Speaker Johnson’s Job

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) has a job to do, and The Wall Street Journal tried to characterize it this way:

…Johnson has to decide whether to cut a government funding deal with Democrats that risks costing him his job.

No. The House’s job, and so Speaker Johnson’s job, is to control the Federal government’s spending. That job, that spending control, most assuredly does not include cutting deals with a Progressive-Democratic Party that is bent on profligate spending. That he’s confronted with so many timid Republicans desperate for the comfort of loyal opposition rather than the hard reality of governing only makes his own job harder. That timidity, no more than spendthriftiness, alters his job not a whit.

Progressive-Democrats Protecting Their Own

There’s a move afoot that might result in the Progressive-Democrats ruling the Senate won’t deign hold a trial for the just-impeached DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. They’ll just table the matter and walk away.

…rumblings that US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) plans to table and not even hold an impeachment hearing to try Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas….

Senator Eric Schmitt (R, MO) emphasized the need for the trial in his letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, KY):

How Good is Good Enough?

The EPA has finalized, despite a plethora of public comment decrying the move, a pollution regulation that, among other things, tries to vastly reduce the amount of soot particles in the air we breathe. Vastly reduce: from the current standard of 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air to 9 micrograms per cubic meter—from almost nothing to even more almost nothing.

Never mind that the ordinary march of technology and ordinary free market forces have already reduced the amount of soot in our air by 42%, or that there’s vanishingly small [sic] room between the existing almost nothing and nothing.

Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

Oops, he said it again. Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden has told Russian President Vladimir Putin not to deploy his newly developed nuclear-armed antisatellite weapon. Biden’s words were sent secretively through his NSA Jake Sullivan and his CIA Director William Burns among others.

Tellingly, Biden only spoke to Putin—even then only through surrogates—after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R, OH) exposed the Russian weapon a week ago.

What’s the or else, you might ask. What will Biden do if Putin goes ahead with his deployment? It seems the paper pussy cat in our White House has no consequences in mind, only his words of Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

Republican Timidity

Recall that ex-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy committed to individual floor votes on each of the dozen separate appropriations bills. His position, and he was right IMNSHO, was that lumping them all together into a single omnibus spending bill only led to increased Federal government spending by preventing Congressmen from debating and voting on those bills individually—omnibus made the lot of them an all or nothing proposition.

In Which Biden Extends His Betrayal of Israel

The Biden administration is putting before the UN Security Council an alternative proposal that demands Israel agree a cease fire as soon as practicable and not engage its Rafah ground offensive until, functionally, Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden personally approves. Biden’s “alternative” pushes for

a temporary cease-fire in Gaza and states Israel’s planned, major ground offensive into the southern Gaza city of Rafah “should not proceed under current circumstances.”

No alternative proposal needs to be submitted to the UN Security Council. The US vetoed the proposal put up by Algeria, and that’s all it needs to do, other than then sitting down, shutting up, and staying out of Israel’s way.

Biden Refuses, Abbott Acts

Fronton Island is American territory, a Texas island in the Rio Grande near the Texas town of Fronton and across from the Mexican towns of Los Guera and Ciudad Miguel Alemán.

Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden has been refusing to defend our southern border his entire term, and his decision ultimately led to his surrendering Fronton Island and ceding it to Mexican drug cartels. Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham:

This island before it was claimed, was literally a law enforcement free zone for the cartels to do whatever they wanted[.]

It’s an Alliance that’s Sinking Itself

The Wall Street Journal spilled a lot of pixels and ink in an opinion piece masqueraded as news that purported to answer its question of whether loose lips can sink an alliance.

[Republican Primary Presidential candidate Donald] Trump’s recent broadsides against European members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for not spending sufficiently on defense raised the question of whether shaming allies strengthens or weakens the alliance.

And this, an opinion masqueraded by the article’s writer as fact—all too typical in this article:

Trump’s recent comments crossed a line, even if they were inflated with campaign-trail hyperbole.

No CR

The House Freedom Caucus wants House Speaker Mike Johnson (R, LA) to attach a House-passed border security bill that’s sitting in the US Senate to the next spending bill that Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown. Freedom Caucus member Bob Good (R, VA):

I think we ought to be willing to have a fight over securing the border. I think we ought to refuse to fund the government if the administration continues to be unwilling to secure the border, then we ought to tie the funding of the government to border security implementation where some funds are held back until the measurables are met, the performance metrics that demonstrate that the border is being secured. And we do it to through Sept. 30 at the FRA levels[.]

Why Wait?

House Education and Workforce Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R, NC) has subpoenaed multiple leaders at Harvard University for their failure to produce documents the Committee has been trying to get through more cooperative channels for some time. These docs are related to Harvard’s performance in correcting antisemitism that’s rampant at the school.

The subpoena requires that documents in 11 key areas, show what actions the university has taken, or will be taking, to ensure that Jewish students “feel safe and welcome on campus,”  be produced NLT 5 pm on March 4.

My question is why the long deadline?