Don’t get caught flat-footed in front of the press!  Below is a quick rundown of today’s “must reads.” – John T. Doolittle, House Republican Conference Secretary

The Morning Murmur – Thursday, April 6, 2006

1. Tax-cutting strategy - Washington Times Op-ed
Pro-growth tax policies work, and if Americans vote their pocketbooks this November they should return a Republican majority to Congress based on the GOP's economic record.

2. Liberal War on Terrorism Heats Up: DeLay Finally Captured - Ann Coulter
If only liberals were half as angry at the people who flew planes into our skyscrapers as they are with Tom DeLay, we might have two patriotic parties in this country. Conservatives live under a jurisprudence of laws, but they get prosecuted under liberals' jurisprudence of epithets.

3. The Anti-Kelo - Wall Street Journal Op-ed
A heavy government hand isn't necessary for economic development. Some communities are taking a more freedom-friendly approach to revitalization: protecting property rights, deregulating land uses, promoting competition, loosening business restrictions and lowering taxes.

4. Capitol Hill Scuffle Said Headed to Grand Jury - Associated Press
A federal grand jury will soon begin hearing evidence about Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Police officer, a lawyer familiar with the case said late Wednesday.

5. Schakowsky's Husband Gets Five Months in Check Scheme - Roll Call
The husband of Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D) was sentenced to five months in prison on Wednesday for bank fraud and failure to pay federal taxes.

For previous issues of the Morning Murmur, go to www.GOPsecretary.gov

FULL ARTICLES BELOW:

1.  Tax-cutting strategy - Washington Times Op-ed

By Gary J. Andres
Published April 6, 2006

Last April, Congress hammered out the details of the fiscal 2006 budget resolution - a five-year fiscal blueprint laying out the broad parameters of federal spending and tax policies. More than 12 months later, a big piece of that plan - the part dealing with tax policy - is still on the drawing board, bogged down by a complicated parliamentary snag in the Senate. Congressional negotiators are trying to overcome this hurdle and may have an agreement as early as tomorrow. But at this writing the outlook is still cloudy.

Political forecasters agree President Bush and his congressional allies have faced some foul weather since Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on the Gulf Coast last summer and created its own political storm in Washington. Yet the continuing strong performance of the economy offers powerful rays of sunshine. As Mr. Bush has stated repeatedly, America has added almost 5 million new jobs in the last two years. Our unemployment rate is now 4.8 percent - lower than the average of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, real after-tax income is up 8 percent per person since 2001 and consumer confidence is at its highest level in nearly four years.

Overcoming the procedural hurdles and pulling Republicans together on an economic policy victory could provide the White House and Republican lawmakers with a much-needed shot of political adrenaline as they move toward the 2006 elections.

Pro-growth tax policies work, and if Americans vote their pocketbooks this November they should return a Republican majority to Congress based on the GOP's economic record. Conversely, an economic downturn could be just what the Democrats need, putting enough seats in play to capture the majority in both bodies. Failure to extend tax cuts enacted in 2003 on dividends and capital gains could create such a downturn.

And that's exactly what might happen. The legislation has been stalled due to behind-the-scenes wrangling about the interpretation of the so-called Byrd Rule. And as it stands now, the Senate may require a super-majority 60 votes to extend these tax cuts for even two more years - even though Republicans intended this measure to move in a procedurally protected legislative vehicle called reconciliation, which was supposed to require only a simple majority for passage.

First adopted in 1985, the Byrd Rule is a complicated provision aimed at keeping extraneous items out of procedurally protected (cannot be filibustered and can pass with 51 votes) reconciliation bills in the Senate. It also requires 60 votes if a law "would increase the deficit for fiscal years beyond those covered by the reconciliation measure." How we got to this point underscores the notion of the New Republic's Ryan Lizza that "parliamentary procedure is destiny," so please put on your green eyeshades.

Last year's budget resolution, hammered out between the House and Senate, provided for $70 billion in further tax cuts protected under the reconciliation process - enough money to extend the capital gains and dividends reductions set to expire at the end of 2008 for two more years. In contrast to the 2001 and 2003 tax reconciliation bills, which were 10-year measures, fiscal and political constraints caused Republicans to craft a five-year budget (2006-10). They reasoned that if the tax cuts were simply extended for two years, to 2009 and 2010, within the context of a five-year budget (2006-10), the Byrd Rule would not come into play.

Yet the Joint Tax Committee scored the 10-year revenue effects of this five-year budget and showed the legislation increased the deficit in the so-called out-years (outside the five-year budget), triggering a Byrd Rule point of order and the 60-vote threshold. Some House and Senate Republicans strongly disagreed, reasoning the tax bill covered only a five- year period. But the parliamentarians ruled the legislation did increase the deficit in the out-years, so the legislation is stuck - needing to get scaled back or mustering 60 votes.

Fixing the budget problem can be accomplished in several ways, including adding other tax provisions that Democrats support, scaling back the tax plan or finding other offsets. But whatever the small fix, Mr. Bush now has a big opportunity to lead, bringing Republicans together and exposing the Democrats' attempts to block the legislation for raw political advantage.

Yet Republicans and Mr. Bush should conclude the tax battle quickly, before leaving for the Easter break if possible. Doing so unifies the party and energizes the Republican base - all critical tasks as the 2006 midterm election approaches. Giving Republicans a unifying issue that also strengthens the economy is something liberals in Congress don't want. But it's a chance for the president to show leadership on an issue that will help ensure his party doesn't return to minority status for the last two years of his term.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20060405-091813-7570r.htm
 

2.   Liberal War on Terrorism Heats Up: DeLay Finally Captured - Ann Coulter

by Ann Coulter
Posted Apr 05, 2006

If only liberals were half as angry at the people who flew planes into our skyscrapers as they are with Tom DeLay, we might have two patriotic parties in this country.

Any Republicans who didn't ferociously defend Tom DeLay -- which is to say, almost all Republicans in Congress, the president, and alleged conservative writers trying to impress the editorial board of the New York Times -- better hope liberals never come after them. The only proven method for a Republican to avoid having his name turned into a liberal malediction is to be completely ineffective. You'll notice there's no "Stop Lamar Alexander Before It's Too Late" website.

Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Ed Meese, Oliver North, Clarence Pendleton, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove, Tom DeLay -- all these men saw their names used as curse words.

Only one of them was ever indicted. To wit, the comical indictment of DeLay recently brought by political hack Ronnie Earle. To finally get some grand jury to hand up an indictment, Earle had to empanel six grand juries in Austin, Texas, which is like the Upper West Side with more attractive people. In addition, DeLay knows Republican and gambling lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates, who have recently pleaded guilty to various other incomprehensible charges.

Liberals spit out all these names with more venom than they've ever been able to muster for names like "Saddam Hussein" and "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."

Even proud American corporations find their names being turned into curse words by liberals, such as "Halliburton," which is currently losing money in Iraq in order to supply food to our troops -- you know, the same troops liberals pretend to love (but don't lose money feeding).

I spent a couple of hours listening to liberal hate radio this week to try to figure out what crime against God and man Tom DeLay is even alleged to have committed. But all I heard was the name "Tom DeLay" and "PRISON!" mentioned in the same sentence over and over again.

Back when Newt Gingrich still scared liberals, the House Ethics Committee spent years probing various charges against him, focusing on the charge that a college class he taught was ... partisan! Meanwhile, they're teaching Marxism in comp lit classes, Islamic terrorism in Indian experience classes, and Druidism in divinity classes. As we speak, freshmen in English 101 classes all over the country are rushing to complete their term papers on how all heterosexual sex is rape. Over a million dollars later, the committee realized: Wait a second. This is a college class!

But at the urging of the Democrats, the Internal Revenue Service spent 3 1/2 years investigating Gingrich's college course. After all the hullabaloo, the result was: No crime. The classes "were not biased toward particular politicians or a particular party" -- thus distinguishing Gingrich's class from every other college course in America.

To the contrary, Gingrich's college class spent more time praising FDR and JFK than praising Reagan. (Did you know that FDR's radio broadcast after Pearl Harbor included an eight-minute prayer? You would have learned that in Newt's course.)

But the mere mention of the name "Newt Gingrich" was proof of criminal conduct in the '90s.

When Democrats are accused of wrongdoing, it's usually something more like what most people think of as a crime, say, punching a Capitol Hill policeman.

Or perhaps by being captured on tape in hotel rooms stuffing wads of cash into their pockets from Arab sheiks -- as Democrats were during the Abscam investigation. This was back when Democrats controlled Congress. Consequently, Congress responded to this shocking proof of criminality by their colleagues by ... investigating the FBI for investigating members of Congress.

The "rule of law" means something entirely different for Republicans and Democrats. Consider the case of a prosecutor faced with the same possible wrongdoing by a Republican office-holder and a Democrat office-holder at the same time.

In the midst of Ronnie Earle's witch hunt of Republican Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison for allegedly using her office for campaign purposes -- begun days after she was elected to the U.S. Senate by a 2-1 margin -- employees in former Democratic Gov. Ann Richards' office admitted that they destroyed almost three years' worth of long-distance billing records that were supposed to be preserved -- to ensure the office wasn't being used for campaign purposes, among other things.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, Earle promptly "cleared (Richards) and her staff of wrongdoing, saying there was no evidence of criminal intent."

Conservatives live under a jurisprudence of laws, but they get prosecuted under liberals' jurisprudence of epithets.

http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=13815&o=ANN001
 

3.  The Anti-Kelo - Wall Street Journal Op-ed
A heavy government hand isn't necessary for economic development.

BY STEVEN GREENHUT
Thursday, April 6, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

ANAHEIM, Calif.--While city officials have long micromanaged land-use decisions and appropriated private property for economic redevelopment, it was not until the Supreme Court's Kelo v. City of New London decision last summer that many Americans noticed the degree to which big government has set up shop on Main Street.

Take Garden Grove, an aging working-class city of gaudy strip malls and tract houses 34 miles south of Los Angeles. In 2002, officials planned to bulldoze a large, decent neighborhood to make way for a theme park, issuing bond debt to finance subsidies to help its developer. The project failed amid community protest; so the local government moved on, this time attempting to turn city-owned land over to a group of Indians who would work with a Las Vegas developer to build a casino.

Economic redevelopment is a serious, complex issue, but it isn't always done this way; and Anaheim, just north of Garden Grove, is proving it. Although the community faces similar problems, its city council, led by Republican Mayor Curt Pringle, is taking a more freedom-friendly approach to revitalization: protecting property rights, deregulating land uses, promoting competition, loosening business restrictions and lowering taxes.

Anaheim's old downtown was obliterated in the 1970s through past uses of eminent domain and urban renewal. Now, the city (population: 328,000) wants to build a new downtown, and the target location is called the Platinum Triangle, an area of one-story warehouses near Angel Stadium. In the typical world of redevelopment, officials would choose a plan and a developer, offer subsidies and exclusive development rights, and exert pressure on existing property owners to leave the area. Instead, Anaheim created a land-value premium by creating an overlay zone that allowed almost any imaginable use of property. Because current owners could now sell to a wider range of buyers, the Platinum Triangle is booming, with billions in private investment, millions of square feet of office, restaurant and retail space, and more than a dozen new high-rises in the works.

The area is developing quickly, without controversy and without a single piece of property taken by eminent domain. Early signs point to an enormous success. "Too often, I hear my colleagues in local government . . . say that Kelo-type eminent domain and redevelopment policies are their only tools to revitalize cities," Mr. Pringle recently said. "I have a simple message . . . Visit the Platinum Triangle."

The previous planning commission and city council were harsh on small businesses seeking variances; the new council (which took office in December 2002) began overturning one commission decision after another, with the goal of giving local residents and businesses as much leeway as possible.

The council waived fees for homeowners undertaking renovations, on the grounds that the city would gain in the long run by the increase in property taxes. Anaheim also waived fees for business start-ups for three months; some 2,000 new businesses formed in 2005, an increase of one-third from the previous year. It also passed a tax amnesty and eliminated business taxes altogether for home-based businesses. Most cities don't like to allow churches to build new worship centers, because tax-exempt churches typically locate in commercial and industrial areas, taking properties off the tax rolls. Anaheim has eliminated most hurdles for approving new churches. Its housing plan also avoids "inclusionary zoning"--an increasingly popular approach to mandate that builders set aside certain amounts of "affordable" housing.

"Mayor Pringle is a god in our world," says Kristine Thalman, CEO of the Building Industry Association of Orange County. "He gets it. He understands the regulatory issues and some of the impediments to development."

Anaheim's experiment happened almost by accident. Mr. Pringle had always been a free-market guy, and headed to the California State Assembly when he was 29. He still brags about "the largest business tax cut in California history" ($1 billion), passed while he was speaker. He ran for mayor in 2002 at the encouragement of other local leaders, but not, he says, with a specific policy goal in mind. "I didn't run thinking of these ideas. After winning, I realized this is the smallest council of the largest city in the state. I could change things . . . Local government is mostly devoid of exciting new ideas."

At the urging of then-Councilman Tom Tait, a Republican with libertarian leanings, he began to look at the command-and-control nature of local planning. He found a surprising ally in Councilman Richard Chavez, a liberal Democrat who agreed that the old rule-bound system was holding back opportunities for the city's emerging Latino community.

Mr. Chavez said he didn't know what to expect from Messrs. Pringle and Tait, but that both helped him early on in protecting the interests of some local businesses that were facing unfair treatment from the city. "Curt created a sense of trust," he says. That trust led to "incredible growth, incredible energy for the city and a success at providing housing at every level . . . . I get very little negativity, even from those on the left side of the aisle." Hermetic partisan politics drop away, evidently, in the face of verifiable success.

In many ways, the Kelo case incited a national property-rights mutiny, with hundreds of localities passing laws that limit the scope of the eminent domain power. Anaheim's circumstance is instructive in a different sense: By decentralizing bureaucracies and loosening cosseted government regulation, it has confirmed the vitality and audacity of private enterprise. The city has made itself a laboratory for free-market thought.

No doubt, most cities will plod along like Garden Grove, embracing typical big-government redevelopment policies. But success also attracts curiosity, other cities are learning from Anaheim. Many are in Orange County; but the story is spreading. Mayor Pringle says his ideas are being employed in the mayoral race up north in San Jose. He was most proud, he said, when Mayor Doug Davert, of nearby Tustin, recently vowed to "Pringle-ize" his community.

Mr. Greenhut, senior editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register, is the author of "Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain" (Seven Locks, 2004).

http://www.opinionjournal.com/cc/?id=110008189
 

4.  Capitol Hill Scuffle Said Headed to Grand Jury - Associated Press

A lawyer says federal prosecutors have taken on the case involving Rep. Cynthia McKinney.

April 6, 2006

WASHINGTON - A federal grand jury will soon begin hearing evidence about Rep. Cynthia A. McKinney's run-in with a Capitol Police officer, a lawyer familiar with the case said late Wednesday.

The lawyer, who declined to be identified because of grand jury secrecy, confirmed that federal prosecutors had agreed to get involved in the case, in which the black lawmaker is accused of striking a white officer after he tried to stop her from entering a House office building without going through a security checkpoint, as Congress members are entitled to do.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance Gainer said McKinney had turned the officer's failure to recognize her into a criminal matter when she failed to stop at his request, and then struck him.

"He reached out and grabbed her and she turned around and hit him," Gainer said on CNN. "Even the high and the haughty should be able to stop and say, 'I'm a congressman' and then everybody moves on."

"This is not about personality," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). "It's not about racial profiling. It's about making this place safer."

McKinney charged anew that racism was behind what she called a pattern of difficulty in clearing Capitol Hill security checkpoints.

"This has become much ado about hairdo," she said Wednesday on CBS' "The Early Show." McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, recently dropped her trademark cornrows in favor of an afro.

The police aren't the ones who are racist, said Republican Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas.

"Cynthia McKinney is a racist," he said on Fox News Channel's "Fox and Friends," a day after abandoning his reelection bid under a cloud of ethics charges. "Everything is racism with her. This is incredible arrogance that sometimes hits these members of Congress, but especially Cynthia McKinney."

Capitol Police have turned the case over to U.S. Atty. Kenneth J. Wainstein, who must decide whether to press charges against McKinney. His office had no comment on any grand jury proceeding.

McKinney has garnered little support among fellow Democrats over the March 29 altercation. No one in her party joined her at a news conference Friday on the matter.

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-mckinney6apr06,1,7973958.story?coll=la-news-a_section
 

5.  Schakowsky's Husband Gets Five Months in Check Scheme - Roll Call

April 6, 2006
By John Bresnahan,

The husband of Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D) was sentenced to five months in prison on Wednesday for bank fraud and failure to pay federal taxes. Robert Creamer also will have to serve 11 months of home detention after he is released from prison, although during that time he will be allowed to travel between Chicago and Washington.

Federal prosecutors were seeking 30 to 37 months in prison for Creamer, who pleaded guilty to the two felony charges last August.

Creamer and his attorneys were seeking to avoid any time behind bars, and Schakowsky expressed unhappiness with the decision by U.S. District Judge James Moran to jail Creamer, although both she and her husband were pleased that his sentence was for a far shorter period than recommended by the U.S. Attorney's Office in Chicago. Schakowsky was not accused of any wrongdoing in the case.

"I am obviously disappointed that Bob's sentence included incarceration, but we accept the judge's decision and look forward to the day that we can finally put this nearly decade-long chapter behind us," Schakowsky told reporters following her husband's court appearance. "Bob's decision last fall to enter into a plea agreement was not an easy one ... I'm proud of him for the way he has handled himself throughout this process. Bob has apologized, he has learned from this experience, and he is prepared to accept the consequences."

House Republicans jumped on the news as a way to divert attention from their own legal and ethical problems. The National Republican Congressional Committee issued a statement blasting Schakowsky and Democrats as a whole for hypocrisy in light of the Democratic attacks on the GOP throughout the Jack Abramoff scandal.

"Hopefully now Congresswoman Schakowsky realizes that mistakes don't land you in federal prison, crimes do," NRCC spokesman Ed Patru said. "We are waiting for comment from [Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi and National Democrats."

Schakowsky's office countered that while serious, Creamer's crimes were not committed by a Member of Congress, but by a Congressional spouse.

"Republicans are desperate to change the subject from the very serious criminal charges their Members themselves have been charged with and convicted of," said Jon Samuels, Schakowsky's spokesman. "They have put the Congress up for sale to the special interests and now they will do anything to deflect attention away from that fact."

Creamer, a Democratic consultant, pleaded guilty last August to running a check-kiting scheme in 1997 while he was executive director of a Chicago nonprofit group. Creamer manipulated checking accounts at several banks in order to obtain what federal prosecutors charge were "unauthorized and unsecured short-term loans" worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Creamer also failed to pay nearly $1,900 in taxes owed to the federal government.

Following a lengthy investigation, a federal grand jury indicted Creamer in March 2004 on 34 counts of fraud and tax evasion worth millions of dollars, although he pleaded guilty to only two counts last summer.

http://www.rollcall.com/issues/51_107/news/12833-1.html
 

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