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Saturday, May 9, 2009
Just Gotta' Love Those Liberal Politicians
Posted by on 5.9.09 @ 7:33AM
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is outraged by torture. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi fulminates against the Bush Administration. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she knew nothing about the Bush administration's use of torture. House Speak Nancy Pelosi is ... well, not telling the truth!
A top aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attended a CIA briefing in early 2003 in which it was made clear that waterboarding and other harsh techniques were being used in the interrogation of an alleged al-Qaeda operative, according to documents the CIA released to Congress on Thursday.
Pelosi has insisted that she was not directly briefed by Bush administration officials that the practice was being actively employed. But Michael Sheehy, a top Pelosi aide, was present for a classified briefing that included Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking minority member of the House intelligence committee, at which agency officials discussed the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida.
A Democratic source acknowledged yesterday that it is almost certain that Pelosi would have learned about the use of waterboarding from Sheehy. Pelosi herself acknowledged in a December 2007 statement that she was aware that Harman had learned of the waterboarding and had objected in a letter to the CIA's top counsel.
"It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred," Pelosi said in the Dec. 9, 2007, statement.
Every time I think I have seen Washington at its most shameless, I am proved wrong. So who knows what will come next!
Friday, May 8, 2009
Federal Subsidy Programs on the Rise
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 5:34PM
My Cato Institute colleague Chris Edwards points to one of the areas where federal spending is out of control:
Most people know that federal spending and budget deficits are soaring. But an equally troubling trend is that the government is funding a growing array of activities that used to be left to state governments, businesses, charities, and individuals. An increasing part of American society is suckling on the federal subsidy teat.
The accompanying chart shows that there are 1,804 federal subsidy programs, and hundreds of these were added this decade. The data comes from the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance (www.cfda.gov), an official listing of all federal subsidies, including grants, loans, insurance, scholarships, and other types of benefits.
The CFDA was created in the 1960s because politicians needed a guide to help their constituents access all the new benefits under Great Society programs. By 1970, there were 1,019 federal subsidy programs, and the number rose further in late-1970s before being cut back in the early 1980s under President Ronald Reagan.
The number of subsidies started expanding again in the late-1980s, but leveled out in the late-1990s as Congress briefly restrained the budget. This decade, budget restraint has vanished and the number of subsidy programs has exploded 25 percent.
As in so many other areas, Republicans are as complicit as Democrats in making Americans dependent on government. It would be nice if the GOP "listening tour" caused party officials to actually put our money where their mouths are, so to speak, when it comes to fiscal responsibility.
Words to Kill Health Care "Reform"?
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 4:40PM
Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon) is upset that a political strategist wants to prevent the health care rationing that is part and parcel of socialist medicine from coming to America.
If the freshman senator is so worried about the words that Frank Luntz is urging universal health care opponents to use, then maybe Luntz is on to something.
Republicans Fiddle While Health Care Burns
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 4:33PM
Kim Strassel's column in today's Wall Street Journal should be read by every Republican on Capitol Hill.
Sanford Mulling Legal Action in Stimulus Fight
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 1:30PM
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who has spent months battling the Obama administration and his own state legislature over the use of stimulus package funds, said on a Friday blogger conference call that he was exploring legal alternatives.
Sanford made two requests to the White House asking for a waiver allowing him to use $700 million of anticipated stimulus funds to pay down state debt, both of which were denied. Since then, Sanford has been in what he described as a "tug of war" at home. He has pushed to use the stimulus funds to institute structural reforms and shore up the state's balance sheet, but has met resistance from the legislature. The issue will come to a head next week when lawmakers vote on the budget. Sanford called the vote "the first volley."
He said, "there could be legal work after that and we're exploring options on that front." Asked if that meant action to challenge the federal government, Sanford only said that his legal staff was "looking at legal angles."
During the call, Sanford said he found the tea party movement "incredibly, incredibly encouraging," because it showed him that he isn't alone in his frustration with out of control spending.
"There's something going on out there that I have not seen in my 15 years in the political process," he said. "I attended three of these tea parties, and there was an energy that I have not seen before, where people are genuinely frightened and concerned about the long-term ramifications of spending money that we don't have."
Sanford also expressed disappointment with the early days of the Obama administration.
"There have been some real missed opportunities," he said. "One of the things [Obama] talked about from the very beginning was getting away from the worn out dogma of the past, the old style politics, and yet when we put in that first waiver request asking to apply some [stimulus money] to debt, before the White House responded the Democratic National Committee cranked out ads in South Carolina criticizing our efforts to try to use stimulus money to pay down debt and trying to scare folks to call on me to try and get me to change my mind. That was anything but change from old-style politics. It was, if anything, a return to rough-knuckled Chicago style politics."
Perhaps even more interesting than anything Sanford said was the fact that he was holding a conference call with bloggers in the first place. Sanford, who had maintained a relatively low national profile before this year, has been mentioned as a potential 2012 presidential candidate, so it's worth noting that he's taking the time to speak to conservative bloggers outside of South Carolina. He conceded that this was a new thing for him.
"A blogger conference call is slightly out of my comfort zone because I really don't know what it is," he said.
Flip-Flops in New England
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 1:20PM
Maine's Democratic governor campaigned as an opponent of same-sex marriage but signed a bill redefining marriage into law anyway. Will New Hampshire's Democratic governor, who also ran on a pro-traditional marriage platform, be next?
Taxpayer-Funded Abortion in D.C.
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 1:18PM
The National Right to Life Committee says that the Obama budget would repeal the Dornan Amendment, which forbids public funding of abortion in the District of Columbia.
Unemployment Numbers Challenge Obama's Budget Forecast
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 12:01PM
With today's news that unemployment in April rose to 8.9 percent, it's worth reiterating that Obama's deficit forecast for 2009 is based on the assumption that unemployment would average 8.1 percent this year. And it's worth keeping in mind that even under that rosy scenario, we're still looking at a $1.75 trillion deficit in 2009, according to Obama's own projections.
Daily Must-Reads, Noon Edition
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 12:00PM
- A rare bona fide education success story (NY Times)
- The problem is spending -- not taxes (Forbes)
- John Kerry: can he save the newspapers in time? (NRO)
- Self-recommending: Bill Simmons on Manny scandal (ESPN)
- Meghan McCain flaunts her ignorance. Read some more books, Meghan (Daily Beast)
- A century's worth of DC ruining the rest of the country's housing markets (City Journal)
The Other Klein
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 11:33AM
Noah Pollak has been having a back and forth with Andrew Sullivan and Joe Klein over the Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs. Joe Klein writes:
In one of the sillier bits of prose I've read in some time, Noah Pollack argues:
"But Israel isn't Iran's rival — Iran is Israel's. Can Andrew name any acts of unprovoked bellicosity Israel has committed against Iran?"
How about Israel's constant threats of military action against Iran's nuclear program? How about the disproportionate bellicosity Israel visited upon Iran's Hizballah surrogate in 2006? Which is not to say that Hizballah is anything other than a group of extremist thugs--but southern Lebanon and, more recently, Gaza are the battlefields where Israel's rivalry with Iran has been playing out. (Add: Indeed, given the state of hostilities--for which Iran is almost totally responsible--the very existence of Israel's nuclear arsenal can be seen as an existential threat to Iran.)
Pollak responded for himself here, but it's worth highlighting what a warped sense of morality Joe Klein has. Iran has a decades-long record of supporting terrorism against Israel, its leadership has denied the Holocaust, threatened to wipe Israel off the map and done so within the context of seeking a nuclear weapon. One of the terrorist groups that Iran was funding -- Hezbollah -- was firing rockets at Israeli civilians and raided Israel to kidnap Israeli solidiers, while another terrorist group funded by Iran -- Hamas -- was doing the same on the southern front of Israel. And this represents unprovoked bellicosity on the part of Israel? Wow.
Joe Klein goes on to write that:
For the record, I think 60 years of history make it reasonable for Israel to have a nuclear deterrent. But the reality of Israel's nuclear arsenal does make it difficult to argue against Iran's right to have the same. And the constant plumping for war against Iran by Likudniks in Israel and the U.S. makes the case for a nuclear capability dire and immediate from Iran's point of view. It is time we stopped kidding ourselves about this--and stopped making arguments that the rules should be different, somehow, for Israel than for other countries.
This is like saying that allowing law-abiding individuals to posess guns to protect their families makes it difficult to argue against allowing violent criminals to own guns. At this point, I wonder if Joe Klein actually believes anything he writes, or if he just leaps at any oppourtunity to attack "Jewish neoconservatives" without thinking about what he's writing.
National Catholic Prayer Breakfast
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 11:10AM
St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke forcefully condemned Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama at commencement at this morning's National Catholic Prayer Breakfast. Archbishop Burke said that Notre Dame president Fr. John Jenkin's invitation to Pres. Obama to address the graduating class and receive an honorary doctorate of laws is "a source of the greatest scandal." His remarks about Notre Dame, which drew the loudest and most sustained applause of the entire event, were one focus of the archbishop's speech concerning Catholics in public life. In the course of discussing the president's persistently anti-life record, the responsibilities of Catholic voters, and what he perceived as grave threats to religious life in American society, Burke also contradicted those who would argue that religious institutions must compromise in order to remain relevant in secular society. In the face of officials advocating for laws that are "always and everywhere evil," he said, "Catholic schools and institutions are necessarily countercultural."
The group Catholicvote.org also introduced a video at the breakfast that they hope will achieve the same success as the video they released during the election season that went viral. The earlier video portrayed Barack Obama as an example of an unborn child whose mother chose life. Below is the video, which the promoters hope to run during primetime hours, including the American Idol finale, according to Raymond Arroyo, the event's MC:
Spending Parties
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 10:51AM
I don't agree with everything Bruce Bartlett says in his latest Forbes column -- we differ on the tea parties and I think, as bad as Bush was, Obama's spending is even worse. But on this he is indisputably right: the fiscal crisis is now. And by failing to be serious about spending, the Republicans may have made it impossible to remain a tax-cutting party. Until, perhaps, the tax burden once again becomes absolutely crushing.
The Greatest Series of Tweets Ever
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 10:50AM
Suitable for this blog because they come from the right side of the Tweet-O-sphere. Ladies and Gentlemen, the incomparable Joshua Trevino tweeting on the Star Trek reboot.
Receiving the (Gentle) Back of the Times' Hand
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 9:17AM
Justice David Souter might have given the left his votes, but he did not lead America to liberal pastures. For that the New York Times today gave him a soft slap with the back of its hand. Explained the Times:
Legal scholars have praised Justice Souter's care, candor and curiosity. But they have said that he is, by temperament and design, a low-impact justice devoted to deciding one case at a time, sifting through the facts and making incremental adjustments in legal doctrine to take account of them.
Other justices have had more impact, gaining influence through personal and intellectual persuasion.
Poor David. All those liberal votes. So little liberal recognition!
Other Than That, What Was Wrong With John Edwards?
Posted by on 5.8.09 @ 8:56AM
Writes Matt Mackowiak in the Chicago Tribune:
Politicians often have affairs; that is not unusual. What makes this case different is that Edwards cheated on his wife, told her about it, continued the affair, allegedly fathered a child out of wedlock with his mistress, lied to scores of reporters, aides and donors about the affair for months, and yet still chose to run for president knowing that the affair was likely to come out.
This is an impressive résumé for a candidate who ran his campaign on a platform of honesty and integrity.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Ah, Arlen Gets His Chairmanship
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 5:56PM
Of a subcommittee, anyway. Reports Newsmax:
Senate Democrats gave party switcher Arlen Specter a plum Judiciary subcommittee chairmanship on Thursday as a potential primary challenger to the veteran Pennsylvania lawmaker stepped forward.
Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois said he would give up his chairmanship of the Crime and Drugs subcommittee in exchange for becoming chairman of a panel on human rights. The move, he said, would "best utilize Senator Specter's talents and experience in our caucus."
The move came as Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., a former Navy vice admiral, said he's seriously considering challenging Specter in the Pennsylvania primary next year.
"The Democratic political establishment reached into the GOP establishment to give us the Democratic candidate for the future. I don't think we want to re-establish the establishment," Sestak said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"It's not theirs to make, it's ours to make. That's really what moved me. It's the ideal. It's not what we came to Washington to do is tell Pennsylvanians what they are to do in their Democratic choices."
Too bad, though, about that bit on a potential primary challenge. So much for the party clearing the field!
ACORN is EVERYWHERE!
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 5:10PM
It's all ACORN -- all the time.
Much has been happening in the wacky world of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now in recent days.
Longtime ACORN ally Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) backed out of the congressional probe of the group he promised. The Washington Examiner's Kevin Mooney has the story and quotes me in it. Mooney is slated to be on the "Glenn Beck Program" to talk about ACORN at 5 p.m. Eastern today.
I have a longer piece on the same topic right here at the American Spectator. GOP lawyer Heather Heidelbaugh testified in Congress about ACORN's many misdeeds and Conyers said at the time the allegations were "a pretty serious matter."
Heidelbaugh testified the nonprofit group violated a host of tax, campaign finance, and other laws. She said the presidential campaign of Barack Obama sent ACORN its "maxed out donor list" and asked two of the avowedly nonpartisan group's employees "to reach out to the maxed out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN."
Heidelbaugh said the New York Times had the donor list story but editors there spiked it the month before the election, a claim she repeated on "The O'Reilly Factor" two weeks later. The newspaper told the Philadelphia-based Bulletin that "political considerations played no role in our decisions about how to cover this story or any other story about President Obama."
Heidelbaugh's star witness is former ACORN employee Anita MonCrief. MonCrief maintains a blog where she tells her story and reflects on all the latest goings-on with ACORN.
Mooney discovered that ACORN has received at least $53.6 million in federal funds since 1994. The sum is probably much higher but this sort of information is very difficult to track. Moreover, the ACORN network consists of more than 100 affiliates and those affiliates routinely transfer money to each other. He also reported that ACORN and other liberal advocacy groups could get as much as $8.5 billion from the February stimulus bill and fiscal 2010 budget.
It's old news by now that Nevada charged ACORN and two former senior ACORN officials with election fraud Monday, but just today it was learned that Pennsylvania authorities have charged seven ACORN workers with election fraud.
Rep. Michele Bachmann's (R-Minnesota) bid to keep an anti-ACORN funding provision in a mortgage reform bill went down in flames but not without embarrassing House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) first.
CNSNews reported some people are worried about the fact that ACORN has signed up to be a partner in the 2010 U.S. Census.
From the you-win-some-you-lose-some-file, a judge has recommended that the Buckeye Institute of Ohio's state racketeering lawsuit against ACORN be dismissed.
In the Manhattan Institute's City Journal, Steven Malanga has an article called "Obsessive Housing Disorder." He explains ACORN's role in lowering lending standards, which housing activists denounced as racist and unfair. This lowering of the standards contributed to the subprime mortgage meltdown.
Crazy Talk (With A New Jersey Accent)
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 4:40PM
New Jersey is a confusing state. You think it's all about malls and hair spray, but then you realize they have a really nice shore, which means, geographically speaking, it's a state suffering from bipolar disorder. In fact, this is true of everyone I've ever met from New Jersey: Either really great, or really awful.
So when Lonegan's campaign (rightly) noticed that the visuals of this Christie ad exploited the look of a blind man, they did the thing that you're supposed to do, which is seize the moment and call foul. At the least, you show how incompetent the other side is, at worst, you convince the public that Christie's planting explosives at schools for the deaf. Win win, I say.
Then they retracted it.
Now, you can make a statement and then see if it floats and let it die. But there was a squirrel's heartbeat between when they released the statement and when they retracted it. So are the Lonegan people buying crazy pills from the Christie campaign?
Actually? I'm willing to bet. This is a confusing thing, so try to bear with me.
Check out this fantastically NUTTY story. The New York Times reports that the Democratic Governor's Association is about to drop ads attacking both Christie and Lonegan. Christie's people are trying to push that the Democrats are trying to align themselves with Lonegan more because they're really afraid of Christie.
Democrats so fear Christie’s advance into the general election that they cannot contain themselves from aligning with movement conservative Steve Lonegan, Christie’s allies charge.
Uh. Okay. So that's Tweedledee. What's the Lonegan campaign saying?
Relentlessly on message, Lonegan campaign strategist Rick Shaftan charged the DGA with leaking the story to the New York Times as a way of trying to generate mega press coverage prior to the ads running, which he argues undermines the argument that they truly want to damage Christie.
“If they really wanted to hurt Chris Christie, they would just run the ads, but they want publicity for the ads, which means they fear Steve Lonegan,” Shaftan said. “It’s reverse psychology.”
Yes! That's it! The hidden code that reveals the meaning of life! AT LAST! Quick, to the Fountain of Youth before the Illuminati and Opus Dei swoop in and destroy it with their black helicopters!
That's definitely Tweedledum. I don't even know what that means. Do you know what that means? Is that English?
To everyone, and I mean everyone, in New Jersey: Stop. Saying. Stupid. Things.
Dionne: Disingenuous
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 2:31PM
E.J. Dionne, Jr.'s column in today's Washington Post on Pres. Obama's upcoming appearance at Notre Dame is filled with deceptive and misleading statements and presentations of facts.
He leads into his article by suggesting that an article in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, characterizing the president as less than extreme in his abortion politics proves that "[w]e now know that the reaction of right-wing Catholics to Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama falls into the category of 'more Catholic than the pope.'"
The implication is that the folks affiliated with Notre Dame protesting the school's decision to honor Obama aren't doing so because of a principled stand on the Church's doctrine regarding life issues, but because they are wingnuts. Without the authority of Church teaching, the conservatives' case falls apart. Hence Dionne's subtitle: "Words From Rome Change The Debate on Inviting Obama."
Except for one problem: the L'Osservatore Romano article that paints Obama as a moderate in no way reflects Church teaching or the voice of any Church official. It was written by Giuseppe Fiorentino, a foreign correspondent. L'Osservatore Romano bills itself merely as the "semi-official" newspaper of the Vatican, and doesn't pretend to express the pope's teaching.
It is especially disingenuous for Dionne to pass this article off as a statement "from Rome" since the Church hierarchy has, when it has spoken on the issue, clearly and unambiguously condemned Notre Dame's decision to honor Obama. At last count 70 American bishops, including 4 cardinals, had responded publicly to the Notre Dame situation. All were at least skeptical of Notre Dame's choice, and many denounced the university officials in strong language. Such a reaction from the American bishops is very unusual, and for Dionne to present a random article by a layman in Rome as representative of the hierarchy in light of the bishops' response is dishonest.
Among other obfuscations, Dionne also argues that the people objecting to the school honoring Obama are crazed conservatives out of lockstep with the mainstream. He cites Pew Research Center polls that gauge the public's attitude toward the situation, which show mixed results. He neglects, however, a Rasmussen poll that directly asked the pertinent question, namely whether the university should award an honorary degree to the president. The poll showed that 60% of U.S. Catholics thought that it should not (compared to 25% who thought it shoud), and 52% of Americans overall thought the same thing.
Dionne's article fell well short of a basic level of journalistic sincerity, and I expect that he will hear from some of the bishops who, unlike a random columnist in Rome, actually speak for the Church. This column is an embarassment for him and the Washington Post.
Ridge Isn't Running
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 1:46PM
Conservative opposition was starting to suface, mentioned this morning in the Allentown Morning Call. The polls showed that while Toomey was behind Specter, it was by less than 10 points. A year out, that indicated a winnable race. Ridge is 63. There was already a fuss about his main residence being in Chevy Chase, Maryland -- a version of the story the Democrats used successfully against Rick Santorum in 2006 (Santorum has a home in Leesburg, Virginia.) All in all, making money (the lobbyist issue was lurking as well), having family responsibilities, there was a question of whether he had the fire to do this. For whatever reason -- the answer is no.
Tom Ridge Won't Run
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 1:31PM
The Associated Press is reporting that Tom Ridge won't challenge Arlen Specter for U.S. Senate next year. Early polling indicated he would have been a competitive candidate in the general election.
Obama's Primrose Path Watch
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 12:05PM
Speaking today when he released details of his budget, a haughty President Obama declared:
We can no longer afford to spend as if deficits do not matter and waste is not our problem. We can no longer afford to leave the hard choices for the next budget, the next administration – or the next generation.
What followed was a speech announcing $17 billion in proposed budget cuts to a $3.4 trillion budget. Yet as even the Washington Post notes, last year, the Bush administration -- which candidate Obama called "the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history" -- proposed $34 billion in cuts in its final budget.
Once again, as Shakespeare put it:
Do not, as some ungracious pastors do,
Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven;
Whiles, like a puff'd and reckless libertine,
Himself the primrose path of dalliance treads,
And recks not his own rede.
--Hamlet, I, iii, 51-55
Obama Slashes Union Enforcement Budget
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 11:40AM
President Obama today unveiled a paltry $17 billion in cuts to the $3.4 trillion federal budget, about half of which will come out of defense spending. But buried in the budget documents released by the White House today is a 9 percent cut in the unit of the Department of Labor that is in charge of regulating unions.
Under the leadership of Elaine Chao during the Bush administration, the Labor Department's Office of Labor-Management Standards took its job of policing unions seriously. Its actions led to 929 convictions of corrupt union officials and to the recovery of more than $93 million on behalf of union members. Yet the Obama administration has proposed slashing its budget from $45 million in 2009 to $41 million in 2010, citing an insufficient "workload" for the office.
Instead of using the money to make sure unions play by the rules, the Obama administration proposes shifting resources to the department's Wage and Hour Division, Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration -- all areas of the agency focused on regulating businesses.
Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, who has had a long and cozy relationship with big labor, already announced recently that the department would loosen union disclosure requirements.
These are the type of actions that occur under the radar, out sight of most Americans, but that have a dramatic impact on life in the workplace.
The message to crooked union bosses by the Obama administration is being delivered loudly and clearly: we've got your back.
About that Purge of the Moderate Republicans
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 11:33AM
It hasn't happened. In fact, the national party is actively recruiting moderate candidates for key Senate races in 2010. Of course, some of those candidates may lose their primaries to conservatives (democracy and all that). But the party is in some cases trying to bring in moderates while conservatives are already in the race. Some purge.
Not Exactly Don't Ask, Don't Tell
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 11:19AM
This strikes me as more than a little over the top. A news story suggests that President Obama is under pressure to name the first openly gay Supreme Court justice. Even the religious right leader quoted in the story says his organization will focus on the nominee's judicial philosophy. The ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee says, "I'm not inclined to think that would be an automatic disqualification." But it is the Republicans who are focused on sexual orientation?
None of the Republican senators quoted say they will vote against a judicial nominee because he or she is gay. The closest any of them comes to saying such a nominee would be unwise is Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.). But it's okay for the president to nominate someone because of their sexual orientation. And anything less than unbridled enthusiasm shows an unhealthy obsession with sexual orientation. We live in interesting times.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 10:57AM
- It is never a good sign when Canada beats us at anything, much less bank regulation (WSJ)
- Bush might be, just like every U.S. wartime president, a war criminal (Reason)
- We would hope that our schools are better than Pakistan's (New Majority)
- A "sound bashing" for Paul Krugman (EconLog)
- Israel and the Jews can't count on the U.S. to share interests with them forever (Jerusalem Post)
Hatch: Baucus Told Me Dems Won't Use Reconciliation on Health Care
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 10:01AM
Sen. Max Baucus, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, assured Sen. Orrin Hatch last night that Democrats would not use reconciliation to pass health care legislation, Hatch told reporters this morning at a breakfast sponsored by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
"I was with the chairman of the Finance Committee last night," Hatch recounted. "He said, 'don't worry about it, we're not going to do it.'"
Reconciliation is a process allowing the Senate to pass legislation with a simple majority rather than the 60 votes required to stop a filibuster. Originally intended to pass emergency budget bills, its use has expanded over the years, and Democrats passed a budget last month giving them the option of using the procedure to pass health care reform. Hatch said using the tactic, being bushed by liberal Senators, would have disastrous consequences.
"Most of them don't understand the complexities of trying to use reconciliation on a major substantive piece of legislation that affects one-sixth of the American economy," he said. "If they want to really get into that, they're gonna look like fools."
He continued, "I guarantee you if they use reconciliation you won't have a plan you like. A reconciliation bill would make health care look like swiss cheese it would have so many holes in it."
Hatch explained that using the process would mean just 20 hours of debate, and it would pose certain limitations on the way the bill is written.
"The partisan part of me says, 'Oh, I hope they do that,' because they'll have to live with every stinking problem that comes up over the next hundred years," he said. "And they're going to be a myriad of problems they never contemplated."
But Hatch said that he was working closely with Democrats and believed a bipartisan compromise was possible, and that lawmakers can achieve "meaningful reform" this year.
He said that legislation should focus on seven principles: costs, access, value, prevention, modernization, effectiveness research, and entitlement reform. Any reform should also give states the flexibility to experiment and tailor their systems to the unique needs of their own populations, he said.
More on Sonia Sotomayor
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 6:25AM
Obviously miffed by the Jeffrey Rosen profile of Sonia Sotomayor mentioned here the other day, in which anonymous sources called her dumb, Rob Kar, who clerked for Sotomayor on the Second Circuit, mounts a preposterously over-the-top defense:
Let me start with the obvious conclusion that anyone would draw if they were to get to know Judge Sotomayor and her work both intimately and deeply: she is an absolutely brilliant jurist and an absolutely brilliant person...
I count myself privileged to have worked closely with some of the very best minds in the world... Judge Sotomayor stands out from among these people as one of the very brightest; indeed, she is in that rarified class of people for whom it makes sense to say that there is no one genuinely smarter... Judge Sotomayor is much smarter than most people in the legal academy, and much smarter than most judges who are granted almost universal deference in situations like this. And while I have worked with numerous people who are thought of as some of the best minds in the nation, and about whom the question of brilliance would never even arise, most of them are-quite frankly-pedantic in comparison.
Sotomayor is so smart that even the world's smartest people aren't smart enough to comprehend her towering smartness!
Snark aside, the comments to Kar's post recommend a couple of Sotomayor's dissents as examples of her thinking. Her dissent in Hankins v. Lyght is indeed persuasive, and I suspect it will be passed around by her advocates in part because it uses the words "judicial restraint." (Suffice it to say that the majority opinion is a convoluted mess, and one needn't be "absolutely brilliant" to take it apart.) Croll v. Croll, on the other hand, is more problematic; her analysis of the issue at hand isn't implausible, but I'm bothered by her thinly-veiled contempt for the majority's straightforward textual analysis of the relevant treaty (governing child custody cases that cross international borders) and her willingness to pick the precedents in foreign caselaw that suit her and dismiss those that don't.
Another Great Obama Appointment
Posted by on 5.7.09 @ 4:29AM
President Barack Obama has hit another home run with his nomination of Ronald Sims to be deputy secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
President Obama's choice for the government's No. 2 housing job is embroiled in the largest fine in U.S. history for "blatant violations" of open records laws after the Washington State Supreme Court chastised his office for withholding documents detailing taxpayer costs for a new professional football stadium in Seattle.
The documents that Ronald Sims' office was found to have kept from the public when he served as King County executive included information about cheaper alternatives to the $430 million Seattle Seahawks stadium, which was built in 2002, according to a Washington Times review of the court records.
Washington's highest court ruled in January that the withheld documents would have allowed voters in a referendum to challenge "the veracity" of King County's request for $300 million in public bonds for the project. The justices found the actions of Mr. Sims' office to be so "egregious" that they scrapped a lower court's order of a $123,780 fine - the largest ever assessed in a public records case - and recommended that the penalty be increased to as much as $825,000.
Mr. Obama nominated Mr. Sims as the top deputy at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) just three weeks after the court's ruling, which harshly and repeatedly criticized Mr. Sims' office for its conduct during a 12-year legal fight.
This from the president who promised transparency in government and to change the tone of Washington politics.
Never mind!
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Hedge Fund Manager Blasts the Dear Leader
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 7:05PM
One of the eeeeevil "speculators" that President Obama has been vilifying sent out an open letter to the president which has been circulating around Wall Street.
The New York Times published the letter from hedge fund manager Clifford S. Asness of AQR Capital Management, LLC. Asness indicates that his "company is not involved in the Chrysler situation."
The final paragraphs of the letter are priceless:
Let's quickly review a few side issues.
The President's attempted diktat takes money from bondholders and gives it to a labor union that delivers money and votes for him. Why is he not calling on his party to "sacrifice" some campaign contributions, and votes, for the greater good? Shaking down lenders for the benefit of political donors is recycled corruption and abuse of power.
Let's also mention only in passing the irony of this same President begging hedge funds to borrow more to purchase other troubled securities. That he expects them to do so when he has already shown what happens if they ask for their money to be repaid fairly would be amusing if not so dangerous. That hedge funds might not participate in these programs because of fear of getting sucked into some toxic demagoguery that ends in arbitrary punishment for trying to work with the Treasury is distressing. Some useful programs, like those designed to help finance consumer loans, won't work because of this irresponsible hectoring.
Last but not least, the President screaming that the hedge funds are looking for an unjustified taxpayer-funded bailout is the big lie writ large. Find me a hedge fund that has been bailed out. Find me a hedge fund, even a failed one, that has asked for one. In fact, it was only because hedge funds have not taken government funds that they could stand up to this bullying.
The TARP recipients had no choice but to go along. The hedge funds were singled out only because they are unpopular, not because they behaved any differently from any other ethical manager of other people's money. The President's comments here are backwards and libelous. Yet, somehow I don't think the hedge funds will be following ACORN's lead and trucking in a bunch of paid professional protesters soon. Hedge funds really need a community organizer.
This is America. We have a free enterprise system that has worked spectacularly for us for two hundred-plus years. When it fails it fixes itself. Most importantly, it is not an owned lackey of the Oval Office to be scolded for disobedience by the President.
I am ready for my "personalized" tax rate now.
Students for School Choice
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 6:36PM
Earlier today, I attended a rally of more than 1,000 students, parents, and activists protesting the decision by the Obama administration and Democratic Congress to defund the tremendously successful D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program, which provides parents with the choice to send their children to private schools rather than failing public schools, just like the choice that President Obama made for his daughters. Joe Lawler plans a more thorough report later, but I just thought I'd post this video in which Carlos Battle, a student at Georgetown Day School, talks about how he doesn't fit the stereotype of a black teenager, and sending him back to a public school would be like kicking the ladder out from under him. Mary Katharine Ham has more photos from the event.
Waxman-Markey All Pain, No Gain
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 3:28PM
I've noted in the past (and friends at the Science and Public Policy Institute have studied ad nauseum) that initiatives pursued by global warming alarmists will accomplish nothing in terms of temperature rise averted. Twas repeated just a few weeks ago for Spectator:
But instead of boldly proclaiming the great thermostatic results their policies will produce, (alarmists) run away from the science they so adamantly claim that they stand behind.
How? Because they cannot explain how much greenhouse gas reduction -- in whatever quantities they propose -- will cause global temperatures to change. For all their jargon-filled technological conversations about how to "solve the problem," they only measure their goals in terms of emissions averted or reduced -- usually quantified in "million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent," or MMtCO2e. How's that for an absurd acronym?
SPPI in particular has examined what various policies (that is, destruction of their economies via the elimination of fossil fuels) pursued by the states would produce in terms of global warming avoided, which is always "undetectable." Environmental scientist Chip Knappenberger, in doing this analysis, applied a model created by former Al Gore adviser Thomas Wigley at the National Center for Atmospheric Research to reach his conclusions.
Well, now Knappenberger has applied the broadly accepted model (I assume it's the same one, but if not, Wigley is still the main scientist behind it) to the proposed Waxman-Markey global warming energy tax legislation. The Beverly Hills Congressman (wouldn't bananas in tailpipes work just as well?) has been selling pieces of the bill off order to buy votes from committee members. Knappenberger found:
The bottom line is that a reduction of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions of greater than 80 percent, as envisioned in the Waxman-Markey climate bill will only produce a global temperature “savings” during the next 50 years of about 0.05ºC.
Whatta deal: the economy gets hammered by billions of dollars in energy taxes and we spare ourselves maybe a single drop of sweat during the next half-century.
Knappenberger does a good job explaining the modeling (as much as should be necessary for a layman) and the results, so go read for yourself.
Hat tip: Marc Morano.
Environmentalist Edit-Whores Strike Again
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 2:29PM
Those of us in the global warming debunkification (okay, I made that word up) movement are used to being ignored — or (usually) politely being humored first, and then ignored — but I thought this experience was worth noting in the blogosphere.
Last week the Heartland folks referred a reporter to me from a Midwestern weekly newspaper, who had some questions about a greenhouse gas inventory her county was compiling and where she could expect public policy to go next. I had no idea where her sentiments were on the issue, but I gave her straight feedback based upon examples I’d seen elsewhere. What she did with it after that was up to her, and I did not care much either way what she did, given my past experience with environmentalist journalists.
Turns out she sought to do a balanced article, but her editor would have none of it. I usually like to name names with things like this, but I assume the reporter wants to keep her job so I will refrain. This is what she emailed me:
Paul:
Thank you so much for your responses. I did a story, but my editor removed all references to debate about climate change, global warming or whatever they are calling it now. He didn’t tell me, which is unusual when removing such a huge chunk of a story, but I just discovered it today after it didn’t appear in our print edition.
It is online, but is not as I wrote it. I’m so sorry. I will still try to get both sides of all issues out. That’s all I can do. Thank you, and again, I apologize.
Cross-posted at Globalwarming.org.
As Maine Goes?
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 1:29PM
Maine today approved same-sex marriage by an act of the legislature. Gov. John Baldacci campaign as an opponent of redefining marriage but signed the bill. The D.C. city council voted for same-sex marriage yesterday, with Marion Barry casting the only dissenting vote. The goal of same-sex marriage supporters is to have it recognized in all six New England states by 2012. They're right on schedule, and so is a red-blue divide on marriage.
Tom Ridge Over Troubled Waters
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 12:47PM
John Avlon enthusiastically touts former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge for Senate against Arlen Specter. He naturally focuses on Ridge's strong biography and impressive electoral history. But he's troubled by conservatives who point out that Ridge has some Specter-like tendencies himself:
The Club for Growth is supposed to be a libertarian organization, devoted to fiscal issues only, remember? But when they say that Tom Ridge isn't conservative enough, they can't be talking about his military record or his tax cuts or his spending record or his national security credentials. They're not talking about support for gay marriage (Ridge doesn't.) They're talking about choice -- which without delving too deeply into a well-trod debate -- is supposedly the essence of libertarianism.
Not surprisingly, this is incorrect. The issues on which Ridge "isn't conservative enough" far exceed abortion. Take those "national security credentials": While in Congress, Ridge voted against the Strategic Defense Initiative, against the MX missile, against aid to the Contras, and for the nuclear freeze. Ridge coauthored with a Democrat a successful amendment to cut SDI funding from $4.9 billion to $3.1 billion. He was, in fact, a leading anti-SDI Republican.
On economic issues, Ridge was once one of 19 House Republicans who voted to increase the minimum wage, was a vocal opponent of the first President Bush's efforts to cut the capital gains tax, and raised the gasoline tax as governor. Between 1984 and 1988, Congressional Quarterly rated him as being more likely to oppose President Reagan's position on a given issue than support it. Finally, he voted to expand welfare eligiblity and in favor of the Fairness Doctrine.
Ridge was definitely better as governor than he was in Congress, and he has obviously since run the federal Department of Homeland Security (whether that's seen by voters as a national-security plus or a bureaucracy minus remains to be seen). He's got solid numbers. I'm not taking a position on his candidacy. But to say that Ridge's conservative critics are focused exclusively on abortion is just plain wrong.
Truce, Hamas Style
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 12:26PM
When Hamas was elected over three years ago, I made the prediction that some day, a leader of the terrorist group would follow in the footsteps of Yassir Arafat, and win a Nobel Peace Prize for tricking the west into actually thinking he wants peace. Now, after a five hours interviewing terrorist leader Khaled Meshal of Hamas, the New York Times reports that he, "reached out in a limited way to the Obama administration and others in the West, saying the movement was seeking a state only in the areas Israel won in 1967."
This is nothing new. Hamas has long stated that it would offer a truce in exchange for establishing a Palestinian state along the pre-1967 borders, but it sees that as an interim step toward the ultimate goal of destroying Israel.
Back in November, I spoke with Maen Areikat in East Jerusalem -- the deputy head of the negotiations department for the Palestinian Authority. He explained, "Hamas is offering a Hudna, a truce. A longterm truce, but then maybe in 10 or 15 years they'll say it no longer applies." He told me that given that Hamas is part of the Islamic Brotherhood, the group could never truly recognize Israel.
If you read further down into the Times story, a similar picture begins to emerge:
“We are with a state on the 1967 borders, based on a long-term truce. This includes East Jerusalem, the dismantling of settlements and the right of return of the Palestinian refugees.” Asked what “long-term” meant, he said 10 years.
So, Hamas wants gullible westerners to think that they're ready to compromise on statehood, when in reality they would only support such a move as a way of buying time, arming themselves, and building a base from which they can launch an all out assault on Israel. The question is, will Obama prove as gullible with Hamas as Clinton was with Arafat?
Oh, Bybee
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 11:42AM
While I rather like the kicker for this piece -- "Hit me Bybee, one more time" -- Jonathan Chait ends up taking back a good bit of his "prosecute 'em" argument with this paragraph:
Now, exceptions can be made, and the question of whom to prosecute is tricky. It seems unfair to prosecute CIA agents who tortured, as they had been specifically advised that techniques like waterboarding were legal. It's likewise tricky to prosecute the Bush administration lawyers who wrote torture-authorizing memos. Administration defenders assert that those lawyers were "acting in good faith." And, yes, they were making a good-faith effort to stop terrorism, but to suggest that they were making a good-faith effort to interpret the law insults their intelligence and ours. A recent Washington Post story leaves the impression that torture-memo author Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, realized the tendentiousness of his memos, which said waterboarding isn't torture (and therefore is legal) because it does not inflict "severe physical or mental pain or suffering."
It seems to me that it is in fact difficult to prove that someone knew they were giving legal advice in bad faith. And while I agree with Chait about the rule of law and torture being worse than being fellated by a White House intern, Bill Clinton wasn't being fellated in order to stop a sequel to the 9/11 attacks. In my view, it would have to be pretty clear that the people acted in bad faith or were knowingly trying to justify illegal actions before they could be prosecuted.
That said, Chait makes a number of good points, particularly this:
Finally, yes, we can imagine ticking-time-bomb situations where regular interrogation methods work too slowly and extreme measures might prove helpful. But this premise bears the same relationship to the question of legalizing torture as the morality of stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family does to the question of legalizing theft.
The trouble with actually legalizing torture in these cases is that everything will be defended as a ticking-time-bomb scenario. It is better to deal with such exceptions to the rule through prosecutorial discretion and the pardon power.
Nick Gillespie Doesn't Want To Have No Burger With The President
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 11:30AM
It's a very funny screed, but do make sure to scroll all the way down to the infuriating/poignant video on the D.C. voucher program, which Obama, in Gillespie's words, is "helping to kill in the name of caring about low-income kids trapped in schools [he'd] never send [his] own children to."
Stimulus for Tiny Airports
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 11:26AM
David Hogberg finds that "$154 million in stimulus
funds is going to low-traffic rural airports that already get
subsidies and tax breaks." More
here.
Medicare Myths
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 10:31AM
One of the main arguments made by proponents of a government-run health care option is that it would have lower administrative costs than private health care plans, but as Merrill Matthews of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance explains:
Speaking of scams, the argument that Medicare's administrative costs are 2% is one of the biggest scams out there.
Public figures for Medicare's administrative costs count only what it takes to print reimbursement checks. Normal operating costs — rent, management, health insurance, taxes, capital to start a business and new equipment — which private insurers must include in their administrative costs, are counted elsewhere in the federal budget.
Official Medicare administrative costs simply exclude what most companies must include. No administrative cost savings exist in the public plan, and the true costs will never be counted because they'll be hidden in the federal budget.
"Obama is No Reagan"
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 9:08AM
That's not me, but Reuters, which recounts:
TEL AVIV (Reuters) - When he first got word of Israel's sneak attack on the Iraqi atomic reactor in 1981, U.S. President Ronald Reagan privately shrugged it off, telling his national security adviser: "Boys will be boys!"
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 8:58AM
- Jeff Jacoby vs. James Srodes on liberal newspapers (Boston Globe)
- Our president is being gamed by Italian carmakers (WSJ)
- Yes, David Brooks, Mozart was actually special (First Things/Spengler)
- The rule of law in the Kremlin (Real Clear World)
- Trouble with a capital "T," that rhymes with "P," that stands for Pakistan (Daily Beast)
Secret U.S.-Israel Nuclear Pact in Danger
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 8:56AM
Eli Lake reports on how the Obama administration's nuclear non-proliferation efforts could imperil a secret 40-year accord between the United States and Israel which allows Israel to maintain its nuclear weapons. The idea that a country like Israel -- whose nuclear arsenal exists as a deterrent and does not represent an offensive threat to anybody -- could ultimately be lumped together with the regimes such as North Korea and Iran, is inane.
Bank of America $35 Billion Short?
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 8:51AM
Monday, after I wrote that the economic fundamentals "suck," the stock market actually had a good day, gaining more than 200 points. Now, however, comes the bad news. Bank of America is reportedly facing a $35 billion capital shortage.
Meanwhile, Chrysler won't repay its federal bailout loans and the company's private creditors are outraged by the Obama administration's hardball tactics. And -- when it rains, it pours -- Rep. Henry Waxman is reportedly ready to "fast track" his climate-change legislation.
About Your Seniority, Senator Specter
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 7:56AM
Sen. Arlen Specter said that Majority Leader Harry Reid promised that he could retain his seniority while flipping to the Dems. Alas, that was then, and this is now.
The Senate last night stripped Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) of his seniority on committees, a week after the 29-year veteran of the chamber quit the Republican Party to join the Democrats.
In announcing his move across the aisle last week, Specter asserted that Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) had assured him he would retain his seniority in the Senate and on the five committees on which he serves. Specter's tenure ranked him ahead of all but seven Democrats.
Instead, though, on a voice vote last night, the Senate approved a resolution that made Specter the most junior Democrat on four committees for the remainder of this Congress. (He will rank second from last on the fifth, the Special Committee on Aging.) Reid himself read the resolution on the Senate floor, underscoring the reversal.
Oops!
True, the Dems say that the issue will be revisited after the next election. As in, do the Dems need Sen. Specter's vote for the majority and has he been a dutiful drone when called upon to push Democratic initiatives over the top?
Well, I guess he could always switch back if he's reelected!
Homeland Security; Securing Anything but the Homeland
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 6:26AM
The Department of Homeland Security continues to be busy. Unfortunately, it isn't clear that busy activity by the Department of Homeland Security actually contributes much to homeland security in America.
The same Homeland Security Department office that categorized veterans as potential terrorists issued an earlier report that defined dozens of "extremists" ranging from black power activists to abortion foes. The report was nixed within hours and recalled from state and local law enforcement officials.
Whites and blacks, Christians and Jews, Cubans and Mexicans, along with tax-hating Americans were among several political leanings listed in the "Domestic Extremism Lexicon" that came out of the Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A) in late March.
Quick question: is there a greater danger of terrorism committed by Islamic jihadists or anti-abortion activists? It might be best not to ask DHS.
ACORN Could Be Eligible for $8.5 Billion This Year
Posted by on 5.6.09 @ 1:06AM
As I told the Washington Examiner a few hours ago after reviewing the Obama stimulus bill and the proposed fiscal 2010 budget for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), ACORN and other left-wing advocacy groups could have a shot at pocketing up to $8.5 billion this year.
Here's how I arrived at the $8.5 billion figure.
The $800 billion-plus stimulus bill, which is now formally known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 or Public Law 111-5, originally set aside $5.2 billion that could flow directly or indirectly into the coffers of ACORN and its liberal friends. It appears the $5.2 billion was chopped down to $3 billion in the version of the bill that President Obama signed into law on February 17. The $3 billion consists of $2 billion in funds set aside for the redevelopment of abandoned and foreclosed homes and $1 billion in Community Development Block Grants (CDBG).
CDBG is good old-fashioned graft. Local politicians of both parties love CDBG because it is flexible. The program gives them wide latitude when spending grant money and allows local leaders to use federal dollars on local projects that they wouldn't dream of spending their own local tax dollars on. ACORN loves CDBG because it is adept at lobbying for CDBG funds.
In addition to the $3 billion available in the stimulus package, the proposed $47.5 billion HUD budget for the fiscal year that begins October 1 provides $1 billion for an affordable housing trust fund and $4.5 billion in CDBG funds that could be funneled to ACORN indirectly.
Of course ACORN won't get it all, and given its history of electoral fraud and racketeering, it shouldn't get a penny of federal money.
According to the Washington Examiner article, ACORN has taken in $53.6 million in federal funding since 1994.
Amazingly, ACORN spokesman Scott Levenson told reporter Kevin Mooney that his group has "received no significant federal funding."
(crossposted at the Capital Research Center blog)
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Here's Johnny, Again
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 6:42PM
John Edwards is back in the news: His wife Elizabeth is out hawking a new book (Catch her Thursday on Oprah!), and there's a federal investigation into whether Edwards improperly used campaign money to pay off his mistress, Rielle Hunter:
Edwards's political action committee, One America, paid Hunter a total of $114,000 for videos she shot to show Edwards's offbeat side as he traveled the country in 2006 promoting his anti-poverty plans. The last of those payments, for about $14,000, was made in April 2007, right around the time that Edwards's campaign paid One America, which was nearly out of funds at that point, about $14,000 for what was listed as a furniture expense.
"I'm sure Rielle is thrilled that she got paid for being a piece of furniture." snarks Deceiver. "Well, technically it's true. He did spend a lot of time on top of her."
By the way, as usual, the National Enquirer was way ahead of the mainstream media on this; they had the story about the investigation a month ago.
Mickey Kaus asks Joe Trippi what he knew and when. Ben Smith asks similar questions of other campaign aids. Lee Stranahan rakes Elizabeth over the coals.
An Enigmatic Reading List
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 5:10PM
David Leonhardt's NY Times interview with Pres. Obama on the topic of economics has attracted plenty of notice. While speaking unusually candidly, without any of his advisors at hand, Obama demonstrates a fairly nuanced grasp of both the issues of the day and the complaints that many of his detractors have aimed at his Robert Rubin-inflected centrist economic team. Leonhardt also includes a random factoid that stuck with me more than anything else. Obama tells him "he had become sick enough of briefing books to begin reading a novel in the evenings — 'Netherland,' by Joseph O’Neill."
Sure enough, a week or two later and 'Netherland' has shot up the charts.
A cursory look at the books that Obama has previously mentioned as his favorites yields some seeming contradictions. During the campaign, Laura Miller of Salon claimed that Obama would make one of the "most literary presidents in recent memory," citing his professed love for Melville, Toni Morrison, Shakespeare, and others. Furthermore, she noted of his early Chicago years, "Obama lived so much like a retiring writer -- spending many hours holed up in a spartan apartment with volumes of 'philosophy and literature' -- that some of his colleagues assumed he was gathering material for a novel." But then she makes the case that the most important book in Obama's literary formation was Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals -- not exactly the pinnacle of storytelling. In the NY Times, Michiko Kakutani reported that Obama "immersed himself" with philosophers like Nietzsche and St. Augustine during college. How does someone so enthralled with serious literature and philosophy wind up identifying with Alinsky's soulless political manipulation? How do you hole up in a spartan apartment with masterpieces and emerge enamored with Rules for Radicals?
To me, some of the economic policies that Obama advocates -- socialized health care, cap-and-trade, etc. -- reflect the same kind of lack of moral imagination that you would expect from someone whose reading was limited to policy briefings with the occasional Alinsky tract thrown in. But at times in the interview, as when he mentions the visceral appeal of jobs performed by hand and when he claims that his grandmother wrote better than his U. Chicago law students, his approach seems less technocratic than literary in a down-to-earth way.
If you delve into Obama's reading habits, as Miller and Kakutani did, the theme that emerges is Obama's literature-steeped search for his own role in the world. Naturally, this search steered him toward the writings of others trying to understand the role of black men in society, like Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. DuBois, and Toni Morrison. There isn't such a clear explanation for why, out of all of the authors he read, Alinsky would be the one that Miller would associate with his political approach.
I don't know. It seems paradoxical to me that the president would be regarded as the face of political efficiency by day, orchestrating massive domestic policy changes by the handful and captivating the media, while remaining a soul-searching, Joseph O'Neill-loving, wannabe novelist at night. It is tough to reconcile these two characters: the pragmatic wonk who surprises economists with an off-the-cuff tour de force interview on economic issues, and the Harvard Law grad who eschews the corporate world to lock himself in a Chicago apartment with the Great Books.
Using a Visual Medium
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 3:50PM
A big part of this commercial is focusing on the silly faces Steve Lonegan makes. You've seen campaign commercials. They do this a lot. No biggie.
So, go ahead, watch and laugh.
Boy, that Steve Lonegan sure does look clueless.
By the way, he's blind.
Thanks, Christie campaign. Even if this is just tin-eared commercial making, it's hardly a recommendation. Maybe in the general election, Christie can make conspicuous use of footage of Corzine using a cane.
Carrie Prejean Statement on Photo Scandal
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 2:36PM
Again, from the National Organization for Marriage:
"It is amazing to me that in honestly answering a question during the Miss USA pageant, my answer would lead to what have become vicious attacks on me and my integrity as a woman. We have a great country, a country that was built on freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Yet my comments defending marriage as between a man and a woman have now lead to intimidation tactics that seek to undermine my integrity and somehow silence me and my beliefs as if opinion is only a one way street.
"I am a Christian and I am a model. Models pose for pictures, including lingerie and swimwear photos. The photos of me taken as a teenager have been released surreptitiously to a tabloid website that openly mocks me for me for my Christian faith. I am not perfect and I will never claim to be perfect. But the attacks on me and others who speak in defense of marriage are precisely the kind of intolerant, offensive attacks that I hear some in the gay community say are hurled at them for their opinions. No one should have their opinion silenced through vicious and mean-spirited attacks on one's character and integrity.
"I will continue to support and defend marriage as the honorable institution it is. I will continue to stand with the overwhelming majority of the American people. If this whole experience has taught me anything it is how precious our right to speak freely is, and how we as Americans can never allow anyone or any group to intimidate or threaten us to keep silent."
Having seen what is apparently the most revealing photo -- and it's not really that revealing -- I am just about certain it was not taken when Miss Prejean was a teenager. I have asked for clarification. The blogs are all abuzz about this.
Conservative Leaders Come Out Against Harold Koh
5.5.09 @ 2:01PM
A group of leading conservatives released the following statement opposing the State Department nomination of Harold Koh:
Obama Chooses Radical Transnational Ideology Over US Interests With Koh State Department Nomination
President Obama’s nomination of left-wing academic Harold Koh to be the top lawyer at the State Department represents a choice based on ideology instead of national interest. Koh is a terrible pick for this important position.
Koh is a radical transnationalist who, based on his writings and statements, aims to use international and foreign law to deprive Americans of our rights as American citizens.
KOH FAVORS FOREIGN LAW OVER AMERICAN LAW
Koh wants the Supreme Court to misinterpret the Constitution to embody rules of foreign and international law. He objects to America’s “distinctive rights culture,” which he complains gives “First Amendment protections for speech and religion … far greater emphasis and judicial protection in America than in Europe or Asia.” He also wants to invent new constitutional rights favored by leftist elites—for same-sex marriage and against the death penalty, for example. Under our Constitution, these are matters for us citizens to decide through our elected representatives. But Koh wants to impose on us the views of foreign and international bureaucrats.
KOH FAVORS TREATIES + UN CONFERENCES THAT UNDERMINE AMERICAN SOVEREIGNTY
Koh also favors an aggressive misuse of treaties to impose social and economic policies on American citizens. For example, he strongly supports a treaty that has been interpreted by the treaty’s own committee to create rights to abortion and prostitution, to have the government determine the pay scale of every job, and even to require the abolition of Mother’s Day.
Koh also believes that United Nations conferences and even international meetings of left-wing activists have the authority to create rules of so-called customary international law that are binding in the United States as federal law.
KOH’s POSITIONS HANDICAP AMERICA’s EFFORTS TO DEFEND ITSELF
Koh favors a flat ban on the United States government ever taking action to prevent American citizens from severe and imminent threats to national security. Koh opposes the very idea that American government officials should act to promote what they perceive to be our national self-interest.
KOH’s POSITIONS WOULD HARM AMERICAN BUSINESSES
Koh supports imposing massive liability on American businesses—and massive costs on their employees, customers, and shareholders—for their entirely lawful commercial transactions with foreign regimes that did bad things to their people. This threatens a massive redistribution of wealth from American citizens to international left-wing activists.
As the State Department’s top lawyer, Koh would be well positioned to advance his dangerous views on all these matters. President Obama’s choice of Koh demonstrates a preference for ideology over the national interest and the Senate should reject his nomination.
The statement was released by:
Edwin Meese, former Attorney General
Alfred Regnery, Publisher, American Spectator
Grover Norquist, President, Americans for Tax Reform
Wm. Bradford Reynolds, former Assistant Attorney General
Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council
Brent Bozell, President of the Media Research Center
T. Kenneth Cribb, former Counselor to U.S. Attorney General
Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America
Phyllis Schlafly, founder and President, Eagle Forum
Richard Viguerie, Chairman ConservativeHQ.com
Obama and Pakistan
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 1:59PM
"If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.” -- Barack Obama, August 2007.
"If we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot. Senator Clinton, Senator McCain, and President Bush have all distorted and derided this position, suggesting that I would invade or bomb Pakistan. This is politics, pure and simple. My position, in fact, is the same pragmatic policy that all three of them have belatedly – if tacitly – acknowledged is one we should pursue. Indeed, it was months after I called for this policy that a top al Qaeda leader was taken out in Pakistan by an American aircraft." -- Barack Obama, March 2008.
Today, the Telegraph reports:
The Obama administration is considering suspending drone attacks against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants inside Pakistan because it fears they are undermining the critically weak government.
During the campaign, it was easy for Obama to attack the Bush administration for coddling Pakistan as one way of exuding strength, thus giving him cover for his views on withdrawing from Iraq and unconditionally negotiating with rogue regimes. But now that he's president, he's starting to realize the fragile situation that exists in Pakistan, where the policy options range from bad to worse, and suddenly it isn't so easy to risk the fall of a flawed government that is nonetheless better than the alternative of having Islamic extremists in control of nuclear weapons.
Scholarship Students Nail Obama
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 1:59PM
In this "must see" video by Reason TV, recipients of the DC Opportunity Scholarships -- Obama supporters, mind you -- directly ask the president why he is allowing their scholarships to be taken away. What Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are doing is utterly unconscionable. It borders on outright evil. I bet this pathetic president does not have the guts to look these kids in the eye and explain to them why he's letting their scholarships disappear.
Maggie Gallagher on the Carrie Prejean Saga
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 1:18PM
In reaction to today's news, I have received a press release from the National Organization for Marriage:
Today, Maggie Gallagher, President of the National Organization for Marriage, released the following statement regarding Carrie Prejean:
"Because Carrie honestly said what she believed in answer to a question--marriage is the union of a man and a woman-- she is now the subject of ongoing character assassination. The level of hatred directed at her is astonishing. Even more astonishing is her personal courage and strength of character in the midst of these attacks. Of course Carrie is not perfect. On a personal note, as a former unwed mother, I want to say to Americans: you don't have to be a perfect person to have the right to stand up for marriage. Nothing gay marriage advocates can do can change the fact-we all saw it on national TV-that Carrie is a young woman who surrendered all the glitter Hollywood has to offer, because she would not become the kind of person afraid to say the truth.
Through Carrie, we are also learning, the lengths some people will go to hurt and harass those who speak up for marriage."
Any time a liberal starts jumping up and down and yelling about a "scandal" affecting a conservative, remember this reply: "Mary Jo Kopechne could not be reached for comment."
Amateur Hour
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 11:26AM
Michael Hirsh has a condescending blog post about Jack Kemp over at Newsweek. Now, I do think Republicans have been insufficiently concerned about debt levels -- "deficits don't matter" -- in crafting their fiscal policy. They missed an excellent opportunity to restrain government spending during the 1980s and '90s, with the baby boomers in their peak earning years and the economy booming. Supply-side economics has been perverted by some Republican pols into a something-for-nothing equation, with Kemp's own "bleeding-heart conservatism" playing a role.
But let's look at the other side of the ledger. When a version of the Kemp-Roth tax cut was signed into law by President Reagan, many of the professionals predicted increased inflation. They predicted a worsening of economic conditions. Kemp's predictions of what would happen in the wake of tax cuts plus tight money were not fully vindicated, but they were much closer to reality than many mainstream economists'. This was the policy mix that put an end to stagflation, an economic phenomenon many of these economists once thought unlikely or even impossible.
Of course, this wasn't totally a success for "amateurism." Robert Mundell, one of the economists advising Kemp about this policy mix, eventually won the Nobel Prize. The Tax Reform Act of 1986, which was not totally a supply-side creation, was thoroughly bipartisan. And here's another bipartisan reality: Nobody, not even Barack Obama, seriously proposes returning to pre-Reagan tax rates today. The deficits of the 1980s and '90s were reduced without a 50 or 70 percent top marginal income tax rate.
Not bad for an amateur.
How Dumb Does Specter Think People Are?
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 11:06AM
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) has played the voters of Pennsylvania for suckers for years.
So is it any surprise that his new campaign fundraising website seems to be preying on well-intentioned donors?
Decide for yourself by visiting Specter for the Cure.
It certainly looks like a website for some kind of cancer research charity. Alas, it is not.
(Hat tip to David Freddoso)
A Very, Very Bad Historic First
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 10:59AM
It's a historic first -- and a very, very bad one at that.
USA Today reports
[...] Uncle Sam has supplanted sales, property and income taxes as the biggest source of revenue for state and local governments.The shift shows how deeply the recession is cutting. Federal stimulus money aimed at reviving the economy and a sharp drop in tax collections have altered, at least temporarily, the traditional balance of how states, cities, counties and schools pay for their operations.
The sales tax had been the No. 1 source of state and local revenue since the mid-1970s, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Before that, property taxes were the primary source. That changed in the first three months of 2009.
Federal grants - early stimulus money plus conventional federal aid - soared 15% in the first quarter to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $437 billion, eclipsing sales taxes, which fell 2%.
The dominance of federal money is set to expand dramatically this year because tax collections are sinking while the bulk of federal stimulus aid is just starting to arrive. "This money isn't manna from heaven. It comes with a price," says Indiana state Sen. Jim Buck, a Republican. He worries that the federal money will leave states under greater federal control and burden future generations with debt. [...]
And then there's the inflation that is to come.
From Outsider To Oracle
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 10:55AM
Ron Paul's stock is rising amidst the current ideological disarray, Dave Weigel reports. Was Dr. No On Ice cancelled perhaps a bit too early?
Biden at AIPAC
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 10:22AM
Vice President Joe Biden, speaking to the annual AIPAC policy conference this morning, reiterated the basic public positions of the Obama administration as it relates to Israel.
After making the standard declarations that the administration shared a commitment to the safety and security of Israel, which he said would not change, he said that the U.S. would be in a better position to promote peace in the region once it reestablishes its leadership role in the world by "responsibly" ending the war in Iraq and stabalizing Afghanistan.
On Iran, Biden said that they supported "direct, principled diplomacy" based on "mutual respect" and said if it fails, "all options remain on the table." Biden claimed that it would be easier to obtain international support for any action to stop Iran's nuclear program should they first make an effort for diplomacy.
Biden called on Israel to end settlement activity and for Palestinians to recognize Israel and renounce violence.
He said he's been friends with Benyamin Netanyahu for a long time and "looks forward to working with him when he comes to visit."
He also said the administration would continue to "explore oppourtunities for peace with Israel."
Ultimately, Biden said, "We will be judged not by our commitment to Israel, but by the results of that commitment." That was probably the most honest part of the speech.
In the "Check Is in the Mail" Category
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 10:17AM
"Bernanke Says Growth Will Resume Later This Year," reads the WSJ News Alert I just received:
The U.S. recession appears to be losing steam, with growth likely to resume later this year on the back of firmer household spending, a bottoming housing market and an end to inventory liquidation, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday. But Bernanke said that the recovery will probably be slower than usual, and warned that the unemployment rate may stay high "for a time" as businesses remain cautious about new hiring.
It Pays To Be a Murtha
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 9:47AM
From the Washington Post:
The headquarters of Murtech, in a low-slung, bland building in a Glen Burnie business park, has its blinds drawn tight and few signs of life. On several days of visits, a handful of cars sit in the parking lot, and no trucks arrive at the 10 loading bays at the back of the building.
Yet last year, Murtech received $4 million in Pentagon work, all of it without competition, for a variety of warehousing and engineering services. With its long corridor of sparsely occupied offices and an unmanned reception area, Murtech's most striking feature is its owner -- Robert C. Murtha Jr., 49. He is the nephew of Rep. John P. Murtha the Pennsylvania Democrat who has significant sway over the Defense Department's spending as chairman of the House Appropriations defense subcommittee.
Daily Must-Reads
Posted by on 5.5.09 @ 9:43AM
- Poland finally gets the mass consumerism it always wanted (Washington Post)
- A wink and a nod at those education crusaders, Barack Obama and Arne Duncan (WSJ)
- How to make a list of must-reads (Slate)
- Time to start taking cheap shots at Obama when he makes Bush-style verbal blunders (Weekly Standard)
- The freedom of the press in 2009. The results are not necessarily heartening (Freedomhouse.org)
- Great, we are not more intelligent or ethical than little babies (Seed Magazine)
- Did anything good come of the "Bush Boom"? (New Yorker)
Monday, May 4, 2009
Not So Bad After All
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 9:19PM
April 29: Not wasting a crisis, President Obama asks Congress for $1.5 billion in supplemental funding to "respond" to the swine flu outbreak.
Today: Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says it's not so bad after all.
"We are cautiously optimistic that this particular strain will not be more severe than a normal seasonal flu outbreak," Napolitano said.
Are they still asking for the supplemental?
At AIPAC, Bibi Says Israel Ready for Unconditional Talks With Palestinians
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 9:07PM
In a shift, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu said tonight that his government was ready to restart peace negotiations with the Palestinians without delay or preconditions.
Speaking to the AIPAC annual gala dinner via sattelite, Netanyahu called for a "fresh approach" -- a three track peace process comprised of political, security, and economic elements.
While we'll know more once the details get fleshed out, at first blush, the approach seems different than the one Netanyahu called for during the campaign, when he expressed much more skepticism about talks with a divided Palestinian leadership.
This could be a good will move by Netanyahu to get the Obama administration to become more serious about resolving the Iranian nuclear crisis.
"Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons," Netanyahu said.
He said of the Iranian nuclear threat that this was a rare time in which Arabs and Jews see "a common danger," noting that the Arabs supported Germany during World War II and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Nevada Vote Fraud Charges for ACORN
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 5:38PM
The Las Vegas Sun is reporting that voter registration fraud charges have been laid against the left-wing community activist group ACORN.
From reading the article I am not yet convinced that the charges were laid against ACORN, as opposed to individuals in the employment of ACORN. As everybody in the news business knows all too well, early news reports sometimes get the details wrong. We'll see.
In any event, tThe article says
Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto and Secretary of State Ross Miller announced Monday that voter registration fraud charges have been filed against an organization that works with low-income people and two of its employees in its Las Vegas office.
The complaint includes 26 counts of voter fraud and 13 counts for compensating those registering voters, both felonies.
The Association of Community Organization for Reform Now, Inc., also known as ACORN, operated a Las Vegas office that helped register low-income voters last year.
Throughout 2008, ACORN employed canvassers to register people to vote in Nevada, the complaint said. ACORN paid the canvassers between $8 and $9 an hour, but made continued employment and continued compensation based on the canvasser registering 20 voters per shift. Those who failed to sign up 20 voters per shift were terminated, the complaint said.
From July 27 through Oct. 2 ACORN also provided additional compensation under a bonus program called "Blackjack" or "21+" that was based on the total number of voters a person registered.
A canvasser who brought in 21 or more completed voter registration forms per shift would be paid a bonus of $5.
The Blackjack program was created by employee Christopher Edwards, field director for the Las Vegas office. ACORN timesheets indicate that corporate officers of ACORN were aware of the Blackjack bonus program and failed to take immediate action to stop it. [...]
Developing...
Updated later the same day: Yes indeed ACORN itself has been charged, as commenter MR notes below. Voter registration fraud charges were laid in Clark County, Nevada, against the Association of Community Organization [sic] for Reform Now Inc., and ACORN employees Christopher Howell Edwards and Amy Adele Busefink. A copy of the 18-page criminal complaint may be viewed as a PDF file here.
Jan Schakowsky Says "Public Option" Is Way to Single-Payer Health Care
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 4:41PM
Here's a video of Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky making explicit something I've been writing about for a long time -- that introducing a government-run health care "option," as favored by Obama and Democrats, will destroy private insurance. And this is not an uninteded consequence, but part of the very strategy Democrats will employ to achieve a socialized, or single-payer, health care system in America. You don't have to take my word for it anymore. Just watch the video.
Building a Catholicism That Can Win Again
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 2:35PM
Patrick O'Hannigan has a fine piece up on the main site defending Mary Ann Glendon's decision to decline a Laetare Medal from Notre Dame the same day the Catholic school is awarding an honorary degree to President Obama. O'Hannigan defends her from the more substantive criticism of the Bush administration from the perspective of Catholic doctrine. But Glendon has also been criticized for "opting out of engagement with the larger political culture," denying "the moral legitimacy of the president of the United States," and being too angry to beat Obama politically.
Well. I'm actually a conservative Methodist, not a Catholic. But it seems to me that one can make a legitimate argument that Catholic institutions should not award high honors to people who support what the Church understands to be an intrinsic moral evil. To do so creates confusion as to whether the Church really believes what it claims to believe about abortion. Maintaining this witness without regard to station, office, or opinion polls is not the same as pretending Obama isn't really the president because his birth certificate supposedly says he was born on Mars.
Having said that, this objection to Glendon's non-appearance at Notre Dame has a certain heads-I-win, tails-you-lose quality to it. Meaning Glendon no disrepect, I'm willing to bet that if I walked into a bar -- even in D.C. -- and asked people who Mary Ann Glendon is, I'd get very few correct answers. Yet if she decided to use a college commencement ceremony to pick a fight with the president of the United States about abortion, it might be a bigger story. I'm further willing to bet that the tone of this coverage would not emphasize how nice it is that religious conservatives are fair-minded and engaged with the larger political culture.
So if Glendon actually did decide to argue abortion with Obama on graduation day and it created a minor controversy, would the people now criticizing her praise her for seizing "this rare chance to articulate her principles directly to Obama?" Or would they worry about how swing voters will react to a leading conservative lecturing our democratically elected president about divisive issues during what is supposed to be a happy occasion?
There is definitely more than one way to look at Glendon's choice, even outside a "Catholic frame of reference." But we get into all kinds of problems when our frame of reference for everything becomes: Is this good for the Republicans?
Did Romney Just Out Himself as a Democrat?
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 1:28PM
Mitt Romney on health care in Newsweek, writes:
Our divide is fundamental: Republicans believe health care can be best guided by consumers, physicians and markets; Democrats believe government would do better.
Judging by the plan he signed in Massachusetts, under which the government forces individuals to buy health coverage and provides them with subsidies to purchase government-designed insurance on a government-run exchange, Romney's record suggests more faith in government to solve the health care crisis than consumers, physicians and markets. Does that make him a Democrat?
A New Low, Even for Specter
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 12:41PM
Party switcher Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pennsylvania) is now attempting to exploit the death of former Rep. Jack Kemp (R-New York) from cancer by using falsehoods in order to chastise fiscal conservatives.
He told "Face the Nation" on Sunday that, "If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today."
Of course, it's one thing to seize on a news event to make a point, but as Michelle Malkin (see above link) points out, Specter's facts about cancer research funding are wrong:
During Republican control of Congress, federal spending on health research and regulation increased 46% after inflation, from $49 billion a year to $72 billion a year, or about 7% increase each year. That's almost the same rate of increase as Defense spending got in the same period (48%), when we actually had a real war on our hands, and not a political contrivance for excusing federal spending.
And Specter wonders why he can't get within 20 points of Pat Toomey in a primary race?
At AIPAC, Peres Says Israel is Ready for Peace
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 12:25PM
Israeli President Shimon Peres, speaking this morning at the annual AIPAC Policy Conference, clearly sought to play down reports of a strain in U.S.-Israeli relations with the new Obama and Netanyahu administrations. "There is no difference between our position and the American position," he said, "We want peace."
Peres had high praise for President Obama. "You are young enough to offer hope to the world," he said. "You are strong enough to see it come to light." He wished Obama success and "Godspeed" and said, "We trust the leadership of President Obama."
Peres said he would be meeting with Obama tomorrow, and that Netanyahu would be later this month. While Peres reminded the audience that he was once a political opponent of Netanyahu, he said that he knows the new prime minister is a man of peace. Netanyahu "wants to be making history, and in our tradition making history is making peace." He empashized, "peace is his priority." Peace can happen right way, through regional and bilateral agreements, Peres said.
The problem with Peres's speech was that all of the rosy talk obscured the very real differences that exist between Obama and Netanyahu. Netanyahu campaigned on the view that peace talks are futile at the current moment given a split in Palestinian leadership with Hamas in contol of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank; the Obama administration sees the peace process as a good in and of itself, regardless of whether there are any realistic prospects that it can actually achieve peace. Netanyahu sees the Iranian nuclear threat as the more pressing issue than a peace agreement with the Palestinians; the Obama administration has the opposite point of view. The Obama administration has left the door open to recognizing a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas; Netanyahu would never recognize a government in which a terrorist group dedicated to Israel's destruction played a leading role.
No amount of lofty rhetoric -- either from Peres or Obama -- is going to paper over these substantial differences, which will inevitably cause tension between the two allies.
Obama's Top Supreme Court Pick
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 11:59AM
President Obama says the ideal replacement for Justice Souter should have “a sharp and independent mind" and, of course, "empathy." Could White House counsel Greg Craig be researching feverishly whether a President can serve in two branches of the federal government at the same time?
Obama’s Top Supreme Court
Pick
By Asher Embry
The White House roared with giddy cheer,
When Justice Souter made it clear,
How soon his SCOTUS opening came.
Let’s start the nomination game!
The legacy of David Souter,
Still guides each subsequent recruiter:
Make sure you know the judge you name,
Or risk what Souter soon became --
With faulty vetting by his staff,
The first George Bush’s biggest gaffe.
Barack has tried his level best,
To say there’ll be no litmus test.
But one group he’ll disqualify --
No male Caucasians need apply.
It’s surely no surprise to find,
“O” thinks that justice isn’t blind.
He says the central traits should be,
Diversity and empathy --
Include in Court deliberation,
Each Justice’s imagination.
While “O” is fighting flu-like germs,
And running banks and auto firms:
Awarding stimulus largess,
Enchanting members of the press:
Ensuring global warming halts,
Apologizing for our faults…
Convinced there’s more for him to do,
He wants to add a thing or two.
We hope Obama didn’t ask,
Greg Craig to take a secret task:
To check that nothing would prevent,
While serving still as President,
“O” simultaneously'd assign,
Himself as Justice number 9!
(You can read more of Asher Embry's Political Verse at www.politicalverse.com.)
Competition For Nobody-Messes-With Joe Biden?
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 11:24AM
Nobody messes with Silvio...not even his wife.
In the interest of fairness, before we crown a winner we should make a good faith effort to determine whether Silvio's wife is tougher than the currently Joe-messing EPA.
The (Liberal) Case Against Sonia Sotomayor
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 9:31AM
Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic asks around about the Second Circuit judge, often mentioned as a potential Supreme Court nominee, and doesn't like what he hears:
But despite the praise from some of her former clerks, and warm words from some of her Second Circuit colleagues, there are also many reservations about Sotomayor. Over the past few weeks, I've been talking to a range of people who have worked with her, nearly all of them former law clerks for other judges on the Second Circuit or former federal prosecutors in New York. Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court. Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.
The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was "not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench," as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. "She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue."
Sounds like a jurist we could spend decades hating -- or laughing at.
Boston Globe Owner Threatens to Shut Down Paper
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 9:22AM
This certainly puts all those pro-labor editorials I've read in the Boston Globe over the years in perspective.
Going for the Loot
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 9:08AM
Ah, yes ... the "stimulus" bill. It certainly has helped the economy. At least, it has stimulated the hiring of lobbyists to help everyone far and wide get their hands on the loot. The latest porkers at the federal trough trying to get more of their snout into our collective pockets are local governments.
The city fathers of Tracy, Calif., have furloughed many city workers for eight days this summer. They've cut staffing by about 5 percent. And now they are trying another way to help make ends meet in these tough economic times -- They've hired a Washington lobbyist.
It's an idea that seems to be spreading. Senate lobbying records show that dozens of cities and counties signed up with lobbying firms in the first three months of this year. Their goal is to get a greater share of the money flowing out of Washington from a record federal budget and the $787 billion economic stimulus package.
Some of the communities hiring lobbyists have done so before and are simply shuffling their lineup or adding to it. But others are getting into the lobbying game for the first time.
"This is a new venture for the city. This is a relatively conservative community and has a high degree of self-reliance, but we also understand there's also a great opportunity for all communities, Tracy included," said Leon Churchill, city manager for the suburban community about 60 miles east of San Francisco. "The opportunity was too immense to bypass."
Who's going to end up paying for all of the wonderful projects landed by the lobbyists? Don't ask!
Another Obama Promise by the Wayside
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 8:26AM
Didn't he say something about not turning policy over to lobbyists?
Reports the Wall Street Journal:
President Barack Obama says lobbyists won't run his administration, but he picked an antitobacco lobbyist with ties to the pharmaceutical industry as the No. 2 official at the Department of Health and Human Services.
The nomination of William Corr -- former executive director of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, where he was a registered lobbyist until September -- highlights the murkiness of Mr. Obama's antilobbyist policy.
Mr. Obama requires employees to sign a pledge stating they will not "participate in any particular matter on which I lobbied within the two years before the date of my appointment." Those rules prohibit Mr. Corr from working on tobacco issues, the White House says.
But Mr. Corr's nomination raises another question: In an era when industries often make financial donations to public-interest groups that support policies that help those industries, when are public-interest advocates conflicted by the funding that supports the causes they advocate?
The problem isn't hiring former lobbyists. The problem is telling the world that you won't fill your administration with former lobbyists and then doing so.
Dr. Paul to Run for Senate If Bunning Retires
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 8:02AM
Dr. Rand Paul, that is, Congressman Ron Paul's oldest son. The Bowling Green physician says he isn't planning on challenging Sen. Jim Bunning in the primary and will only run if Bunning decides not to seek a third term. Kentucky Secretary of State Trey Grayson said pretty much the same thing when he announced his exploratory committee for a Senate run, going so far as to say he had Bunning's blessing. But Bunning's spokesman has subsequently insisted that the two-term incumbent is running again in 2010.
Peggy Noonan Still Doesn’t Get It
Posted by on 5.4.09 @ 3:25AM
We didn't need another reason to avoid reading the slippery Peggy Noonan, but she gave us one anyway.
Still in awe of the Dear Leader whose news conference Wednesday night was in her words "a bit of a masterpiece," in her Friday Wall Street Journal column Noonan shows that she has become a captive of liberal conventional wisdom on yet another issue.
Noonan implies that the Republican Party is too conservative and as such it forced liberal Sen. Arlen Specter to defect to the Democrats. Noonan complained that the people inside the party "can't always be kicking people out of the tent. A great party cannot live by constantly subtracting, by removing or shunning those who are not faithful to every aspect of its beliefs, or who don't accept every pole, or who are just barely fitting under the tent," she wrote. "Room should be made for them. Especially in those cases when Republican incumbents and candidates are attempting to succeed in increasingly liberal states, a certain practical sympathy is in order."
If only the party had kicked some people out of the tent years ago, but I digress.
Like Specter who complained he was "ostracized" for voting for President Obama's disgraceful $787 billion stimulus package -the biggest spending bill in the history of the Republic- Noonan treats his vote for the measure as just another vote.
It's not.
It was, as conservatives saw it, the Mother of All Votes, and it capped a long career of giving the finger to conservatives. That single vote - which among other things erased the landmark Clinton welfare reforms, helped lay the foundation for socialized medicine and expand Leviathan's reach- gave the nation's left a forward momentum that it hasn't had since the days of LBJ.
Mere ostracism is far too mild a punishment for Specter for such a shocking betrayal of his party.
Specter's pissed off and alienated conservatives for decades, and Noonan thinks conservatives should just grin and bear it. She chastises Republicans for "too much ferocity, and bloody-mindedness."
For the record, party apparatchiks bent over backwards to accommodate Specter. As recently as two weeks ago the National Republican Senate Committee backed Specter for reelection in 2010 over the infinitely more conservative Pat Toomey. This was, it's worth noting, even after Specter's vote for the infamous "porkulus" bill.
It was only after Specter saw his abysmal polling numbers against Toomey that he decided his future was bleak in the Republican Party. He admitted this fact.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that Specter said he made the decision to change parties after the results from one of his own polls came in on April 24. "The most important number was the approval rating - it dropped from the 60s to 31" percent in the last few months, Specter was quoted as saying.
Specter switched parties to save his skin, yet he self-servingly whined in front of reporters about how the GOP supposedly left him and how the big, bad Club for Growth picked on him. As CNN reports
Veteran Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter said Sunday that he hopes his recent switch to the Democratic Party will serve as a "wake-up call" to an increasingly conservative GOP.
He also once again assigned some blame for the recent decline of the Republican Party to the political advocacy group Club for Growth, which targets moderate GOP incumbents who do not adhere to the doctrine of supply-side economics.
Club for Growth fought Specter's GOP renomination in 2004 and was set to oppose him again in the 2010 primary.
"It would be my hope ... that this would be a wake-up call and the [GOP] would move for a broader big tent like we had under Reagan," Specter said on CBS's "Face the Nation."
"The party has changed so much since I was elected in 1980," he said.
On this last point, Specter's right. The party has become much more liberal (like him) since he was elected - and that's a shame.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Remembering Kemp
Posted by on 5.3.09 @ 4:47PM
So many people have so many good stories about Jack Kemp that I won't take too much time adding my own few tales of the times I had chances to interact with him. The funniest, in retrospect, is the time I did NOT meet Kemp. As an alternate delegate to the GOP national convention in 1988 in my hometown of New Orleans, I was performing all sorts of host duties in addition to my alternate delegate duties, plus I was helping some national folks organize a "Draft Kemp" for VP movement on the convention floor. And, finally, as the guy with the local knowledge of all the New Orleans street routes, etc., I was scheduled to be Kemp's driver after he got into town, all day the Tuesday of the convention.
One problem: I had had mononucleosis earlier that summer and, with me absolutely knocking myself out in convention-related stuff in the week leading to the convention, I came down with a relapse that Monday night. Tuesday morning, I literally had trouble lifting my head off the pillow, much less going to pick Kemp up. I ended up forcing myself to call my brother, who is entirely apolitical, and getting him to be the chauffeur for Kemp all day - while I lay in bed, trying to recuperate. So I missed my chance to spend a lot of time with Kemp, much to my chagrin. Oh, well.....
Anyway, I'll have a column out soon on Kemp's legacy. He was a great and good man. The United States is very much in his debt. For that matter, so are lovers of freedom throughout the world. His infectious enthusiasm was unmatched. He was an apostle of hope and freedom. We were blessed to have him as a public servant. Very fondly, R.I.P.
The Great Jack Kemp
Posted by on 5.3.09 @ 9:40AM
The year was 1988. Jack Kemp came to my hometown, Pensacola, Florida, where Navy pilots trained and the kids hung out at the beaches with the sugar white sand.
A friend and I were hooked on the old Crossfire with Pat Buchanan and Tom Braden/Michael Kinsley. We identified Kemp as the best hope to continue Reagan's reign.
Kemp stopped at the airport just long enough to shake the hands (including mine which I considered not washing) and give a speech. I was one of a hundred or so who came out to see him that day. His prospects already looked shaky. He asked us, "Do you want me to give up?" We all shouted, "NO!"
There could probably be a great alternate history written with the premise of Kemp being elected that year.
He lost, of course, but went on to serve in Housing and Urban Development in the Bush administration. His many young fans held out hope his time would come. When Dole put him on the ticket as a running mate in 1996, it seemed like destiny for those of us who thought Kemp would rejuvenate the party. He would bring back Reaganomics. He would break the back of monolithic African-American support for Democrats and big government.
Instead, he lost the Vice-Presidential debate to Al Gore (truly performing with less verve than Dan Quayle in 1992, who BEAT Gore!) and the GOP ticket made way for Clinton's second term.
After that, Kemp ceased to be the man many of us felt we were waiting for and the party has lacked a true iconic figure since that time. There was Reagan and then there was the one who would take up Reagan's mantle. Kemp was supposed to be that man.
While Kemp failed to become the party's leader (and, of course, the nation's), his career was one of the most consequential in American politics in the second half of the twentieth century. Kemp was a winsome evangelist for the Reagan project in Congress when the need was great. He was part of a group that performed the near impossible in politics. They promised. They delivered.
Jack Kemp, R.I.P.
Posted by on 5.3.09 @ 2:30AM
I second everything Wlady and Doug have said -- and then some. Although I came to have some disagreements with him later in life, Jack Kemp was an important leader of the Republican Party and conservative movement. He was one of the few figures who was passionate both about the standard Reaganite themes -- pro-growth economics, tax cuts, right to life, Cold War -- and also interested in bringing in the black and Hispanic Americans who too often felt excluded from the conservative message. He was a bridge between Reagan and King. And he was not afraid to dissent from conservative orthodoxy. Some of those dissents I agreed with -- Iraq, term limits -- some I did not -- Proposition 187, balanced budgets. But I always respected him and had high hopes for his presidential ambitions. Alas, it was not meant to be.
