Channeling Billy Carter

Essential reading over at Moonbattery.

Glimers of Hope

Yep, the Republic Just Might Survive. From the latest Patriot Post Digest:

Recess? What Recess?

A few House Republicans are holding the fort against Barack Obama's recess appointments this month while the rest of their colleagues are on August recess. According to the Constitution, the president may make unilateral temporary appointments to various agencies when Congress is not in session. However, neither the House nor the Senate may adjourn without the consent of the other chamber. The nine GOP representatives are holding pro-forma sessions every three days, thereby blocking the Senate from adjourning and preventing any Obama appointments. They are freshmen Jeff Landry (LA), Andy Harris (MD), Jeff Duncan (SC), Mick Mulvaney (SC), Jeff Denham (CA), Trey Gowdy (SC), Steve Stivers (OH), Allen West (FL), as well as three-term Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

The most recent benefit of this maneuver has been the House's blocking of Richard Cordray's appointment as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. These Republicans are living up to a promise made by 77 freshmen in June to do whatever was necessary to prevent Obama's ability to make another recess appointment. This procedure isn't new; Obama's two most recent predecessors were also stumped by it. Yet it still didn't stop Bill Clinton from making 139 recess appointments, or George W. Bush from making 171. Obama has made 21 in two-and-a-half years, due in part to the actions of Republicans like the group currently meeting in the House.

Unions Stumble in Wisconsin Recall Elections

Earlier this year, Wisconsin's Republican legislature and GOP Gov. Scott Walker made a series of reforms that took a bite out of public unions' lavish benefits. Predictably, the unions threw a tantrum. First, they spent millions to defeat a conservative justice on the state supreme court to help them win legal challenges. That didn't work, but they also forced several GOP lawmakers into recall elections. Those were held Tuesday, and, for the most part, that didn't work either. Republicans won four out of six elections -- a major blow to the unions and their allies, who once again spent millions to try to buy victory. One of the losing Republicans represented a heavily Democrat district, and the other was plagued by scandal and lost only narrowly. The four victors, however, also represented districts Barack Obama won in 2008.

Round three will be recall elections next Tuesday for two Democrats who fled the state earlier this year in a vain attempt to obstruct Republicans in passing budget legislation. Delusional Democrats are trying to cast Tuesday's outcome as a win, but it's possible that the unions could go 0-for-3 if Democrats lose next week. Who would have thought it possible in Wisconsin, the home of "progressivism"?

For Once They Acted Like They Had A Pair

From the most recent Wes Pruden commentary in the Wash Times:

"For once, the conservatives, both the tea party variety and the mainstream conservatives, didn’t buckle in the face of the media condescension that usually makes girlie men of Republicans in tight places. When girlie men get to Washington and see themselves surrounded on all sides by boogeymen of the left and under constant sniper fire from the pipsqueaks, they usually mistake the noise of pipsqueakery for the voice of the people who sent them to Congress. Buckling under pressure seemed the better part of what passes for valor in these parts."

But wait, there's more:

"President Obama arrived in Washington with schemes and dreams of blowing a bubble big enough to protect everyone from reality, whether they wanted to live in a bubble or not, but he didn’t understand that he was arriving just as the party was coming to its drunken conclusion. While Congress squirmed to an agreement on debt “relief,” trying to scratch as many itches as it could, Mr. Obama hid out at the White House, dreaming his dreamy dreams of ever-grander grandiloquence and desperate to stay out of the line of fire."

And the pure poetry:

"But this time, the Republicans and other conservatives did not flinch, their spines stiffened by courage taken from the teapot. Washington hasn’t seen a panic like this since Beauregard sent the Federal army scrambling back to Washington from Manassas battlefield in the summer of ‘61. This was the change we’ve been hoping for."

Hope and change in a magic tea party pot; Wes Pruden, the Washington Times, 2 August 2011