-based, cooperative model. Some senior Democrats say the finance and health committee bills could be blended to create a national co-op with a fallback option that triggers the formation of a public plan if private insurers do not offer adequate coverage alternatives.

Republicowards Afraid Of Sarah Palin?

It seems the media just can't get enough of Sarah Palin. When it comes to some of the typical Republicowards, not so much. Credit Blunt, Grassley and I'd imagine other conservative and more principled Republicans on the Hill for not being Scaredy-crats. The irony is that many of these weak-kneed, big government Republicrats are probably less popular than Palin. We really do need to see more primary challenges from Republicans who are serious about less government and fiscal restraint. Or, conservatives need to think about abandoning more and more Republicans who are almost as bad as Democrats. Settling for Democrat-lite isn't going to get it done.

Republicans facing tough elections in 2010 don’t want Sarah Palin campaigning with them.

Though the soon-to-be-former Alaska governor is seen as popular with the conservative grass roots, several Republicans said she’d help them by staying home in Wasilla.

Several of these Republicans hail from districts or states carried in 2008 by President Obama, a frequent target of Palin’s criticism. Republicans must keep these districts and win others where Obama is popular if they are to gain seats next year.

GOP Rep. Lee Terry (Neb.), who squeaked out a victory despite his district’s overwhelming turnout for Obama, said he’d rather have House colleagues campaign for him than Palin.

“There’s others that I would have come in and campaign and most of them would be my colleagues in the House,” Terry said.

Rep. Frank Wolf, a Republican from Northern Virginia, which is increasingly becoming Democratic territory, offered caution when asked whether he’d welcome a Palin fundraiser.

“I don’t generally need people from outside my district to do a fundraiser,” Wolf said.

Several other lawmakers indicated a wariness about accepting help from Palin, but did not want to criticize the GOP’s vice presidential candidate from last year. They said Palin could hurt them by firing up Democrats.

An unnamed GOP lawmaker representing a district that Obama carried in 2008 told The Hill that if Palin came into his district, his opponent would “probably be doing a dance of joy.”