Deterring the Nuclear Option

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In our dealings with the Soviet Union in the latter half of the 20th century, a theory of how to stop a nuclear war was known as “mutually assured destruction.” The theory went that the Soviets would not launch a first strike knowing that a counterstrike would inflict similar or worse damage.

Even on a smaller scale, the fallout from a nuclear blast is severe — and it is nearly impossible to tell which way the winds will blow and who will be affected by the fallout.

While obviously hyperbole, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is currently threatening to launch what congressional observers refer to as the “nuclear option” — that is, breaking the current Senate rules to permanently curtail the rights of the minority party by ending the possibility of extended debate and amendments on vital pieces of legislation.

Much like any nuclear alternative, deterrents are available if one is willing to exercise them, and the possible dangers of unforeseen fallout exist. Today, I caution the majority leader that I will not simply stand by and witness his destruction of the rights of senators, nor his power grab through clear breaking of Senate rules and precedents. I will fight back.

Currently, the Senate requires 67 votes, a two-thirds majority, to shut down debate to change its rules. The Senate should be consistent and not changed at the whim of 51 of its members. Sen. Reid knows this, but is insisting that debate on Senate rules can be shut down with 51, and plans to use this tactic to impose his will on the body.

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DeMint On Prospect of Jenny Sanford Replacing Him: ‘She’s Great’

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Jim DeMint suggested in a brief interview with The Daily Caller on Thursday that he would approve if former South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford is tapped to take over the Senate seat he is vacating next month.

“She’s great,” DeMint said Thursday afternoon, as he walked off the Senate floor after a vote.

DeMint, a Republican, announced last week that he’s resigning from the U.S. Senate to take over as head of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington D.C.-based conservative think tank.

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will appoint DeMint’s successor. Haley is thought to be considering at least five people for the seat, including Sanford, whose ex-husband, Mark Sanford, was governor of the state.

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GOP Lawyer: Republicans Must End Cronyism of ‘Little White Boy Consultants’

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A top GOP legal adviser to several House and Senate Republicans says the Republican National Committee’s newly formed panel to study the GOP’s failed 2012 election strategy must focus on rooting out cronyism among the party’s consultant class.

“Until Chairman Priebus and other GOP leaders focus on rooting out the greed, cronyism, and corruption of the ‘little white boy’ consultants who make millions of dollars, year in and year out, and yet lose elections—and until there is real accountability and transparency to donors to ensure that integrity is restored to GOP circles—none of these initiatives will matter,” said Cleta Mitchell.

The assembling of the Republican panel comes on the heels of an investigation by Breitbart News contributor Patrick Michael Leahy that showed that the Romney campaign paid over $150 million to two consulting firms with ties to top RNC and Romney campaign staffers.

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More Babies, Please

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IN the eternally recurring debates about whether some rival great power will knock the United States off its global perch, there has always been one excellent reason to bet on a second American century: We have more babies than the competition.

It’s a near-universal law that modernity reduces fertility. But compared with the swiftly aging nations of East Asia and Western Europe, the American birthrate has proved consistently resilient, hovering around the level required to keep a population stable or growing over the long run.

America’s demographic edge has a variety of sources: our famous religiosity, our vast interior and wide-open spaces (and the four-bedroom detached houses they make possible), our willingness to welcome immigrants (who tend to have higher birthrates than the native-born).

And it clearly is an edge. Today’s babies are tomorrow’s taxpayers and workers and entrepreneurs, and relatively youthful populations speed economic growth and keep spending commitments affordable. Thanks to our relative demographic dynamism, the America of 50 years hence may not only have more workers per retiree than countries like Japan and Germany, but also have more than emerging powers like China and Brazil.

If, that is, our dynamism persists. But that’s no longer a sure thing. American fertility plunged with the stock market in 2008, and it hasn’t recovered. Last week, the Pew Research Center reported that U.S. birthrates hit the lowest rate ever recorded in 2011, with just 63 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age. (The rate was 71 per 1,000 in 1990.) For the first time in recent memory, Americans are having fewer babies than the French or British.

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Conservative Purge: House Leadership Office Cites ‘The A–hole Factor’

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Back-bench freshmen Justin Amash, Tim Huelskamp and David Schweikert are gaining martyr status among conservative activists after they were “purged” from House committees for what they say is a matter of sticking to their principles on tough votes.

But some of their colleagues say the trio got yanked by the leadership-driven Republican Steering Committee because they’re jerks — or worse.

In an interview with POLITICO, one member of the Steering Committee called them “the most egregious a—holes” in the House Republican Conference.

The argument: This went beyond voting records. The members who were booted made life harder for other Republicans by taking whacks at them in public for supporting the team, according to Republican sources familiar with the Steering Committee’s decision.

In a closed-door meeting of the House Republican Study Committee on Wednesday, Amash and Huelskamp argued that they had been unfairly targeted for their conservative voting records, complaining that the leadership used a “secret scorecard” to rate their loyalty.

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Threat of Mass Cyberattacks on U.S. Banks Is Real, McAfee Warns

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The wave of distributed denial of service attacks that hit U.S. banks in October was next-to-nothing compared to what could happen if cybercriminals actually carry through with their plans for next year.

According to a report (PDF) released today by McAfee Labs, an impending attack on U.S. financial institutions — dubbed Project Blitzkrieg — isn’t only a possibility, it’s a “credible threat.”

“McAfee Labs believes that Project Blitzkrieg is a credible threat to the financial industry and appears to be moving forward as planned,” the report reads. “Although Project Blitzkrieg hasn’t yet infected thousands of victims and we cannot directly confirm any cases of fraud, the attackers have managed to run an operation undetected for several months while infecting a few hundred.”

Project Blitzkrieg is believed to be headed by an individual known as vorVzakone, according to McAfee. In September, vorVzakone announced a massive fraud campaign to be launched against 30 U.S. banks in spring 2013.

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Vladimir Putin Calls On Russian Families to Have Three Children

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. . . Mr Putin lauded recent measures to give cash payments and other benefits to mothers having a second child. Current birth rates show an average of 1.7 children are born to each Russian woman, but the president urged a huge leap in family-building.

New payments for those having a third child would begin next year, he said. “Demographers affirm that choosing to have a second child is already a potential choice in favour of a third,” he added. “It’s important that families make that step… I am convinced that the norm in Russia should become a family with three children.”

To achieve that goal, he said, women needed to be provided with the opportunity to continue work, so that they “did not fear that having a second and third child would close the path to a career”.

Mr Putin has long equated Russia’s demographic decline over recent decades with a potential threat to security. On Wednesday, he added: “In order for Russia to be a strong and sovereign country, there must be more of us and we must be better in morality, in our competences, our work and our creativity.”

To applause, the president said there were already signs that Russia’s long term demographic decline was reversing, and the population had grown by 200,000 in the first nine months of this year. “The birth rate is at last above the mortality rate,” he said.

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U.S. Terror Agency To Tap Citizen Files

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Top U.S. intelligence officials gathered in the White House Situation Room in March to debate a controversial proposal. Counterterrorism officials wanted to create a government dragnet, sweeping up millions of records about U.S. citizens—even people suspected of no crime.

Not everyone was on board. “This is a sea change in the way that the government interacts with the general public,” Mary Ellen Callahan, chief privacy officer of the Department of Homeland Security, argued in the meeting, according to people familiar with the discussions.

A week later, the attorney general signed the changes into effect.

Through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews with officials at numerous agencies, The Wall Street Journal has reconstructed the clash over the counterterrorism program within the administration of President Barack Obama. The debate was a confrontation between some who viewed it as a matter of efficiency—how long to keep data, for instance, or where it should be stored—and others who saw it as granting authority for unprecedented government surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.

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Rand Paul Targets Paul Ryan for ‘Purge’ of House Conservatives

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Add Rep. Paul Ryan to the list of House Republican leaders under fire for removing conservatives from key congressional committees.

A fundraising email sent by Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul urges supporters to sign a petition protesting the move, targeting the party’s 2012 vice presidential nominee and House Budget Committee chairman, as well as Speaker of the House John Boehner.

“The petition urges John Boehner and Paul Ryan to stop purging fiscal conservatives from committee assignments, and to reinstate the four already purged from their positions,” reads the message from RAND PAC, Rand Paul’s political action committee.

Rand Paul noted that “according to news reports, two of the congressmen were purged from the Budget Committee for voting for a five-year balanced budget plan — instead of Paul Ryan’s budget which balanced in 28 years.”

Michigan Republican Rep. Justin Amash and Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp both voted against the Ryan budget in committee last year. As a result, the spending blueprint only cleared committee by a narrow 19-18 vote.

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