URLs du Jour

2009-02-13

  • As you no doubt have heard, NH Senator Judd Gregg withdrew his nomination for Secretary of Commerce. I'm glad to have one representative left (for now) who has a good chance of voting in ways that won't give me ulcers.

    I like to think that, a few days ago, he slapped his head and said, "Secretary of Commerce?! Why would I even want that job? Why would anybody? What was I thinking?"

  • But there's probably more to it than that. At Big Lizards, Dafyyd explores the Census angle of this dustup. Inflating the population count in urban areas has long been on the Democrat wish list, and it appears it's on its way. I'm sure big-city Democrats will undertake the 2010 count with the honesty and transparency they've long been known for. I'm sure ex-ACORN workers will find themselves first in line for census taker positions.

  • And at Power Line, Scott titles his post on the topic "Census and Censibility." This is a Jane Austen pun (albeit very similar to ones made before), so it's an automatic link for Pun Salad.

  • Captain Ed observes, on the other hand:
    From a couple of sources around Capitol Hill, I've gotten the sense that the effort by Rahm Emanuel to strip the Census from Gregg was just the final straw and not the prime motivator behind his decision. It rendered Gregg even more of a political eunuch than the lockout on the stimulus plan, and underscored the fact that even as a Cabinet member, he would not have inside status with the Obama administration. Gregg would get trotted out as the Bipartisan Pony when Obama needed a beard. Some of us predicted just that when he accepted the position, and Gregg found out the hard way that he never should have done so.
    Also the Captain quotes the WaPo deeming the Administration's reaction to be "peeved and churlish".

  • Lawrence Henry has passed away. His friends at the American Spectator remember him here. I particularly enjoyed his essay from a couple years back about Garrison Keillor, a talented writer and humorist brought low by political obsession.