United Liberty

The Daily Caller reports that Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) is actively working to prevent a vote on a resolution offered by Senate Republicans that would honor the life and work of the late Margaret Thatcher, who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990, for reasons that have yet to be made clear:

While the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring Thatcher last week, Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, objects to some of the language proposed by Republicans in the Senate’s version, sources said.

A copy of the proposed resolution, which would be offered by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, honors “the life, legacy, and example of British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher.”

Another source said Democrats want to “black out everything but a few lines acknowledging her service as prime minister.”

Reacting to the news, conservatives slammed Menendez.

“I don’t know if he’s blocking the Thatcher resolution because he likes Socialism or because he holds women in such low regard, but Senator Menendez should drop his objections immediately,” Matt Hoskins, the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, told TheDC.

Via Jim Treacher at The Daily Caller, Chris Matthews is apparently happy about Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath because he believes that it helped President Barack Obama win the election last night:

“I’m so glad we had that storm last week. ‘Cause I think the storm was one of those things. No. Politically, I should say. Not in terms of hurting people. The storm brought in possibilities for good politics.”

Even Scary Larry is shaking his head. You’re not supposed to say it, Chris.

But take heart, victims of Hurricane Sandy. Your lives may be ruined, but try to see the bigger picture: At least President Obama didn’t have to give a concession speech.

Yep. That pain, suffering, and death is all good news because it apparently got Obama re-elected last night. What an ass.

We all know that President George W. Bush was a fiscal nightmare, largely laying the groundwork for his successor. Veronique de Rugy noted in her analysis on spending under Bush, that domestic spending alone went up by more than 20% in his first term. He expanded Medicare and expanded the bloated federal bureaucracy.

And even though he’s not in office anymore, The Daily Caller notes that Bush is still a burden to taxpayers thanks to a free ride for expenses given to former presidents:

Former President George W. Bush is budgeted to receive the most money from taxpayers of all the living ex-presidents.

Bush, the most recent former president, is requesting more than $1.3 million in taxpayer dollars for fiscal year 2013, according to a budget proposal document prepared by the General Services Administration.

Among expenses, the GSA budget document says the younger Bush is requesting $85,000 for phone costs. Hannah Abney, a spokeswoman for Bush, declined to comment on that when reached by The Daily Caller on Tuesday.

This is something from which all living presidents benefit. For example, Clinton has been budget just over $1 million; so just picking on Bush isn’t fair, but at the same time it’s hard not to equate this sort of spending with pork projects for companies already turning a profit.

While surfing the web this weekend after getting from home BlogConCLT, I came across this story at The Daily Caller, claiming that a new poll from Pew Research shows that Republicans are more open-minded and more informed than Democrats:

Yet another new survey shows that Republican supporters know more about politics and political history than Democrats.

On eight of 13 questions about politics, Republicans outscored Democrats by an average of 18 percentage points, according to a new Pew survey titled “Partisan Differences in Knowledge.”

The Pew survey adds to a wave of surveys and studies showing that GOP-sympathizers are better informed, more intellectually consistent, more open-minded, more empathetic and more receptive to criticism than their fellow Americans who support the Democratic Party.

“Republicans fare substantially better than Democrats on several questions in the survey, as is typically the case in surveys about political knowledge,” said the study, which noted that Democrats outscored Republicans on five questions by an average of 4.6 percent.

The widest partisan gap in the survey came in at 30 points when only 46 percent of Democrats — but 76 percent of Republicans —- correctly described the GOP as “the party generally more supportive of reducing the size of federal government.”

I spent the weekend in Charlotte chatting with some great people, however, I also heard several people making fun of libertarians and cracking jokes about how Barack Obama, as a small child, once tried dog meat — as if that is going to matter to voters in the fall. So I’m inclined to chuckle at the notion that Republicans are “open-minded.”

Even though she has recused herself in past hearings and decisions where she had some sort of involvement, it doesn’t seem that Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan will do the same when ObamaCare reaches the nation’s High Court. However, new e-mails that have surfaced show that she is anything but an unbiased party merely trying to determine the law’s constitutionality:

Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions issued a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder Tuesday requesting answers to Kagan’s involvement after emails revealed Kagan enthusiastically supporting President Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as well as possibly orchestrating legal defenses for the act.

The emails, obtained by Judicial Watch and originally reported by CNSnews.com, show Kagan and other administration officials setting up meetings to discuss how to counter legal challenges to the health care law.

In a March 21, 2010 email exchange with Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe, who also served in the Justice Department at the time, Kagan expressed enthusiasm — so much so that it apparently required two exclamation points — at the news of the law’s impending passage through Congress.

“I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing,” Kagan wrote to Tribe in one of the emails.

Some Keynesians, such as Larry Summers, are claiming that the recent earthquake in Japan - truly a devastating and saddening event that has claimed the lives of thousands - could help that country’s economy:

It may lead to some temporary increments ironically to GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake Japan actually gained some economic strength.

Over at The Daily Caller, Matt Kibbe, president of FreedomWorks, debunks the notion floated just days after this disaster:

After expressing sorrow for the people of Japan, former White House economics adviser Larry Summers said, “it may lead to some temporary increments in GDP as a process of rebuilding takes place. In the wake of the earlier Kobe earthquake, Japan actually gained some economic strength.” Any economist is dead wrong to claim that there is a silver lining in a natural or man-made disaster. As it turns out, earthquakes and tsunamis are not stimuli. Destruction will not create prosperity.

As economics Professor Steven Horwitz notes, “If one really believes such disasters are good for the economy, even in the short run, then one should positively recommend burning down neighborhoods and destroying farm machinery. After all, think of the demand for construction workers and equipment, as well as the demand for manual labor on farms that would generate. Why we’d be rich as kings in no time, right?”

The Daily Caller has taken notice of increased support of an audit of the Federal Reserve, like that introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), from tea party organizations and promoters:

Though Republican Rep. Ron Paul told The Daily Caller  last week that he was worried that “some people have slipped into the Tea Party who are awfully close to being part of the establishment,” on at least one particular anti-establishment issue close to the Texas congressman’s heart — auditing the Federal Reserve — Tea Party leaders told The DC that they are all for it.
[…]
FreedomWorks vice president of public policy Max Pappas said the PAC has signed onto Paul’s “Audit the Fed” movement as a way to hold the institution accountable.

“A call for an audit of the Fed has been pretty popular,” Pappas told TheDC in a phone interview.

Pappas said news media continually want to label the entire Tea Party movement as a proponent of or a proponent against a particular recommendation, like auditing the Fed, instead of trying to understand the movement is bonded together on core values.

“What brings together the Tea Party movement is general agreement over free markets, fiscal responsibility and constitutionally limited government,” Pappas said. “It [the Tea Party movement] is not a think-tank that produces white papers saying, ‘here’s what needs to be done at X agency or Y agency.’”

HR 1207, the Audit the Fed bill introduced by Rep. Paul, was included in the financial reform package, though it was gutted by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

Via The Daily Caller comes news that Rand Paul and Jack Conway will meet for a debate on Sunday, October 3rd, on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace:

Senate candidates Republican  Rand Paul and Democrat Jack Conway of Kentucky have committed to a fourth political debate, this one on Fox News in early October.

The candidates had already agreed to three debates to be held in Kentucky, and others remain a possibility.

The campaigns have discussed facing off on NBC’s “Meet The Press” but haven’t yet committed to that.

The Conway campaign had been pushing for the joint appearance on “Meet The Press,” but Paul is balking.

We’ll have video of this after it airs. We may also live-blog it as well.

On Tuesday evening, President Barack Obama delivered an address to the American people telling us that combat operations in Iraq had come to an end, though the speech also gave him an opportunity to talk about the economy.

In case you missed it, here it is:

I know you’re not shocked to learn that we still have a vast presence in Iraq as some 50,000 “advisors” (ie. troops) remain in the country to assist the Iraqi government and they are still in danger, as President Obama said. But not every thing he said was accurate as the Associated Press pointed out in a fact check after the speech: