Posted on 06/28/2010 11:20:59 AM PDT by a fool in paradise
Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said. ”I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would strike down laws restricting property rights.” That caught me off guard, and I had no recollection of making so atypical a statement, which shook me up even more. “Now, it would seem to me what you were talking about,” Senator Biden went on to say, “is you find it attractive the fact that they are activists and they would like to strike down existing laws that impact on restricting the use of property rights, because you know, that is what they write about.”
Since I didn’t remember making the statement in the first place, I didn’t know how to respond to it. All I could say in reply was that “it has been some time since I have read Professor Macedo … But I don’t believe that in my writings I have indicated that we should have an activist Supreme Court.” It was, I knew, a weak answer. Fortunately, though, the young lawyers who had helped prepare me for the hearing had loaded all of my speeches into a computer and at the first break in the proceedings they looked this one up. The senator, they found, had wrenched my words out of context. I looked at the text and saw that the passage he’d read out loud had been immediately followed by two other sentences: “But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy.” The point I’d been making was the opposite of the one that Senator Biden claimed I had made.
Taking the Acela Express, of course. If you wanted to take the Acela Express from Wilmington, DE, to Washington, DC, round-trip would cost $350-400. Of course, a daily commute would get a discount, but the fact is, the taxpayers paid for him being able to have a luxurious, fast commute.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/26/AR2008082603894.html
Interesting article about Hunter Biden. In it he’s clear that he doesn’t lobby his father. His company does, but he doesn’t. In some other articles I saw remarks that, we never talk to him directly, we only talk to his staff. Or something like that.
He did lobby Obama, of course.
He was on the payroll of the credit card company that was his dad’s biggest supporter but not as a “lobbyist”, but rather as “consultant”. They say quite boldly “he was never our lobbyist”. He was a consultant, for four years, which is different. This was during the time Biden was working on credit card reform. So I’m sure they’ve measured what the law allows and they are careful not to cross any lines.
In digging I ran across some stuff about the Biden family hedge fund. That stuff is pretty interesting, brother and son bought in for $21 million dollars, or something like that. Other articles say they were being paid $25k a month to find financing for the deal, which they were calling companies that were Biden campaign donors. And so it goes. I’m not a lawyer or a financial guy, so I just have to take it on faith that what they are doing is legal or they wouldn’t do it.
Although he seems like, and may be a real doofus; he CAN AFFORD the BEST financial and tax advice in the country; and may even get it FOR FREE. I’d say the $750K figure is a lie! His real estate holdings alone are worth more than that!”
You are probably correct, but remember, Joe Biden is a lifetime leftist, and they *hate* the very idea of personal responsibility. Many people on the left blow through huge personal fortunes that were handed to them. The idea that they should be held responsible for *anything* is repugnant to them.
Thank you stephen, I’d forgotten the name.
You are welcome.
” Biden is, has always been and will always be a sumbag.”
I spose that is a combination of sumbitch & scumbag. In any case, I like it ;-)
If he were a real hero with taxpayer $, he could put a cot in his office to sleep during the week like that freshman congressman from Utah does.
Now try NON-minimal advance purchase. It goes up. They sell last-minute tix cheaper. Also, perhaps he didn't go first class...I just know it was the Acela Express, which runs tomorrow morning for $131 to DC from Wilmington, business class ($197 first class), and $88-146 return ($154-212 first class). Note that the 5:05 pm return is $146, for example. Mid-day rates are less, and the 7:10 is also down to $88.
But from what I have read, then-Senator Biden rode first-class.
And remember, this doesn't count the subsidies he voted for it.
If he were a real hero with taxpayer $, he could put a cot in his office to sleep during the week like that freshman congressman from Utah does.
Actually, if he were a real hero with taxpayer $, he would have stayed home and slept, instead of spending our $. :-)
I must admit I owe Biden and the other senators on this committee a debt of gratitude. At the time, my wife, who was pretty darn liberal at the time, was staying home with our two daughters.
I was away at work all day, so missed the hearings that she watched live. In the evening, we’d watch the news reports together of what had happened at those hearings. She was astonished that what was reported often bore remarkably little relationship to what had happened.
Particularly when dozens of women Thomas had worked with over a couple of decades took the stand to describe how he had always been the perfect gentleman around them. Rebutting Anita Hall. In the news, AH was pandered to, all the other women were ignored.
Started my wife’s movement from left to right. And for that I’m grateful to Thomas, the committee and the media.
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