By Mike DeVine, Legal Editor for The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
________________________________________________________________________________

The same Democratic Party that is about to nominate a radical Marxist preaching “hope and change” as its presidential nominee, attained its hoped for change in Congress by running candidates advocating conservatism in 2006.

But given the post-Clinton McGovernite take over of the world’s oldest political party, conservative Democrats wield little power especially given the GOP’s paranoid drift to the left.

America remains a center-right country whose majority is nearly as under-represented in Congress as it is in a culture dominated by elitists in academia and the media.

But don’t lose hope my fellow beleaguered Reaganites. We even have some champions in Congress, as evidenced by Sens. McConnell (R-KY) and Sessions (R-AL) smack down of the Lieberman (ID-CN)- Warner (R-VA)-[Dole (R-NC)?] De-CAP-itate the American economy and TRADE away our liberty Bill this week, lest the American people get to watch Democrats vote down common sense majority positions on C-Span II.

Meanwhile, Gamecock’s congressman urges oil drilling off N.C. coast:

Drivers upset with high gas prices could find relief off the N.C. coast, U.S. Rep. Sue Myrick said Thursday.

Using a gas station as a backdrop, the Charlotte Republican renewed calls for oil and gas drilling off the Atlantic Coast. Drilling is now prohibited under a longstanding moratorium.

“I’m as frustrated as the next person when it comes to filling up my car,” she said, overlooking pumps selling regular for $3.99. “One of the things we need to do is use more of our own resources.”

Myrick has introduced the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act of 2008. It would give states authority to permit drilling within 100 miles of their coast, while allowing the federal government to lease sites beyond 100 miles. The moratorium is in effect until 2012.

A bill similar to Myrick’s passed the then-Republican controlled House largely along party lines in 2006. It did not make it through the Senate. She said she thinks this time will be different.

“People are paying $4 a gallon for gasoline,” she said. “They weren’t in 2006.”

Myrick aides pointed to a Gallup Poll released Wednesday that shows 57 percent of Americans favor drilling in coastal and wilderness areas currently off limits. Myrick said she’s driven in part by the fact that Cuba has leased drilling rights to China and Spain in waters 50 miles off Florida.

“That’s our oil!” Myrick said in a rising voice. “China already has our jobs. Are we going to give them our oil, too?”

The former mayor of the Queen City lays it out nicely, doesn’t she?

Too bad she isn’t in the Senate seat now held by the wife of a former senator from a state with no coastline who gets her “maverick” mug plastered on page A1 as a missionary for Al Gore’s Church of man-made global warming while a clear headed Myrick makes page B6.

Bob, we gave you a standing ovation for your curt e-mail smackdown of Scott turncoat Texan McClellan. Could you please re-tar the heels of this close relative of yours?:

Dole is climate bill’s unlikely ally

Global warming threatens U.S. security, senator says.

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to cast a historic vote today on the first comprehensive global warming bill to make its way out of a committee room.

The sweeping legislation is expected to die.

But among those supporting the measure will be Sen. Elizabeth Dole, the Salisbury Republican whose voting record is among the Senate’s most conservative.

“It’s very important that we move on this because the costs of inaction are just too great,” Dole said Thursday. “The data became more and more voluminous.”

Her eureka moment, she said, came more than a year ago, after poring over the science about climate change and concluding that the Earth definitely is getting warmer.

Two colleagues on the Armed Services Committee – Independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Republican John Warner of Virginia – persuaded her about the effect of climate change on national security.

This convert to the GOP after a 2000 conservative epiphany is sick and tired of voting for Republicans that have “eureka” moments surrounded by liberals in Washington, D.C.

[And you will search the whole article in vain for HOW global warming threatens our national security (not to mention the dearth of evidence that man can control the weather - vanity of vanities).]

The only Eureka moments conservatives need concern themselves with are the four years worth of same Ronald Reagan spent at the Illinois college that taught him the basics of economics that saved America in the 1980s.

Dole is opposed by her fellow Tar Heel republican Senator Richard Burr.

South of here in the more refined Carolina (see Spartanburg and Charleston), Republican conservative stalwart Jim DeMint is with Burr, but we suspect McCain’s Vice-President Lindsey Graham supported the now dead bill as did McCain (too busy campaigning to vote).

Graham was also a senator that spoke to racist La Raza group last year and called opponents of the amnesty bill, racists.

Thank God the Palmetto State’s governor was and is no more intimidated by Graham (nor of the prospect of McCain speaking to “The Race” in July) than Rush Limbaugh and We the People were last summer when we smacked that abominable bill last summer.

SC’s Sanford signs illegal immigration bill

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Gov. Mark Sanford signed legislation Wednesday that threatens to temporarily shut down businesses and fine them up to $1,000 per worker if they employ illegal immigrants.

Sanford, surrounded by about 20 legislators, said the measure reasserts the rule of law in South Carolina - cracking down on the “wink-and-nod” employment of illegal immigrants. He and legislators said they hope the ideas spread and force Congress to act.

“The message is loud and clear: Stop the silent invasion of this state,” said Senate President Pro Tem Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston.

Legislators boasted the measure is the most strict and effective anti-illegal-immigrant bill in the country. Lawmakers made the law increasingly tougher as debate progressed, with constituents becoming more frustrated by the federal government’s inaction on the issue.

“It’s certainly one of the toughest, if not the toughest,” said Larry Frankel, state legislative counsel in the American Civil Liberty Union’s Washington office.

Rep. Thad Viers, R-Myrtle Beach, predicted the law will lower the state’s unemployment rate, at 5.9 percent in April, because immigrants will “self-deport” and make more jobs available.

This comes on the heels of a historic conservative legislative session on abortion law, religious free speech, criminal law and free market health insurance reform in South Carolina.

Hope and change the conservative American majority can believe in lies in following the federalist lessons being espoused south of the Old Dominion and north of the Peach State.

Never mistake democratic primary voters for America. Obama won the Carolinas’ primaries. Some liberal always wins democratic contests down here. (see Bill Clinton re Jesse Jackson).

But come November, the actual election occurs. There has been a lot of wild talk that N.C. or even S.C. could be in play this November. I’m not going to dignify the suggestion re the home of the birthplace of Old Hickory, but as to Polk’s state:

Democrats’ percentage of the presidential vote in North Carolina from 1980-2004 has been: 47, 38, 42, 42, 44, 43, and 44, respectively.

I don’t see a 50, do you? I don’t even see a 48.

Obama’s only hope? He smokes.

McCain will smoke him, and if he would follow Myrick and Sanford’s lead, he’ll snuff him out by a landslide.

[UPDATE RE NO MAJOR DRILLING RELATED OIL SPILLS SINCE 1969]

Drill, Coast Haste

Uncle Sam bans states from drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf mainly to protect the environment. Some 85% of the U.S. coastline is off-limits to energy production — including huge reserves off Florida’s coast, which China is exploiting in Cuban waters.

To change that, a lawmaker is offering a novel idea. Rep. Sue Myrick of the House Energy and Commerce panel wants to let coastal states decide whether drilling is environmentally risky. She has introduced a bill that would give coastal states that want offshore drilling the power to opt out of the Interior Department’s offshore restrictions.

And as a powerful incentive, Myrick, R-N.C., proposes cutting them (and adjacent states) in on the federal revenues from leases. Washington now collects as much as $8 billion a year in existing Gulf royalties, a figure that would balloon as coastal regions opened for exploration.

Her Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act would give states the ability to control energy production up to 100 miles off their shores and would extend their territorial waters.

But the bill faces major hurdles. Even if Myrick can get the House panel’s Democrat chair, Rep. John Dingell, to take it up, it would face stiff opposition in the Senate. Florida Sens. Mel Martinez and Bill Nelson have blocked previous attempts to lift the ban on drilling — although Martinez, a Republican, lately has shown signs of softening.

Foes have successfully cloaked their arguments against offshore drilling in eco-apocalypse, claim it will lead to oil spills. Fearing tar-ball-pocked beaches, the tourism industry has joined the greens in lobbying against such bills.

Their fears are unfounded. And politicians concerned about America’s energy security ought to do a better job educating the public with the facts. For example:

• Less than one one-thousandth of a percent (0.001%) of the 7 billion-plus barrels of oil that Washington has allowed to be produced offshore over the past 25 years has been spilled, according to the Interior Department.

• A whopping 63% of petro pollution in North American seas comes not from offshore rigs, but from natural seepage from the sea floor. Source: National Academy of Sciences.

• There hasn’t been a major oil spill from an offshore well since 1969 even though rigs since then have been lashed by Katrina and other major hurricanes.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Mike DeVine’s Charlotte Observer columns
The Minority Report and The HinzSight Report
Race 4 2008
“One man with courage makes a majority.” - Andrew Jackson