Civility Watch (combined with "Oh, that liberal media): If you missed the fact that Wisconsin Republicans were the target of death threats, you need to get your news from somewhere else.

Not taking this seriously were ABC, CBS, MSNBC, NBC, and NPR. LexisNexis and closed-caption dump searches of "Wisconsin and ‘death threat’" produced zero results for these so-called news outlets throughout the month of March.

Zero.

When you compare this to the hysterical coverage of last year’s Tea Party rallies and town hall protests, where conservatives were regularly depicted as either hostile or fomenting violence, one has to wonder how actual death threats against sitting politicians would not be considered newsworthy.

This seems particularly curious after all the talk about hostile rhetoric immediately following the shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) in January.

And more civility in DC:

Paul Craney, executive director of the D.C. Republican Committee, says that a shooter took out the windows at the GOP’s storefront office, near 13th and K streets NW, with a small-caliber projectile, possibly from an air gun.

Craney said he got a call from an alarm company early Wednesday morning but didn’t pick up the call. And when he showed up to work this morning the alarm was on. But he didn’t notice the fenestration damage until later in the day. “I was getting lunch, and noticed: Oh my god, our windows are all shot up.”

While on the phone with a reporter, Craney discovered an approximately BB-sized piece of shot on the ground outside the window.

Following 4 closed-door meetings, the President was to get an award for being so open to the press. Sensing the irony, that award got postponed.

And finally, to make up for the dearth of links this week, two political cartoons. (Can you tell I really like Chuck Asay?)

Hunter Baker, writing at "First Things", responds to Jim Wallis’ question "What Would Jesus Cut", referring to government spending. (Which begs the question, would Jesus borrow us into prosperity?)

Obama’s HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, admits to double counting some savings that ObamaCare™ would bring. Not really news, except for those who haven’t been paying attention.

Media Matters, an allegedly non-partisan press watchdog group, has a Transparency project that lists major donors to conservative and libertarian organizations. "The Agitator" notes that, while a number of those conservative organizations themselves already provide this transparency, Media Matters itself does not.

Who’s going to clean up this mess in Wisconsin?

It could cost as much as $7.5 million to repair damage protesters have done to the Capitol Building marble say officials in Madison. Fixing posters to the marble with tape and glue appears to have done the bulk of the damage.

During testimony Thursday, a representative from the Attorney General’s office said a contractor estimated it would cost $500,000 to remove all of the posters and garbage. He says it would cost $6 million to restore the marble inside of the Capitol building and another $1 million to touch up the marble outside of the building.

Guess who came to the rescue? The Tea Party. Liberals trashed it, conservatives will care for it.

Mark Steyn notes a very odd way to say, "Thank you.". A young Kosovar is who killed 2 US servicemen in a Frankfurt airport. I mean, we didn’t even wait for UN resolutions before helping Kosovo get its independence. That’s gratitude?

Remember how upset the Left was about indefinite detentions and military tribunals at Guantanamo, and how much the press covered it? Yeah, well, all that is back on again and now they’re rather quiet about it. Wonder what changed.

Michael Moore and Rachel Maddow say, no, we’re not broke as a nation. Reality begs to differ.

Bummer. A set-back for reprogrammed adult stem cells. Undisturbed adult stem cells continue to be extremely useful, but trying to reprogram them into what are essentially embryonic stem cells is having problems.

Look, if you’re going to be biased in what you say, I have no problem with that. Just be honest about it. NPR isn’t. James O’Keefe strikes again at the heart of liberal bias at the network. NPR tries some damage control, but Patterico calls their ombudsman on it. Predictably, liberals now deplore gotcha’ journalism. (Though calling up a governor and misrepresenting who you are is just fine. Wonder what changed.) And apparently O’Keefe isn’t done with the revelations.

The UK’s CEO of the national power grid is predicting that blackouts will be just a part of the new normal once wind turbines become more prominent and supplant other means of electricity generation. How long before paying to not get blacked out becomes popular, and the politization of energy begins?

Civility Watch: Credible death threats against the Palins.

And finally, the Society of Centurions is named after the Centurion who was at the cross when Jesus died, and ultimately admitted, "Surely he was the Son of God". It is an organization for former abortion providers. Changing one’s view on abortion is one thing. Considering it wrong after you’ve provided them is another thing entirely. Priests for Life admonishes, "Let’s pray for the Centurions, and may their numbers increase!" Amen.

For weeks, Wisconsin’s Democratic State Senators have been hiding out in Illinois to prevent a vote on a budget bill that would strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. Republicans became so fed up with the Democrats’ run and hide strategy they decided to separate the collective bargaining provision from the rest of the budget and vote on it anyway:

Wisconsin lawmakers voted Thursday to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from the state’s public workers, ending a heated standoff over labor rights and delivering a key victory to Republicans who have targeted unions in efforts to slash government spending nationwide.

The state’s Assembly passed Gov. Scott Walker’s explosive proposal 53-42 without any Democratic support and four no votes from the GOP. Protesters in the gallery erupted into screams of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as Republican lawmakers filed out of the chamber and into the speaker’s office.

The state’s Senate used a procedural move to bypass missing Democrats and move the measure forward Wednesday night, meaning the plan that delivers one of the strongest blows to union power in years now requires only Walker’s signature to take effect.

He says he’ll sign the measure, which he introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall, as quickly as possible — which could be as early as Thursday.

“We were willing to talk, we were willing to work, but in the end at some point the public wants us to move forward,” Walker said before the Assembly’s vote.

This is the first step in Wisconsin’s efforts to regain fiscal sanity and Governor Walker and his fellow Republicans should be applauded for their courage in standing up to the bullying tactics of the unions and the Left.

By the way, if you’re still in doubt about whether public unions are bad for our country, check out this post by Mike Flynn at Big Government which will tell you all that you need to know.

Back in October, I said this:

If jobs start getting created after big Republican wins in November, it’ll likely be because the "Party of No" will be there to curb this uncertainty.

And now?

Employers in February hired at the fastest pace in almost a year and the unemployment rate fell to 8.9 percent—a nearly two-year low.

The economy added 192,000 jobs last month, with factories, professional and business services, education and health care among those expanding employment. Retailers, however, trimmed jobs. State and local government, wrestling with budget shortfalls, slashed 30,000 jobs, the most since November.

The government’s report Friday bolstered hopes that employers will shift into a more aggressively hiring mode and allow the economic recovery to get on firmer footing.

The unemployment rate has been falling for three months, down from 9.8 percent in November.

I’m no economist, but this sort of clear cause-and-effect is rarely seen in politics. But indeed, taking the uncertainty out of economic policy has done what it should have done; allowed businesses to take a deep breath and jump back in to a hiring mode. The Obama administration’s policies were all over the map and were giving businesses heartburn trying to predict what new regulations would come out that afternoon. The "Party of No" has returned stability to the process, and now unemployment is going down.

Was that so hard to understand, really?

From HotAir, a link to this jello,

A coalition of progressive Christian leaders has taken out a full-page ad that asks “What would Jesus cut?” in Monday’s edition of Politico, the opening salvo in what the leaders say will be a broader campaign to prevent cuts for the poor and international aid programs amid the budget battle raging in Washington.

What would Jesus cut? Seriously? For starters, I think he’d trim it down to five loaves and two fish.

Where “cutting back” = “sticking our hands deeper into your pockets”
Ain’t it just like the government, when faced with a budget crisis, to look at more ways to tax the people? From E-Commerce,

With the state and local revenue shortfalls, I suspect we will see more state governments demanding Internet sales taxes. Since the original Ban on Internet sales taxes was to foster the growth of the Internet, that mission seems to be completed.

That may mean that we, as consumers, will eventually find everything more costly on the Internet, as Internet sales taxes are permitted and sought on more and more transactions.

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Man kills 4 – uses a high capacity knife
Maybe we should ban public access to kitchen knives? Don’t laugh.

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Got an iPhone? Watch this video
Password bypassed and into the phone in 6 minutes. Moral of the story: besides wiping your data, if your phone is stolen, have recovery backup systems built into your information-rich cyber accounts.

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Geek News of the Week
NASA releases images of man-made crater on comet.

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PSP-playing is dangerous to your health
At least when you’re in a subway station. Lucky for the reality-distracted gamer that a reality-based hero was around.

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On calling evil good
California SB48 – an excerpt (bold emphasis added),

51204.5.  Instruction in social sciences shall include the early
history of California and a study of the role and contributions of
both men and women,  black Americans, American Indians,
Mexicans, Asians, Pacific Island people, and other ethnic groups
  Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans,
Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and
transgender Americans, and members of other ethnic and cultural
groups,  to the economic, political, and social development of
California and the United States of America, with particular emphasis
on portraying the role of these groups in contemporary society.

So what’s the huge deal in Wisconsin? Why are teachers abandoning their posts (and students) to protest at the capitol. The Wall St. Journal explains.

Mr. Walker’s very modest proposal would take away the ability of most government employees to collectively bargain for benefits. They could still bargain for higher wages, but future wage increases would be capped at the federal Consumer Price Index, unless otherwise specified by a voter referendum. The bill would also require union members to contribute 5.8% of salary toward their pensions and chip in 12.6% of the cost of their health insurance premiums.

If those numbers don’t sound outrageous, you probably work in the private economy. The comparable nationwide employee health-care contribution is 20% for private industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average employee contribution from take-home pay for retirement was 7.5% in 2009, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.

Mr. Walker says he has no choice but to make these changes because unions refuse to negotiate any compensation changes, which is similar to the experience Chris Christie had upon taking office in New Jersey. Wisconsin is running a $137 million deficit this year and anticipates coming up another $3.6 billion short in the next two-year budget. Governor Walker’s office estimates the proposals would save the state $300 million over the next two years, and the alternative would be to lay off 5,500 public employees.

(Hat tip: Betsy Newmark, a teacher.)

In short:

• The union refuses to be treated same as everyone else.
• The union doesn’t care about the state’s financial problems; let someone else pay the price.
• The union doesn’t want the governor to make the tough choices, at least if those tough choices affect the union.

This is what liberal politics has given us; teachers, and a union, that frankly don’t care about the fix we’re all in. If you want to complain that teachers aren’t paid as  much as those in the public sector, who’s fault is that? It’s the fault of those who insist on keeping their jobs, and their paychecks, in the hands of government.

Not all Wisconsin teachers approve of playing hooky for politics, nor are they all against this belt-tightening. But those that are, are doing their profession a disservice, and are exposing the problems with their union.

And here’s another entry for Civility Watch. If you thought the previous video of the lady with a Hitler sign was a one-off crackpot, check out those signs, including a very clear gun-violence message towards the governor.

Georgetown University Law Professor Randy Barnett provides a succinct explanation of what’s wrong with the Obamacare individual mandate:

Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine that I tell you 100 things that you may not do tomorrow. For example, you cannot run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. While your liberty would be restricted, there would still be an infinite number of things you may still do.

Now suppose I tell you 100 things that you must do tomorrow. You must run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. These 100 mandates could potentially occupy all your time and consume all your financial resources.

You can see why economic mandates such as the individual mandate in Obamacare are so much more onerous than either economic regulations or prohibitions, and why so dangerous an unwritten congressional power should not be implied.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

Think of how big the US economy is; the sum total of all the goods and services produced in an entire year. That’s how deep our debt is.

President Obama‘s budget, released Monday, was conceived as a blueprint for future spending, but it also paints the bleakest picture yet of the current fiscal year, which is on track for a record federal deficit and will see the government’s overall debt surpass the size of the total U.S. economy.

Mr. Obama‘s budget projects that 2011 will see the biggest one-year debt jump in history, or nearly $2 trillion, to reach $15.476 trillion by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. That would be 102.6 percent of GDP — the first time since World War II that dubious figure has been reached.

And the budget projects the government will run a deficit of $1.645 trillion this year, topping 2009’s previous record by more than $230 billion. By contrast, 2007’s deficit was just $160 billion altogether.

We do not need more tax increases. That has not solved the debt issue. Spending must be cut, substantially. That is one thing that has simply not been tried. The Tea Party exists because of this; the huge debt we are going to pass on to our great-grandchildren if we don’t do something about it now.

It’s not often (well, ever) that a Friday Link Wrap-up would have breaking news, but as I type this, Hosni Mubarak has stepped down as President and put the military in charge, not his recently-named VP. This is a historic day for Egypt, as it now has its first living ex-President. Barry Rubin runs down the "now what?" scenarios.

Some town in the US, including one suburb of Atlanta, have a law requiring each household to own a gun. These towns have much lower crime rates than their neighbors. But with the cases going through the courts on the constitutionality of the ObamaCare individual mandate to buy health insurance, and with South Dakota considering a bill requiring gun ownership, Glenn Reynolds goes over the major differences between the two.

Reaganomics vs Obamanomics and getting us out of a recession.

In his first speech as Britain’s prime minister, David Cameron argued that a shared national identity prevents extremism more so than multiculturalism, and indeed, the latter may encourage it. If you have no connection to your country, you have no problem burning it.

Patterico highlights one woman’s success story for her child because of school vouchers. However, he notes that, far from being just one bit of anecdotal evidence, this is a trend. He points to a CATO article that highlights a new federal study.

The latest federal study of the D.C. voucher program finds that voucher students have pulled significantly ahead of their public school peers in reading and perform at least as well as public school students in math. It also reports that the average tuition at the voucher schools is $6,620. That is ONE QUARTER what the District of Columbia spends per pupil on education ($26,555), according to the District’s own fiscal year 2009 budget.

Better results at a quarter the cost. And Democrats in Congress have sunset its funding and are trying to kill it. Shame on them.

If President Obama believes his own rhetoric on the need for greater efficiency in government education spending and for improved educational opportunities, he should work with the members of his own party to continue and grow this program.

But frankly, it’s all about the unions, not about education, for Democratic politicians.

In more Civil Discourse Watch, here’s folks on the Left calling for riots, or at least pointing to rioting as a good example.

The failure of the repeal of ObamaCare can be laid at Democrats feet. We’ll see how well that works for them in 2012. (Didn’t work so well in 2010.)

In which country in the Middle East do Arabs have the greatest civil liberties? Click here to find out.

We keep hearing this refrain.

Shortly after taking office, President Obama traveled to Cairo to declare a new day in U.S. relations with the Muslim world – saying there was "no straight line" to building democratic societies in the Middle East.

The June 2009 address was in part intended to show a clean break from a George W. Bush-era "freedom agenda" of promoting electoral democracies across the region. Yet Obama now finds himself forced to move much closer to that world view as he escalates pressure on Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to make immediate changes.

Regarding national defense and now foreign policy, Dubya had it right. Slowly, but too slowly, Obama is realizing this.

Law enforcement could have stopped the Fort Hood shooting by Major Hasan if political correctness hadn’t prevented them.

And finally, some bad investments. Click for a larger version.

A verse I found highlighted by a friend on Facebook:

Proverbs 26:18-19 (New International Version 1984, ©1984)

¹⁸ Like a madman shooting
   firebrands or deadly arrows
¹⁹ is a man who deceives his neighbor
   and says, “I was only joking!”

The Left seems to forget their own hateful rhetoric when they start to point fingers at Sarah Palin. “…a big mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick on it.” “I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.” “Somebody’s going to jam a CO2 pellet into his head and he’s going to explode like a giant blimp.” Indeed. These and other gems at Q&O.

On the (much) lighter side, I have finally been convinced that you should only put 1 space after a period, not two. I’m endeavoring to do so in this post, but it’s a hard habit to break.

Living up their promises, the Republicans have put forth a proposal for $2.5 trillion of spending cuts. Since it’s that amount over 10 years, it’s still only a drop in the bucket. But it’s more than they have suggested in the past (as far as I know) and certainly more than Democrats ever have. If the Dems want to criticize the choices of where to cut, let’s just see them propose their own.

I grew up in the Salvation Army denomination. (Yes, it’s a denomination.) Representatives from around the world are currently meeting to elect the next General, the administrative head of the Salvation Army. You can follow events on their web page, get e-mail updates, or even follow them on Twitter.

Cutting sugar, sodium and trans fats. Buying more produce locally. Cutting price premiums for healthier food options. That’s Wal-Mart for you. (Yeah, that Wal-Mart).

In Houston, it’s apparently safer for the homeless to go hungry than to get a meal that hasn’t been government certified.

Reason TV asks, what happened to the antiwar movement? It gives a serious look at the disappearance of a group that was so huge while Bush was President. Glenn Reynolds notes, they were useful idiots until they stopped being useful.

Charles Krauthammer:

Suppose someone – say, the president of United States – proposed the following: We are drowning in debt. More than $14 trillion right now. I’ve got a great idea for deficit reduction. It will yield a savings of $230 billion over the next 10 years: We increase spending by $540 billion while we increase taxes by $770 billion.

He’d be laughed out of town. And yet, this is precisely what the Democrats are claiming as a virtue of Obamacare.

Some say that if spending $X saves us $Y down the road(where Y is greater than X), then the government should spend it. But ObamaCare is much more a behemoth than simply judicious spending on road repairs before they get much worse. The claim that repealing ObamaCare will cost us money is ridiculous for Krauthammer’s reason.  Amazing.

And finally:

Haven’t found much to expound upon this week, or perhaps my blogging muse took an extended (if you’ll pardon the expression) Christmas vacation.  But indeed, I still have been perusing the ‘net, and have found a few interesting links.

If you’ve ever wondered why the ACLU seems to regularly side with organizations and issues that seem to oppose traditional American values, this collection of unearthed letters between the ACLU founder, Roger Baldwin and the American Communist Party should shed some light.  (Hat tip: Holy Coast)

Y’know that phrase, "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it"?  Here’s you’re chance to learn from it.  If you want to find out how ObamaCare will turn out, just look at the broken promises and escalating costs of RomneyCare in Massachusetts.

An impressive new invention from Germany; heat balls! 

Chavez currently has dictatorial powers in Venezuela, and is currently in a stand-off with American diplomats.  So he wants the US to change the envoy to Caracas to one of his choice of useful idiots; Sean Penn, Oliver Stone or Bill Clinton.  Talk about gall.

So many liberal blogs got this absolutely wrong, you wonder if poor civics or history classes in public school lead to liberalism.  Talking Points Memo illustrated this perfectly.  When reading the Constitution in the House chambers yesterday, Republicans read what amounted to the amended Constitution, skipping parts that were superseded by later amendments.  This included counting only 3/5ths of the slaves.  Evan McMorris-Santoro writes:

It’s fairly likely that no elected politician wants to stand up and read aloud the Founder’s vision of African Americans as equaling three-fifths of a white person, so the GOP has decided to leave that part, and others, out when the Constitution is read today.

This was no "vision" of discounting African-Americans.  In fact, the "Three-Fifths Compromise" did two things when it was written into the Constitution.  It gave us a "united" states, which would have been impossible if slave states would not agree to the new Constitution, and it kept slave states from gaining too many representatives in the House (by simply importing "constituents") to keep slavery from ever being abolished.  It was a compromise, not a "vision", and it paved the way for the abolition of slavery.  A good explanation is here.

The federal debt is certainly cause for concern, but there’s also the problem of individual cities who have been financing all sorts of things with municipal bond debt.  This, too, has gotten out of control, leading us to another bailout-or-bankruptcy issue.

And finally, the roll of homeschoolers has grown to 2 million, 4% of all school-aged children.  Thanks, public schools.  Couldn’t have done it without you.

What Charlie Rangel did:

To summarize briefly, we have blatant and recurring Federal and State tax fraud, illegal use of four rent-controlled apartments in New York City, using his Congressional letterhead to illegally solicit funds for his private foundation from lobbyists for companies he was writing tax regs on, outrageous conflict of interest, failure to declare over $600,000 in income..the sort of stuff that would get you or I locked up for a long time.

What punishment he got:

Charlie Rangel’s penalty? He’ll be required to stand in the well before his colleagues in the House while a censure resolution is read, which will then become part of the Congressional Record. That’s it. Boo-freaking hoo.And he will stay in Congress.

Love that accountability.

Remember the movie "Erin Brockovich", telling of one woman’s crusade to get justice for the people of Hinckley, California from the eeevil corporation, Pacific Gas & Electric, for releasing a toxic plume of hexavalent chromium 6.  PG&E was sued for (what was going to be) a huge spike in cancer for the people.  No real scientific proof was offered, but this result was clearly going to happen.  Yeah, well, it didn’t.  Turned out John Stossel was right.  Again.  And Erin is back in Hinckley, pursuing the same thing.

Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and writing for they Sojourners blog, decides that the moral measure of a tax plan. 

"Does it further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few? Or does it disperse concentrated wealth and power, and strengthen possibilities for a democratic society with greater equality, improved health and well-being, shared prosperity, and ecological sustainability?"

By this measure, it sounds like the "rich" should never have their taxes decreased.  Ever.  OK, so what’s his limit on that moral measure?  How much money should the "rich" be allowed to keep?  Can we just get that number out, so we know what the standard is?

Wonder what the Hollywood Left’s supporters of Hugo Chavez will think of his upcoming dictatorial powers?  Eh, probably sweep it under the rug.

Liu Xiaobo, newest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, also endorses the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, praised George W. Bush, and is strongly on Israel’s side in the Middle East conflict.  Just sayin’.

Post-natal abortions are all the rage.  Oh, please don’t be surprised.  It’s just the natural result of the culture of death mindset.

Death panels are getting ready to meet.  Really.