I just downloaded all of Ann Althouse's posts on the protests in Madison. For me, the nub of the issue is that the state had an election which Scott Walker and the Republicans won. They're doing what the law requires them to, find a way to balance the budget. The unions lost the election and are trying to block those who did win from carrying out the agenda they ran on. In other words, they're anti-American, anti-democratic and childish.

Civility!

14 Wisconsin State Senators have left the state in order to prevent a quorum to vote on a bill they oppose. Their problem is that they just created the meme of the "climate of hate" and pushed into the public's mind after Representative Giffords was shot by a maniac. And then they demonstrate their own civility like this.

Their ploy of leaving the Senate one short of a quorum, is compared to taking their ball and leaving, except that it's NOT THEIR BALL!

UPDATE: They've left Illinois after being discovered in Rockford. I've still not heard who is paying the freight for this defiant junket. The unions have too much control over the Democrats and some Republicans and they've come to believe it's their civil right to get whatever they demand. We need to revisit the labor laws.

The problem with the "civility" movement. Best line: It's political correctness by another name.

Democrats and democracy

Power Line makes a point I've been thinking about all day. How much of a democrat are you when you can't stand to lose without tantrums? And what kind of leaders are they if they vacate their posts and hide out of state to avoid a vote they know they'll lose. They're obviously beholden to labor unions if they're willing to take such extreme measures to protect their continued siphoning of taxpayer money for the unions' benefit.

Check out Moot, the game,

It'll expand your mind. One thing I found fascinating while learning German was the strange way old Nordic words developed into modern cognates. Example: the word moot now means inconsequential or beside the point, but it also means a debate or discussion (Remember the Entmoot in Lord of the Rings?). Before reduced to its modern form, it was "gemot" which gave rise to modern German "gemuetlich" meaning sociable, jovial, friendly. It's also related to meet but not gamut.

Another cognate pair that I always found interesting is German knopf, meaning button, and English knob.

Utah Rep. Jason Chavetz verbally mauls Jason Lew over Obama's budget proposals. Chavetz is an impressive interrogator. There's talk about him running against Hatch. Hatch should be getting ready to retire.

After hearing Hugh Hewitt brace a number of congressional leaders over the past week, my conclusions are as follows:

1. The House of Representatives is still afflicted with pork barrelers with lots of seniority and power, e.g. Hal Rogers, chair of Appropriations who doesn't necessarily want to make cuts as drastic as the situation calls for. His position makes him powerful and not one to be criticized lightly by other House Members. I don't think that even the Speaker wants to be too blunt with him.

2. Boehner and Cantor and Ryan and others are trying to get around these logs in the road to deeper cuts by making all these appropriations bills subject to "open rules" which allow any member to propose amendments changing the bill as it comes out of Rogers' committee. From the reassurances they gave Hugh, I didn't feel that they were less than serious about their pledge to the country, but that there was something they were reluctant to say, which I suspect was that they want to cut as much as possible in the continuing resolution and 2012 Budget, but they have to skirt powerful chairmen like Rogers.

This is just a guess, but I did get weary of Hewitt badgering them, when they were at pains to reassure him but reluctant to put it in the words he was demanding. The reclamation of the government from the Democrats will take two steps the 2010 and 2012 elections. I expect that next year, there will me more primary contests than ever and less patience with the silly proposals put forth by the President and the pack of fools who can't seem to understand that we are on the brink of a real disaster if we don't back off the entitlement spending and regulations that bog down the economy for no better reason than to placate anti-capitalists and environmentalists, who constitute as close to a federal religion as we've had since the Civil War.

More proof that science doesn't know everything. Scientists used to believe that space was filled with ether, an invisible "hypothetical substance supposed to occupy all space, postulated to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space," but then that was replaced by vacuum, supposedly empty. Now they claim to have discovered that vacuum has friction. Something tells me that there are a lot of new discoveries between what we know, or think we know, now and what is the ultimate truth, between the current limits of our ability to observe and the Planck length.