Well, that didn’t take long.  Just one week into the conference committee on the highway bill, Republicans are showing signs of caving on their insistence that the Keystone pipeline be approved as part of the deal.

Throughout the past few months, we have been chronicling how Republicans have been apathetic to the underlying vices of the highway bill (S. 1813).  They basically told the Democrats in committee that they have every intention of passing the Senate bill; they just want a provision approving the Keystone pipeline as part of the agreement.  As any negotiator that lacks the credulousness of a toddler understands, once you take your bargaining chip off the table, the other side has no reason to give in.  Since Republicans have guaranteed Democrats that the tax and spend highway bill is too big to fail, Democrats will wait them out until they agree to jettison the Keystone provision.  And that is exactly what is happening.

Take a look at these quotes from The Hill:

Republicans are pressing for approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline in a final House-Senate transportation bill but appear unlikely to draw a line in the sand that jeopardizes the infrastructure legislation.

While the proposed Alberta-to-Texas pipeline is a top GOP and oil-industry priority, Republicans might have incentive to keep the matter unresolved, enabling them to continue using Keystone as a political weapon during the campaign season. [...]

“The overall Republican conference position is not to sink the conference report over [Keystone XL], however, as keeping that issue alive through the elections is also acceptable,” an oil industry source told The Hill.

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On Monday, when the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia smacked down the Obama NLRB’s new “ambush” election procedures, the court made clear that the union-controlled labor board overstepped its bounds by imposing its new rules without a proper quorum (as required under a U.S. Supreme Court case).

That, however, has not deterred the NLRB’s chairman (and union attorney) Mark Pearce from vowing to find a way to re-impose the ambush election procedure on America’s union-free workplaces.

According to a press release issued Tuesday, the NLRB chief stated:

“We continue to believe that the amendments represent a significant improvement in our process and serve the public interest by eliminating unnecessary litigation,” he said. “We are determined to move forward.” [Emphasis added.]

As the NLRB’s ambush elections were established without a proper quorum, the NLRB may end up simply re-voting on the issue using a quorum comprised of President Obama’s constitutionally-questionable recess appointments.

That re-vote could happen within a week or two, according to Industrial Relations Professor Gary Chaison.

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Today is May 16th. On this date in 1920, Joan of Arc was beatified and canonized by the Vatican. Man, first burned at the stake, then fired from a canon? That chick just could not catch a break!! On this date in 1965, SpaghettiOs went on sale in American supermarkets for the first time. You had to go to Morganville to buy them, which is what they called Shelbyville at the time. The cans were five for a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. “Give me five Os for a bee” you’d say. Also on this date, in 1868, President Andrew Johnson was acquitted during a Senate impeachment hearing over alleged “high crimes and misdemeanors” by one vote. Johnson successfully argued that they were not high crimes because he did not inhale, and that he “did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Demeanors”. And finally, today is “National Love A Tree Day”, where people are encouraged to go outside and hug a tree. Seriously. Here is a helpful instructional video on how to celebrate. Consider this an Open Thread.

Do-Nothing Democrats | Free Beacon
“Senate Democrats are poised to continue their impressive streak of budgetary negligence on Wednesday by unanimously rejecting as many as five different budgets, including the one offered by President Obama.”

Video Knocks Obama’s “Bureau of Womanhood Conformity” | LifeNews
“Today, the Susan B. Anthony List released its latest web ad entitled “Womanhood,” rebuking President Obama, his allies in Congress, and the abortion lobby for the ‘War on Women.’”

Walker speeds release of positive jobs data | JSOnline
“State officials said they show a gain of 23,321 jobs (public and private) between December 2010 and December 2011, which represents Gov. Scott Walker’s first full year in office.”

Chris Matthews Is Dumb | Big Journalism
“… after relentlessly mocking how well Governor Sarah Palin would hypothetically do on “Jeopardy,” Matthews made a king-size fool of himself in reality [video].”

Morning Bell: President Me | The Foundry
“President Obama insinuated yesterday that if you don’t support his policies, it’s not due to philosophical differences, but because of his name. Answering a question on The View about tight polls, he said: ‘When your name is Barack Obama, it’s always going to be tight. Barack Hussein Obama.’”

Have Unions ‘Occupied’ the Occupiers? by Rick Berman

spruik (sprook): verb To make or give a speech, especially extensively; spiel.
(via Dictionary.com)

From the diaries.

Pete Hegseth – Decorated Combat Veteran, Executive Director of Vets for Freedom, U.S. Senate Candidate, Patriot

Pete Hegseth, who is running for the GOP endorsement for U.S. Senate in MN, was kind enough to sit down and provide his valuable time for an interview. In the interest of time, I edited the interview down, but was careful to keep the core of his answers.

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Slightly contra Instapundit, this call for Mickey Mouse as a write-in on the California ballot is a blogger’s joke rather than an actual movement [UPDATE: I am informed in comments here that this is meant absolutely seriously; please be assured that I had no intention of mocking either the sentiment or the activity], but if it’s kidding then it’s kidding on the square. And it’s illustrating something that is perhaps being under-reported: the way that Obama’s not been doing all that well in the primaries for an incumbent.

I mean, yes: we’ve had it noted that Obama only racked up 59.4% of the West Virginia primary vote; 80.9% of New Hampshire’s; and 79.2% of North Carolina’s. But here are some other primary race vote totals, thus far (all via The Green Papers): Rhode Island, 83.4%. Louisiana, 76.5%. Alabama, 80.8%. Massachusetts, 81.2%, Oklahoma, 57.1%. To give you a baseline… if you remove places like American Samoa or Guam, if I read this right in 2004 George Bush never dipped below 89.5% (Idaho) of the primary vote in states he won and 79.6% (New Hampshire) in states that he didn’t. Other states of note in 2004, to give you an idea: Alabama, 92.8%. Kentucky, 92.5%. Massachusetts, 90.6%. Rhode Island, 84.9%.

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People often ask me what can be done to move the elected officials within the Republican Party rightward.  Well, for one thing, we need to elect more conservatives.  But more importantly, we need those conservatives to obtain positions of power, such as chairmanships of the committees that set our domestic policy agenda.

Not surprisingly, all the relevant committee chairmen are either conduits for leadership or are even more liberal than leadership.  Here is a list of the chairmen along with their respective 2011 scores from Heritage Action:

Committee	Chairman	HAFA Score
Agriculture	Frank Lucas	55
Appropriations	Hal Rogers	56
Armed Services	Buck McKeon	56
Budget	Paul Ryan	78
Education	John Kline	67
Energy & Commerce	Fred Upton	52
Ethics	Jo Bonner	56
Financial Services	Spencer Bachus	64
Foreign Affairs	Illena Ros Lehtinen	47
Homeland Security	Peter King	47
House Administration	Dan Lungren	58
Judiciary	Lamar Smith	59
Natural Resources	Doc Hastings	57
Oversight	Darrell Issa	75
Rules	David Dreier	58
Science, Space, & Tech	Ralph Hall	67
Small Business	Sam Graves	63
Transportation & Infrastructure	John Mica	67
Veterans’ Affairs	Jeff Miller	91
Ways and Means	David Camp	59
Intelligence	Mike Rogers-Michigan	60

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Pejman Yousefzadeh and Kevin Holtsberry are joined by Dr. Larry Rosen to discuss his book on tech addictions, how to recognize them, and how to lessen any unhealthy dependency that we may have on technology.

We’re brought to you as always byStephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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There have been many studies out on the “tea party congress” and just how tea party it actually is. One study last year noted that 70% of candidates who went to Congress under the tea party banner were voting just like the Republican Leaders they ran against.

Probably one of the best places to get a sense of this is the Club for Growth. Why? The Club ignores social votes and focuses only on fiscal votes — spending issues more than anything else. The tea party candidates went to Congress not just to repeal Obamacare, but were really motivated by out of control government spending, bailouts, etc. Remember, it was Rick Santelli of CNBC on February 19, 2009, who predicted this grassroots army of activists would rise up and say enough to out of control government spending and bailouts. Santelli said, in part,

The government is promoting bad behavior. Because we certainly don’t want to put stimulus forth and give people a whopping $8 or $10 in their check, and think that they ought to save it, and in terms of modifications… I’ll tell you what, I have an idea.

You know, the new administration’s big on computers and technology– How about this, President and new administration? Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the Internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers’ mortgages; or would we like to at least buy cars and buy houses in foreclosure and give them to people that might have a chance to actually prosper down the road, and reward people that could carry the water instead of drink the water?

…

We’re thinking of having a Chicago Tea Party in July. All you capitalists that want to show up to Lake Michigan, I’m gonna start organizing.

Things sort of spiraled from there sending a wave of candidates to Washington embracing the concerns of the activists who showed up to the tea party.

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The Federal Reserve is not my issue. Audit it if you want, I’m with you. But it’s not something that drives me crazy or makes me passionate. But there is one issue that really gets me and the Fed has been at the center of it lately — crony capitalism.

Barack Obama has nominated Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for six years each. Senator David Vitter (R-LA — HAFA Score 85%) placed a hold on both men. They are creatures of Wall Street and, in the biggest red flag of the day, both Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan have been pressuring Senator Vitter to drop his hold.

The issue here is bailouts. Mark Calabria notes the Federal Reserve has bailout powers, but it needs the support of five Federal Reserve governors. Stein and Powell are both in favor of the Federal Reserve continuing to bailout banks and other entities with little oversight.

Harry Reid can bring these men to the floor any time he wants. The word in the Senate is that he is about to.

Conservatives in the Senate and outside the Congress are deeply worried that Mitch McConnell will cut a deal with Reid to undercut David Vitter’s hold. We potentially could delay the appointments until after the November election if Mitch McConnell will side with David Vitter and Senate conservatives by objecting to Harry Reid’s cloture motion.

Please call Senator McConnell’s office today and encourage him to stand with David Vitter and object to cloture on Jeremy Stein and Jerome Powell. His office number is (202) 224-2541. Then call your own Senator at (202) 224-3121 and tell them to oppose Stein and Powell.

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Alernate-alternate title: DOOM.

You know, when I saw this secondhand whine from Wisconsin Democrats upset that the DNC apparently wasn’t prepared to throw half a million dollars at the general recall election, I assumed that this would be resolved. I mean, really: the Left has already thrown away tens of millions of dollars; what’s a bit more? Admittedly, not throwing utterly horrible money after bad (we’ve passed the ‘throwing good money after bad’ stage already) would be the right answer, in a strictly utilitarian sense; but the state party is in a bad way right now. They sort of need an indication that the President cares for more than his own election, right?

Well… that’s apparently not going to happen. MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Obama’s deputy* campaign manager Stephanie Cutter whether the DNC would be sending money earmarked for the recall, and Ms. Cutter said… nothing in particular. And definitely nothing that would commit the DNC to giving out money.

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Guest post from Rep. Louie Gohmert, Rep. Jeff Landry, and Rep. Scott Rigell

This week, the House will fulfill our most important constitutional duty by debating the FY 13 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In accordance with the framer’s intent, this act is the primary check that Congress can apply to the Executive Branch on defense and national security policy.

Last year, constitutional conservatives raised the alarm bell about some provisions in the FY 12 NDAA; provisions that many were concerned would grant President Obama far reaching powers to detain American citizens without trial. The bill ultimately passed, but has become the subject of countless town hall meetings, tweets, and Facebook posts in the months since.

The debate has become so heated that many believe that the NDAA is a bill that deals strictly with detaining terrorists. It is much more than that. Aside from dictating how the military can handle any al Qaeda terrorists they capture, the FY13 NDAA deals with the full scope of national security issues. There is much in it, from a rejection of the Obama administration’s effort to raise health care fees on military retirees; to making sure the President doesn’t trade our missile defenses away to the Russians, that Conservatives can be proud of.

The real question before us is how to adjust the language from last year that has made so many so uncomfortable while still ensuring that we can fight and win the War on Terror. The base bill has already made important steps in the right direction. It includes the Rigell / Landry reassertion of the Writ of Habeas Corpus. This language firmly states that the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) and the FY 12 NDAA detainee provisions do not allow for the detention of any person in the United States without the right of redress. Under this provision, all Americans have access to the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

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