The AP has the story here. Other stories are here and here.

Stevens is most recently know for his involvement in a Department of Justice investigation in which Stevens was convicted of seven counts of lying on Senate financial disclosure statements to hide gifts from friends, including an oil company executive.

However, a judge later overturned Stevens’ conviction on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct and corruption among DoJ attorneys.

The trial and conviction cast enough of a shadow on Stevens that he lost his bid for re-election in 2008, prompting outrage among some Republicans who saw the entire fiasco as dirty politics taken to new lows.

Stevens spent 40 years serving the citizens of Alaska in the Senate, where he was known for his ability to bring millions of federal dollars to Alaska for various projects. One of the projects that caught the most attention was the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.” The project was intended to build a $223 Million bridge to Gravina Island from the Alaskan mainland, despite the fact that the population of Gravina Island is only 50 people. That works out to $6.7 Million per inhabitant. That kind of government waste helped to drive the creation of the Tea Party movement.

Sen. Stevens was 86.

In this video, we see a SWAT team has been called in to preserve order in the face of a tea part protest. Note the reaction from the protesters–peaceful compliance.

On the other hand, here is video of protest against the new, strict immigration law recently signed by the governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer. Note the man being escorted away by police. He is a counter-protester whose life was threatened. Note the violence being enacted against the police for protecting the man’s right to life, which these protesters refuse to recognize.

In this second video, we see how liberals, progressives, and socialists treat conservatives. Why the great difference? Because liberals, progressives, and socialists don’t believe in equal rights. They believe only in their own “rights,” which includes the right to take the property of others by violence, as demonstrated by the two losers that stole a backpack from one of the tea party protesters.

Update: my favorite part of the above video is where the communists and liberals are shouting at the conservatives to “get educated,” while holding up a very large sign with word the “immigrant” misspelled (no, people, it’s not spelled “immagrant”). HA! Too much.

Here is another example of the major differences between these two movements (this one was in LA). I guess the Left wouldn’t be the Left if they weren’t looking for excuses to destroy things.

The article mentions that anarchist infiltrators may have been responsible for the damage. Ok…but the Tea Parties also had infiltrators, who were quickly sent packing. The immigration protesters didn’t stop the damage when they could and should have.

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“Our feeling is that the majority of the Republican Party delegates are now tea party people,” Brian Halladay, one of the founders of the grass-roots Utah Rising organization, tells Newsmax.

NewsMax also interviewed Dave Hansen, Utah GOP Chairman, who said,

“I’m sure they have a very strong bloc, and they may have control,” Dave Hansen, chairman of the Utah GOP, tells Newsmax. “But we won’t know that until we get to the convention.”

But the really interesting part is their discussion with Hansen concerning the fate of incumbent Senator Bob Bennett.

Dave Weigel of the Washington Post reported Tuesday that a recent poll of more than 1,000 GOP delegates in Utah showed that Bennett is the top choice of only 15 percent of them. Tea party favorite Mike Lee, an attorney and first-time candidate, was the top choice of 35 percent of the delegates polled.

Hansen is skeptical that Bennett is in as much trouble as that survey suggests, however.

The results from the straw poll taken today at the Utah County Republican Convention are in, and Bob Bennet is still carrying only about 15% of the delegates.

The Rasmussen poll quoted by NewsMax also fails to mention Cherilyn Eagar, who is in second place behind Mike Lee. Additionally, Rasmussen polled GOP voters, which may or may not have included delegates. And in Utah’s Primary system, the delegates decide who the voters will have to choose from on the ballot.

What this means is that, if these patterns hold up, Bob Bennett won’t have enough to win the first round of voting at the State Convention next month, because the first round of voting will reduce the field to three candidates. It looks like it’s no longer a question of Bob Bennett getting 40% or more of the votes, and the balance being split by his three challengers. Bob Bennett is fighting for his political career.

That would be the kind of political decision I would like to face more often–the choice between three equally competent candidates who are all strong conservatives.

He succeeded in making Bart Stupak look like a complete idiot. I’m not too sure that would be hard to do. As Moe Lane at Red State put it,

“Now, it’s like this. It’s one thing to be a prostitute. It’s another thing to be a cheap prostitute. It’s yet a third thing to be a cheap prostitute who accepts Monopoly money. But to be a cheap prostitute who gets stiffed on your Monopoly money? That takes skill.”

Almost ruined my keyboard with a mouthful of water when I read that.

So what I am getting to? The AP has released this story about Obama’s fulfillment of his promise to Bart Stupak that he would sign an Executive Order that would prohibit the use of federal funds for abortions in return for Stupak’s vote for the health care reform bill.

AP Special Correspondent David Espo writes,

WASHINGTON – Anything but jubilant, President Barack Obama awkwardly kept a promise Wednesday he made to ensure passage of historic health care legislation, pledging the administration would not allow federal funds to pay for elective abortions covered by private insurance.

Where’s the catch? It covers only those elective abortions covered by private insurance. According to the Guttmacher Institute, only 13% of all abortions in 2001 were billed to private insurance. Additionally, the vast majority of abortions are obtained by single women, living below the poverty line. The women in this demographic are the same group that are most likely to not have private insurance, but are on some kind of government assistance. They cannot pay for abortions through Medicaid, but they can use state funds in several states. In other words, the women most likely to have elective abortions are the very people that ObamaCare was designed to cover (that is, when those provisions finally do actually kick in, four years from now), because of a lack of private insurance.

Barack Obama’s magnanimous promise to Bart Stupak will likely prevent federal funds from being used for only about 15% of all abortions. And that might still be a generous percentage.

“Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

If the Left were ever honest about their aims, they wouldn’t be enjoying the “success” they now are. The way to successfully deal with them is to stop giving them the benefit of the doubt. Wise Conservatives will be best served by thinking the worst of their Liberal and Progressive opponents–they always want control, they always will renege on deals, they always will be dishonest, they always will not care what Conservatives think, and they will never allow themselves to be constrained by laws, rules or agreements. Don’t believe me? Read “Rules for Radicals” by Saul Alinsky. If you have read it and you still don’t believe me, you haven’t been paying attention.

If Conservatives will consistently deal with Progressives with these assumptions in mind, they will be better able to proactively counter Progressive weaseling and prevent the damage caused by Progressive policies.

Sunday’s socialist uprising was only possible because of 100 years of steady Progressive plotting and conspiring. If the Republicans and Conservatives had recognized the truth about their opponents and acted on Reagan’s instincts 20 years ago, we would not now be looking at 10 years of repeal attempts just to get back 40 percent of what was lost on Sunday.

h/t Peter Barry Chowka at AmericanThinker

Louise Slaughter, a Pelosi minion and Chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, is considering a rule that would allow the House Democrats to pass a corrections bill that would automatically assume a majority vote on the Senate version of the health care reform bill, thus ensuring that ObamaCare becomes the law of the land without anyone in the House actually having voted on it!

Dave Schnittger, aide to House Minority Leader John Boehner, said:

“The Slaughter Solution is a plan by Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY), the Democratic chair of the powerful House Rules Committee and a key ally of Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), to get the health care legislation through the House without an actual vote on the Senate-passed health care bill. You see, Democratic leaders currently lack the votes needed to pass the Senate health care bill through the House. Under Slaughter’s scheme, Democratic leaders will overcome this problem by simply ‘deeming’ the Senate bill passed in the House — without an actual vote by members of the House.”

The Progressives are really showing their true colors now. They proved they could pass legislation without reading it. Now they are working on passing legislation without even voting on the actual bill. If this passes, what is to stop them from unilaterally declaring bills passed without ever even considering them? What will prevent them from passing raw ideas as legislation? Only their fear of the American Public. And, at the moment, that doesn’t seem to give them even a moment’s pause.

National Review’s Jim Geraghty wrote in Thursday’s Morning Jolt newsletter,

“Are they out of their minds? What, the town hall meetings of last summer were too genteel and conciliatory for House Democrats’ tastes? Trying some sort of stunt like this in order to pass a bill without actually making members vote for it — that’s the sort of thing that takes “armed insurrection” talk out of the realm of chat rooms. We’ve long suspected that the Constitution means nothing to our counterparts on the left, but the idea of working around the requirement that bills be passed by the House strikes a new and disturbing we’ve-lost-democracy note.”

This maneuver doesn’t just violate the Rule of Law. It goes way beyond that. This is an attack on the fundamental principles of our form of government. This is so foreign to our Constitution, the only word that truly fits is Sedition.

If the Progressives pull this off, you’ll find me at the nearest Militia recruiting station.

Fox News has video (see below) of Ms. Pelosi saying we have to pass the health care reform bill “so we can see what’s in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

First of all, that’s not what I would call “transparency,” Madam Speaker. Keeping from us the details of what this legislation will do until after it’s passed is somewhat like being asked to ingest the contents of an unlabeled bottle; for all you know, it might contain cyanide.

The lack of transparency brings me to my second point. The Speakers position, as enunciated in the video, conflicts with two of the five main principles of the Rule of Law.

The five principles are:

1. Generality: Laws must apply to everyone equally, and not single out groups or individuals.
2. Prospectivity: Laws must apply only to future behavior, not to past action (no ex-post facto laws).
3. Publicity: Laws must be publicized, so the people can be certain of their application.
4. Consent: Laws must be generally acceptable to the people who will live with them.
5. Due Process: Laws must impartially applied and enforced according to established laws.

Judging from Ms. Pelosi’s  comments, it appears that not only does this legislation violate the principle of Publicity (we can’t know what’s in it until it passes?), it violates the principle of Consent. How are we to give consent to being subject to legislation the application of which we can’t know until it becomes law?

That’s essentially how Republicans and Conservative talkers have been described by MediaMatters.org and other liberal bloggers.

But a quick Google search revealed that MediaMatters is being dishonest in its portrayal of Conservatives and Republicans as trying to “falsely accuse Dems of hypocrisy.” In fact, MediaMatters actually expose their own complicity in the promotion of this red herring.

The accusation is that the Right is conflating the terms “reconciliation” and “nuclear option” intentionally in an effort to discredit Democrats for wanting to use the reconciliation process to pass health care reform, which would bypass the regular Conference Committee process. However, MediaMatters shows that Conservatives and Republicans are not alone in making that connection.

Here is video that shows CNN anchor Anderson Cooper describing the Democrat maneuver as “the Nuclear Option.”

“Tonight: Breaking news that could change everything in the White House battle for health care reform. Call it the nuclear option.”

And CNN’s Kiran Chetry, on American Morning, said,

“We’ve heard about the nuclear option before, right? I mean, that was when there was talk about maybe bypassing Democratic concerns when it came to judicial nominees. Well, now, the nuclear option is something that we’re talking about yet again. This time it has to do with Democrats considering going it alone when it comes to health care. We’re live from the White House next hour.”

Let’s take a stroll backward through time.

Sean Hannity was condemned by MediaMatters on Feb. 10, 2010:

“Sean Hannity aired clips of Democratic leaders he falsely claimed were criticizing GOP use of the reconciliation process, and accused them of “hypocrisy” for currently supporting the use of reconciliation to pass healthcare reform. In fact, those Democrats were criticizing a 2005 Republican proposal to change Senate rules that was unrelated to reconciliation, which is a procedure that is part of the Senate rules.”

Then, on August 20, 2009, MediaMatters attacks RNC Chairman Michael Steele:

“Nuclear option” term for reconciliation makes jump from media to RNC chairman Steele”

But, the CNN story appeared on MediaMatters.org the day before, on August 19, 2009:

“Echoing Fox News’ Bill Sammon and Sean Hannity, CNN hosts Anderson Cooper and Kiran Chetry both falsely compared Senate Democrats’ potential use of the reconciliation process to pass health reform legislation to the “nuclear option.” In fact, the term “nuclear option” was coined by then-Republican Sen. Trent Lott in 2005 to refer to a possible Republican attempt to change Senate filibuster rules, while reconciliation is already part of Senate procedure and Republicans have used it repeatedly in the past.”

Finally, MediaMatters blasted Bill Sammon in a story that appeared on June 23, 2009:

“Echoing a reported Republican talking point, on Fox News’ Happening Now, Fox News vice president of news and Washington managing editor Bill Sammon falsely compared the budget reconciliation process some progressives have suggested be used to advance health-care reform legislation to the “nuclear option,” a term referring to the Senate rule change Republicans proposed in 2005 that would have prohibited filibusters of judicial nominations. In fact, there is no comparison between progressives’ proposed use of the budget reconciliation process, which already exists under congressional rules and has been used by Republicans in the past to pass legislation with only a majority of votes in the Senate, and the Republicans’ prior proposal to change Senate rules to require a majority of votes to confirm judicial nominees.”

Now, no-one can claim that Anderson Cooper is sympathetic to Republicans or Conservatives. He was, after all, 0ne of the first to use the term “teabagging” when talking about the Tea Party movement. The point is that CNN’s use of the term “nuclear option” to describe reconciliation renders the accusations of MediaMatters and others against Republicans and Conservatives meaningless.