Then Senator Arlen Specter is showing him how to do it:

Dear President Obama:

Congratulations on your inauguration. Throughout your campaign, you promised change and pledged to strive for bipartisanship in your administration, and you underscored this commitment to bipartisanship in your inaugural address.

I write to respectfully suggest that, as a sign of bipartisanship, you renominate some of President George W. Bush’s circuit court nominees who were not confirmed prior to the adjournment of the 110th Congress. To do so would echo the bipartisanship President Bush demonstrated when he renominated one of President Clinton’s judicial nominees, Judge Roger Gregory, to a vacancy on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.

Several of President Bush’s circuit court nominees had bipartisan support and were not confirmed due to asserted time constraints. I believe these nominees in particular deserve your consideration. Mr. Peter Keisler, nominee to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, had bipartisan support and garnered praise from across the country, including the editorial boards of The L.A. Times and The Washington Post. In addition, Judge Paul Diamond, nominee to the Third Circuit, and Judge Glen Conrad, nominee to the Fourth Circuit, had bipartisan support, including the support of their Democratic home state Senators. All three nominees were rated “well qualified” by the nonpartisan American Bar Association and would be excellent candidates for renomination.

Thank you for your attention to this matter, and I look forward to working with you.

Sincerely,

Arlen Specter

Now, elections do have consequences – we lost, and now it will be President Obama nominating judges over the next four years and it is expected he will nominate judges in line with his liberal worldview. This is just one of the hard lessons of politics which should make us, in future years, redouble our efforts to win. If Obama refuses to follow Senator Specter’s advice he won’t have done something wrong – but he will have failed to do something good.

Don’t get me wrong here – with Obama’s impatience and the Democrats’ generalized pinheadedness, we on the GOP side are just waiting for revived power to fall into our laps like ripe fruit. Ultimately, the question is not whether we’ll recover power, but when. Will it be in the 2010/12 phase or the 2014/16 phase? The other question is whether we’ll be smart enough to run the course for a big win, rather than the regular win we can expect. But, unlike our Democrats, we do have a concern for the nation as a whole and thus we’d prefer not to see things go to heck in a handbasket, even though this would work to Obama’s credit and make our return to power a longer process. But we need something – we need, that is, to know that when we come to the table and pull Democrat fat out of the fire that we’re going to get something in return. A few judges, some tax cuts, a bit of spending restraint, and we’re off to the races…and, incidentally, the economy is saved and Democrats will get to take credit for it, just as Clinton did in the late 90’s.

Or Obama and his Democrats can take the Pelosi attitude – they won, they get to make the rules. Which is fine and dandy and in keeping with the hard reality of political power…but if we want a new spirit of cooperation, we’re going to need more than lip service to bipartisanship.

Absolutely powerful and entirely unanswerable. Couple this sort of thing with the concept of abortion being the enemy of hope, and we’ll have the practice on the ropes within five years.

Pay Democrats to keep speaking in favor of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Are-You-Sure-We-Spent-Every-Penny “Stimulus” bill…here is Pelosi and here is someone from Americans United for Change (which I think is a sorta street beggers union, but I might be wrong) defending this dog of a pork bill. For the GOP, its just a matter of Tivo’ing it and then starting to rebroadcast it in September of 2010.

Larry Kudlow notes that the $1,100,000,000,000.00 or so in the Obama-Pelosi-Reid “Yeeehaw! There’s Another Dollar to Spend” Bankrupt-the-22nd-Century-Too “Stimulus” bill, there’s as much as $2,000,000,000,000.00 more in the works:

And in what may prove to be the biggest stimulus-package hurdle of all, news reports suggest that Team Obama is contemplating as much as $2 trillion in TARP additions to rescue the banking system in one form or another. That would be $2 trillion on top of the nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.

When do you Democrats out there start to realize this is stupid and that it will cost you power for a generation once the full effects of this spending binge take hold? I mean, I don’t mind, in the long run – 30 or 40 years of uninterrupted GOP control and we might even get ten years or so of genuinely conservative government in there. But don’t you Democrats care about your own side? Or are you really convinced that this sort of spending will help?

Now, you can dump a lot of money into the economy and have a temporary, positive effect on it – just as FDR’s spending bonanza had its effect, most notably in bringing down unemployment – for a while – from more than 20% to around 15%. But the long-term costs of such irresponsible spending are disastrous, as noted by the fact that FDR’s spending bonanza never got us out of the Depression. I was discussing this a bit on Thursday with Nevada Pundit and he pointed out that a very large amount of the spending is scheduled to hit the economy in 2010, just in time for the mid-terms – such a thing might help Democrats limit losses, but is this what you Democrats really want? To just struggle on year after year hoping you can pull and electoral rabbit out of your hat?

Outside of the purely political considerations, in the course of my day job I had a conversation with one of our customers who actually broke down crying with frustration over his growing poverty. This is the guy we need to help, friends, not bankers, union bosses and favored Democrat special interests. Passing this trillion dollar boondoggle – with promises of more to come – isn’t going to help the people make ends meet over the next six to nine months…and spending all that money ensures that in years to come the economy will be much smaller than it otherwise would have been with proper fiscal management.

Its time to start thinking, people; don’t react to talking points or a glitzy presser…actually think about what Obama and his Democrats are doing.

They are afraid, over in Obama-land, that things might go haywire…so they carefully control what information they provide:

NewsBusters and the Weekly Standard’s Mary Katharine Ham are not the only critics of the Obama administration for its failure to transcribe, publish and archive the daily press briefings held by press secretary Robert Gibbs.

A Web site called WhiteHousePressCorps.org is running a graphic at the top of its main page which reads, “Waiting on the official release of the 1/22/2009 Press Briefing transcript for” followed by a ticker counting up from January 22. You can also track them on Twiter @whpresscorps.

The site, which features archives of White House press gaggle and briefing transcripts dating back to February 2006, describes itself as “an independent media watchdog source providing information and commentary on the relationship between the press and the White House” that is not affiliated with the White House Correspondents’ Association.

One of the really useful things at President Bush’s White House site was the ability to get every press conference, press gaggle, briefing, speech or what have you – it was tremendously useful in refuting lefty accusations which twisted what Bush or aides said…lefty would say, “Bush Said EVIL Thing”, a check of the White House website would easily reveal that Bush said no such thing. President Bush and team weren’t afraid, it would seem, of people going back over what they said – Obama and Team are seemingly quite fearful that things they said won’t look good in retrospect, so they are only putting out the bits they like best.

This is cowardly. This is the act of a tyrant. This is the work of someone who holds the American people in actual contempt. If Obama is worth anything at all, he’ll quickly change policy here and put every word uttered up on the White House website for all to see right through to the end of his term in office.

UPDATE: Seems someone at the White House reads blogs:

Checking back at the site a few minutes ago, the Obama White House now has a press briefings section with the Briefing Room portion of the site. You can find it here.

This morning I discovered that the Obama administration’s WhiteHouse.gov is indeed transcribing and maintaining its daily press briefings featuring Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Of course you pretty much have to know where to find them since there’s no link to an archive section from either the main page or the “Briefing Room” page.

This will take careful monitoring to ensure the White House doesn’t star to “forget” to keep these things updated.

It is nice to see that Minnesotans are not about to allow the sleazebag politics of the Democratic party to hijack a Senate seat without a fight:

Minnesota voters testified Tuesday their ballots had been unfairly rejected as Republican Norm Coleman argued thousands of disqualified absentee ballots should be counted in the U.S. Senate race.

“Perhaps my signature is not as good as it once was,” Gerald Anderson, of St. Paul, told the three-judge panel hearing Coleman’s lawsuit. “It gets cloudy and crooked. I am 75 years old.”

But that shouldn’t have disqualified his vote, he said: “I want it back. I’m entitled to my vote.”

A statewide recount gave Democrat Al Franken a 225-vote edge. The personal stories that Anderson and five other voters told are just one front on Coleman’s effort to have more votes counted.

And so much for “count every vote” – that only applies when Democrats are behind. Once the Democrat gets in the lead, then all the votes are counted, no matter what.

Has there been a more disgusting spectacle out of the 2008 campaign? Here is Al Franken, the man who routinely accuses Republicans of being lying bastards, attempting to steal a Senate seat he couldn’t win on the square…how do liberals sleep at night?

Its only fair – from NRO’s The Corner:

Rep. John Carter, a Texas Republican, sent out a press release earlier today about his innovative new bill:

“Rangel Rule”

All U.S. taxpayers would enjoy the same immunity from IRS penalties and interest as House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Obama Administration Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, if a bill introduced today by Congressman John Carter (R-TX) becomes law.

Carter, a former longtime Texas judge, today introduced the Rangel Rule Act of 2009, HR 735, which would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service from charging penalties and interest on back taxes against U.S. citizens. Under the proposed law, any taxpayer who wrote “Rangel Rule” on their return when paying back taxes would be immune from penalties and interest.

Liberals do consider themselves above the laws – heck, above the rules of basic decency, for that matter (as in the way they slandered President Bush for 8 years and now get upset when conservatives offer even mild criticism of The One). But we really can’t have that. Of course, with liberals in charge it will be impossible to bring liberals to justice (anyone out there really think that Obama’s Justice Department will go after Rangel?) – so, we bring justice to the people, instead…just allow them to skate as easily as liberals do.

That this will result in a massive drop-off in government revenues is just one of those things we’ll have to put up with, since we want to be fair about things. Unless, that is, liberals want to start holding their own side accountable?

They are becoming a self-parody:

Berkeley’s public library will face a showdown with the city’s Peace and Justice Commission tonight over whether a service contract for the book check-out system violates the city’s nuclear-free ordinance.

The dispute centers on a five-year, $63,000 contract the library wants to sign with 3M, an international technology company based in Minnesota, to service five scanner machines library patrons use to check out books.

But 3M, a company with operations in 60 countries, refused to sign Berkeley’s nuclear-free disclosure form as required by the Nuclear Free Berkeley Act passed by voters in 1986.

As a result, the library’s self-checkout machines have not been serviced in about six months. Library officials say 3M is the only company authorized by the manufacturer to fix the machines, which were purchased in 2004.

The library asked the Peace and Justice Commission for a waiver, but at its Jan. 5 meeting the commission voted 7-1, with two abstentions, to reject the request.

Some of you younger people won’t realize what happened here – back in 1986, in order to stick to Ronald Ray-Gun (as our loving, tolerant liberals called him – when they weren’t using obscenities), Berkeley passed its utterly worthless nuclear free act…but given the way liberals work, even stupid things are continued on as if they made sense. Reagan is dead, the USSR is no more, the nuclear threat which ultimately cause the ruckus has faded (we no longer fear mutually assured destruction, but rogue weapons, instead…for which we don’t need nuclear weapons in Berkeley to defend ourselves)…but the liberal idiocy goes on, and now is hamstringing the library because a corporation doesn’t want to open itself up to lawsuits by signing the absurd disclosure…

A legislative proposal to re-instate the “Mexico City Policy” so eagerly renounced by President Obama in his first week in office:

Congressman Chris Smith was joined by Congressmen Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), in introducing H.R. 708, aimed at restoring the abortion-neutral Mexico City Policy. This 25-year old guideline establishes a wall of separation between abortion and family planning by ensuring that U.S. international family planning funds directed to foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) could not be used to actively promote or perform abortion as a method of family planning…

…”One of President Barrack Obama’s first acts in office was to issue an executive order to allow U.S. taxpayer money to flow to groups that perform abortions or actively work to overturn pro-life laws all over the world,” said Smith. “It’s a sad statement about his list of priorities. With Americans facing an economic crisis the likes of which we’ve not seen in generations, he chooses to enact a policy that will redirect funds to foreign organizations promoting and conducting abortions.

“The Mexico City Policy represents common ground,” Smith said. “It has allowed the US to substantially fund international family planning without padding the budgets of radical groups intent on spreading the scourge of abortion. Under Mexico City policy, funding for family planning was not reduced one penny. The President’s decision will shift U.S. funding from true family planning programs to programs that provide and promote abortion with little or no regard for the sovereignty of democratic nations that oppose abortion as a method of family planning.”

One does wonder – why this ardent desire on the part of the pro-abortion fanatics to have US taxpayer money pay for abortions and abortion advocacy in the Third World? Why does the entire United States have to be dragooned into supporting such a thing? And why, if they think it such a worthy object, have they not tried to get public funding of abortion passed through Congress?

Well, because abortion in an inhuman horror and even its proponents are nauseated by what they do…unfortunately, the human stomach can put up with a lot, so the clear violation of all that is good and true which is involved in each elective abortion doesn’t move proponents to change their ways, but it does make them run an hide and seek the dark, nasty corners of American life to do their dirty work. Working to abort more brown-skinned babies in the Third World is in keeping with Planned Parenthood’s original goal of reducing the number of “inferior” children, while it also is something which can be done, for the most part, outside the glare of publicity which follows abortion in the United States…after all, the Chinese government very conveniently prevents anyone from filming a forced abortion in China…abortion proponents can get on board with this and as most people won’t know about it, they can still be accepted in decent company in the United States. Nothing like being nasty and invited to A-list parties in Manhattan and Los Angeles, huh?

Some have said that conservatism has to ditch the life issue, or at least radically de-emphasize it. That is all a load of bull, of course: conservatism is pro-life, or its not conservatism. Period. The reason for this is tied up in what conservatism is conserving – Judeo-Christian civilization, which places a supreme value on the individual human life. Ditch that, and what you have left might be a lot of things, but conservative won’t be one of them.

We do need a reworking of strategy in the pro-life movement, but the ultimate thrust still has to be full speed ahead towards an eventual ban on this hideous practice.

The nearly $1 trillion “stimulus” package passed the House... but without a single Republican vote. Toby Harnden at the Telegraph (UK) says (and I agree) it is a slap in the face to Barack Obama.

President Barack Obama got the $825 (or $1.2 trillion over a decade) stimulus package through the House of Representatives but the 244 to 188 vote is a hollow victory indeed. Without a single Republican voting for the bill, his high-profile visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday came to exactly naught – at least on the House side.

Obama vowed to change Washington and usher in a new post-partisan era. The the mood music and optics were pitch perfect as he trekked up to the Hill. Republicans praised his gesture, welcomed his sincere demeanour and appreciated his willingness to listen.

Problem was, he wanted only to listen and did not want to act on what Republicans said. When he was asked if he would re-structure the package to include more tax cuts, he reportedly responded: “Feel free to whack me over the head because I probably will not compromise on that part.”

He apparently added: ” I understand that and I will watch you on Fox News and feel bad about myself.”

That’s fine. No doubt Obama will indeed get beaten up on Fox News. But his failure to get even the squishiest moderate Republican  – including the 11 entertained in the White House by Rahm Emanuel last night – to back him is not merely a big score for Rep Eric Cantor, Republican Whip, and the rest of the GOP leadership.

Take that Barry.