Rossputin.com

Judging from the stock market, Republicans should keep doing exactly what they’re doing when it comes to the sequester. Well, almost exactly: it would be better if they didn’t implicitly buy into any of the Obama administration’s sky-is-falling rhetoric by calling, in near-panicked tones, for meetings with the president or for the Senate to do something.

But still, based on people putting their money where their brains are, what’s happening now is basically fine, which is more than enough for a Republican Party that has been routinely outmaneuvered by this president and that often shows less confidence than a 40-year-old virgin visiting the Chicken Ranch.

In the 11 months since the failure of the Simpson-Bowles Commission in March, 2012, the S&P 500 index is up approximately 7%. More interesting, over that same time period, the defense and aerospace industry (as represented by the Exchange Traded Fund, PPA, which holds many of these names) – those companies which the administration is putting forward as likely to suffer pestilence, famine, and huge job losses – is up the same percentage as the broader market.

Please read the entirety of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/28/stocks-support-sequester

As a Republican member of Congress whose mixed-in-every-way Colorado district includes Aurora, suburbs of Denver, and a large Air Force Base, Mike Coffman has long argued that the nation must make cuts in the Defense Department budget.

This week, Coffman will propose legislation to cut $500 billion from defense spending over the next decade through a range of 15 measures that include reducing programs “which do not contribute significantly to military capability,” using local civilian contractors instead of military personnel for “commercial-type activities at military bases,” lowering bureaucratic head count through attrition, and reducing the number of U.S. troops stationed in Europe.

This man is no RINO, and no naïf on defense issues. In addition to having an American Conservative Union ranking of 95 in his four years in Congress and serving on the House Armed Services Committee, Coffman has served in both the U.S. Army and the Marine Corps (in active duty and reserve capacities in each).

He volunteered to join the Army when he was 17 years old. And in more recent years Coffman voluntarily gave up safe, comfortable jobs in Colorado government, both while serving as a legislator and later as State Treasurer, to serve in combat in Kuwait and later helping to establish local governments in Iraq.

Today, Rep. Coffman believes — or at least hopes — that the sequester gives him “leverage to try to get these reforms done.” He doesn’t have illusions that his reforms will pass in the roughly 100 hours before the sequester hits, but rather that over coming months he will be able to pass, whether as amendments or stand-alone legislation, changes that replace across-the-board cuts with specific cuts aimed to save nearly as much money.

Please read the entirety of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/26/mike-coffman-gets-it

Colorado, the site of the Columbine and Aurora mass shootings, is now ground zero in the national debate over “gun control.” Last Friday, the State House of Representatives ? controlled by Democrats after yet another dismal election showing by the GOP here ? passed four bills restricting gun rights. They will soon go to the State Senate, where passage is likely given the Democrat majority in that chamber, and then on to Governor John “Really, I’m a Moderate” Hickenlooper (above), who has already said he will sign at least three of them.

Colorado Democrats have avoided the “assault weapon” debate and are focusing on ways more likely to fool average citizens into feeling good about “doing something.” Unfortunately, what they are doing will harm both liberty and safety for most Coloradoans.

The debate in the Centennial State is garnering national attention, with Vice President Joe Biden calling four perceived Democratic moderates (three freshmen and the Speaker of the House) to encourage them to vote for the measures. One Democrat who received a call said that “[Biden] just said he’s watching us and asked if we had a chance to move these bills forward and said what an important signal it would send to the country if we do.” I imagine that the “watching” part sounded very much like a threat, given the schoolyard bully nature of this administration. After all, this is a president who said to a Democratic member of Congress “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother.”

The four measures, which passed out of committee on party-line votes and then passed the House with unanimous Republicans (and a few, but not enough, courageous Democrats) in opposition, include:

Please read the rest of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/20/ground-zero-for-gun-control

A little irony: Last night, while much of America was watching Barack Obama spew his usual statist drivel, I was at the Pepsi Center watching The Who in concert, hearing Roger Daltry sing “Won’t Get Fooled Again.”

A little stupidity: I ordered some Valentines Day flowers from the web site of 1-800-Flowers. Today I got a message from UPS that the flowers were damaged in transit. (I was going to have them delivered today so they’d be at my house in the morning.) I wanted to call the people I ordered from to discuss options, so I did a Google search for “1800 flowers” to find their phone number. (As if that’s not dumb enough, the Google search result was not 1-800-FLOWERS. But at least I was smart enough to dial that anyway.)

It is rarely a productive exercise to accuse Democratic politicians of hypocrisy. After all, they so rarely campaign on principles that there is seldom an opportunity to notice when they violate the few principles they claim to hold dear. The hypocrisy-laden debates over the nomination of Chuck Hagel thus offer a unusual opportunity.

What pass for Democratic principles, but which in fact are just rationalizations of desired outcomes regarding the transfer of power and wealth, include, in domestic policy, that the rich get rich by making other people poor and, in foreign policy, that the U.S. is just one nation among many and therefore not exceptional.

A principle-free case in point: Democrat politicians, including particularly President Obama, are attempting (again) to destroy the educational opportunities of America’s poorest and poorest-served children in order to please teachers unions – perhaps the single most corrosive force attacking America’s youth and our nation’s ability to compete in the future of a global economy. I wonder what “principle” this travesty stems from. (John Boehner forced the reinstatement of the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program in 2011 after Obama and his fellow Illinoisan, Dick Durbin, had torpedoed it two years earlier, but Obama has taken aim again. And why not, since voters in Washington, D.C. cast 91 percent of their ballots for him?)

What tax-raising, UN-loving, union boot-licking congressional Democrat could easily be called a hypocrite when their few core beliefs are little more than the statist, irrational detritus of the educational system they themselves have devastated?

Please read the entirety of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/12/hypocrites-for-hagel

The Leadership Program of the Rockies Annual Retreat, which I’ll be attending for the 8th year in a row in late February at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, is always one of the highlights of my year. Full of lovers of liberty, and packed full of some of the most interesting speakers you’ll ever hear (if you’re interested in politics, and especially if you have a conservative/libertarian pro-free market viewpoint), this year’s event promises to be another great one. And the hotel is so fantastic, that even non-political spouses love the event.

The keynote speaker for the Friday night dinner will be Fox News reporter and libertarian champion John Stossel. Other great speakers (see regularly-updated list here) will include Bill Whittle, Mia Love, Yaron Brook, and – the person I’m most looking forward to hearing – DC Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Janice Rogers Brown, whom I’ve written about several times as one of the best (most principled) judges in America. If the Saturday lunch speaker is who I think it is, that will be fantastic, too, but I don’t have official confirmation yet, so I won’t say who I think it is.

Click here or on the picture below to open the printable PDF file with information about Retreat attendance, or learn more and register online here. The sooner you book, the better your chances of getting one of the block of discounted rooms.

The 2011 retreat, one of the best so far, featured Charles Krauthammer as the dinner’s keynote speaker, along with a raft of other great people addressing the crowd on politics, economics, and foreign policy.

You can see highlights of the 2011 Retreat here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=?HCSs8-KXw

This year’s Retreat will be held on Friday and Saturday, February 22nd and 23rd, at the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs, and LPR has an incredible discounted room rate available for Retreat attendees. Just ask for the Leadership Program rate when you call hotel reservations at (866) 837-9520.

It’s likely that this year’s event will be sold out, so please book soon.

As always, there will be a VIP reception ? at which you’ll be able to say hello to John Stossel and other speakers and have your photo taken with Stossel ? available to those who purchase a package which includes it. The number of attendees permitted at the VIP reception is limited in order to maintain a true “VIP” feeling about that part of the event.

Again, information about Retreat packages can be found HERE. And if you want a paper/pdf version, to fax or mail, or an easy way to see all the package choices, click HERE.

I hope to see you at this great event. You’ll be telling your friends for months afterwards how much fun you had, how much you learned, and how many interesting people you met. So again, please visit the LPR Retreat web page to get more information and register!

http://www.leadershipprogramretreat.com/

The Obama administration released a photo of President Obama shooting skeet, although you can’t actually see what he’s shooting at.

They added a rather amusing warning to the photo release:

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

So in the spirit of civil disobedience, here are four pictures of Obama shooting his shotgun, the first being the official one released by the White House, the second (I am told) comes from a contest at Michelle Malkin’s web site, and the last two done by a friend of mine.

It has recently become fashionable in conservative circles to attack Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) and the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” for putting forward a framework of principles for reform of America’s broken immigration system. The critiques from serious thinkers such as Utah Senator Mike Lee (perhaps my single favorite member of the U.S. Senate) and my American Spectator colleague Larry Thornberry, usually revolve around the word “amnesty” and suggest that Sen. Rubio is somehow caving in to leftist ideas in the way we normally expect from RINO and “establishment” Republicans, not from Tea Party champions.

These criticisms, both of the framework and of Senator Rubio, are misguided. They represent — but not for the reasons most people think — a primary cause of President Obama’s winning a second term and the primary reason that the GOP will have little chance at better future results unless the party — and the perception of the party — change dramatically.

The importance of the immigration debate is not mostly about its impact on several million Spanish-speaking illegal aliens (a term I don’t shy away from using). It is not even mostly about the economic impacts of immigration (a debate for another day). Instead, it is about how an ever-increasing number of voters view the Republican Party even if they have little interest in the details of immigration policy.

Please read the entirety of my article for the American Spectator here:
http://spectator.org/archives/2013/02/01/amnesty-versus-bigotry

but only Bloomberg’s guys have guns…

http://youtu.be/RCC-rEx81PE

I’ll be guest-hosting for Mike Rosen on Denver’s 850 KOA from 9 AM to noon (Mountain time, 11 AM to 2 PM Eastern time) on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, January 28-30.

If you can’t listen over the air, you can listen online at http://www.850koa.com

Please listen in, and you can join the conversation by calling 303.713.8585