Oh! The scandal of it all! A contested Primary and the Maricopa County Republicans are having JD Hayworth speak at their annual Lincoln Day Luncheon WITHOUT inviting Jim Deakin or Senator McCain! For Shame! For Shame!

This was the newest bone of contention to rile the august body of Republicans at last night’s (Thursday, April 1st) Maricopa County Monthly EGC Meeting. The McCain people were unhappy because of what they claim appears to be an endorsement of JD Hayworth over incumbent Senator, John McCain.

One member of the council raised the issue under new business and quoted the by-laws prohibiting anyone on the council from endorsing anyone in a contested primary on behalf of the council without a 60% approval vote by the council. This council member then attempted to one up the by-laws by calling for the council to raise this threshold to NEVER endorse anyone in a contested primary. The motion was declared out of order which started another fight over the authority of the Chairman to declare a motion out of order. A roll-call vote was taken and passed in the Chairman’s favor (10 – 8, ~5 abstaining).

Read the rest at: Lost Dutchman Blog

The IRS commissioner lets loose on the left on their slander about the Tea Parties and violence against the IRS:

“What there has been is increased chatter on the Internet that has an anti-government sentiment, and the issue of taxes has gotten swept into it,” he said. “And there’s a lot of difference between people not liking taxes, people not liking the tax system or having issues with the government, and it actually being a safety issue for my employees.“

I bet this comment is going over reallllly well with the Kos Kids and Democratic Weather Underground right about now…

Read the rest.

Thanks to Code Monkey.

For the past six years I’ve been pointing out that the Clean Elections system has made the legislature more extreme.  Here’s a post from 2006, quoting a post from 2005.

Legacy moderates survive but they are endangered.  I’ve mentioned before that Conservatives always had a natural base and an army of supporters but they couldn’t get past the Chamber of Commerce types who controlled the money.  Those gatekeepers are now meaningless.

With equal money, the candidate with the natural base and supporters will beat the candidate who happens to be a lobbyist favorite.

My prediction has come true and it’s now conventional wisdom that Clean Elections has empowered conservatives and made the legislature more extreme.  Since I’m pretty happy with the current state of the Legislature, I’ve decided that Clean Elections has worked out pretty well.  But for some reason, the Democratic Party activists and Establishment Moderates who originally pushed it aren’t happy.

So now, after finally realizing that Clean Elections empowers Conservatives, the Establishment folks have gone to the legislature and asked the knuckle dragging troglodytes to pretty please put a referendum on the ballot to repeal it.

Read thr rest at: Arizona’s Own Espresso Pundit

“Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government . . . . and that whensoever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force. . . . that the government created by this compact [the Constitution for the United States] was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; . . . . that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority; . . . and that the co-States, recurring to their natural right in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these acts void, and of no force, and will each take measures of its own for providing that neither these acts, nor any others of the General Government not plainly and intentionally authorised by the Constitution, shall be exercised within their respective territories.”

So wrote Thomas Jefferson, Vice President of the United States, in a document drafted at the request of members of the Kentucky legislature in 1798. Kentucky passed Jefferson’s paper and broadcast it to the world as the definitive opinion and stand of the sovereign people of the State. The language drafted by James Madison for similar documents adopted by the Virginia legislature in 1799 and 1800 was similarly unequivoical in its constitutional position and forceful in expression.