Conservative Inconsistency on Court

RealClearPolitics - Thin-Skinned Supreme Court

EJ thinks Republicans are being inconsistent by claiming that BO ought not to have made the statements that he made in his SOTU. Let me try to help:

1. It makes a difference where you raise your issue. Reagan wrote an article, Nixon made the court an issue in a campaign.  BO attacked the court when he was on the podium and they were sitting in front of him and prohibited from responding. That is the difference.
   
2. If you want to make statements against a co-equal branch of government, especially if you are a constitutional scholar, it might be nice to have some semblance correctness in what you say. 

• Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights declare any rights. They restrict the government's rights.
• Congress can't pass laws to circumvent Court rulings. To propose that shows a lack of understanding of the basic operation of the Constitution and Government which BO is pledged to defend, or something far more sinister. It is hard to believe that a Harvard Constitutional scholar
  
• The legislation this ruling was focused on is McCain / Feingold, passed in 2002, not "100 years ago".

Note, conservatives are NOT "always consistent", to be so is humanly impossible. To have a liberal like Dionne talk of the issue though is like having Slick Willie talk of martial fidelity!

Americans Get Stupid Again

Moody Blues - WSJ.com

If one listens to the left, the average intelligence and maturity of the American voter can swing quite wildly. Just a year ago, US voters had a ton of intelligence and maturity, but in barely a 12 month period, they have lost all semblance if intellectual capacity and has been reduced to a bunch of pouting and stomping 2-year olds, even in a formerly brilliant and wise blue state haven like Massachusetts.


Taranto does a good job of covering some specific examples of our leftward punditry heaping praise on the decision 14 months ago, and disdain on the blue state of MA voters now. Clearly "stopping an unpopular healthcare bill" is far more vacuous than "hope and change".

BO Picks Up Budget Hatchet

BO Ridicules McCain on budget freeze.

Be interesting to see if the MSM has any memory. BO thought McCain was completely wrong to call for a freeze. McCain has now supported the BO call for a freeze. BO said it was a "hatchet rather than a scalpel". Suppose it is racist to point out what he said in the past.

Didin't BO used to be some sort of a great leader and political genius?

The Lesson of Slick

William McGurn: Bill Clinton's Revenge - WSJ.com

In the process, he learned one thing: In a nation where roughly 20% describe themselves as liberal, 40% as conservative, and 40% as moderate, there's not a high price for shutting out the left. As for history, Mr. Clinton went on to become the only Democrat since FDR to win and serve two full terms as president.

Exactly! Of course, there never has and we pray never will be anyone as disingenuous as Slick Willy in the WH, but he did understand that key fact that the MSM works night and day to hide! Hopefully BO will stick to his guns and do "what he thinks is right", and the American people will assign this sorry chapter to a one year leftward sprint, a 3 year stall, and finally move on to start to deal with reality!

Even CNN Understanding Pelosi?

 CNN used to be "Clinton News Network". Apparently Queen Nancy is pushing things a bit too far for even them!

FInal Word On Corporate Free Speech

THOMAS MITCHELL: An irrefutable right correctly restored - Opinion - ReviewJournal.com

This one covers the ruling and the key arguments. It is short, just read it.

Airial Refuel Over Iraq

Extremely cool!

The Base

RealClearPolitics - Rock on the Health Care Road

al Qaeda is loosely translated as "The Base". Christ is my "base", but close to next in scale of import is the principle of "unalienable rights". That some rights come from God (or transcendence if you really must persist in atheism), NOT from "the people". America is NOT a "democracy", it is a constitutional republic. The MSM and the left in this country want to tear that down so they can more rapidly accelerate our decent into some form of collectivist socialist "utoptia" where the the ability of the "majority" to impose whatever their whim de jour on individuals is unfettered. A utopia very likely to resemble hell.

Read the whole thing. Will does a good job of pointing out the sinister way in which the forces of the left seek to entice us to their supposed eden. I've pulled a couple highlights:

Would it be constitutional for the government to legislate compulsory calisthenics for all Americans? If not, why not? If it would be, in what sense does the nation still have constitutional, meaning limited, government?

Opponents of the mandate say: Unless the Commerce Clause is infinitely elastic -- in which case, Congress can do anything -- it does not authorize Congress to forbid the inactivity of not making a commercial transaction, of not purchasing a product (health insurance) from a private provider.

If the Senate health care bill is constitutional, then Congress can do anything. That is absolutely true, and it ought to srike enough fear into the hearts of anyone with a shred of understanding of the peril of mob rule into opposition of this bill.

The mendacious and the unaware are the only supporters this bill can have.

The following puts it very well. The primary purpose of the government is to protect the pre-existing rights of the individual.

More truly conservative conservatives take their bearings from the proposition that government's primary purpose is not to organize the fulfillment of majority preferences but to protect pre-existing rights of the individual -- basically, liberty. These conservatives favor judicial activism understood as unflinching performance of the courts' role in that protection.

New Yorker On BO Year 1

One Year: Beware of Sudden Downdrafts: Hendrik Hertzberg : The New Yorker

 Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Today's internet affords us an excellent opportunity to read the words of those to whom think in the exact opposite terms, to understand what is on their minds. What is on the minds of this New Yorker columnist is the destruction of the constitution and the the creation of a European style parliamentary system that would allow our quicker decent into socialism and the loss of "American exceptionalism",  a noxious term for those of the left. He is pretty direct about his desire to somehow dispense with the horror of "Republicans", we can be thankful he has spared us the gory details of just how.

Thanks to my longstanding obsession with the obsolescence of our eighteenth-century political and electoral hydraulics (such as the separation of powers and the lack of a single government accountable to a national electorate) and this sclerotic system’s sadomasochistic twentieth-century refinements (such as the institutionalization of the filibuster), I am not astonished that Obama has had trouble “getting things done.” Absent only the filibuster—even while leaving untouched all the other monkey wrenches (committee chairs, corrupt campaign money, safe districts, Republicans, etc.)—Obama by now would have signed landmark bills addressing health care, global warming, and financial regulation, and a larger, better-designed stimulus package, too.

Boston Tea Party

Scott Brown Beats Martha Coakley - WSJ.com

Massachusetts passed a prototype of the Obama plan in 2006, and residents have since watched as their insurance premiums have risen to the highest in the nation, budget costs have soared, and bureaucrats are planning far more draconian regulation of medical practice. Mr. Brown accurately said the national sequel would be too expensive and reduce the quality of care, and that it would be a "raw deal" forcing Massachusetts taxpayers to subsidize all other states.

Why do I need to read this buried in an article only AFTER the special election? I've certainly been aware of what the MA plan has caused because I'm the kind of idiot that wastes my time running off and finding such things. What I just don't get is why ANY news outlet that actually cares about outcomes for the country would NOT want to look into what has been wrought by a plan that even far lefties have identified as being "very much like the moderate Senate bill". (See Paul Krugman)

The fact is that the Senate bill is a centrist document, which moderate Republicans should find entirely acceptable. In fact, it’s very similar to the plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts just a few years ago.

The voters of a state that PASSED something very equivalent to the MOST CONSERVATIVE version of what is being shoved down our throats now have resoundingly spoken on what they think of essentially the health care bill that they now have EXPERIENCE with going national, and NOBODY CARES? Having STATES pass new laws that are controversial and then observing the outcomes is exactly what the US was supposed to be about. Our Founding Fathers unerstood the principles of "Agile Development" over 200 years before it became the rage in software.

How can we possibly govern ourselves if we are not reality and outcome based?

NYT Officially Against Free Speech

Editorial - The Court’s Blow to Democracy - NYTimes.com

I wonder what status quo the NYT thinks ought to be protected?  Try this. In 2008, one has to get to the 39th group on the list before one hits a group that is "strongly Republican" (Club for Growth). Number 23 (National Car Dealers) "leans Republican". Out of the top 100, 3 lean R, 2 are solid R, and 1 is "strongly" R.

How about D? 3 are "Solid", including #1, ActBlue, a PAC that hides god knows what shenanigans and contributed $24 Million, over 3x #2, which is Goldman Sachs, "strongly D". 30 are "Strongly D", and 10 "lean D". The current advantage in this list alone is many 10s of millions, and we know in the last cycle, BO alone had an advantage approaching $500 Million.

Is it any wonder the NYT wants this state of affairs protected? We well know how campaign finance laws are enforced. Republicans are scrutinized and prosecuted if they or their contributors step out of line. Democrats are rarely looked at, and even if they are -- as in Slick and the Goracle in the '90s when they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar on all sorts of campaign irregularities, including taking foreign funds, the answer is "well, we had to do it because it looked like the Republicans might win". That is always a good enough emergency to justify ANYTHING to the MSM.

As the NYT understands, in a big country where media costs money, freedom of speech means freedom to raise money to speak. While the NYT will defend anyone's right to agree with them (as will all good liberals), they aren't so sure that those that DISagree with them ought to be able to raise money, so we have a HUGE crisis here from their POV.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens warned that the ruling not only threatens democracy but “will, I fear, do damage to this institution.” History is, indeed, likely to look harshly not only on the decision but the court that delivered it. The Citizens United ruling is likely to be viewed as a shameful bookend to Bush v. Gore. With one 5-to-4 decision, the court’s conservative majority stopped valid votes from being counted to ensure the election of a conservative president. Now a similar conservative majority has distorted the political system to ensure that Republican candidates will be at an enormous advantage in future elections.

In the interest of "even handedness", the NYT didn't find a google search to point to who has the advantage today to be worth a couple minutes of their time. They apparently found Democrats skirting the law on every front and coming up with 100s of millions in advantage in the last election cycle to be completely  unthreatening to democracy. While we listened to them prattle constantly post '94 of the "dangers" of the Republicans having control of ANY branch of government, the 2008 election and talk about the "end of the Republican party" was a sign that America had finally "woke up". One party rule is apparently "democratic" as long as it is the party that you agree with!

Freedom of speech for Republicans. The end of Democracy!

Let Them Sleep

RealClearPolitics - The Meaning of Brown

A particularly cogent one from Charles. Hopefully the Democrats will find some delusions that allow them to continue to sleep peacefully.

Thanks To BO!

RealClearPolitics - The Public Has Spoken on ObamaCare

By any measure, the upset in MA is one of the grandest political coups in US history. To have John Edwards admit to fathering a love-child in the same week makes one wonder if the Kennedy Foundation admitting that he murdered Mary Jo Kopechne is soon to follow. It really ISN'T "The Kennedy Seat", it belongs to the people of MA.

This is a great paragraph from Will:

With one piece of legislation, Obama and his congressional allies have done in one year what it took President Lyndon Johnson and his allies two years to do in 1965 and 1966 -- revive conservatism. Today conservatism is rising on the stepping stones of liberal excesses.

With just one year in power, BO and his total control of Congress has managed to awake the 40% of Americans that have always identified themselves as conservative from their stupor. A year ago, this seemed impossible, but while the capacity of the human race for the positive is sadly limited, the capacity for arrogance, narcissism, mendacity, elitism, and incompetence is completely unbounded. BO, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have just proven the known yet again.

The following paragraph from George summarizes my thoughts far better than I am able. One of the very essences of modern "liberalism" is that; "The masses are too stupid to know what is best for them, they ought to be thankful we brilliant liberals are here to take care of them". Modern liberalism has left behind the very core of what makes this country special. The faith that the intelligence, hard work and common sense of the MANY exceeds the supposed brilliance of the few by a WIDE margin! God Bless the America of the COMMON People! Together, we can be far more UNcommon and even EXCEPTIONAL -- with no need for BO to apologize for us to anyone!

The 2008 elections gave liberals the curse of opportunity, and they have used it to reveal themselves ruinously. The protracted health care debacle has highlighted this fact: Some liberals consider the legislation's unpopularity a reason to redouble their efforts to inflict it on Americans who, such liberals think, are too benighted to understand that their betters know best. The essence of contemporary liberalism is the illiberal conviction that Americans, in their comprehensive incompetence, need minute supervision by government, which liberals believe exists to spare citizens the torture of thinking and choosing.

A United Nations World

Security concerns cause doctors to leave hospital, quake victims - CNN.com

The UN orders Doctors to leave patients behind and leave, and they do -- except for a Doctor with an American News Corporation. When collectivism gets to the level of "World Government", of which the UN is the "best" example we have today. We are told every day that individual rights and resolve are bad, collective command and control are good, corporations are bad, government and Non-profit NGOs are good. How long can people keep truth alive in the daily drumbeat of false messages?

The people of Haiti have been "wards of the world" basically forever, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. On the other end of the island, The Dominican Republic has built itself into the 2nd largest economy in the Caribbean and a major tourist destination. Why? Seems like something worth some study.

It is heart wrenching whenever there is a disaster, but it is impossible to look at Haiti and not be reminded of New Orleans and that feeling of people with the attitude that "life is something that happens TO them and it is entirely under the control of others and "fate"". Otherwise healthy people can somehow stand, wait for help, and complain, while feeling no responsibility to help either themselves or their fellow man.

Will the once strong spirit of America have to be reduced to people wandering about while the bodies of their  neighbors rot in the street and lamenting "where is help"? Obviously, such disasters are not the "fault" of the people to which they happen, but they show a fundamental difference between the largely self-motivated and self-sufficient and those that have decided to be dependent. It is said that disasters and trying times "bring out the best", and for functional, independent people, that is true. It is also true that for those that are dependent, such things bring out the worst; looting, rioting, crime and even more total despair.

New Orleans showed that the spirit of dependence already has taken hold in parts of this country, and like a plague, it can spread easily. Worse in many ways, the MSM decided that New Orleans was a great opportunity to "blame Bush" rather than point out that a half million people with days of warning failed to evacuate, leaving among other things, 500 buses to be flooded in a parking lot.  Not only did they fail to evacuate, they failed to get a few days supply of bottled water and non-perishable foodstuffs. Saying such things is currently "not PC", it is called "blaming the victim".

The idea that humans should ignore that sodden feeling in the pit of our stomach when we see the wages of dependence and despondency, NOT the disaster, but the inability of a community of people to do anything but beg ... even those completely uninjured by the event. To turn that off, and to somehow blame relief efforts for being "too slow", "not sufficient" or otherwise ignore the core problem is to walk the road that eventually leads to the despair of Haiti or New Orleans.

Let us lift our eyes and get off this road!

Secret Ballot in MA?

Democrat Coakley Fights for Massachusetts Senate Seat - TIME

Were you aware that a week from today voters in MA will decide the fate of Teddy Ks old seat and it is still in doubt if their candidate will win? You have to be somewhat of a news hound to know it. Just imagine for a second if say John McCain had died and his seat was up with the Republicans having a 60 vote Senate majority and the President being a Republican. Suppose there would be any talk of "the need for balance"? Would we hear anything about the "arrogance" of a party that has jammed through legislation without a single "Democrat" (remember, opposite world) vote, often late at night and on weekends with nobody having much of an idea what is in the bill?

Let's face it, were the roles reversed, there is no way the MA election could be could be a "win" for the incumbent party.  If they won, it would be by too little, and if they lost, it would obviously be a "repudiation of the President and his policies", a "mandate to filibuster" to prevent the "unpopular and ill advised policies foisted on Americans by this misguided party". We don't even have to imagine it ... we heard much the same in elections in '04 and '06 as the MSM harangued Bush and the Republicans who had far less than 60 votes in the Senate. They were "on message" in '04 and failed with much weeping and gnashing of teeth mixed with promises to "leave the country". Many of the Dems and MSM were "embarrassed for their country".

Well, in '06, the heavens opened and the donkeys brayed their way to big majorities in the House and Senate running on that platform of "Change" -- that was one campaign promise that the Dems finally kept. Things certainly have CHANGED since they took over congress in '07!

Unfortunately, nobody from the Republican side seems willing to do more than the Democrats did for a platform in '06 and '08. It ought to come so somebodies attention that "I'm not W", "I'm not BO", or "Change" aren't platforms. They are barely even slogans, and they are just as stupid used by Republicans as Democrats!!