I very seldom try to link BUGS with current issues. But Porch Talk is not connected with what just happened. I went from Porch Talk to using what I learned listening to the hardnest and most practical kind of current politics.

Porch Talk can be good advise in almost anything.

One example is my lone and successful initiative to get congress to stop the IRS from unilaterally imposing race quotas on private schools. The reason it is current is because Obama announced his intention to get a lot of his environmentalist programs that congress wouldn’t pass through by having regulatory agencies impose them.

Our most effective argument against this, as usual, was a basic. A regulatory agency only exists because congress cannot do everything. Article 1 of the Constitution says that “ALL legislative authority is invested in Congress.”

John Ashbrook asked each of the one in five minority that did not want to repeal those IRS regs, “Why don’t you introduce those regulations in congress?” It was very effective, like the Mantra, because it dealt with a point no one had considered in many years: regulatory agencies issue regs to CARRY OUT the mission given them in the legislation which created them.

When John died and Mrs. Ashbrook and Bob Dornan were left to debate the renewal of the ban on such IRS regs. From a four to one majority, they damned near lost. They were pitiful. As usual, they ended up compromising.

I wish you could have seen their floundering attempts to defend what John and I had beaten the crap out of the opposition on.

It wasn’t just the issue, it was the ARGUMENTS we had that got that four to one majority. I watched it on C-Span, and even I was impressed by how critical it is TO GET YOUR POINTS RIGHT.

What they desperately needed was me. I have seldom felt so helpless, as I had moved on into the Administration. But even I did not fully realize until that moment how absolutely critical it is to MAKE YOUR POINT AND MAKE IT RIGHT.

Both Dornan and Mrs. Ashbrook were totally devoted to what they were doing, but they didn’t have the intellectual discipline John and I had developed, and I watched them lose a lot for that reason.

Most people are not really aware that regulatory agencies are given only the powers congress hasn’t the TIME to regulate. They’re not legislative bodies.

Read any agency ruling and you will find, first of all, reference to the legislation that gave the agency the right to make that regulation.

But I doubt seriously anyone among the respectable conservatives will MAKE that point, much less ram it down the opposition’s throat the way they would have to in order to rein in the Obama Power Grab.