WELL SAID – AT 8:29 A.M. ET:  I've been very impressed with the style the Republican congressional leadership has shown thus far as it contemplates the power it will have in January.  Consider this, from The Hill:

House Republicans announced Wednesday they plan to force a floor vote on defunding NPR in response to the firing of analyst Juan Williams last month.

House GOP Whip Eric Cantor (Va.) and Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colo.) said that cutting funds to the publicly subsidized news organization was the winner of the conference's weekly "YouCut" contest, in which the public votes online on spending items they want eliminated.

And this is truly superb:

"When NPR executives made the decision to unfairly terminate Juan Williams and to then disparage him afterwards, the bias of their organization was exposed," the two Republicans said in a statement. "Make no mistake, it is not the role of government to tell news organizations how to operate. What is avoidable, however, is providing taxpayer funds to news organizations that promote a partisan point of view. Eliminating taxpayer funding for NPR is precisely the kind of commonsense cut that we have to begin making if we want to fundamentally alter the way business is conducted in Washington.”

Yippee.  Every great governmental action is a teaching experience.  What Republicans must teach some of these snotty institutions, like NPR, is that with federal funding comes federal oversight.  No more blank checks.  And that goes especially for colleges and universities.

No one has an automatic right to the people's treasury.  And the people, through their representatives, have a right to know how their treasury is spent, and to object when they wish.

I'm agnostic on cutting all funding to NPR.  There are arguments both ways.  But a little scare can produce wondrous results. 

November 18, 2010