What Now?  There Are Things Trump Can Do Both Now And After The Inauguration.  [Scroll down]  Getting elected should not be a feather bed.  People like Chuck Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and other federal fungi should not exist.  But unlike the presidency, these positions do not have term limits.  My home state of Florida is flourishing under term limits.  We seem to get tax cuts and bigger surpluses every year, with hundreds of thousands of people U-Hauling their cats and squirrels south every year.  The same medicine should be good for Congress.  Why should AOC be a multimillionaire after a handful of terms in Congress?  She makes less than $200k per year and was broke when she arrived.  Rinse and repeat for dozens of others.  The answer is simple: term limits.  But Congress won't exercise its Article V option to propose a term limits Amendment because that would cut off its gravy train.

Making a House seat an inheritance.  [Scroll down]  It is impossible to imagine the unthinkable because once you've imagined it, it becomes thinkable.  But the phrase reflects the sloppy thinking behind this effort.  The [Washington] Post said, "To address such a scenario, these four House members — two Republicans and two Democrats — are pushing an unlikely solution: a constitutional amendment that would allow members to be replaced quickly in the event of a mass-casualty event.  "In addition to ensuring uninterrupted representation for constituents, the amendment would discourage attempts to use violence to sway the balance of power in the House."  So the problem according to the newspaper is that a bunch of congressmen die and the House speakership changes.  Congress says the only solution is to let incumbent congressmen pick their successor.  Obviously, we cannot wait and hold funerals and let voters choose the replacement.  No, no, no.  We must allow the officeholder to pass the public office to his heir.

Too Many Politicians Have Ruled The Roost For Decades.  Term Limits Can Send Them Packing.  The Founding Fathers envisioned a government by the people, for the people — a dynamic and responsive system driven by citizen legislators who would serve their country and then return to their private lives.  Today, however, our political landscape is dominated by career politicians who, after decades in office, often become more attuned to the interests of lobbyists and special interest groups than to the needs and desires of their constituents.  As conservatives committed to preserving the integrity of our republic, it is imperative that we champion the implementation of congressional term limits that most Americans also support.

The Editor says...
Brilliant idea, but to implement term limits, the permanent Congressmen would have to vote to oust themselves, which will never happen.  Neither of the other two branches of the government checks or balances the legislative branch in such matters.

Massive Government Spending Equals Broken Elections.  [Scroll down]  From state legislators to congressmen to senators, money spent by outside interests now plays the dominant role in who represents us.  And if our leaders are beholden to outside donors to get elected, they no longer fear getting voted out of office.  The result is that our government spending is out of control, and much of it is fraudulent, corrupt, wasteful, or unnecessary.  And our elected representatives who vote to choose this wasteful spending continue to be elected.  Open Secrets reports re-election rates of 94.5% for House members and 100% for Senators in 2022!  How can the interests of the taxpayers and voters be honored when the campaigns are financed by those interested in the spending?

Dead Congressman Donald Payne wins his New Jersey primary election:  Democrat takes victory weeks after fatal heart attack.  Despite his death following a heart attack in April, late Rep. Donald Payne Jr. (D-N.J.) still won his primary election on Tuesday in New Jersey's 10th congressional district.  Payne was running for reelection in 2024 unopposed for his seat in the deep blue suburb of New York City.  On April 6, Payne suffered a heart attack that slipped him into a coma from which he never woke up.  More than 18 days after the cardiac event and while being treated at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center, Payne was declared dead on April 24 at the age of 65.

The Editor says...
Don't replace him.  Don't hold a special election to fill this vacancy.  Don't encourage the Governor to appoint somebody.  Let the people of his district go without representation for the next two years, if they are stupid enough to vote for a dead man.

No, the government is not to be trusted.  [Scroll down]  As for limited terms, time and again I know how popular it is, but unless the bureaucracy can be fired or their own service limited, they present the highest of all risks.

The Real Reason DC Politicians Never Leave Office.  Why is it that there are so many ancient politicians in Congress — Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Chuck Schumer?  Do they just love power, or is there another reason they take forever to retire?  Glenn [Beck] speaks with James Poulos, the host of the newest Blaze Originals documentary, "Bought and Paid For:  How Politicians Get Filthy Rich."  In the documentary, James reveals what he believes is keeping the geezers in the Swamp:  loads of money.  Somehow, these lawmakers have become expert stock traders, and although they claim there's no insider trading going on, the numbers look just a little suspicious.  James reveals the most shocking thing the documentary exposed and also why he believes almost no one in Congress is interested in stopping these shady practices.  [Video clip]

Report: Mitch McConnell Urges Republicans to Oppose Term Limits.  Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) has reportedly told his colleagues to oppose the idea of term limits, which aligns with his past public statements.  A report from Axios said two sources indicated McConnell told Senate Republicans that "imposing term limits on the Senate leader is a bad idea during a Wednesday [3/20/2024] meeting about the direction of the conference":  ["]McConnell was one of several senators who spoke during an hour-and-a-half conference meeting, which was called by conservative Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.).  McConnell spoke against imposing term limits for the top GOP position, calling it a bad idea, according to two sources in the room.["]

The Editor says...
It's easy to see that term limits are a great idea, because the loudest voices in opposition are those who have made a lucrative careers out of their elected positions.  Especially the politicians whose net worth is a hundred times their annual government salary.

Any ten-term congressman should have retired about ten years ago.
Republican US Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado announces he won't seek reelection.  Republican U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn of Colorado announced Friday that he won't seek a 10th term in Congress in the latest shakeup of Colorado's U.S. House races for the 2024 election.  Lamborn, who represents the Colorado Springs area, about an hour south of Denver, talked about his plans to retire at the end of 2024 on a radio show Friday morning, saying he wants to spend more time with family.

Map reveals how old every state's elected officials are compared to their constituents amid calls for term limits.  Americans are gearing up for another election next year — and they'll likely be choosing between two of the oldest presidents ever again.  Age has become a central issue this election cycle following a spate of high-profile 'senior moments' including two Mitch McConnell freeze episodes.  Aside from Joe Biden, 80, and Donald Trump, 77, US politicians on Capitol Hill are older than ever, and there are growing calls for term limits in the House and Senate.

US politicians are older than ever.  Stop voting for them.  Most Americans look forward to retirement, especially those who've enjoyed a successful career and built up a solid nest egg.  Take U.S. senators, for example.  After years in the public eye and media crosshairs, you'd think they'd enjoy a well earned break.  Finally, they can kick up their Gucci loafers at one of their many vacation homes, lazily shuffle millions between tax shelters and enjoy beach time with their wealthy children — at least those who still talk to them.  But that's not the choice most politicos make.  Instead, they keep a bony grip on their Senate desks, refusing to budge unless ejected by voters or the Grim Reaper.

Diapers and Decades:  The Senate's Unspoken Issue.  There's a real concern about the age of those in the U.S. Senate.  Feinstein has no idea where she's at. [...] McConnell froze up recently, and we can see that he's not equipped to be in the Senate.  Let me be really clear:  Mitch McConnell is the worst senator in America.  I despise his performance as a senator. [...] I frequently speak out about McConnell.  I think he's the problem.  He's representative of the issues we have in the Senate.  He's a sell-out, he's a crook, he's a RINO.  He's everything I dislike.  When I spoke out about him freezing up on Twitter, people started accusing me of not being sensitive to his medical issues.  Here's the point:  if he's not healthy enough to do the job, he needs to step down.  McConnell is an old man incapable of doing his job, yet he continues to do it.

Is it time to slap term limits on America's aging elite?  Last week, the Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley, in a shrewd attack on US President Joe Biden, 80, and on his main opponent, 77-year-old Donald Trump, called for term limits and mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75, saying that "they need to let a younger generation take over." [...] Haley's remarks came just days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader of all time, froze for the second time in as many months during a press conference.  Much like with Joe Biden, America's oldest-ever president who always has handlers nearby to navigate him when he wanders off the beaten path, an assistant quickly came to McConnell's rescue.

Goodbye McConnell, Hello Term Limits.  U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was first elected to his position in 1984.  Thereafter, the voters of Kentucky elected him another six times, with his last victory occurring in 2020. [...] Unfortunately, as the nation has seen too often, McConnell is like many other members of Congress who are reluctant to retire, even at advanced ages.  For example, Strom Thurmond of South Carolina served in the U.S. Senate for 48 years, finally retiring at the age of hundred.  Robert Byrd of West Virginia served in the U.S. Senate for even longer, 51 years, and died in office at the age of ninety-two.  Along with McConnell, U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) should also retire.  She is 90 years old and is well past her prime.  She must be told how to vote by her aides, who keep her public appearances to a bare minimum.  Like McConnell, Feinstein has been in the U.S. Senate for decades, first getting elected in 1992.  The nation deserves better than to have a U.S. Senate in which the average age is 64, the third oldest in history, and 54 of the current members are 65 years of age or older.

Yes, Washington Is a Gerontocracy.  And It's Our Fault.  [Scroll down]  Now, there are clear cases where age should be disqualifying.  California's Sen. Dianne Feinstein, 90, has reportedly relinquished power of attorney to her daughter.  If a person can't be trusted to legally handle their own life decisions, how can they be entrusted with the power to make decisions over your life?  That seems like a reasonable standard to push someone out of office.  Then again, even a person in a coma would be better for the country than Rep. Adam Schiff or Rep. Katie Porter, so you see the problem.  Obviously, mental acuity diminishes with age, but people don't die in sequential order, and they don't mature in identical ways.  There are plenty of 80-year-olds who are sharp and plenty of 60-year-olds who already struggle.  Age minimums for office, as James Madison (probably) argued in Federalist No. 62, make sense because a person gains a "greater extent of information and stability of character" as they age.  Most 25-year-olds shouldn't even be voting.  But a maximum cutoff age is completely arbitrary.  It would make more sense to administer a cognitive test (maybe throw in a civics test) than an age limit.

Jumping To Conclusions About Mitch McConnell.  [Scroll down]  Mitch's health problems point to a truly big problem.  We have an entitled class that thinks that particular seats in our federal government belong to them personally.  No, they don't have the prohibited "Count," "Baron," or "Prince" title of nobility, but they might as well because they rig things to prevent meaningful opposition during election season.  They will never agree to medical disqualification rules.

Leo Terrell Calls on Mitch Mcconnell to Resign After Sad Second 'Freezing' Incident.  Ardent Donald Trump supporter and popular news commentator Leo Terrell has not minced words after U.S. Senator and minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has had a second apparent "freezing" incident while publicly speaking.  "Resign Mitch.  Put Country First!" Terrell said with a repost of a Media Right News X.

Let's end the gerontocracy.  Mitch McConnell has lost it again.  One need not reference a Feinstein, Pelosi, or a Brandon — or any of the other dozens of septa- and octogenarians currently entrusted with writing legislation. [...] There is a very serious problem that goes beyond mere medically obvious cognitive failure.  Although this is a real issue — many of our 'leaders' would not be allowed a driver's license in many states due to their frailties — it is one of perspective more than anything else.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell Has Another Episode.  This one is worse, significantly worse.  Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell freezes again while taking questions from reporters on Wednesday at an event in Kentucky.  This very disturbing cognitive disconnect is raising additional concerns about the 81-year-old's health.  The episode happens after a reporter asked him about running for re-election in 2026.  [Video clip]

Throw All the Bums Out.  I don't think the federal government will exist in its current form much longer.  The reason is simple:  if Marxist globalists get their way, then sovereign U.S. powers will continue to be unlawfully delegated to the U.N., the WHO, and other international monstrosities until some Obama-type tyrant is ruling over us all from Turtle Bay or a stately castle outside Brussels.  If freedom-minded people succeed in reining in the federal government and reimposing the Constitution's limited delegation of powers, then the monstrosity that is already with us will radically diminish or disappear.  Either the current beast lording it over us will transform into something even more menacing, or it will be sapped of its blood-thirst for unconstitutional overreach and brought to heel. [...] If we were still abiding by the Constitution, then 99% of today's federal government would be chucked to the bottom of the Potomac.

Feinstein Watch.  It has been obvious for quite a while that Dianne Feinstein is not capable of discharging her duties as a senator.  Earlier today Feinstein became confused in a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing and began reading a statement instead of casting a vote.  An aide tried to help her, and Patty Murray audibly said, "Just say 'aye.'"  I haven't paid much attention to the Feinstein saga because it is not surprising when an elderly senator hangs on to his or her seat.  Robert Byrd had to be carried into the Senate chamber to vote.  Arlen Spector, an 80-year-old cancer survivor, switched parties to run as a Democrat (unsuccessfully) rather than retire from the Senate.  So Feinstein's tenacity is nothing new.  But it turns out there is more to it.

CNN Anguishes Over 81-Year-Old McConnell's Health, Ignores Same Issues With 80-Year-Old Biden.  In yet another example of why embattled CNN continues to swirl down the ratings toilet, CNN News Central on Thursday featured a laughable segment about 81-year-old Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's age and health issues following an earlier moment when he stopped speaking during a press event.  Host John Berman and congressional correspondent Manu Raju talked about the incident at length, pointing to McConnell's past falls and suggesting complications might make him incapable of carrying out his senatorial responsibilities.  Just one problem.  80-year-old Joe Biden has also fallen multiple times, tripped while walking up staircases, mumbled incoherently on numerous occasions, and abruptly started wandering around on the stage in the middle of making public comments — and CNN, self-anointed as "The Most Trust Name in News," has ignored every minute of it.

It's Time For Americans To Stop Tolerating Mentally Deficient Politicians.  Our nation is run by a faction of physically and mentally frail figureheads.  The politicians responsible for representing Americans and the U.S. are so old and fragile that they often struggle to form coherent sentences and can't keep both feet on the ground.  Inadequacy isn't a phenomenon that only affects McConnell and Biden, whose increasing irritability and building bewilderment has become more apparent in recent years.  It's a pandemic that has completely cursed the public-facing echelon of America's political class.  It's time for that to change.

Feinstein gets confused in Senate Appropriations hearing and has to be prodded to vote.  During Thursday's hearing, Feinstein was meant to cast her vote on the Defense Appropriations bill, requiring her to say "Aye" or "Nay," when her name was called.  When she didn't answer, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state tried to prompt her.  "Say aye," she said, repeating herself three times to Feinstein.  Feinstein then started to read from prepared remarks, and was interrupted by an aide whispering in her ear.  "Yeah," Murray said once again.  "Just say 'aye.'"  "OK, just," Feinstein replied.  "Aye," Murray repeated once more.  Then Feinstein sat back in her chair.  "Aye," she said, casting her vote.

Whispering Aide Tells Sen. Dianne Feinstein to 'Just Say Aye'.  I have previously documented the obvious state of unfitness of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is 90 years old and clearly suffering from cognitive decline.  Now we have this nearly unbelievable spectacle. [...] This video of the event is unreal — almost beyond written description in its sinister creepiness.  [Tweet with video clip]  It's worth noting that, whoever this handler is whispering like a serpent into Feinstein's ear, no one voted for him and he has no legitimate authority to be telling a sitting senator how to vote or what to say in front of a microphone.  This kind of disgusting, in-your-face flaunting of the fact that Congress is, at this point, largely vestigial is really getting out of hand.  It's exceedingly obvious to anyone who's honestly assessing the state of the union that none of these elected members of Congress make any decisions of consequence.

Alarming Dianne Feinstein Situation Roars to Life During Defense Appropriations Bill Vote.  [I]n an alarming development that perhaps eclipses the McConnell incident, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who returned to the Senate back in May after reportedly suffering a particularly troublesome bout of shingles, had to be prompted to "say aye" multiple times by Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and someone who is presumably an aide to Feinstein after she attempted to give a speech during a roll call vote on a defense appropriations bill Thursday.  [Tweet with video clip]  As my colleagues and I have also extensively documented, Feinstein's rumored cognitive issues, which California Democrats first raised questions about over a year or so ago, have also been on display at various points since her return to Washington, D.C., including when she seemingly did not remember that she had been absent from the Senate for two months at all.

Is It Time for Age or Term Limits in the Swamp?  Some of us, as we get older, look forward to retirement.  Not having to go to a job, maybe pursuing a hobby that we have never had time for, and spending time with family.  Then there are those that decide to keep going past the time most folks hang it up.  The best place to find those people is in Washington, D.C.  On Wednesday, as he spoke to reporters, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) appeared to freeze in mid-sentence and stared blankly at those gathered.  Immediate concern was obvious not just among McConnell's fellow senators but everyone at the press conference.  Sen. Joni Ernst was heard asking, "Are you good, Mitch?" [...] We all wish Sen. McConnell the best, but the state of our aging leadership in Washington is a hot topic.  One look at President Joe Biden, and it is easy to see why. [...] A quick list of the Washington gerontocracy should also give one pause.  In addition to 80-year-old Joe Biden and McConnell at 81, there is Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) at 72, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-NY) at 83, Rep. Jim Clyburn at 83, and topping off the Democrats is California Senator Dianne Feinstein at age 90.

Hours After McConnell's Stunning Freeze-Up — Elon Musk Suggests a Nation-Changing Solution.  Guess what?  Democrats aren't the only ones with aging, unfit leaders in office.  We all know about Joe Biden.  Sen. Feinstein, and John Fetterman.  These, among others, have shown that their physical fitness is far from adequate to stay in office.  But this week, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell let everyone know that, yes, Republicans are also ignoring the signs on the wall. [...] McConnell is 81.  Many other leaders in Congress are in their 70s or 80s.  Some are even older.  This prompted Elon Musk to suggest a "constitutional amendment."  It appears Musk is suggesting an amendment that would either set term limits or age limits for those serving in Congress.  For many years, Americans have discussed placing term limits on those in the House and Senate.

Does the GOP have a 'Feinstein problem,' too?  Are the Democrats the only ones with a "Dianne Feinstein" problem, that of entrenched leaders who are visibly shambling apart, yet impossible to remove from power?  Sure looks like it, with the sudden seize or freeze up of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell yesterday:  [Tweet with video clip]  We've seen this sort of incapacity in Feinstein, a 90-year old Democrat whose infirmities should require her to retire from office, and in Democrat Sen. John Fetterman, who cannot plausibly serve in his post-stroke condition, as well in Joe Biden himself, who occupies the White House with many signs of senility.  But now we see it in the GOP, one of whose top leaders, McConnell, cannot with any vigor deliver a speech.

Having made her millions, a congresswoman will retire.  Democrat Grace Napolitano of California announced this weekend that she will retire when this term ends in January 2025.  She will be 88.  That you can retire from Congress reflects an electorate that pays scant attention to those who represent them in Washington, as shown by the 98% re-election rate in the House.  Grace went from being poor when she entered Congress after the 1998 election to a net worth of over $5 million.  This coincided with the national debt rising from under $6 trillion when she arrived to more than $32 trillion today.  Congress has overspent its annual allocation of taxes by more than $1 trillion a year during her tenure.  She got rich.  The nation went broke.  As Jerry Reed might sing, she got the gold mine; we got the shaft.  While many are the members of Congress whose wealth explodes while they oversee federal spending and regulate the companies they invest in, Grace was exceptionally good at increasing her net worth.  She did so well, she could be a Biden.

End American Gerontocracy.  The 89-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), whose political career first began in 1970 (one year before Biden's), recently missed over two months of senatorial work while recovering from a nasty bout of shingles and encephalitis.  When she finally made her way back to the Capitol, Feinstein, in the words of a May 18 New York Times article, "appeared shockingly diminished."  Since returning, the now-wheelchair-bound Feinstein has required additional staff assistance to merely cast her votes and has apparently forgotten she was ever out of commission to begin with: "No, I haven't been gone," she told Slate on May 16.  Come again?

Political Imprisonment Of Dianne Feinstein.  Dianne Feinstein returned to the Senate in a wheelchair following a three month battle with Shingles.  At the risk of being ableist or ageist, the woman looks [...] awful even for 89.  There are stories of complications from her illness that raise questions of her ability to serve.  There are also stories of her alleged political imprisonment as Governor Gavin Newsome and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi run out the clock for that Senate seat.  Just in case, you haven't been keeping up with the DiFi story, Nina has the details for you here.  Shingles is no laughing matter at any age, and a super-elderly person would not fare well.  When Feinstein returned to the Senate, looked out of it.  [Tweet]

Ailing Senator Dianne Feinstein's office admits 89 year-old DID suffer brain infection during two month absence from Congress she's since forgotten about.  Ailing Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein's office has admitted the 89-year-old did suffer a brain infection, despite her own insistence that she'd just been battling the flu.  The New York Times reported on Thursday that Dianne Feinstein, 89, has been diagnosed with vision and balance impairments as well as facial paralysis known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome in addition to encephalitis, a brain infection.  'It was a really bad flu.  I'm doing better thank you,' Feinstein said initially about her condition.

Senator Dianne Feinstein suffered brain inflammation.  The oldest member of the US Senate contracted encephalitis, a brain inflammation, her office has said, after a bout of shingles that left her unable to sit on key committee.  Dianne Feinstein, 89, also developed Ramsay Hunt syndrome, which can cause facial paralysis, her office said.  The encephalitis resolved itself, but she continues to deal with Ramsay Hunt syndrome, the statement said.  She returned to Washington on 10 May after nearly three months of absence.

Confused Feinstein says 'I haven't been gone.  I've been working' despite three-month absence.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Tuesday told reporters that she's been at the Capitol working and voting, apparently unaware that she's spent months away this year due to health problems.  Feinstein, 89, returned to the Senate just last week after spending nearly three months away from Washington, DC, recovering from a bout of shingles.  When asked by a reporter Tuesday about the reception she's received from colleagues upon her return, Feinstein lashed out at the journalist and provided answers indicating that she was seemingly unaware that she had been out.  "No, I haven't been gone," Feinstein said.  "You should follow the — I haven't been gone.  I've been working."  When asked if she meant that she'd been working from home, the senior senator from California responded, "No, I've been here.  I've been voting.  Please.  You either know or don't know."

Dianne Feinstein 'Wheeled Away' After Apparently Forgetting Leave Of Absence.  After a recent spate of health issues forced Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein to take an extended leave of absence, the aging lawmaker inadvertently raised new concerns by apparently forgetting she had taken one.  Plagued by recent health issues and calls from her peers to resign, Feinstein's return to the Senate has been under scrutiny even as the 89-year-old legislator took on a "lighter schedule" by order of her physician.  Though participating in two votes in the Senate this week and walking out of the chamber "on her own two feet" an impromptu interview with reporters raised more concerns, Slate reported.  [Tweet]  When asked how her colleagues felt about her return to the Capitol, Feinstein denied she had ever left in the first place.  "No, I haven't been gone," she reportedly told the press, adding, "You should follow the — I haven't been gone.  I've been working."  When pressed if she meant that she had been working from home, the Senator allegedly doubled down, maintaining that she hadn't left.  "No, I've been here.  I've been voting," she said, according to Slate.  "Please.  You either know or don't know."  In April, Democratic California Rep. Ro Khanna called on Feinstein to resign while the Senator was on an extended leave of absence due to a shingles diagnosis.  "While she has had a lifetime of public service, it is obvious she can no longer fulfill her duties.  Not speaking out undermines our credibility as elected representatives of the people," Khanna stated at the time.

Feinstein's Latest Chat With Reporters Suggests She's Doing Worse Than We Thought.  Longtime U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) recently returned to Capitol Hill after more than two months of time hospitalized and then recovering at home following an apparently serious bout of shingles that took her away from Senate business.  Setting aside other issues with Feinstein, there's one big problem:  Feinstein doesn't seem to know she was away from Washington or missed any votes in committee or on the Senate floor.  According to Slate writer Jim Newell and Los Angeles Times staff writer Benjamin Oreskes, the two had quite the elevator ride with Feinstein on Tuesday afternoon.

The Democratic Party Has A Zombie Problem.  Let's begin with the footage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California being wheeled into the Capitol on Wednesday, photos and videos that were both pitiful and horrifying.  Even the Democrat-enabling media was taken aback and started to turn on the Crone from California, telling her that it's time to go.  That Democrats have put the fate of the nation's looming debt default on the shoulders of this one incoherent lawmaker is mind-boggling.  Feinstein had been out of service for two and a half months due to a nagging case of shingles.  After seeing her so damaged and frail, no reasonable person would advise she is ready to return to the grueling schedule of lawmaking and debt-ceiling busting.  Feinstein is the poster child for elder abuse by Senate Democrats, who also need her for a few crucial votes on some [truly] awful judicial nominees. [...] Life has come fast at Feinstein since that September day in 2018, when she pinned Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a quarter century her junior, to a wall in the Capitol and bullied her over the Justice Brett Kavanaugh nomination.

Dianne Feinstein Returns to Senate in Wheelchair, 'Experiencing Vision/Balance Impairments'.  Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein finally returned to the senate after a 3-month absence due to shingles.  "Even though I've made significant progress and was able to return to Washington, I'm still experiencing some side effects from the shingles virus," Feinstein said.  "My doctors have advised me to work a lighter schedule as I return to the Senate.  I'm hopeful those issues will subside as I continue to recover."

The Editor says...
I had shingles once, and I was over it in a few days.  I'm no doctor, but apparently there's a lot more going on here than shingles.  Most of the people in a typical nursing home look healthier than Senator Feinstein.  One has to wonder what her motivation is for continuing to "work" twenty years beyond her reasonable retirement age.  Is it power, greed, or political pressure?

Dianne Feinstein Releases Statement in Attempt to Downplay Her 2-Month Senate Absence.  California's senior Democrat senator, Dianne Feinstein, has been under pressure to resign her seat amid ongoing health problems exacerbated by her advanced age, but she is apparently adamant that she intends to hold on until the end.  Feinstein downplayed her two-month absence Thursday [5/4/2023] despite heavy criticism from other members of her party. [...] Feinstein was hospitalized with a case of shingles, a skin condition that is serious for elderly people.  The senator, who turns 90 in June, has faced questions over the last few years about her cognitive health and memory, though she has defended her effectiveness in representing a state that is home to nearly 40 million people.

Longtime Senate Democrat to Retire After Decades of Service at 79 Years Old.  Ben Cardin of Maryland has announced his intention to retire from politics.  At 79 years old, Cardin is one of the oldest members of Congress.  Cardin announced his decision to step down via Twitter, where he thanked the people of Maryland for their trust and support over the years.  His tweet included a link to a profile of his legislative work, as well as an interview with his wife Myrna.

The Useful Veneer of the Aging Democrat.  President Joe Biden is now 80 years old.  He will be 82 when he campaigns for the 2024 presidency — and a clearly debilitated 86 should he be elected and fill out his second term.  He has been in government for over a half-century.  Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and current representative from California is 83.  Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the second-ranking Democratic House member behind Pelosi, was House majority leader until early this year.  He is 83, and has been an elected official for nearly 60 years.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is 72, with 48 years in elected government.  Democratic luminary and former chairman of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, Senator Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is 89, and ailing — after 53 years as an elected official.  James Clyburn, D-S.C., is House minority whip and 82.  These are the official faces of the Democratic Party.  They came into power and maturity three decades ago during the Clinton years of 1993-1999.  Decades ago, they sometimes supported strong national defense, secure borders, gas and oil development, fully funding the police, and a few restrictions on partial-birth abortions.  Not now.

Who is pulling the puppet strings in Washington, DC?  [Scroll down]  Next is Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) who has been US Senator for over three decades.  Last month Feinstein learned that her staff took a very important decision without consulting her: they announced her retirement from the Senate.  Feinstein was understandably left perplexed when informed, but eventually accepted the decision.  Feinstein has been a frequent subject of discussion regarding her mental acuity and fitness to serve.  Feinstein's office recently released a statement that she was hospitalized due to shingles but expects to make a full recovery and return to the Senate this month.  Feinstein is yet to return.

Politicians and the Problems of Age.  Increased age heightens the risk of developing dementia.  Dementia heightens the risk of slips, trips, and falls, resulting in physical incapacitation.  Stumbling, bumbling seniors who are physically and mentally incapacitated should probably not serve — serve — as elected leaders.  A centerpiece of Nikki Haley's rationale for her candidacy for president is that we need a new generation of leadership.  Some agree with her call for mental competency tests for politicians over age 75.  Some disagree, including, naturally, the American Association of Retired People. [...] The average age of U.S. Senators is 65.  Twenty-three percent of the members of Congress are over age 70, the age at which Elon Musk suggests they should be barred from running for political office.

What Will Become of Joe Manchin?  [Scroll down]  The most unlikely scenario is Manchin runs for president.  As a moderate blue senator from a red state, he has no natural constituency.  The likelihood of him winning either party's nomination is about the same as holding the Winter Olympics in the Sahara desert.  This is likely just a tease to increase his visibility back home.  Joe could try to defend his Senate seat, but there are problems.  One of them is West Virginia Republican Governor Jim Justice.  Justice, who is more popular than Manchin and wealthy enough to self-fund his campaign, may jump into the race.  In a recent poll of registered voters, Justice received 52% of the vote versus 42% for Manchin, with 5% undecided.  Manchin's other problem is the perception that he is out of step with West Virginia voters.  In 2016 he endorsed Hillary Clinton for president despite her dislike of coal and other fossil fuels and her "deplorables" commentary about Trump voters.

Delusional Democrats think Fetterman and Feinstein still fit to serve.  Once upon a time we mocked the Soviet Union for its gerontocracy.  Aged party leaders, bundled up in overcoats and fur hats to the point of near-unrecognizability, would be wheeled out to sit, immobile, as parades passed or party congresses opened.  Their withered, stale leadership was emblematic of the decaying USSR's withered, stale ideology — and industrial base.  But now the joke's on us.  A l  eading United States senator, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), can't seem to remember important things, like her just-taken vote on a judicial nominee and her just-announced retirement. "Did I vote for that?" she asked an aide Wednesday, moments after leaving the chamber.  The day before, the oldest sitting senator announced she wouldn't seek another term — or her staff did, anyway.  Asked about her coming retirement an hour after the statement posted, Feinstein said, "Well, I haven't made that decision.  I haven't released anything."  A staffer told her she had.  As The [New York] Post reported, "an incredulous-sounding Feinstein" said, "You put out the statement?" before telling reporters, "I didn't know they put it out."

Gerontocracy: the exceptionally old political class that governs the US.  It is the year of the octogenarian.  American TV viewers can find Patrick Stewart, 82, boldly going in a new series of Star Trek: Picard and 80-year-old Harrison Ford starring in two shows plus a trailer for the fifth installment of Indiana Jones.  And a switch to the news is likely to serve up Joe Biden, at 80 the oldest president in US history, or Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, who turns 81 on Monday.  But while action heroes are evergreen, the political class is facing demands for generational change.

Dianne Feinstein Announces She Won't Seek Reelection in 2024.  California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein announced Tuesday that she will retire at the end of her term.  "I am announcing today I will not run for reelection in 2024, but intend to accomplish as much for California as I can through the end of next year when my term ends," Feinstein said in her announcement.  At 89, Feinstein is the oldest senator.  She has represented California in the Senate since 1992, and is the longest-serving woman senator in U.S. history.  Before she was elected to the Senate, Feinstein was the mayor of San Francisco and made an unsuccessful bid for California governor.

If Dianne Feinstein is suffering from cognitive decline and is unfit to serve, then why she still a senator?  Nearly overlooked earlier this month because of the drawn-out vote for speaker of the House was the breaking of seven decades of precedent in the upper chamber of Congress in the election for largely ceremonial post of president pro tempore of the Senate.  Largely ceremonial only up to a point, that is.  The holder of that position is third-in-line in presidential succession.  Every president pro tempore elected since 1949 had been the longest-serving senator from the majority party.  The dean of the Senate is 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein, she has been representing California since 1992.  But Patty Murray of Washington, who is a relatively spry 72, was elected president pro tempore, which ups her salary a bit and earns her a security detail.  Feinstein reportedly declined to run for president pro tempore.

This $1.7 trillion-dollar circus demands a new debate over term limits.  Term limits were always a peripheral debate.  If you'd ask most Americans, it wouldn't be shocking if this proposal got supermajority support, but all politics is local.  The same old folks keep getting re-elected no matter how bad the anti-incumbent bias becomes.  That's the paradox:  voters might not like other people's representatives, but they want theirs.  I was indifferent to the whole affair, but I might be more open to it, though it only took multiple trillion-dollar omnibuses to get my head straight here.  The latest $1.7 trillion omnibus is an atrocious bill, filled with the Democrats' last-minute items they know wouldn't see the light of day under a Republican House majority next Congress — and Senate Republicans went along with it. [...] Then, on the omnibus itself, McConnell has the gall to say that this bill, fraught with liberal initiatives, was a good piece of legislation that showed Republicans could get their agenda aims accomplished under a Democratic Congress.  Also, he added that billions more in aid to Ukraine is a top priority for Republican voters.  Two patently false things were uttered by one of the faces of the GOP and our leader in the US Senate.  To make things worse, McConnell does know that billions were allocated to the Internal Revenue Service to harass Americans, right?

Dementia: 2022's Word of the Year.  Age is just one risk factor for dementia, but it's disconcerting that the average age of members of the House at the beginning of the 117th Congress was 58.4 years; the average age of senators, 64.3 years.  Even more troubling, the risk of dementia rises as you age, especially after age 65.  No wonder Elon Musk declared that people over 70 should be barred from political office.  That's wishful thinking, because the Constitution applies no upper age limit for the Presidency or Congress.  Neither does it provide for term limits; in fact, a majority of delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 believed that longer serving members of Congress would become more effective.  The Supreme Court ruled a constitutional amendment is required to limit the number of terms members of Congress can serve.  In the meantime, during election debate season, we (debate commissions, sponsors, or even opposing candidates) might extend the option for geriatric candidates for statewide office (say, above the standard retirement age of 67) to take a cognitive test.  Those who refuse will at least be identified before mail-in balloting kicks in.

It's Time For McCarthy and McConnell to Retire.  Americans are ready to move on from the current Republican leadership, choosing to vote out Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.  According to a new Rasmussen Reports Poll, just 28 percent of likely voters have a favorable view of McConnell, while 61 percent say the GOP needs a new leader.  Following his win, McConnell, who is the longest-serving GOP leader in Senate history, said that he doesn't plan to give up his position anytime soon.  However, several Republicans feel that new, younger leadership is needed in Congress.  "Nobody, not Republicans, not independents, not Democrats in my state are happy with the leadership in Washington.  I'm not either.  So I'm on their side, not on the side of these guys," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said.  Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind) also insinuated that it's time for McConnell to hang up his robe.  I don't think we're generating the results politically or governmentally... we don't have an agenda.  We don't have a business plan.  That doesn't work anywhere else," Braun said.

The Editor says...
How very true!  The government does things that don't work anywhere else.  That's because the government can print money and distribute it to specific groups of voters.  That's why term limits would be a great improvement.

Dianne Feinstein Has an Alarming Exchange With a Reporter and I Have Thoughts.  We've written before about how rumors have been swirling since the looming September 2020 confirmation battle over Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the Supreme Court that Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) mental health has been steadily deteriorating, with some in the Democratic Caucus questioning her ability to continue to serve in the office she's held since 1992.  A story filed by Politico prior to Barrett's eventual nomination and confirmation hearings stated that there was "widespread concern" on the Democratic side amongst Senators and aides alike over whether or not she was capable of performing her duties, which at the time included being the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The report also noted that Feinstein "sometimes gets confused by reporters' questions, or will offer different answers to the same question depending on where or when she's asked."

Dianne Feinstein becomes [the] longest-serving woman in [the] Senate.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., on Saturday [11/5/20922] became the longest-serving female in Senate history, passing former Sen. Barbara Mikulski while celebrating her 30th anniversary as part of the chamber.  Feinstein, the first woman to lead the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee from 2017 to 2021 and the first female head of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called it an "incredible honor" to reach the milestone.

Report: Nancy Pelosi To Retire After She Loses Majority; Her Radical Daughter Christina Is Reportedly Set To Replace Her.  Already, rumors have swirled that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) could step down when Republicans likely retake control of the House in the upcoming midterm elections.  Pelosi's new district, California's 11th Congressional district, would be a highly coveted seat for Democrats who are interested in replacing her as it is a D+37 district, according to the Cook Political Report, making it one of the safest Congressional seats in the country for the Democrat who wins the nomination.  Nancy Pelosi's daughter, Christine Pelosi, has already been floated as a viable option to replace Nancy.  Christine is a left-wing activist and Democratic political strategist who has served as the Women's Caucus Chair of the California Democratic Party and as an Assistant District Attorney in San Francisco.

The Editor says...
A seat in the U.S. Congress is not a family heirloom, to be passed from one generation to the next.

Patty Murray makes an anguished face.  Some strange things have been happening here in the Pacific Northwest.  We've had a freakishly warm and dry October, for one, and just the other day Seattle apparently boasted the worst air pollution in the world.  That was thanks to the smog from all the nearby wildfires, though I'm pleased to report that more normal monsoon conditions have since returned. [...] But surely none of these oddities could compete with the news that Washington's five-term Democratic senator Patty Murray, 72, is in trouble against her 39-year-old GOP opponent, a self-described farm girl with the striking name of Tiffany Smiley.  Smiley is a political outsider whose husband Scotty was blinded by a suicide bomber while serving as a US Army major in Iraq.  Long considered a lock for Murray, the seat is now a statistical toss-up, with a new Trafalgar Group poll showing Murray up 49-48.  The rival candidates sat down (or in Smiley's case, stood up) for a televised debate the other day.  If ever there was a living portrait of the gulf between America's two main parties, this was it.

Ten Reasons to Vote Democrat.  [#1] You like your leaders brain-dead and nearly as old as Methuselah.  Among the leaders Democrats have "voted" into office is our senile and incontinent president, Crusty Joe, 80 years old in a month and growing more deeply fried by the day; speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, age 82, soon to be deposed and, by the looks of her face, already far along in the embalming process; Senator Dianne Feinstein, 89, and rumored to no longer recognize anyone else in the Senate; and Pat "Leaky" Leahy, the 82-year-old president pro tempore of the Senate, whose nickname undoubtedly now has a double meaning.  If you think great-grandparents should run anything more complicated than a potato peeler, much less the most powerful country in the world, then vote "D" in a few days, and we'll all see what happens!

CBS News poll: Big majority favor maximum age limits for elected officials.  We live in an era of stark political division, but there's at least one aspect of politics both sides agree on: a maximum age limit for elected officials.  Most feel that after a certain age they should not be permitted to hold office.  There isn't just agreement across political lines, but across demographic groups, like age, too.  Young and old, including seniors, favor maximum age limits for elected officials.  And far more Americans believe additional young people in elected office would be a positive for U.S. politics than a negative.

Dem Staffer Reveals Congress's Well-Kept Secret — Recurring Issue Plaguing Nadler.  At 75 years old, longtime New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, a Democrat, is far from being the oldest member of Congress, but he's certainly well past his prime.  A Democratic staffer told the New York Post that Nadler, who serves as chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, has earned a nickname from his peers:  "Rock-A-Bye Baby."  It is apparently a well-kept secret that the abrasive congressman falls asleep during meetings — frequently.  Citing a Zoom meeting of House Democratic committee chairs earlier in the year, the aide, who participated in the planning session, said Nadler fell asleep.  No one woke him up; the discussion simply continued without him.

'L'Etat, C'est moi!'  Sadly and alarmingly, many American politicians and government appointees appear to have an antipathy to any limitation or constraint on their power or position.  Nor do they want to give up the offices they hold.  Retirement is for the little people.  Today there are seven senators over the age of 78.  The House of Representatives have ten members over the age of 80.  Anthony Fauci is 81 years old.  Joe Biden 79.  The legal age of retirement, according to Social Security, is 70.  Why do these people, to alter a phrase from Barack Obama, "cling to their power and position?"  Like Louis the 14th, much of the American political class conflate themselves with the offices they hold.  They claim the right to do whatever they want with the reins of government including sending our young men and women to kill and to die in undeclared foreign wars.  And, like Louis, they understand that they can do what they want because they have both the literal and figurative muscle to execute their will, shield themselves, and punish their opponents.

Rep. Daniel Webster's Health Called Into Question.  For quite some time, rumors have been circulating around Florida's 11th congressional district that Rep. Webster's health has diminished since he was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives a decade ago.  Over the last several years.  Rep. Webster has missed floor votes, and committee assignment hearings, and has been all but invisible to his constituents.  Among the votes that Webster has skipped, Webster did not vote on H.Res 503, the measure that established the current January 6th Select Commission.  Most Republican legislators voted against forming the committee to investigate the Capitol Riot. [...] Not voting on the vote to create the 1/6 Commission, and skipping the vote on the second impeachment of former President Trump, could prove problematic for Webster, who will also have to answer to his constituents for missing about a quarter of the votes this past year.

Democrats struggle with an open secret:  The serious mental decline of an aging politician.  The NY Times published a story today about Democrats coming to terms with the fact that an aging Democrat may no longer be fit for office.  It's a story about Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  Who did you think we were talking about? [...] Some people close to Feinstein have said they don't see how she could possible finish out her current term which doesn't expire until 2024, but Feinstein is still saying she has no plans to retire.

Don't These People Ever Go Away?  Just in case you haven't had enough socialist scolding and woke posturing, the angry great-grandfather of the Left, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-East Berlin) is considering yet another run for Chairman of the Politburo; uh, scratch that, he's actually thinking of running for president of the United States in 2024.  And why not?  By the time the election rolls around, Bernie will be 83, just a little over a year older than Old Joe Biden himself.  Maybe Bernie can persuade Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California Soviet Socialist Republic) to be his running mate.  DiFi will only be 91 by the time of the November 2024 election and no doubt tanned, rested, and ready.

The Democrat Plan to Stop Joe Biden.  [Joe] Biden keeps talking about running again and it's not a joke.  After spending two generations clawing his way to power, the guy who would have been one of the youngest presidents when he first tried to make a dash at the big job, is not about to just walk away whistling to Delaware.  The Democrats have become a gerontocracy of dementia patients with the party trying to push Senator Dianne Feinstein, 88 years old, and Rep. David Scott, 76, to the exit after reports that they appear out of it.  Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 82, has vowed to run again and so have her number two and three, Steny Hoyer, 82, and James Clyburn, 81, who got Biden the party's nomination, making it rather difficult to dump Biden on account of being old or out of it.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth:  Biden expresses 'confidence' in Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  Joe Biden has been fully exposed as a dotard who'd be better off at the dog tracks than the Oval Office, but he's got nothing on Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who's reportedly so senile she can't recognize her own staff.  Now, after a bombshell report from the San Francisco Chronicle on Feinstein's desiccated state, Joe's White House is telling the press that he's got "confidence" in his former Senate colleague.

Dianne Feinstein Is a Lot Older Than You Think, and It's Starting to Show.  Hunter Biden is just the tip of the iceberg:  it's lucrative to be a politician today, even if your father isn't playing the role of president of the United States.  There are innumerable ways in which our elected representatives can grow rich while doing the bidding of some powerful group, all perfectly legal:  astronomical advances for books that hardly anyone will read, similarly inflated speaking fees, and much more.  What was once known as the public service has become so remunerative that it's no wonder that politicians are clutching to power as they never have before in American history.  Washington is now top-heavy with the Geritol set, and it doesn't look as if that's going to change anytime soon.

Our Geriatric Political Class Needs To Go.  Yesterday [4/14/2022] Joe Biden gave a speech that ended like this.  He is a frail, elderly man obviously suffering from dementia:  [Video clip] [...] But Biden isn't the only one.  Nancy Pelosi is gaga, a fact that she can't hide with multiple plastic surgeries.  A member of the U.S. Senate recently said — privately — that one-third of senators belong in nursing homes. [...] Dianne Feinstein is notoriously incapable of carrying out the duties of her office: [...] I am not sure how we became a gerontocracy, but it needs to end.  Term limits and age limits are problematic in various ways, but in any event they would require a constitutional amendment that isn't going to happen.  Clearing out the dead wood, in a democracy, is a task for the voters.

Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden show why we need age limits for politicians.  Does it shock anyone, really, to learn that 88-year-old veteran US Sen. Dianne Feinstein is exhibiting signs of dementia?  I'll brace for angry emails from readers who still have landlines, dial-up modems and AOL addresses in making this argument:  We're long overdue for age limits on our legislators.  Commercial airline pilots are forced to retire at age 65.  Air traffic controllers must retire at age 56.  Yet we have a 79-year-old in the White House who, on any given day, thinks that his VP is his wife, or that his wife is his sister and his sister is the first lady, or that Michelle Obama is the vice president or that Barack Obama is Donald Trump and vice versa.  So easy to get the latter two confused, isn't it?  When asked how he'd handle a dispute with his actual vice president, Kamala Harris, Joe told CNN that "I will develop some disease and say I have to resign."  Wonder where he got that idea?

Democratic colleagues are concerned that Senator Dianne Feinstein, 88, is 'mentally unfit to serve'.  Multiple Democrats on Capitol Hill are worried about the ability of one of their longest-serving senators, Dianne Feinstein, to continue serving in Congress, a new report suggests on Thursday [4/14/2022].  Feinstein, 88, had long been renowned in Washington for an issue-focused passion and quick wit — but one California Democratic lawmakers told the San Francisco Chronicle there was 'no trace of that' in recent months.  Four other senators — three of them Democrats — as well as three of her former staffers fear that Feinstein is 'mentally unfit to serve' and that her memory is 'rapidly deteriorating.'

Longest-serving US congressman Don Young dies aged 88 midair on flight from LA to Seattle.  Republican Representative Don Young, who was first elected to Congress in 1973 and was its longest-serving current member, died on Friday, his office said in a statement.  The 88-year-old congressman died while traveling home to Alaska, his office said.  'Don Young's legacy as a fighter for the state will live on, as will his fundamental goodness and honor.  We will miss him dearly,' the statement said.  His office did not give the cause of death.  Jack Ferguson, who had served as Young's chief of staff, told the Anchorage Daily News that Young lost consciousness on a flight from Los Angeles to Seattle and could not be resuscitated.

I would not be opposed to Congressional age limits, as well as term limits.
Rep. Don Young, Alaska Republican, dead at 88.  U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, the longest-serving member of the House, died Friday night at Los Angeles International Airport while he was on his way home.  He was 88.  The cause of death was not yet determined.  Young, a California native, had served in Congress since winning a special election in 1973.

Want to "Throw the Bums Out"?  Then, Don't Replace them with more Bums!  Why does America keep electing the same dysfunctional representatives year after year, term after term?  Now more than ever, a majority of voters are ready to turn over the entire House and Senate in Washington, DC.  Over 75% of voters agree that it is time to change the guard, to get rid of the scum that covers the DC swamp, to bring in some new people who will get us back to the Constitution.  Clean House!  And Senate.  We are desperate for honesty and integrity, and responsiveness to the electorate.  It is my contention that those candidates who can help to redirect and heal America, DO exist, around this country, but that they are buried in the process and systemic gridlock.

Our current leaders have outlived their usefulness.  [Scroll down]  It's time to give way to the next generations.  Biden is 80.  Trump, by the next election, will be 78.  Too [...] old, both of them, to think on their feet — as are Nancy Pelosi (81), Mitch McConnell (79), and Chuck Schumer (71).  In the Senate, 64 of the 100 senators are over 65 years old and 26 are over 75.  And yes, 14 are over the age of 80.  Granted, Congress is a bit younger, but there are too many entrenched lifers there, too.  Thirty-two percent of our representatives are over 65.  The argument that they bring gravitas is easily countered by the fact that they accomplish absolutely nothing and seem to prefer it that way.  We need new blood — but we have a problem.  Smart, honest people look at politics and run the other way.  They see that it's a game, complete with a system that doesn't work, the frustration of endless procedural hearings and crooked, limitless, unreadable bills, plus endless fundraising.  They see that the goal is to reward deep-pocketed cronies by funding their pet projects, and that faceless bureaucrats are working in the background, getting it done the way they see fit, so why bother?

Ron Johnson reveals exactly why he broke his two-term pledge.  Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson officially announced Sunday that he is running for reelection, parting ways with a 2016 promise to only serve two terms because he believes the Democrats' "complete takeover of government" has put America in "peril."  Johnson announced in The Wall Street Journal that he will run for a third term in Wisconsin — a key battleground state that President Biden narrowly carried in the 2020 election. [...] "I believe America is in peril.  Much as I'd like to ease into a quiet retirement, I don't feel I should," he added.  "Today, I am announcing I will continue to fight for freedom in the public realm by running for reelection.  It is a decision I haven't made lightly."

The Editor says...
Any politician who purports to be indispensable should be the first one to be challenged in the primary election.

Michigan US Rep. Brenda Lawrence won't seek 2022 reelection.  U.S. Rep. Brenda Lawrence plans to retire from Congress at the end of her term, becoming the 25th House Democrat to decide against seeking reelection in 2022, she announced Tuesday [1/4/2022].  "This year marks my 30th year in elected public service, and I've had the good fortune of serving Michiganders on the local and national level," she announced on Twitter.  "After reflecting on my journey & having conversations with my family, I'm announcing that I will not be seeking re-election to Congress," Lawrence said.

Longtime Democratic Rep to Retire After 30 Years in Congress.  Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, who represents Illinois' 1st congressional district, announced Tuesday that he will not seek a 16th term in the U.S. House of Representatives.  Rush first assumed office in January of 1993.  "After nearly three decades in Congress, I have been reassigned," Rush said in a statement.  "Let me make it clear that I am not retiring, I am returning.  I'm returning home, returning to my church, returning to my family and grandchildren — but my calling to a life of service is stronger than ever.  I am expanding my tent beyond the guardrails of Congress."  Rush is the only politician to beat former President Barack Obama in an election.  In the 2000 Democratic primary for Illinois' 1st congressional district, Rush beat Obama with 61 percent of the vote.  Obama won 30 percent of the vote.

Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell in tears after learning she will have to move because redistricting swiped her seat.  Democrat Rep. Debbie Dingell grew emotional on Wednesday night over having to leave her hometown of Dearborn, Michigan in order to keep serving in Congress after redistricting swiped her seat ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.  For the first time in history, Michigan's new map was drawn by an independent commission rather than political operators.  That saw the state's number of House seats drop from 14 to 13, and is forcing Dingell out of the 12th Congressional District she took over from her husband, late longtime Rep. John Dingell.  Members of her party are watching nervously as next year's races begin to take shape with 23 less Democrat incumbents — all of whom are either retiring or seeking a different office.

Dr Fauci's Retirement Pay Will Exceed $350,000 Per Year:  The Largest In U.S. Federal Government History.  On Christmas Eve, Dr. Anthony Fauci turned 81.  However, he is not retiring just yet.  If he did, Fauci would reap the largest federal retirement package in U.S. history.  Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com estimate Dr. Fauci's annual retirement would exceed $350,000. Thereafter, his pension and benefits would continue to increase through annual cost-of-living adjustments.  Fauci has 55 years of service as a federal employee.

Self-imposed term limits are the best kind.
Two More House Dems Make Mad Dash for the Exits as Joe Biden's BBB Agenda Implodes.  With voter concerns sitting squarely on uncertainties about the U.S. economy on issues like worsening inflation, the ongoing supply chain crisis, and the gloomy jobs outlook, a number of House Democrats have apparently concluded it's best to get out while they can.  As of last week, the number was at 20 with the announcement that five-term Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.) would be retiring at the end of his term.  But today, barely 24 hours after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) dashed Joe Biden's hopes and dreams on the BBB bill, two more House Dems said in so many words that they're headed for the exits, too.

Here Comes the Wave as Yet Another Dem Flees the Sinking Ship.  Democrats who see the writing on the wall and who have been around in Congress for a while are seeing this as a good time to pack it in.  The latest to retire is five-term Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA).  Lowenthal is the 20th Democrat who will be retiring or otherwise moving on at the end of this term.  He's 80 years old and has been serving in political positions since 1992, almost thirty years.

Oregon Congressman Peter DeFazio announces he won't seek re-election after 36 years.  Congressman Peter DeFazio, who has represented Oregon's Fourth Congressional District for 36 years, announced Wednesday he won't seek re-election in 2022.  DeFazio is the longest serving House member from Oregon and the 65th-longest serving member of the House in U.S. history.

The Editor says...
The article above makes no mention of Congressman DeFazio's political party affiliation, from which one can infer that he's a Democrat.

U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson announces retirement after almost 3 decades in Congress.  Longtime U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, announced Saturday she is not running for reelection after serving nearly three decades in Congress.  "I have gone back and forth ... the whole time because of the pleading and the asking, but as of January ... the year after next, I will step down," Johnson said during an event in Dallas.  "I will retire, and let me assure that I will also recommend to you whom I feel is the best to follow me."  Johnson added she is looking for a "female that is qualified."

The Editor says...
[#1] "Qualified" is a code word for black.  [#2] I'm reasonably well-informed about politics in south Dallas, and for the last 10 years or so, the Republicans have considered it almost a waste of time to run against Eddie Bernice Johnson, because of name recognition and because of straight-party voting.  Things will be different in 2022.

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson Retiring After Almost Three Decades in Congress.  U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), chair of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, announced Saturday that she will retire in January 2023.  "I have gone back and forth ... the whole time because of the pleading and the asking, but as of January ... the year after next, I will step down," Johnson said during an event in Dallas.  "I will retire, and let me assure that I will also recommend to you whom I feel is the best to follow me."  Johnson, 85, was first elected to Congress in 1992 and is one of the most senior Congress members.  "There is a good reason I should stay:  I am a personal friend to the president, I have gained some respect and influence," Johnson said during her announcement.  But she said she plans to keep a promise she made after winning the Democratic primary in March that her current term would be her last.

The Editor says...
Somebody please point to a single thing Eddie Bernice Johnson accomplished while in Congress.

More about Eddie Bernice Johnson.

Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson [is the] latest Democrat to announce retirement.  Texas Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson is set to retire from Congress in January, the latest in a line of Democrats calling it quits in Washington, DC.  Johnson, 85, announced Saturday she will not seek re-election after serving nearly three decades in the Lone Star State's 30th District, which includes a large part of Dallas.  Johnson was raised in the segregated South and became the first black woman to represent Dallas in the Austin statehouse early in her political career.  In Washington, she was the first woman of color to chair the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, 81, the chamber's longest-serving Democrat, announces he will retire.  Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the longest-serving Democrat in the Senate, announced Monday that he will retire at the end of his term next year.  Leahy, 81, who was first elected in 1974, would have been up for reelection to a ninth term in 2022.  "It's time to put down the gavel.  It is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter to carry on this work for our great state.  It's time to come home," Leahy said at a news conference Monday at the Vermont State House in Montpelier from the same room where he announced his first Senate candidacy.

The Editor says...
He could have made the same speech three terms ago and it would have been just as true.

Physician GOP Senator Wants Annual Senility Tests For Aging Politicians.  A Republican senator is calling for annual senility tests for aging politicians, such as President Joe Biden, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).  GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a physician, said during a recent appearance of "Axios on HBO" that he wants cognition tests for aging leaders in all three branches of government, Axios reported.  Cassidy, a gastroenterologist, said that people generally begin a "rapid decline" when they hit 80 years old.  "It's usually noticeable," the senator said.  "So anybody in a position of responsibility who may potentially be on that slope, that is of concern.  And I'm saying this as a doctor."  "I'm told that there have been senators in the past who, at the end of their Senate terms were senile," Cassidy added.  "I'm told that was true of senators of both parties."

Pie in the sky:
A Mechanism to Restore Liberty and Prosperity.  The Anti-federalists, including George Mason and Patrick Henry, were correct in their concern about government growing ever bigger and less concerned about individual rights and free enterprise.  Today, progressive fascists control both houses of Congress and the White House, and their authoritarianism is becoming ubiquitous.  To rectify this situation and to return to much smaller government respectful of individual rights and free enterprise, the following Constitutional amendments are proposed. [...]

The Editor says...
Let me assure you that the Constitution will NEVER be amended to make any Congressman's career shorter, more difficult, or less lucrative.  Propose all the amendments you like, but none of them will ever be ratified.

The Case of Fauci:  Why Bureaucrats Need Term Limits More Urgently Than Politicians.  Term limits for politicians has been a popular idea with conservatives, libertarians, and even some liberals and progressives (though fewer these days) for some time.  But more important, I would argue, are term limits for the government bureaucracy.  At least politicians can be voted out.  Unelected bureaucrats go on and on and on, and in many ways end up running our country.  Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) alluded to this unfortunate situation on Steve Hilton's "The Next Revolution" in December 2020:  "And you know, Steve, one of the things you touched on about the bureaucracy and cutting it — I have said for a long time, we need to have term limits for bureaucrats because they are the ones that dig in."  Indeed.  But little has been done about it.  All the while, the bureaucracy, aka the deep state, has been reaching new heights (or lows), in essence taking over the country.  As, for example, with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

One Texas fleebagger returned to Austin — it's not for [the reason] you might think.  State Rep. Harold Dutton of Houston is one of the longest-serving members of the Texas House. [...] Dutton was born in 1945, according to his bio, so that makes him 76 years old.  He falls into the most at-risk age group if he develops a serious case of COVID. We are told that all of the lawmakers were fully vaccinated, though, so he would have a breakthrough case if he tests positive which means his symptoms would likely not be severe or require hospitalization.  After it's been found to be a super spreading event, no one would blame Dutton for abandoning the Democrats in D.C. and staying in Austin.  Dutton has been in the Texas House since 1984.  He is not a stranger to controversy.  He is not afraid to buck his own party and work with Republicans to get legislation passed, even if it is in retaliation against Democrats.  For example, in 2015 the liberal publication Texas Monthly labeled Dutton "The Worst" after he let a grand jury selection reform bill languish in the House Juvenile Justice Committee.

Gov't shows they don't need your vote.  You might be under the impression that we live in a country governed by the people's representatives.  Think again.  More than 20 percent of Oregon's House reps were appointed to their positions by elites in government.  Yes, they had to run for RE-election to their spots.  But the power of incumbency is such that once you're in, anyone running against you has about one chance in ten of beating you.  Second example:  state Judges in Oregon.  These men and women make some of the most consequential decisions about our lives and liberty.  Nearly all were originally appointed to their positions by just one person:  the Governor.  For the last ⅓ of a century that has meant Democrat Governors.  And when Judges retire, nearly all quit mid term as part of the scam that lets the Governor name THEIR replacement.  The chance of actually replacing a sitting judge with one chosen by voters is almost zero.  There's the Governor herself, who slid into her job originally after John Kitzhaber slithered out on corruption charges.  Re-election, virtually guaranteed.

Obama and the Broken Nation He Made Come Of Age.  Barack Obama turns 60 over the summer.  The AARP cover with Barry posing next to a basketball and a shelf of bestselling non-fiction books he hasn't read can't be too far away.  Once the symbol of youthful hipness, the former boss of Hope and Change now lectures "young people" on what they should be doing.  His legacy is being carried forward by 78-year-old Biden and the 81-year-old Pelosi.  That's above the average age of 80 of the House Dem leadership.  The average age of the Biden cabinet is two years older than President Trump's cabinet.  The gerontocratic technocracy uses AOC as its younger foil, but she's been a stalking horse for Bernie Sanders who will hit the big 80 in the fall.  The big donors behind the American Left are even older with George Soros due to hit 90 the same month Obama gets to 60.

Senate senility.  The Washington Post reports that the current U.S. Senate is the oldest in American history.  Dianne Feinstein turns 88 this month.  Charles Grassley turns 88 in September.  Richard Shelby is 87.  James Inhofe is 86.  Patrick Leahy is 81.  Twenty-three senators are in their 70s.  The average age of senators at the beginning of this year was 64.3 years.  It may be that being 88 now is like being, say, 78 a few decades ago.  So despite being the oldest, this might not be the most age-impaired Senate in our history.  Robert Caro's book about the Lyndon Johnson-dominated Senate makes it clear that more than a few solons of the 1950s were rendered largely useless by age and/or drink.  Dianne Feinstein and some of the other Senators cited in the Post's article insist they are still as sharp as a tack.  But there must be a few who are losing it.  A local pharmacist said in 2017 that he routinely sends Alzheimer's medication to Capitol Hill.

Patrick Leahy signals he'll run for ninth Senate term.  The Senate's longest-serving Democrat, long assumed to be on the cusp of retirement, is leaning toward giving it another go.  Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who has served since 1975 and is in the line of presidential succession, is asking colleagues to support his potential campaign for a ninth term, according to Democratic senators who have spoken to him.  The 81-year-old has also indicated to them that he believes he's "the only Democrat that can win the seat," said a person briefed on the conversations.  Given that Bernie Sanders is an independent who caucuses with Democrats, Leahy's the only Democrat ever elected to the Senate from Vermont.

Our Democrat Rulers Can't Be Serious.  Ed Markey — the 45-year D.C. lifer — could be considered the quintessential liberal NE Democrat politician.  He transparently espouses every clichéd liberal Democratic policy position that comes down the pike.  He never puts forth any new, thoughtful, genuinely helpful initiatives of his own.  (Remember the groundbreaking "Markey Act"?  Of course not — it doesn't exist.)  His entire political existence is one of self-perpetuation, to live off the public dole.  He brazenly resides full-time in a luxurious home in suburban Maryland, maintaining a barely plausible legal mailing address in Massachusetts, just to be able to run for his guaranteed re-election.  As a dynamic, influential, important politician, Markey is meaningless.  Empty.  Irrelevant.  He collects his government dough, lives worry-free, and has the dictionary definition of a "cushy life."

When Fools Rule.  Arguably, the third most powerful person in America is Nancy Pelosi.  Under the section titled "Private Sector" on her Wikipedia page is nothing but a string of emoticons to indicate hilarious laughter.  Pelosi has never had a real job.  In fact, she comes from a family of taxeaters.  Her father was a lifelong politician.  Her brother was also a lifelong taxeater, largely credited with ruining Baltimore while mayor.  The second banana in the House is the octogenarian Steny Hoyer, who, like his boss, has avoided the private sector his entire life.  According to his bio, he was a mediocre student, so he naturally chose politics.  He was a Senate staffer while attending law school and then ran for an open seat upon graduation.  He has spent 55 years without ever having worked a real job.

Democratic Death Watch: 'Biden's agenda is pretty much dangling by a thread'.  Yes, my headline is pretty blunt but no more so than this NY Times piece itself.  Last week CNN published a story about the progressive push to get Justice Breyer to retire.  There's was one paragraph in that story which I found particularly striking.  It noted that the Senate could fall into Republican's hands "at any moment" because "two members of the Democratic majority are near or just over 80 years old."  In other words, Democrats are one stopped heartbeat away from losing the chance to replace Breyer with a young progressive.  Today, the NY Times weighs in with a piece that is focused not just on Justice Breyer but the possibility that President Biden's entire agenda could come to a grinding halt if the wrong people were to die suddenly.

Ted Cruz and Senate Republicans Reintroduce Term Limits for Senators.  Here's Why We Should Cheer Them On.  Texas Senator Ted Cruz and five other Republican senators have, once again, reintroduced a constitutional amendment that would limit the number of years a person can serve in the Senate to twelve (two terms).  On his Senate website, Cruz noted that every person of every political stripe supports the idea of limiting the number of years one can serve as a senator and that those who serve far longer than they should are often corrupted and going against what the founders intended.  "Every year, Congress spends billions of dollars on giveaways for the well-connected:  Washington insiders get taxpayer money and members of Congress get re-elected, all while the system fails the American people.  It's no wonder that the vast majority of Americans from every political stripe — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents — overwhelmingly support congressional term limits," said Cruz.

This month's poster child for term limits:
Feinstein, 87, Files Paperwork For Possible Re-Election; Gets Scolded On Social Media.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) won't be up for re-election until 2024, but she has seemingly already filed paperwork indicating she might run again.  The 87-year-old U.S. Democrat from California filed the initial re-election paperwork with the Federal Election Commission last week, L.A. Magazine reported.  A Feinstein rep reached out to L.A. Magazine to clarify what the FEC filings allegedly mean.  "To be clear, Senator Feinstein has had a campaign committee since she took office, as all senators must.  In order to keep this account active, the senator has to maintain filings with the FEC.  Yesterday's filings merely reflected an updated address," the rep said.  They also claimed that they didn't have any "announcement" regarding a 2024 Feinstein run.  Feinstein's already the oldest senator in the chamber.  She would be 91 if re-elected, and 97 if she serves out her full six-year term following a 2024 victory.

Left Targets Dianne Feinstein For Not Attacking Amy Coney Barrett Hard Enough.  It turns out Democrats aren't as forgiving of elderly politicians as we might have thought.  After several months of doing their best to ignore former Vice President Joe Biden's declining abilities and his unending string of inexplicable gaffes, Democrats have had it with one particular senior citizen:  Sen. Dianne Feinstein.  In a story published by The New York Times the weekend before Judge Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearings began, various sources within the party voiced no confidence in the California senator's ability to lead Democrats' efforts to stop the nomination.  Like a previous article published last month in Politico, the point of the effort was to highlight a belief expressed by the two liberal outlets' sources — both on the record and anonymous — that Feinstein is simply too old and lacks the mental and physical capacity to do her job.

The Editor says...
If you're writing a term limits law, here's an idea:  There should be a law stating that the oldest member of the U.S. Senate, and the two oldest members of the House, are ineligible for re-election.  Since new members of Congress are generally middle-aged, that should keep a slow but steady turnover underway, while affecting only three people.

Democrats Want Term Limits for the Supreme Court but not Themselves.  Yet another variation of "change the rules in the middle of the game" has arisen from Democratland.  In addition to the "mail-in" ballot scheme to cast confusion on the presidential election, peppered with a good, old-fashioned, FDR-like threat to "pack the Court," congressional democrats fuming about Amy Coney Barrett now want "term limits" for Supreme Court justices.  Sometime this week, in a shameless stunt of hypocrisy, House Democrats, led by Rep. Ro Khanna of California, will introduce a bill that would (a) limit the tenure of a Supreme Court Justice to 18 years and (b) limit a president to appointing only two justices during his term in office.  Why is this a shameless stunt of hypocrisy?  Because congressional Democrats want term limits for the Supreme Court, but they don't want term limits for themselves.

Put term limits on yourselves first!
Democrats prepare bill limiting U.S. Supreme Court justice terms to 18 years.  Democrats in of the House of Representatives will introduce a bill next week to limit the tenure of U.S. Supreme Court justices to 18 years from current lifetime appointments, in a bid to reduce partisan warring over vacancies and preserve the court's legitimacy.  The new bill, seen by Reuters, would allow every president to nominate two justices per four-year term and comes amid heightened political tensions as Republican President Donald Trump prepares to announce his third pick for the Supreme Court after the death on Sept. 18 of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with just 40 days to go until the Nov. 3 election.

Ben Sasse Calls for Repealing 17th Amendment, Eliminating Popular-Vote Senate Elections.  Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) called to repeal the 17th Amendment on Tuesday, which would eliminate the requirement that U.S. senators be elected by popular votes.  In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled "Make the Senate Great Again," Sasse called for an end to the amendment, among other changes to the Senate "aimed at promoting debate, not ending it."  He also recommended abolishing standing committees, requiring senators to show up for debates, implementing 12-year term limits, and requiring senators to live together in dorms when in Washington.

The Editor says...
The term limits alone would be enough to fix a lot of the Senate's problems, but only if the same 12-year limit applied to the House, too.

Rep. Eliot Engel loses Democratic primary to progressive Jamaal Bowman.  Jamaal Bowman has defeated veteran Rep. Eliot Engel, unseating the powerful chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a stunning upset, according to the Associated Press.  Bowman, a progressive former middle school principal backed by the Justice Democrats, triumphed over Engel, a 16-term congressman, more than three weeks after the New York Democratic primary took place on June 23.  The AP called the race on Friday morning.  Engel, 73, had been besieged by gaffes and accusations he was missing from his Bronx-Westchester district as the coronavirus pandemic raged.

A political dirty trick in San Diego's District 53 race that might just backfire.  I'm stuck here in San Diego's congressional District 53, a gerrymandered zone that has the gay progressives of Hillcrest, the rabidly left-wing academics of the liberation theology — lovin' University of San Diego, and the illegals of Chula Vista all spliced together, in what's hardly a community of interests.  I'm in a small hospital and defense contractor zone attached to these constituencies — nothing in common with the other areas, just useful filler for ensuring that a congressional seat has enough residents to get the seat for a Democrat.  So with disgust, I watch the 53rd congressional race to vacate Rep. Susan Davis's seat, Davis being a nine- or ten-term congresswoman who's served for 19 years and retiring.  Davis is a lefty Democrat, but not a loud, obnoxious one.  I wouldn't vote for her but she seems nice.  Not so the people jockeying to fill her place now.

Why the Senate Passed on Witnesses.  [Reason #1] The United States Senate is a more deliberative, elegant body than is the House, and it is comprised primarily of more even-keeled politicians.  There is a simple reason for this.  In the House of Representatives it is possible to get elected in an outlier district and to remain there for years without bothering to manifest prudence or common sense.  Maxine Waters is a lock because her district is perfect for her, and she for them.  Same with Nancy Pelosi.  Same with Ocasio-Cortez and Jerrold Nadler on the other coast.  Likewise Ilhan Omar.  The only way that any of them ever would lose their seats is if they would die, be primaried-out, or both.  As long as their names appear on a November ballot under the Democrat column, they are in for two more years and then two more.  Therefore, Maxine Waters could yell "Impeach 45!" the day that Donald Trump became president, and her district loved her for it.

The Hellish Legacy of the Dingell Family.  The Dingell clan has held a congressional seat outside Detroit since 1932.  Their 87-year tenure has not coincidentally coincided with the decline of a thriving industrial city into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.  But it's been good for the Dingells, three of whom have sat in their congressional seat since the days of Herbert Hoover, the rise of Hitler, and the radio age, and fattened their pockets on its sinecures.  Dingell Sr. was the son of Polish immigrants who started out in politics as a union boss, jumped into a newly created seat, and kept it through eleven elections before passing it on to his son.  Dingell Jr, outdid daddy by becoming the longest serving member of Congress in American history.  Before he died, he passed on the seat to his second wife, whom he married when she was 28 and he was 55 years old.  She was a GM lobbyist who married the Congressman from GM.  What was good for GM was good for the Dingells.  By 2014, Dingell Jr. was listed as the third richest member of Congress from Michigan with a net worth of $3.5 million.

Jerrold Nadler Is Caught in His Own Quid Pro Quo.  [Jerrold] Nadler has been in Congress for 27 years.  Basically, a Liberal Democrat Congressman named Ted Weiss dropped dead literally the day before the 1992 New York primaries, and the party basically gave the open seat to Nadler.  It is a super-safe Democrat Liberal district that has not gone Republican for more than a century.  Nadler now is in his 70s, no longer a spring chicken.  His job is safe and sound as long as he does not face a Democrat primary — and he never does.  At age 72, after nearly three cushy decades in the seat, he simply is not up for a primary.  Think:  Joe Crowley.  Nadler is not about to go walking the district, knocking on doors, glad-handing, and begging for votes.

It's Time for Term Limits on the Supreme Court.  Liberals live in a state of semi-panic that [Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader] Ginsburg will leave the court and give President Trump the chance to name a third Supreme Court justice and put a conservative stamp on the body for a generation.  Any Senate confirmation battle would be the mother of all political brawls, easily eclipsing the one last year surrounding Brett Kavanaugh.  It's time to end the unseemly position that the anachronism of life tenure for Supreme Court justices has put the country in.  It's a good thing that modern medicine is extending the lives of everyone, including Supreme Court justices.  But the time has come to remove the incentives that make justices serve until they drop dead or are gaga.  It's time to put term limits on the Supreme Court.

Longest serving black congressman John Conyers dies at 90.  Former Democratic Michigan Rep. John Conyers died Sunday [10/27/2019] at 90 in his sleep. [...] The former congressman represented his district in Michigan for more than 50 years.  He was a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus and the longest serving black legislator in U.S. history.

Nancy Pelosi Running For Another Term As House Speaker, Even Though She Turns 80 Next Year.  Isn't it time for Nancy Pelosi to retire yet?  Millions of Americans are told by their employers every year that it's time for them to leave their jobs, that they have gotten too old, and that someone younger is taking their position.  Why doesn't this ever seem to apply to people in Washington?

Retiring Rep. Duffy: 'Democrats Stick Around Forever,' While Republicans 'Transition'.  Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) announced on August 26 that he will leave Congress before his fourth term is up because his ninth child will need heart surgery when the baby's born in October.  On Thursday [9/5/2019], Duffy told Fox Business, "it was sad to say goodbye," but he knows he's doing the right thing for his family. [...] Duffy is one of 13 House Republicans who have announced their intention to retire.  Only three Democrats have said they will leave Congress in 2020.

Virginians like term limits, but their representatives don't.  Virginians are frustrated with the politicians and entrenched power brokers in Washington and their enablers in Richmond.  As elected officials, they become accustomed to the power and trappings that elected office holds and lose sight of promises they made on the campaign trail.  Term limits could be the answer.  Possibly one of the most popular political proposals of the modern era, support for term limits has polled at more than 80 percent for more than two decades.  And though the problem manifests in the halls of Congress, the cure must be concocted locally because Congress has yet to prove it is up to the task of putting country first.  That's where our Virginia state legislators come in.  The Founding Fathers foresaw this and provided an alternate means to amend the Constitution.

It's time to at least talk about congressional term limits.  It likely will get little more than a cold shoulder for reasons of self-preservation, but we believe a proposal from Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Republican Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida deserves discussion and thought in Washington, D.C.  In January, the pair introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution to impose term limits on members of Congress.  The amendment would limit senators to two six-year terms and members of the House of Representatives to three two-year terms.

America's Second Tea Party 246 years after Boston.  The ruling class that has been ascendant for well over the past 30 years has found comfort in their lofty seats of power.  Hence, they are loath to give them up.  The fable of Democrat versus Republican has been well played over the years.  Sensible people have bought into their boxing match.  One party gets in, and the opposition rails; the other party gets in, and the reverse happens.  Lately, both parties are of the same ilk.  Both endorse big government.  Both party's representatives in Washington, D.C. enjoy smoking the same cigars at the same club of insiders.  The drama is played out in a complicit media, supported by a school system designed to create like-minded robot victims of students.

Shallow State:  How Congress Protects Its Own.  Members of Congress are old.  Really old.  The House Democrats' top three leaders are all 78 or 79.  Democrat John Dingell was re-elected to the House every two years from 1955 to 2014, even though he represented Detroit during the period in which the city sank from America's crown jewel of manufacturing to a symbol of urban blight.  In 2014 he was replaced — by his wife.  Republican Strom Thurmond was a racial segregationist born in 1902 who served in the upper chamber from 1956 until 2003.  The nation changed, but he remained in office.  By the end, his aides were dragging him around and propping him up like a marionette.  Who did this serve?  Congressmen have used their power to design an institution whose first order of business is keeping current members as current members for as long as possible.

John Dingell, longest-serving member of Congress, dies at 92.  John Dingell, the longest-serving member in the history of Congress, died Thursday at 92, Fox News has confirmed.  Dingell served 21,572 days in Congress from December 1955 through January 2015.  He succeeded his father in the House of Representatives.  He is survived by his wife, Debbie, who currently holds his House seat and four children.

Ted Cruz introduced a term limit bill that would end his own career in the Senate.  Republican Sen. Ted Cruz introduced a constitutional amendment Friday that would restrict senators to two six-year terms.  If it's passed, it would limit Cruz's Senate career to its current term.  The amendment would also limit members of the House of Representatives to three two-year terms.  It's cosponsored by Republican Sens. Marco Rubio, Mike Lee, and David Purdue.  Cruz just began his second consecutive term in the US Senate, after winning reelection in November 2018 over Democratic candidate Beto O'Rourke.  He's set to end his term in 2025.

Pass Mark Levin's Supreme Court Amendment.  The Supreme Court was never supposed to be this powerful.  Alexander Hamilton claimed in The Federalist No. 78 that the judicial branch was to be the least powerful of the branches.  Though it has judgment, this pales in comparison to the force and will of the other branches.  It, after all, depends on the executive and legislative branches for cases to hear.  Though this was true for the first 14 years of the Constitution, it soon changed.  After the landmark decision of Marbury v. Madison took hold in 1803, it forever changed the power structure of our federal government and effectively derailing checks and balances.  It was the first decision that established judicial review.  Since then, the Court's decision has been final in determining if a law is unconstitutional.

UFO Over Chicago.  Last week, I became so distracted watching the flocks of pigs soaring through the clouds overhead that I nearly missed the Chicago Tribune report, headlined "Bill Daley, whose brother and father ran Chicago for 43 years, backs a term limit for mayor."  It is no surprise that this latest Daley launched his bid for the next mayoral election, which will be held in February.  What is surprising is the term limits biz.

The Top 5 Best Ideas for Constitutional Amendments.  [#5] Term Limits for Congress:  While the 22nd Amendment created a two-term limit for the presidency after FDR's four-terms, there has been no such amendment created to address term limits for Congress.  With the likes of Patrick Leahy (41 years), Orrin Hatch (39 years), Thad Cochran (37 years), Chuck Grassley (35 years), and Mitch McConnell (31 years) all serving 30+ years in Congress, it is pretty clear that special interests and stagnant thinking have become an impediment in our democratic process.

Here's why Maxine Waters is the 'poster person for term limits'.  A California Republican congressional candidate slammed his opponent, Rep. Maxine Waters, for being "weak" and "ineffective" as well as inciting "mob" violence against supporters of President Donald Trump.  Republican candidate Omar Navarro argued that a message of "unity" has to be brought back to communities, not the divisive rhetoric that Waters has been spewing.

Ending the judicial Wheel of Fortune:  The need for 18-year Supreme Court terms.  The Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections, yet unless Ruth Bader Ginsberg can stay on the bench until she is 87, there may soon be six conservative justices on a Supreme Court no longer in touch with the people.  High court justices live longer and serve longer than they used to.  Until 1970, the average justice served 15 years and retired at 68.  Today, he or she serves 26 years and retires at 79.  Clarence Thomas, for example, has been on the court 27 years, but shows no sign of retiring soon.  Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, just 49 and 53 when President Trump appointed them, could still be on the bench in the 2050s.

Save the Supreme Court:  Impose Term Limits on Justices.  While envisioned by Alexander Hamilton as "the least dangerous branch" and "the weakest of the three departments of power," intended to settle disputes rather than make policy, the judiciary has turned into a quasi-legislature, where disappointed activists turn if they lose political battles.  That view of the courts predominates on the Left, for whom the Constitution has virtually nothing to do with constitutional law.  The role of judges is to say what the law should be, not what it is.  What previous generations agreed to is irrelevant, a historical footnote.  A good jurist briefly mentions the nation's founding document while looking for ambiguous language.  He or she then claims to have discovered constitutional penumbras and emanations after great effort.  The opinion then justifies turning the latest political zeitgeist into law.  Jurisprudence is almost entirely result-oriented, with judges expected to vote as if they were legislators.

Watch Judge Kavanaugh Eviscerate A Nearly Inchoherent Senator Patrick Leahy During SCOTUS Confirmation Hearing.  Yet another aging Democrat put on a nationally-televised demonstration of the need for Congressional term limits.  Watch as 78-year-old Patrick Leahy makes reference to an email that doesn't actually exist.  Senator Leahy attempts to insinuate the email in question was stolen from him SIXTEEN YEARS AGO as nearly everyone in the hearing room, including Leahy's own staff, look on increasingly confused as to what the senator is talking about.  For his part, Judge Kavanaugh shows a remarkable degree of patience while also managing to entrap the senator in his own confused lie.  From there a badly beaten Leahy makes a hasty retreat and changes the subject.

Trump calls for congressional term limits.  President Trump signaled support on Monday [4/30/2018] for congressional term limits, saying he discussed the issue with a group of first-term lawmakers.  "I recently had a terrific meeting with a bipartisan group of freshman lawmakers who feel very strongly in favor of Congressional term limits," Trump tweeted.  "I gave them my full support and endorsement for their efforts."

Justice Ginsburg, 84, signals intent to work for years more.  In different circumstances, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg might be on a valedictory tour in her final months on the Supreme Court.  But in the era of Donald Trump, the 84-year-old Ginsburg is packing her schedule and sending signals she intends to keep her seat on the bench for years.

The Editor says...
Yes, I know there are no term limits on the Supreme Court.  Maybe that should change.

Orrin Hatch is out, Mitt Romney is in, and conservatism dies in Utah.  On his Twitter account yesterday Sen. Orrin Hatch — the quintessential example for why America needs to hold an Article V Convention of States — announced that his on again/off again retirement plans were back on. [...] Utah could take this opportunity to replace Orrin Hatch with another Mike Lee.  Unfortunately, it looks like Hatch will be replaced by a GOP establishment cheerleader who's just as bad as he is.  If Mitt Romney's political career has shown us anything, it's that his so-called values are negotiable and for sale to the highest bidder if it will help his chances to win an election.

Orrin Hatch is a favorite of Trump and McConnell, but not Utah voters.  In the Christmas Day edition of the Salt Lake Tribune, Sen. Orrin Hatch was recognized as Utahn of the Year.  While it appears to be complimentary, the honor was actually the exact opposite.  As explained in an editorial by the paper, the award goes to "the Utahn who, over the past 12 months, has done the most.  Has made the most news.  Has had the biggest impact.  For good or ill."  In Hatch's case, it was for ill, mainly due to his lies about making his current term in office his last and his "utter lack of integrity that rises from his unquenchable thirst for power."

An Unfond Farewell to Un-statesman Orrin Hatch.  He begin his occupancy in 1976, when all phones were dumb, the 5.25-inch floppy disk was cutting-edge, the very first Apple computer went on sale for $666.66, the Concorde was flying high, O.J. Simpson was a hero, Blake Shelton was a newborn, the first MRI was still a blueprint, and I was a gap-toothed first-grader wearing corduroy bell-bottoms crushing on Davy Jones.  This encrusted longevity will be marketed by Hatch, 83, and his supporters as proof of his "statesmanship."

Weekend at Thad's:  Mississippi Senator 'Frail and Disoriented'.  A four and a half decades-long career as a member of the Congress of the United States is coming to a humiliating and undignified end for 79-year-old Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS).  A reporter from Politico captured the sad scene at the Capitol on Wednesday [10/18/2017]:  ["]Cochran appeared frail and at times disoriented during a brief hallway interview on Wednesday.  He was unable to answer whether he would remain chairman of the Appropriations Committee, and at one point, needed a staffer to remind him where the Senate chamber is located.["]

Why the Swamp Hates Trump.  Imagine that you were elected to a federal office several years ago and had a safe seat with all the perks attached, including salary, expense account, and influence with corporate CEOs and other titans of industry.  Suppose further that you knew that the future would be prosperous when you left office because the connections you made would make you a fortune as a lobbyist.  Moreover, since unseating an incumbent is a herculean task, you felt that you were set for life.  In fact, as soon as you got elected, you began raising money and preparing for re-election. [...] Suddenly, a guy runs for office with a lot of ideas about "draining the swamp" and making rules that include a prohibition on lobbying for at least five years after leaving office.

Maybe Republicans want to lose the House.  [Scroll down]  And what is Paul Ryan's incentive to stay on as speaker?  He could make five to ten times as much money as a lobbyist.  He's never going back to Wisconsin.  He is a creature of the swamp.  He has lived in Janesville only one year since turning 18, and that was to run for Congress the first time.  College in Ohio followed by living in Washington.  Eric Cantor lost a primary to David Brat.  Cantor was rewarded with a nice lobbying job.  'Tis their nature.  Washington has become a magnet for men of weak will and poor character.

After Obamacare repeal collapses, Susan Collins caught trashing Trump.  What we have are career politicians from both parties who, along with their staffs, lobbyists, and bureaucrats, have amassed a huge amount of power while running up huge debts to this and future generations.  They do not like an outsider who wants to reduce their power.  The media are supporting the insiders with all their might instead of going after the powerful.  We need to clean the swamp, and we need to start with term limits.

Freedom and the GOP are dying under 'Leader' McConnell.  In a not-so-subtle chess move late last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., sent a signal to his rank-and-file that the time is coming to capitulate to Democrats on health care reform.  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., did not hesitate to exploit the weakness: [...] Stock criticisms of McConnell's conservatism and principle indeed apply.  But this last fumble, here at the final showdown over Obamacare — the apex of our generation's duty to limited government — goes well beyond questions of principle; it reveals a basic lack of competence to lead the Senate.  The majority leader is not up to the job.

Maxine Waters as Resistance Leader?  What a Joke.  Thirteen-term Democratic congresswoman Maxine Waters, Beltway barnacle permanently affixed to USS Government, is now the fresh-faced "rock star" of the Democratic party. [...] Waters has spent 37 years in office — many of those years as head of the Congressional Black Caucus — promising to make life better for constituents in economically ravaged South Central Los Angeles.  What do the denizens of her district have to show for it?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein at 84 is not planning to retire.  California's Dianne Feinstein turns 84 on Thursday and is displaying signs that she's headed for a re-election campaign, not a retirement party.

The Price of Power:  Congress' Maddening Cash Quota System.  Here is an exclusive first look at a new report that says you can put a price on success when it comes to Congress.  The report by "Issue One" exposes the secretive money system in which members of Congress "buy" top spots on the most powerful committees.  To raise the money, they often collect from the very interests their committees are supposed to oversee...  As an example, ordinary Republicans have six-figure party "dues."

Is Nancy Pelosi The Poster Girl For Term Limits?  Pelosi has been in office since 1987 — after inheriting the seat from her predecessor, Sala Burton, who had it bequeathed to her by her husband, Phillip Burton.  Phillip Burton had been elected to Congress in a special election in February 1964 and held California's 6th Congressional District seat for 10 consecutive elections until his death in 1983.  His wife, Sala Burton replaced him.  When Sala became ill with cancer in 1986, she decided to not run for reelection but instead put her support behind her friend, 46-year old Nancy Pelosi.  Pelosi won the seat in a special election after Sala's death and hasn't had any real opposition since.  She hasn't even participated in a candidates' debate since that first election in 1987.

Congressman: Term Limits 'Only Going to Happen If Enough Americans Make It Happen'.  Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) on Thursday urged American citizens to mobilize support for limiting congressional terms, which he believes would be a major step in fixing a broken system.  House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Freedom Caucus Reps.  Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) and Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) have all voiced support for setting term limits.  Cruz and DeSantis in January proposed a constitutional amendment that would limit senators to two six-year terms and House members to three two-year terms.  A constitutional amendment requires two-thirds support in both chambers of Congress, which would set the stage for state ratification.

Congressman Says Corruption in Washington Is 'Worse Than You Think'.  Corruption on Capitol Hill is "worse than you think," Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., insists.  "When you first get here, you think that you are in some sort of fairy-tale novel," Buck said.  "They wine and dine you and they show you just exactly what it's like if you play the game.  It's a wonderful life."  Things quickly change, however, if "you don't play the game."  "If you don't play the game ... it becomes a much less conformable existence here," Buck said.

Throw The Bums Out — And Other Reforms.  Being a member of Congress was never supposed to be a lifetime employment.  But for many, that's what it's become.  And even those who don't spend decades in Congress — the average member of Congress serves more than nine years — do the next best thing and often become lobbyists so they can keep paddling in the swamp.  President Trump supports, as do I, term limits for Congress to "clean up the corruption and special interest collusion in Washington, D.C.," as well as a five-year ban before members of the executive branch and members of Congress can be employed as lobbyists.  Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, has declared that term-limit proposals are dead on arrival:  "I would say we have term limits now," Mr. McConnell told reporters.  "They're called elections.  And it will not be on the agenda in the Senate."  McConnell has been in the U.S. Senate for thirty-three years; he's the longest-serving senator in the history of Kentucky.  He's about the last person you'd expect to want to drain the swamp, because he thrives in it, and you'd be right.  He is a firm supporter of the Washington swamp status quo.  And he's a perfect reason why we need term limits — because while his seniority might make him useful to some of the people of Kentucky, it also makes him a firm opponent of necessary congressional reform.

The Government Doesn't Care About You.  Let's be honest:  congressmen don't care about America, and they certainly don't care about you and me, the individuals.  Their every thought revolves around maintaining power and getting re-elected.

Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch willing to step aside for Mitt Romney.  Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said he would be open to step aside and not run for re-election in 2018 if a candidate like Mitt Romney were to run for his position in his stead.  In an interview with National Journal, the Republican senator who has been in office since 1976 said he "might very well consider" not campaigning for another term if an "outstanding person" were to run for his position.

Orrin Hatch is a lying Beltway clinger who deserves to be kicked to the curb.  In the last four years, since Sen. Hatch's landslide reelection in 2012, his voting record has repeatedly broken his promise to serve as a conservative senator.  Hatch has voted to fund Obamacare, to give amnesty to illegal aliens in the Gang of 8 bill, and to pass a 1,582 page Omnibus spending bill.  Hatch also voted over and over again to raise the debt ceiling and continue President Obama's big-spending liberal agenda.  Hatch's record in this last term goes against everything he stood for on the campaign trail in 2012, when he ran on a solid constitutional agenda devoted to stopping President Obama's liberal agenda.  Now he expects the people of Utah to send him back to the United States Senate for an eighth consecutive term.

Why Term-Limiting People Like John Lewis Would be Good for the Nation.  John Lewis has been a Representative for Georgia's 5th district for 28 years.  The 5th district of Georgia, which is mostly the city of Atlanta, has seen 5,203 commissions of violent crime in 2015, with 94 murders, 170 rapes, almost 2,000 robberies, almost 3,000 aggravated assaults and 25,556 total property crimes according to the FBI.  Trump is right, Atlanta is crime-ridden.  But not only is Atlanta a pretty dangerous city, it has become more dangerous since it has become a major drug-trafficking hub for Mexican drug cartels.

Chaffetz Wants To Relocate Federal Agencies Away From Washington, D.C..  Four of the five richest counties in the U.S. are Washington, D.C. suburbs — Loudoun, Fairfax and Arlington in Virginia and Howard in Maryland — so it is unsurprising that many Americans question the federal government taking money to prop up far-off elites?  One solution to the federal government being too expensive and out-of-touch is moving parts of it away from Washington, D.C., according to House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Jason Chaffetz.

Senator Chuck Schumer — A good example of why we need term limits in Congress.  There is no better representation of why we need term limits than Chuck Schumer.  Opponents of term limits claim experience is necessary.  That claim is antithetical to representative government, because it implies that the people are rubes and need the "smarter, better" people to make decisions for them.  It's in line with a need for rulers, instead of a representative.  I don't know what the Republicans will do on Obamacare, I'm not automatically in favor of whatever they do because they are Republicans.  That's partisan hackery.  But because of the fact that government programs, once in place, never die, means we will be fighting over what we have lost for a very long time because of the government take over of health insurance.

Cruz, DeSantis push for congressional term limits.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) are pushing for an amendment to the Constitution to place term limits on lawmakers, arguing the move will help overhaul Washington.  "The American people resoundingly agreed on Election Day, and President-elect Donald Trump has committed to putting government back to work for the American people," Cruz said in a statement on Tuesday.  "It is well past time to put an end to the cronyism and deceit that has transformed Washington into a graveyard of good intentions."  Under an amendment the two GOP lawmakers filed on Tuesday [1/3/2017], House members would be allowed to serve three two-year terms and senators would be able to serve two six-year terms.

Democrat Moonbats Have a New Swamp Defender — Maxine Waters.  One third of all recently elected Democrats hail from only three states:  New York, Massachusetts and California.  The entire party apparatus is increasingly ancient, archaic and collapsing unto itself because it now focuses entirely on social issues.  Speaking of archaic — The Democrat House leader for the past 14 years is 76-year-old Nancy Pelosi.  House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is 77, and Assistant Minority Leader Jim Clyburn of South Carolina is 76.  Representative Maxine Waters, also from California, is in her twenty-fifth year in the House (elected '91).  She is also 78 years old.

Here's What the Founders Thought About Term Limits.  With the sudden dominance of Republicans in Congress, state legislatures, and, of course, the White House, conservatives have an incredible opportunity to restore constitutional principles to government.  Several lawmakers have brought back the old idea of congressional term limits to "drain the swamp" on Capitol Hill.  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post suggesting they will endorse a constitutional amendment to limit the number of times a legislator can run for re-election to the same office, an idea that was also popularized by President-elect Donald Trump during his campaign.

Census Bureau: 4 Richest Counties in U.S. Are Suburbs of D.C..  The four richest counties in the United States, when measured by median household income, are all suburbs of Washington, D.C., according to newly released data from the Census Bureau.  They are Loudoun County, Va., where the median household income was $125,900 in 2015; Falls Church City, Va., where it was $122,092; Fairfax County, Va., where it was $112,844; and Howard County, Md., where it was $110,224.  The Census Bureau treats independent cities such as Falls Church, Va., as the equivalent of a county when calculating its median household income statistics.

Draining the Swamp:  Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis to Propose Constitutional Amendment on Term Limits.  Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) have revealed their plans to introduce a constitutional amendment that will impose term limits for both congressmen and senators.  In a joint op-ed for The Washington Post, the two Republican firebrands said that term limits would be an effective way for the new Republican administration to "drain the swamp."  "We believe that the rise of political careerism in modern Washington is a drastic departure from what the founders intended of our federal governing bodies.  To effectively "drain the swamp," we believe it is past time to enact term limits for Congress."

More Voters Than Ever Want Term Limits for Congress.  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is calling for term limits on members of Congress even though his party currently controls both the House of Representatives and the Senate.  Voters agree more strongly than ever with the need for term limits but also still doubt Congress will go along with them.  A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 74% of Likely U.S. Voters favor establishing term limits for all members of Congress.  Just 13% are opposed, while just as many (13%) are undecided.

Evan Bayh Is A Carpetbagger.  I live in the same neighborhood as Evan Bayh.  Or so he wants Indiana voters to believe.  Yet I never seem to see him at CVS or Dunkin Donuts or Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts.  I sure would love to give that guy a friendly wave and a "Howdy, neighbor!"  But he's never around.  As it turns out, I'm not just imagining things.

8 Times Liberals Claimed An Election Was Stolen Or Rigged.  In 2014, [Ezra] Klein wrote a piece explaining that the election process is skewed in favor of incumbent candidates.  Once in office, candidates often get to have a say in where the electoral lines are drawn — which means they can gerrymander their way into staying in office.  "A new Rasmussen poll finds that 68 percent of Americans think elections are rigged in favor of incumbents," he wrote.  "And they're basically right. ... Few congressional elections are seriously competitive.  Reelection rates for incumbents tend to hover around 90 percent."

Who are the Longest-Sitting Members of Congress Today? 

CNN Host Tries to Burn Trump, Thinks Members of Congress Already Have Term Limits.  CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin criticized Donald Trump's call for term limits on members of Congress on Tuesday [10/18/2016] by incorrectly saying that such limits already existed.  As part of a new policy to "drain the swamp" in Washington, D.C., Trump announced Tuesday he would push for a constitutional amendment as president to impose term limits on all members of Congress.  "Correct me, there already are term limits, so what does he mean?" Baldwin skeptically asked reporter Dana Bash.  Indeed, Baldwin had to be corrected.  Bash did so politely.

Smug CNN Moonbat Claims "There are already term limits in congress".  In what can only be described as the current intelligence customarily found amid the Clinton News Network, host and pundit Brooke Baldwin looks at her panel, smugly and condescendingly replying:  ... "there are already term limits, so what does he mean"?  [Video clip]

CNN Anchor Brooke Baldwin Doesn't Know There Are No Term Limits for Members of Congress.  The liberal media that is pushing Hillary Clinton down our throats while trashing Donald Trump every chance they get may not be as informed as they portray themselves.  Take for instance CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin who is under the impression that there are term limits for members of the US Congress.  Even funnier is that she made this mistaken point while trying to stick it to Trump.  Brooke Baldwin is a fairly attractive woman and perhaps she got her job more on her looks than her journalist chops.  On Tuesday she was reporting that Donald Trump has made a pledge that if he were elected president, he would propose a Constitutional amendment that would place term limits on Congress.  Here's what Baldwin had to say about this: [...]

Bill Clinton is not responsible for the economic boom of the 90s.  Politicians, have no value per se, they do not need to have a skill, be literate, do their jobs properly, or perform excellent customer service.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Once elected, a politican needs to be proven to commit huge crimes in order to be ousted from office.  And that, as we've seen with HRC, is nearly impossible (because, they control the police, FBI, etc.).  Politicans have no value or skill — they have POWER.  Because once they are in office, they can enact ordinances, executive orders, create taxes, declare emergencies, zone property, create business licenses, enforce or not enforce regulations, and many other powers.

Former state Sen. Al Lawson beats longtime U.S. Rep.  Corrine Brown in Congressional District 5.  Embattled U.S. Rep.  Corrine Brown lost her bid for a 13th term in Congress on Tuesday [8/30/2016], outpolled by former state Sen. Al Lawson while a federal fraud trial loomed ahead of her.

Our System Was Not Designed for Career Politicians.  As an avid supporter of term limits, I have addressed this subject in this column many times over the years and have received some valid and sensible opposition to my opinion.  The basic counter argument is that the bi-yearly or quad-yearly elections serve as term limits, as the voters have a chance to replace any candidate, but if they are doing a good job for their state, congressional district or whatever, why should they be removed from office just because they have served a prescribed amount of terms?  Well, one rebuttal is fairly obvious and the other more obscure. [...]

The Unlearned Lessons of Watergate.  [Scroll down]  While most citizens believe that their federal legislators should go to Washington to legislate on the important issues of the day, they are appalled when they learn the number of hours legislators actually spend fundraising rather than legislating.  Simply put, it is time for bipartisan, legislative action that benefits average Americans — not the special interests — to become the norm in Washington again, and the first step to a functioning government is relieving the stranglehold money has over how we elect our leaders.

Eight-term GOP congressman loses primary.  Rep.  Randy Forbes, R-Va., became the third congressman and second Republican on Tuesday to be ousted in a primary this year.  Forbes is an eight-term lawmaker from the 2nd District of Virginia, and his loss to state House delegate and former Navy SEAL Scott Taylor was due in part to redistricting in the state.

In year of supposed angry electorate, just one congressional incumbent ousted in primary.  In the year of the supposed angry electorate, millions of frustrated voters have put their weight behind the outsider presidential campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders but continue to back congressional incumbents — ousting only one so far in hundreds of 2016 primaries contests.  The lone victim was Pennsylvania Democratic Rep.  Chaka Fattah, but his ouster appeared more about questionable ethics than frustration with Washington insiders.  The 11-term congressman is facing a 29-count federal indictment related to racketeering, bribery and mail fraud.

Politician tells all in manifesto.  An anonymous congressman has dropped a bombshell election-year book that confirms why Americans hate their national government and have rallied to anti-establishment presidential candidates like Donald Trump.  The veteran politician lays bare a rotten and corrupt Congress enslaved by lobbyists and interested only in re-election in an anonymous, 65-page manifesto called "The Confessions of Congressman X."  "Like most of my colleagues, I promise my constituents a lot of stuff I can never deliver," he admits.  "But [...] My main job is to keep my job."

America Needs Congressional Term-Limits And A President From Outside-the-Beltway.  To better understand why Republicans don't want an "outsider" in the White House, we need an honest assessment of congress members.  Their average salary of $174,000 is three times the average American's salary of $52,000 — and many citizens are paid much less than that — if they are employed at all.  Congress has set its own pay scales for years, and surreptitiously increased its own salaries while providing inadequate or zero cost of living adjustments for Social Security recipients, many who are elderly with health problems.  Congress voted to put the public under the costly and flawed Obamacare, while exempting themselves because they have much better health coverage.  Congress members who have served only five years are entitled to a governmental pension, whereas a citizens must have at least twenty years or more of service to qualify.

Plans for Congress Term Limits Must Be Kept Short and Tight.  Term Limits is a weapon that should be used to stop congressional spending which always ends up by creating bigger governments, more taxes and ever-mounting debt that punishes our children and perhaps even drives more nails into the country's coffin.  But instead of getting to the heart of the matter most proposals nibble at the edges and leave matters almost as bad as they found them.  No one seems willing to jump on the wagon and drive it home with a workable goal.  I have been preaching for several years that we need to stop legislative robbery.  I'm talking about how we get novice politicos that come to Washington almost penniless and in a very few short years they are filing tax returns in the millions of dollars.  How'd they do that on a salary of $174.K per year?

The Entrenched Parties Have Weakened America.  The rise of Trump is not a fluke, but it reflects anger with the establishment.  His vocabulary is inflammatory; he is braggadocio to a fault.  The establishment opponents do not understand the frustrations of the citizenry.  Our conservative leaders have not redeemed their promise to halt Obama's Executive Orders, his damage to our military, the bleeding of our treasury, the division among the races, illegal immigration at the expense of citizens and states, and loss of national pride and exceptionalism.  Our nation is resilient, but our politicians have created this mess.

Monarchical Obama? Real monarchs are humbler and a whole lot cheaper.  [Scroll down]  For at least 100 years, power has been dribbling from the 50 states to Washington, and from the legislature to the executive.  America's permanent federal bureaucracy has become an unofficial fourth branch, assuming most of the competences once exercised by the Crown.  Do you imagine that President Hillary Clinton would reverse this trend?  Or President Donald Trump?  Even the most literalist conservatives have a tendency to give themselves the benefit of the doubt once their own hands are on the levers of power.  And shall I tell you the worst thing?  Hardly anyone seems to care.  As long as people are getting the outcomes they want, they lose interest in process.

This is one way to "term limit" a politician:
33-Year-Old Veteran Mounts Bid Against Alabama's 81-Year-Old GOP Senator.  A 33-year-old Marine veteran in Alabama is trying to convince national conservative groups to help his campaign, hoping the state's Republican Senate primary this year will be the next battleground between conservative outsiders and the Republican establishment.  That candidate, Jonathan McConnell of Birmingham, Ala., is running against Sen. Richard Shelby, a longtime incumbent lawmaker with a $19 million campaign war chest that has scared off challengers before.

75 Percent of Americans Think U.S. Government Is 'Corrupt'.  A shocking finding from a recent Gallup survey explains a great deal of the turmoil rolling through the Presidential contest.  A staggering 75 percent of Americans say that "corruption is widespread throughout the government."  The number saying the government is corrupt is up dramatically, almost 10 points, since Barack Obama took office.  This isn't just the cynicism of technophile citizens in the developed world.  The number of Americans who view the government as corrupt is almost twice the number of Germans who believe their government is dirty.

After 25 Years in Congress, Sanders Claims He's 'Not Exactly a Career Politician'.  The beginning of this year marked 25 years since Sen. Bernie Sanders first took the oath of office as a U.S. representative.  Prior to that he served four terms as the mayor of Burlington — Vermont's largest city.  Thus, you could say politics is all Bernie knows, making it all the more bizarre that he apparently doesn't consider himself a career politician.

It Has Come to This.  The United States of America that we grew up in, and in some cases fought for, no longer exists.  I would like to write something stirring in defense of our Constitution, but it isn't under attack.  It is simply ignored.  Some have proposed that we have a Constitutional convention to add new amendments.  What would that accomplish?  Would our present Federal government respect a set of new amendments when they don't respect the old ones?  What good does it do to insist on one's rights as a citizen, when in fact mere citizenship has lost its meaning?  Americans have no rights officials in Washington feel bound to recognize.  Both Republicans and Democrats overrule majority opinion as a matter of course.  They do not doubt for a moment that they are the best and brightest, and that our voting franchise is merely an antiquated inconvenience.  My elected representatives represent no one but themselves.

Rubio: Amend the U.S. Constitution.  U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio is endorsing a Convention of States to amend the U.S. Constitution, saying it's the only way to impose term limits on Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court and to require a balanced federal budget.

The surprising reason behind Obama's aggressive drive to regulate you more.  Leveraging the behavior of massive institutions in a democracy is very difficult.  On purpose for stability's sake.  Even when control of Congress changes parties, institutional inertia is powerful.  Same for altering the direction of accumulating liberal or conservative court decisions.  Change requires, well, changing members through election and retirement. Opinion polls show approval of Congress now nearing historic lows in single digits.  But wait! Statistics show that in congressional elections every two years, voters routinely reelect at least 90% of Senate and House incumbents — nine out of ten.

Conyers clings on and on and on.  A Detroit looking hopefully to the future does not need political representation that's locked to the past.  That's what it'll have if voters do what they always do and return Democrat John Conyers to Congress in 2016 just because his name appears on the ballot.  A lot of his fellow Democrats were hoping the 86-year-old congressman would forgo seeking a 27th term and give one of Detroit's promising young leaders a chance at the seat.  But this week, he announced he'll run once more for re-election.

Bobby Jindal: Fire everybody in Washington.  Speaking in the undercard GOP debate Tuesday [11/10/2015] in Milwaukee, Mr. Jindal passed on the chance to answer a moderator's question about which Democrat they admire most on Capitol Hill, calling it a "silly" question and a waste of time.  "Let me use my time to say this:  I want to fire everybody in DC in both parties," Mr. Jindal said.  "We need term limits, get rid of them all, and make them live under the same laws they pass for the rest of us."  Mr. Jindal espoused a tough tone in the four-person event, ripping both parties for allowing the federal government to get bigger and bigger.

Wanted: A President of Good Character.  The United States is getting slapped around by every thug and bully in the world, from Vladimir Putin, playing the Czar of All Russias, to the Chinese, the Stalinist North Koreans, the proto-Nazis of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Jihadi butchers of ISIS, and most of all, the Persian rug-sellers of Tehran.  What a crew.  Under Obama the nuclear horse has finally escaped from the barn, and will soon join the other four horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Obama hasn't even tried to stop it, after swearing to do so, in public, a couple of hundred times.  At the same time Valerie Jarrett was negotiating surrender behind the scenes.  All that, thanks to the Washington establishment — yes, even the GOP and the DC lifers — the permanent bureaucrats.

McConnell Angers Conservatives By Blocking Defunding Planned Parenthood, Kate's Law.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has never been a favorite of conservatives.  Those who see him as a "squishy" compromiser more interested in placating President Barack Obama and K Street lobbyists than the Republican base had more fuel tossed on that fire when he blocked amendments to the Highway Bill Tea Party members wholeheartedly support.  One amendment would defund Planned Parenthood, the nationwide abortion provider which receives more than a half billion dollars in taxpayer subsidies annually.  McConnell has previously said he supports defunding Planned Parenthood, [...] But the leader blocked an amendment to the Highway Bill that would have defunded the organization.

The Editor says...
As I see it, the Tea Party has two primary opponents:  The Democratic Party and the Republican Party.  This makes it fairly obvious that the Tea Party must organize as a separate political party if it is to gain any traction.  Working within the Republican Party or trying to pull the Republican Party to the right is not working, and in the absence of term limits or the spontaneous resignations of Senators McConnell, Boehner, Graham, and McCain, it will never work.  The fossilized Washington establishment knows no party lines.  Senator McCain in particular should switch parties and run for president as a Democrat.  He'd have a good chance of winning, partly because the Republican establishment would be afraid to criticize him.

America Is Completely On Board with Mark Levin's Proposal for Supreme Court Term Limits.  It's okay to have no patience for the hero-centric model of political interest — wherein we fall in line with a leader's opinions like a flag to rally around, neglecting that the conservative movement is about ideas, logic, and never about personality — while believing that Mark Levin's decade of getting it right on the Supreme Court deserves some recognition.  Plenty of conservatives — and conservatism itself, via the above point — correctly predicted every negative occurrence of the past decade's adventures in progressivism.  But I'm not sure anyone else can claim to have been completely on the mark about the Court's progression, as Levin was with his 2005 book Men in Black.

Ted Cruz Is Right: The Supreme Court Needs Term Limits.  In a year in which both liberals and conservatives have had plenty of decisions to cheer for and to criticize, term limits appropriately does not favor either political party or any ideology and has strong bipartisan support.  There are many ways to accomplish term limits, but the best idea is that each justice should be appointed for an 18-year, non-renewable term, thus creating a vacancy every two years.

Cruz blasts Supreme Court on rulings, calls for judicial retention elections.  Presidential candidate and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz blasted the Supreme Court's rulings on ObamaCare subsidies and same-sex marriage Friday [6/26/2015], branding them "lawless" and calling for a constitutional amendment that would introduce "periodic judicial-retention elections." [...] Arguing that the Constitution specifies that Supreme Court Justices "Shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour," Cruz called for judicial retention elections as a legitimate method for "throwing off judicial tyrants."  "Every Justice, beginning with the second national election after his or her appointment, will answer to the American people and the states in a retention election every eight years," Cruz proposed.

The Editor says...
That sounds okay at first, but such a system would inject politics into the Supreme Court, which is designed to be immune from politics.  Even so, an 18-year term should be long enough for anybody, since a seat on the Supreme Court usually happens at the end of a judge's career.

Too bad we've lost interest in term limits.  Republican John McCain says he will seek election to a sixth six-year term in the U.S. Senate.  Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) built a power base over nearly 30 years before deciding this year to retire.  Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco has 27 years in the House of Representatives.  Politicians grow ancient and even die of old age in office.  Democrat Robert Byrd spent more than half his life in the Senate, representing West Virginia from 1959 until his death in 2010 at age 92.  Republican Strom Thurmond of South Carolina clocked 48 years in the Senate, retiring at age 100 and dying afterward.

Sen. John McCain announces he's running for 6th term.  The Arizona Republican made the announcement to run for a sixth term on Monday [4/6/2015] in an interview with NBC News.

The Old, Rich Washington Lawyers' Party.  The recent mention of Al Gore as a possible alternative to Hillary Clinton suggests that the top five Democrat contenders, if Gore actually gets in the contest, will be, in order:  Hillary, Warren, Biden, Gore, and Webb.  Governor O'Malley trails even Webb in the polling data, and Bernie Sanders, of course, is a Socialist and not a Democrat. [...] [These] Democrats are lawyers, Ivy League professors, and federal politicians.  They live within the Beltway of Boston to Washington.  They are old.  Everything about these five reeks of insider influence, unproductive jobs on an engorged public teat, and physically living in the Never-Never Land sandwiched among the rich, spoiled Ivy League academia; the global capital of the news media; and Washington D.C., whose only product is government.

This month's poster child for term limits:
Eunuch Mitch McConnell Squeals Like a Pig.  I told you guys the Senate GOP would screw us over on DHS funding, but even I had no idea Mitch McConnell would capitulate so easily.  I assumed he'd do a major song and dance first, but instead he just went all Ned Beatty in Deliverance the moment Barack Obama looked at him funny.  Good grief.  Even CNN's website declared that the Democrats were the ones blocking Department of Homeland Security Funding.  McConnell behaved as if he needs testosterone injections.  His minion in the press want everyone to know the steel in his spine, but it is more silly putty.  His friends say other people call McConnell "Darth Vader."  Honestly, I've gotten on Lexis-Nexis.  The only people ever saying McConnell is Darth Vader are McConnell's friends.

Another Case for Term Limits.  In 2010, Plymouth, Conn., was awarded $430,000 for widening sidewalks and related matters near two schools.  This money was a portion of the $612 million that Congress had authorized for five years of the federal Safe Routes to School program, which is intended to fight childhood obesity by encouraging children to burn calories by walking or biking to school.  Really.  Fortunately, Plymouth is near Sharon, Conn., home of the Buckley family, whose members, when their gimlet eyes notice nonsense, become elegantly polemical.  So Congress's Safe Routes silliness inadvertently did something excellent.  It helped to provoke James Buckley to write a slender book that, if heeded, would substantially improve American governance.

Lott to GOP: Rein in conservative freshmen.  Former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott is urging today's GOP leaders to co-opt staunchly conservative freshmen if possible and to marginalize the rest in order to ease congressional gridlock.

Almost half of the 114th Congress has been elected since 2010.  Come January, nearly half of Congress (48.8 percent) will have been in office for four years or less — i.e. elected in 2010 or later.  That includes 49.7 percent of the House and 45 percent of the Senate  — assuming GOP Rep. Bill Cassidy defeats Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in the Louisiana runoff Dec. 6.  Going back a little further (based on numbers crunched from Fair Vote data), 63 percent of the new Congress will have been elected in 2006 or later.

The Editor says...
All that may be true, but it is the entrenched old-timers, not the newcomers, that are the biggest problem in the Congress.  If the 2016 election sweeps out a few of the establishment's permanent fixtures, there might be a chance to pass an amendment to the Constitution to codify term limits for Congress.

Time for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid to go.  In politics, there's nothing harder than realizing that it's time to go.  People who have made their careers as Beltway politicians start to think they've become indispensable to Washington, when in fact it's Washington that has become indispensable to them.  And so they can't or won't recognize when the moment has come to move on to other things.  For Democrats Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, that moment has arrived.  With the Democrats' midterm losses, the two 74-year-olds should announce that when this session of Congress ends, they will relinquish their roles as leaders of their respective Democratic caucuses.

How the GOP Establishment Plans to Steal Your Election.  Almost every anti-establishment firebrand is the same.  Elected to break the chokehold that Beltway elites have on the republic, they come to Washington with their constituents' concerns foremost.  They are eager to heave overboard the dead weight that sinks the balance of powers, and ready to defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.  Then it happens.  One taste of the waters of forgetfulness on Capitol Hill and suddenly their goal is something called "incumbency," and their allegiance is to the powers that be — "the leadership."  It hardly matters which party's.

Give Back the Senate.  The Seventeenth Amendment made the Senate utterly redundant.  Now it's kind of a retirement home for lifers; the House of Lords with six year terms that get further and further away from the people that elected them and who sit in a sort of royal court being serenaded by special interest groups in DC steakhouses.  The Senate was designed to protect the power of the states because the more power the states have, the less power the Federal government has — and vice versa.

This month's poster child for term limits:
McCain 'leaning towards' reelection run.  Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says he is "leaning towards" running for reelection and is well aware he'll likely face a tough primary challenge from the right.

A new case for Congressional term limits.  It is official: America "is at war."  We know this because the president's press secretary says so.  Congress has not said so, but many members say that the Islamic State must be countered and that they may have more to say about this in a few months.

Term limits would probably eliminate situations like this:
Uh Oh: Mary Landrieu Doesn't Own a Home in Louisiana.  This is not what embattled "Louisiana" Democrat Sen. Mary Landrieu wanted to read in the Washington Post — which, as it turns out, is her hometown paper: [...] Landrieu has gone 'full Beltway.'  She lives in her multimillion-dollar DC mansion, not in the state she ostensibly serves.  The Senator claims that she lives at her parents' house when she's in town, but neighbors, including some of her supporters, aren't so sure.

Another poster child for term limits:
81-year-old Rep. Don Young is getting married.  Young, who has served in the House since 1973, is running for re-election.  The lawmaker is perhaps best known for his association with the 2005 "bridge to nowhere" controversy in which he tried to steer more than $220 million for the construction of an enormous bridge linking mainland Alaska to a sparsely populated island.

Sen. Pat Roberts fends off tea party challenge.  Milton Wolf, 43, a Leawood radiologist making his first run for public office, failed to pull the upset in the race against [Senator Pat] Roberts, 78, whose political dates to the late 1960s, when he was a congressional aide.

'Blame Cruz' Is the New 'Blame Bush' for Whiny Democrats.  No one is living rent free in more Democrats' heads these days than Ted Cruz. [...] What Cruz is most guilty of is responding to his constituency rather than the popularity police on Capitol Hill.  We have created a permanent ruling class thanks to a lazy electorate who returns idiots to office for decades.  These idiots stay in office by mugging for the cameras but not really doing much.  Anybody new who shows up and acts like a representative in this — you know — representative republic is just asking for trouble.

Career Politicians on the Rise: How to Stem the Tide.  The trend creating "career politicians" has been growing for decades, and it has surely contributed to the entrenchment of power in D.C. and its separation from the will of the American people.  Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post states, "There are many more people populating our state legislatures and U.S. Congress who have never done anything outside of being a professional politician than there were even a few decades ago.

16 Reasons Why the United States is Going to Hell in a Handbasket.  [#8]  As former Governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura has said; when you spend millions of dollars to get elected to a position that pays a hundred thousand a year, we know those figures don't add up.

Why Are Establishment Republicans Supporting Thad Cochran?  Anyone that wants to know what is wrong with today's Republican Party need only look to the state of Mississippi.  A 76-year-old Republican Senator, Thad Cochran, who has been serving in the United States Congress for 42 years, is running yet again for another six-year term.  This, while his dementia-ridden wife has been sitting in a nursing home for the last 14 years.

Mississippi vote rattles Cochran, Republican country club.  Taking out an incumbent U.S. senator is not easy.  Nine of 10 senators up for re-election in the last congressional elections held their seats.  This kind of job security makes the Senate a bit of a country club, where the attitude of "going along to get along" ensures a life of relative ease and comfort.  Tea Party activists have been itching to cancel a few of those country club memberships and invite conservatives of a deeper shade of red to the club.  They have a shot now in Mississippi,

No, the Supreme Court Doesn't Need Term Limits.  Some of you may believe partisanship is a healthy organic reflection of genuine disagreement in the nation, but for the well-known political scientist Norm Ornstein, there is nothing more devastating than inaction. [...] Limiting terms is hardly a new idea among those on the left who believe that a bunch of old codgers are holding up progress by taking all things too literally.  The thing is that Ornstein's justification for term limits is selectively deployed.  First off, when you dig a little deeper into his argument, you end up where you always end up when you dig into his argument:  "Partisanship" and "polarization" equal "conservatives."  Ornstein notes how "asymmetric" things have become as "conservative justices have moved very sharply to the right, liberals a bit more modestly to the left."

Oldest man in Congress makes Texas history — by losing.  Ralph Hall made history this week, not just for being the first incumbent defeated this year as he lost in his 18th bid for re-election.  The oldest member of Congress — described as an institution in Texas politics — also became the first incumbent Republican House member from Texas to lose his party's nomination in nearly 150 years, according to a review by SmartPolitics, a nonpartisan political news site.  Hall's loss to John Ratcliffe, a 48-year-old former U.S. attorney backed by the Tea Party, ends a streak of 256 House primary wins by incumbent Texas Republicans.

Look What 42 Years In DC Has Done to Senator Thad Cochran.  There are things that campaign strategists do when they are terrified of losing, and when they are the autopilot for a candidate too detached and insulated to bother monitoring them, things get ugly really quick. [...] It really is DC against the people.  We must understand that.  It's only us out here, in our towns, small and big, that can change the direction of this nation from the course it is on.

Rep. Ralph Hall defeated by John Ratcliffe.  Rep. Ralph Hall (R-Tex.), the oldest-serving member of Congress and one of the last World War II veterans serving on Capitol Hill, became the first incumbent House lawmaker to lose a primary challenge this year by losing Tuesday night to a tea party-backed challenger.  Hall lost to John Ratcliffe, a former U.S. attorney and small-town mayor who spent more than $500,000 of his own fortune to defeat the 18-term incumbent, especially on television ads that raised questions about whether 91-year old Hall was still fit to hold elective office.

Oldest man in Congress fights for another term.  [Scroll down]  The main topic is Hall himself and whether the oldest man serving in Congress should be elected to an 18th term.  "I'm the hardest worker in politics you ever saw," Hall said.  "I still run two miles every morning.  I vote 99% of the time.  I do anything that those other guys do."  John Ratcliffe, the Republican trying to unseat Hall, asserts his issue is not with Hall's age but his tenure.  A former U.S. attorney and small-town mayor, Ratcliffe said he is trying to make a point about citizen legislators and the need for change in Washington.

Anti-incumbent sentiment strongest in 20 years.  A new Gallup poll shows that congressional incumbents should worry about re-election — at least a little bit.  More than 70% in the poll say that incumbents don't deserve re-election while only 22% say they do.  This represents the lowest percentage of voters who believe incumbents should be returned to Washington in more than 20 years.

Sometimes politicians term-limit themselves.
Wayne Co. clerk throws Conyers off primary ballot.  The political future of U.S. Rep. John Conyers, the longest-serving African-American in Congress, hinges on a federal legal challenge and an appeal to the state's top elections officer after the Detroit Democrat Tuesday was thrown off the primary ballot.  Wayne County Clerk Cathy Garrett agreed with her staff that Conyers had 592 signatures — 408 less than the 1,000 required by state law — and called the decision unfortunate.  But Garrett said she's "bound by the current laws and statutes of the State of Michigan that set forth very specific and narrow instructions regarding candidate petitions and the authority of the County Clerk."

This 50-Year Congressman Can't Find the Ballot.  After nearly 50 years in Congress, John Conyers may end his political career in the most undignified way possible, by not even making the ballot.  The Michigan representative is the longest serving African-American in congressional history and will be the most senior elected official on Capitol Hill if he's returned to office next year, but a snafu with the signature-gathering process may cost him a place on the ballot and make a formidable opponent out of a challenger who would otherwise be a long-shot.

Long-Time Dem Rep. John Conyers Fails to Qualify for Election Ballot.  Wayne County, Michigan officials reported this weekend that long-time Detroit Democrat Representative John Conyers didn't submit enough signatures to qualify for the ballot this year.  Authorities say Conyers was 400 signatures short of having enough to qualify to run for re-election.  Many of the signatures were thrown out because some of his signature-gatherers were not registered to vote in Michigan as required by law.

Dem 'disarray'? Florida House candidate drops out, Conyers kept off ballot.  Democrats suffered a double blow after their choice candidate in a Florida House race suddenly dropped out and longtime Michigan Rep. John Conyers apparently failed to qualify for the primary ballot in his state.  Republicans, looking to defend their majority in the House this fall, seized on the developments as a sign that Democrats are in "disarray" in the mid-terms.

Cochran Lists DC Address As His Primary Residence.  Newly revealed documents cast a doubtful glare on where exactly Republican Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran calls home.  The documents, as first reported by Breitbart, show that since 2003, Cochran repeatedly lists an address owned by an aide as his primary residence.  His campaign claimed that his primary residence was instead a self-described "cabin" in Oxford, MS, but on formal documents, Cochran identified that residence in 2006 and 2010 as a second home.

Ted Cruz: 'Our democratic process is broken and corrupt right now'.  Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, denounced the current electoral rules as "broken and corrupt" because they favor incumbents, as he responded to retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' argument in favor of a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to cap campaign donations.  "Our democratic process is broken and corrupt right now because politicians in both parties hold on to incumbency," Cruz said during a Senate hearing Wednesday [4/30/2014].  "We need to empower the individual citizens."

Pat Roberts Stumbles in Answering About His Kansas Residency.  On the topic of his residency, which has been subject of controversy, [Sen. Pat] Roberts insisted he was a resident of Kansas and downplayed the importance of actually being in Kansas in order to properly represent Kansas.  However, Roberts did stumble during his explanation when asked where he spends his time when the Senate is not session, which apparently has not been his declared residency of Dodge City, a home that has been rented out.

GOP primary challenger to Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts: 'Nobody should spend 47 years in Washington'.  The Republican challenger to Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., thinks nobody should spend 47 years in Washington.  Dr. Milton Wolf, a diagnostic radiologist from the Kansas City area, on Wednesday released a television ad criticizing Roberts for his nearly five decades in the nation's capital.  "After 47 years in Washington, Kansas is a distant memory for Pat Roberts," the ad opens, before pivoting to Wolf's daily routine as a Kansas doctor.

For Whom The Tea Party Tolls.  Ralph Hall is the oldest person to sit in the House of Representatives in American history.  The Texas Republican, who was born in the Harding Adminstration, was first elected to Congress in 1980 and has represented Northeast Texas's 4th Congressionial District ever since.  But his time on Capitol Hill may come to an abrupt end in Texas's primary runoff on May 27th as conservatives sense blood in the water.

A case for House term limits.  [Scroll down]  Think about it.  Four-year terms for representatives, senators and presidents.  The same start time and end time for the executive and legislative branches of government.  A maximum of two terms for any elected official.  This is the type of scenario that could potentially create a more democratic and transparent political system that many Americans crave.  It would prevent the same old political names from always appearing on the ballot, and, hopefully, encourage new people with good ideas to run for public office.

Congressional Terms & Benefits:  A Proposed Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Longtime US Rep. Ralph Hall, 90, Faces Runoff.  A conservative former U.S. attorney forced the oldest member of the U.S. House into a runoff election Tuesday night [3/4/2014] for the Republican nomination.

Wife of John Dingell Running for Seat He Is Stepping Down From.  If you think the Kennedy dynasty seems to have lasted forever, that's nothing compared to Michigan's 12th congressional district, where Democratic Congressman John Dingell, Jr., 87, who succeeded his father in 1955 and is the longest serving Congressman in U.S. history, announced on Monday that he is stepping down.  Dingell is tacitly encouraging his wife, Debbie, 60, to replace him. [...] Dingell's father, John Dingell Sr., served from 1933 to 1955.

29-Term Congressman Retiring, Because 'I Don't Want People to Say I Stayed Too Long'.  The longest-serving representative in the history of Congress will be stepping down at the end of this term.  Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who turns 88 years old in July, has served in the House for 58 years and 29 terms.  "I'm not going to be carried out feet first," Dingell told the Detroit News.  "I don't want people to say I stayed too long."  Dingell is expected to announce at a luncheon in his district today that he'll retire from the seat he's held since 1955.

This Senator is 76 years old.
Senior Republican Sen. Thad Cochran says he doesn't 'know a lot about' the Tea Party.  Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., a 36-year Republican senator facing a primary challenge in 2014, denied that he is out of touch with voters but acknowledged that he "doesn't know a lot about" the Tea Party.  "The Tea Party is something I don't really know a lot about," Cochran, who was elected senator in 1978 after six years in the House, told Mississippi News Now.  Cochran denied Tea Party rival Chris McDaniel's accusation that he's out of touch with conservatives.  "I'm as in touch with the people of Mississippi as an elected official can be," he said.

Here's an example of a problem that term limits would mitigate:
Republican senator facing Tea Party challenger doesn't live in his 'home' state.  A Republican senator facing a Tea Party challenger this year revealed that he doesn't live in his home state, an admission likely to fuel an opposition that has already accused him of going native in the nation's capitol.  "I have full access to the recliner," Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told the New York Times, referring to the fact that the Kansas residence he listed as his voting address actually belongs to two donors.

Pat Roberts, senator from Kansas: I don't have a home of my own in Kansas.  This feels like a re-run of Dick Lugar's last campaign:  Midwestern Republican who's spent decades in Washington decides that turning 80 is still too soon to cede power.  Lugar didn't reside in his home state either except in the most pro forma way, in order to qualify for the ballot.  Roberts has already learned a lesson from that, tacking towards the right over the past year a la Orrin Hatch to pander to tea partiers in hopes that there won't be a groundswell against him as there was against Lugar.

Visiting Wichita isn't the same as living there.
Roberts: NYT Residency Story Is Wrong.  Kansas senator Pat Roberts hit back today at a New York Times story questioning whether the senator has a residence in his home state.  "We had an interview with Jonathan Martin where we discussed the senator's residency, and what turned up in the story is a distortion," Sarah Little, the Roberts campaign's communications director, tells National Review Online.  Little says the senator is in Wichita today and goes back to the state whenever he can, and that the Times piece is a hit job.

Pat Roberts races to renew ties, if not make a home, in Kansas.  It is hard to find anyone who has seen Sen. Pat Roberts here at the red-brick house on a golf course that his voter registration lists as his home.  Across town at the Inn Pancake House on Wyatt Earp Boulevard, breakfast regulars say the Republican senator is a virtual stranger.  "He calls it home," said Jerald Miller, a retiree.  "But I've been here since '77, and I've only seen him twice."

Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts won't say how many days he spends in Kansas.  Recently the New York Times reported that Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts, who owns a duplex in Dodge City as well as a house in Alexandria, Va., does not live in the Dodge City home when he is in Kansas.  Instead, Roberts has rented out the house for several years; he told the Times he pays a friend $300 a month to stay in a room in the friend's house during visits to his home state.  The article set off an uproar, with both Democrats and Republicans slamming Roberts.  But the piece did not shed much light on the bigger question, which is how much time Roberts spends in Kansas.

Rep. Mulvaney Introduces Congressional Term Limits Bill.  Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) announced in a release he introduced a bill this week that would establish term limits for members of Congress.  The bill would limit members of Congress — in both the House and the Senate — from serving more than 12 years in either chamber, or 24 years total between the two chambers.  "Believe me, 24 years is more than enough time to serve in Washington," Mulvaney said in a statement.

Top 10 Revelations From Robert Gates's Memoir.  [#1] Contempt for Congress:  Mr. Gates expresses open disdain for Congress and the way lawmakers treated him when he testified at hearings.  "I saw most of Congress as uncivil, incompetent at fulfilling their basic constitutional responsibilities (such as timely appropriations), micromanagerial, parochial, hypocritical, egotistical, thin-skinned and prone to put self (and re-election) before country."

Term limits are a check against an American cult of personality.  Americans want their presidents to be decisive and effective, but they also, understandably, fear the potential abuse of power.  The 22nd Amendment is a practical if imperfect compromise between the need for energy, decisiveness and leadership in the presidency and the republican principle of rotation in office.

Tom Latham is 3rd House member to declare retirement Tuesday.  Tuesday was a busy day for House retirements, as Iowa Rep. Tom Latham was the third lawmaker to say he wouldn't run for reelection next year. [...] arlier in the day, Reps. Jim Matheson, D-Utah, and Frank Wolf, R-Va., announced they too would step down when their terms end in January 2015.

A Government Separated from the People Cannot Stand.  The United States is now controlled by a Democratic and Republican ruling class that transcends government and sees itself as distinct from the rest of society and as the only element that may act on its behalf.  The ruling class considers those who resist it as having no moral or intellectual right, and, only reluctantly, any civil right to do so.  Power rests, not with the citizens, but with a relatively small group of politicians and financiers, who enhance their personal wealth and privilege by looting the country through a self-serving legislative process.

Look at the money involved in politics today!

This infographic says a lot:  "Who Owns Your Congressman?"

Challenged by Tea Party, Veteran Mississippi Senator Decides to Run for Seventh Term.  Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican who was first elected to the Senate in 1978, set up a generational and ideological clash in the state's Republican primary when he announced Friday that he would seek a seventh term in 2014.

Rep. Gutierrez: Obama 'Should Be Expanding His Prosecutorial Discretion'.  At a House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) said that President Barack Obama should be expanding his prosecutorial discretion when it comes to enforcement of immigration laws.  "Unfortunately, he should not be limiting his prosecutorial discretion.  He should be expanding his prosecutorial discretion," Gutierrez said during a hearing on the constitutionality and legality of actions the Obama administration has taken on issues like the enforcement of immigration laws.

Liberal law prof: Obama's unconstitutional power grabs are creating a "very dangerous and unstable system".  Show of hands:  Who thinks Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi will keep Obama in line?  Before you answer, note that leading amnesty shill Luis Gutierrez argued at this same hearing that, if anything, Obama should have a freer hand so that he can go about unilaterally legalizing the illegals Gutierrez has been effectively representing in Congress for years.  That's what's left of Democratic opposition to the imperial executive.

On repealing the 22nd amendment.  This is one of those issues which seems to pop up reliably during the second act of every two term presidency.  Should we impose term limits on US Presidents and was the 22nd amendment really a good idea?  It's a concept which has been unofficially in place since the first President and was then enshrined in the constitution in 1951 as a backlash against FDR.  Of course, the people most exuberant about the idea tend to be supporters of the current White House occupant and for all the wrong reasons.

WaPo Op-Ed Urges Letting Obama Run for a Third Term so Senate Will "Fear Him".  Four more years.  10 trillion more dollars in debt.  And by the end of it, we'll have a nuclear war in the Middle East and mandates forcing you to buy everything from electric cars to Michelle Obama's trademark Soy and Asphalt pie.

No Uncertain Terms.  On Wednesday [11/27/2013] we observed that it's hard for a political humorist to keep up with the real-life absurdities of the Obama crowd.  To illustrate the point, along comes Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian at New York University, with an op-ed in the Washington Post arguing that we need to repeal the 22nd Amendment.  Now of course the way this was supposed to work was that Obama would be such an amazing president that he would come to seem indispensable.

Presidential term limits:  necessary and right, or bad for democracy?  In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, Jonathan Zimmerman, a history and education professor at New York University, says deciding whether a president deserves a third, fourth or more terms should be left to the American people, not the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, which placed a two-term limit on the position.

End presidential term limits.  Democratic lawmakers would worry about provoking the wrath of a president who could be reelected.  Thanks to term limits, though, they've got little to fear.  Nor does Obama have to fear the voters, which might be the scariest problem of all.

Washington Post: Repeal presidential term limits.  As President Obama faces a small revolt within his own party, a Washington Post op-ed is calling for the United States to end presidential term limits and allow him to run again in 2016.  "Barack Obama should be allowed to stand for re election just as citizens should be allowed to vote for — or against — him," writes New York University Jonathan Zimmerman professor of history and education.  "Anything less diminishes our leaders and ourselves."

Needed: A Different Sort of President.  One-term presidencies — or a constitutional change to a single six-year presidential term — make better sense.  A single presidential tenure might curtail an incumbent's customary exaggerations about supposed past achievements and the phony promises about great things to come that are apparently necessary for reelection.

Til Death they do Part — The U.S. House.  It has become abundantly clear that most of our so-called "patriotic public servants" in D.C. run for office with the intention of staying until "death they do part".  They have no allegiance to the constituents they represent nor the Country.  It's all about power, corruption, ideology and greed, but We the People re-elect them every two years.

Till Death They Do Part — The House, Part II.  [Edward] Markey is 67 years of age and after serving 37½ years in the House was elevated to the Senate by the voters of Massachusetts in a special election. [...] He is second only to Patrick Leahy as the longest serving member of Congress from New England.  Edward Markey is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.  Rep. Markey, with his sidekick Henry Waxman, authored the Cap and Trade Bill.  Markey is the primary force behind the global warming/climate change hoax.

The Elites Stumble on Syria.  [Scroll down]  I suppose you have to have lived in Washington a long time for this fairy tale to make sense.  And frankly, some elected officials have lived in Washington for far too long.  We must remember that in addition to Senator Graham, John McCain — who like Graham was elected to be the loyal opposition — rushed to the Oval Office weeks ago in support of Obama's Syria policy.  In fact, after meeting with President Obama, McCain and Graham emerged confident — even cocky — that they had the entire Syria scenario figured out.

Mark Levin: 'Entrenched' Republican 'losers' may cost GOP the House in 2014.  Conservative talker Mark Levin blasted Republican House leaders on his Tuesday [8/13/2013] radio show, warning that by attacking more conservative members of the GOP, Speaker John Boehner and prominent Reps. Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor are throwing away the 2014 midterm elections.  Levin, author of "The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic," said the GOP establishment's disparagement of conservative colleagues, could be a disaster in a midterm "turn out the base" election.

Time For Third Party.  [Scroll down]  What in the world gives the bureaucrats at HUD the unmitigated chutzpa to think that they have a right to determine who lives where?  Or perhaps even worse, that they are the arbiters of neighborhood "balance?"  In keeping with the true nature of progressivism, this is nothing less than the attempt to regulate society irrespective of talent, ambition and, above all else, liberty.  Once again, it illuminates the left's lust for control and their pathetic misunderstanding of human nature.

The Editor says...
That alone is not a justification for a third party.  The problem is that the second party isn't counteracting the first party.  Unfortunately, everyone with an inclination to get involved in politics is already active in one of those two parties.  If a third party were to organize overnight, where would all if its candidates come from?  Term limits for the existing politicians is far more practical than a third party.

Rep. John Dingell's Irresponsible Abuse Of His Bullying Pulpit.  Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich) today becomes the longest serving member of Congress in history, with a 57-year tenure.  Most of the press coverage of the milestone has focused on the power he wielded, primarily as the chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee from 1981 to 1994.  There has been little notice taken of the irresponsibility and tyranny with which he wielded that power.

Dingell, Lautenberg and the Problem With D.C..  In sports, some athletes have a tendency to hang on too long, playing past their prime as their skills diminish considerably.  In doing so they put themselves at greater risk of injury even as they become more of a burden to their teammates.  But in politics, an even more pernicious force is at work.  Some politicians don't "play past their prime."  They play until they die in office.  The question arises:  Who is that helping?

How Did America Become A Paper Tiger?  When crises erupt around the world, stock markets crash but the cunning somehow bet short and make billions.  Either they are omniscient or somehow manipulating the crisis.  It takes money to buy arms, explosives, travel documents, airplane tickets, identities and other resources to foment violence and overturn stable governments.  It takes money to finance campaigns to place compliant politicians in office that will pass legislation to benefit their sponsors.  Mr. Smith went to Washington and found that the long termers in Congress stayed there thanks to big money.

We need an IQ test for politicians.  While politicians talk about expanding background checks for gun owners, I'm starting to think that what we really need are IQ tests for political officeholders.  The only problem is, that might leave us with a lot of vacancies in Congress and America's statehouses.

Making the world safe from armed Mallards.  Dianne Feinstein is the absolute, living demonstration in support of the concept of term limits for Congress.  No pol has been more aggressive than Old Dame Feinstein in seizing on the recent school shooting tragedy in Connecticut to advance her über liberal, gun-grabbing agenda.  This old Left Coast tool has recently advanced her silliness to the point of making herself the subject of outright ridicule.

20 Reasons America Is Becoming An Increasingly Nonfunctional Society.  [#12]  Gerrymandering, increasing partisanship, and a lack of term limits have allowed politics to become a lifetime job for a majority of members of Congress.  The average congressman cannot be defeated by a member of the opposing party and only has to worry about making special interest groups on his own side angry enough to back a primary challenger against him.  For most members of Congress, once they're elected once, they never have to worry about the voters in their own district again.

One more reason for term limits:
The Real Reason McCain-Graham Attacked Ted Cruz.  Anything involving junior Texas Senator Ted Cruz is likely to invoke some level of toxic response from Senator John McCain of Arizona and his secondary outlet of public communication, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.  That Senator McCain harbors a grudge against "the Bushies" for the South Carolina primary defeat that ended his presidential run in 2000 is the worst kept secret in Washington.  Having "his" candidate lose in his home state was also a blow to Graham.  Known for his long memory, some Senate staffers joke the "R" behind McCain's name is for "revenge."

Americans want term limits [...] after re-electing a bunch of incumbents.  I'm no fan of term limits in Congressional elections, after my experience in seeing the application in California do nothing but make the dysfunction there arguably worse, and certainly no better.  The best solution is to vote out the incumbents one dislikes, by finding better candidates to oppose them.

Whatever Happened to Common Sense?  Today we protest against many of the same injustices [Thomas] Paine complained about in Common Sense.  What was once a tyranny by the king has become a tyranny of the majority foisted upon an unwilling minority.  Voices of opposition are now ignored as politicians scheme in various ways to ensure their re-election.  We have come full circle.

Political Elites Keep Power By Blocking Change.  A couple of economists have determined that rulers around the world keep their subjects in poverty so they can maintain power.  What does this impart to us about where our country is headed today?