Freedom Line Blog

If you’re someone who thinks that democracy works best when citizens and their representatives take time to deliberate (i.e. reason and think together), then a new Fox News/Bing collaboration will not excite you.

From Politico:

Bing is teaming up with Fox News to bring State of the Union viewers an interactive experience with real-time polling and social media aggregation.

The project is spearheaded by Microsoft’s Mark Penn, the Democratic strategist and pollster, and promises to meet the “growing need for up-to-the-minute political information and second-screen experiences that are a great companion to political broadcasts.”

Bing Pulse will allow anyone to vote every five seconds on their feelings about the address and the results will be shown live on the site and on Fox News Channel.

“We think this will be the largest live online poll in history,” Penn writes in an announcement of the project.

It’s also history’s most useless poll.  Allowing people “to vote every five seconds on their feelings” about a message as they’re hearing it would be great if we wanted to know people’s reactions to words instead of sentences.  It’s bad enough that most political dialogue has been reduced to competing sound bites.  But at least sound bites are designed to trigger reactions based on thoughts.  From Penn’s description, this new venture is tracking little more than raw emotion in five second intervals.

Like Ohio’s John Kasich and four other Republican governors, Indiana’s Mike Pence seriously considered expanding Medicaid eligibility under ObamaCare.  But unlike Kasich & Company, Pence ultimately decided against it when HHS refused to grant him one sensible reform.

Established under Mitch Daniels, Pence’s predecessor, the Healthy Indiana program allows uninsured adults aged 19-64 to use a state-based health savings account to pay for medical expenses, such as doctor’s visits, hospital services, diagnostic tests, and prescription drugs.  Incentives apply to reward cost-effective spending, but it’s critical to point out that the spending decisions within the account are determined by the policyholder, not the state.

In order to go along with expansion under ObamaCare that increases the eligibility pool for Medicaid, Pence asked permission to use Healthy Indiana accounts to help keep costs down.  The request is imminently reasonable.  If the purpose of Medicaid expansion is to cover uninsured people, why not let Indiana migrate a state-based program with a 94% satisfaction rating?

Predictably, Kathleen Sebelius’ Department of Health and Human Services said no, preferring to retain federal control over coverage and spending.  Without a program like Healthy Indiana in place, costs are likely to spiral upward since Medicaid beneficiaries are not tethered to the consequences of their spending decisions.

So, Pence said no to the Medicaid expansion.  But I think it’s crucial to understand that his response was not a kneejerk reaction against helping the uninsured get normal access to healthcare.  Instead, he proposed a sensible reform that would have accomplished the same goal as Medicaid expansion, but with more cost certainty for the state budget, and thus less tax receipts from taxpayers.

I’ve speculated before that Pence might be the GOP’s best bet in the 2016 presidential race.  A moment like this, even when it doesn’t result in a “win” politically speaking, helps confirm that suspicion because it’s based on sound principles.

I don’t know of a major journalist other than Byron York continually highlighting the plight of the under- and unemployed in Barack Obama’s America.

Summarizing the findings of a new Rutgers study, York excerpted this cautionary stat:

The researchers asked people — unemployed and employed alike — about the “major causes” of joblessness. Seventy percent named “competition and cheap labor from other countries.” The next-highest number, 40 percent, blamed “illegal immigrants taking jobs from Americans.” That 40 percent is more than blame Wall Street bankers (35 percent), the policies of George W. Bush (23 percent) or the policies of Barack Obama (30 percent).

“These strong and enduring concerns about globalization and fears that illegal immigrants hurt job prospects for Americans citizens are likely to make it more difficult for policymakers in Washington, DC to negotiate free-trade agreements and reform immigration laws,” the report concludes, in what is probably a serious understatement.

Whether this perception is correct or not, Republicans in Congress need to take care how they handle immigration reform.  As I wrote last week, conservatives like Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies make a strong case that increasing the legal labor supply when jobs are scarce hurts native workers.  If Republicans are seen as complicit in increasing the Democrats voting base and hurting job prospects for working class citizens, the party will have no one to blame but its leadership for its dwindling popularity.

Fox News is reporting a major announcement by the Post Master General today that the United States Postal Service (USPS) plans to discontinue Saturday letter delivery.  The agency would continue to deliver packages six days a week.  (Per federal law, USPS does not operate on Sundays.)

The decision to reduce letter carrying to five days a week is one of the cost reduction approaches advocated by congressional postal reformers such as Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK).  With USPS posting a near $16 billion operating loss last year, the move, at a cost-savings of $2 billion, is one of the changes that could help the agency stay alive.

Unfortunately for those who like letter service, legacy costs like high levels of workers’ compensation use and generous pension guarantees are coming up against the switch by consumers to email and other electronic messaging services.

When looking at the numbers, today’s USPS announcement makes sense.  According to the report, the agency’s percentage of letter deliveries has fallen since 2010 while package delivery rose 14 percent.  Reformers typically want government agencies to act more like businesses to reduce the cost to taxpayers while maintaining an acceptable level of service.  Unless Congress gives USPS more flexibility or some money (currently USPS receives no appropriations), a leaner Post Office, with fewer services, seems like the most likely way forward.

It’s an interesting time to follow California politics.

Last month, Democratic Governor Jerry Brown announced that, thanks to the voter-approved tax hikes from last November, the state looks poised reap budget surpluses for the first time in years.

But instead of using those projections as an excuse to restore funding for programs pared back by budget cuts, Brown is promising to set aside the money in a rainy day fund.

Moody’s and S&P rewarded Brown’s announcement by upgrading California’s credit rating.

Now Brown faces an even bigger test.

There’s an estimated 15.4 billion barrels of oil in California’s Monterey Shale formation, or four times as much as North Dakota’s Bakken Shale reserves.  Another way to put it is that California is home to two-thirds of America’s projected shale oil reserves.  Opening it up would be a game changer for the nation’s oil security and California’s economy.

But here’s the rub, according to Walter Russell Mead:

The intrigues in this drama are many. Does California’s Democratic Party come down on the side of low income Californians, who desperately need the jobs and state services new oil extraction will fund? Or does it come down on the side of a green lobby that is heavily backed by some of the wealthiest people in the state? To what extent does the wealthy coastal elite control the future of the inland poor in California? Can the GOP use the issue as a wedge to rebuild its credibility in a state it once dominated? Will black gold bail out big blue California?

Bring lots of popcorn. This is going to be a terrific show.

A Governing.com blog post by finance writer Liz Farmer includes a little history lesson for conservative governors looking to swap income tax cuts for higher sales taxes.  In order to avoid a massive drop-off in tax revenue in such a scenario, states would be obliged to not only increase their sales tax rate, but expand it beyond goods to include services as well.

But an example from Florida’s recent past gives reason to pause:

Expanding the sales base to include services would address both of those issues. However, getting that idea past the powerful lobbies that advocate for the affected industries is another question. In 1987, the Florida Legislature enacted an expanded sales tax on services like including advertising, legal, accounting and construction services. The move was met with enormous outcry. Major corporations like Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble canceled or reduced their advertising in the state to protest the tax while business groups canceled at least 60 conventions they had booked in the state. The tax lasted just six months until it was repealed and the legislature instead voted to raise the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent, a rate that is still in effect today.

It’s worth noting that a tax expert quoted in the blog confirms that income taxes are the most destructive tax because they create a disincentive to build wealth.  However, as the experience in Florida shows, a workable sales tax runs the risk of becoming quickly unpopular once consumers start seeing the true cost of government on every commercial transaction.

Assuming some states do enact the income-for-sales-tax swap, maybe the sticker shock will prompt another round of reform; one that perhaps lets third-party vendors compete for government contracts to deliver services at a fraction of what it costs to fund a bureaucracy.

Looks like Quin might get his wish on Chuck Hagel’s nomination.  President Barack Obama’s Defense Secretary nominee misstated the Administration’s policy on containment of Iran twice; once when Hagel said he supported Obama’s policy of containment, then when he said there was no policy.  It took Senate Armed Services Committee Chair Carl Levin (D-MI) to remind Hagel that, actually, “We (i.e. America) do have a position on containment, and that is we do not favor containment.”

Hagel also said during his confirmation hearing today that he doesn’t know enough about military programs and technology, but promised that as Defense Secretary he would do the necessary cramming to get up to speed.

Overall, Hagel did himself no favors with the senators who oppose his nomination, and may have given fence-sitters enough wiggle room to justify abandoning him.  My guess, however, is that President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will work the phones and twist the arms necessary to save the Administration from a humiliating No vote on confirmation.

So far, a busy half week on Capitol Hill saw Senator John Kerry (D-MA) become Secretary of State after the U.S. Senate confirmed him 94-3; gun-control politicians getting righteous blowback from the NRA and an advocate for young mothers; and another round of immigration reform heating up.

On this last point, it’s helpful to remember that a big part of what’s missing from the illegal immigration debate is how to fix the problems with the legal immigration system.  For an idea of how byzantine is the process of getting into America the right way, check out these charts prepared the libertarian Reason Foundation and the liberal Immigration Road.  (Each is a pdf.)

The worst lowlight: Waiting up to 28 years to become a citizen.

But before policy wonks and political advocates jump to conclusions and start proposing ways to fix immigration by reducing wait times and streamlining the process, it’s worth having a serious national discussion about what principle should drive our immigration policy.

If it’s about the national interest, in this case defined as what’s best for Americans already here, then it’s far from clear how importing any foreign workers, skilled or unskilled, improves the economic lot of domestic skilled and unskilled workers.  If anything, basic economics suggests that importing more labor reduces the value of the labor already here, which, while a boon for employers, translates into a pay cut for workers.  (For more on this, see Mark Krikorian’s thought-provoking book, “The New Case Against Immigration.”)

On the other hand, if immigration policy is about ensuring that America is the preeminent land of opportunity within the world community, then a small but clear set of filters (e.g. screening out convicted criminals, terrorists, and those fleeing tax problems) need to be put in place to allow the greatest number of opportunity-seeking immigrants to come, live, and hopefully contribute to the nation’s growth.

Personally, I’m conflicted about which route to take.  With Americas suffering from 7.8 percent unemployment – which is really 14.4 percent when underemployed and those too discouraged  to look for work are counted – it’s hard to justify adding to the labor market.  And yet an immigration policy focused on opportunity for those seeking it is an attractive extension of Ronald Reagan’s city on a hill, of which he said “And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

This much I do know: Finding a solution to the illegal immigration problem can’t be done until Americans decide on legal immigration’s foundational principle.

A new GAO report says that Dodd-Frank, the 2010 law that enormously expands the federal government’s regulatory role in the financial markets, is being implemented at a snail’s pace:

Overall, GAO identified 236 provisions of the act that require regulators to issue rulemakings across nine key areas. As of December 2012, regulators had issued final rules for about 48 percent of these provisions; however, in some cases the dates by which affected entities had to comply with the rules had yet to be reached. Of the remaining provisions, regulators had proposed rules for about 29 percent, and rulemakings had not occurred for about 23 percent.

At first blush, limited government conservatives might cheer the slow growth in regulation.  But limited government is only good if it’s for the right reasons; for instance, relying on the current legal (fraud) and market (bankruptcy) framework to police financial bad actors.  Here, however, the delays are due to Dodd-Frank’s perpetuation of flawed regulatory methods.

For example, the report lists obstacles such as regulators with overlapping jurisdictions and inconsistent rules, impossible-to-meet statutory deadlines, and lack of consumer confidence in the regulators’ ability to produce fair and reasonable guidelines.  To cope with these realities, bureaucrats are opting to miss deadlines in favor of more collaborative rules.  But while the benefit may be more buy-in from stakeholders inside and outside the government, the costs are huge to the businessman on the street.

The two biggest casualties are the rule of law and regulatory transparency.  The first is undermined because bureaucrats allowed to ignore statutory mandates are bureaucrats allowed to operate outside the law.  Think a private business could just decide to miss a deadline because compliance is too hard?

Moreover, part of the difficulty complying comes from the lack of transparency.  Businesspeople need certainty in regulations to plan for the future, but that can’t be done when deadlines are waived at the discretion of the regulator.  So instead of being able to act on distasteful yet concrete information, businesses are left wondering how to position themselves as the regulatory elites “collaborate.”

In this type of environment, the safest bet is not to take risks like hiring or expanding.  With government like this, is it any wonder the job market is so lousy?

H/T: The Hill’s RegWatch blog

The Wall Street Journal shows us that the price of “affordable” health care is a reduced standard of living:

The Affordable Care Act requires large employers to offer a minimum level of health insurance to employees who work 30 hours a week or more starting in 2014, or face a penalty. The mandate is a particular challenge for colleges and universities, which increasingly rely on adjuncts to help keep costs down as states have scaled back funding for higher education.

A handful of schools, including Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania and Youngstown State University in Ohio, have curbed the number of classes that adjuncts can teach in the current spring semester to limit the schools’ exposure to the health-insurance requirement.

The scaled back hours and pay for adjunct professors is part of a larger trend in a wide variety of industries.  Faced with lower thresholds that require new benefits, employers from universities to fast food restaurants face three options: pay-up, pay-out, or tap-out.  In other words, they can increase their health care spending, be fined for not increasing such spending, or cap the hours and pay of otherwise eligible workers to avoid the spending and the fines.

Unfortunately for workers, capping hours and pay reduces their standard of living.  But don’t worry.  In 2014, Obamacare mandates that every state will have a fully functioning health insurance exchange where newly impoverished workers can get “affordable” health care – some even with government (i.e. taxpayer) subsidies – so it’s a safe bet that all will be well when the feds are in charge of at least 25 separate state programs.  Right…

The Hill posted a jaw-dropping lead to describe just how broken is the federal budget process:

Senate Democrats on Wednesday said they will move a budget resolution through the Budget Committee and onto the Senate floor for the first time in four years.

Despite protests to the contrary, the move is in response to a House-approved measure to move the nation’s debt ceiling back from late February to early May.

It’s hard to applaud a group of adults for finally getting the regular budget process going in the Senate.  Still, it’s a sign of progress that a budget may actually be produced in accordance with federal law.

Jim Treacher of The Daily Caller does a public service by compiling all the data points on the man who started the booing of Paul Ryan as the latter walked to Barack Obama’s second inauguration.

Dan Freeman, a civil service (i.e. technically non-political) hire at the Department of Justice’s Voting Rights section, said on his Facebook page that he “Just started the booing when Paul Ryan came out.”  Helpfully, Freeman gave his location as “United States Capitol.”

Sleuthing by the blogosphere netted biographical nuggets like Freeman’s involvement in the Yale Law Democrats, and internships for liberal activist groups.  Among his responsibilities was undermining the Bush Administration’s national security strategy by challenging the state secrets privilege in court.  He also helped defend terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

If you’re wondering when Freeman had time to learn federal election law, he didn’t.  But at Eric Holder’s Justice Department, the relevant experience was met checking all the liberal activist boxes.

And, thanks to civil service protection, Freeman will have his position for as long as he wants it, regardless of who becomes the Attorney General, or for that matter, President of the United States.

The Hill is reporting that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) is in the final stages of hammering out a filibuster reform package.  Here are the two biggest changes:

The agreement between Reid and McConnell is not expected to include the talking filibuster, which would require senators who want to block action on legislation to actually hold the floor and debate for hours on end.

In recent days, Reid has begun to focus on a proposal to tweak the filibuster rule by requiring the minority party to muster 41 votes to stall a bill or nominee. Under current rules, the responsibility is on the majority to round up 60 votes to end a filibuster.

I say half right because I favor a talking filibuster and making the minority party (in this case the Republicans) come up with the votes necessary to trigger a filibuster.  Putting people on the record isn’t comfortable, but it is required to make the distinctions between the parties – and their ideologies – more publicly apparent.

Moreover, citizens need to know the well-reasoned, well-researched arguments for and against a proposed policy.  Far from hurting the Republican minority, I think giving articulate conservatives like Ted Cruz (R-TX), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Rand Paul (R-KY) an opportunity to make their case will help educate the public about important issues.  This in turn will spur a dialogue on the Right that will allow the movement to better understand itself so that it can better persuade the electorate.

George Will has some excellent questions that should be put to Defense Secretary nominee Chuck Hagel in the latter’s upcoming confirmation hearings.  Here are my three favorites:

●Do you agree with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s judgment that cuts under sequestration would “hollow out the force”? Can you give examples of procurements or deployments that justify your description of the Defense Department as “bloated”?

…

●Congress’s power to declare war has atrophied since it was last exercised (against Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary on June 5, 1942). Should Congress authorize America’s wars?

…

●Speaking of the imperial presidency, do you believe that the use of drones to target specific individuals means presidents have an unreviewable power to kill whomever they define as enemies? Do you favor “signature strikes,” wherein drones attack not identifiable individuals but groups of young males whose characteristics match the “signature” of terrorists?

Read the whole list here.

Mark Mills writing in The Wall Street Journal says that projections about California’s latent shale oil reserves could be the silver bullet for the state’s fiscal woes:

The overall economic benefits of opening up the Monterey shale field could reach $1 trillion. One can only imagine the impact on California’s education system, social programs, infrastructure, and even energy-tech R&D. Moreover, with that kind of revenue, Sacramento tax collections could wipe out debt and deficits.

But is it really plausible that California’s big-spending political class would use the $1 trillion windfall to pay off the state’s debts and seed a rainy day fund?  Call me cynical, but it seems way more likely that state spending would increase above and beyond whatever windfall comes from oil drilling.

That said, I’d love for Sacramento to prove me wrong.  Let the fracking begin!

Now that President Barack Obama has announced the most sweeping gun control measures in generations, RedState’s Erick Erickson reminds us of what the Second Amendment is really about:

In all the talk that has happened and will happen, the press and the general public seem willing to ignore the actual purpose of the second amendment.

The amendment is not about sports. It is not about recreation. It is not about hunting. It is only partly about defending yourself from a criminal.

The second amendment is about ensuring a “free state.”

…

The 2nd Amendment, contrary to much of today’s conversation, has just as much to do with the people protecting themselves from tyranny as it does burglars. That is why there is so little common ground about assault rifles — even charitably ignoring the fact that there really is no such thing. If the 2nd Amendment is to protect the citizenry from even their own government, then the citizenry should be able to be armed.

There are plenty of arguments and bodies to suggest that we might, as a nation, need to rethink this. The Founders gave us that option. We can amend the Constitution.

In doing so, we should keep in mind that in the past 100 years Germany, Italy, Russia, Japan, China, and other governments have turned on their people at various times and, in doing so, restricted freedoms starting often with gun ownership. You may think a 30 round magazine is too big. Under the real purpose of the second amendment, a 30 round magazine might be too small.

Erickson is right.  If it’s true that times have changed, and the Founders’ method of ensuring a free state is no longer dependent on individual access to weapons that would repel tyranny, then there is a mechanism to do that.  It’s not unilaterally mandating twenty-three executive actions.  It’s amending the U.S. Constitution.

The Hill provides the text of a letter sent by the White House Office of Management and Budget to House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI).

In it, the OMB’s Deputy Director for Management blames the late resolution of the “fiscal cliff” negotiations for causing the White House to violate the law by missing the February 4 deadline for submitting a budget to Congress.

But as The Hill notes, that excuse is nonsense when considered in light of the Obama Administration’s record on budgets:

Under the law, President Obama must submit a budget by the first Monday in February, but he has met the deadline only once. The annual budget submission is supposed to start a congressional budgeting process, but that has also broken down. The Senate last passed a budget resolution in 2009.

Left out of that tidy little summation is the fact that the House Republicans have never failed to pass a budget resolution during the entire time Obama has been president.

The failure of Washington to “work” in the Obama Era is not a failure of substance; both parties are relatively clear about their policy visions.  What’s grinding the system to a halt is the liberal disregard of legal procedures like statutorily defined deadlines.  Throw out the rules, and suddenly no one knows how to play the game.  As I said last week, unless the budget process is amended to enact meaningful punishment on parties who violate it, nothing else is likely to change.

Here at CFIF we’ve promoted the idea of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would require Congress to pass balanced budgets every year with certain 60 percent supermajority thresholds for raising taxes or the debt ceiling.

The idea comes with a stellar pedigree since conservative icons like Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, and the Contract with America all supported various Balanced Budget Amendments.

Alas, the BBA has yet to become law, and with the current lineup of liberals running the U.S. Senate and White House, it will be awhile before such an idea can be seriously discussed in Washington.

That said, Byron York says that Republicans might have an opening in the coming fight over raising the debt ceiling to get closer to a balanced budget; albeit by amending a statute, not the Constitution.

On its face, the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 sets out a clear deadline for passing a budget by April 15 every year.  The problem, however, is that there is no enforcement mechanism to punish Congress if it fails to do so.  With Harry Reid (D-NV) and Senate Democrats failing to pass a budget for the last 1,351 days as of today, the budget law’s impotency is on full display.

York reports:

“The law doesn’t have teeth,” says a Senate aide involved in the fight.  “Sen. Sessions and others have proposed process reforms to give the budget law teeth (one reform would make it harder to pass spending bills without a budget), but the debt ceiling is the strongest leverage we have on this. This is the opportunity.”

In other words, it is precisely because the budget law has no enforcement provision that Republicans believe they need some other form of leverage, in this case the debt ceiling deadline, to force Reid and his fellow Democrats to move.  In addition, whatever happens in the debt ceiling standoff, it seems clear that the original budget law should be amended to include some sort of enforcement method.

This strategy strikes me as a great way to get real value in return for raising the nation’s debt ceiling.  Imagine how much different Obama’s first term would have been if instead of ignoring the House Republicans’ Paul Ryan-inspired budgets, the President and Senate Democrats had to negotiate its terms up against a hard deadline.  Liberals would have been forced to debate conservatives on specifics instead of substituting scare tactics for policy.

So far, Republicans have said they want entitlement reform in exchange for upping the ceiling, and for good reason since spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid alone account for about 44 percent of the federal budget (other entitlements push the total to 62 percent).  Moreover, since entitlement spending is not discretionary, meaning it isn’t determined in the normal appropriations process but by eligibility formulas, reining in federal spending will require statutory changes that can only be gotten when the stakes are very high.

But if York is right, then Republican strategists would be wise to include changes to the Congressional Budget Act along with spending reforms to entitlements.  Winning both would improve the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook by helping conservatives change the way Washington does business.

In light of the volleys exchanged, let’s review how a senatorial hold works.

From the U.S. Senate’s reference page on chamber rules:

hold – An informal practice by which a senator informs his or her floor leader that he or she does not wish a particular bill or other measure to reach the floor for consideration. The majority leader need not follow the senator’s wishes, but is on notice that the opposing senator may filibuster any motion to proceed to consider the measure.

Note the part stating, “The majority leader need not follow the senator’s wishes, but is on notice that the opposing senator may filibuster any motion to proceed to consider the measure.”

What’s a filibuster?

filibuster – Informal term for any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions.

Bear in mind that the majority leader, i.e. Harry Reid (D-NV), “need not follow the senator’s wishes…”  Recall also Reid’s musings that he’d like to enact the so-called ‘nuclear option’ to remove the usual supermajority requirement for overcoming a filibuster, and replace it with a simple majority.  So, if the Senate Democratic caucus wants to, they can 1) refuse to honor any hold requests on Hagel, and 2) change Senate rules on filibusters to shut down the opposition.  With several news outlets reporting that President Barack Obama is ready to pick a fight over Hagel, I think Reid does both if Republicans try to kill Obama’s nominee for Defense Secretary with obstructionist procedural tactics.

Maybe if Hagel was nominated for some second tier Cabinet office Republicans could get away with relying on informal procedures to block his next career move.  But with Obama riding high after the fiscal cliff negotiations – Quin’s optimism notwithstanding – I think Republicans will lose, and lose big, with the public if they try to kill Obama’s top Pentagon pick on procedure rather than substance.

It should be said that I don’t disagree with any of Quin’s criticisms of Hagel.  Instead, my point of departure is with Quin’s reliance on procedural obstruction rather than tough questioning and reasoned argument.  Conservatives have one of the most intellectually articulate groups of senators in living memory with the likes of Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and others.  Let them and military stalwarts like John McCain and Lindsey Graham make a coordinated, sustained case against Hagel and his views on foreign policy.  In the process, they might even discover a countervailing vision that convinces the American people.

To start, I’ll take as a compliment Quin’s assertion that “Ashton seems to accept with some equanimity the idea that Chuck Hagel will be confirmed as Secretary of Defense” since equanimity is a virtue I’m trying to achieve.

That said, I don’t think there’s a Republican United States Senator willing to take Quin’s suggestion and put a permanent hold on Hagel’s nomination.

It’s one thing for Ted Cruz (R-TX) to make waves on cable television by (rightly) blasting the Obama Administration over Hagel, the fiscal cliff, and gun control, but it is quite another for Cruz to use his senatorial prerogative of “holding” up the President’s nomination for one of the top three Cabinet posts (State and Treasury being the other two); especially since Cruz is in his first full week as a Senator.

Moreover, from the tone of opposition coming from other top Republicans like John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and others, I don’t get the sense defeating the Hagel nomination through an obscure “hold” is the proverbial hill upon which any Republican Senator wants to die this session.

Instead, I think Hagel will go through the confirmation process with the kind of probing scrutiny Supreme Court justices get.  It may very well be that, as Quin writes, “The man [Hagel], appears to many to be an anti-Semite.  Opponents make quite a case that he should never set foot in the top office at the Pentagon.”

Well, let Senate Republicans, not just political pundits, make that case on the record.

In the confirmation hearings, during floor debate, and in an actual speaking filibuster if it comes to that, Senate Republicans will have many instances to make precisely the case Quin alludes to, and any other substantive policy criticisms about Hagel they think will defeat his confirmation.  But let’s have the argument in public, through the normal process of a presidential nomination.

U.S. Senators like to think they work within “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”  Let them prove it with a robust examination of Chuck Hagel’s fitness to be the next Secretary of Defense.