Neil Stevens's blog

Posted at 6:20pm on Jul. 2, 2008 Mercosur Demands Lebensraum

By Neil Stevens

The South American trade union demands that its people know no boundaries, according to the BBC:

The EU laws, due to come into force in 2010, could see illegal immigrants held for up to 18 months and face a five-year ban on re-entry if expelled.

....In a joint declaration, [Mercosur leaders] rejected "every effort to criminalise irregular migration and the adoption of restrictive immigration policies, in particular against the most vulnerable sectors of society, women and children".

They used to call this sort of thing an invasion, sending your people across national boundaries and demanding full rights to that territory. If the EU caves on this, I bet Hitler would be kicking himself right now. He might have had Poland without a fight had he just demanded an end to "restrictive immigration policies."

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Posted at 10:35am on Jun. 25, 2008 Phoenix has a good Sheriff, Part LXVII

By Neil Stevens

A few years back, dominant NBA basketball center Shaquille O'Neal took all the training he needed to become a Sheriff's deputy, and served as one while playing for the Miami Heat. He did work where his unusual size and notoriety would not hinder the job, which meant much Internet-based work. But sometimes his size and strength would come in handy on planned operations, so he'd come along and help.

It was good for Shaq, good for the county, and good for the community. Everyone gained, so naturally when Shaq was traded to the Phoenix Suns, he entered into the same kind of relationship with Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Shaq wrecked it all this week, though.

Read on...

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Posted at 9:22am on May 29, 2008 Pulling An Obama

By Neil Stevens

When Red State 3 comes, replying to yourself will be cemented in as Pulling a Kowalski. However something that happens much more often, is that people will go and reply in the wrong place to make a comment. What should we call that?

I propose calling it Pulling An Obama. After all, when you're travelling to 55 states, it's hard to tell if you're in Sioux City or Sioux Falls, so the occasional gaffe of gargantuan proportions is inevitable.

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Posted at 3:13pm on May 14, 2008 Splitting California

By Neil Stevens

Texas may hold the option of splitting into multiple states, but it's California that most needs broken up. Traditionally, the proposal has been a North-South split, but some of us have other ideas.

Via Paul Cella I came across this post by Jeff Culbreath reacting to a proposal to split California into three states. Both Culbreath and Phrelin.com focus heavily on geography in taking the traditional north-south split, but adding a third state, separating the northern coastline from the rest of the proposed Northern California.

I think this is a bit self-serving, and misses where the meaningful split is.

Read on...

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Posted at 1:42pm on May 7, 2008 California Republicans open primaries

By Neil Stevens

I was sitting here, reading my sample ballot for the June primary election here in California, and noticed something startling. It says here that nonpartisan voters may request a ballot for any of the following parties: Democratic Party, Republican Party, American Independent Party. This is a change. In the past, independents could only vote in the Democratic and AI primaries.

Clearly, the California Republican Party has changed the policy. I assume this happened at the last convention in San Francisco, during which my attention was focused on the platform fight.

This is disappointing to me. As things stand, conservative stalwarts in the party do the state a great service by leveraging their Constitutional prerogatives and limiting the tax-and-spend desires of the Democratic majority. If we allow ourselves to be watered down by 'independents,' then we could destroy that, and the Democrats would be able to run amok raising taxes, supermajority requirement or no.

I, for one, personally prefer we go back to having truly closed primaries. Even if "moderating" on spending, taxes, and culture would net us a few more seats, it could cost us what limited success we do have in Sacramento.

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Posted at 4:01am on Mar. 30, 2008 Just another reason Red State is so great

By Neil Stevens

Cuss-o-meter

According to the Cuss-o-meter, 0.2% of Red State pages contain cussing. "This is 98% less than other websites who took this test," it says. My own site came up with 0.1%. The average is said to be 9%.

Good for us, good for us. I think that figure shows two things: it shows we try to be more educated in how we write, and it shows we try to be less angry in how we write. So many people will just spew out foulmouthed rants when they get agitated, and they all have to calm down before they post here.

Good for us.

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Posted at 4:01pm on Mar. 25, 2008 A small request of our readers and commenters

By Neil Stevens

Red State's servers do get slow from time to time, to the point where they even stop responding. We know this, and we do take efforts to handle it.

What our readers can do to help though is simple: If you hit the button to post, and it doesn't get through right away, please do not press the button again until you are able to get through to the site and see if your first attempt succeeded. This will prevent duplicate posts.

Thank you, and back to our regularly scheduled discussion!

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Posted at 12:04pm on Mar. 21, 2008 The Divided States of America

By Neil Stevens

Elaborating on an earlier Redhot, a reader sent in this translation of The Divided States of America, a Turkish site dedicated to readers carving up our country to make a point.

Read on for the text...

"DIVIDED USA MAPS CONTINUE TO COME"

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Posted at 7:27pm on Mar. 12, 2008 My first political video

By Neil Stevens

This is my first attempt at a political video. I was rummaging around my Applications folder and found I had iMovie HD, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

Don't be gentle. If it stinks, just say so. If you don't get the joke of the video, see here.


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Posted at 7:17pm on Mar. 3, 2008 Redstate Roundtable #4: The GOP/Conservative Domestic Agenda 2009-2012

By Neil Stevens

For this week's roundtable, let's discuss what Republicans in general and conservatives in particular should pursue as our top domestic federal legislative priorities over the next four years. Obviously, if McCain is elected, or if the GOP recaptures at least one House of Congress in November, we will have a foothold from which Republicans can propose a legislative agenda of our own. If none of those things happen, we should still consider what our agenda should look like besides (as the late Bill Buckley would say) simply standing athwart Obamania shouting "stop."

Read on for the discussion...

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Posted at 7:32pm on Feb. 24, 2008 California Republicans reject abortion, re-adopt compromise platform

By Neil Stevens

The California Republican Party has again adopted "a strong, conservative pro-life, pro-family platform", says Flash Report, but I think what really happened in San Francisco is that conservatives and moderates fought off an extreme pro-abortion fringe and joined to put in a moderate platform that reaches out in a reasonable way to a left-leaning state.

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Posted at 2:29pm on Feb. 5, 2008 My Super Tuesday Ballot [Bumped for primary day]

By Neil Stevens

Yesterday my ballot came in the mail for California's primary election on Super Tuesday, February 5.

Unlike the November 2006 ballot which was just huge, this one is pretty small. One office, and 7 initiatives (well, effectively four since four of them are nearly identical).

Here are my choices and recommendations from top to bottom, and why:

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Posted at 10:28pm on Feb. 4, 2008 John McCain is the conservative choice on technology issues

By Neil Stevens

Gizmodo weighed in on the Republican Presidential race today, being good little Democrats and not being able to resist injecting politics where they don't belong. Their pick is Mike Huckabee, but I think their own chart shows John McCain to be the pick.

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Posted at 4:16pm on Jan. 25, 2008 I am no longer a RiNO

By Neil Stevens

For the record, I no longer consider myself a RiNO. I will vote for the nominees of the Republican party* all the way down the ticket automatically. That's my new policy.

This is a major change for me. I've always considered voting for another party to be a reasonable message-sending approach. but I was misguided: my thought processes hinged on the assumption that the Republican party is truly and rightfully Reaganite. But that is not the case, so I have to adapt.

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Posted at 1:32am on Jan. 20, 2008 Well, that was a kick in the teeth

By Neil Stevens

Boy, it was a rough night for us fans of Fred Thompson. So many of us had so many hopes wrapped up in him. He seemed a rare and special candidate; he was a conservative's conservative. Mix equal parts Ronald Reagan and Calvin Coolidge, and you get Fred Thompson, ready to swoop in and carry us all to victory in November.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the inauguration: the party was not there for us. We thought that everything would pull together since Thompson represented the ideals of two of the most admired Republicans of the 20th century, but he was not even close. Where we thought the party should be is decidedly not where it is.

And worse than that is that a dream many of us have had even before Fred Thompson was drafted for President, has failed. Republican Conservative mythology centers on the great conservative captivating the party with his ideas, taking the nomination, and leading the country with him. We talk about Goldwater, we talk about Reagan, and we sigh wistfully. But we now see that in at least three tries, we have only actually taken the Presidency once. Our plan just will not work.

So what do we do about it? We could quit. We could decide that caring about politics just is not worth this. But, I have to assume anyone who quit will not be reading this, so that option will not be discussed further. So we have to act, but what can we do?

Read on...

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