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Senate Blocks Keystone XL Pipeline, NSA Reform Bills






11/19/2014 10:23 AM ET



In a sign of continued gridlock in Washington in the lame-duck session, the Senate voted Tuesday to block two separate bills approving construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and reforming the nation's domestic surveillance programs.

The Senate voted 59 to 41 in favor of a bill to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, falling one vote short of the 60 needed for passage.

All forty-five Senate Republicans voted to approve construction of the pipeline, joined by fourteen Senate Democrats.

Facing a tough runoff election next month, Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., had been looking to build support for the bill but was unable to get fourteen other Democrats on board.

Republicans generally support construction of the pipeline, while the issue has divided Democrats amid concerns about the environmental impact and potential oil spills.

President Barack Obama stopped short of threatening to veto the bill but called on Congress to allow the State Department to complete its review of the project.

The pipeline is projected to ship up to 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from Canada and Montana to Cushing, Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast area.

The project is expected to create about 2,000 jobs during a two-year construction period but only about 50 permanent jobs.

Earlier in the week, the Republican-controlled House voted 252 to 161 in favor of a bill to approve the pipeline. Just thirty-one Democrats joined with nearly all of the chamber's Republicans to pass the legislation.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ken., expressed disappointment in the Senate's failure to pass the bill but noted that the legislation will be brought back up when Republicans control the chamber next year.








Meanwhile, the Senate also fell short of the 60 votes needed to begin debate on a bill reforming the National Security Agency's bulk collection of phone records.

The Senate voted 58 to 42 to begin debate on the NSA reform bill, with the vote largely coming down along party lines.

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., Dean Heller, R-Nev., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the motion.

The bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, would prohibit the government from directly collecting bulk telephone metadata.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., who introduced the bill, said, "Tonight, Senate Republicans have failed to answer the call of the American people who elected them, and all of us, to stand up and to work across the aisle."

"Once again, they reverted to scare tactics rather than to working productively to protect Americans' basic privacy rights and our national security," he added.

Earlier this year, House voted 303 to 121 in favor of a watered down version of the NSA reform bill, with 179 Republicans joining with 124 Democrats in voting to approve the legislation.

Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., Dean Heller, R-Nev., Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Ak., were the only Republicans to vote in favor of the motion



Good for them.

Ted Cruz says Obama will �threaten a shutdown�



GOP Sen. Ted Cruz said Wednesday that President Obama will "no doubt threaten a shutdown" with his upcoming executive action on immigration.

"[T]hat seems to be the one card he repeatedly plays � but Congress can authorize funding for agencies of government one at a time," Cruz (R-Texas) wrote in an op-ed published in Politico Magazine. "If the President is unwilling to accepting [sic] funding for, say, the Department of Homeland Security without his being able to unilaterally defy the law, he alone will be responsible for the consequences."

Cruz, who is widely considered to have been one of the primary actors in last year's shutdown, has frequently accused Democrats of causing the debacle. At the time, Cruz and various tea party conservatives refused to vote for a continuing resolution to fund the government unless the Affordable Care Act was defunded.

"Congress, representing the voice of the People, should use every tool available to prevent the President from subverting the rule of law," Cruz wrote. "If the President announces executive amnesty, the new Senate Majority Leader who takes over in January should announce that the 114th Congress will not confirm a single nominee�executive or judicial�outside of vital national security positions, so long as the illegal amnesty persists"

Congressional leaders have indicated they are averse to a shutdown, and incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has explicitly promising to avoid one.

�Let me make it clear: There will be no government shutdowns and no default on the national debt,� McConnell said on Nov. 5, the day after Republicans won control of the upper chamber.

The White House has also dismissed the possibility of a shutdown over the immigration action but has said the responsibility for avoiding such an action rests with Congress.

"I don't anticipate, based on the comments by Sen. McConnell and others, that there will be a government shutdown as a result of this," White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said during Wednesday's press briefing.

Ted Cruz Calls On GOP To Answer Amnesty By Blocking All Obama Nominees

"...it becomes all the more imperative for Congress to act.�


B. Christopher Agee� November 20, 2014


As the countdown to Barack Obama�s amnesty announcement continues, many legislators opposed to the use of executive action on the issue are planning a response. As for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, he explained in a recent Politico article that his branch has several arrows in its quiver.

He cautioned that it would be up to congressional leaders in the new GOP-controlled session to pursue a specific course of action.


�When the president usurps the legislative power and defies the limits of his authority,� Cruz wrote, �it becomes all the more imperative for Congress to act.�

Unless it takes advantage of the remedies enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, he warned, the legislative branch will �lose its authority.�

The first step, Cruz wrote, should be blocking any and all nominees Obama sends to Congress during the final two years of his presidency.

�If the president announces executive amnesty,� he said, �the new Senate majority leader who takes over in January should announce that the 114th Congress will not confirm a single nominee�executive or judicial�outside of vital national security positions, so long as the illegal amnesty persists.�


Beyond this �significant deterrent to a lawless president,� Cruz explained that legislators can also use their fiscal authority to put an end to any amnesty order Obama decides to unilaterally enact.

He wrote that �the new Congress should exercise the power of the purse by passing individual appropriations bills authorizing critical functions of government and attaching riders to strip the authority from the president to grant amnesty.�

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded to a question regarding Cruz�s call to block Obama nominees by insisting the president has learned a lesson from the recent midterm election.

He said Obama is interested in �trying to find common ground and putting the interest of the nation ahead of partisan political ambition,� adding �we hope that Democrats and Republicans do the same.�

For many who want to see a secure border and the enforcement of the nation�s immigration laws, however, there is little hope for common ground. For that reason, Cruz has received significant support from conservatives across the U.S.

Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/te...king-obama-nominees/#ycpeKJ0zUotfqcbR.99

NRO: Ted Cruz Suggests Romney and Christie Will Run In 2016
By Joel Gehrke
11.25.14

Senator Ted Cruz (R., Texas) won�t be surprised if Mitt Romney runs for president against the� Chris Christie, the New Jersey Republican who angered conservatives with his embrace of President Obama when Hurricane Sandy struck just days before the 2012 election.

�There�s one bucket that, for lack of a better word, I�ll call the �moderate establishment� bucket. It�ll be some combination of Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney,� Cruz told a group of potential donors, according to the New York Observer. �My guess is two of the three will run. And my view is whoever�s in that bucket will raise tons of money. A lot of donors will rush to write them checks.

And yet if the nominee comes from that bucket, the same voters who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 will stay home again and Hillary�s the winner.�

Cruz�s prediction that �two of the three will run� seems to be the behind-closed-doors conventional wisdom in Republican circles, with the secondary premise that if Jeb Bush runs, Romney will stay out of the race. Christie is less of a deterrent, in this scenario.

Cruz has not been caught in a lie yet. Why do you think almost everybody in Washington hates him?

Columnist Pat Buchanan predicted that either Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) or Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) would be in the "finals" for the GOP nomination in 2016 on Friday's "McLaughlin Group."

"If you want to get the nomination, you don't worry about independents in a general election, you excite the base, the Tea Party, the conservatives, the activists, the libertarians, and this is exactly what Cruz is doing. And I think it's a correct strategy as a nomination strategy, it's risky in a general election" he stated.

Buchanan continued, "the guy that's going to do well, the individual, I think he's got to show some real passion and fire and energy and ability to communicate, and there's no doubt I would put Cruz in the top level there and the second one I would put behind him for rolling that route is Rand Paul. One of those two, I think, is going to get to the finals."

So say8ing "no new gun control" then introducing bills that do just that, is not a lie?

You mean the one the NRA wanted? I can't argue with an alternate reality.

Uh Oh!!!!

I wouldn't want to be you when Pat see's this.





Oops,,, too late.

I ain't BOWSINGER and Cruz ain't got boobs.

Neither did Sarah until she quit her job and sold a book.

GOP Colleagues Slam Cruz As Senate Averts Government Shutdown





As the Senate on Saturday passed a short-term spending bill to fund the government through Wednesday, many Republicans targeted Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for forcing lawmakers into an all-day session that left the timing of the $1.1 trillion spending bill�s completion in doubt.

Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate have reached an agreement to hold a vote Saturday night on the spending bill. A Senate Democratic leadership aide said the first of three votes related to the measure could come within the hour.

But passage of the bill was thrown into doubt after Cruz challenged the measure on Friday night. That led swiftly to the unraveling of an informal bipartisan agreement to give the Senate the weekend off, with a vote on final passage of the bill deferred until early this coming week.

That, in turn led Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to call an all-day Senate session to be devoted almost exclusively to beginning the time-consuming work on confirmation for as many as nine judicial appointees and an unknown number of nominees to administration posts.

The procedural move to delay a vote immediately drew ire from both sides.

Democrats accused Cruz of a publicity stunt. Republicans said the move was counterproductive as it won�t stop a vote on the spending bill and will expedite votes on several of President Barack Obama�s nominations.

As reporters tried to interview Cruz as he entered the Senate chamber in the Capitol, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill shouted: "Quit giving him so much attention, that's exactly what's causing the problem!"

But the sharpest criticism came from Cruz's fellow Senate Republicans.

"I've seen this movie before, and I wouldn't pay money to see it again," Georgia GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson said between seemingly endless roll calls.

Asked if Cruz had created an opening for the Democrats, Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch said, "I wish you hadn't pointed that out."

"You should have an end goal in sight if you�re going to do these type of things," Hatch added, "and I don�t see an end goal other than just irritating a lot of people."

Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake said the strategy doesn�t bode well for the new Republican-controlled Congress. "I fail to see what conservative ends were achieved," he told reporters.

But Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, praised Cruz for his opposition to a provision in the bill that would fund the executive orders Obama announced last month.

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and Utah Sen. Mike Lee also opposed the Senate bill on those grounds.

"We strongly support Sens. Sessions, Cruz, and Lee as they fight to insure that the Congress does not appropriate funds for an unlawful, unconstitutional order," Martin said on Saturday. "We urge their colleagues to join them in that fight.

"This is not a fight about amnesty; this is a fight over whether or not America will remain a constitutional republic," she said.

During floor debate on Friday and later on Facebook, Cruz blamed Reid for the budget drama.

He said that the Nevada Democrat's "last act as majority leader is to, once again, act as an enabler" for the president by blocking a vote on Obama's policy that envisions work visas and deferred deportation for as many as 6 million immigrants living in the country illegally.





Cruz, a potential presidential candidate in 2016, charged that Reid was "going to an embarrassing length to tie up the floor to obstruct debate and a vote on this issue because he knows amnesty is unpopular with the American people, and he doesn't want the Democrats on the record as supporting it."

Democrats lost control of the Senate in November.

The legislative process remains in flux as the Senate was holding as many as 40 procedural votes on nominations on Saturday because the two parties couldn�t reach a deal on holding a vote on the budget bill.

"The other concern I have here now is the nominations that are going to get through that otherwise wouldn't," Hoeven said.

The list included Carolyn Colvin to head the Social Security Administration, Vivek Murthy to become surgeon general, Sarah Saldana as head of Customs and Immigration Enforcement, and Antony Blinken to the No. 2 position at the State Department.

Democrats did not provide a complete list, saying it might change. More than a dozen judicial nominations remained on the Senate's calendar, and dozens of appointees to administration positions.

Appearing irritated, some Republicans spoke with Cruz on the Senate floor about his actions. At another point, Cruz huddled in the rear of the chamber with Lee, who had supported him on Friday evening, and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, another tea party-backed lawmaker who said that he would not vote for the measure over the immigration issue.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox News Saturday morning that he was surprised that both Cruz and Lee had gone over his head, but otherwise made no comments on the events.

Cruz suggested on the Senate floor that McConnell and House Speaker John Boehner should not be entirely trusted to keep their pledge to challenge Obama's immigration policy in the new Congress.

"We will learn soon enough if those statements are genuine and sincere," Cruz said.
It was not the first time Cruz has interrupted the parliamentary process to make clear his opposition to legislation. Last year, he led the drive to defund Obamacare that resulted in a 16-day partial government shutdown that cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion.

The $1.1 trillion spending bill provides funds for nearly the entire government through the Sept. 30 end of the current budget year.

The exception is the Department of Homeland Security, which is financed only until Feb. 27.

Republicans intend to try then to force the president to roll back his immigration orders that he announced in a Nov. 20 a prime-time speech on national cable television.

The events in the Senate quickly overshadowed developments in the House earlier in the week, when Democratic divisions were on display over the spending bill.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California opposed the bill, and publicly chastised Obama for giving it his support.

"I'm enormously disappointed that the White House feels that the only way to they can get a bill is to go along with this," she said during debate on the House floor on Thursday.

Ted Cruz's Strategy: To Hell With Independents


To hell with the independents. That�s not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz�s, it just might be.

His strategists aren�t planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. According to several of the senator�s top advisers, Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout; attracting votes from groups � including Jews, Hispanics, and Millennials � that have tended to favor Democrats; and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, �not getting killed with independents.�

Twenty-three months from the presidential election, it seems all but a given that the freshman senator, who has been in Congress just two years, will mount a bid for the White House. �He�s looking at the race very seriously,� says a senior adviser, who confirms that Cruz�s campaign headquarters would be based in Houston. Cruz strategists see a way to win both the nomination and the general election. They are assiduously cultivating the party�s top-dollar donors, almost all of whom remain uncommitted. Internally, the senator has shaken up his staff to address problems and to set the stage for a presidential bid. All that�s left, it seems, is an official announcement.

[quote=ltppowell

I ain't BOWSINGER and Cruz ain't got boobs. [/quote]


Just for you....Babe...
http://www.palin-cruz.org/
Join our campaign! Palin-Cruz the Winning Ticket for 2016!!
The logical opponent for Hillary Clinton is Sarah Palin with a Ted Cruz chaser�� And if we want to take our country back and win in 2016, it is time to start pressuring Reince Priebus at the RNC to look at the obvious.
[�]
The left knew how much of a threat Sarah Palin was, and is, and colluded to demonize her using their progressive minions in the mainstream media with instructions to use any and every dirty trick in their bag of Alinsky tricks� already knowing that they would be running Hillary Clinton in 2016 and that Sarah Palin another tough woman but younger, prettier, principled and by then tested by the fire created by them, who had real accomplishments both personal and professional would be the Republican�s best shot to beat her� that is if common sense could get past the GOP party establishment that strangled the party in 2008 and 2012.

The Progressives organized a group of jour�no�lists including CFR operative Katie Couric to go after Palin and a created what is commonly know as Palin Derangement Syndrome� which still continues.� And it really is time that we re-exam it and are prepared to address those falsehoods with the truth and facts.

It is time that we, Republicans, Conservatives, Independents, Libertarians... Patriots of all stripes, arm ourselves with the truth, use common sense and start supporting Sarah Palin, a woman who has been vetted and tested and has a history of accomplishments, of being a fighter and what it takes to beat Hillary Clinton.. a women with an endless record of lies, scandals and very weak or questionable accomplishments.
[...]
And why Ted Cruz for VP?
The Key' for the GOP to both beat Hillary in 2016 and nullify the carrot of 'electing the first female president', is running Sarah Palin at the top of the ticket!!�
She is tough, charismatic, loved by average Americans, vetted and already tested like no candidate before her.�
Plus Palin's circle of supporters and influence is growing, while many of her detractors have had to publicly admit they were wrong about her and admit that she has been right about a long list of things, including Fannie and Freddie, death panels in ObamaCare, Putin invading the Ukraine and even about President Obama himself.

And there is a good crop of possible GOP VP choices for 2016 including Rand Paul, Allen West, Ben Carson and Ted Cruz.� So why Ted?

When you watch the reaction and reception for Ted Cruz virtually everywhere he goes, except in Washington D.C. and add his Cuban heritage as well as his understanding of the immigrant experience through his father; plus he and Palin being friends and simpatico politically you have a real winner for the GOP and for America and the American people!�

In his CPAC introduction of Sarah Palin in 2013, Ted Cruz credited his election to Sarah Palin, as do many she has endorsed and fought for.

Cruz and Palin were the bookends for CPAC 2014 and rocked the house!

Sarah Palin (consistently) tops the poll of women that Americans want to run for President.� Palin has highest favorability rating among GOP primary voters in poll after poll.
The Election of 2016 will be the battle for America�s soul and future. More and more people are saying, �Wouldn�t that be an amazing race� two women, Sarah verses Hillary running for President of the United States?� Yes it would be! Two women... two paths... polar opposites.� And it would be the first time in a long time that the American people had a clear choice as well as an interesting race!

And why Cruz for the number 2 spot... because for over a year now Palin and Cruz have vied for top spot on the GOP ticket in virtually every Straw Poll.�
Cruz is brilliant, brings in the Hispanic vote, understands what it is to be an immigrant through his father and is a fighter.�
Plus he and Palin are simpatico and agree on almost all issues.
Cruz credits Palin for his election to the Senate and calls her the Kingmaker and they appear together on behalf of candidates and at events regularly.

In our view, the fact that Palin, Cruz and Paul consistently hold down the top of the list of preferred candidates, in the polls with limited government constitutional conservatives like Senator Mike Lee, Dr. Ben Carson and Col. Allen West right behind, shows that the voters are searching for authenticity and real change and that it will be the determining factor in the 2016 Republican presidential primaries. (We could support a Palin ticket with Paul, Lee, Carson or Allen in the number 2 spot, but as mentioned above, there are good reasons why a Palin-Cruz ticket is a winner!)...

White House Fears �President Cruz� Will Overturn Exec Amnesty



White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer conceded that he fears a President Ted Cruz will overturn President Barack Obama�s executive amnesty, perhaps signaling that Cruz represents the greatest threat to the progressive left.

�Our first 100 days we spent a lot of time signing executive orders undoing what [President George W.] Bush did, and I would like not to be sitting on a beach somewhere reading about President [Ted] Cruz doing that to us, so it�s very important to us,� Pfeiffer told the Wall Street Journal on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Pfeiffer declared that Obama�s executive amnesty was one of the reasons that made 2014 a �year of great progress� for the �progressive agenda.� He told the Journal that from the �perspective of advancing our agenda through our pen and our phone, this has been a tremendously successful year.�

Cruz, a potential 2016 heavyweight, would run as a bold conservative. And the conservative Texas Senator has not been ambivalent in the least about wanting to repeal Obamacare and reverse Obama�s executive amnesty.

Cruz has also, with his actions, made it clear that he isn�t the type of politician who campaigns as a conservative and then turns his back on the base as soon as he is elected. That, more than anything, is why the bipartisan permanent political class and Washington insiders despise him.

Despite his fears, though, Pfeiffer, according to the Journal, ultimately �predicted Obama�s administrative actions on immigration and Cuba will stand no matter who sits in the White House in 2017.�

From Bloomberg?
____


The Delayed-Reaction Victories of Ted Cruz


The Texas senator knows what he's doing.




As Republicans left Washington, the 113th Congress getting happily smaller in the rear-view, they were at war over a meme. Namely: Conservatives were pushing back, hard, against the idea that Texas Senator Ted Cruz staged a pointless fight and enabled the confirmation of some of Barack Obama's least confirmable nominees. The weekend before the recess, Cruz made a procedural objection -- a protest of the November "executive amnesty," which the spending agreement would not defund -- and senators who expected to skip down were forced to stay. That let Reid start the clock on a crew of Obama nominees, and set them up for weekday votes.

Many Republicans trashed Cruz, on the record. Many more Democrats thanked him. Cruz lost 20 Republicans on his procedural vote, which was read as a protest of his protest. And the Obama administration echoed the departing Democratic leadership of the Senate:

This fit so snugly, so Lego-like, into the standing narrative of Cruz that it took until mid-week for conservatives to craft their comebacks. Cruz's office was very satisfied with a take from Byron York, the well-sourced Washington Examiner reporter, who among other things recalled what Harry Reid had said at the start of the prior week. "Maybe we'll have to work the weekend and maybe even work next week," warned Reid. "We have a number of nominations we're going to do."

York took that seriously, because Reid had never shirked a vote just because it required Congress staying in session until the holiday. Any Capitol Hill reporter who arrived when Barack Obama won the presidency had covered Christmas Eve health care votes and a New Year's Eve showdown over the fiscal cliff. "If Cruz had not acted," York asked, "would Reid have said, 'Well, it looks like we would have to work all the way until Dec. 18 to finish these nominations, so let's just put them aside and go home and have a nice time, even though it's our party's last chance to pass them?' Does anyone believe Reid would have done that?"

Democrats scoffed at this. It was one thing to ask them to stay around for a generation-defining health care vote, and another to ask them to approve Vivek Murphy. But Cruz's office insisted that the reporters writing "GOP in disarray" stories had been hoodwinked. The weekend votes had moved up Reid's calendar; they hadn't given him any special powers. At most, they allowed him to release his senators two days early.

"Everyone knows Harry Reid planned to jam forward as many nominees as he could after the omnibus passed," wrote Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier in an email. "He made this clear to members last week, and his spokesperson confirmed so publicly. Unfortunately, there are many on both sides of the aisle who want to distract from the more important debate over the president�s unilateral action to grant amnesty. (Also it is na�ve to think that Harry Reid would end his tenure as majority leader, as President Obama�s No. 1 enabler, without pushing through everything he can)."

As ever, conservatives sided with the Cruz protest (as ever, a doomed and grasping protest) over the gripes of most Republicans. On talk radio, the senators who blamed Cruz for the Obama confirmations were obliterated.

"You sound like a bunch of munchkins,� said Mark Levin, one of the most influential talkers on the right. �Backbenchers. Immature! Stupid! Childish comments. I don�t know what this is going to add up to. I don�t know why we�re here. I�ve seen this movie before, and you�re so ineffective. You�re so impotent."

After Jeb Bush announced his presidential explorations, Rush Limbaugh offered that "a lot of this talk about the Jeb candidacy is an attempt to see if they can actually, once and for all, in a primary setting, relegate the Tea Party and members of it who are elected, such as Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, impotent. And I think that's the objective that they have. You look at the way they went after Ted Cruz when he stood up and tried to get a vote on whether or not what Obama was doing is unconstitutional."

Cruz could have predicted those reactions. He'd gotten them before�when he (and Utah Senator Mike Lee, his Sancho Panza) threatened to prevent a debate on post-Newtown gun bills, when he demanded that the 2013 spending packages defund the ACA. Every time, he was covered as Washington's least popular man; every time, he was welcomed home a hero. In speeches, his lonely campaigns became examples of how he challenged the establishment for a victory that only historians would understand. And so it would be with the great nomination jam of 2014.

Why Liberals Fear Ted Cruz


Cruz is different � a Princeton and Harvard man who not only matriculated at those fine institutions but excelled at them. Champion debater at Princeton. Magna cum laude graduate at Harvard. Supreme Court clerkship, on the way to Texas solicitor general and dozens of cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cruz is from the intellectual elite, but not of it, a tea party conservative whose politics are considered gauche at best at the storied universities where he studied. He is, to borrow the words of the 2009 H.W. Brands biography of FDR, a traitor to his class.

And his classmates. A Daily Beast piece the other day quoted fellow Princetonians who apparently can�t believe he turned out this way, �a man of calcified thinking, dangerously impervious to facts.�

Democrats and liberal pundits would surely dislike Cruz no matter where he went to school, but his pedigree adds an extra element of shocked disbelief to the disdain. �Princeton and Harvard should be disgraced,� former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell exclaimed on MSNBC, as if graduating a constitutionalist conservative who rises to national prominence is a violation of the schools� mission statements.

It almost is. Princeton and Harvard aren�t quite the �cole Nationale d�Administration, the French school that trains that country�s political class, but they are close.

In a Washington Post column a year ago, Dana Milbank noted Cruz�s schooling and concluded almost entirely on that basis that his tea party politics must be a put-on, that he is, underneath it all, an �intellectually curious, liberal-arts conservative.� Note the insulting assumption that an interest in books and ideas automatically immunizes someone from a certain kind of conservative politics.

One of the left�s deepest prejudices is that its opponents are stupid, and Cruz tramples on it. Chris Hayes of MSNBC actually says he fears Cruz�s brilliance. So should congressional witnesses. At hearings, Cruz has the prosecutorial instincts of a � Harvard-trained lawyer. Watching Attorney General Eric Holder try to fend off Cruz�s questioning on the administration�s drone policy a few months ago was like seeing a mouse cornered by a very large cat.

Cruz hasn�t played by the Senate rules that freshmen should initially be seen and not heard. In fact, he joined the upper chamber with all the subtlety of a SWAT team knocking down a drug suspect�s front door.

For people who care about such things � almost all of them are senators � this is an unforgivable offense. At another hearing, this one on guns, as Cruz says the highest commitment of senators should be to the Constitution, another senator can be heard muttering that he doesn�t like being lectured. Chairman Pat Leahy (probably the mutterer) eventually cuts him off and informs him he hasn�t been in the Senate very long.

Cruz lacks all defensiveness about his positions, another source of annoyance to his opponents, who are used to donning the mantle of both intellectual and moral superiority.

None of this is to endorse all of Cruz�s tactical judgments or to deny he can irk his own side of the aisle at times.

His push to defund Obamacare this fall is a grass roots-pleasing slogan in search of a realistic path to legislative fruition. Cruz never explains how a government shutdown fight would bring about the desired end. The strategy seems tantamount to believing that if Republican politicians clicked their wing tips together and wished it so, President Barack Obama would collapse in a heap and surrender on his party�s most cherished accomplishment.

It is no secret that Cruz, soon to be an erstwhile Canadian citizen, has presidential aspirations. Even if he ascends no higher, though, he will be a force in the Senate. He could spend decades making liberals recoil at what Princeton and Harvard hath wrought.

I know this will frost our local Nazi's balls, but found it worth mentioning.
_____


According to Politico, hawkish Texas senator is being billed as speaker in high-end getaways catering to religious Jews.



Wealthy American Jews planning their Passover vacation this spring will have a chance to hear one of Israel�s most ardent supporters � and, by extension, one of US President Barack Obama�s fiercest critics � in a resort near you.

Ted Cruz, the Republican senator from Texas who is considering a run for the presidency, is listed as a speaker in a number of high-end vacation getaways that cater to religious Jews in the United States, according to the online magazine Politico.

The appearances by Cruz and a number of prominent rabbis are being promoted by Prime Hospitality Group.

According to Politico, the speeches have been booked by resorts in Aspen; Westlake Village, California; Monarch Beach, California; and Vieques Island, Puerto Rico.

The Westlake Village event is being billed as �intimate and personal and will feature the inspiring Rabbi Eli Mansour, Rabbi Daniel Mechanic, Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn, Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis, Malcolm Hoenlein and Senator Ted Cruz, surpassing all expectations.�

Cruz has been outspoken in his support of the Israeli government while denouncing the Obama administration for its policies toward Iran.

Earlier this year, he said America has no business dictating terms on issues of vital national security to Israel.

He placed the blame on the Palestinians for the recent failure of peace talks, saying �the principal impediment to peace is that, to date, the Palestinians have refused to recognize Israel�s right to exist as a Jewish state and have refused to renounce terror.

�Unless and until the Palestinians can agree on those very basic starting blocks, no lasting peace solution is likely,� he stated.

Cruz described Obama�s approach to Israeli-Palestinian talks as �to criticize and harangue and pressure the Israeli government.�

�The US should stand with Israel,� the senator said.

Consider Ted in their "Pocket"...