“American Conservative Union” on The Daily Caller

The American Conservative Union – founded in 1964 and best known for hosting the Conservative Political Action Conference – announced Monday that it will be using its Congressional Ratings program on state legislators. (more)

Al Cardenas, the new chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU), announced on CSPAN Wednesday that his organization, which hosts the annual CPAC event, will now vet organizations before allowing them to participate. (more)

David Keene, the longtime chairman of the American Conservative Union, stepped down on Wednesday as the leader of the organization, one day ahead of the first of its annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). (more)

After several days of negotiations with CPAC organizers, Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin turned down an invitation to give the keynote speech for this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference. (more)

One thing is becoming clear about legislation that a bipartisan group of more than 30 senators plan to introduce later this month to implement the recommendations of President Obama’s deficit commission: the bill’s debut will be just the beginning of a protracted fight over its final result. (more)

Republicans, who were expected to be overwhelmed by internal divisions and Tea Party discord, have navigated the first set of rapids with surprising ease following the midterm elections, while Democrats have suffered a level of chaos that most did not foresee. (more)

Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips explained why he sent out an e-mail that included the Muslim faith of Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison on a list of reasons not to support him, claiming that Tea Party members ought to “seriously consider” whether they should vote for a candidate who adheres to Islam. (more)

Venture capitalist and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel will host GOProud’s “Homocon” party in New York, a spokesman for the organization that represents gay conservatives told The Daily Caller Friday. (more)

While the announcement that conservative pundit Ann Coulter agreed to headline a party for gay conservatives may have ruffled some feathers on both sides of the debate over gay rights, the overall reaction has been surprisingly positive, a spokesman for the group hosting the event told The Daily Caller. (more)

This month the American Conservative Union (ACU) launched a new project aimed at tracking former leaders of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) to expose any similarly corrupt spin-off groups they may conspire to create. (more)

“This is personal but John Thune is somebody that I have nightmares about,” says DNC executive director Jennifer O’Malley Dillon.  O’Malley Dillon has worked for Tim Johnson and Tom Daschle; both men were defeated by John Thune.  Thune ousted Tim Johnson in ’96 for a seat in the House of Representatives and in 2004 Thune unseated then Senate Minority Leader and Leader of the Senate Democrats, Tom Daschle.  The DNC director also noted of Thune: “He has his head down and is doing some policy stuff. [You] just got to start looking at him.”  Thune is also running for re-election this year but has no Democrat or Republican challengers. (more)

Efforts by American presidents to consolidate and centralize power are nothing new. FDR took full advantage of the Great Depression by vastly expanded his reach through the New Deal and, in an effort to preempt any check on his grab for federal power, cynically attempted to pack the U.S. Supreme Court. Nixon resigned in disgrace over Watergate. Clinton was impeached attempting to deny an American her rightful day in court. And so it’s no surprise that President Obama, even as a constitutional scholar, has shrewdly utilized his executive powers in implementing his transformational national agenda. What is startling, however, is the breathtakingly comprehensive scope of his reach into every facet of our lives. In their recently published and No. 1 bestselling book, “The Blueprint” (Lyons Press, 2010), authors Ken Blackwell (Ohio’s former secretary of state and conservative activist) and Ken Klukowski (a constitutional legal scholar) lay out the sheer breadth of President Obama’s power grab. (more)

As a curious person who likes crowds and dislikes big government, it’s only natural that I’ve made my way to a couple Tea Party rallies in the past few months. My semi-regular attendance earned me a number of pins and buttons—including one with the now-again-emblematic “don’t tread on me” slogan—and it has placed my name on the mailing list of Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks organization, one of the principal sponsors of the rallies. (more)

It’s always sad to see bad behavior rewarded in any way. When a spoiled hotel heiress makes a naughty home video and instantly becomes a popular celebrity, or a tacky couple shamelessly crashes a White House event and is green-lighted for a reality TV show, we all feel a bit uneasy. (And don’t even get me started on dubious cultural icons  like Bret Michaels of VH1’s “Rock of Love”, Snooki, or Mike a.k.a. The Situation of MTV’s “Jersey Shore”). (more)

“In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then…they came for me … And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”
Pastor Martin Niemöller (more)

Like most of us, I normally ignore or delete the many e-mails of jokes, partisan trivia and the like often forwarded to me. However, I found one such recent e-mail, which included a White House photo, especially troubling. (more)

It’s not very often that Utah is a topic of conversation in Washington, D.C. Only when a high-profile polygamist is on the run or when the Jazz are in the playoffs do my friends ask about my home state. (more)

Conservatives have long written-off New York as a state taken over by social-welfare liberals, union bosses, and dependents on big-government. New York lost its only Republican senator, Alfonse “pothole” D’Amato, in 1998, and after three Republican terms under George Pataki, the governorship slipped to liberals Eliot Spitzer in 2004 and then (through scandal) David Paterson in 2008. Reflecting an overall trend in the northeast, liberals won congressional seat after congressional seat in both upstate New York and the Long Island, Staten Island and other New York City suburbs. President Barack Obama’s appointment of Republican Rep. John McHugh as his Secretary of the Army appeared to spell doom for yet another Republican seat. And sure enough, Democrat candidate Bill Owens won the seat just in time to vote in favor of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s health care bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. (more)