Here is an interesting article from Fox News that details a poll about what Americas are fed up with.

Not surprisingly, 81% Americans are tired of the growing federal debt. 73% claim “they are fed up with Uncle Sam’s spending spree.” And on a side note, 53% of Americans are sick of “people having loud cell phone conversations.”

It’s clear that Americans in general are not happy with what’s going on in Washington. It doesn’t matter if you are a Republican or Democrat. What needs to change at the capital? I want to know what you think– leave some comments.

After hearing Newt Gingrich speak at CPAC, it feels evident that the Republicans have the opportunity to take back the House and Senate, much like in 1994. But they need a plan, and a revamp of the original Contract for America would do just the trick.

Gingrich stressed common sense. “2 + 2 = 4″ was his motto. It’s simple, but it’s the truth. No more spending money that we don’t have. No more bills that increase the deficit. People from both parties are fed up with the runaway spending in Washington, and if Republicans take advantage of that sentiment, they can win big. Republicans should lay down a specific plan outlining all the common sense provisions they intend to take action on if they take back congress. It should also include promises for integrity and transparency. America truly is a center-right country, and currently, Washington is on the left.

One doesn’t need to be interested in politics to know that spending is out of control. A common theme to reduce government spending could unite most of the country. It’s time for conservative republicans to take a fiscal stand for what they believe in. The only question left to ask is: Who’s going to lead the charge?

CPAC 2010 had around 10,000 registrants– more than ever before. Glenn Beck was the keynote speaker and he was greatly welcomed into an enormous, packed ballroom. Even I had to view from an overflow ballroom, but that didn’t detract from a phenomenal speech. We laughed. We we were touched. It called us to action. Glenn Beck said what needed to be said.

You can watch Glenn Beck’s speech here. It’s just under an hour (start at the 5:oo mark). I encourage you to skip one TV show and watch this speech.

Beck told us about the “cancer” of Progressivism– now under the term “liberalism”– and how it is slowly destroying our country. He explained how in the late 1920’s, low taxes and high spending helped lead to the Great Depression. He mentioned how we need to turn back to personal responsibility and learn from our failures because some of the best successes come from the of greatest of failures. He claimed that in America, we don’t need big government, because we work hard to succeed and we are naturally generous to one another.

Beck stressed that we are in a tough place right now, but we can do something about it: “stand for the right things. Our future is not cast in stone. It does not have to be this way. It does not have to be that the greatest American generation is behind us. It does not have to be that our children will have a lower standing of living. It will be that way if we choose to believe that. I choose not to believe that!”

On Feb. 1, Obama presented his $3.8 trillion budget proposal for the next decade. The deficit will hit a post-WWII record high this fiscal year at $1.6 trillion. The budget is supposed to save $1.2 trillion over the next decade, but this savings becomes nearly meaningless when compared to the $6 trillion debt that is supposed to accrue in the next 10 years.

Obama’s big effort to to reduce spending is to freeze some domestic spending for three years. Sounds great on the surface until you read the fine print. The freeze exempts spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, spending by the Pentagon, the budgets of the Veterans Administration and Department of Homeland Security. Also, this spending freeze would not impact the mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. These three programs account for 59 percent of all federal spending.

So in essence, the three-year spending freeze is completely irrelevant.

To make the spending freeze even more insignificant, according to the Office of Management and Budget’s numbers, the baseline discretionary domestic spending has been increased by $115 billion since Obama’s inauguration. Great place to freeze spending, if you ask me.

Even with all this, you would think that the administration would actually attempt to decrease spending in the non-security, discretionary domestic arena. However, in the budget, education, civilian research, food and drug safety and biomedical research would all get more money. NASA would be granted $18 billion to spend on new technologies that could take humans farther into space. The Department of Health and Human Services would see an increase in their budget of $1.7 billion to $81.3 billion. The National Institute of Health’s budget would see an increase of $1 billion, to $32 billion. Cutbacks, you say?

The focus of the administration should be on fiscal responsibility. Social Security will be bankrupt by the year 2017 and Medicare will be bankrupt by 2037 if nothing is done to reform these programs. There cannot be a significant reduction in the federal deficit without attention to these huge entitlement programs.

Pork-barrel spending pervades the federal budget. Currently, the Senate and House Appropriations Committee members are so protective of their own interests that there is no chance for cutting excess pork. We need to grant the president the power of the line-item veto so that waste can be cut from the budget.

We are borrowing heavily from China and other countries, and by 2020, our debt will be 77 percent of the gross domestic product. Frightening.

Once again the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has discriminated against a religious group. In Christian Law Society v. Martinez, the court upheld the actions of the Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. The law school denied to officially recognize a student group because they did not follow the college’s non-discrimination policy. The group in question is the Christian Law Society (CLS) on the grounds that they refuse to allow non-Christians to become voting members or be involved in club leadership. The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) is helping to defend the CLS. You can read their account here.

This is clearly undermining the rights of religious groups in schools. Its astonishing how cases like this continually make it past the the higher courts. A Christian law group is not going to be able to fulfill their mission if they are forced to let people be involved who don’t share their vision. What if Campus Crusade for Christ couldn’t deny leadership positions based on religious qualification? It just doesn’t make sense.

Courts like the 9th circuit continually try to introduce small concepts like this, with hopes that they will turn into bigger movements. This is a case that must be reversed to show that we value the rights of religious groups on campuses everywhere.  Thankfully, the ACLJ is currently trying to convince the Supreme Court to overturn this decision. It will be interesting to see what the court makes of this case because it isn’t just vital for Christian groups, its for the protection of all religious clubs.

Will there ever be an end to the spending in Washington? Representative Paul Ryan has a plan. In an interesting article, Ryan defends his “Roadmap for America’s Future 2.0″ against the objections of Peter Orzag, the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Ryan explains the key provisions of his “Roadmap” while rufuting Orzag’s claims at the same time.

Congressman Ryan’s Roadmap  proposes some drastic changes to the government’s entitlement programs to help solve the financial crisis. He suggests changing tax codes to help reduce the number of low-income uninsured and dramatically slowing down the costs of Medicare.

The key part about the congressman’s proposal is that it will solve the long-term financial crisis — as certified by the Congressional Budget Office. The plan may not be perfect, but it seems like a crucial step to take. It appears that congress is just pushing aside this growing financial burden for the future. The Democrats are busy working on a health care bill that would only seem to further this problem. Paul Ryan has made a stand amidst all the inaction.

Hopefully his ideas will gain momentum with the Republicans, and with congress. People know we need finance reform, and this could be a great starting point to a solution.

New York Magazine just published an excerpt from the book Game Change about the rise and fall of John Edwards.  It also reveals a different side to Elizabeth Edwards, who is often portrayed in the media as the “sainted” wronged woman.

From NY Mag:

Many of his friends started noticing a change—the arrival of what one of his aides referred to as “the ego monster”—after he was nearly chosen by Al Gore to be his running mate in 2000: the sudden interest in superficial stuff to which Edwards had been oblivious before, from the labels on his clothes to the size of his entourage. But the real transformation occurred in the 2004 race, and especially during the general election. Edwards reveled in being inside the bubble: the Secret Service, the chartered jet, the press pack, the swarm of factotums catering to his every whim. And the crowds! The ovations! The adoration! He ate it up. In the old days, when his aides asked how a rally had gone, he would roll his eyes and self-mockingly say, “Oh, they love me.” Now he would bound down from the stage beaming and exclaim, without the slightest shred of irony, “They looooove me!”

…

During the 2004 race, Elizabeth badgered and berated John’s advisers around the clock. She called Nick Baldick, his campaign manager, an idiot. She accused David Axelrod, his (and later Obama’s) media consultant, of lying to her and insisted that he be stripped of the responsibility for making the campaign’s TV ads. She would stay up late scouring the Web, pulling down negative stories and blog items about her husband, forwarding them with vicious messages to the communications team. She routinely unleashed profanity-laced tirades on conference calls. “Why the fuck do you think I’d want to go sit outside a Wal-Mart and hand out leaflets?” she snarled at the schedulers.
Read more: An Excerpt From John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s ‘Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime’ — New York Magazinehttp://nymag.com/news/politics/63045/index1.html#ixzz0cik6KBLx

Jay Cost is one of my favorite writers. He’s a professor of political science, and writes about politics in a manner more akin to V.O. Key than Jim Geraghty or Eleanor Clift (or any of that crowd, really). This week, he wrote an exquisite piece highlighting the popular conception that Obama has “let us down” and noted how that shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s a very good piece, I enjoyed it quite a bit. Hope you do too.

“The Real Barack Obama” by Jay Cost.

Thanks for reading. Have a good first day of classes, everybody!

• Top Democrats drop out of 2010 election races
  Dorgan (D-ND), Dodd out (D-CT) (Politico)
  Democratic majority still looks safe (Politico)
  CO Governor Bill Ritter (D) drops out (WSJ), CO Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will not run for Governor (Washington Post)
• NJ State Senate rejects gay marriage proposal in a 20-14 vote.  The bill’s supporters had hoped it would be passed before Governor Corzine left office.  (NY Times)
• Improvements in security policies ordered after attempted terrorist attack Christmas Day (NY Times), summary of security review available here (WSJ)
• Republicans put hold on TSA nominee Erroll Southers, who has previously accessed confidential database files without license.  There were also concerns that Southers would support TSA unionization.  (Washington Post)
• EPA proposes tougher regulations on smog, could cost industries $19-$90 billion. (WSJ)
• Unemployment is at 10 percent, with 85,000 more jobs lost in December.  (Politico)
• Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) apologized for comments relating to Barack Obama’s race, not planning to step down or resign.  (Politico)

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Ken Blackwell of the Family Research Council, and Kenneth Klukowski of the American Civil Rights Union are out with a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal today on some of the major constitutional questions hanging over the health care legislation that just passed the Senate.  The key take-away is that the legislation breaches traditional balances between state power and individual liberty in ways never seen before:

America’s founders intended the federal government to have limited powers and that the states have an independent sovereign place in our system of government. The Obama/Reid/Pelosi legislation to take control of the American health-care system is the most sweeping and intrusive federal program ever devised. If the federal government can do this, then it can do anything, and the limits on government power that our liberty requires will be more myth than reality.