Looks more and more like it:

More reports are confirming the Obama administration is preparing for a potential Supreme Court vacancy in the next few months. Reports surfaced weeks ago that pro-abortion Justice John Paul Stevens was considering retiring and today, CNN said more recent reports indicate that as well.

CNN indicates the White house has begun “quiet preparations” for a high court vacant but cautions that top Obama officials have not named any names of potential Supreme Court retirements.

It won’t change the make-up of the court because Obama will just replace one ultra-liberal judicial activist with another, but it will be a great opportunity for we conservatives to clarify issues heading in to November.

What is at stake this November is the vision of American government – a super-State or a democratic republic? Stevens has been legislating liberalism from the bench for decades and we can point out the baleful effects of the decisions he’s authored or concurred in – and then point out the dangers of Obama’s nominee, who will be a carbon-copy of Stevens.

Change we can believe in?

The economy stunk. Corporations slashed jobs. And some firms, once juggernauts of American industry, simply ceased to exist.

But for federal lobbyists, 2009 proved to be a year of riches unlike any other, a Center for Responsive Politics analysis indicates.

In all, federal lobbyists’ clients spent more than $3.47 billion last year, often driven to Washington, D.C.’s power centers and halls of influence by political issues central to the age: health care reform, financial reform, energy policy.

That figure represents a more than 5 percent increase over $3.3 billion worth of federal lobbying recorded in 2008, the previous all-time annual high for lobbying expenditures. And it comes in a year when a recession persisted, the dollar’s value against major foreign currencies declined and joblessness rates increased.

We have the best government money can buy.

Now, don’t get be wrong – we Republicans have been slack about this, too. But, dear Democrats, we are not in charge now and thus this record level of expenditure has been mostly used to buy your party in DC. How’s it feel to be such suckers?

We need a root and branch reform of our government. Of course, the best way to whack a lobbyists is to get the federal government out of our lives. Because the government taxes and regulates so much, we have an army of lobbyists to ensure that the favored don’t feel the pain.

But on top of getting government out, we have to carefully investigate all that has gone on – and send to jail all of those who sold their position, as well as all those who sought to buy someone’s position. Only the harshest measures will allow us to clean up our government.

Very good news:

A flying Boeing 747 jumbo jet equipped with a massive laser gun shot down a Scud-like missile over the Pacific late Thursday night, marking what analysts said was a major milestone in the development of the nation’s missile defense system.

The test shoot-down at 8:44 p.m. over a military test range near Point Mugu is expected to renew debate over spending billions of dollars for a system that seemed so far behind schedule that the Pentagon decided to significantly curtail its budget last year. The test, which the Pentagon described as a success, could be a major boon to Southern California, where much of the high-tech system has been developed and tested.

“Proving this technology is game-changing,” said Loren Thompson, a military policy analyst for the Lexington Institute, a think tank in Arlington, Va. “The program’s funding has been hanging on by a thread. A successful shoot-down of a ballistic missile will demonstrate to Capitol Hill that the airborne laser has potential.”

To translate from the MSM-ese: Obama and his liberals are gleefully gutting SDI because they are just plain and simple ignorant about it. They think in terms of the leftist slanders of “Ronald RayGun” from the 1980’s rather than in reality. Meanwhile, we desperately need this program in an increasingly dangerous world and smart people at Defense know this.

So, we get this successful test in an election year and the hope is that some Democrats – desperate to save their political hides – will vote for funding of SDI and that Obama will just sign it because its easier than opposing it. The United States gets defended by happy accident of Democrats wanting to get re-elected. Its a sad way to conduct affairs, but as long as Democrats are in charge, we’ll have to use such tricks to get anything worthwhile done.

Michael Yon brings to our attention this case:

TUSR has followed this case since its inception, and, based on available facts, we have openly advocated for redress for the captain. Bjork will face trial on murder charges. Bjork’s sister Erica sums the situation up: “[C]arl was sent back to the States and was told that he was under investigation for a double murder that occurred during his 2006-2007 deployment in Hit, Al Anbar Province, Iraq. His accusers, who are the only witnesses/evidence in this alleged crime, are four disgraced former Iraqi police who are imprisoned for the murder of two Iraqi civilians – believed to be Iraqi al queda.[sic]”

According to Erica, the captain was not present at the alleged murder—“He simply trained the Iraqi police as part of his duty.”

Not much is really known, apart from that. We do know those who grew up with or fought with Bjork hold him in the highest regard. A Facebook group formed to support Bjork has grown to 7, 983 members.

It is absurd the lengths the military lawyers will go to in their quest to seem so ultra-fair to the enemy. Its a war – in war, bad things happen. To take the word of a couple non-US personnel and use it to gin up a murder charge against a US soldier who was risking his life in a combat zone is just insanity. Our troops are not war criminals no matter how much the American and global left wants to pretend otherwise – massive benefit of the doubt should always be given to our men and women of the armed forces and only with the most clear and compelling evidence of wrongdoing should an investigation be launched.

As the linked article goes on to note, this case seems to revolve around an Iraqi officer who once did good things but then strayed off the path and got himself in trouble with the Iraqi government over corruption and other charges – and seems to be trying to lay blame on Bjork for some of his misdeeds. A confused situation coming out of confused military situation – not the place for cut and dried things such as murder charges, even if Bjork had been present at the murders, which appears not to be the case.

Anways, there is a defense fund set up and I hope that everyone will kick in a bit – and it is high time we started treating our soldiers as the heroes they are, and stopped giving official weight to every stupid accusation leveled against them.

From Victor Davis Hanson:

…We inherited a wonderful infrastructure from our parents. A superb system of politics and economics was likewise given to us at birth. Many of us try to copy our grandparents and parents whose values and work ethic we increasingly eulogize. But against all that is that Roman notion of luxus, untold wealth and leisure that we see juxtaposed with shrill cries and accusations that we are too poor, exploited, and in need of someone else’s income. The wealthier we become, the louder and angrier we become that we are not even more wealthy.

In short, what ruined Rome in the West? Lots of things. But clearly the pernicious effects of affluence and laxity warped Roman sensibility and created a culture of entitlement that was not justified by revenues or the creation of actual commensurate wealth — and the resulting debits, inflation, debased currency, and gradual state impoverishment gave the far more vulnerable Western Empire far less margin of error when barbarians arrived, or rival generals marched on Rome. For a while the Romanization of the wider Mediterranean subsidized this ennui, but eventually the old western and southern provinces neither could protect what they had created nor could continue to be as productive as in the past nor believed that being Roman was any better than the alternative.

The historian Will Durant, after surveying the decay of Rome in the 1st century AD, noted that “by its own exhausted will, the great race (of Romans) was beginning to die”. That is important – decline is a choice, not a fate. We are touched with decay while the rest of the western world is shot through with it. Thus far, the people of what was once called Christendom are choosing to die. Meanwhile, even those states which might want to supplant us have also started to choose to die – but being further back on the road, there is that prospect of a brief supremacy.

It was not a perversity on his part that St. Francis said, “Grant me the treasure of sublime poverty”. While we look back at the 13th century as a time of grinding poverty, the fact is that St. Francis was of a wealthy family and living in a society growing highly prosperous – perhaps as well off as anyone had been since the height of Rome. St. Francis knew, though, that wealth can be a killer – a killer of courage, mercy and love. Sublime poverty is what keeps a person – and a society – healthy.

So, are we all to burn our cash and go live as peasants in the countryside? It is a choice of “farm or die”? That depends on how one wishes to look at it – the real choice is between doing things and doing nothing. If we continue to do more and more nothing, then we’ll get progressively weaker, and eventually die. Not in a cataclysm, but in a slow drift to national senility and an eventual breakup of the nation and our replacement by anyone who wishes to do things on the land we slept upon.

One of the hardest thing for us to wrap our minds around is that, all along, sublime poverty was provided for us. Remember that our federal government is directly indebted for nearly $13 trillion dollars. The “most wealthy” nation spent $13 trillion it didn’t have – and when you tack on personal and State government debt and combine it with the unfunded mandates, we’re many tens of trillions of dollars in the hole. The harsh fact is that we weren’t as rich as we thought we were.

To be sure, we were vastly wealthy – and in very real terms, we retain such wealth. Its in our soil and in our ability to invest in sweat equity. We haven’t wanted to sweat and we’ve listened to idiots about the environment and thus closed off vast amounts of native wealth. But we never were rich enough for all those millions of people to get “free” health care. Never were rich enough for kids to get government grants to go to college. Never were rich enough to provide welfare for tens of millions of people. Our politicians talked of “how can the richest nation in the world not afford X” and we nodded our heads like morons – never fully understanding that being the richest nation in the world isn’t the same as having unlimited wealth for whatever struck our fancy.

We must get back to work. We must, in the end, have the courage to tell a high school graduate that he’s going to have to go to work and entirely pay for college on his own – or not go to college. We’re going to have to tell the shiftless poor that it is time to shift for themselves. We’re going to have to be brave enough to say to a person, “its sad you can’t afford that quadruple bypass”. We don’t have an endless supply of money – we do have an endless supply of resources and ability to work; an endless supply of love and generosity (maybe that oldster’s friends can pool their resources to pay for the bypass?), but we don’t have an endless supply of money. Sublime poverty sits at our knee, waiting for us to wake up.

And if we do wake up and get back to work and understand that all our whims will not be granted, then we will cease to die. We will become what we were – the America of our grandfathers will return. The choice is ours – live, or die. I chose to live and I’m beginning to believe that a large majority of my fellow Americans wish to live, too and understand what it will require.

Cross Posted at Noonan for Nevada

The news:

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, mounted stiff resistance tonight to any swift bailout of Greece, as a rift opened up between European capitals over how best to tackle the risks posed to the euro.

Despite a show of Franco-German unity on the crisis and the first statement from EU leaders pledging to safeguard the currency’s stability, hopes on the markets of a German-led rescue plan to shore up Greece’s critical public finances were dashed by Merkel, who repeatedly emphasised that Athens would need to put its own house in order and brushed aside all questions of financial support.

“Germany is stepping totally on the brakes on financial assistance,” said a senior EU diplomat. “On legal grounds, on constitutional grounds and on principle.” Another senior diplomat said of the Germans: “They’re not waving their chequebooks.”

Even if Germany wanted to, she can’t – there isn’t enough money in Germany to bail out all the troubled nations of the Euro-zone. Spain is actually in worse shape – while Portugal, Ireland, Italy and a host of other nations in Europe teeter on the brink of disaster. They’ve taxed, borrowed and spent themselves in to oblivion – and not having children over the past 30 years hasn’t helped, either (you know, if they had some kids in Europe they’d have workers and innovators and such…).

The ball cannot be kept in the air forever – and while Germany is healthier than all other European nations, it is on the skids to financial disaster, too. In fact, all nations pretty much are – or, at least, any nation which runs a regular annual government deficit. Even if we wanted to suppose that government spending can stimulate the economy (it can’t; not in any meaningful sense, but lets grant it for the sake of argument), this would only work in short spurts. Well, aside from a couple odd years, all the major economic powers of the world have spent the last 70 years “stimulating” their economies via deficit spending.

What we have, now, is a situation where there isn’t enough wealth to tax to make up for the shortfall – only massive reductions in government spending offer a way out of the mess. And this is precisely what short-sighted politicians don’t want to do because it will really anger an electorate to have its baby-bottle ripped away. This could result in the biggest nightmare a politician has – losing election. Politicians hope never to face such a thing – they hope to keep things going and that, some how, an exhausted, bankrupt economy will produce the funds to paper over the fiscal cracks.

But it cannot go on. Eventually, you not only have to balance the budget, you have to keep it balanced until such time as you are out of debt. Think in terms of decades of no deficits – or, at worst, very small deficits which will be made up within a year or two. There is nothing left.

The party is over.

The bill has come due.

Patrick Kennedy to bow out?

Wow, Patrick Kennedy not running for re-election? Maybe he thinks he’d be the voter’s next whipping boy?

WASHINGTON — A Democratic official says Rep. Patrick Kennedy has decided not to seek re-election for his seat representing Rhode Island in the U.S. Congress.

The official spoke to The Associated Press only on the condition that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak ahead of the official announcement.

The decision by the eight-term congressman comes less than a month after a stunning Republican upset in the race for the Massachusetts Senate seat his late father, Edward Kennedy, held for almost half a century…

Such a reliably liberal (and equally reliably foolish) Democrat quits in a very blue State?

The times, they are a-changin’…

UPDATE: More blood in the water?

And given this, its bound to come out that one or two of them are bastards:

Now, the Obama-Biden pair that opposed the Iraq war and its tactics and predicted their failure is prepared to accept credit for its success.

It seems that Biden, who’s from Delaware when he’s in Delaware and Pennsylvania when in Pennsylvania, is certain now that Iraq will turn out to be one of the Obama-Biden administration’s greatest achievements.

No, really.

Here’s how Biden put it to Lar:

I am very optimistic about — about Iraq. I mean, this could be one of the great achievements of this administration.

No, Joe, Iraq is not one of your achievements or Obama’s achievement. Victory in Iraq is brought to you by the magnificent men and women of our armed forces under the courageous leadership of President George W. Bush. Blowhards like you had and have nothing to do with this – had we followed your drooling-idiot advice on Iraq (or, worse, followed Obama’s!) we’d have a catastrophe in that area of the world.

This just burns me up.

Michael Yon has the latest from the campaign in Afghanistan.

Say a prayer for our troops.

Is anyone surprised?

President Barack Obama said he is “agnostic” about raising taxes on households making less than $250,000 as part of a broad effort to rein in the budget deficit.

Obama, in a Feb. 9 Oval Office interview, said that a presidential commission on the budget needs to consider all options for reducing the deficit, including tax increases and cuts in spending on entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the table,” the president said in the interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “So what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions.”

Obama repeatedly vowed during the 2008 presidential election campaign that he would not raise taxes on individuals making less than $200,000 and households earning less than $250,000 a year.

He gave us his word – his most solemn promise. Of course, he’s already broken many such promises.

Naturally, Obama sees the middle class as a ripe target for taxation – they already strongly oppose him and he’ll call it “taxing the rich” to play up to the idiot envy of the poorer leftist base…meanwhile, Obama’s rich, bankster buddies will continue to rake it in.