A Switch in Time Saved Now, and Now This....

There's a famous saying about how "a switch in time saved nine" Supreme Court justices under FDR, who was threatening to pack the court unless it quit ruling his laws unconstitutional. When one judge switched to the liberals' side, it was just in time to save all of them.

Now, for all of us who consider the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) evil incarnate, it was an ill senator who saved the nation from the twin terrors of card check unionization and forced contract arbitration.

One of the EFCA's sponsors, Senator Tom Harkin (D.-Iowa), has revealed he had a deal in place in July to pass EFCA--with labor leaders set to descend on the capital to celebrate--when all he needed was just one more vote to reach the 60-vote cloture threshold. That vote belonged to the late Ted Kennedy, but when Harkin inquired of Kennedy's doctor if the senator could spend just three days in Washington, D.C., the answer was no; he's too ill.

Harkin wouldn't reveal what was in the deal:

"I will not say [what was in the bill] because it was closely held, it never leaked out and it still hasn't," Harkin said. "I took it off the front-burner and put it on the back-burner so it is still on warm, OK?"

No Surprise in This Lilly Ledbetter Endorsement

I came across an obscure news item in the Web site for Alabama TV station WHNT, which announced that Lilly Ledbetter--she of the eponymous Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act--had endorsed Democrat Artur Davis for governor of her home state of Alabama.

The last line of the brief article pretty much summed up Ledbetter's rationale--and gave me a good chuckle at the same time: "Davis was the only Alabama congressman who voted for the Ledbetter act."