Politics and other nightmares

No, Mr. President, "diversity" has not been one of this country's strengths. How we've handled diversity has been. But too many people, including, unfortunately, you, seem intent on turning the great American melting pot into a salad bowl. I don't care, by the way, whether the next justice is man, woman, white, black, whatever, as long as it's a rightwing wacko conservative who will drive the "Constitution is a living document" wacko liberals right around the bend.

Don't want to say I told you so, but . . . I told you so. The Star editorial is undoubtedly right that this move was probably designed to help get Bayh through the early appease-the-liberal-base primaries. But it will make it harder for him to rush back to the center, where he needs to be, if he does get through those.

And if you STILL believe the GOP is the fiscally conservative party, just consider the treatment Indiana Rep. Mike Pence got from Tom DeLay and other congressional Republican heavyweights for having the audacity to cut spending elsewhere to pay for hurricane relief.

Is Tom Delay completely brain dead?

We need to drag this woodpile of wasteful spending that is buried in the federal budget out into the light and throw it onto the scrap heap.

And which party has control of the federal budget, hmmm?

When he ran for his first congressional term in 1994, Mark Souder made a big deal about people going to Washington and staying too long. In fact, he made a self-imposed 12-year limit on his service the cornerstone of his campaign. So guess when that 12 years is up? If Souder really meant it back in 1994, he shouldn't even be running for re-election next year.

If you can choose between heroin or crack, is that a real choice? How about heart disease or cancer? There's about that much of a choice for us in Washington these days. If it's tough to still be a Democrat or a Republican and feel halfway good about it (I sincerely hope it is), at least be consoled that this is the worst time to be a fiscal conservative I can ever remember.

Evan Bayh has now come out against John Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court. Well, not against, exactly. From a Bayh office press release:

Regrettably, therefore, I cannot vote to confirm, not because I oppose John Roberts, but because we simply do not know enought about his views on critical issues to make a considered judgment.

No kidding: "The McCain meeting, however, is completely inexplicable." If anybody still has any illusion that media-darling McCain has a snowball's chance in the Republican primaries, this should provide a dose of reality.

Let's have a real war of conservative and liberal ideas on how to combat poverty. We've had plenty of cities that have tried the liberal approach; let New Orleans be the test case for the conservative one. At the very least, we'll learn something, even if it's what not to do.

The latest dispatch from the field by libertarian correspondent Mike Sylvester:

Last year I decided to research the annual average cost per student for K-12 education in Indiana.  I used two sources for all of my statistics -- Stats Indiana and The National Teachers Association.  Below is a summary of the average cost for 2004:

Expenses per student (not counting capital outlays or debt service) = $8,592 per year.