As it turns out, so many Members of Congress showed up at the Blog Row that we couldn’t type, synthesize and post fast enough. So we are off to a dinner and will write more later. There’s some good stuff in here — check back, stay tuned.

We are here in the US Capitol, Room HC-9, awaiting the arrival of GOP Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (R-FL) and Budget Committee Ranking Member Paul Ryan (R-WI) to kick it off. Here with us are fellow bloggers Ivy Sellers of Human Events, Rob Bluey of Heritage, Mary Katherine Ham of Town Hall, Mark Impomeni, a RedState brother, and Stephen Spruiell of National Review.

We are expecting dozens of Member of Congress to drop by over the next fews hours. Don’t forget to drop us an e-mail if you have a questions you’d like us to pose. Otherwise, we’ll be teeing up questions on issues of importance to manufacturers: trade, tax cuts, energy, workforce, etc.

Stand by….

As we’ve noted previously, there’s been a grand alignment this week in Washington of the stars in organized labor’s firmament. The Communications Workers of America are meeting at the Hyatt-Regency, Capitol Joe Hill, where Sens. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards spoke yesterday. The Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO has really geared up today, with candidate appearances as well. (Jim Geraghty of The National Review is live-blogging the events here.)

Then there was the Senate hearing on the fancifully named Employee Free Choice Act. And we overlooked the quarterly meeting of the Teamsters’ general executive board, another stop for Obama and Clinton.

But the big element in this constellation we missed?

The labor events coincide with the busiest fund-raising week of the campaign, as candidates are scrambling for contributions from top donors before the first quarter filing deadline on March 31, considered an early benchmark for White House hopefuls.

Reckon that should have been obvious earlier.

UPDATE: (12:45 p.m.) The Hill leads today’s edition with a long piece giving union leaders a chance to trumpet their renewed influence over Democratic candidates, “Unions ride Dem wave.”

Meanwhile, The Associated Press finds autoworkers in the Midwest to be uninterested in unionization, “Japanese U.S. automakers steer clear of unions.” Key passage:

“A union has a difficult time convincing others to join when workers already get what they perceive to be really good benefits and pay,” said Steven Szakaly, an economist with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Randy Bagby, another worker at the Subaru of Indiana Automotive plant about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northwest of Indianapolis, agreed. He said the plant offers workers vision and health benefits similar to what friends in unionized factories receive.

“If they’re giving us the benefits and pay that’s comparable to what the UAW plants give, why would we want them in there messing with what we already have?”

It appears that one of Al Gore’s environmental rally and global concert happenings, “Live Earth,” will not take place on the Capitol grounds this summer. Last week Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell objected to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s unanimous consent request for a waiver allowing the performance on July 7th. (Politico’s story is here.)

Reid’s resolution, cosponsored by Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-ME, has now been referred to the Senate Rules Committee, and Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-OK, vows to block any Capitol concert, saying, “There has never been a partisan political event at the Capitol, and this is a partisan political event.” A not unreasonable point of view.

So the performers will have to find another location for their strummin’, shoutin’ and sanctimony, rock ‘n roll shows being held on seven continents. And, while we believe in the motto, “Shut up and sing!” some of the acts are pretty good. Here’s a partial list:

Snoop Dogg, Pharrell, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Black Eyed Peas, Fall Out Boy, Akon, John Legend, Kelly Clarkson, John Mayer, the Foo Fighters, AFI, Sheryl Crow, Keane, Lenny Kravitz, etc.

But wait a minute. Snoop Dogg? Surely the organizers must know what the rapper Snoop Dogg built his career on — gang violence, drug abuse, pimping and misogyny of the basest kind. It’s more than name-calling and cursing. He celebrates sexual degradation of women, brutalization — evil, really.

With the strongest possible caution about the language and imagery, we offer links to his lyrics to make the point.

The rapper claims to promote a more positive social message these days — a marketing ploy that means a couple of acting gigs and fewer paeans to murder and rape — yet still faces various felony charges for drugs and firearms violations. The U.K. won’t let him in the country.

Al Gore and the other organizers of the “Live Earth” concerts say they want to clean up the globe. How do you accomplish that by spreading filth, hate and violence? (Gore’s wife, Tipper Gore, once led a campaign against explicit lyrics. We wonder where she is now.)

Politics aside, any involvement of Snoop Dogg in “Live Earth” is reason enough to keep the show not just away from the Capitol, but just away. Far away.

P.S. And how can you have an anti-global warming concert and not invite Bad Religion to sing “Kyoto Now!”? (Video here.) Seems like they’re not very serious about the message.

“The problem with this city,” former Sen. Bob Dole once cracked, “Is that the second demagogue doesn’t stand a chance.” Today, the demagogues will converge on Capitol Hill, represented by their spiritual leader — and our pal — Lou Dobbs.

That’s right, TV personality and demagogue Lou Dobbs is testifiying on Capitol Hill. “On what topic?” you might ask. Demagoguery? How to turn good news into bad news? How to twist data to fit your own ends? How to ignore years of economics training at Harvard in shameless pursuit of ratings?

Nope. Lou is coming to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s Subcommittee on — get this — Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. Guess they didn’t have one on demagoguery. The topic is, “Trade, Foreign Policy and the American Worker,” vaguely fitting under the expansive jurisdiction of this committee. Funny, we thought the Ways and Means Committee handled trade. Truth is, Charlie Rangel is too smart to allow his committee to be used as a platform for a commentator with an ax to grind.

We’ll keep you posted on what Lou says, but just as a wild guess, we’re figuring he’ll continue to weave his yarn about the war on the middle class and continue to blame trade agreements for our trade deficit. He’s mostly wrong on the first point and flat wrong on the second (just check out this chart, if you don’t believe us), but as we always say, never let the facts get in the way of a good story — or your ratings.

A new study out from the non-partisan Pacific Research Institute (PRI) has some startling — and discouraging — new numbers based on exhaustive research that shows for the first time that total tort costs in this country may in fact be several times higher than first thought. The Tillinghast study (which we’ve written about) has typically put the number at over $260 billion. But the new PRI study — released yesterday by the American Justice Partnership — shows that the direct and indirect costs of the American tort system total a whopping $865 billion. This would put our tort costs in the top 20 of world GDP, larger than the entire GDP of Taiwan. We already had a 32% cost disadvantage vs. our international competitors. This new research shows that number is moving in the wrong direction.

As we’ve said before, this is a national disgrace. To move this from the global comparison to your own household, this number represents $9,827 per family of four. By comparison, a family of four paid $6,884 in state and local taxes in 2004.

Here’s a link to the full study and here’s a link to our press release on the topic. As the enormous magnitude of this drag on our economy becomes known, let’s hope policy makers begin to curtail this litigation-happy culture in which we live.

We’ll be blogging live from Capitol Hill today, as we’ve been invited by the House Republican conference to a “Blog Row,” where a bunch of members of Congress will drop by — including some from House leadership — to chat with a gaggle of bloggers. We’re happy for the invite, and, as we always say, would be happy to oblige if the Dems invited us, too. We’re still waiting for that invitation, still waiting for them to reach out to business bloggers.

So if you have any questions you’d like us to ask, we’ll be on site from about 1 p.m. – 4 p.m. EDT. Click here to drop us an e-mail and we’ll be Happy to tee up any questions you might have.

And, check back in this space any time after 1 p.m. and we’ll be posting as members drop by. If we run into Lou Dobbs, we’ll let you know.

North Carolina’s move toward new high school graduation requirements that serve to funnel every student toward a four-year college education is meeting with serious objections from educators and others who appreciate the kind of training and technical education provided by two-year colleges. (See our earlier blog post here.) The issue is especially important to manufacturers, who place great value in employees who have gained technical skills and who are motivated to enter the workforce sooner rather than later.

Joe Loughery, president and COO of Cummins Inc. and chairman of The Manufacturing Institute, has responded to newspaper coverage of the debate with an important op-ed that appeared in Tuesday’s Raleigh News & Observer, “The Value of Technical Education.” His comments carry additional weight in North Carolina, because Cummins’ joint venture with Consolidated Diesel Company employs about 1,600 people in Whitaker, N.C.

Simply this: Not every teenager who graduates from high school wants to go to college, nor does every rewarding career require a four-year college degree. In fact, fewer than half of North Carolina’s graduating seniors say they plan to go directly to a four-year college or university.

For many of those students, technical and vocational education offers an attractive alternative by providing the training to enter a challenging, well-paying career in advanced manufacturing. And that is exactly the type of education that seems to be in the cross-hairs of governments today.

We admit to be somewhat mystified by a political environment that puts an inordinate emphasis on four-year college educations as somehow the only education of any worth. It’s a view divorced by economic reality, sure, but it also shows a disregard for young people who choose to pursue another path in life. Many people do appreciate a community college education. We wish they’d respect it, too.

Seth Borden at The Union-Free Employer blog has read through the testimony from today’s Senate committee hearing on the purposely misnamed Employee Free Choice Act and reaches the unavoidable conclusion: Proponents believe the ends — unionization — justifies the means — the elimination of secret-ballot elections and employee choice and the destruction of decades of settled labor law.

The positions set forth in these statements are less about “employee choice,” and more about why the witnesses believe there should be more unionized workers in the private sector.

Plain and simple, as we have known for months, the E.F.C.A. is really about stacking the deck to ensure more union wins — regardless of what particular employees do or do not want.

Meanwhile, Richard Hankins at the EFCA Updates blog from Kilpatrick Stockton spots flat-out falsehoods being spread in the campaign for card-check — he uses the polite term, “misinformation” — and challenges Senators to seek the truth where they may find it. He follows it with a great list of resources on the topic.

Finally, for now at least, we would be remiss not to note the clever and forceful ad campaign launched this week by the Center for Union Facts, including ads in Capitol Hill tabloids and on local TV. (News release here.) The TV spots are particularly amusing. You can find them here, at the bottom of the Center’s homepage.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee has wrapped up its hearing on the wrongly named Employee Free Choice Act. More details later, but for now, note the prepared testimony of the witnesses has been made available at the committee’s website here.

Senator Enzi, R-WY, the ranking member on the HELP Committee, could not attend the hearing today due to an illness in the family. His office did contribute a statement to The Hill’s blog.

There’s nothing “free” about taking away the right of an employee to make a private choice without fear and intimidation. The cost is the loss of majority rule, free speech, and the use of the private ballot box – important principles that should not be thrown away to satisfy special interest groups. No matter how this legislation is packaged, at its core, it simply takes away an individual’s right to vote. That is a dangerous road we shouldn’t travel.

Americans get a private ballot when they choose their President, their Congressmen, their local councilmen, even their PTA leaders – why should they not have the same right in the workplace when they decide whether they want a union to become their exclusive, legal representative in their workplace? Free, fair, and private elections are a fundamental principle of American democracy.

Meanwhile, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-NY, just finished speaking to the Communications Workers of America.

I just came from the Senate hearing that was chaired by a great champion of American middle class and working families, Senator Ted Kennedy. We just had the hearing on the Employee Free Choice Act.

(APPLAUSE)

And, you know, the facts are indisputable. There’s no debate here. It’s just whether we can get the votes in the Senate to get it passed.

There’s no debate here….

There’s no debate.

UPDATE (4:15 p.m.): Sen. Jim DeMint, R-SC, says he will introduce the Secret Ballot Protection Act. From The Examiner: “This bill will guarantee that every American worker gets a secret ballot election,” he said.