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Legislation to permit law enforcement to jam prisoners' cell phone calls easily cleared a Senate committee on Wednesday, the latest example of how Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has used her seniority to push Texas-centric issues that translate directly to her run for governor.

Yet Hutchison has been absent from the committee's work on two top priorities of Congress: health care legislation and consumer protection. When she recently announced her departure from the Senate in the fall, she said she'd stay in Washington long enough to participate in the health legislation.

"It's very helpful and in the interest of consumers when the chairman and ranking member are able to be there, because it gives us a perspective on what both sides of the aisle are concerned about," said Sally Greenberg, executive director of the National Consumers League, who testified at two of the consumer hearings.

“Hutchison missed all four Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearings that explored problems with health insurers, including one that showed insurers "purge" small-business beneficiaries if their claims exceed underwriters' expectations.”

"When she looks at the health care debate, she just doesn't see how you can really turn that to advantage in a governor's race in Texas," said Cal Jillson, a professor of political science at Southern Methodist University. "I think she's deciding she has better ways to spend her time."

The committees are integral forums for lawmakers, who use meetings to build legislation, conduct oversight and press a case for pet issues that sometimes never result in legislation.

In April, Hutchison used a Commerce hearing to promote one of the latter – her proposal to let Texas opt out of the federal system that funds highway construction. She called as a witness a Texas transportation commissioner, Ned Holmes, a Perry appointee who broke with the governor's strategy to finance most new highway construction through tolls.

As a boy of fourteen, Joseph Ratzinger had a cousin who had been born with Down's Syndrome, only a bit younger than himself. In 1941, German state "therapists" came to the boy's house and probably informed the parents of the government regulation that prohibited mentally handicapped children from remaining in their parents' home. In spite of the family's pleas, the representatives of the Nazi state took the child away. The Ratzinger family never saw him again. Later the family learned that he had "died," most likely murdered, for being "undesirable," a blemish in the race and a drain on the productivity of the nation. This was Joseph Ratzinger's first experience of a murderous philosophy that asserts that some people are disposable.

Other worried national security conservatives note that while social spending is increasing at alarming rates, Obama is looking for savings in the area of national defense. For example, conservatives noted the administration's recent zeal in ending the F-22 Raptor program, effectively cutting production on the world's most advanced tactical fighter. And according to a recent op-ed by Adm. Paul Rohrer, "the Congressional Research Service (CRS) announced . . . a much greater shortfall in Navy and Marine Corps strike fighters than was previously estimated. Last year, CRS predicted a shortfall of 125 Navy fighter jets by 2017. They now predict that the shortfall will more be more than 300 jets."

But defense cutbacks -- no matter how egregious or dangerous -- are not likely to provoke much outrage from the general public.

A recent Quinnipiac University poll shows Obama's approval numbers slipping to just 50 percent. Social conservatives and economic conservatives have contributed to these numbers, but national security conservatives have thus far remained relatively quiet. One wonders what would happen if the Reagan Coalition were to unite in opposition to the president's agenda.

... Roosevelt swept the nation, burying the hapless Alf Landon. Republicans carried only two states in that bruising contest-Maine and Vermont.

No sooner had Roosevelt won his second consecutive landslide, however, than he came to grief trying to pack the U.S. Supreme Court. His own Democrats in Congress rebelled.

Franklin Roosevelt was a man with long experience in government-as state lawmaker, as Cabinet member, as Governor, as President. This is in marked contrast with President Obama. He spent little time in each office in his meteoric rise to power. He rose because he has an "aura."