The nation's menu of crises caused by governmental malpractice may soon include states coming to Congress as mendicants, seeking relief from the consequences of their choices. Congress should forestall this by passing a bill with a bland title but explosive potential.

Principal author of the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act is Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, where about 80 cents of every government dollar goes for government employees' pay and benefits. His bill would define the scale of the problem of underfunded state and local government pensions and would notify states not to approach Congress like Oliver Twists, holding out porridge bowls and asking for more.
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The states will go hat in hand to the feds but there is NO money. There needs to be public pension reform and the states must cut their spending.

There is, however, something at least vaguely disturbing about a government incentivizing doctors to do so as part of an expansive regulatory program that has, as one of its primary goals, cost reduction. The process used by Obama and Kathleen Sebelius to get this into ObamaCare is more disturbing, and in a very specific way. Congress made it clear that it didn’t want this incentive as part of the new law. However, thanks to the miles and miles of ambiguity in the final version of ObamaCare, with its repetitive the Secretary shall determine language, Congress has more or less passed a blank check for regulatory growth to Obama and Sebelius.

This is just the opening gambit of a strategy Obama will use throughout the coming year in order to achieve through regulation what a Democrat-run Congress could not deliver through legislation. The new Republican House will have to use its power of the purse to stop this autocratic imposition of regulation,
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An Obama end around

When a proposal to encourage end-of-life planning touched off a political storm over “death panels,” Democrats dropped it from legislation to overhaul the health care system. But the Obama administration will achieve the same goal by regulation, starting Jan. 1
Under the new policy, outlined in a Medicare regulation, the government will pay doctors who advise patients on options for end-of-life care, which may include advance directives to forgo aggressive life-sustaining treatment.

Congressional supporters of the new policy, though pleased, have kept quiet. They fear provoking another furor like the one in 2009 when Republicans seized on the idea of end-of-life counseling to argue that the Democrats’ bill would allow the government to cut off care for the critically ill.
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Another reason why the GOP should push for repeal of ObamaCare and make Obama own this and other provisions before the 2012 elections

Neither Republicans nor Democrats are saying much about the defeat of the DREAM Act. It seems most Democrats would rather not bring up one of the Obama "losses" during the lame-duck session of Congress; Republicans are too busy grousing that START opposition melted like butter. The reactions of both sides suggest that keeping the immigration issue alive rather than solving the problem is uppermost in the minds of politicians.
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E-Verify for Employers

Secure the border

No free ride visas for lefty technology companies who don't want to hire Americans who make too much

An America first immigration policy and hell to the corporations and unions that have screwed the American worker

Senate Democrats spent the lame-duck session slogging through endless motions to break filibusters, but they’re quietly maneuvering to curtail these Senate stall tactics — even though they’ll have a weaker caucus next year.

After weeks of closed-door meetings, Democratic reformers are pushing a handful of rules changes, including a simple majority to change Senate rules at the start of a Congress, a requirement for senators to actually filibuster when they’re filibustering and a push to get rid of anonymous holds.

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Please do since the GOP will take back the Senate in 2012 and Dems will be in the minority.

Lisa Murkowski isn’t gunning down caribou on national TV like that other famous Alaskan, but the Republican lawmaker is going rogue in the Senate just weeks after staging the most stunning back-from-the-dead political win of the 2010 cycle.

Murkowski is already showing a fierce independent streak, becoming the only Republican to cast votes on all four items on President Barack Obama’s wish list: a repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a tax-cut compromise, the START deal and cloture for the DREAM Act.

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Murkowski is a Big Government RINO anyway. Shame she was re-elected.

But, when GOP takes over the Sente in 2012 she should have no plum committee assignments.

Uncertainty reigns in the race for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee despite the fact that the election to pick a new head for the party is now less than a month away.

Conversations with a number of strategists close to the RNC — and its 168 voting members — suggest that none of the six candidates in the running are anywhere close to securing the 85 votes they need to claim the chairmanship in January.

But, two tiers of candidates have begun to emerge with the top three seen as potential winners and the bottom three regarded as longer shots although, given the number of undecided voters and the unpredictability of the ballot process, it's hard to count anyone totally out at the moment.
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Anybody but Michael Steele is how I see it.

As the treaty speeds toward ratification, the biggest question that remains is: If the treaty ratification had been delayed until next year, would Kyl then have supported it? Was he ultimately trying to delay forever or was there really some amount of consultation and concessions that would have gotten him to vote yes?

Whether or not Kyl's vote was ultimately winnable will simply never be known for sure. But in the end, Kyl's efforts resulted in the administration promising over $84 billion for modernization of the nuclear stockpile and nuclear labs. "At least Jon Kyl was able to get more money for modernization and that letter from President Obama making assurances on missile defense," Lowry wrote.

And why did the argument to delay — made by McConnell, Kyl, Inhofe, McCain, Graham, and others — fail to convince the almost dozen Senate Republicans who will vote for New START?
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GOP Senators who voted for START will pay the price in a primary election especially Lugar

As the White House scrambles to secure enough GOP Senate votes to ratify the New START treaty with Russia, there's a lot of overt political grandstanding — and a lot of horse trading going on behind the scenes.

In a long floor speech on Wednesday Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) declared, "I am deeply concerned the New START treaty may once again undermine the confidence of our friends and allies in Central and Eastern Europe." Then, quietly, he offered his support to the Obama administration in exchange for waiving visa requirements for Polish citizens.

Various GOP senators have submitted demands in exchange for their support of the treaty, but they are usually related to concerns over the treaty itself. For example, the administration has offered Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) over $84 billion for nuclear modernization, under the premise that shoring up the safety of the stockpile is needed to ensure national security.

Too Many

If conservatives are feeling bad about START, they should be really happy about this. With the new Congress in January, the GOP will be in a strong position on fighting ObamaCare."

In other words, the loss of funding is directly attributable to the slothful behavior of House and Senate leaders who passed no budget or appropriations bills before the lame-duck session. They assumed, I guess, that Republicans would roll over and pass an omnibus spending bill after an election, one that everyone had assumed was going to go badly for the Democrats. Well, that was poor planning. The failure was then compounded by Reid, who dramatically overreached on the omnibus, making it impossible to round up votes for cloture.

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ObamaCare will die a slow funding death – if not outright repeal in 2013 when Obama leaves office

Mike Huckabee recently publicly expressed his disagreement with Sarah Palin's attacks on Michelle Obama's heavy-handed approach to childhood obesity:

“With all due respect to my colleague and friend Sarah Palin, I think she's misunderstood what Michelle Obama is trying to do,” the former Arkansas governor said Tuesday on the “Curtis Sliwa Show.” …

“Michelle Obama's not trying to tell people what to eat or not trying to force the government's desires on people,” Huckabee said. “She’s stating the obvious, that we do have an obesity problem in this country.”

He added: “The first lady's campaign is on target.”

Just as a reminder, Mike Huckabee is no conservative when it comes to using the federal government to regulate what we eat.

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And, why Sarah Palin will have him for lunch if he dares to run against her

Strategy: The heirs of Ronald Reagan abandon his legacy and dream of defending America from nuclear attack. Our security will rest on ambiguous language and vague assurances, not on the genius of U.S. technology.

Peace in our time, or should we say appeasement in our time, as a sufficient number of GOP senators signed on the New START treaty to give the Democrats and President Obama the 67 votes needed for ratification.

The Hill reported that Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., became the 10th Republican to support the treaty on Monday. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was No. 9, saying on Monday afternoon, "I believe it's something important for our country and I believe it's a good move forward."
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Those GOP Senators who have caved into Obama on New START will regret their vote