Is this the new GOP that was elected last month?

Look who's a judicial activist now:

If there is one thing your typical Republican politician does not care for (I have always been given to understand), it is an “activist judge.” You know the sort of judges I mean. The ones who ignore the Constitution and “legislate from the bench,” arrogating to themselves the power that rightly belongs to the American people. In their “Pledge to America,” published shortly before the midterm elections and listing the principles by which they intend to govern, Republican congressional leaders made reference to “an overreaching judiciary” and declared: “We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its Framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored.” 

If there is one more thing your typical Republican politician does not care for, it is frivolous lawsuits that clog the courts and unfairly burden innocent doctors and small-business persons as they go about trying to create jobs. “The rule of law does not mean the rule of lawyers,” the 2008 GOP platform wittily observed. 

So it is puzzling to learn that 32 Republican senators have filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking a U.S. District Court judge to invalidate President Barack Obama’s health care reform. That’s 32 out of 42 GOP senators, or more than three-fourths, in these waning days of the old Congress. Several of these suits are working their way through the federal court system. Governors, such as the currently fashionable Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota, have also filed a brief, as have 63 Republican House members. John Boehner, the next speaker, feeling the full weight of his upcoming office, has filed one all by himself. 

The pledge complains that “an arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions ... without accepting or requesting the input of the many.” But health care reform was enacted by majorities in both houses of Congress and signed into law by a president who got a majority of the people’s votes, so I don’t know who these “self-appointed elites” are.

Study: Congress sought 39,294 earmarks:

Members of Congress requested almost 40,000 earmarks worth more than $100 billion directed to their home districts and states for the current fiscal year, according to a first-of-its-kind analysis to be released Tuesday. 

As Congress attempts to finalize appropriations legislation through next September, the new database shows that there remains a relentless bipartisan appetite for projects from coast to coast — whether it’s the $5 million Sen. Bill Nelson sought for an engineering project at the University of South Florida, the $1 million requested by Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) to develop soybeans resistant to a problematic pest, the $160,000 that Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) sought for a local Boys and Girls Club in Sacramento or the $2 million for a new transit transfer center in Lafayette called for by Sen. DickLugar (R-Ind.). 

In total, the new database — developed by Taxpayers Against Earmarks, Taxpayers for Common Sense and WashingtonWatch.com — showed that House members and senators from both parties asked for 39,294 earmarks worth an eye-popping $131 billion. 

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The database covers requests for fiscal 2011 — a time when House Republicans vowed to follow a self-imposed earmark moratorium and House Democrats said they would not seek money earmarked to for-profit companies. But some House Republicans clearly went their own way; Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), for instance, sought 51 earmarks worth more than $358 million.

GOP Never Serious About Reducing Deficit:

After complaining bitterly during the midterm elections that budget deficits were a tool of the devil, and using those complaints to convince people to vote against Democrats, the GOP has now agreed to the one option that will increase the deficit the most; extending the Bush tax cuts for all Americans. This is so audacious that it likely would have made Lyndon Johnson proud.

Not since Johnson criticized Barry Goldwater’s military plans for Vietnam during the 1964 campaign, and then implemented many of those same strategies and tactics immediately after the election, have we seen the type of hypocrisy that Congressional Republicans displayed with this tax deal. 

This doesn’t mean that the deal wasn’t justified and won’t be good for the economy. It was and it will be. But the ability of Congressional Republicans to turn not on a dime, but on hundreds of billions of dollars, demonstrates unambiguously that they were never as serious about reducing the budget deficit and national debt as they said they were. They deserve to be called out for it.