Now seems like a good time for a break. There won’t be much in the way of blogging on the site for a couple of months or so, through the holidays at least (barring any major world events).

The home page will continue to update daily, check it out for a roundup of commentary from a variety of conservative writers.

Thank you to all our readers, and we’ll see you in ’07.

The state legislature of Massachusetts has decided not only to undermine the institution of marriage, but also to reject their own state constitution and the principle of democracy.

Via The Corner at NRO, current Mass. governor Mitt Romney reacts to the opponents of democracy and marriage in the state legislature:

One hundred and seventy thousand citizens followed our Constitution’s process to petition government. They followed the prescribed process to place an item of importance before the voters. They asked for democracy.

But today, by effectively avoiding the constitutionally required vote on same sex marriage, 109 legislators disgraced their oath of office. Each of them swore to follow the Constitution. The Constitution plainly states that when a qualified petition is placed before them, they ‘shall’ vote. By not voting, we have witnessed the triumph of arrogance over democracy. Whether or not you favor same sex marriage, you should be very concerned that the rule of law and the sovereignty of the people have been trampled. I salute the 87 who voted for democracy, who voted to follow their oath of office.

The “Democratic” party should change it’s name, if they were at all honest. They’re for democracy, the rule of law, and the Constitution only when it suits their agenda. This is of course true at the federal level as well.

Need a good laugh after a tough election day? For a humorous take on the election results, here is cartoonist (and cartoonish) Ted Rall:

OUR LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE HAS JUST BEGUN
Like Cornered Rats, GOP Losers More Dangerous Than Ever

…Yet even more damaging and nearly impossible to unravel will be the threats to Americans posed by the neofascist national security apparatus the Bushists will leave behind–unless they use it to remain in power.

Shortly after 9/11 Bush began the first of a long series of power grabs that have transformed him from the leader of a country beholden to its people to an authoritarian despot. He signed a secret executive order granting himself the right to declare anyone in the world, including a U.S. citizen, an “enemy combatant”–without proof–and order him assassinated. Violating federal law and privacy rights, Bush authorized the NSA to listen to our phone calls and read our e-mail. FBI, CIA and HomeSec goons “disappeared” thousands of people into a horrible new matrix of concentration camps and secret prisons.

….

As ugly secrets surface, Bushists will turn desperate. Democracy has failed their grand schemes; token resignations like Rumsfeld’s come too little, too late. Only tyranny can save their skins. Will the beleaguered neocons led by Cheney and Bush, cornered like rats, unleash their brand-new police state on their political opponents? Or will they tough it out and suck up the fines and prison sentences to come? The next year or two could go either way.

The nightmare is not over.

Democrats – as gracious in victory as in defeat.

Somebody’s tinfoil helmet is on way too tight. Lighten up Francis.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has resigned, just days after President Bush said the SecDef would be staying until the end of Bush’s term. President Bush said today at his press conference that he didn’t want to inject the matter into the election. Let’s just say we don’t think this was good political strategy. Signaling to voters before the election that change was on the way seems like it would have taken some of the edge off their anger.

Needless to say, we do not share the Angry Left’s view that Rumsfeld is unmitigated evil. We believe he has served his country well in a very difficult time, with honor and integrity. But we do support the decision to have him resign, to put “a fresh set of eyes” on the war, as the President said in today’s press conference. Change is needed in Iraq; the American people need to see a change in strategy leading to some progress in the war. We must work toward victory in Iraq, failure is not an option. Now that the Democrats have regained power in Congress, they need to stop carping and trying to undermine the war effort for political gain, and aid in the pursuit of that victory.

So the Democrats have won the House (and likely the Senate), and Daniel Ortega is back in power in Nicaragua. It’s like the 1980s all over again. If only we could have Ronald Reagan back too.

The Democrats and their allies in the DeMSM will try to portray the election results as a rejection of all things conservative, even though they owe much of their victory to running a bunch of moderate-conservative candidates and hiding their liberal leadership. But this is a misreading of the election results.

The major issues in the election were of course the war in Iraq, corruption from several Republican (and several Democrats too, but they didn’t get tagged with it by the electorate, fairly or unfairly. “Well they did it too!” is not a winning campaign slogan.) House members, and out of control spending. As much as those on the left would like to believe otherwise, graft and overspending are not core conservative principals. And in Iraq, while voters expressed a desire for change, they did not necessarily embrace some Democrat’s calls for America to accept defeat and go home. Joe Lieberman, who is a hawk on the war, won reelection by a solid margin, defeating darling of the Adolescent Angry Anti-victory Left Ned Lamont.

So you could say the Republican defeat yesterday was due to a rejection of conservative principles by Republican politicians, not by the voters. The lesson for Republican politicians is not to move left, but to move back to the right. The House was won in 1994 by conservatives, not mushy moderates.

Voters embraced conservative ideals in many places yesterday – An initiative making English the official language won handily in Arizona. Seven out of eight initiatives protecting the definition of marriage won (marriage was already defined traditionally in Arizona, where the initiative lost to put the definition in the state constitution and also to ban civil unions). In Democrat-leaning Michigan, the initiative to ban state discrimination based on race won by a good margin.

Americans reject most of the left’s agenda – discrimination based on race, a weak foreign policy, redefinition of marriage, abortion on demand at any time and any age, socialized medicine, etc. – when it’s presented to them openly. The Democrats have tried to hide their liberal policy preferences from voters (again, aided by their DeMSM allies) while they sought to regain power. They count on the fact people aren’t paying much attention. We’ll now see if they continue the act now that they have a chance to implement some of their ideas.

This editorial from the NY Times-[Democrat] reads just like a blog post at some Angry Left hate site like The Daily Kos or Think Progress.

The Great Divider

As President Bush throws himself into the final days of a particularly nasty campaign season, he’s settled into a familiar pattern of ugly behavior. Since he can’t defend the real world created by his policies and his decisions, Mr. Bush is inventing a fantasy world in which to campaign on phony issues against fake enemies.

….

But he hit a particularly creepy low when he decided to distort a lame joke lamely delivered by Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. Mr. Kerry warned college students that the punishment for not learning your lessons was to “get stuck in Iraq.” In context, it was obviously an attempt to disparage Mr. Bush’s intelligence. That’s impolitic and impolite, but it’s not as bad as Mr. Bush’s response. Knowing full well what Mr. Kerry meant, the president and his team cried out that the senator was disparaging the troops. It was a depressing replay of the way the Bush campaign Swift-boated Americans in 2004 into believing that Mr. Kerry, who went to war, was a coward and Mr. Bush, who stayed home, was a hero.

They’re even using standard nutroots jargon now – i.e. “Swift-boated”. We don’t even find this maddening, just funny. They aren’t even trying to hide the fact any more that they’re part of the Democratic party machine.

Related: Patterico shows more evidence that the Times’ bias isn’t just on the editorial page. Now they seem to be making up quotes out of thin air to try to make Kerry look better. Pathetic, but no surprise from that once-respected newspaper.

Senator Kerry has finally “apologized” for his comments Monday, which were widely interpreted as insulting U.S. troops serving in Iraq:

As a combat veteran [of course, always have to start with that], I want to make it clear to anyone in uniform and to their loved ones: my poorly stated joke at a rally was not about, and never intended to refer to any troop.

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

Blah, blah, blah … [routine anti-Bush boilerplate here]

Talk about a non-apology apology. This is an “I’m sorry I may be causing my fellow Democrats political damage” apology, not an “I’m sorry I made a really stupid and clumsy comment that may have insulted thousands of U.S. troops who have served in Iraq” apology.

And let’s just consider for a moment the implications of Kerry’s defense, that he was insulting the Commander in Chief, not the troops. If we accept his explanation at face value, Kerry is admitting that a U.S. Senator, a leading Democrat, the Democrats’ nominee in 2004 for the presidency of the United States, thinks it’s perfectly acceptable behavior to publicly engage in juvenile schoolyard name-calling against the President of the United States.

Others:
The Indepundit
Hugh Hewitt has a roundup of reactions