Could His Fellow Senators Be A Bit Tired of Joe?

As if Joe hadn't already (only-half-jokingly) complained about what increasingly looks like his bit player role in the Obama administration....("Since the race is over, no one pays attention to me at all.")

Now this...

BIDEN TO BE BARRED FROM SENATE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUS MEETINGS AS PART OF REID EFFORT TO RESTORE CHECKS AND BALANCES

"The new Congress will reassert its constitutional independence from the White House by barring the vice president from joining in internal Senate deliberations, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said in an interview with The [Las Vegas] Sun.

The move is intended to restore checks and balances to a system that tilted heavily toward the White House in the Bush presidency.

By giving Vice President Dick Cheney regular access to Senate Republican caucuses, at times with White House advisers in tow, party unity became more important to many Republicans than upholding their responsibilities to provide legislative oversight of the executive, experts say.

Asked if Vice-President Joe Biden will be allowed to attend Senate Democratic caucus meetings, Reid said: 'Absolutely not.'

So much for senatorial courtesy...

I do applaud Reid for his purported 'restore checks and balances' assertion, but let's be real -- I suspect they don't want Joe Biden interfering, especially now that he will be looking for ways to stay relevant...or at least stay in the media spotlight.

To his credit Biden is certainly no Dick Cheney. But then Biden will never possess much less wield anything resembling the power Cheney did. That Harry Reid seems to think so is rather laughable.

Bottom line : Joe's no longer in the club and he will have to get used to being constantly on the sidelines. Perhaps Biden may come to regret leaving the Senate. But I doubt it.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

The Obligatory Libertarian Tax Day Post

The most disturbing factoid that I learned on Tax Day was that the average American must now spend a full twenty-four hours filling out tax forms. That's three work days. Or, think of it this way: if you had to put in two hours per night after dinner to finish your taxes, that's two weeks (with Sundays off). I saw a talking head economics professor on some Philly TV channel pontificating about how Americans procrastinate. He was laughing. The IRS guy they interviewed actually said, "Tick, tick, tick." You have to wonder if Governor Ruth Ann Minner and her cohorts put in twenty-four hours pondering whether or not to give Kraft Foods $708,000 of our State taxes while demanding that school districts return $8-10 million each?

New Warfare: I started my posts with a discussion.....

.....on Unrestricted warfare . The US Air force Institute for National Security Studies have developed a reasonable systems approach to deter non-state violent actors who they label as NSVA's. It is an exceptionally important report if we want to deter violent extremism and other potential violent actors that could threaten this nation and its security. It is THE report our political officials should be listening to to shape policy so that we do not become excessive in using force against those who do not agree with policy and dispute it with reason and normal non-violent civil disobedience. This report, should be carefully read by everyone really concerned with protecting civil liberties while deterring violent terrorism and I recommend if you are a professional you send your recommendations via e-mail at the link above so that either 1.) additional safeguards to civil liberties are included, or 2.) additional viable strategies can be used. Finally, one can only hope that politici...

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