Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

A little humor from John W. Lillpop

...It's in our DNA to cooperate with even our most despicable and nasty foes.

To illustrate this principle, President Bush and Speaker-elect Pelosi made several public gestures of reciprocity and nonpartisan goodwill including:

• Pelosi agreed to tutor Bush on pronouncing "nuclear," and Bush will teach Pelosi to blink.
• Pelosi gave Bush a copy of "Alcoholics Anonymous," and he presented her with "House Keeping for Dummies."
• On a more personal level, Pelosi gifted Bush with a dozen-used razor blades wrapped in a tally sheet showing the final Democrat and GOP head counts in the House and Senate. Bush gave Pelosi a make-up kit with mascara that melts when exposed to bright lights for more than 12 seconds, like at an historic swearing-in ceremony, for example.

Read more.

This is funny stuff. 

Incoming Democrats Will Bring Moderation, Experts Predict

(CNSNews.com) - The newly elected members of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives will force the party's leadership to shift to the center in the name of maintaining control, according to political analysts.

House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is expected to be the next speaker of the House, "has every reason to treat all members of the new Democratic majority caucus with fairness and inclusion," said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the liberal Brookings Institution. "She understands full well that winning one election is nice but by itself means very little."

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I don't know. I suppose we can hope so. So far Nancy Pelosi sounds a whole lot more reasonable than she or the rest of the Democratic leadership did before the election.

The thing is, all of these new "moderate" and "conservative" Democrats that have been elected are very junior representatives and junior senators. The Democratic leadership is still very far to the left. I'm sure that they'll be reminding the new blood that it was the DNC that financed and supported their campaigns.

That support could dry up if they don't toe the party line. The voters' support could dry up too if they don't come through for their base. I'm not going to make any predictions about that though.

Despite what I've read on the New York Times, the Seattle Times, and the Washington Post websites, I think that this wasn't nearly as strong a referendum against the president's administration and policies as has been reported. Sure, among Democrats it was, as well as among the members of the major media, most of whom are registered Democrats.

I think that there are three reasons that the Republicans lost. One of them is about the war and frustration with what appears on the surface to be a failed policy.

The second reason is that I think the voters are fed up with the failure of the Republican party to live up to its ideals. The Republican party is supposed to be against big government, but they certainly seem to have forgotten it.

Republicans are also supposed to be about integrity and honesty. The scandals that rocked the Republican party this year certainly made it appear otherwise. What's truly sad though is that just as many scandals hit the Democrats, but that didn't really affect them as much as it did Republicans.

There's still a small majority of conservatives among the American people. Republicans have abandoned them. This is why RINO's like Lincoln Chafee lost to more conservative Democrats.

That's the thing about power though. The Republicans have been a perfect illustration of the problem. They rode a wave of change into power, and they slowly forgot their principles. Part of that problem was their leadership.

One of the reason's for president Bush's low approval ratings could be explained by this. He's not a true conservative, despite the left's unreasoning hatred of him. Sure he has some conservative principles, but he's also got some pretty liberal ideas, despite what you may have heard.

• Do you remember how Ted Kennedy wrote most of the president's education bill during his first term? Could that big increase in federal spending have truly come from a conservative? Sure, the left howled about it. So did Ted Kennedy. Why? Because no matter how much spending a Republican proposes, it's never enough. The left was mad because the bill didn't go far enough.
• How about when President Bush authorized federal funding for stem cell research? You don't remember? You mean you actually think he imposed ban on it? That's not what happened at all. He chose four, existing, stem cell lines and authorized funding for research using them. That's the opposite of a ban. Still, the far left was angry because he "banned" stem cell research.
• How about "entitlement" spending. Conservatives hate it, and not because we are lacking in compassion. No, we hate it because it saps ambition from the recipients. Why work harder if you can get paid for not working harder? We also hate it, because the Constitution doesn't explicitly authorize it. And President Bush created one of the biggest federal entitlement programs in decades when he pushed for and signed the Medicare prescription drug plan into law. The left hated it too, because it didn't go far enough.

None of those things are the act of a conservative. If the Republican party base truly consists of conservative Americans it should be plainly obvious why the approval ratings of the president and congressional Republicans dropped so low, even among Republican voters. Think about that. Conservative Republicans voted for "conservative" Democrats rather than for fringe Republicans. Basil, from Basil's Blog is an example.

Finally, the third reason the Democrats took over congress in a "Blue Wave" is related to history. Just about every second term president has suffered a loss of seats in congress during the mid-term elections. If you look at the number of seats lost this time, it's pretty darned close to the average for the last several presidents. It's nowhere near the biggest swing, and it's not the lowest swing.

There were a lot of comments during the weeks running up to the election about how the Republicans deserved to be taught a lesson. They've certainly been schooled.

I just hope the Democrats really do moderate a bit with the new conservative junior members of congress. But I'm afraid that what will really happen is that the Democrats will teach the Republican voters a lesson.

I'm afraid we're all going to get schooled.

Maryland Sentences Malvo To Life

It's another life sentence for Lee Boyd Malvo, to go with the one handed to him by Virginia.

(AP) Convicted sniper Lee Boyd Malvo was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for six murders in Maryland that were part of a three-week shooting spree that terrorized the Washington area in 2002.

The Maryland trial in Montgomery County Circuit Court included Malvo's chilling insider account of his trip across the country with accomplice and mentor John Allen Muhammad.

In a brief statement in court Wednesday, Malvo apologized for his role in the killings.

"I'm truly sorry, grieved and ashamed for what I've done," said Malvo, his voice breaking.

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He should be. Even so, he's getting off easier than the people he killed. It's still not too late for him to be given the death sentence for some of his killings. There are still more trials to come.

Justice is slow, but sure. This is one assassin that won't be back on the street.