In March, it seemed the pro-union legislation known as "card check" was dead - thanks in part to Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.).

Before that, Specter had been coy about the Employee Free Choice Act. He'd voted to allow a debate on the measure in 2007, without commenting on the substance. In March, he had two main concerns: (1) card check, where workers sign cards to indicate support for a union instead of holding a secret-ballot election, and (2) the potential harm of increasing costs to businesses in a recession.

Well, the recession continues, but card check lives - thanks in part to Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.).

Specter and five other colleagues are trying to craft a compromise that would appeal to moderate senators. The New York Times says they are even considering dropping the card-check provision.

Majority Leader Harry Reid had predicted the bill would be back. He said in March, "Anyone who thinks they're burying card check because of Specter's statement in an effort to avoid a primary in Pennsylvania should not think this legislation is going to go away."

Then, the issue was the GOP primary and a rematch against Pat Toomey, who almost beat Specter in 2004. At that point, Specter was trying to appeal to conservatives.

But a month later he switched parties, and now needs labor support because of the expected primary challenge from U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak of Delaware County.

In 1776, the rallying cry was, "No taxation without representation."

Today, it could be, "No taxation without totally clueless representation."

That's what Americans got on June 26, when the House voted 219-212 for the "cap-and-tax" energy bill, as the Republicans refer to it. The bill ran more than 1,000 pages, and before members had time to digest that tome, 300 pages of amendments were added after midnight. When Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R., Ohio) started to read the additions, bill cosponsor Henry A. Waxman (D., Calif.) objected. He was rebuffed. There are no time limits for comments by House leaders.

"When you file a 300-page amendment at 3:09 a.m., the American people have a right to know what's in this bill," Boehner said.

Whether this bill will lessen greenhouse-gas emissions - as Democrats hope - or kill countless jobs - as Republicans predict - or ever pass the Senate, remains to be seen. But the House vote did raise a question that cuts across party and ideology:

How can lawmakers vote on something so important without a thorough understanding of what's in it?

"But Pawlenty has always advocated fiscal responsibility, even when Republicans in Washington were faltering on that issue. When Pawlenty was first elected governor in 2002, Minnesota faced a $4.5 billion deficit. He helped turn that into a $2.2 billion surplus without raising taxes.

But the fiscal conservative is also a bit of a populist, so he might not fit any of the Sunday talk-show molds being espoused for the GOP. Pawlenty has urged Republicans to reach out, become "the party of Sam's Club, not just the country club." This son of a truck driver is comfortable pushing education reform, a clean environment, and energy independence. To lower health-care costs, he backed the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, even though the Bush White House insisted the drugs couldn't be proved safe. Pawlenty famously replied, "Show me the dead Canadians."

And now, amid the worst fiscal crisis in decades, Pawlenty again rejects business as usual. Instead, he will try to do the responsible thing that governors and lawmakers from Trenton to Harrisburg to Sacramento have deemed impossible: cut the budget - not just reduce the growth of spending - without raising taxes.

It may seem radical to some, but Pawlenty is merely applying the same budgeting principle to government that families use every day: If there's less income, you cut spending. The focus is on what you have to have, rather than what's nice to have, as former presidential candidate Mitt Romney put it in his endorsement last week of Christopher J. Christie, the front-runner in the GOP primary for New Jersey governor."

Clearly, there's a disagreement on this point and others, but both Christie and Lonegan are arguing from right of center on how to best cut taxes to spur economic growth. The GOP primary winner is going to be a conservative. The question then becomes, in the Age of Obama, is such a distinction the kiss of death?

Not necessarily. Christie has consistently led the increasingly unpopular Corzine in head-to-head polls. The lead is troubling enough, the New York Times reports, that the Democratic Governors Association plans to help Corzine, who gave the group $100,000 in 2007. The group will run ads designed to boost Lonegan, who is seen as the weaker general-election candidate.

So Lonegan isn't the only one feeling threatened by Christie's conservative message.

With good reason. Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, suggests that New Jersey has all the ingredients of what could be "the beginnings of a blue-state tax rebellion." Enormous debt. An inability to cut spending. Budget holes that even federal stimulus money can't fill. And an expectation that "the rich" can be taxed enough to make up the difference.

But here's the rub. Most of those considered "rich" aren't living off trust funds. They are often struggling two-income households. One earner might now be out of work. Savings have been depleted. What was once affordable - a hefty mortgage and private school or college tuitions - is now a burden. They supported the president and might want to help in a time of crisis. But President Obama isn't the only one who wants to raise their taxes. Corzine does, too. And that's before the bills come due for all the new spending on education, health care, and the environment. Before the shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare have been addressed. "The rich" will be hit up again and again, but even they can't pay for it all.

"If Democrats expand their definition of rich they will create problems for themselves," Franc says. "This will first show up in the blue states, because that's where the money is."

Harrisburg seems poised to make state government more accountable and transparent.

Yes, that's right. Harrisburg. Accountable. Transparent. All in one sentence.

State Rep. Jim Christiana was seeking cosponsors for a similar measure in the House last week. (He had 83, including six Democrats, as of Wednesday.) Chuck Ardo, spokesman for Gov. Rendell, said: "It sounds like the right thing to do."

The phrase acts as a reality check, forcing one's thoughts back to the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and the mass murder of almost 3,000 people: The innocents who had their throats slit by hijackers. The men and women who burned to death. Those who plunged to their deaths from the World Trade Center to escape the inferno.

That was a shock to my conscience.

I compare that with KSM's being subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, including reportedly being waterboarded 183 times - roughly one session for every 16 victims of 9/11.

Sorry, but I cannot work my conscience into being shocked for him, even though I suspect such a judgment will result in some form of eternal damnation.

Campaign '08 has hit the big screen.

In a sense, it's a love story. The heartthrob is the Kennedyesque young senator from Illinois, with the supporting cast composed of the many media suitors who came a-courtin'.

There's Chris and his thrilled leg. Oh-so-serious Anderson and his plaint about distractions vs. real issues. The TV reporter who declares a Rev. Jeremiah Wright-free zone so the candidate will feel more comfortable. The swooning ladies of The View. And the superest, specialist guest star of them all: Oprah!

The documentary - Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected and Palin Was Targeted - is part tragedy and part romantic comedy, as the above-named suitors and others trip all over themselves making excuses for their guy.

Filmmaker and Philly-area native John Ziegler isn't the only one who noticed the media's infatuation with Barack Obama. A Rasmussen poll released on Election Day showed that 51 percent of voters thought reporters tried to help Obama win. But Ziegler was on to the issue long before Nov. 4. The filmmaker's "crystallizing moment" was the coverage of Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and his racially inflammatory sermons.

"That showed how ridiculously in the tank the media were going to be for Barack Obama," Ziegler says. "It was just a flat-out joke."

The photo below was taken in the Ladies loo at the National Press Club. Yes, my camera goes everywhere. With the media abandoning their professional principles, who is minding this cradle of liberty?



Pssst...I AM.

"In the stimulus debate, the GOP out-organized the onetime community organizer.

Sure, this was a flawed bill, with a priority not on stimulus, but on richly rewarding special interests loyal to Democrats. Republicans got that. More important, so did the public.

Still, the Republicans were outnumbered in Congress and supposedly out-messaged by the Great Communicator in the White House. It didn't matter. They did a better job of organizing their community and communicating.

The standards for organizing were set by Saul D. Alinsky, who began his work in the slums near Chicago's stockyards in 1939. Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation was the granddaddy of many subsequent groups, such as ACORN and the Developing Community Project, which hired a young Barack Obama in the 1980s."

Schmidt is ready to pound home the problems and solutions outlined in "Quiet Crisis." He says the benefits issue demonstrates why Philadelphia's economic situation can't be blamed on the recession alone.

"The finances of this city were run with us holding onto a cliff by our fingernails," he said. "It didn't take much to push us off."

A city finance official makes a similar point in "Quiet Crisis": "If the economy stays healthy, we're OK. If there's a recession, we're dead."

The recession is here. So now what?

To start, Philadelphia needs two viable political parties, says Schmidt, who was a senior auditor with the nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office for five years.

"One-party rule is always bad, always corrupt, and, with no checks and balances, is always inefficient," Schmidt said. He cited his own party's rule in Washington from 2001 to 2006, as well as the Democrats' 60-year dominance in Philadelphia.

"Without a two-party system," he said, "you don't have oversight. You have ward leader [and City Controller] Alan Butkovitz auditing ward leader Nutter, and all the other ward leaders in the Democratic Party with their own fiefdoms in city government."

While Schmidt would focus on pension and health-care costs, he insists savings could be achieved without sacrificing benefits. And he believes more regular audits of city agencies would reveal needless expenses that could be trimmed. That would spare core services such as police, fire and libraries from across-the-board budget cuts, which Schmidt called "a crude, blunt instrument."

He'd also rather see the city get its financial act together than use stimulus money to paper over long-standing problems.

"Borrowing more money is not the solution," Schmidt said. "The solution is better, responsible government that's accountable and reliable."

"There's no doubt that we're in a very severe and worrisome recession," she says. "The question needs to be, what are the best ways to think about stimulating the economy?"

She rejects the conventional wisdom of stimulus coming from rebate checks or massive infrastructure projects. The former already has proved ineffective, she says, and if Congress is bent on providing relief to low-income families suffering through the recession, the legislators should not confuse that assistance with a real boost to economic growth.

Money poured into transportation projects also will prove inadequate, Fraser believes. It didn't work for FDR in the 1930s or Japan in the late 1980s. One reason such efforts fall short, Fraser says, is that no real jobs are created. The government merely handicaps the private sector, where real growth is created, and consumes a larger percentage of the economy. (One often hidden cost of increasing government workers is those massive employee pension packages that no one can afford anymore.)

Besides, bailing out the states with money for projects they were going to fund anyway just rewards bad fiscal behavior.

Somewhere in Hollywood:

Producer: OK, Mr. Moore, let's hear the pitch.

Michael Moore: You'll love this. I call it a tragi-comic-docu-romance-musical sequel, Chicago II: The Story of Rod Blagojevich. And we don't even have to write new songs. The old ones fit perfectly.

P: A political musical? I don't know. . .

MM: No, wait. Hear me out. We open with an overhead shot of the governor's mansion, zooming in through the window to the big hair guy's office. He's standing on his desk, singing to the staff:

Ask any of the chickies in my pen

I love 'em all and all of them love me

Because the system works

The system called reciprocity. . .

Perhaps Mark Sanford - South Carolina's representative to Tuesday's meeting of the National Governors Association with President-elect Barack Obama - will have better luck.

Sanford was in Congress Hall to discuss an economic-stimulus package that could cost $700 billion or more. Many of his fellow governors wanted to green-light a plan they hope would create jobs, rebuild infrastructure, and ease the increasing costs of unemployment benefits and other social services. But Sanford was urging caution.

The governor has no problem with improving infrastructure or helping citizens in tough times. But he does take issue with the government's spending more than it takes in. And that's the common element among the bailout proposals: They all would use borrowed money.

"You don't solve a problem created by too much debt with more debt," Sanford said in an interview Monday.

Operator: Transition hotline, can I help you?

Caller: Uh, yeah, I've been reading about the transition . . .

O: Yes, sir, only seven more weeks until The One takes the oath!

C: Yeah, really looking forward to it. But I wanted to double-check something.

O: Ask away, sir. We have answers you can believe in.

C: I've been reading about some of the people who are going to help Barack Obama change Washington . . .

O: The One.

C: The who?

O: The One. We don't say Obama. We say The One. We want all Americans to say it, in the spirit of national unity.

C: The One.

O: You've got it. Please tell your friends.

C: You betcha.

O: Oh, now, we don't say that.

C: Say what?

O: That expression you just used. I can't repeat it. This call is being monitored. But we're discouraging its use. We hope to have it officially banned next year, but for now it's just a request.

C: You mean, you betcha?

Barack Obama and John McCain agreed on at least one area in the campaign:

More troops are needed in Afghanistan.

But they left plenty of questions unanswered. How many troops? Would they continue the current strategy or move in a new direction? How would this increase in forces compare with the surge that turned things around in Iraq? Was this talk of troops campaign rhetoric or a real commitment?

Election leaflet published by the National Socialist German Workers Party (October, 1925)

The November revolution, the revolution of the Jews and the Marxist party-rabble have delivered you into the hands of the international loan capitalism. For years you have sweated so that the State can pay the interest on the loan capital. You are damned for all eternity to be wage slaves, if you don't demand: (1) The Nationalization of the banks and the money economy. (2) The abolition of interest-exploiters and Stock Exchange speculators. (3) The abolition of share capital.

The night Barack Obama accepted his party's nomination for president in Denver, John McCain appeared in an ad saying:

"Sen. Obama, this is truly a good day for America.

"You know, too often the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed. So I want to stop and say, 'Congratulations. . . . Tomorrow we'll be back at it, but tonight, Senator, job well done.' "

It was a classy move, and McCain was every bit as gracious and dignified in his concession speech Tuesday night. Of course, tradition dictates that we'll be back at the politics and partisanship soon enough. First, though, there's another tradition, offering prayers for our leaders and the nation.

Americans have a habit of seeking grace in tough times.