Half a dozen freshman Democrats took to the House floor one late-October morning to cast their lot with Republicans.

Their actions went unpunished by the Democratic leadership that day, as they have on many other occasions in recent weeks. The symbolic gesture — casting nay votes on approving the House Journal, essentially the minutes of the previous day — would have no bearing on the leadership’s agenda.

While they overwhelmingly support that agenda, the bloc of freshmen has begun casting votes against such minor procedural motions in an effort, Democratic sources and Republican critics say, to demonstrate their independence from their leadership. The number of votes that the potentially vulnerable newcomers to Capitol Hill cast against House leaders is tallied and watched closely by interest groups and political foes.

Such is the political life of many of the 42 freshman House Democrats, a sizable number of them moderates and conservatives who must straddle the fence between supporting their party’s interests and distancing themselves from a mostly liberal leadership as they gear up for their first reelection battle next fall.

And . . . that’s it. There are no major substantive differences between the freshmen and the House Democratic leadership. There are no serious philosophical divides between the two camps. The House Democratic leadership allows the freshmen to pose as latter day subjects of a “Profiles in Courage” piece while at the same time ensuring that when it comes to actual substantive votes, the freshmen display absolute fealty to the leadership:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other members of the party’s leadership are happy to tolerate the independence on procedural matters. Less than three hours after opposing the late-October journal vote, the same six freshmen sided with Pelosi as Democrats tried, and failed, to override President Bush’s veto of a bill to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years, legislation that Pelosi has called her “crown jewel.”

“I’m viewed as an independent. I’m viewed as a conservative Democrat,” said Rep. Jason Altmire (Pa.), the first freshman to regularly oppose his party’s leadership on the journal vote.

Like several others, Altmire offered no explanation for voting against all but one of 18 roll calls on the routine measure, adding that he had no “pre-planned” rationale for the votes. “I’m certainly not going to win or lose my reelection based on my journal votes,” he said.

Too cute by half. Altmire must know that most voters won’t delve into the specifics of his voting record to find that in the overwhelming majority of instances in which he took a bold and brave stance against his own party leadership, those bold and brave stances entailed voting against approving the journal. And even if his opponent in 2008 tries to explain to the voters that Altmire is as independent of the House Democratic Leadership as Dmitri Medvedev will be of Vladimir Putin, it’s not the kind of ad that can be succinctly explained in 30 seconds. It’s also not the sexiest of issues. Mention parliamentary procedure to voters and their eyes glaze over.

The rationalizations for this flim-flam game are just laughable:

Some freshman Democrats have taken the idea of voting against their party leadership on procedural votes one step further, opposing mundane matters such as the journal vote.

Altmire has sided with the opposition in 17 of 18 journal roll calls this year. Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) has cast 15 votes with the GOP. In the spring, only a few freshmen voted against the journal, but one recent vote drew 13 freshmen in opposition, and in another, 11 voted nay. Now a half-dozen or more regularly oppose whenever a roll call is held.

Democratic leaders acknowledge that they have encouraged the freshmen to sometimes vote with Republicans on politically difficult issues, but deny that they have had any input on the Congressional Record votes.

“We’ve given them very simple advice: Make sure you vote your district,” [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Chris] Van Hollen said.

And how, precisely, do Congressional districts break down on journal approval votes? Come on. A five-year old can see through this.

Yes, as the article notes, when Speaker Gingrich started getting unpopular, Republican Representatives pulled the journal trick. But it wasn’t nearly as systematic as it is now with the freshman Democrats. If this is “independence,” then the word has lost any luster it may have had in the past.

To be honest, I’d never heard of ERISA before today. I have an opinion neither on whether it’s a good law or a bad law, nor whether the law is correctly interpreted here. Judge White was appointed by President Bush in 2002, for what it’s worth. He’s also the judge that put two San Francisco Chronicle reporters in jail for failing to reveal their source of Barry Bonds’ secret grand jury testimony. That all sounds good, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he’s right here in interpreting ERISA.

If he’s right, then AB1X, the Schwarzenegger/Democratic HillaryCare-lite bill that passed this month and will be debated in the Senate come January, could also be in trouble. Says the Chronicle:

The requirement that all employers either provide insurance for their workers or pay into a new state purchasing pool on a sliding scale of 1 percent to 6.5 percent of payroll based on company size is a key funding element of the plan and the one that may provide biggest obstacle to passage in light of White’s ruling, which San Francisco intends to appeal.

Not that AB1X is even guaranteed to get out of committee in the Senate:

But there are other issues that could spell trouble for the bill in a hearing set for Jan. 16 before the Senate’s health committee, which is chaired by Sen. Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica, a longtime advocate of a single-payer health system that would eliminate private insurance.

….”There’s a lot to consider here,” Kuehl said. “I think you can assume that we will hold the world’s longest hearing because I want to have every bit of this bill looked at.”

So I’m still not worried about our state economy being trashed. Governor Schwarzenegger may be trying to do his best to link arms with Assembly Speaker Fabian Nez (D-Los Angeles) to block job creation in this state, but Senate Democrats or the courts may yet save us from this monster we nominated and elected.

The Captain goes on to suggest either the Iowa Caucuses or the State of the Union speech for Bush to make the announcement. I’m torn on that, myself: the earlier, the better… but the image of the President telling Congress that this is going down, and then the panicky looks as 500+ legislators realize that the cameras are on them and they had better start clapping if they don’t want this showing up in a campaign ad…

Let us savor that image, for a moment.

(pause)

Moving on, as a practical matter Ed’s right: there’s almost no downside for the President for this one. Granted, it’s only nationally that Americans hate pork; we happily forgive our local porkers. It’s still true that we nationally hate pork, and the news that the President is doing something to counteract it will help hearten fiscal conservatives, who have been taking a lot of beatings for the Party’s sake these last seven years. True, it’ll mean that the next Congressional session will make this one look like the New Deal’s First 100 Days - which will just break conservative hearts, won’t it? - and put some freshmen Congressmen in opposite-color districts at risk because they aren’t showing that they’re good providers, but that’s about it…

Oh, right, all of those freshmen are Democrats trying to keep their seats in Republican districts.

(pause)

You’re a baseball man, Mr. President - so I hardly need to tell you about the tactical uses of the beanball, do I?

The United States still has enemies in Iraq, to be sure. Chief among these is Iran, which through its intelligence services and proxies like Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army, has been fighting a low grade shooting war against the US almost since Saddams statue fell. The US will need to maintain troops in Iraq long into the foreseeable future to keep Iran in check. It will also need a military presence inside Iraq to prevent backsliding among Iraqs various factions. The calm that has been established by the troop surge is a relative one, and tenuous. Having built the nation, keeping it together is the next great strategic effort.

But everybody agrees that the troop surge has been a spectacular success at defeating al Qaeda in Iraq. Both through military means and outreach to the population, AQIs infrastructure and base of support have been nearly completely dismantled. It is still capable of smaller scale attacks, and it still operates in areas like Diyala Province. But the key observer, the local population, increasingly sees AQI for what it is: foreign troublemakers with no respect for human life or dignity that want to impose a harshly repressive interpretation of Islam on the people without regard for local customs or traditions.

In the wake of this defeat, al Qaeda may have finally woken up to the fact that Iraq was as much about creating a kind of jihadist sink, into which al Qaeda would pour its resources only to seen them lost down the drain of American military might, as it was about removing a brutal dictator who posed a national security threat to the United States. Accordingly, it is fleeing to Afghanistan, where it has suffered a lesser defeat, and enjoys the protection of the mountains, and free movement across the border with the lawless Waziristan Province of Pakistan.

All of which recalls the plan outlined by al-Yazid to Asia Times Online. By taking out what it views as American assets, al Qaeda now hopes to plunge Pakistan into chaos, much as it once hoped to foment a civil war in Iraq. And there are indications that the plan may be seeing some early success. The assassination of Bhutto has led the next largest opposition figure, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to announce that his party will boycott the elections scheduled for January 8th. The holding of fair and free elections is not possible in the presence of Pervez Musharraf. After the killing of Benazir Bhutto, I announce that the Pakistan Muslim League-N will boycott the elections,” he said. No elections mean that the political unrest, which is fast becoming a blood feud, will have no outlet for a resolution.

Simmering tensions in nuclear armed Pakistan stoked by extremist elements backed by al Qaeda is a perfect storm for United States national security. As undemocratic as Musharrafs presence in power is, he at least is able to keep the nuclear arsenal safe. Should al Qaeda be successful in descending Pakistan into a civil war, it could take advantage of the chaos to gain access to the nuclear stockpile. Al Qaeda may have admitted defeat in Iraq with its new focus on Pakistan. But that defeat has not reduced its ambitions. Pakistan is a far bigger prize, and one on which al Qaeda seems to be setting its sights.

Stop-loss is the extension of a service members contract. Right now stop-loss is necessary because we have too small a force for the war were fighting.

A prominent military expert told me that the “Problem goes back to the Civil War in which the Union Army was cut by huge chunks at harvest times. We need it, but its ugly.”

John Kerry has been quoted saying this about the stop-loss policy:

“You have what is a backdoor draft that has been put into effect,” Kerry said. “People serving beyond the time of their voluntary service are no longer volunteers.”

The New York Times in 2004 wrote this article sighting the first soldier to challenge the legality of the policy’s application to deployment in Iraq.

“A member of the California Army National Guard filed suit in federal court here Tuesday challenging the Bush administration’s so-called stop-loss policy, asserting that his pending deployment to Iraq “bears no relation to the threat of terrorism against the United States.”

The Washington Post wrote in 2004 about the stop-loss policy as well :

Army officials said the move promotes cohesion by preventing Army divisions from being depleted shortly before they go into battle. But military experts and lawmakers said the decision indicates that the Army is being stretched thin by multiple operations, with some calling the program a draft in disguise.

“It’s a blanket imposition of extended service, and it has to raise questions about how adequately manned the Army is,” said Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.

The “stop-loss” policy prevents the normal attrition of troops and ensures that divisions will not have to seek additional troops when they go to Iraq or Afghanistan, said Lt. Gen. Franklin L. Hagenbeck, the Army’s deputy chief of staff in charge of human resources and personnel. Congress authorized such measures after the Vietnam War, and they were first used during preparations for the Persian Gulf War in 1990. They have been used since to bolster divisions heading to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I myself dont have the military experience or knowledge to make a full evaluation of the stop-loss policy, but my opinion is that if you are in the military, and there is a war going on, shouldnt one expect to serve until the war is over?

On the other hand — if this policy is enacted or executed dishonestly by our government or president it will reflect negatively in the competence of our military — now and later.

Stop-loss has two faces, the face of the men like the one depicted in this film, decorated Iraq war hero Sgt. Brandon King (Ryan Philippe). King is still deserving of thanks and respect.

But then there is the face of a warrior

Warriors like Cpl. Sean Stokes who returned to Iraq for his 3rd tour voluntarily because he couldnt bear the thought of his fellow Marines being someplace where he couldnt share the burden with them. Men who hide their wounds in order to avoid being medevaced.

Stop-loss has a slippery slope. This film wont be in theatres until late March but it is sure to draw some more attention to the already controversial policy. Nothing reaches out more to bleeding hearts than a poignant sound-track, graphics, and a romantic plot.

Paramount has set up a website where you can “Get Involved in a Front Line Dialogue With Real Soldiers.”

The bill does not send money to the Pentagon, but authorizes $696 billion in military spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the 2008 budget year. It aims to provide more help to troops returning from war and set conditions on contractors and pricey weapons programs.

The bill would authorize a 3.5 percent pay raise for service members. It would also guarantee that combat veterans receive mental health evaluations within 30 days of their request and prohibit fee increases to the military’s health care system.

In one provision likely to be costly, troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan are guaranteed three more years of Veterans Affairs health care after being discharged.

The Democratic led Congress also used the bill to try and micro manage the nation’s ballistic missile defense program. Congress authorized about $331 million less than requested for missile defense and restricted the money from being used to deploy missile defense radar in Poland and the Czech Republic until Congress received an independent assessment of the program.

That’s the way the Democratic led Congress punishes Russia for providing sophisticated air defense weapons to Iran and Syria, not to mention providing nuclear fuel for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power facility

From Reagan, you got it from his heart; from Romney, one cannot be sure from where it comes.

Here’s Jennifer Rubin at the AmSpec Blog:

On Today he invoked Reagan as an example of a President without experience in foreign affairs. But of course, Reagan had written and given speeches for years on Communism– the equivalent of writing and speechifying for years on Islamic terrorism.

This is no time to elect someone who’s going to talk to a team of experts whenever a decision must be made, just as it is not good to consult a team of attorneys every time you might need to use military force.

Beyond that, this is another example of Romney’s tendency to use President Reagan as an excuse for his own shortcomings. Another example of this took place last August, when FOX News Sunday host Chris Wallace asked Romney about his dramatic change of opinion on abortion. Romney tried to cover himself by insisting that Ronald Reagan as governor of California was “adamantly pro-choice.” This was a bald-faced falsehood.

A candidate worth his salt should be able to answer all questions about his current views and qualifications without invoking another, let alone the greatest President of most living people’s lifetimes. (Anyone remember Cal?)

Now, there is no reason that a conservative would not be able to overlook Romney’s use of President Reagan’s name for political purposes, but as someone who has admired and followed the doings of the man for longer than I care to admit, I am put off by this. Or am I fooling myself when I think of the Republican Party as the “party of Reagan”?