Lawmaker News

It is difficult to envision Eric Cantor's name emblazoned across the front of a NASCAR stock car. Impossible to imagine Ralph Stanley playing at his events. Cantor is from the age when the South finally joined up with the Eastern conservative establishment, leaving church, party and tradition behind. The great historian W.J. Cash early warned of this: The ominous New Man would come to the South, he said, a reincarnation of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt, avatar of commerce as a measure of all humanity. Texas conservative Ron Paul brought up Lewis as well when asked a question of the advancing establishment by Fox: When America becomes a fascist state, said Paul, quoting Lewis, it will be calling itself a Christian nation and wrapped in the American flag.

On May 15, 2012, I wrote about the John Edwards trial, predicting that he'd walk. Yesterday he did. One acquittal and five mistrials, after all the government’s evidence, doesn’t warrant another try.

The prosecution COULD retry Edwards, but it won't. The applicable elections law is unclear. The government's unprecedented case was based on a questionable key witness, Edwards's unappealingly sycophantic ex-assistant, who has made a career of soiling the name of his former employer. Mostly, prosecutors know that retrying a case is "like kissing your sister,” as I was told when I proposed doing so in a celebrated trial in the Kennedy Justice Department. The defense knows your case; the juice of surprise is gone; it is the opposite of the original trial, where the deck is stacked for the prosecution.

After graciously taking responsibility for his hideous behavior, John Edwards invoked the name of the Lord in support of his planned comeback.

When will they ever learn? Have they no shame?

Let me first associate myself with the excellent post about the Edwards trial by Ronald Goldfarb, titled "John Edwards walks, disgraced.” I would add two major points. First, not only did John Edwards betray his wife, he also betrayed Bunny Mellon, who donated major money because she believed in John Edwards. He abused her trust. And second, Edwards was totally right in his critique about the two Americas, which was similar to the profoundly important analysis of the 1 percent and the 99 percent offered by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

The odds are 11-1 the jury in the federal case in North Carolina trying John Edwards for campaign law violations will convict. There might be a holdout. That’s why I set odds at 11-1. Edwards has been portrayed as such a despicable human being — politician and husband — that the jury is likely to be unsympathetic to his legalistic defense.

But I also think that if there is a conviction, the odds are that there will be a reversal based on the trial judge's ruling yesterday. She kept out of the trial the testimony of a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission that in his opinion Edwards did NOT violate federal election laws by not declaring donations from admirers that went to shield his tawdry affair. The judge ruled that this testimony could not be heard by the jury because the witness might have based his testimony on facts the jury doesn’t have.

True libertarians do not care what people do in their private lives.

Phony libertarians use private-life issues as partisan political weapons, as the pseudo-libertarian Rand Paul does in his low-grade comments that mock honorable libertarianism as much as they mock President Obama.

From journalists to Democrats to Republicans, many in Washington this week lamented the defeat of Indiana Sen. Dick Lugar in his GOP primary election Tuesday night — he is literally the embodiment of a time gone by. Known for his vast record of accomplishments in foreign and domestic policy, particularly in his pioneering work on securing nuclear weapons, Lugar was known for always striking the right tone and working with Democrats. The election wasn't even close. Lugar's opponent, Richard Mourdock, backed by the Tea Party, beat the 80-year-old, six-term incumbent by 20 points.

Excellent reporting by The Hill reveals that Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R) has missed 92 percent of the votes in the House of Representatives in 2012. He should therefore return 92 percent of his 2012 salary to the federal Treasury. In another example of the rampant hypocrisy of Republicans, it is ludicrous for Ron Paul to expect American taxpayers to subsidize his campaign speeches where he quotes Austrian economists and complains about the deficit at taxpayer expense. This is as hypocritical as Ron Paul supporting earmarks while Rick Santorum lobbies for earmarks, while both claim to be fiscal conservatives.

Can anyone with a modicum of common sense understand why the Republican Party of Florida allowed Congressman Allen West to be gerrymandered out of his congressional district?

It would make sense if this were Massachusetts or California. If a Democrat-majority state had tried to force Rep. West out, we could easily see why. But this is a battleground state, and one whose Legislature is run by his fellow Republicans. Read more...

If you are tired of the gaseous bigotry of Rush Limbaugh and the verbose inability of Mitt Romney (the "weather vane") to directly criticize Limbaugh, check out the hearing about the State Department budget from Feb. 29. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) exchanged civil and respectful words about President Obama's recent apology regarding Afghanistan. This exchange suggests why Ron Paul runs better against Obama than most other Republicans, why Hillary Clinton towers above all other national political figures in popularity, and why other Republicans could learn a lot from Ron Paul about how they could avoid the landslide defeat that might be approaching them.