A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead.
-Leo Rosten, author (1908-1997)

Political conservatism has wandered way off course in my mind, from the steady, clear-eyed support of business, to a kind of anything-goes grab-bag of tax giveaway. Where it will take us from here is anybody's guess.

Frankly, my money is on the return of fiscal conservatism, something we haven't had for a very long time now.

• About to Maybe Get Close to Thinking About Possibly . . .
  We’re in an amazing period of our government dreaming up possibilities and announcing them as plausible. Not only plausible, but caught in the nick of (something that resembles, but is not exactly, yet possibly could be) time.
• Betrayed, the Raid on Medicaid
  Medicaid is supposed to be helpful to those who don’t have access to health insurance at their job and (no surprise to the vengeful right) may not even have a job.
• Same Old Perle Before the Same Old Swine
  Men of like mind to Richard N. Perle have made many wreckages in the history of America and gone on to comfortable retirement, while lesser criminals spend their lives in prison.
• A Law Not Enforced Is No Law At All
  It is often said that a man who does not read is no better off than a man who cannot read. Along that same line, certainly laws that are made in our name and under the logic of our Constitution are worthless when they are ignored.
• The Hastert Legacy to Representative Government
  Hastert’s formula for killing immigration is simple. He has enunciated a ‘majority of the majority’ rule that entirely destroys all vestiges of bipartisan governance in the House of Representatives.
• An Indecent Proposal From Senator Bill Frist
  Bill has a mission, which is always handy in place of a philosophy or a following. The mission is to excoriate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens for letting the House Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2005 languish, as it should languish.
• No Fly--No Work--No Damned Good
  The Senate, in its wisdom, is recommending that the DHS ‘Basic Pilot Program’ should be expanded. In effect, Basic Pilot is a ‘No-Work’ instead of a No Fly program.
• Shooting the Horse They Rode in On
  I can only presume, after watching the Republicans these past six years, that they have chosen to achieve their goal of small government by shooting it.
• Flogging the Base and Losing the Majority
  Ah yes, there’s the President out there facing-the-nation on TV, sending overworn National Guard troops on a do-nothing mission at the Mexican border, all to give a rush to his ‘conservative base.’
• The Most Chilling Thing Is, We Will Be Told It Works
  Sixty-three percent (63%) of Americans polled, when asked if surveillance of their personal telephone calls was a fair trade-off against possible terror strikes, said yes.
• Another Incredible Failure of Vision
  Kneeling to whatever is left of his ‘core conservative lunatic base,’ President Bush is going to militarize the border with Mexico.
• Michael Chertoff Trips Up His President Again
  Chertoff understands what making plastic crates with undocumented workers can lead to.
• We're Off to See the Wizard
  There's a regular Wicked witch of the West anger from the provinces, towering and hovering, as Senators Conrad Scarecrow and Trent Lion look to central-casting, hoping for some good lines to get them off-camera.
• Stand and Deliver
  But Congress, in its wisdom, failed to fund the most expensive war we have ever fought and (ditto) failed to fund the most expensive natural disaster the nation has ever known. That’s what is known as going two for two and it’s not always a sports metaphor.
• Outraged Against Themselves, Congress Throws a Tantrum
  Like little kids in the check-out line, holding their breath ‘till they’re blue in the face so mom will buy them gum, Congress and the President are outraged, apoplectic, appalled, indignant, offended, shocked and scandalized by gas prices at the pump.
• If Iranians Don't Cooperate, I'll Shoot Myself in the Other Foot
  Right in the middle of The Masters, with Tiger five strokes behind and a rain delay, my country is about to actually contemplate another adventure in the desert. Talk about a sand-trap.
• Senior Fellows, the Cookings at Brookings
  Opinion is anybody’s fair game until someone acts on that opinion and then it better be pretty well founded. Iraqis are dying at the moment because of too much (or too little) screwed up hectoring lecturing.
• Janet Jackson’s Breast vs Jack Abramoff’s Bust
  We are at one time a nation that demands a fine for CBS having (however briefly) exposed Janet Jackson’s breast during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show and the world’s largest consumer of pornography.
• Sitting Up In the Coffin
  Preemptive war as a national security strategy died in the first years of its practice. Keeled over. Stiff as a board. Morte.
• A Quiet Little Deal By Uncle Pat
  That must be why they call it the Select Committee. They select the intelligence the President most wants them to bow down over and then, like ducks in a shooting gallery, they all fall down in compliance.
• It's All Just Too Bizarre
  This coordinated effort, with all the earmarks of Mubarak’s closing down the press in Egypt or China locking up dissenters in the night, is aimed at leaks to reporters.
• A Golden Parachute For George Walker Bush
  First of all, there’s precedent. He’s been consistently bailed-out of his other failures throughout a lifetime of coming-up-short. It’s time to take the man aside yet again, pay off his debts, settle the pending suits, assuage the stockholders, buck-up his fragile self-image and put him out to pasture on the ranch he loves so well.
• I Have a Hunch There Will Be No More Karl Roves
  Seldom, if ever, has a political consultant come along with both the power and effectiveness of Karl Rove. The man is a genius in coalition-building, that modern day making of whole boards from slivers.
• Darwin and the Agencies-Disaster Game
  This whole ‘restructuring’ game that's afoot in the intelligence community has put our national security in a dark room with a blanket thrown over its head.
• Things I Learn On the Way to Other Things
  I don't like child-abusers, particularly wealthy ones who are politically connected and institutionalize their abuse. They abused their own child in a similar program. It's what inspired them to cripple other young lives.
• Ramping Up the 'China Threat'
  Under the leadership of the first Defense Secretary to admit that “stuff happens,” the Pentagon has just released its Quadrennial Defense Review( QDR).
• Goin’ to the Mat for Scooter (Libby’s Liberal Litigation Fund)
  Does it seem just a little bit strange that a five-count indictment, that really comes down to--do you believe Scooter Libby forgot some of this stuff of do you think he’s a mad-dog conspirator--will take twenty thousand hours of legal time to unwind?
• Somewhere, Over the Rainbow
  Unwilling to compromise the universality of Cat-Scans and $1,000 a day prescriptions, we have no basic medical care for poor mothers with sick children, other than emergency rooms at whatever might be their nearest hospital.
• Some Things Just Don't Work Out
  I will restore honor and integrity to the White House" was a slam-dunk of a statement after the Clinton second term and Mr. Bush ran hard on it.
• The Photo-Flap, Who Me?
  Somehow or another, the photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam Hussein never became a controversial issue, possibly, because it was never withheld.
• Missing the Point on the Jack Abramoff Scandal
  It took an Enron to shake up Congress enough to come up with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, that essentially requires corporate CEOs to sign off on accounting practices in their firms. But, of course, Congress wasn’t Enron at the time.
• Health Issues Take to the Street
  On the 7th day of the new Medicare benefit, there were no seven-swans-a-swimming for Steve, but the voices were back.
• Two Weeks Away? So, What's New?
  So, I’m home and scanning the Washington Post and the thing that seems most necessary, top priority in fact, is to find out what Doonesbury has been up to for the past sixteen days.
• Roe, Roe, Roe Your Boat
  The Supreme Court and, by inference, nominees to that court have become single-issue objects of debate. It is all about Roe vs Wade and has been for some years now.
• Encouraging Responsibility (Yours, Not Mine)
  Joe Barton knows about moral lessons, because he studied at the feet of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. (Tom and Jack, the Indictment Boys, one in Texas and the other in Florida).
• Major Ben Connable Checks In
  Major Ben Connable has written to me through his friend, who copied and pasted the note and forwarded it to me; all a bit deep cover for my taste, but I asked for the letter and he has sent it.
• Following Up on the Elusive Ben Connable
  Something in my December 14th Who and Where is Ben Connable must have struck a nerve out there in cyberspace, a place that tends toward nervousness.
• Who and Where is Major Ben Connable?
  Both articles by the mysterious Ben, May of last year and current, read as if they were written word-for-word by the administration spin-meisters.
• Injustice Ain't Blind, Condi
  Condoleeza Rice, our current Secretary of State, has just published as an Op-Ed piece the most condescending collection of clap-trap I’ve seen in ages.
• Rumsfeld Is Not the Problem
  The nation's press, like justice, grinds exceeding slow. Failure after failure after failure and the comedy is that they have yet to recognize the problem.
• Sorry David, It’s Absolutely NOT the Age of Skepticism
  David Brooks, the widely-read columnist of the New York Times tells us in a column titled The Age of Skepticism, that we are confused and unsteadied and all at sea about everything from government institutions to the stock market . . . and he’s dead wrong.
• Deeply Split By the Mid-Term Axe
  Makes me chuckle to pick up the paper and read a headline “Republicans Are Deeply Split Over How to Apportion New Tax Cuts”
• Someone Forgot to Tell Bill Ford
  When Dick Cheney had all the big oil honchos in to divide up the spoils of energy policy, someone forgot to tell William Clay Ford, the family scion, CEO and largest private shareholder of Ford Motor Company.
• We Tried “Limited Government” and it Failed
  A hundred years ago, Mark Twain said “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.” That was correct in his day and there has been a sharp decline in the intervening years.
• The Karl Rove Dream
  Politics under Karl has become so painfully negative and lie-based, so excruciatingly reliant on character assassination that it's unlikely to hold up for three more years, let alone become a legacy.
• Probable Cause Rides Off Into the Sunset
  Probable Cause is that delicious freedom that keeps the police from breaking down our doors to satisfy their whim that something illegal might be going on there.
• If We're Broke, Who Broke Us?
  In the amazing statements department of my mind, there is a special place for Representative John Boehner of Ohio
• Enhancement Takes on a Whole New Meaning
  What offends me beyond nearly all words is the original title of his bill that became an amendment; the Terrorist Death Penalty Enhancement Act.
• The Next Sound You Hear
  The next sound you hear out of Washington will be the quiet click of a door closing on New Orleans’ poor.
• Aspirin for a Broken Leg
  Face it, bipartisanites, the income tax is a broken leg and the country has been hobbling around on it, hopping from one unfairness to another for ninety-two years . . . long enough.
• The Sound Of the Far Right Going Nuts
  There is an almost palpable glee behind cautious grins, a sense that the middle has just dodged two bullets in a very short and likely non-recurring period of presidential opportunity.
• Napoleon Sends a Message to Tom DeLay
  This exterminator from Houston has risen to such overwhelming power, by his own hand and his own thirst for confrontation, that he is now “too powerful for any man, except myself, to injure me.”
• The Honorary Degree, a Template For Patronage
  The honorary title, a template for patronage in modern government.
• Republicans at the Wailing Wall
  It’s a sight for sore eyes, all these conservative Republicans having given so much away in the past five years instead of conserving that they’re bickering over how to pay for Katrina.
• Karen Hughes, PhotoShopping America
  The problem, according to Hughes, was not a failed relief effort, but a foreign press that did not appreciate the federal government’s good work.
• Congress Weighs In At the Pumps
  The push for higher mileage vehicles just got a flat tire in Congress. Swerved out of control, ran off the road, landed in the ditch of good intention and no guts. Smashed up by that pothole called "lobbyist money"
• Privatizing? Maybe Not All Bad.
  Very interesting story a couple of days ago about Lockheed getting the contract for providing flight services that were the territory of the FAA.
• Conservative Republicans?
  That just cracks me up, that conservative label that Republicans like to wear in the collar of their jackets like a hex sign on an old barn to ward off any hint of liberalism.
• Talking the Talk
  America is the only country I know of that makes such unending noise about human rights and the pushing and shoving for democracy, then allows the most outrageous offenses for short-term goals.
• Ha! Ha! (as in HA-liburton HA-rken)
  You can clothe it in the mysteries of accounting irregularities, but the greedy few have been caught shearing the sheep---not only shearing, but slicing off a lamb chop here and a tenderloin there for their own personal table
• Tax Crafting
  Every time I consider an alternative to the tax code, such as a flat tax or value-added (VAT) tax, I’m confronted by evidence of social engineering that would be impossible without the present complicated law.
• Soft Approach to Soft Money
  Congress, a few decades late, has enacted Political Fund-Raising Reform!

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