This is a Painful 53 Seconds - Rick Perry Campaign Go BOOM (Part 3)

From the November 9, 2011 CNBC debate in Michigan.

Perry Tries to Save His Campaign

Rick Perry's painful debate stumble last night was so serious he'll appear on every morning news show in an attempt to rescue his flailing campaign. 

Howard Kurtz: "After a series of stumbling performances, the governor of Texas attempted to tick off the three federal agencies he would abolish, and was stumped at two. He paused, regrouped, and still couldn't come up with the missing one (the Energy Department, which is hardly obscure). It was the only Perry moment anyone will remember, and a metaphor for his erratic campaign."

Brad Phillips: "With his bumbling answer, Mr. Perry reinforced the now almost irreversible perception that he is not ready for prime time. That indelible moment will linger, and will likely doom his campaign."

Jonathan Chait: "And that's it for Rick Perry. His latest debate performance was so world-historically awful that it truly seems beyond all repair."

And this is on his Campaign Web Site today:

Man Visits Texas State Sentaor Dan Patrick's Office, Fires Shots Outside Texas State Capitol

The blog LaVida Studios has photographs of the Texas Department of Public Safety apprehending the suspect.

Hit Tip to Texas Tribune / Abby Rapoport

Three or four shots were fired outside the State Capitol on the South Steps at 12:15 p.m. Thursday (22 Jan 2010).

An official in Governor's Rick Perry Office said the shooter entered the Governor's Business Office on the first floor and looked around.

The man was also spotted behaving strangely in the office of Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston. Logan Spence, a spokesman for Patrick, said the man, who was about 20 years old and spoke broken English, walked into Patrick's Capitol office and asked to speak to “the woman in the white shirt.” Apparently, Spence said, the visitor had seen another Patrick staffer in the hall and had followed her into the office

According to messages on Patrick's Twitter and Facebook page, the staff called security.

"He was acting in a way that made my staff concerned," writes Patrick on the Facebook page.

The visitor, who Spence said was “nervous and uncomfortable,” repeatedly asked to speak to the female staffer in private. When she wouldn’t go with him, he left the office — and shots were fired moments later.

“He was definitely not a constituent,” Spence said. “I don’t think he was targeting our office.”

“Several of us in the past have called for added security measures at the Capitol," Patrick told the Tribune. "Today’s event recalls the fact that we need to reevaluate people's access freely into our building. Currently, anyone can walk in at anytime. That’s not a safe situation. If it turns out indeed that the person who came into our office was also the person arrested, then my staff was in danger.”

There are no reported injuries, but DPS officials are going through the building to ensure everyone is safe. There's no word on a possible motive, or whether the suspect was aiming at particular individuals.

DPS spokeswoman Lisa Block says the crime scene is secure. The Capitol Grounds remain on lockdown; however employees may come and go in the building, according to emails to House employees. No one parked in the drive may leave and everyone must keep their identification badges visible.

Here are the emails:

________________________________

From: House Information
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 12:48 PM
To: House; O0665
Subject: Capitol Lockdown

The Capitol is currently on Lockdown so please stay in your office and lock your door until further notice.

________________________________

From: House Administration
Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 2:03 PM
To: House;
Subject: Update - Employees with Valid State ID May Now Enter

Employees with valid State ID are now cleared to enter the building, including the parking garage. There was some confusion as to why the Senate sent out an email earlier stating that the lock down had been lifted, which was only true for the interior of the building. The perimeter was still under lock down at the time.

Again, the building is no longer being kept on lock down. The Capitol Grounds are still on lockdown, and at this time no one parked on the drive is being allowed to leave.

You may now enter and exit the Capitol Building on foot at all entrances except the south entrance. Please keep your ID with you and be prepared to produce it. State ID's are mandatory at this time. If you are an employee, you must wear your ID Badge visibly, and you may still be questioned. We ask for your full cooperation as DPS moves forward with the ongoing investigation. More updates will come as we receive more information.

Thank you for your patience during this time.

________________________________

Gov. Rick Perry Commends DPS Troopers Who Nabbed Capitol Shooter:

“I commend the Texas Department of Public Safety troopers who responded swiftly to a shooter on the South Steps of the State Capitol," Gov. Rick Perry said in a statement. "Thanks to their efforts no one was injured and the shooter was apprehended immediately and taken in to custody.”

Barry Switzer to host a fundraiser for Gov. Rick Perry

Barry Switzer will host a fundraiser for Gov. Rick Perry the weekend of Nov. 14 at Switzer's home in Norman.

That same weekend, the Sooners are hosting Texas A&M's football team.

Presumably the coach and the governor, a former Aggie yell leader, will take different sides in that one.

Football "is an area where they can have a disagreement," Perry spokesman Mark Miner said. Miner said Perry's fellow Aggies shouldn't be alarmed.

"Coach Switzer is a supporter of the governor," he said. "Nobody can question the governor's loyalty to the Aggies."

States prepare to combat stimulus strings

Worried the federal government is increasing its dominance over their affairs, several states are pursuing legislative action to assert their sovereignty under the 10th Amendment of the Constitution in hopes of warding off demands from Washington on how to spend money or enact policy. The growing concerns even have a handful of governors questioning whether to accept federal stimulus money that comes with strings attached.

The sentiments to declare themselves legally independent from Washington have swept across as many as a dozen states, renewing a debate over so-called unfunded mandates that last raged in the 1990s. The states question whether the U.S. government can force states to take actions without paying for them or impose conditions on states if they accept certain federal funding.

States prepare to combat stimulus strings
Assert sovereignty with 10th Amendment
by David M. Dickson

"We are telling the federal government that we are a sovereign state and want to be treated as such. We are not a branch of the federal government," said Arizona state Rep. Judy Burges, who is leading an effort in her state to pass a resolution called "Sovereignty: the 10th Amendment." Ms. Burges was inspired to action by a pair of Bush administration initiatives: The No Child Left Behind education law of 2002 and the Real ID Act, a 2005 law that established national standards for state-issued driver's licenses and identification cards.

In other states, lawmakers say they are bracing to repeal federal mandates to spend their money that they expect will emanate from Washington once President Obama begins delivering some of the big-ticket programs promised during his presidential campaign.

Oklahoma state Sen. Randy Brogdon introduced a resolution that he said would enable his state to "reclaim its 10th Amendment right to reject any and all acts of Congress that go beyond its enumerated powers in violation of the 10th Amendment."

Other states pursuing sovereignty resolutions are Hawaii, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire and Washington. Similar measures are likely to be introduced in more than a dozen other states, analysts said.

"The states are sending a message," said Robert Alt, a legal scholar at the Heritage Foundation.

The nearly $800 billion stimulus bill also has raised worries.

Republican governors Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Bobby Jindal of
Louisiana and Rick Perry of Texas expressed reservations this week about accepting their states' shares of the stimulus package because they are worried that the federal government will impose conditions on how it can be spent.

As a self-styled staunch conservative, Mr. Sanford, the new head of the Republican Governors Association, aggressively opposed the stimulus plan. However, in a Thursday morning interview on CBS' "The Early Show," Mr. Sanford said his state would accept money from the stimulus bill. Opposing the plan "doesn't preclude taking the money," said Mr. Sanford. South Carolina's 9.5 percent unemployment rate is the nation's third-highest.

Mr. Perry sent Mr. Obama a letter Wednesday certifying that Texas also would accept stimulus money.

"I remain opposed to using these funds to expand existing government programs, burdening the state with ongoing expenditures long after the funding has dried up," Mr. Perry wrote, clearly expressing his opposition to unfunded mandates.

Mr. Obama has promised that his administration will use federal funds to support his administration's initiatives.

"[Mr. Obama does] not support imposing unfunded mandates on states and localities. They strongly support providing necessary funding for programs such as No Child Left Behind," his campaign literature said.

The states are resting their efforts on the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Mr. Brogdon said prospects for passage of his resolution are "grand," noting that a similar bill passed the Oklahoma House by a 97-3 vote last year and that Republicans captured a majority of the Oklahoma Senate in the 2008 elections. He predicted that the Legislature would easily override a veto from Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat.

Mr. Obama proposed a slew of expensive programs during his presidential campaign, ranging from health insurance to policies addressing alternative energy and climate change. "The states are worried that these programs would increase the overall regulatory burden without providing the funding," Mr. Alt said.

Some analysts dispute the financial impact of recent unfunded mandates on state budgets.

Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst at the Cato Institute who recently completed a two-year stint in Indiana's budget office, said he hasn't "heard states clamoring about unfunded mandates the way they were during the 1990s. What you hear more today are states begging for federal money."

The reality is that states are being "hypocritical," he said, noting that about a third of average total state spending comes from the federal government.

The biggest federal grants involve Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health care for the poor.

"States were adding Medicaid benefits when times were good. Now the federal government must bail the states out through the so-called stimulus bill because the states' revenues have taken a hit and they must operate under a balanced-budget mandate," Mr. DeHaven said.

In 2007, according to the Congressional Budget Office, states collectively spent $1 billion for unfunded federal mandates from programs enacted since the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, said Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation.

"To a large degree, states are scapegoating their budget problems on Washington," Mr. Riedl said. "It's tough to be sympathetic for states and local governments when they got $467 billion in federal grants last year," he said.

Mr. Riedl also rejected the notion that the No Child Left Behind Act constitutes an unfunded mandate. States are free to opt out of this and many other federal programs by not accepting federal money in exchange for federal regulations. States have effectively decided that the federal dollars are worth the strings attached to them, Mr. Riedl concluded.

Mr. Riedl acknowledged that Medicaid, which was created in 1965, does represent a major unfunded mandate. But he said that "a majority of state Medicaid spending is on populations and benefits that states have voluntarily added and could reduce at any time."

The other major unfunded federal mandate that predates the 1995 law is the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). However, federal funding for IDEA has grown 71 percent faster than inflation since 2001, Mr. Riedl said.

Many of the sovereignty resolutions under consideration in the states will not have the force of law. Even if they did, said Mr. Alt, "through the supremacy clause in the U.S. Constitution, so long as a federal statute is constitutional, it would trump state law."

Mr. Brogdon of Oklahoma did not take issue with that. "Federal law does not trump the Constitution," he said.

He suggested that if he becomes governor, the federal courts likely will get a case involving the 10th Amendment and congressional powers.

New GOP off to bad start

Hat Tip Palmetto Scoop

SANFORD CHOSEN TO LEAD
REPUBLICAN GOVERNOR’S ASSN.

Everyone keeps talking about this “new Republican Party” that must emerge from the ashes of last week’s embarrassing national electoral defeat.

Unlike in 2006, though, when we had the same kind of talk but no action, I really think the party will get it’s act together and usher in a new generation of strong, conservative leaders who will… oh, wait, nevermind.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford was elected the new chairman of the Republican Governors Association on Friday.

Sanford succeeds Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who will now serve as finance chairman. The association has been meeting this week in Miami — and some discussions have revolved around what went wrong for the party on Election Day.

“I am honored and excited to become chairman of the Republican Governors Association as we work together to win a majority of governors by 2010,” Sanford said in a statement released by the group. “Republican governors are natural leaders who will find solutions to our nation’s challenges and bring back the party.”

This is great news for Republicans who like picking petty fights with other Republicans, hypocritically wasting tax dollars on environmental nonsense and personal slush funds, flip-flopping on key issues, and putting television cameras ahead of taxpayers.

For the rest of us, it’s just another sign that we still haven’t learned our lesson. But on the bright side, “Quantum of Solace” opened today and it will probably rock so hard that we’ll forget all about the demise of the GOP.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry did the right thing...

The World Court and Mexico can't stop Texas !