Las Vegas.  It's good to be here at Bally's in Vegas among several thousand pro-freedom folks at Mark Skousen's Freedom Fest.  It's also creepy that right across the Strip from Bally's, Zero is at  Caesar's as I am writing this.  He gave a fund-raising speech for Lost Harry Reid last night (7/08).  Believe it or not, his very first words of the speech were "Si, si, puede" - the chant in Spanish of illegal aliens, meaning "Yes, yes we can violate America's laws and live off the American taxpayer with impunity" (then become citizens and vote to keep Dems in office in perpetuity). The Las Vegas Review Journal eviscerated Zero's speech this morning in an editorial entitled, Mr. President, Your Economic Policies Suck.  Nevada has the highest unemployment of any state in the US, while Zero's "main economic goals," the LVRJ says, "seem to be the punishment and prevention of capital formation and business growth."  You should read the entire editorial. One fear you'll hear expressed here - as well as on the TTP Forum - is the Dems planning an orgy of fascist legislation during a "lame duck" post-election session, as described in the Wall Street Journal today (7/09).  This fear is way overblown.  Here are four reasons why. 

The political rationale for the lawsuit the Obama administation has filed to overturn Arizona's immigration law is clear.  According to Gallup, Mr. Obama's job approval rating this year has been pretty stable among whites (low) and blacks (high).  But it has declined from 69 percent to 57 percent among Hispanics. So the lawsuit likely is an effort to boost the president's standing among Hispanics. But whether or not it raises Mr. Obama's standing among Hispanics, "the administration's lawsuit...ensures that the immigration debate will be front and center for the next few months," wrote Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post. To the detriment of Democrats, which is why it is selfish of Mr. Obama to raise it.  He's not on the ballot again until 2012.  But the lawsuit all but dooms the re-election hopes of Arizona Democrat Reps. Gabrielle Giffords, Ann Kirkpatrick and Harry Mitchell, who were elected in 2006 and 2008 in districts which lean slightly Republican.  It isn't just in Arizona where Democrats will suffer.

It's this simple: Most of the current problems facing America stem directly from the failure of our elected representatives to follow the Constitution. Much of what the Tea Party activists are demanding is a return to the principles and procedures found in the Constitution. Many of those running for office are venting about excessive spending, deficits, taxation, regulation and so forth, but are struggling to say what they are for and what they would actually work to accomplish once they are elected. To deal with this problem, candidates for office should state that, if elected, they will have a "Contract with the Constitution," much like the Contract with America that Newt Gingrich and Dick Armey developed for the Republicans in 1994.

The Canadian government spent more than $1 billion on the G-8/G-20 conferences last weekend in Toronto, epitomizing the wretched excess that's largely responsible for the worldwide economic crisis. Other than the rioting, nothing much usually happens at these annual confabs. "As predicted, it cost much and accomplished nothing," said Walter Russell Mead of the Council on Foreign Relations. "No decisions were taken, no minds were changed. Politicians had their pictures taken; the press hailed mushy communiques as breakthroughs and delusional protesters played silly ‘revolutionary' games." But this summit was noteworthy in that for the first time ever, nobody paid much attention to the president of the United States. Reuters published a list of "winners and losers" at the G-20. There were just two losers, according to the British news service. One was Brazil, because its president didn't show up. The other was America, whose president did.