No phone calls, no door-knockers on Saturday. Just three mailers: a four-pager from Tom Korge, and giant cards from Frank Quesada and from the “Accountability Project” (Police unions et al.) for Gonzalo Sanabria (but it’s a positive mailer for a change).
Let’s get to the scans:
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This headline in the LA Times is wrong: House Republicans pass Government Shutdown Prevention Act.
It should say House Republicans pass unconstitutional budget bill.
The first problem is visible right near the top of the story — although the reporter seems not aware of it.
A portion of the bill sought to ensure that lawmakers and the president have their paychecks cutoff, just like other federal employees, if the two sides failed to reach a budget deal before an April 8 deadline. The provision was similar to one that already passed the Senate.
The rest of the bill was less conventional.
WRONG. It seems our reporter — and the House GOP — has never read the US Constitution. Article I, sect 1, para. 7 states:
The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
So the statute is unconstitutional right there. But it gets worse.
Another section tried to revive a House spending plan that was killed by the Senate last month. Under the resolution passed Friday, the dead bill would come back to life and become law, without the president’s signature, if the Senate does not pass a bill funding the government for the rest of the 2011. The Senate would need to act by Wednesday.
Hello? Bicameralism? Presentment? Chadha anyone?
Every Republican in the House voted for this monstrosity.
Every Republican in the House violated his or her “Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution”. As required by Article 6 of the U.S. Constitution. It goes:
“I, (name of Member), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.
Voting for something that is clearly unconstitutional is a violation of this promise. I don’t see what else it can be.
But no one cares. We are now so debased as a Republic that no one bats an eye. What’s left, a Tea Party Senate candidate named Incitatus? (Look it up.)
At least some people knew enough to react with ridicule:
Democrats used the bill as an invitation to mock Republicans’ creative legislative process. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) brought to the House floor a copy of “House Mouse, Senate Mouse,” a children’s book on how a bill becomes a law that is sold in the House gift shop.
Outrage would be better.
(It doesn’t help that the President committed acts of war on Libya without Congressional permission. While the act was legal under international law as it was authorized by the Security Council, the military action’s conformity to US domestic law rests entirely on the War Powers Act, and only shakily on that. The next Gibbon will have a field day with all this.)
The Miami Herald editorial board — not the world’s most utterly reliable source, but one worth considering — endorses Tom Korge for Mayor saying his “experience on key city boards coupled with his vision for change offer a winning mix.” This is slightly surprising since the don’t-rock-the-boat Herald usually has a strong pro-incumbent bias. Bodes well for Korge.
In Group 5 they endorse Kerdyk, no surprise, see above on incumbents.
In Group 4, they say this:
In the packed field to replace 20-year veteran Commissioner Wayne “Chip’’ Withers, three of the seven candidates stand out: insurance salesman Rene Alvarez, lawyer Frank Quesada and clothing businessman Brad Rosenblatt. Each offers energy and imaginative ideas, but Mr. Alvarez is our pick.
I was starting to thinking I’d end up Quesada, but maybe it’s time to take a more careful look at Alvarez too. It’s interesting too that they don’t put Sanabria in their front rank.
One of my favorite scientific anomalies — why spacecraft speed up at the edge of the solar system — may have been explained.
For quite some time, the physics community has been baffled by subtle anomalies in the trajectories of the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft. If no “mundane” effect (e.g. propulsion from a gas leak, or radiation pressure, or collisions with space dust) can be found to explain it, then serious questions would have to be asked about whether our understanding of gravity is incomplete. This paper, however, claims to explain the anomalous acceleration in terms of thermal radiation.
Source: Unqualified Offerings, Mean scientists say no gravitational anomaly in outer solar system, referring to Modelling the reflective thermal contribution to the acceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft.
My only remaining hope that there might actually be a singularity is the date of the paper.
Is she the Republican George McGovern, or the Tea Party Barry Goldwater?
Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann raised more than $2 million through her campaign fund and political action committee over the first 90 days of 2011
via The Fix.
This morning I got another robocall. I picked up the phone, said “hello” and there was silence. “Hello? Hello!” As a result of all the helloing, I missed the first few words of the call in which the speaker on the scratchy tape identified himself as Somebody Something former Mayor of Something. But whoever he was, his recorded voice asked me to vote for Sanabria because he understands budgets and good public policy. It closed appropriately, identifying itself as a call paid and approved by the campaign for Gonzalo Sanabria.
[Late evening update: I came home to find a message on the answering machine left around 7:30pm from “Victoria,” a real live human who was calling to encourage me to vote for Sanabria. I don’t know what it is about his phone lines or his volunteers, but what she was saying was really hard to make out on the tape (sounded cheerful, though). I’d start to worry it was my phone, or maybe my hearing, except the other messages were fine.]
This afternoon’s mail brought three mailers:
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