Don’t despair, my imaginary friends on the internet!
Y’all know I have been down on politics lately. I despair of the weakness and mediocrity of ‘our guys’ as much as the duplicity and overreach of ‘the other guys.’ Well, I read an article in the Weekly Standard this morning that cheered me up a little.
The 25 Republican state Attorneys General are hunting in packs. They’re aggressive, they’re activist, they’re libertarian (whether they call it that or not), they have each other on speed dial and they’re banding together to block the worst excesses of the Obama administration.
The AGs are committed — “ruthlessly committed” is how Pruitt puts it — to obstructing the expansion of the federal government at the expense of the states. They are champions of federalism, the Tenth Amendment, states’ rights, and a defanged federal government. […] Republican AGs regard themselves as “the last line of defense” against Washington and its blob-like tendency to grow. It’s a conceit, but a defensible one.
It’s a trick they learned off Democrat AG’s, who (you may recall) would oft band together to turn companies upside down and shake them for $billions. Once in a while, I have to remind myself there are some very smart people in government, they just aren’t very visible.
Anyway, go read it. This is where Ted Cruz came from — he was one of the scrappy young lawyers in the Texas AG’s office. More like him, please.
The illustrator is Gary Locke. You may recognize his stuff; he’s done many covers for the Weekly Standard, among other clients. Drove me nuts squinting at the tiny thumbnails on the Standard’s site (if you click them, you don’t get a bigger picture, you get a subscription form) until I thought to Google Gary’s name.
Go look at purty art. He does a wicked good Barack Obama, and an excellent David Cameron.
Posted: July 15th, 2013 under art, personal, politics.
Comments: 12
Comments
Comment from Uncle Al
Time: July 15, 2013, 10:34 pm
I know, I know, it is awfully hard to give it up, especially when there are good guys such as these AGs showing up from time to time. But, Sweasel, you’ve got to let it go. Govt is very much past the point of redemption or recovery. Time to embrace anarchocapitalism!
Comment from Deborah
Time: July 15, 2013, 10:59 pm
And now Greg Abbott is running for the Governor’s office in Texas.
Comment from Uncle Badger
Time: July 15, 2013, 11:24 pm
With a tip o’ the hat to Uncle Al, I still wish we had some of these people over here in benighted Britain.
Comment from EZnSF
Time: July 16, 2013, 3:33 am
Thanks U Al,
Just when the possibilities of superheros flash to life before our eyes, you force us to finish our broccoli and do our homework.
Just hope I’m not to old to shoot straight in the coming revolution. And I neither think well of our chances.
Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: July 16, 2013, 4:09 am
There are sheriffs across the west standing up against the various alphabet agencies in the federal government, too, particularly the EPA. Oregon is having problems with areas being closed off to ALL traffic, including law enforcement, by the EPA. So bad guys go past those barriers and giggle… except the Sheriffs are going thorough anyway and flipping off the federal government.
What will it amount to? Nothing, I expect.
Comment from Mike C.
Time: July 16, 2013, 8:54 am
Well hopefully, we here in The Old Dominion will wind up with Cuccinelli (the guy on the right in the illustration) as our next governor, although that is by no means certain.
Comment from S. Weasel
Time: July 16, 2013, 10:18 am
I’ve been lighting a candle for the revolution every night for my whole life. Eventually, you blow it out and come inside and watch TV.
The big shifts certainly happen in history — and are generally intensely painful for all concerned — but incremental change is much more likely.
Comment from Nina
Time: July 16, 2013, 3:08 pm
I don’t even want to go out of my house these days. Daughter 1 did the Tough Mudder on Sunday, where the crowd was overwhelmingly melanin-deficient. For the first time in my life that made me glad. Not a good feeling.
Comment from mojo
Time: July 16, 2013, 3:33 pm
I don’t think a Federal outfit can bar a county Sheriff (or his deputies) from anywhere in their county. But no doubt they will try.
Comment from Christopher Taylor
Time: July 16, 2013, 7:16 pm
“I don’t think a Federal outfit can bar a county Sheriff (or his deputies) from anywhere in their county.”
You’re probably from the east coast. Much of the west is federal land, the feds own about 53% of Oregon, for example, according to a site I peeked at. http://strangemaps.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/map-owns_the_west.jpg
The federal government claims jurisdiction over that land and control of it over state and local governments.
Comment from scottthebadger
Time: July 16, 2013, 9:40 pm
Who is the blonde with the grenade and the Webley? She looks determined!
Comment from Brad
Time: July 16, 2013, 10:45 pm
The thing about big shifts in history is that all but the very biggest and most disruptive are only apparent in hindsight.
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