Interesting to see that on the eve of her confirmation hearings, Sotomayor’s New Haven decision was overturned 9-0 by the Supreme Court. Stuart Taylor writes that “. . .even Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s 39-page dissent for the four more liberal justices quietly but unmistakablyrejected the Sotomayor-endorsed position that disparate racial results alone justified New Haven’s decision to dump the promotional exam without even inquiring into whether it was fair and job-related.” Jesse Jackson felt the need to opine that the ruling was deeply flawed. My advice to Jackson would be Abraham Lincoln’s: Better to be silent and thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt. . . though I suppose that advice is a wee-tad late for Jackson.

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Senator Max Baucus, Democrat Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is proposing in this health care “reform” bill, which includes the idea of taxing health benefits, that the union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law, would not pay the tax. So let’s think about that: if I join a union, none of my health care benefits get taxed. If I don’t, the benefits will get taxed. Ergo, I join a union so I don’t pay those taxes . . . the proposal is much more dangerous in my mind than the union card check issue. I’m of the opinion that if Baucus’ idea should somehow remain intact in the health care bill that it would have a far more dramatic impact on increasing the number of union members than card check would.

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I’ve been fascinated by Abraham Kuyper for some time. From the Netherlands, Kuyper lived in the mid-1800s until 1920. Was a minister, founder and editor of a paper, founder of a college, founder of what I believe was the first modern political party in the Netherlands, the Anti-Revolutionary Party, a member of Parliament and eventually Prime Minister. He believed very much in “sphere sovereignty,” the idea that there are distinct spheres were certain entitites; state, church, family, etc. should be, and certain places they should not be. Kuyper once said, “The beginning of freedom is knowing where the lines are drawn,” and “Liberty comes from this: knowing how to make distinctions where walls are to be built and where they are to be torn down.” A quick fact sheet on Kuyper’s life shows that he had an amazing range of talents. Probably the most famous of his works is actually his Stone Series lectures he gave at Princeton Theological Seminary.

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Is it me, or do I recall Bill Gates supporting Obama? Regardless, seems Microsoft isn’t terribly excited about Obama and Congress thinking of raising taxes on it. Thinking of moving employees outside the U.S. Amazing isn’t it, how taxes go up, and people move out? One of the parts of this article that stuck out to me was this section: “Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate [Exploited? Please.].  Typically, he said, a company like Microsoft develops a product like Windows in the United States and deducts those costs against U.S. income. It then transfers the technology to a subsidiary in Ireland, where corporate tax rates are lower, without charging licensing fees. The company then assigns its foreign sales to the Irish subsidiary so it doesn’t have to claim the income in the United States.  “What Microsoft wants to do is deduct the cost at a high tax rate and report the profits at a low tax rate,” Bosworth said. “Relative to where they are now, the administration’s proposals are less favorable, so there will be some rebalancing on their part.” Notice at the end of the article this interesting quote: “Thompson of Symantec, the Cupertino, California-based maker of Norton anti-virus software and similar tools, said software companies are frustrated by being called tax cheats and compared with companies that moved their headquarters to low-tax countries such as Bermuda. Thompson called the Obama proposals “counterintuitive” to the administration’s other stated goals of fostering an innovation-oriented economy. “It is a little bit ironic that most of our most significant trading partners and partners globally have taken the tack that they’ll reduce corporate tax rates to stimulate economic growth and not raise corporate tax rates,” Thompson said. Exhibit A on how an economy explodes when the corporate tax rate is reduced is Ireland. Ireland reduced its corporate tax from 50% to 12.5%, and its economy is now one of the most robust in Europe. We should do the same in America.

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I would like to know where Sonia Sotomayor’s “empathy” was in regards to Frank Ricci. David Paul Kuhn wrote at Real Clear Politics today: “In 2003, the New Haven fire department had several vacancies for new lieutenants and captains. Candidates for promotion had to take a written and oral test. Candidates had three months to prepare. Ricci gave up a second job to study. Because he is dyslexic, Ricci paid an acquaintance more than $1,000 to read textbooks onto audiotapes. He studied 8 to 13 hours a day. And he succeeded. Ricci’s exam ranked sixth among the 77 candidates who took the test. But New Haven’s civil service board ruled that not enough minorities earned a qualifying score. The city is more than a third black. None of the 19 African-American firefighters who took the exam earned a sufficient score. The city tossed out the exam. No promotions were given. Ricci and 17 other white firefighters, including one Hispanic, sued New Haven for discrimination.” Sotomayor upheld the decision that denied the promotion to Ricci and the others . . . why? Where was her empathy there?

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I have a feeling that Sotomayor is not nearly as moderate as the Obama administration is making her seem. There is an excellent article on Sotomayor at Judgepedia.org. I’d highly recommend reading the article. Quin Hillyer’s blog post on Sotomayor’s radical nature makes the point: “He [Obama] nominates the most radical possible choice for the Supreme Court, a woman whose speeches and writings are so obscenely racialist that no white male could possible get away with saying anything like those things and live, professionally, for even a single additional day.”  When Sotomayor makes comments like, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” ask yourself, “What if a white man had made the comment that he could make a better decision than a Hispanic or African-American?” The person would be run out of town as a racist. And when she makes statements that the, “Court of appeals is where policy is made,” I have a sneaking suspicion that she has a different view of the Constitution than our Founders did. What is troublesome about Sotomayor is that she does not have any decisions on abortion, the death penalty, and some other key issues. Eventhough the Dems have 59 votes, and likely 60 with Franken being seated, I’m not entirely sure that this is a done deal.

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I’ve been saying this for awhile: the SoCo community has never quite figured out how to be successful politically. They have never created the political machine necessary for winning political battles, and politics IS policy. You’ll never win on the policy front if you don’t win political races and have a machine in place to enforce discipline on policy issues.

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Most have probably never heard of him, but, “Obama nominated Koh on March 23 to become the State Department’s legal adviser — an appointment that, if confirmed by the Senate, will give Koh far-reaching influence over the extent to which international norms affect U.S. law.”  Among other things, Koh believes that “the U.S. should accept international law when deliberating cases at home.” Again, typical thinking of the left in regards to international law supreseding our Constitution. Conservatives have started to rally against the Koh nomination, with www.nokoh.org being launched. Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center has done an excellent job of chronicling Koh’s radical views on transnationalism. Whelan’s analysis is a long read, but very interesting.

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Politico asks today: Is Nancy Pelosi a Liar or a Hypocrite? My answer: she’s both. I’ve a sneaking suspicion she heard about waterboarding in 2002, didn’t think it was all that bad (I thought Ann Coulter’s piece on waterboarding vs. Japanese torture in WWII was a nice comparison) and so did nothing. Now with the left all in a tizzy at how awful waterboarding is, Madame Speaker got busted, and then tried to lie her way out of it. Now she has one of her defenders, Martin Frost, floating the preposterous idea that maybe both the CIA and Pelosi are right. I don’t think so. This could all have been easily avoided if Pelosi had just come clean weeks ago and said, “Yes, I was there. I was briefed on waterboarding and did not have a problem with it.” But the far-left has instilled such fear in the Democrat party that to disagree with the far-left’s flavor of the day is to bring down their wrath.

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