Makes me wonder just how long it has been since someone advised her of the difference between truth and lies:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) insisted on Friday that the Senate health care bill does not allow tax-funding of abortion, and added that she had spoken with “Catholic bishops” about the issue. However, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told CNSNews.com that anyone who had spoken to the bishops about the legislation should know that it does fund abortion and that the bishops oppose the bill.

Dishonesty, thy name is Nancy.

Who is she trying to impress? The folks back home? I doubt that pleasing Catholics is high on the San Francisco agenda. I can only guess that she’s hoping to limit Catholic voter defections in November – as the Church has gotten ever more forthright on the moral duties of politicians who claim to be Catholic, it has become ever harder for such politicians to try and split the moral difference. The days of Ted Kennedy getting away with it for decades are over.

In addition to that, I do wonder why liberals are so determined to insert at least some sort of abortion funding in to ObamaCare? Is the bill not quite unpopular enough? I know the abortion industry lavishes money on the Democrats, but is pleasing them worth angering political moderates who are opposed to federal funding for abortion?

Or, is it that they are just insane? So convinced that they deserve their power and can’t lose it that they just don’t care? I guess time will tell on that.

I don’t know if you are watching the Health Care Reform Summit today…  But, just to show you how much of a sham it is, I’d like to bring up how Obama suggested he cut Republicans “some slack” by allowing  Senator Alexander to apparently go over his allotted time for his opening remarks. Obama said, “Both I and Lamar went a little bit over our original allocated time. I — not wanting to be a hypocrite — wanted to give you some slack.”

Let’s see just how much of a hypocrite Obama is…

Senator Alexander’s opening remarks lasted 13 mins, 10 seconds
Barack Obama’s lasted 14 mins, 36 seconds                        
Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s lasted 7 mins, 57 seconds
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s  lasted 8 mins, 13 seconds

So Democrats’ opening remarks lasted 30 mins, 46 seconds compared to the GOP’s 13 minutes, 10 seconds. Democrats needed more than double the time to grandstand about a bill that the American people don’t want.

For Lamar Alexander’s remarks, see the extended entry: Read the rest of this entry »

ConservativeGal explains:

Budgets do not come from the White House. They come from Congress, and the party that controlled Congress since January 2007 is the Democratic Party. They controlled the budget process for FY 2008 and FY 2009, as well as FY 2010 and FY 2011. In that first year, they had to contend with George Bush, which caused them to compromise on spending, when Bush somewhat belatedly got tough on spending increases. For FY 2009, though, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid bypassed George Bush entirely, passing continuing resolutions to keep government running until Barack Obama could take office. At that time, they passed a massive omnibus spending bill to complete the FY 2009 budgets.

And where was Barack Obama during this time? He was a member of that very Congress that passed all of these massive spending bills, and he signed the omnibus bill as President to complete FY 2009

And, if you didn’t know this already, Obama was still a member of the Senate when Congress passed those spending bills… and ultimately signed the omnibus bill after taking office.

The truth hurts sometimes, and the truth is, Obama voted for and signed into law the current deficit, which he continuous to expand to this very day.

Which, for those of you who are not Catholic, is a recognition that Pelosi has excommunicated herself from the Church – and do note that: its not her being excommunicated, but an acknowledgment of her self-excommunication:

Speaking with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) after the Vigil for Life Mass last week, Lexington Bishop Ronald Gainer said that the Church has been “patient enough” with outspokenly pro-abortion Catholic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

LSN questioned Bishop Gainer on whether Pelosi should be denied communion due to her public stance as a ‘pro-choice’ Catholic. While acknowledging that it was up to her local bishop, the Lexington prelate did say that “something should be done.”

Pelosi’s latest salvo claiming to support abortion and yet be a faithful Catholic came in a December Newsweek interview. “I am a practicing Catholic,” she said, while suggesting that this made the U.S. bishops uncomfortable. “I practically mourn this difference of opinion,” she said regarding her conflict with the Church over abortion, “because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions.” She added: “And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will.”

Reacting to Pelosi’s stance, Bishop Gainer said, “to make these public statements is a betrayal of our Catholic faith and discipline.” The bishop noted that her position was a “contradiction” and stressed that “our Church is clear on what the teachings are regarding the sanctity of life, on the inviolability of human life.”

On the question of denying Pelosi communion for her betrayals, Bishop Gainer said he understood that such actions on the part of the Church are often spun to make a martyr of those denied communion, by falsely painting the Church as being heavy-handed.

Nevertheless, he said, “the bishops have an obligation to stand up for the Church’s teaching and when we have such a broad and public consistent denial of our Church’s moral position it would seem to indicate that we’ve been patient enough and something should be done.”

Everyone should also note that it is, indeed, up to Pelosi’s Bishop to make the call – it must be understood that in spite of what critics believe, the Catholic Church is neither monolithic nor dictatorial. The reason it is left up to the local Bishop in these matters is because it is felt – correctly – that the man on the ground (as it were) will have the best understanding of the totality of the issue. The weakness of the system, of course, is that we some times get Bishops who are unwilling to challenge people who persistently violate Church teaching and yet claim to be Catholic.

If Pelosi is ever denied communion by her Bishop it will, naturally, be spun as her being persecuted by a hidebound Church – but the reality is that just as one doesn’t really get damned by God, one doesn’t really get excommunicated by the Church. Its all in the personal choice – people decide to refuse salvation, people decide to reject the Church. All that anyone else does is recognize the choice having been made.

Pelosi is perfectly free to believe as she wishes – but to be a Catholic requires acceptance of certain, basic beliefs. Its not hard – we are pro-life. From conception until natural death, no one has just cause for taking an innocent life…and even a guilty life should only be taken at extreme need. Pelosi is flat wrong when she claims her views are consistent with Church teaching – and she’s either a bald faced liar, or a complete fool for making such a claim.

We all have our choices to make in life – Pelosi has made hers. We should recognize it.

UPDATE: Pro-lifers massively outnumber pro-abortion people in San Francisco demonstration. Come on, liberals, you can do this – you can reject abortion. I promise that if you do so you can still be in favor of massive spending and you may even continue to think of President Bush as Chimpy McSmirk BusHitler…you’ll only be giving up despair and death.

And his name is John Dennis:

John Dennis, an accomplished businessman and entrepreneur, has been a pro-liberty Republican for a quarter century.

Born in Jersey City, the son of a longshoreman and a city hall clerk, he grew up in one of the city’s toughest public housing projects.

After graduating from Fordham University with a degree in business administration, John co-founded Humanscale, which became one of the world’s top 10 design firms, specializing in office ergonomics.

After a varied career in global development and marketing, John created Foundation Real Estate, a San Francisco-based investment company with domestic and international holdings.

He is the founder of the San Francisco chapter of the Republican Liberty Caucus and currently the head of the Campaign for Liberty San Francisco.

John is a board member of the Republican Liberty Caucus California, has served as an alternate on the San Francisco Republican Central Committee and is a member of the National Rifle Association.

This is certainly the man with the biggest uphill battle in 2010 – just getting the people of San Francisco to even consider a Republican is going to be hard…getting a majority of them to vote GOP…well, all things are possible. The important point: Pelosi will not go unchallenged.

It is up to us GOPers to do what we can for Mr. Dennis – though, of course, if there are other GOPers out there vying for Nancy’s seat, we’d like to hear from them. Any challenge we can mount in these bastions of liberalism means that the liberals will have to spend that much effort and money defending rather than attacking and that, in and of itself, is a good thing.

But, also, you never can tell. Who of us ever thought that Brown would even have a chance in Massachusetts? The people are furious with government – and its not just conservatives and Republicans…its independents and even that part of the left which is actually in favor of liberty (this is a small percentage of the whole – but it is there, and we should reach for it). These are revolutionary times and we should not lock ourselves in to the political boxes of the past.

I wish Mr. Dennis all the luck in the world and if anyone out there had ever thought of running – this is the year to do it. Pick your entrenched Democrat and have at him – it just might work.

As usual:

While Nancy Pelosi is now dodging a request from C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb to open up House-Senate negotiations over the final version of the health-care bill so C-SPAN’s cameras can show them to the public, back in July she pledged she would give the public an “ample amount of time” to read the final bill before brining it to a vote.

At a July 9 press briefing, CNSNews.com’s Nicholas Ballasy asked Pelosi: “Minority Leader Boehner has taken a pledge that he will not vote for a health care bill that he hasn’t read, that he hasn’t had a chance to read in its entirety or until it’s available to the public online for 72 hours. Will you take that pledge–a similar pledge and encourage other members to take it?”

In response, Pelosi did not pledge to post the bill online for 72 hours, but did pledge to give the public “ample time” to get to know the legislation.

Of course, our liberals will find new definitions for “ample” as required. But this is just like Pelosi’s pledge to have the most honest Congress, ever: just another lie, designed to sound good for a news cycle and then on to leftist policy and plundering the people.

Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was demonstrably a racist eugenicist:

The aim of the program was to restrict—many believe exterminate—the black population. Under the pretense of “better health” and “family planning,” Sanger cleverly implemented her plan. What’s more shocking is Sanger’s beguilement of black America’s crème de la crème—those prominent, well educated and well-to-do—into executing her scheme. Some within the black elite saw birth control as a means to attain economic empowerment, elevate the race and garner the respect of whites.

Margaret Sanger, one of the founders of the Malthusian Eugenics movement, thought it a wonderful idea to “do away” with the “undesirables” of society. Unlike Dr. Martin Luther King, who dreamt of the day when little black children and little white children could walk hand in hand, Margaret Sanger (did I mention she was the founder of Planned Parenthood?) dreamed of the day when little white children would be walking hand in hand with each other–with no black children to be found.

And the story in today’s AP looks like Margaret Sanger’s “dream” (to others, a nightmare) is coming ever closer to fruition:

LONDON (AP) – Giving contraceptives to people in developing countries could help fight climate change by slowing population growth, experts said Friday.

More than 200 million women worldwide want contraceptives, but don’t have access to them, according to an editorial published in the British medical journal, Lancet. That results in 76 million unintended pregnancies every year.

If those women had access to free condoms or other birth control methods, that could slow rates of population growth, possibly easing the pressure on the environment, the editors say.

Sounds eerily like…

(Magaret Sanger and fellow eugenicists)… espoused racial supremacy and “purity,” particularly of the “Aryan” race. Eugenicists hoped to purify the bloodlines and improve the race by encouraging the “fit” to reproduce and the “unfit” to restrict their reproduction.

Which, when you think of it, is the liberal elitists’ position on everything. In their mind, their status of being the “enlightened” ones makes them uniquely entitled to the spoils of the world, while the unwashed masses should be happy to live in squalor. While Nancy Pelosi and Algore can have their personal jetliners to jet themselves and their families to points unknown, the rest of the plebian masses can take public transportation. While Rosie O’Donnell can travel with an armed body guard, she seeks to deny the 2nd Amendment right of self-protection to the plebiscite. While Margaret Sanger and her ideological descendants think that they, the enlightened, are entitled to live, the great ‘unwashed masses’ beneath them are a waste of resources and thus are not only expendible, but actually have a duty to curb their numbers.

At any rate, you get the picture.

And the more you look at it, the more the picture begins to look like Dorian Gray.

First, some quotes from the old gal:

“Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he’s not a leader. He’s a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.”

“He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops…”

“They’ll take food out of the mouths of children in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.”

And now:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

Nancy – go jump in a lake.

For giving us this visual:

Reporting dissent is the highest form of patriotism! Is your neighbor suspiciously “well-dressed”? Is he mouthing off about cancer-survival rates under socialized-medical systems while wearing a cravat? Give us his name, and we’ll give you his spats! Just go to flag@whitehouse.gov, not to be confused with flagging@whitehouse.gov, which is the e-mail address for reporting President Obama’s latest approval rating. Go to flay@whitehouse.gov if you’d like Speaker Pelosi to walk across your back as a whip-wielding SS dominatrix barking “Vee haff vays of making you tokk less casually, dummkopf!”

Of course, I’m pretty lousy, myself, for bringing it to more peoples attention. Ah well, the truth must come out about these creeps in government.

And they’ll be sure to buy it:

U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday ramped up her criticism of insurance companies, accusing them of unethical behavior and working to kill a plan to create a new government-run health plan.

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” Pelosi said to reporters…

Meanwhile, Her Majesty has taken – over her career – $311,250.00 from the insurance industry, $176,450.00 from the pharmaceuticals industry, $542,250.00 from “health professionals” (which ain’t all selfless docs and nurses, ya know? A phrase like that covers a multitude of job descriptions…and sins) and $324,369.00 from lobbyists, some substantial part of which is sure to be insurance lobbyists.

She won’t be giving any of this money back.

Liberals will not put two and two together.

She’ll be thumpingly re-elected in 2010.

This is good advice for Nancy Pelosi, who has  changed her story regarding what she knew and was told about “enhanced interrogation” techniques several times. 

Her most recent outrageous claim was that she was misled by the CIA – a claim that CIA director and Obama appointee Leon Panetta outright refuted. 

Well, she has changed her story again, and is now blaming Bush.

 Speaker Nancy Pelosi responded Friday to CIA Director Leon Panetta’s public disagreement with her charge that she was misled by the agency on the use of waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques.

“We all share great respect for the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community who are deeply committed to the safety and security of the American people,” she said in a statement issued by her office. “My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe.

Pathetic. How can someone keep changing their story and expect to be taken seriously?

Newsbusters usefully notes that long before it became the contentious issue of May of 2009, news reports were indicating – quite calmly and with no heated Pelosian denials – that Pelosi and others were, indeed, briefed on the CIA’s interrogations:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers’ recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”

That was from December of 2007. So, why are we talking about it, now? Because the left was trying to gin up war crimes trials against President Bush and his Administration – our side fought back by pointing out the rank hypocrisy of people like Pelosi on the issue and then Pelosi went and lied about what she knew and when she knew it. The whole fracas is the fault of the left and Pelosi’s routine dishonesty in her political actions. Had the left not been determined to “keep hate alive” vis a vis the Bush Administration had not Pelosi’s default position been to be dishonest, none of this would have ever been an issue.

Ah, what tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive…

The story:

CIA Director Leon Panetta challenged House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s accusations that the agency lied to her, writing a memo to his agents saying she received nothing but the truth.

Panetta said that “ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”

Pelosi (D-Calif.) infuriated Republicans this week when she said in a news conference that she was “misled” by CIA officials during a briefing in 2002 about whether the U.S. was waterboarding alleged terrorist detainees.

Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,’” according to CIA records.

“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

I’m glad that Panetta came to the defense of his troops on this – as I said when his appointment was announced, he is one of the few adults in the ranks of the Democrat leadership and he’s earned the gratitude of all Americans. It becomes ever more clear that Pelosi is caught in a trap of her own making – had she just told the truth from the beginning (ie, “I was ok with it back then, but I’ve changed my mind) then she wouldn’t have any trouble. But hatred of President Bush and pandering to the kook left outweighed any sense of honor on Pelosi’s part – Pelosi and Co wanted some sort of war crimes tribunal for President Bush and they could only sustain such insanity by pretending they weren’t living in America in 2002 and 2003 (you know, back when Democrats were attempting to out war-hawk the GOP).

It is clear that Pelosi must resign for the good of the nation – much as I’d like her to stick around as a millstone ’round the necks of Democrats it doesn’t serve America’s interests to have someone like Pelosi in charge of the people’s House.

UPDATE: Legal Insurrection asserts, correctly, that seeing as Pelosi has accused the CIA of criminal acts, its time for her to put up, or shut up.

And hopes that if she piles up the poop high enough, people will pay attention to the pile of poop rather than the lie at the bottom of it:

Under strong attack from Republicans, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA and Bush administration of misleading her about waterboarding detainees in the war on terror and sharply rebutted claims she was complicit in the method’s use.

“To the contrary … we were told explicitly that waterboarding was not being used,” she told reporters, referring to a formal CIA briefing she received in the fall of 2002.

Pelosi said she subsequently learned that other lawmakers were told several months later by the CIA about the use of waterboarding.

“I wasn’t briefed, I was informed that somebody else had been briefed about it,” she said.

Everyone else in the room remembers being advised about the waterboarding…Nancy says she was advised that waterboarding wasn’t happening. Ok, Nance – lets declassify the briefing and see what was said. If you are to accuse President Bush and the CIA of deliberately misleading a second-rank backbencher presumptively so that they could play “gotcha” 7 years later, then lets see the proof.

Are Democrats getting ready to eat one of their own?

The House majority leader reluctantly agreed Tuesday that congressional hearings should investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assertion that she wasn’t informed, more than six years ago, that harsh interrogation methods were used on an al-Qaida leader.

Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., called Republican challenges to Pelosi’s assertion a diversion from the real question of whether the Bush administration tortured terrorist suspects. Nonetheless, he acknowledged the controversy should be resolved.

Hoyer, of course, wants Pelosi’s job and the best way to get it is to force Pelosi to resign…and so calling for an investigation which everyone knows will show Pelosi is a liar is a good way to secure that. Also, Democrats are worried that in 2010 all the GOP will have to do to win swing districts is hang a picture of Pelosi next to the Democrat. Remember, the most important thing to a liberal Democrat is to hold on to office…anything which risks having a Democrat lose his place at the trough is living on borrowed time.

Well, ok, so that isn’t a direct quote – but its close:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted Friday that she was briefed only once about the “enhanced” interrogation techniques being used on terrorism suspects and that she was assured by lawyers with the CIA and the Department of Justice that the methods were legal.

Pelosi issued a statement after CIA records released this week showed that Pelosi was briefed in September 2002 on the interrogation methods. The briefings memo appeared to contradict the speaker’s claims that she was never told that waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation methods were being used.

Iowahawk translates from the liberalese:

…After a thorough review of these notes, it appears I was unaware this meeting was with the Central Intelligence Agency. Instead I was under the impression that it was a coffee chat with Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, an important constituent group from my home district. In their description of waterboarding, fuzzy caterpillars, etc., I simply assumed they were speaking of new Castro District trends in sexual foreplay. Had I known the real truth — that they were describing the grim tools of a sadistic torture regime beyond the worst imaginings of Mengele himself — I would have vigorously objected, and would have never cheerfully told my briefers, “play safely!”…

When will you liberals call for Pelosi to resign? From cripes sake, you were after DeLay’s blood for far less than this…

From Paul Kane at the Washington Post:

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used. 

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

It is pretty sad isn’t it? That Democrats are so desperate to appease their liberal base that they will publicly oppose methods of interrogation that have kept our country safe and without another terrorist attack? Why would anyone want to placate a group of people who care more about terrorists than the lives of Americans?

More news from the most ethical Congress, ever:

Democracy 21 and other good-government groups are expected to ask the House ethics committee next week for an investigation into lawmakers with close ties to defunct lobbying firm PMA Group, Democracy 21 President Fred Wertheimer said on Friday.

The request will seek a probe into whether the millions of dollars in campaign contributions the firm generated for favored Members of Congress influenced the tens of millions of dollars in earmarks those lawmakers secured for PMA clients.

Outside groups are barred from filing complaints with the ethics committee, but the panel can initiate probes on its own and the request is sure to pile political pressure on an already strained House Democratic leadership team.

Democratic leaders have remained in a defensive crouch in the wake of reports that federal investigators are probing the earmark empire of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), the defense-spending chief in the House and a close confidant of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

But that position is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Since news broke in February that federal agents raided the offices of the PMA Group and the home of its founder, former House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense aide Paul Magliocchetti, Rep. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) has kept the issue front and center by calling votes on whether to force an ethics probe. His first attempt gathered 17 votes from the majority party, but Democratic defections on subsequent votes have mounted, reaching 27 on his seventh and latest attempt before the spring recess.

Remember back in 2006 how Her Majesty, Nancy I and her Democrats were running against an alleged GOP “culture of corruption”? Well, that wasn’t really the case, now was it? I mean, if we’ve got a Speaker so divorced from morality that she’ll claim to be shocked about interrogation techniques she was briefed about years ago, just where would she draw the line? Certainly not a Murtha’s various scandals.

It is good to keep in mind that one of the things Matt and I discovered about Nancy Pelosi is that she learned very early on that political corruption pays. In the very first campaign she was involved in, she illegally failed to report some printing work by a union as an in-kind donation – the work was worth something like $90,000; the fine for not reporting the work was $7,000. Nancy was $83,000 to the good and she’s never looked back (and you can read all about her in Caucus of Corruption). She got into politics to be a mean, bitter attack-dog against Republicans; she rose in politics via corruption (including the use of illegal PACs to engineer her rise to Minority Leader after the 2002 elections) and she runs the House just as one would expect a corrupt, partisan hack would.

We’ll have to see if anything comes of this – no one thought the House “check kiting” scandal would lead to much. Certainly, the Democrats never did, but it played a large role in their defeat in 1994. Pelosi can’t clean house – she’d have to start with herself. So, look for Democrats to attempt to smear GOPers and just confuse the issue any way they can in hopes of turning people off to politics…make it seem, that is, like both Democrats and Republicans are hip deep in this stuff and hope that independents sit 2010 out in a “pox on both your houses” fit. Our job is to keep it front and center – not because it helps the GOP, but because until Democrats are held to account, we’ll never get politics cleaned up.

The GOP house has been cleaned up – our corrupt members are gone and we’ve learned our lesson, at least for a while. It is time for Democrats to learn theirs.

The news story:

House Republicans, who put Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on her heels as they voted unanimously to reject the economic stimulus bill two months ago, are now pointing fingers.

The unity of the GOP Conference was strong when all Republicans voted, on two separate occasions, to oppose the stimulus championed by President Obama, who had approval ratings in the 60s at the time. While many Democrats touted the passage of the stimulus, they privately acknowledged that the extent of the Republican opposition surprised them. But that harmony has been fractured, days before a special election in New York that some Republicans characterize as a must-win.

Some of the differences appeared Thursday over how they handled the rolling out of a much anticipated budget alternative, “The Republican Road to Recovery.”

Standing before television cameras, Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) and other members — including the top Republican on the Budget Committee Paul Ryan (Wis.) — couldn’t answer specific questions about their spending plan.

After weeks of promising a comprehensive alternative to the president’s budget that Republicans have painted as excessive, bloated and wasteful, Boehner was unable to provide specific information about their proposal.

His colleagues were unable to answer line-items questions as well. Boehner dismissed those details as “just a bunch of numbers.”

Even though aides insist that GOP leaders had no intention of releasing their full budget substitute, the press event was a public relations disaster.

“It looked like a disorganized blunder,” one GOP aide said. “It’s the worst messaging snafu at a time when the party can’t afford one.”

I’ll have to go along with the “blunder” judgment on this – I heard one House GOPer try to defend the lack of detail on the Laura Ingraham show and it was a very pathetic performance by a Congressman who is clearly a conservative and a smart man who yet came out and tried to pull a political fast one. You can’t do this, House GOP – you have to put out alternate plans in detail and let the American people know where we wish to lead them. While opposition to Obamunism will carry us a long way – especially as the economy craters – the only path back to power is the path of ideas, and ideals. You’re not fooling anyone, House GOP – well, you could make a stab at fooling Democrats, but the key to victory for us isn’t fooled Democrats (that is a requirement for Democrats to win, not us) but an energized GOP base. And that only comes when there’s a clear plan.

Additionally, we can’t have plans which are just recycled plans of the past – the American people do, indeed, want change. They voted Obama into office pretty much on the strength of change in spite of clear doubts about Obama’s ability pre-election. Obama is now going forward with a massive increase in the corrupt and unworkable status-quo and therein lies our great opportunity: As Obama flounders around with socialism, we have a chance to revamp conservative economic ideas for the 21st century. We’ve won the tax battle and we’ve won the wasteful spending battle – no American politician outside the precincts of the kookiest of kook left will campaign on a promise to raise taxes and massively increase spending (hard as it is to recall, Obama ran as a fiscally responsible tax-cutter). Now we need to change the argument to what sort of America do the American people wish to have.

Obama has his vision for America – massive government, atrophied individual liberty. What do we want? I’ll tell you one thing, fellow conservatives, if we go out there and merely campaign on low taxes, spending cuts and a defense of capitalism, we’re going to lose the debate. To be sure, we still may do quite well in 2010 in an anti-Obama backlash…but if we want the real power to change things, we’re doing to need to be elected for something and not just against some one. What do we want? That is the vital question and we must answer it – the House GOP had a fantastic opportunity to answer it, and blew it.

Fortunately, Obama is almost certain to give us many more chances to make a case for a new, conservative program for America. All we need to do is craft it – and this will take some gigantic steps out of the box. I’ve got some ideas brewing in the brain, and I’ll start to share them over the next couple weeks. But here’s a chance for any GOPer with a mind to do so to start thinking – what do we want?

The way we answer that question will in a large sense determine the course of American history for the next 50 years. Well answered, we’ll win power and be able to change America – badly answered, and Obama’s socialism will be our fate.

Not much hope of a turn around, but with Christ all things are possible:

Benedict XVI is urging legislators to uphold the sanctity of human life according to Church teaching, he affirmed in an meeting with U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Pope received Nancy Pelosi and her entourage briefly today after the general audience, reported a Vatican communiqué.

He “took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural moral law and the Church’s consistent teaching on the dignity of human life from conception to natural death,” the Vatican reported afterward.

The Pontiff added that these teachings “enjoin all Catholics, and especially legislators, jurists and those responsible for the common good of society, to work in cooperation with all men and women of good will in creating a just system of laws capable of protecting human life at all stages of its development.”

Pelosi, naturally, didn’t take the hint – rather than addressing her pro-abortion fanaticism, she opted for lauding the Pope for being a leader on global warming. An issue I was unaware the Pope was leading on. From what I can tell, and pardon me if I haven’t been paying attention, the Pope has been rather on and on about life, morality, human solidarity and such…haven’t heard a lot of pontifical statements on greenhouse gasses.

Be that as it may…

The day of reckoning is coming for American Catholics who presume to have it both ways – be liberal on social issues and remain Catholic. Really, there is no way to reconcile the two. One can be in favor of massive – event socialist – levels of welfare spending and remain a good Catholic, but one can’t be in favor of liberal abortion laws, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, etc, etc, etc and remain a good Catholic. The Pope and other Church leaders are repeating loud and clear the message that a Catholic in the public square must advance Church teaching on the crucial issue of Life, or cease to claim the name of Catholic. Push will come to shove in the next few years, and the Pelosis, Bidens, Kennedys and Kerrys will have a choice to make – renounce their Catholicism, or renounce their culture of death actions.

I do wonder how it will come out – whether our erring brothers and sisters will repent, or whether they attempt to split off and form some sort of “American Catholic Church” where they’ll pretend to be Catholic and then make trouble for the actual Catholic Church in law and regulation? Time will tell.