Rep. Mark Kirk is One of the Smartest Members of the House

That's what Fred Barnes just stated on Brit Hume's show. He listed a few members whom he considered the smartest members of the House, the list was short and it included Mark. Congratulations to Rep. Mark Kirk of the Illinois 10th Congressional District. It is nice to see that others are realizing what those of us who have known Mark have known for years, he's a pretty sharp guy.

Mark Kirk's Iranian Idea Gets More Notice

North Shore Republican Congressman Mark Kirk's idea for dealing peacefully with Iran is getting more notice as the world starts to get their collective minds around the fact that Israel will not allow Iran to become a nuclear power. It can be assumed that Israel would act with extreme prejudice. In this New York Sun piece Mark said "(e)ither we leave this to the United Nations and that is a slow path for Iran getting a nuclear weapon; or the second option is an Israeli attack which is unpredictable and expensive." That is a very sober and realistic assessment of Iran's nuclear ambitions and outside reactions to it.

Mark's idea is to cut off gasoline shipments to Iran, it sounds very counter-intuitive due to Iran's membership in OPEC, they are sizable crude oil exporters. However Mark wants to exploit the fact that Iran does not have the refinery capacity to supply their own gasoline needs, Iran only supplies 40% of their own gas, they even had riots over an abandoned gas rationing plan earlier this year. The linked article is an interesting read.

Mark's opposition in this year's election is the same lightweight he beat 19 months ago, while Mark Kirk has been doing the heavy thinking Dan Seals has been standing on the corner of Milwaukee and Half Day giving away gas and campaign literature while causing a lunchtime traffic jam. The choice between the two is a no brainer.

Hey Dan, Check the Oil, Will Ya?

What is going on up in Illinois' 10th Congressional District? Democratic Congressional candidate Dan Seals spent Thursday's lunchtime handing out $20 bills on the corner of Milwaukee and Half Day Road. Okay, he actually used donated campaign funds to sell motorists $41.49 worth of gas (10 gallons) at a Marathon station at that corner for $18.50. They used to just give out bottles of wine on election day around here, I guess that times change.

The Seals campaign stated that they chose the $1.85 price because that was the price of a gallon of regular back in 2000 when Rep. Mark Kirk (R) was first elected to congress. Something tells me that Mark will not be running on the dramatic drop in computer prices during the past eight years, but that would be just as dumb as the Seals stunt. Mr. Seals has a problem with the price of gas, he is a typical liberal Democrat. Mr. Seals is the type of Democrat who has passed laws and enacted regulations that snuffed out oil exploration in the most productive areas while stifling the growth of refining capacity. Add to that the byzantine fuel regulations that we have and there are gasoline problems galore before you throw in crude oil going from the mid-$20 per barrel to the mid-$130 per barrel in the last 8 years.

It was not clear in the linked Chicago Tribune piece what exactly Dan Seals and his campaign are trying to say with this stunt, the article focused on the obvious illegality of a candidate for the US House of Representatives giving random motorists in the district $22.99 worth of free gas while plying them with campaign literature. Complaints have been filed and nothing will be done until after the next time that Dan Seals runs against Mark Kirk. However I am interested in why they wanted to make this an issue when they can't articulate what Mr. Seals would do to change the market or why Mr. Kirk should be held responsible for world-wide market forces and Democratic policies.

It's not just Dan Seals, it is a problem throughout the Democratic Party, I heard sound clips of Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) haranguing some oil company CEO with another one of his "unconscionable" speeches, in this one he demanded lower gas prices. What Senator Durbin, a lawyer neglected is the fact that those oil company CEOs have a legal fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders not to voters. So in addition to nationalizing the evil oil companies the Democrats want publicly held companies to subsidize our gas bills. Maybe Dan has a radical new energy idea, his donors will subsidize our gas bills.

Does Dan Seals Hate Veterans?

As Flying Debris mentioned in this post, candidate for the Democratic nomination for the Illinois 10th US Congressional District Dan Seals really doesn't get it. Earmarks were last year's Democratic issue, to be used during the campaign that Mr. Seals lost last year. As TA from Team America's Tenth District Blog pointed out in this excellent post over 71% of the dollars that Mr. Seals is complaining about in the e-mail below is for a Veterans Hospital in the 10th District. This is a sentence that I find amazing, "(a)gain, I am sure that there are good projects in there." As TA points out in the post linked to above, it's part of the public record, and come on, Seals hasn't worked in years, you would think that he'd have learned how to use that Google thingy by now.

It's that time of year again. The snow is on the ground, the holiday spirit is in the air, and the gift-giving is underway.

And nowhere is this gift-giving more apparent than Congress' most recent spending bill, which gave billions of dollars in pork to the big special interests and lumps of coal to our children, grandchildren, and future generations to come.

That's right. Just this week, Congress sent a spending bill to the president that contained a side-splitting 9,000 earmarks, pet projects of individual members of Congress that are slipped into legislation at the last minute, financed with taxpayer money, and never debated or scrutinized before being signed into law. Given that we as a nation are already in debt, future taxpayers, like my kids, will pick up the bill.

Some of these earmarks surely go to good projects. But too many of them don't. The problem is that the process of earmarking doesn't give us any way to tell. That's because the decisions about what gets funded and what doesn't get made behind closed doors and without debate. That is an invitation for waste and abuse.

The Democrats that took control of Congress in 2006 point out that they have taken steps to reform this process. They have not gone far enough. The system of earmarks should end. 9000 earmarks isn't a victory for anyone, but it is a definite loss for the taxpayer. I can think of no good reason why we should continue supporting a system that encourages waste and abuse.

Our Congressman, Mark Kirk, can apparently think of 140 million reasons. He asked Congress for a staggering $140 million in pet projects to be funded by taxpayer dollars. Again, I'm sure there are some good projects in there. But if so, why not bring them into the light and have them voted on? The only one who has anything to lose is the project that shouldn't receive any funding in the first place. And that's the way it should be. But this is Congress, where it is better to take than to give. It's one more reason why we need a change in Congress.

Thanks to a local blogger for passing on the Seals e-mail, the mystery blogger desires anonymity, I think.