Voters in Missouri Tuesday rejected the federal mandate to purchase health insurance, as an overwhelming 71 percent marked their ballots for Proposition C. The vote is seen as a rebuke of President Barack Obama’s administration and encouragement to Republicans intent upon reversing the unpopular health care law mocked as ObamaCare which was rammed through Congress in March:

“The citizens of the Show-Me State don’t want Washington involved in their health care decisions,” said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.

With most of the vote counted, Proposition C was winning by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1. The measure, which seeks to exempt Missouri from the insurance mandate in the new health care law, includes a provision that would change how insurance companies that go out of business in Missouri liquidate their assets.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cunningham said at a campaign gathering at a private home in Town and Country. “Citizens wanted their voices to be heard.”

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, says the Missouri vote is even more devastating for Democrats than it appears:

According to preliminary results, just under 668,000 Missourians voted in favor of Proposition C. Only 578,000 Republicans voted in their party’s primaries. Another 40,000 voters appear to have cast votes on Proposition C without voting in either the Republican or Democratic primaries. So, even if you assume that every single Republican voted for the initiative and every person who didn’t vote in a primary voted for it, at least 40,000 Democrats — more than one in every eight Democratic primary voters — voted against the centerpiece of President Obama’s health-care plan. And these aren’t just any registered Democrats; these are the party activists, the Democratic base.

Do we need any more evidence of how unpopular this bill is?

- JP

Republicans will begin casting their votes in the Kansas Republican primary for U.S. Senate in less than 12 hours. The polls will open at 7 AM in the Jayhawk State and will close at 7 PM. Two U.S. Congressmen have been battling to be the GOP nominee, a candidate who will be all but assured of victory in the November general election in Republican Kansas. The Senate seat is being vacated by Sam Brownback, who is the front-runner to be the state’s next governor.

Todd Tiahrt and Jerry Moran have been waging a contest to convince voters that each is the true conservative in the race. Moran has the larger campaign war chest and has led the lead in the polls, but Tiahrt has been narrowing the gap in the most recent polling. Although a Survey USA poll released on the eve of the primary election showed Moran with a 10-point lead, the race could actually be closer than that:

The pollster says that compared to two weeks ago, Moran is down one percentage point, and Tiahrt is up three. Tiahrt’s strategy to paint himself as the true conservative appears to be working, at least among conservative voters. Today he leads among conservatives by five percentage points, where two months ago Moran led by 21 percentage points in this group.

The poll notes potential trouble for Moran: “Most ominous for Moran: Among the 17 percent of voters who report they have already cast their ballots, Tiahrt is nominally ahead, 46 percent to 43 percent. Among those who tell SurveyUSA they are likely to vote, but have not yet done so, Moran leads by 13.”

If these potential Moran voters don’t turn out tomorrow, it could be good news for Tiahrt.

Moran has been endorsed by Senators Jim Demint (R-SC) and Tom Coburn (R-OK). Tiahrt has the backing of 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, former White House chief of staff Karl Rove and political activist Phyllis Schlafly.

Update:  At NRO’s The Corner, Denis Boyles reports “(Mostly) Good News from Kansas.”

- JP

There’s good news for big government proponents in a report released Thursday by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO). The more than $1.9 billion in stimulus funds spent by the Department of Energy (DOE) has created 10,018 jobs through May. The bad news is that it has cost the American taxpayers an average of $194,213 for each full-time job that was created:

“As a small business owner for nearly 22 years, I’m shocked that these jobs cost taxpayers nearly $195,000 each,” U.S. Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) said. “Taxpayers deserve more for their investment. This is more evidence that the private sector is far more capable than the federal government at creating the long-term jobs required for a sustainable economic recovery.”“It looks like the Department of Energy got in over its head when it was handed $6 billion in stimulus money to create jobs by accelerating environmental cleanup work. This report says that DOE managed its timetables well enough, but it also indicates that so far, the jobs that DOE created cost $194,213 each,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

While DOE reports that it created 10,018 jobs through May of this year, the department has also used a more unorthodox methodology to inflate job creation in some of its reports, a methodology the GAO says may mislead the public. For example, using the method GAO was critical of, the agency reports roughly 20,000 jobs created through May of this year, counting the number of “lives touched” in some documents.

Barton and Walden, then-ranking member of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, asked the GAO in March 2009 to examine the Department of Energy’s management of the stimulus funding for environmental cleanup. U.S. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, later joined the request when he became the subcommittee’s ranking member.

“It seems our concerns about DOE’s ability to effectively and efficiently use the funds given to them have become reality. This is yet another example of how, despite the White House’s assertions, the almost $1 trillion of stimulus funding has failed to stimulate anything other than government bureaucracy,” Burgess said.

The funds given to DOE were intended to create jobs and stimulate economic recovery by ramping up the environmental cleanup of hazardous waste material at the federal government’s nuclear weapons complex. But government’s good intentions often only serve to pave the road to perdition, and the taxpayers always get stuck with the bill.

- JP

Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) had reportedly worked out an arrangement which would allow him to avoid the humiliation of a public trial, but now word comes that the deal has fallen though:

Harlem friends of Rangel tell WCBS_TV they have been told that the details could be unveiled when the House Ethics Committee meets Thursday afternoon.

It’s the culmination of two years of scandal for the 20-term Democratic lawmaker. At issue is whether the former head of the House Ways and Means committee will admit to any serious ethical wrongdoing. Rangel is being charged with misusing his office for fundraising, failure to disclose income, belated payment of taxes and possible help with a tax shelter for a company whose chief executive was a major donor.

An ethics subcommittee had charged the 80 year old U.S. Representative with “unspecified violations” July 22 after an 18-month investigation into his fundraising, taxes and financial disclosure statements. Rangel’s lawyers have been negotiating with ethics committee staff hoping to avoid the hearing.

Rangel’s Democrat colleagues are worried that publicity from his ethical troubles could be another albatross around their necks in the November midterm election that will decide which party will control Congress after January of next year:

Republicans have been reminding voters that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi orchestrated the 2006 Democratic takeover of Congress in part by promising to “drain the swamp” of ethics violations.

“The fact is that the swamp has not been drained,” said House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Two Democrats facing competitive reelection campaigns this year have called on Rangel to resign and many others have returned his campaign contributions. Asked about the potential political impact of the hearing, Pelosi said, “the chips will have to fall where they may politically.”

Update: Latest word is that the a deal between Rangel and the committe has fallen through. The embattled congressman was not willing to admit to any wrongdoing, something the committee had insisted upon to avoid a formal hearing:

A House ethics panel was meeting Thursday to discuss a deal with New York Rep. Charles Rangel after holding a briefing earlier in the day on possible charges against the longtime lawmaker.

Rangel said he’s done nothing wrong to warrant an adjudicatory subcommittee’s review of 13 allegations of misconduct.

Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, ranking member on the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, said Rangel was given an opportunity to settle charges during the investigative process, and that time has passed.

“Let me be clear that Mr. Rangel under these rules was given opportunities to negotiate a settlement during the investigation. Let me be clear that I did not participate in any attempts to cut a back room deal behind closed doors,” McCaul said at the start of a hearing on possible corruption charges.

McCaul said it’s not lost on any member of the panel that the approval rating of Congress is at an all time low, and requires the probe, which has involved 28,000 pages of documents and 60 meetings as well as one deposition from Rangel, be fair and open.

- JP

In another embarrassment for the Obama administration. The Sunday Times has gotten hold of correspondence which reveals that the White House favored “compassionate release” over letting Abdel Baset al-Megrahi rot in a Libyan prison:

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama’s claim last week that all Americans were “surprised, disappointed and angry” to learn of Megrahi’s release.

Scottish ministers viewed the level of US resistance to compassionate release as “half-hearted” and a sign it would be accepted.

The US has tried to keep the letter secret, refusing to give permission to the Scottish authorities to publish it on the grounds it would prevent future “frank and open communications” with other governments.

In the letter, sent on August 12 last year to Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond and justice officials, Mr LeBaron wrote that the US wanted Megrahi to remain imprisoned in view of the nature of the crime.

The note added: “Nevertheless, if Scottish authorities come to the conclusion that Megrahi must be released from Scottish custody, the US position is that conditional release on compassionate grounds would be a far preferable alternative to prisoner transfer, which we strongly oppose.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is looking into the circumstances surrounding Megrahi’s release, and questions have arisen concerning whether whether British Petroleum lobbied to free the convicted Lockerbie bomber. BP admitted earlier this month that it had told British officials in 2007 that a stalled prisoner-transfer agreement between Britain and Libya could negatively impact a lucrative BP oil deal with Libya, but the oil giant has publicly denied pushing for Megrahi’s release.

- JP