FIX BAYONETS, the chronicles of Will Manly

Not bad, Newt

2012-01-21T22:08:00.004-06:00

Newton Leroy Gingrich was the last national leader to cut government. If we nominate him, he will guarantee us an entertaining (tho that is not necessarily for the best) race through November. He made a fine speech tonight, after he won the South Carolina primary.

T-Paw, 2012

2011-05-22T17:20:00.002-05:00

Today, I'm rooting for this guy. I think he stands out in the field.

Say 'Yes' to Mitch Daniels

2011-05-05T23:34:00.004-05:00

I saw a Tweet from Mark Levin, whom I respect greatly. He said: "just say no to Mitch Daniels," because he didn't like some things said about Indiana's governor. I think he's wrong. I hope this guy runs for president.

Worth a watch

2011-05-04T15:37:00.003-05:00

Say what you will about Newt Gingrich. We know, at a minimum, he passes this test.

A guy who gets it

2011-02-16T20:29:00.004-06:00

Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey is the kind of guy who will save the country.

I'm not talking about a presidential election. He's said repeatedly that he won't run for that office next year, and he's too young and inexperienced to be ready for it anyway. But there are several good governors — including Bobby Jindal, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels — who are doing the work that we need in every state.

We need more like him in state capitals, and in congress, and in the White House.

Happy Reagan Centennial

2011-02-06T11:09:00.005-06:00

One hundred years ago today, Ronald Reagan was born in Tampico, Illinois. He was one of a rare few (even among men who have been elected president of the United States) who dramatically altered the course of human history, and for the better.

What occurs in this video is sometimes referred to as "The Speech." If you haven't seen it, or just haven't seen it for awhile, it's worth a half hour of your time.

Shortly after it aired, a group of California businessmen embarked on a long and (eventually) successful mission to convince Mr. Reagan to run for governor. Once he did, Americans began electing him to office as enthusiastically as they could. Over the following 25 years, Ronald Reagan saved the world.

Cheers to Shannon Sharpe

2011-02-05T22:23:00.002-06:00

It's a rare occasion when I feel compelled to pour the good whiskey. Shannon Sharpe's election to the Pro Football Hall of Fame qualifies. He re-defined the game, and he was one of the funniest players I've ever watched.

Free at last

2010-12-06T23:11:00.002-06:00

Free at last. Free at last. Thank God Almighty, we're free at last.

Video from The Denver Post:

They've proven their manhood; he never will

2010-11-15T18:18:00.010-06:00

We have seen the face of cowardice, and it is Michael Wolfensohn. Worse, Mr. Wolfensohn is everything that's wrong in America.

A member of the town board in New Castle, New York, Mr. Wolfensohn (mbwolf@town.new-castle.ny.us) saw a great threat to his community last month. So, as Faulkner would say, he vanquished it, horse and foot.

The city councilman's victory, the great threat he defeated, the cancer from which he saved his poor, helpless, unsuspecting subjects, is astonishing. He beat down two 13-year-olds who were selling cookies.

More comical, and instructive of the character that we're dealing with, is the way Mr. Wolfensohn did it: He called the cops.

Kevin Graff, Andrew DeMarchis, Zachary Brass, and Daniel Katz, all young teenagers, demonstrated remarkable foresight and initiative, according to a local newspaper: The four boys started selling cupcakes, cookies, and other baked sweets in the park. They planned to use their earnings to grow the business, and eventually open their own restaurant.

It is unclear whether four 13-year-olds would have followed through to the degree necessary to run a restaurant. But we know these young men had already expanded their business to include beverages, and they'd made a capital investment, in the form of a cart for carrying product. The only thing that stopped them was a low-life politician and an (apologetic) police officer. Mr. Wolfensohn's words: "The police are trained to deal with these sorts of issues." Really? In 2009, more than 2,500 rapes were committed in New York state, and Mr. Wolfensohn would have us believe his state's police academies are teaching recruits to deal instead with black-market Rice Krispies treats.

The boys didn't have a license, said Mr. Wolfensohn. Neither did George Washington. It could have been dangerous, said Mr. Wolfensohn. Business, and life, are rarely not dangerous. A park use permit requires $1 million in insurance, said Mr. Wolfensohn. I wish I was exaggerating that number.

If this standard applied to all entrepreneurs, today we would not have Macintosh computers, television sets, McDonald's cheeseburgers (or, cheeseburgers), iPods, Napa valley wine, the forward pass in football (or, football), flight, or any of the other fine things that Americans have invented and sold for profit and fun.

These days in America, liberals go ballistic when conservatives want to put a 99-week cap on unemployment checks. They throw a hissy-fit when anyone suggests that a man's health insurance is his own responsibility. They whine and cry and jump up and down, stamping their feet like a misbehaving 2-year-old, at any suggestion that human beings are capable of living life.

In contrast, these kids wanted to work hard, to provide for themselves, to plan ahead, to build something they could be proud of by providing valuable products to consumers in their community. Better yet, they were doing it! And this blithering idiot reported them to the police.

Though just 13, these four teenagers have proven that their manhood; I doubt Mr. Wolfensohn ever will.

One headline about the story: "Michael Wolfensohn Hates American Dream, Cupcakes." That wasn't harsh enough. Mr. Wolfensohn, and his attitude, are killing the human spirit. According to the New Castle town government's web site, Mr. Wolfensohn is up for re-election in 2011. There have been few politicians in world history who more deserve to be thrown out of office (and that is saying something). If someone (anyone, actually) runs against him, I intend to contribute to their campaign.

Politics is getting poisonous

2010-11-01T01:08:00.003-05:00

(Editorial note: I wanted to share an important idea before this year's election. I considered writing something new, but decided instead to renew this piece, which I originally published in April. If I could pick one thing in my archives that I'd like everyone to see, it's this.)

Prologue

I recently had a discussion with a friend about health care reform. I behaved impolitely, but my point stands. It went like this:

Me: Congress is going to blow $2 trillion on this drivel.

Friend: Good. They should spend $3 trillion! The more money we spend, the more people will have health insurance.

Me: Fine. Spend $3 trillion of your own [expletive] money. But when you think you have some moral right to spend my money on yourself, well there’s a special corner in Hell for people like you.

Friend: We have a policy disagreement, and you’re telling me to go to Hell!? Jesus, politics is getting poisonous.

Part 1

Over the last year my favorite columnist, Peggy Noonan, has chronicled the above phenomenon in her Wall Street Journal space. Her latest such piece read like a wise observer’s plea for someone in Washington to “lower the temperature” before it’s too late.

Last summer, when she listed three great threats America is likely to face over the next decade, she was more blunt:

First, economic depression. Second, a WMD attack against an American city. And third, “faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements as Americans for various reasons and in various areas decide the burdens and assumptions of the federal government are no longer attractive or legitimate.”

Part 2

A few days ago, another friend marched up to me, beaming, asking if I’d “heard the good news?” He then bragged about some daily tracking poll that, at that moment, indicated Obamacare was more popular after it passed than it was before, and that Congressional Democrats were surging after their victory.

I’m praying that all three of Ms. Noonan’s predictions prove incorrect. But for as long as there are people in America who hope Congress will blow $3 trillion instead of $2 trillion, and for as long as there are people who think it’s “good news” that theft and tyranny are more popular today than they were yesterday, I suspect the “faint glimmers of actual secessionist movements” will smolder and gain strength.

If you meet someone who says this is a good thing, you will know you have met a fool.

Part 3

One of my undergraduate history classes examined pre-Civil War-era America. Once, a classmate asked our professor exactly when the North-South divide began. I’ll never forget his answer. He said: Some settled Jamestown in 1607; then some settled Massachusetts in 1620. They grew apart from there.

In other words, America has been divided from the beginning, in some ways that are minor and some that are irreconcilable.

And, yet, Americans have built the freest, strongest, wealthiest, most generous, most upwardly mobile nation the world has ever seen.

The difference in values between Americans is striking, though it is not surprising. A lot of things are perfectly natural in San Francisco, but make no sense in Kansas. (The Golden Gate Bridge, for example. And Nancy Pelosi.)

This concept isn’t new. The Constitution’s framers were keenly aware that their document wouldn’t become law and couldn’t work unless it guaranteed dramatic autonomy for Americans in different parts of the country. Even in 1787, what worked for Boston wasn’t the same as what worked for Savannah. (Perhaps one is superior, but that point is irrelevant, and the one war that’s been fought to settle the question is one too many.)

Part 4

Americans are proud of their country, and rightfully so. (Texans often don’t see eye to eye with New Yorkers, but the average Texas Ranger and the average New York City firefighter probably share common feelings for al-Qaeda.) But America is a vast country, both in geography and in ideals. And we are an intellectually active country: Most of us have a vision of what works, and a vision of right and wrong, and they generally aren’t arbitrary.

America is too big and too diverse for central planning to work. Just as the colonies couldn’t be run from London, America cannot be run from Washington. That’s why we have dual sovereignty (a novelty among nations) between the federal government and the states. That radical, seemingly impossible notion was probably the greatest gift the Framers left the world. It enables America to flourish.

The Constitution lists a small, distinct, all-inclusive set of powers held by the U.S. government: International and interstate relations, coining money, granting patents, and protecting fundamental rights. And that’s about it. When the Constitution was amended for the first time with the Bill of Rights, the Tenth Amendment insisted that all other powers — those not specifically granted to the federal government — are affairs for the states.

This is not an accident.

Cowboys in Arizona don’t have much in common with attorneys in Boston. The average Floridian who fled Cuba probably doesn’t worship the same god as the average Californian who emigrated from Vietnam. Alaskan crab fishermen surely don’t understand the lifestyle of Pennsylvania mill workers. Yet all are countrymen. And they can get along because each is left to their own devices.

If the Bostonian followed the Arizonan from pasture to pasture, critiquing, we’d have a different story.

America has many beautiful aspects, and one of the most important is this: If a man doesn’t like state income taxes, he can move to Florida. If he’s morally opposed to the death penalty, he can move out of Texas and into Massachusetts. If he seeks a homosexual marriage, he can leave Kansas for Iowa. If that happens, we Kansas will stay out of his business. Even if we want to interfere, we’ll have no legal power to stop him because Iowa gets to make its own rules.

These are facts: In America, many of us think income taxes are repugnant, and many think they are necessary. In America, many of us are morally opposed to the death penalty in all cases, and many are morally opposed to the thought of it being unavailable. In America, many of us think marriage ought to be limited to one man and one woman, and many think a dude should be allowed to marry another dude.

That can work, but only in America.

Part 5

My friend was right about one thing: Politics is getting poisonous.

The anger is bubbling beneath the surface now, at a more dangerous rate than at any time in recent memory. As long as it stays beneath the surface, it’ll be just a passing story reported in contemporary news. But if it boils over, we’ll have ugly chapters to write in our history books.

This is because Kansans who oppose gay marriage do so with moral convictions matched only by those held by Iowans who embrace it.

So long as each state is allowed to decide for itself, neither has much reason to get upset. But in America today, that kind of decision is increasingly made at the national level. Obamacare is the newest example. When Massachusetts enacted its version of an individual mandate, it was within its rights to do so: The people of that state are empowered to oppose it politically, and if they fail (and if they decide it’s a deal-breaker) they’re free to move to New Hampshire.

I think Massachusetts’s program is too expensive, is unworkable, and is less noble than its supporters claim. But I don’t pay taxes in Massachusetts, and I don’t have to live there, so it’s none of my damn business.

Until Obamacare passed. Now it is my business. So are the elementary schools in Minnesota, after No Child Left Behind. Marijuana farms in California, too, because of the national War on Drugs. And the list goes on.

Part 6

America is not homogeneous. It is not uni-religious. It lacks a single, bland view of the world.

America is spicy, and some of the ingredients are incompatible. But so long as state sovereignty is enforced, the explosive combinations don’t mix. Unfortunately, those factions are being forced into each other and stripped of individuality by a federal government with an appetite “to help people” but not enough sense to see that many of us would rather fend for ourselves.

Politics is getting poisonous because ideas that are deeply revered by some of us, and equally repulsive to the rest, are enacted into national law, moments after one side wins an election. Politics is getting poisonous because there is more and more influence available; and most of us either resent the fact that it exists at all, or insist we can use that influence to save the world. Politics is getting poisonous because we are being forced to mind everyone else’s business (and they are being forced to mind ours).

Epilogue

Over the next generation, America might further nationalize. That would pit Americans against one another in ways that will, probably, lead to our destruction. Or, America might relax. It might breathe deeply, and take stock of how it has grown so rich and powerful, so fast, with so much diversity, so peacefully.

Politics is getting poisonous because, as the federal government does more and more, it exercises inappropriate influence at an unprecedented rate. There was a time when politics in Washington didn’t matter as much, when it had only limited influence over us.

That influence doesn’t seem limited anymore. If congressmen vote for a bill today (even if most of us told them not to), they harm us tomorrow, in ways that are clearer and more perceivable than ever before. I hope they learn as much, and soon.

A Message From Marco Rubio

2010-10-18T15:33:00.002-05:00

It works as well for Ken Buck and Ryan Frazier in Colorado, Joe Miller in Alaska, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, Dino Rossi in Washington, and all of the other candidates who understand what America is.

He probably wished it was a Gatling gun

2010-09-07T20:38:00.005-05:00

They told George Grier: "you're dead."

They said: "I'm gonna kill your family and your babies. You're dead."

He asked them to leave. Even said please.

And this exchange occurred after he'd alerted the authorities. He'd seen five men standing outside his house and he feared (reasonably so, it turns out) that they were members of the famously dangerous MS-13 international thug gang. (In that community, MS-13 has about 2,000 members — and it's just the "most" dangerous of the county's street gangs.) Mr. Grier had become so alarmed at the sight that he went back into his house and told his wife to call the police. Just in case, he also grabbed his AK-47. He probably wished it was a Gatling gun.

They didn't "please" leave. They called in reinforcements: 20 more thugs, hellbent on committing a random act of stupid brutality, appeared on his lawn, behaving as if they were going to rush him and invade his house.

So, after they threatened to murder his wife, after they said they'd kill his children, after they promised to kill him, after they refused to "please" leave his tiny lawn, after the trespassers defiantly dared him to open fire, Mr. Grier did. He fired warning shots.

As far as we can tell, the criminals went unscratched. Not a single complaint of damage to any property has been reported in the news. (Nor have any arrests of the would-be home invaders.)

But Mr. Grier, who has no criminal record and was extremely cooperative with police, was arrested and initially charged with felony reckless endangerment for firing his gun in self defense. (If he's convicted, federal law will prohibit him from owning a gun.)

Leftists swear up one side and down the other that they won't take away our guns. They just support "common sense" restrictions. To protect the children. Things like "assault weapons bans" and "child safety lock" requirements.

I wish I had the power to force every single gun control advocate in the world to read the story about Mr. Grier, the peaceful, polite homeowner who owned an AK-47, which saved his family when 25 crooks threatened to attack.

Actually, I wish I had the power to force them all into Mr. Grier's shoes, for just a few minutes.

A conversation with Haley Barbour

2010-09-03T20:45:00.009-05:00

As chairman of the Republican Governor's Association, Haley Barbour is leading the fight to take this country back from the leftists. He's been doing that for years; he was chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1994 when Republicans won majorities in Congress for the first time in generations.

After Hurricane Katrina (which actually hit Mississippi harder than it hit Louisiana), he was one of the few elected officials in the country whose approval ratings did not plummet. In June of 2009 — when Mr. Barbour became chair of the RGA — I predicted the leftist establishment would begin a systematic effort to destroy him because he represents best hope for electing a conservative president. At the time, I really didn't think he had any interest in running. But today I do — and I'm not alone. (Today I make only this prediction: If he decides to run, I think he will win.) Here, one of the best governors in the country talks with Peter Robinson of The Hoover Institution.

Part 1
'The long-term view'

Part 2
'Governor's races count'

Part 3
The Lunatic Fringe

Part 4
'When I say cut spending, I mean cut spending'

Part 5
'I was a lobbyist and a pretty damn good one'

Jerry Moran: One of the good guys

2010-07-23T22:15:00.005-05:00

My freshman year at Fort Hays State University, I was assigned to write a paper about a controversial topic. I picked "compulsory military service."

During my research, I decided to e-mail my representatives in Congress to ask if there was much chance of the idea being implemented into national law, and how they'd vote on it if the debate came to the floor.

The first response was from Sen. Sam Brownback: It was a short form letter thanking me for corresponding, and (in a way that was understandably bland) briefly explaining his opposition.

Sen. Pat Roberts trumped that vanilla response a few days later, with a more personalized e-mail. Mr. Roberts included the following inside information: "I have spoken with the chairman of the relevant committee. He has not scheduled any hearings on the matter."

Then, about a week later, in my mailbox I found a big document-stuffed manilla envelope. Inside was a form letter like those from the Senate. But this package also included a thick, detailed report, recently commissioned by Congress to help members decide if "compulsory military service" was worthy of discussion. As it turned out, that report was the best source for the paper.

The manilla envelope came from Congressman Jerry Moran.

I'll share one more anecdote, and I hope it illustrates that Mr. Moran is — in addition to being an excellent congressman — a genuinely good man.

One night a few weeks before the 2006 election, a group of FHSU students organized a voter registration rally at a bar in Hays. Knowing the kind of intense effort it takes to orchestrate such an event, Mr. Moran decided to attend.

It was when I was a reporter for The Hays Daily News. I covered that rally and — political nerd that I am — I was disappointed in the turnout. That stereotype about young people being apathetic is true; only about 20 people attended the registration drive, and most of them were political science majors who participated all the time anyway. It was an election year, but with such a paltry crowd it was obvious that no lucrative vote haul was available that night.

Based on the size of the group, Mr. Moran clearly was not just politicking; that night, he was not just trying to win votes. But he visited with the political science nerds about electioneering. He visited with other students about national policy. He even visited with me about the type of coverage he'd seen from other newspapers in the state.

Mr. Moran stayed at that small rally for hours.

Any western Kansan who pays even a moderate amount of attention to current events can see that Mr. Moran has been a top-notch congressman for the last decade. He took Kansas common sense to Washington and, applying it at different times, knew enough to vote for enormous tax cuts, and against No Child Left Behind, the over-expensive Medicare Part D, umpteen stupid "stimulus" bills, every immoral taxpayer-funded bailout, and Obamacare. Mr. Moran's conservative common sense is exactly what we need in the U.S. Senate right now.

And he's one of the good guys. That'll make it fun to vote for him.

Why I donated to Marco Rubio

2010-07-15T22:37:00.010-05:00

Though I'm relatively politically active, I've never donated money to a candidate for office.

Until now. His name is Marco Rubio, and he understands what America is.

* * *

My abbreviated story: I was born to lower-middle class parents, neither of whom graduated college. Through their hard work, they climbed deliberately from near-empoverished upbringings. When I was a child, my mom held four jobs; occasionally, my dad still talks about those years when he worked 90 hours a week.

But, by my senior year in high school, they'd risen to middle-middle class. Dad could finally buy a new pickup. They built their own house. And they could afford to offer moderate help with my college education (and that of my brother and sister).

Today my brother is an engineer, my sister is a high school teacher, and I'm in law school.

For 40 years, my parents have put forth efforts that can be described only as epic, working jobs that are often thankless, unflattering, and miserable. They did it because they wanted their children to have careers. They did it so we could be a bit better off than they were.

The beautiful thing: It worked.

That's America.

* * *

Mr. Rubio understands this. His biography describes the phenomenon discussed above. Of course, he has an advantage in this. His parents were immigrants, who fled from their native Cuba to America's opportunity. Because of their hard work, and this country's freedom, their dreams for their children have been fulfilled. Mr. Rubio's life is a testament to America.

Since the discovery of this continent, and especially since the founding of this country, America has been the one place where people go because they could not fulfill their destiny in the lands of their origin.

* * *

I don't like cultish mobs marrying their hopes to a politician — any politician — for two reasons. First, Americans have done that with Mark Sanford, Sarah Palin, and Barack Obama in recent years — and all three have dramatically disappointed their followers. Second, I find cults of personality quite offensive. If you need someone else's political success to make you happy, then your own sense of self worth is unhealthily low.

But Mr. Rubio has captured my imagination. A few times, I've even told friends: "I think someday, he's going to be president." I don't know if that's true, and at the moment I don't really care. But I am certain of this: Mr. Rubio is an excellent advocate of America. (Here I'm referring to America the idea, not just the landmass.)

Over the next decade, one thing tops the list of America's needs: Political leadership in the landmass that understands the idea.

That's Marco Rubio. He's not the only person who meets that qualification. He's not even the only candidate for Congress this year who does. But his ability to convey that understanding is the most impressive that I've seen.

This country needs a Senate full of people like Mr. Rubio.

* * *

I'm a graduate student working an unpaid internship, I drive a 12-year-old truck that's pushing 180,000 miles, and I buy almost all of my clothes from the $5 rack at Wal-Mart. I can't afford this, but I did it anyway.

Via marcorubio.com, I donated $50 to Mr. Rubio's candidacy.

I will make up for it through a series of Ramen noodle meals, skipping cigars I'd like to smoke, drinking PBR instead of Guiness, and watching borrowed DVDs when I'd rather go to the movies. In other words, I intend to sacrifice certain items that would contribute to a higher quality of my life.

But, in Marco Rubio, I think I'm making that sacrifice for a good cause.

Whining children

2010-05-06T14:58:00.015-05:00

Every day at high school, someone gets his feelings hurt. He whines. He thinks he's entitled to stamp his feet and pitch a fit until someone will agree with him, or decide it's not worth the fight.

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And then, the crybaby gets his own way, regardless of how stupid that way is, and how immaturely he has behaved in order to get it.

Sadly, in this whiner's world of the 21st century, the crybaby is — all too frequently — a teacher or administrator, and not a 14-year-old.

Yesterday, the principal at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, California, sent Daniel Galli, Dominic Maciel, and three other students home for incendiary conduct. Presumably to protest Cinco de Mayo (or maybe to celebrate free expression, or ... what is it called ... America?), the boys wore T-shirts bearing American flags. To the feeble-minded infants running the school, that's as good as inciting violence.

They were told they could wear their patriotic clothes on any day other than May 5. They had to refrain that day out of respect for Hispanic students.

According to Maciel: "They said if we went back to class with our shirts not taken off, they said it was defiance and we would get suspended." So the boys went home instead. They returned the next day and will not be otherwise punished.

Principal Nick Boden would rather the students skip a day of school than see them in the classroom wearing red, white, and blue. Do his teachers have nothing important to teach that day?

Or, perhaps, Boden feared the patriotic clothing would cause disruption. If so, is he so deeply racist that he thinks Hispanic teenagers are incapable of behaving when they see an Old Navy t-shirt?

Probably, it's neither of these. Probably, he's just a bully. A whiny, wimpy punk so lacking in manhood that he hardly qualifies as a human being. The kind of weakling who is so dissatisfied with who he is, that he must dominate others by force to justify his own existence to himself.

I'm a little disappointed in these teenagers (although, at that age, I probably would have done the same). But if I were in their shoes yesterday, and I could muster the wit and fortitude for it, I would have done things a little differently. I would have left the principal's office and returned to class. Then, when they suspended me, I would have declined to leave the classroom, unless they physically removed me by force. Then, I would have filed suit for assault, battery, intentional affliction of emotional distress, and a violation of my First Amendment rights.

However, it's hard to hold much against these teenagers. When I was their age, I was occasionally bullied by teachers (though, not to this extent), and I let them get away with it. I wish I hadn't, but it's hard for adolescents to stand up for themselves at school. They're just kids.

The principal, however, is another matter. He is as grown as he'll ever be (although, after reading about how he treats people, it's hard to call him an adult) and he has an advanced college degree. He has absolutely no excuse. The school district has already released a statement denouncing the principal's actions, or at least stating disagreement.

It ought to go further, and fire him.

The immaturity does not help

2010-05-01T15:40:00.010-05:00

America should learn something this week: A great many of us need to grow up.

Yes, I'm writing about Arizona's new immigration enforcement law. More importantly, I'm thinking about where we are as a nation.

Arizona's problems

Illegal immigrants constitute a full 8 percent of Arizona's population. Many (without evidence, I'd guess it's an overwhelming majority) of those people merely moved to America to exploit its economic bounty, as almost all Americans came here.

But a significant portion has contributed to a violent underground:

— On Friday, urgent national news blared on Foxnews and CNN's web sites: A border patrol officer was missing for several hours, and he'd suffered a gunshot wound. He received it from a person he suspected was running drugs from Mexico into Arizona.

— Earlier this month, Arizona police arrested more than 40 people in a sting on a human smuggling ring.

— In 2009, a study found the kidnapping capital of the world was not in Baghdad or Afghanistan, not in an Eastern European human sex-slave trade hub, not in some impoverished and war-torn African nation. It was Mexico City. The runner up: Phoenix, Arizona.

National problems

If we go back far enough, we can trace every single American's lineage to someplace other than here. The one way that we are from common stock is that we (or our ancestry) came here from somewhere else. The day America forgets that, America ceases to be what it should be.

But any country must have a baseline rule of law, or it will lose the respect of its own people and those around it. A nation that cannot enforce its own border exudes incompetence. And those who take advantage of that incompetence bear the shroud of illegitimacy that all cheaters wear.

Especially in this nation of immigrants, we must not tolerate a disregard of immigration rules. Doing so cheapens the achievement of those who came to America the right way. And it masks the indefensible bureaucracy that clogs the process of immigrating — the bureaucracy that carries a 3-year wait to get a Green Card and 2 years (by their own tally) after sending in the paperwork to become a citizen.

For our nation to hold its head up proudly, two things must happen: Our border must be enforceable enough that cheating is not tolerated, and the flaws in our immigration system must be fixed. Until they happen, America is less than it ought to be.

• • •

Those two things have not happened. Worse, it seems the federal government (for decades) has willfully abdicated its immigration responsibilities. Every serious observer agrees that the federal government's failures led to Arizona's actions.

And Arizona's action, to a serious (and grown up) observer, appears quite reasonable. The federal government won't enforce it's laws, so that state decided to adopt some of them, and therefore allow their own authorities to enforce them.

Title 8 Chapter 12, Subchapter II, Part IX, Sec. 1357 of the United States Code grants federal agents the power to "search for aliens" in any vehicle — without a warrant — and to "arrest any alien who is in his presence" that is entering the country illegally.

Arizona's new statute grants that state's police officers the authority, during any "lawful contact" with a person, when he has "reasonable suspicion" that the person is an illegal alien, to make a "reasonable attempt ... when practicable" to determine if the person is an illegal alien, "except if the determination may hinder or obstruct an investigation."

In other words: Arizona's new statute contains a paragraph — with four qualifiers and an exception — that grants its cops the authority to enforce the law.

The reaction has been troubling:

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg described the new law as "national suicide."

Congressman Connie Mack equated Arizona to Nazi Germany.

Headlines say: "Arizona Immigration Law Causes Fury, But Will It Ever See The Light of Day?", "Arizona law a dangerous approach to border issues," and "D-Backs, union have concerns about Arizona's new immigration laws." Always a tone of illegitimacy. Nary a word about the real issues surrounding the new law's passage.

A lead story on Yahoo, from a sports reporter, invented the following lament-filled hypothetical: "An 18-year-old from Venezuela playing in the rookie league jumps in a friend’s car to head to the grocery store. The friend rolls through a stop sign. A police officer witnesses the infraction. ... The Venezuelan player, accordingly, is asked to furnish paperwork proving his legal residence. ... If he happens to have forgotten his passport and work visa at home, his friend would get a traffic ticket and the player would get ... hauled off to jail."

On Friday night, a Google search of "Arizona racist" yielded 3.9 million hits.

• • •

And now comes the growing-up part. (I will frame this in the most un-controversial terms I can.)

The United States government has declined to enforce this country's sovereignty, for at least a decade. This has allowed a wholesale disregard of one fundamental set of laws, and it has caused Americans reason to question their government's motives and abilities. One glaring result is the blood spilled and the people kidnapped by Mexican drug cartels operating in Arizona and other southwestern American states. And when Arizonans decided to do something about it — something identical to what federal law purports to do — mainstream America has denounced them by branding their actions as racist, on par with the Holocaust.

This is an issue of international relations. It's a realm where the federal government has legitimate authority (and duty) to act. Arizona's new law is not the answer. The answer can only come from federal authorities, and it is as simple and as mature as enforcing our existing laws.

That answer has not come, for the last decade, because each step towards adulthood has been met by thoughtless accusations of racism. One side of this issue is terrified to bring it up, for fear of being branded a bigot. The other side doesn't want to act, because they like holding that bigotry card and playing it whenever it's politically fruitful to do so.

The message for Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Mack, the headline writers, the Yahoo sports reporters, and the web-masters at 3.9 million internet sites — and everyone in Washington who has any authority — is a simple one.

Stop behaving children.

Politics is getting poisonous

2010-04-09T18:49:00.007-05:00

Prologue

I recently had a discussion with a friend about health care reform. I behaved impolitely, but my point stands. It went like this:

Me: Congress is going to blow $2 trillion on this drivel.

Friend: Good. They should spend $3 trillion! The more money we spend, the more people will have health insurance.

Me: Fine. Spend $3 trillion of your own [expletive] money. But when you think you have some moral right to spend my money on yourself, well there’s a special corner in Hell for people like you.

Friend: We have a policy disagreement, and you’re telling me to go to Hell!? Jesus, politics is getting poisonous.

Part 1

Last summer, when she listed three great threats America is likely to face over the next decade, she was more blunt:

Part 2

If you meet someone who says this is a good thing, you will know you have met a fool.

Part 3

In other words, America has been divided from the beginning, in some ways that are minor and some that are irreconcilable.

And, yet, Americans have built the freest, strongest, wealthiest, most generous, most upwardly mobile nation the world has ever seen.

Part 4

This is not an accident.

If the Bostonian followed the Arizonan from pasture to pasture, critiquing, we’d have a different story.

That can work, but only in America.

Part 5

My friend was right about one thing: Politics is getting poisonous.

This is because Kansans who oppose gay marriage do so with moral convictions matched only by those held by Iowans who embrace it.

Part 6

America is not homogeneous. It is not uni-religious. It lacks a single, bland view of the world.

Epilogue

It's morning again in America

2010-03-25T13:36:00.001-05:00

Just after midnight, still pitch black, yes, and the ominous clouds from last night's storm still loom, threatening to pound us again before dawn.

But it's morning, nonetheless, and there's nothing the storm — though frightening as it approached, and devastating as it rained hail down on us — can do to prevent its demise at sunup.

* * *

The last year's debate has shown us that there are more Americans who favor freedom than who favor slavery. (Insert "socialism" for slavery, if you wish, but they are the same.) In the end, even President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Congress to ignore what was "popular," pretending their actions were somehow "right" instead.

I believe we all will be judged by our maker someday, and that those who steal will go to the same place as those who murder. But, today, my intent is not to discuss the rampant immorality in Washington.

Today, my intent is to express my own optimism for the future. It comes from two sources: My study of American history, and my readings about Ronald Reagan.

I'll start with the former. Consider:

— In 1777, Gen. George Washington led a band of 12,000 revolutionists into Valley Forge, Pa., to spend the winter diseased, wet, and hungry.

About a sixth of the men in the army — and that army was America's one good hope — died that winter.

But Washington led those men out of Valley Forge the following spring, and they went on to defeat the greatest empire in the world.

— In 1812, British soldiers entered Washington, D.C., unopposed, and set ablaze the federal buildings, including the White House and the the U.S. Capitol.

But the next day a rainstorm arrived, driving the British out and dousing the raging fires. Americans rebuilt the city.

— In 1865, America lay shattered by war, and remained divided by culture and politics. More than 620,000 American soldiers had died — as many as have died in all other American wars, combined — and the two sides continued to stew in their own mutual hatred for more than a generation.

But slavery was abolished, and, eventually, the wounds healed.

— In 1940, a genocidal maniac hell-bent on world domination had conquered all of America's allies on mainland Europe, and then launched a devastating attack against Great Britain. Meanwhile, Japan had amassed the most formidable navy we had ever seen, and was achieving a similar conquest over the Pacific Realm.

Over the next five years, America awakened and led the free world to victory over both.

* * *

The pessimism I've seen from my freedom-loving friends is understandable. If Obamacare survives long enough to take full effect, it will fundamentally change America for the worst. (Those who say otherwise do not understand Obamacare, or do not understand America, or are trying to enslave us.) We must destroy Obamacare or allow it to survive and destroy freedom. They remain mutually exclusive.

The victorious self-righteousness I've seen in my friends on the other side is deeply troubling, almost enough to move me to anger. But I do not see them as willfully supportive of slavery; I see them as ignorant. And I remain confident that they will eventually agree with me because the legislation will hurt them, too.

I am also confident, after seeing the protest marches (conservatives usually don't protest), and seeing the state of Massachusetts elect (to replace Ted Kennedy!) a man promising to fight Obamacare, and seeing Washington win its "victory" over America, that America will strike back in coming elections. The conduct by Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Obama indicates that they realize they probably will be fired for merely considering what they just enacted — so they had to enact it while they had the chance.

Those of us who love freedom have always known that our cause is greater than the cause of those we oppose: Freedom will always be better than slavery. But, this year, we have seen that our strength of numbers also is greater than theirs. If one party articulates a platform of freedom this fall, it will defeat the party of slavery. (The same holds true for 2012.) America has elected the immoral and the imbecilic before, and it has survived by realizing the mistake and defeating them.

Which reminds me of the second source of my optimism, Mr. Reagan. (Things were arguably worse in America in 1979, before he ran for president.)

And it reminds me of the thunderstorms that often approach on spring evenings, and release their senseless fury into the night, leaving dramatic destruction that isn't even fully realized until daylight.

It also reminds me that, each and every time, the sun does come up, and it vanquishes the storms.

Even with his memory rapidly clouding from Alzheimer's disease, Mr. Reagan said his public goodbye with a note of optimism: "I now begin the journey that will lead me into the sunset of my life. I know that for America there will always be a bright new dawn ahead."

We are wise to fear the storm and to seek shelter from it. But we must remember: We maintain the courage to ride out the onslaught because we know the sun will return in a few hours, and then we can rebuild.

I've read the bill

2010-03-19T11:20:00.003-05:00

Actually, I just searched it for the word "qualified." That adjective appears -- usually in front of nouns such as "health care plan" or "health care provider" -- almost 500 times. (I counted 499, but I didn't have the fortitude to double check.) Count them for yourself, if you want.

When the leftists at the top promise you that you can keep your current coverage if you like it, please understand this: They are lying to you.

Their favorite word -- qualified -- betrays their secret. You will only be able to keep your current plan if they like it.

Their peril ... and ours

2010-03-04T15:38:00.003-06:00

Most of us don't expect Nancy Pelosi to provide honest debate or sober analysis. For years she has asserted that health care in America is "broken" and requires immediate "reform" by a government takeover. The very premise of her argument (indeed, the premise of the last year's worth of health care discussion) has been — at best — willfully false or willfully ignorant. Our health care is not perfect, but it is far from broken. It is the finest in the world. (Ask Danny Williams.)

All who say otherwise are lying or stupid.

On some level, Mrs. Pelosi is probably both. Her verbal and legislative excrement is normal to us by now. But in the last year, I've come to expect (indeed, they have earned this expectation!) better from Republican leaders in Congress.

In fight over the renewed push for Obamacare (Part 6: Americans Aren't Smart Enough to Know They Want This!), GOP leaders have targeted their remarks at centrists Democrats who will decide the outcome. For example, from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: "I want to assure our Democratic friends that if they are somehow able to pass this bill in the House, it will be the issue in every race in America."

He's correct, but is telling only part of the story. In campaign mode, congressional Republicans are missing the point.

Democrats are free to risk their own careers as they see fit. It's still a free country, and they're still free individuals.

Yes, if they enact Obamacare, it will be the end of them, politically. If they pass Obamacare, President Obama and Co. will be damned by history for bankrupting America and destroying the world's finest health care — by robbing from the rich and the poor alike, to give to bureaucrats and health insurance companies.

If they enact Obamacare, voters will fire them in November, and rightfully so. But I don't care (and most Americans don't care) about the political challenges that Democrats are willing to bring on. As a Republican, I'd like to see Mrs. Pelosi voted off the Speaker's podium.

But I'm an American first. And Obamacare will do far more than imperil Democrats' offices in Washington. It'll imperil America.

Thieves and Fools, Part VII

2009-12-19T18:08:00.005-06:00

This post is the seventh installment of an ongoing series, entitled : If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool.

I'm making 2 predictions about health care reform.

First, despite what is predicted by the Congressional Budget Office, "health care reform" will add money to budget deficits and raise the national debt.

Government programs so often cost more than expected, it's entirely unnecessary for me to give examples. The one exception I'm aware of is the Apollo Program, which put men on the moon, on time and on budget. The trick there: Planners estimated their time needs, and built in 2 extra years. (They needed them both.) And the planners estimated the price tag, and doubled it. (They needed the money, too.)

President Obama says he will not sign a health care reform bill that adds "one dime" to the deficit. He also said the prison at Guantanamo Bay would be closed by next month. (He really can't predict the future as well as he'd like to.)

Second, (and this one's probably worse), the tan tax is the beginning, not the end.

Once the government starts spending tax money on something, it assumes a duty to hold the costs down to protect taxpayers. The Senate already intends to tax — at a rate of 10 percent — tanning.

Within 10 years, this "reform" bill will cost taxpayers way more than advertised. The Botox tax probably will be enacted before Mr. Obama is out of office. Indefensible taxes on Coca-Cola, chewing gum, and guacamole — and 437 other things that make life more enjoyable — will follow.

Respect for history

2009-11-21T21:30:00.013-06:00

In small ways that add up to a big, ugly truth, President Barack Obama has shown us a piece of who he is. I think it's his ugliest side.

Criticizing one or just a few of these events alone would be nit-picky and unhelpful. Discourse is best when critics choose their battles wisely (that's why I don't complain about the size of the First Lady's paid staff or the high-profile "date nights" that the president drags his expensive entourage around for. At the end of the day, that's small potatoes. But together, we can see something we shouldn't like. This is no small battle. This is an examination of who the man is. And, I'm afraid, it's not pretty.

I don't think Mr. Obama has any respect for history.

No big deal, some will say. We live in the past too much. He's more concerned with the future.

And he should be. But if he doesn't respect the past (and I'm increasingly convinced that he does not) then he does not understand the past. And if he doesn't understand the awesome history of America, he has a set of reins that he cannot handle.

If he had even a rudimentary understanding of and respect for American history, Mr. Obama would see the world through a different lens. He would behave differently.

—> I first noticed this last fall, when Mr. Obama visited Europe in an effort to appear "presidential." In Berlin, he declared himself a "citizen of the world." Clearly, Mr. Obama did not realize Americans have enough trouble protecting our rights against our own government. If we brought "the world" into it, our freedom would have no hope.

Sudan with a seat on a human rights commission. Resolutions labeling as racist and criminal any criticism of any Islamic country. Kyoto-style treaties that demand the United States curb all economic activity, while completely ignoring India and China (two of the most prolific polluters in the world). That's what we get from "the world." Americans cannot afford that.

Indeed, if Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would recognize what America is: A breed of people who fled the world because it is a harsh, cruel, immoral place. We or our ancestors (every one of us) sought America. That was not an accident.

If Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would prefer being an American to being a "citizen of the world." It's better for you.

—> I was further disturbed when Mr. Obama described our long-term goals in Afghanistan. He said he dislikes using the word "victory" because he doesn't want to raise hopes too high, to conjure any notions of seeing Emperor Hirohito coming aboard the USS Missouri to sign a surrender document.

If he had any respect for history, Mr. Obama would know the emperor did not sign the surrender document. Neither did Harry Truman. A handful of Allied military officers signed for our side, and junior officials signed the papers for their side. If Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would know chiefs of state almost never sign the paperwork at the end of a war; military commanders usually meet in the middle of the field for that.

—> I shouldn't have been surprised when, during Mr. Obama's visit to Asia last week he declared himself the "first Pacific President" because he hails from that region and because geopolitical reality today requires more focus on China and North Korea than in previous years.

But if Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would recognize at least 10 previous presidents either spent a significant portion of their pre-presidential careers (thereby being influenced by it) in the Pacific realm, or who made hefty presidential decisions about the Pacific realm (thereby influencing it).

I can picture Jack Kennedy swimming through miles of saltwater, holding a strap in his teeth to tow a wounded shipmate to safety. I can also see a young George H.W. Bush, shot down, bobbing, praying he'd be spotted by Americans before Japanese. To the extent that the word "Pacific" can be used as an adjective, I expect either Kennedy or Bush would think it applies to them.

Does this guy realize the world was, in fact, here before he came along?

—> The most offensive remains Mr. Obama's insistence on bowing to kings and emperors. In April, he showed subservience to the King of Saudi Arabia (and, remarkably, Obama's spokesman lied about it). And last week, Mr. Obama surely pulled a back muscle whilst bending down upon meeting Japan's emperor.

Neither episode was a case of simply adopting a local custom — say, bowing as a form of mutual greeting, in lieu a handshake. Neither monarch returned the bow. (They're not gutless, sniveling pukes. They're men.)

If Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would respect what America is. And if he respected what America is, he would bow to no one short of the Almighty.

He would know America was founded because Americans decided they need not bow to another man. Americans decided that no man, by virtue of his birth alone, is superior. Even the strictest rules of manners stipulate that American citizens are not obligated to bow to royalty from another nation. (Also, those rules stipulate that the head of one state need not bow to the king of another.)

Every human being who is free today owes that freedom to a generation of Americans who insisted (it was quite radical of them, at the time) that men should be equals. They picked up guns, pointed them at their oppressors, and said: No More. I will bow to no king, forevermore.

Before America's Founding Fathers won that freedom, it did not exist for anyone anywhere. Many free nations can, today, trace their freedom directly to America having liberated them during World War II. The rest of the free nations can all trace their freedom indirectly to America's good example.

If Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would understand what human history is. It's a lot of invasion, poverty, theft, slavery, rape, famine, subservience, and murder. The relative peace known to the world since the 1950s is the exception. The equality of Americans since the 1960s is the exception. The prosperity seen in America since the 1850s is the exception. The liberty enjoyed in America since late 1700s is the exception.

The rule is defined by the time beginning with man's climb from the swamp and ending at the Battle of Yorktown. That rule is tyranny.

America is not perfect and it never has been. But peace, equality, human harmony, liberty, justice and prosperity are — to the extent they exist — American inventions. At least, they exist because America insisted they should, when no other country did. If Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would know that.

He would know these things are not accidental. He would know Americans of the revolutionary generation were tired of the old ways and blazed this radical new trail.

It has been said that America is more than a country: It's an idea. And it is not a trivial thing, that idea. Today, it seems natural that no person should have to bow to another, based only on the other's higher status at birth. But that notion is new to humanity. New since the 1770s. New to the world. Widely recognized.

Because of America.

No American has a moral right to under-appreciate that idea. And if Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would not under-appreciate it as much as he has repeatedly shown us he does.

If he had any respect for history, he would wake up each morning and pray, offering thanks to God that such men as our Founding Fathers were able to find one another on one continent in one era. He would rise each morning, look in the mirror, see himself as the chief defender of that heritage. It should terrify him, to know that he has the power to damage it.

It should also inspire him with awe and pride. If Mr. Obama had any respect for history, he would hold his head proud and high every second that he's visible to anyone.

Don't get me wrong. If Mr. Obama wants to bow to the Grand Vizieour of Sludobia, that's his choice. He's a free man. He'll never hear me tell him he can't.

But if he any respect for history, he would choose not to.

Indoctrinate me. I dare you

2009-09-08T14:50:00.021-05:00

One of the best things about America is that, when the president decides to give a speech to all the country's schoolchildren, local teachers can choose not to show it. One of the worst things about America is that some make that choice.

Those who did, and the parents who demanded it, blew an important opportunity to teach schoolchildren something they must know if America is to survive their generation: Don't believe everything you see.

I remain bewildered by those who insist they have a right to never hear anything they disagree with.

It's childish and stupid when pushy leftists demand all references to God be stricken from public buildings. It's equally so when scared conservatives demand schools prevent a school kickoff speech from President Obama.

The First Amendment guarantees the affirmative right of free speech. To guarantee that right, it necessarily must exclude the aforementioned negative right to never hear what you don't like. We can have one or the other, not both. The Constitution guarantees speech, not silence.

It's becoming clearer all the time that the Founding Fathers held a higher regard for themselves and their neighbors — and their children — than do Americans today. Obviously, many of us think other people (including family members) are pretty dim. They also seem to think they hold no responsibility to raise their own offspring.

I can't count the number of times my mom has told me not to believe every word I heard at school, from Kindergarten into law school. By the 7th grade, I was quite familiar with the concept that sometimes teachers and textbooks lie. I supplemented what I heard at school with books I read outside of class, news on TV and in the newspapers, documentaries on The History Channel and National Geographic, and countless conversations with trustworthy (and some not so trustworthy) adults.

If atheist parents don't like the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, they ought to tell their children to go silent when the other kids say them. If conservative parents are convinced that Mr. Obama will give a weekly socialist manifesto that their kids must endure, they ought to teach their kids why socialism is bad and why the president is wrong.

That's not a difficult prospect: Even 9-year-olds like an allowance for doing chores. And he won't like it if you try to make him share with the neighbor kid who didn't help.

If children are not taught to resist the lies they are told at school (by the president, their teacher, or the devious classmate who wants to see them in trouble), they won't learn to see through the lies that will be told them by politicians and others for the next 50 years.

If they aren't allowed to see hear something they disagree with said persuasively, they won't develop a means of resistance, they won't ever think about why they think the way they think. They'll not learn to develop an intelligent, persuasive response. If they are taught that they ought to be liberal or conservative or Martian because that's what their parents were, they won't ever have any ideas of their own.

A decent school will teach kids the basics of reading, writing, history, math and science. A good school will teach them to think for themselves, to remain skeptical, to disagree (and boldly) when they have a reason to. A great school will teach them to look for reasons to disagree. In any event, a child's parents are far more important to his education than the school is.

By the time a child is in middle school, he ought to have an internalized, natural idea (incomplete but strong) of how he thinks and why — and he ought not be afraid of expressing it or of hearing something from a different perspective. By the time they're in high school, they'll need to know how to see it coming without any forewarning.

When they hear of someone trying to "indoctrinate" them, they ought to be ready to react with a sarcastic: Go Ahead and Try, Punk. I Know What You're Up To.

They ought to be able to think independently of their teacher, their classmates, the principal, the president, Zack Morris or their parents. If we don't let them, if we don't encourage them, freedom will die in their lifetime.

Even before their intellect has developed to that stage, they need exposure to a variety of thoughts. In most of the things they do, elementary school children are completely overwhelmed; they're used to it. They like it that way. Tell them to sink or swim, and very few of them actually need the lifeguard.

My recommendation for schools for the future: Show the speech. Ask the students what they liked about it. Ask what they didn't like about it. What they agreed with and disagreed with. Some will be for Obama, and some against. Welcome to America.

I remember when my cousin was in Kindergarten during the 2004 presidential campaign. Not yet able to read, her class voted by checking the box on the ballot near the picture of their favorite candidate. Little Kayla took the extra step of scribbling all over John Kerry's face. Kids are smarter than we realize.

It says a lot about the government

2009-09-03T18:07:00.005-05:00

I was surprised to hear President Obama's planned speech to the nation's schoolchildren would be a first by a president. I was even more surprised when I saw the poll question on the Denver Post's web site: Would you encourage or discourage your child from watching this speech. When I voted, a narrow plurality would discourage their children from watching. (Some are prohibiting them.)

Mr. Obama's accompanying "what they can do to help the president" lesson plan was, of course, inappropriate. The president of the United States should speak to the country's children every year and instead encourage them to help themselves. (That's what education is for.)

But on it's face, Mr. Obama's trip to school seemed to me a legitimate 'study hard and make something of yourself, kids' pep-talk. That the White House quickly removed the "help the president" line from the lesson plan is evidence that Mr. Obama does not intend this to be controversial. Part of the president's job is, after all, making speeches and inspiring.

Today I'm more interested in the reaction that Mr. Obama's planned speech has had. It reminded me of a Rasmussen Reports poll released this week: 42 percent of American voters think "a group of people randomly selected from the phone book would do a better job than the current Congress."

We have the best government in the history of the world. Yet so many people don't trust the president of the United States to speak to their kids. So many people didn't trust the last president with anything. So many people didn't trust the president before him with their teenage daughters. So many people don't trust Congress as much as they trust "a group of people randomly selected from the phone book."

So many people don't trust the government, even to have good intentions. That says a lot about our government.

The anti-Arnold runs for governor

2009-08-28T21:44:00.005-05:00

Former Congressman Tom Campbell, who won praise this week from the stuffy George Will, is running for governor of California.

Libertarian-leaning (and unashamed), the economics professor who studied under Milton Friedman faces long odds at getting the nomination, much less winning in November 2010. But he has remarkable insight — "don't just do something, stand there" — when it comes to economics.

As Mr. Will wrote, "Colorful he is not." And among his opponents he counts the extremely colorful Jerry Brown and rainbow-tinted Gavin Newsom. But he seems to know his stuff.

Dear HUAC: I'm guilty

2009-08-10T21:53:00.009-05:00

Whilst Reps. Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi call names, their union thugs (Pelosi might describe this as a "grassroots movement") stomp and kick normal people.

Upset at America's angry reaction to their attempts at a hostile takeover of the health care industry, Mr. Hoyer and Mrs. Pelosi today co-authored an op-ed piece arguing: "Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American." They ought to remember that town-hall meetings take place so a Congressman can listen to his constituents, not the other way around. And they ought to recognize that enthusiastic rejection of the left's lies is not the same thing "drowning out the facts."

Pelosi, Hoyer, et al swear up and down that "if you like your current plan, you can keep it." They don't mention the adjective "qualified" that appears more than 100 times (usually in front of the words "plan," or "provider") in the House's bill. When they say you can keep your plan if you like it, they mean you can keep your plan if they like it.

Lots of folks have read that, among other things, in the House bill. Most Americans are opposed to such nonsense, so they're saying so.

In response, congressmen are shouting at their constituents. And the senior leadership -- Pelosi and Hoyer -- have formed a brand new, two-person House Un-American Activities Committee, which has ruled all opponents are in violation.

As of this writing, the merry pair has yet to comment on the violent physical attack against Kenneth Gladney by uniformed members of the Service Employees International Union. The attack sent him (at least temporarily) into a wheelchair.

It makes one wonder if either new-HUAC member would recognize un-American activity if it showed up in a SEIU T-shirt, slammed them to the ground and started pounding. Drowning out opposing views is un-American? How about grabbing the opponent and flinging him to the pavement?

E-mail this blog to flag@whitehouse.gov

2009-08-07T00:17:00.005-05:00

Suppose President Bush had asked citizens to inform him of every anti-war comment made "in casual conversation." He might have been impeached. He probably would have deserved it.

I understand that President Obama and Co. do not (yet) intend to prosecute or persecute Americans just for disagreeing with him on health care reform. Yet it is extremely creepy that the president of the United States has asked Americans to rat out one another, to e-mail his hotline so that he can keep track of the viewpoints opposed to his.

This behavior from the federal government is instructive in another way. It shows that Mr. Obama is being flooded by the issues he's taking on. We already have a destructive recession, a crippling federal deficit, rising anger between Americans of differing political persuasions, and six or eight international relations issues that might erupt into something very ugly in the next year. That's plenty for the plate of any one president (or three).

The current debate on national-level health care reform adds another, huge layer. It's one more reason for conservatives and libertarians to dislike and distrust liberals and statists and vice-versa. It's one more massive strain on the federal budget, and the federal budget really can't handle what it's already got. It's one more thing that is distracting intelligent people away from the war in Afghanistan (and, from everything I've read, we need every available intelligent person to contribute to that effort).

And it's one more thing that the president and his staff must spend political and intellectual effort on. Mr. Obama and his people are so busy with other things (other, legitimate federal concerns that are genuinely at crisis levels) that they can't keep track of this debate.

By their own admission, they're taking on too much.

I don't hate to see her go

2009-07-25T23:02:00.026-05:00

Maybe this comes from my libertarian nature. Or maybe it comes from my lifelong fascination with, and my formal education in, history. Perhaps it's the synthesis of the two: My morbid interest in the evil men of the world. The serial killers, corrupt big-shots and, especially, the tyrants.

I've read thousands of news stories about criminals, and I've written a few. I've studied scores of books about hundreds of peoples and their actions over the course of all human history, from man's climb out of the swamp to his leap toward the stars. I took a hefty load of courses devoted to the study of how people have behaved and why. And I've followed politics and government's activities for as long as I can remember.

I am not the sole authority on human behavior, nor am I singularly or even uniquely qualified to discuss sociological occurrences. But during my education, such as it is, I've noticed something important.

Of all the serial killers, corrupt big-shots and tyrants there have been (and there have been a lot), the very very worst of them are always in government.

Adolf Hitler could have neither killed 6 million Jews nor invaded Poland from any job other than Chancellor of Germany.

Joseph Stalin was never all that friendly, but the Purges, the Pogroms, the forced collectivization of farms and the famine-by-policy were never possible until he became General Secretary of the Soviet Union.

There is little record of Idi Amin's exploits before he seized the office of "His Excellency, Presient for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada." His exploits while in office are more well known.

But for the authority granted him as a leader, Pol Pot would have been unable to murder one-fifth of Cambodians.

There are many kinds of human criminals on many scales of severity. Some bad, bad people never held a job higher up than chocolate-maker. But Jeffrey Dahmer's death toll was less than 20; Stalin's was at least 20 million.

Certainly, Sarah Palin's name does not belong on any list with the names above. She's never been convicted of so much as swiping a candy bar from a grocery store (though she's been accused of much). But she has been a member of government, with far more authority than most normal people would ever seek. A governor of a state or another chieftain in government can, if she so chooses, destroy innocent people.

I don't know why Mrs. Palin decided to resign. My sense is that she did not seek fame, that, rather, duty called her into every campaign she ever entered. My other sense is that she does not deserve the lies that have been told about her or the hatred she has attracted. In whatever she chooses to do next (and I am not at all convinced that she will run for president, though I am entirely convinced she'd do a better job than Barack Obama is) I wish her well.

In larger terms, maybe my thoughts come from my deep well of mistrust for government. (If you trust government -- even ours -- any further than you can throw it, then you are a gullible, sad, pathetic excuse for a human being.) Maybe it's because I saw what the Ayatollahs did to Iranians after their recent election. Maybe it's because, for all of my short life and for all the history of human beings, governments all over the world have been guilty of (at best) waste, fraud and abuse, and (at worst) of outright theft, rape and murder.

From what I know, from what I've seen, from what I've experienced and learned, there is one thing -- maybe only one thing -- that a government potentate can do at any time in their career and almost never be wrong for doing it.

They can quit.

There are significant exceptions, of course. The retirement of Ronald Reagan in 1981, Abraham Lincoln in 1862, or George Washington in 1776 would have sent the world down a road to darkness. But the scarcity of such men is barely finite.

Almost every time a person with power relinquishes it, humanity wins.

Even Al Gore rejects global warming

2009-07-22T21:49:00.011-05:00

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been caught in a farce.

The Associated Press reports that, despite that city's new anti-idling law, the mayor's government-owned SUV's are frequently operated in neutral for great periods of time. For every second, gasoline purchased by taxpayers is burned for no purpose; and this situation is instructive about the attitudes held by leaders in the global warming hysterics movement.

Bloomberg fancies himself a savior of the anti-global warming/the ice age is coming/climate destabilization is a tragedy/climate change is the greatest threat America has faced since World War II/whatever the left is calling it this week movement. And his own actions, the actions of his mayoral administration, contradict the notion that there is any threat whatsoever posed by carbon dioxide.

Oh, to live in a world where Mr. Bloomberg was an isolated anomaly.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has long insisted on greater energy use restrictions. He also has long driven a fleet of gas-guzzling Hummer SUV's.

Britain's Prince Charles and our own "prince" Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have, for quite some time, traipsed all over the globe demanding that people reduce their energy use and carbon emissions. This traipsing has been done, by each of them, in private jets.

Former Vice President Al Gore (who won a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-global warming crusade) lives in a house that consumes more than 20 times as much electricity than the average American home.

Mr. Gore's spokesmen insist that he really is a believer, that he has no carbon footprint (because he "purchases carbon credits"). But if he were as convinced as he lets on that carbon dioxide emissions are ruining the world, he would continue to purchase those credits, and he would stop burning so much electricity.

His actions speak a lot louder than all the words ever uttered. Even Al Gore doesn't believe in the threat of global warming. And neither do Messrs. Kennedy, Schwarzenneger, Bloomberg, and Charles.

One of two things is occurring. Either these environmental advocates know that human activity and carbon emissions are not destroying the earth, or they think they ought to get one set of rules, and the rest of the world should get another.

Shining the light on stupidity

2009-07-18T23:30:00.007-05:00

There's a simple, important reason why the Obama Administration and the Congress of leftistas have so often passed laws before letting Americans read them. In more than one case, Congress has voted so swiftly to enact legislation entailing thousands of pages that it was physically impossible for any member to have read the bills before voting.

They do this because, if Americans knew what Congress and the president were up to, Congress and the president couldn't get away with it.

For example: The Treasury Department recently ran a 'help wanted' ad for a cartoonist to help add humor to the government's portrayal of its indefensible deficits and corrupt, unconstitutional spending habits. It took a simple link on the Drudge Report (with no further comment) to shame Treasury into canceling that advertisement. Once an idea that stupid is put to into public consciousness, politicians know they'd better end it if they want to get re-elected.

When he was running for office, asking for Americans to vote for him, President Obama vowed to publish all legislation on the White House's Web site for a minimum of five days — so as to allow citizens to review it and make comments — before he would sign anything. What Mr. Obama didn't say was that he had no intention of keeping that vow, or even of pretending to.

The "economic stimulus" bill passed in February is the most egregious example of legislation in the darkness. That bill was thousands of pages long, and it was passed by Congress just a few hours after it was written. Mr. Obama signed it forthwith. Today, Vice President Joe Biden explains the bill's failure by saying "everyone guessed wrong" or everyone "misread the economy." Mr. Obama insists that "we had incomplete information."

And now these same buffoons, the ones who used "incomplete information" to justify tossing a trillion dollars down a stinking pit, are demanding the passage of a massive, game-changing government takeover of the nation's health care system. In the next 14 days.

Their urgency is explained by the upcoming summer congressional recess. If Congressmen have to go back home and visit their constituents, those constituents will demand that the health care takeover be killed.

An idea to reduce health care costs

2009-07-17T22:30:00.013-05:00

Coming from a man who will begin law school next month, this might seem peculiar.

But logic applied to the law of supply and demand (which, by the way, is more binding than any statute or regulation that I'm aware of), dictates a simple step to reducing health care costs in America. State governments across the country could do it today, and it would begin improving the health care market in just a few years.

States could dramatically reduce tuition at public medical schools, and replace lost revenue by dramatically increasing tuition at public law schools.

It doesn't take a brain surgeon to realize America has too many lawyers. But it'd be hard to imagine a world with too many doctors. Likewise, nurses are in short supply, and their shortage also weighs on the lagging supply of medical care.

There are a variety of factors contributing to this market imbalance. Among them is the exorbitantly expensive malpractice insurance that doctors must carry to protect themselves against all the attorneys with too much time on their hands.

Another factor is the expense of medical school, especially compared to other professional schools. A cost-benefit analysis of law school vs. medical school would send all but those most-committed to medicine towards a law degree. At the University of Kansas, where I will enroll in August, law school tuition will be about $15,000 for the academic year. At the KU Medical Center, on the other hand, tuition is about $24,000 a year. Law school lasts three years, medical school lasts four.

So youthful Kansans intent on post-graduate education and a professional career see a bill of $45,000 over three years to become a lawyer. Then they see $96,000 over four years to become a doctor. Add, say, $60,000 in lost income for the fourth year, when the lawyer will practice and the doctor will pay tuition.

My brother (an engineer) and my sister (a math teacher) both far exceed my skills and enthusiasm at mathematics. But even I can add that one up.

We could have the libertarian discussion about whether or not social engineering is moral. (It is not.) But at the end of the day, it is not the goal of public universities to act as charity towards all men, so that each can pursue whatever whim might fancy him. It is the goal of public universities to provide the education for the new generation, in accordance with the needs of the taxpayers that are funding them.

At the moment, those taxpayers need more doctors than attorneys.

A better approach to 'stimulus'

2009-07-15T23:33:00.019-05:00

The government's methods of choice for battling this recession have included bailouts and nationalization of the financing industry, modest tax rebates and credits, and spending projects on an unprecedented scale. At least thrice, Congress and two different presidents (of near polar opposition) have spent money by the barrel-full to end the recession.

First, with unemployment near 5 percent (a healthy baseline, according to nearly all economists) last February, President Bush insisted on a $152 billion rebate and aid program. Congress acquiesced. Next, with unemployment at about 6 percent last September, President Bush demanded a $700 billion bailout of irresponsible banks. Congress agreed. Unfortunately, as Ronald Reagan put it, "the more the plans fail, the more the planners plan." So finally, with unemployment at about 7 percent this February, President Obama promoted a $787 billion rebate and aid and infrastructure spending extravaganza. Congress nearly peed itself with glee, and then piled on even more.

Today unemployment is pushing 10 percent, and almost nobody thinks things will get better soon.

All in, the federal government has spent more than $1.6 trillion to fight this recession. And each time the government has acted, the recession has grown more severe.

In 12 months, these economic stimulus/aid/rescue plans have added nearly 20 percent to the national debt (the rest of which had been accrued over two centuries). They have bred resentment and division. And they have failed miserably.

Today, the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11's triumphant launch, I suggest a different course of action would have been preferable.

During the 1960s, the United States spent less than $20 billion (adjusted for inflation, about $140 billion, or 7 percent of what's been wasted in the name of "stimulus" since last February) to achieve lunar exploration. Prior to the Apollo project, no human had ever left low-earth orbit. None has done so since.

The United States caught up to the Soviet Union in the space race, and left the USSR in the vapor trails. Before the Apollo program, the Soviet Union had won every significant "first" (first satellite, first man outside earth's atmosphere). After Apollo, the Soviet Union was far behind with no hope of ever catching up. Astronauts planted Old Glory and played golf in places Cosmonauts are still dreaming of.

It is no small thing that the excitement of the lunar mission ignited ferocious interest in engineering throughout the country. That's economic stimulus. Children in math and physics classes had interesting reasons to pay attention. That's economic stimulus. Inventiveness was cool. That's economic stimulus. More than 20,000 companies and universities, and more than 400,000 people worked directly for the Apollo program (those are high-tech, high-paying jobs). That's economic stimulus. (The difference is, these jobs actually built things and improved people's lives.)

The nation had a rallying point to work towards. Now that it's ended, we have something to be proud of.

Consider: The American space program was in its infancy when the first Soviet cosmonaut left the bounds of Earth. Six weeks later, President John F. Kennedy challenged our space-novice nation to go to the moon. Eight years later, Neil Armstrong took his giant leap for mankind. All for $20 billion.

Now consider the improvements we've made in fuel economy, communication equipment, computing power, lightweight materials and aerodynamics. Consider the improvements in our knowledge of human health in adverse conditions (and in climate control systems). Consider our vast industrial and technological upgrades.

Who doesn't believe Americans could have taken that $1.6 trillion that was just frittered away and instead employed it to land a human on Mars in the next 25 years?

We are left to wonder what new technologies we would have invented along the way. It is sadly possible that they will never be invented, now.

President Kennedy will be forever remembered as the visionary who inspired his nation to reach the moon. The "stimuli" of Presidents Bush and Obama will be treated far less kindly by history, and rightfully so.

It's somebody else's fault

2009-07-11T23:39:00.009-05:00

Here's one that ought to be laughed out of court.

Teenager Alexa Longueira was zoned into her cell phone, texting, as she walked down the street. It surprised the heck out of here when she fell into a manhole and suffered minor cuts and bruises.

Unfortunately, it doesn't surprise the heck out of anyone that her parents intend to sue New York City and cash in on their daughter's lack of self-preservation.

This story shows relation to a pilot program in the United Kingdom, in which tax money is being used to wrap padding around lampposts for the protection of walking texters.

I'm not a taxpayer in Britain or in New York. Neither issue affects me in any way. I'm not annoyed at the sight of the idiot-pads on the poles, nor am I distressed at having involuntarily paid for them. If a jury awards Ms. Longueira a billion dollars, not a cent of it will come from me. But if I were, I'd be asking the following questions, and asking them as loudly and as often as I could:

Why can't people walk without injuring themselves? Why must I pay for someone else failing to watch what they're doing? Why in the hell is their lack of responsibility my problem?

The tyranny of hurt feelings

2009-07-10T20:07:00.017-05:00

Interesting that on Independence Day, a handful of cops showed up on the property of Vito Congine Jr. and stole his American flag.

Mr. Congine is attempting to open a restaurant in Crivitz, Wis., but the town's council has vetoed his move to acquire a liquor license. So, to protest, the would-be entrepreneur decided to fly Old Glory upside down on his flagpole. He says he faces the distress of probable financial ruin without the city's permission to sell booze.

His monthlong protest was interrupted July 4, when police officers came on scene and swiped the flag. Evidently, neighbors were offended by the gesture and feared it would ruin their Independence Day parade. (The flag was later returned, and Mr. Congine has resumed his protest.)

In this brutal recession, there is some irony that flunkies on a city council rejected one man's plans for opening a new business. The events since are even worse.

Mr. Congine has been subjected to the culmination of an overbearing town council, a busybody district attorney with a severe lack of respect for the Constitution, a thuggish sheriff, and stupid deputies who are far too willing to follow orders. For this incident, every one of them deserves to be fired or defeated in the next election.

And the worst ingredient of all is a group of Americans who think they can call the authorities every time they see something they don't like. Those authorities only add to the problem when they do the mob's bidding.

For some reason, too many Americans think they have the right to never hear anything they disagree with. Too many think they have the right to never be offended. They think they can dial 911 because McDonald's is out of chicken nuggets. They're acting like idiot children badly in need of a spanking.

I don't like the smell of the feedlots near my hometown but I hardly assume the right to close them down. I don't own the world, and neither do the people of Crivitz.

The abused businessman is a veteran of the war in Iraq. His comment on the matter is simple, harsh and appropriate: "It is pretty bad when I go and fight a tyrannical government somewhere else, and then I come home to find it right here at my front door."

However angry Mr. Congine is, it's not nearly enough.

Having solved other issues, G-8 votes on weather

2009-07-09T23:06:00.007-05:00

The G-8 Summit in Italy has a plateful to address. The world faces the following atrocious conditions:

About 1 billion adult human beings are illiterate. (There are only about 7 billion human beings in the world.)
Daily, about 16,000 children die from starvation.
Iran -- the nation whose leading export is terrorism -- continues to develop a nuclear weapon, which it insists it will use to destroy Israel.
North Korea -- the nation whose leading export is nuclear weapons technology -- continues to illicitly sell military material and to launch long-range missiles, in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
According to figures from 2005, about 1.4 billion people are in poverty and are forced to live on about $1.25 per day.
The most severe economic contraction since World War II is underway and raging, making some of the above figures worse by the day.
Shortages in electricity, oil and other energy sources are emerging and becoming more severe. In days to come, this will only grow more serious.
Cuba holds hundreds of people prisoner for political differences. Some other countries in the world are worse.

Leaders of the world's richest, most powerful and most influential countries are meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, and they could choose to discuss and act on some of these items, items that can be alleviated by human beings, and items that are genuine, terrifying problems facing the world. But the G-8 leaders are more interested in altering the weather.

I guess truth really is stranger than fiction.

Well, at least it's all 'free'

2009-07-02T22:54:00.012-05:00

Why Congressman Brian Baird and a handful of colleagues needed to visit the Galapagos Islands, we may never know.

When the Wall Street Journal analyzed Congressional members' travel patterns over the last 14 years, they discovered a tremendous spike in spending on official trips. Since 1994, members of Congress have elevated their own travel outputs 10 times, to $13 million in 2008.

Baird and other members spent more than $20,000 on food and lodging in a four-day stint in the islands. When the Journal sought an explanation, he declined to answer.

The analysis shows why so many Americans don't trust government to do things correctly or efficiently, and it shows how little respect for their positions (and how much self-importance) many elected officials carry.

Compared to other outlays, the $13 million spent on official travel is less than a drop in the ocean. But in real-world thinking, $13 million is $13-freaking-million. And this is money that's been spent by a government that doesn't have it.

Some Congressional Delegations make legitimate, beneficial journeys across the world to arrange for trade opportunities, massage allied feelings, find facts in war zones and represent our country to other nations. But the $260,000 that was spent in New Zealand and Australia seems a bit over the top. Ditto the $250,000 in Austria, the $140,000 in Italy, and the $920,000 spent in the U.K, France, Germany and Poland. And Switzerland ($163,000) is neutral -- what are we gonna negotiate away from them?

These numbers are bipartisan and they include just food, hotels and incidental expenses. Travel arrangements -- often at the expense of the government -- cost even more.

Such thriftlessness in days of budget surplus are one thing. But our government almost always runs a massive deficit. It's not worth it.

Raw, pure, hardcore, violent government waste

2009-06-27T22:51:00.011-05:00

To each his own, I always say.

For the purposes of this discussion, I'll get more specific: If you like torture-, bondage-, or domination-based pornography, I figure that's between you and your TV. One time a friend shrugged her shoulders and said this: "You like what you like."

My own laissez-faire attitude on personal choices has just two caveats. When I decline to tell you what to do with your private self, I expect the same in return. And I don't want the government to use my tax money to pay for it.

Unfortunately for California taxpayers, their government spent thousands of dollars earlier this year subsidizing the rough-porn industry in the name of (I'm not making this up) ... stimulus. When the San Francisco Chronicle got wind and started snooping, the program was fortunately cut off. But not before five digits were ... uh ... blown.

I Googled "California government spending" for evidence to support this column and got almost 3 million hits. The reference above was the sixth one down, and I quit looking. If you don't understand the point after reading that one, there is nothing in the other 3 million that will change your mind.

This is stupid, outrageous and nearly comical (for everyone who doesn't pay taxes in California). And it's sad.

When Arnold Schwarzenegger visited The Tonight Show in 2003 to tell Jay Leno and the world he was running for governor, Californians were more than fed-up with his predecessor. Chiefly, they were tired of their state's budget deficits and lackluster economy.

The already-famous and charismatic Schwarzenegger promised balanced budgets, free markets and innovation, and Californians rushed him to Sacramento.

Schwarzenegger seemed to deliver at first. But then he ceased to fight for the principles that so emboldened Californians to chuck Gray Davis in a recall vote in favor of a big, buff actor with a funny accent and no managerial experience.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsome described Schwarzenegger in 2006: "He gets it. He's learned his lesson. ... He's running back, not even to the center -- I would say center-left."

And Schwarzenegger is hardly alone. Some 44 percent of Californians are registered as Democrats (compared to 33 percent who are Republicans). California regularly sends Barbie Boxer and Diane Feinestein to the U.S. Senate and Nancy Pelosi to the House of Representatives. Except for three scattered elections when Republicans won a 42-38 (or smaller) majority in the state senate, you have to go back to 1956 to find Republicans in control of the legislature. If California is "Center-left" like its present governor, then perhaps the Vatican is "somewhat-Catholic."

That state's government knows only one mode: Spend. Now. More. And that's all it's known for decades. If Schwarzenegger was as personally unlikable as Davis, he'd probably be out on his can by now, too.

Time Magazine today blamed Proposition 13, a voter-initiated law that requires a 2/3 majority vote to raise state property taxes, for California's deficits. Time's writer cites as evidence two sympathetic aid receivers: A single mother who depends on welfare checks and a college student who receives a modest annual grant to help pay her tuition. (If the story hoped to prove there are, indeed, human beings receiving aid, this evidence would be helpful. Trying to blame a lack of tax revenue for California's budget woes, it is not.)

Time doesn't mention whippedass.com, or any of the other S&M porn sites that claim a (much larger) share of the taxpayer's money. And it doesn't mention that Californians are taxed more heavily than anyone this side of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union went broke, too. It was because they spent too much, not because they didn't tax enough.

If a "California government spending" search reveals 3 million results, and the sixth one is a news story about the state government subsidizing violent porn, how much more waste, inefficiency and blatant fraud exists? I'd bet the size of California's budget deficit they could save a pile of money if Sacramento would take a step backwards, look around, and start slashing.

The insanity of cap and trade

2009-06-26T22:05:00.008-05:00

In his iconic 1964 "A Time For Choosing" speech, describing the potential demise of America, Ronald Reagan said, "History will record with the greatest astonishment that those with the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening."

What we see today is worse even than that. If the leftist government in Washington succeeds in passing it's Waxman-Markey "cap and trade" legislation to "fight global warming," prosperity and free enterprise as we have known them for centuries will be gone. And it won't be because those of us with the most to lose did the least to prevent it, it'll be because those of us with the most to lose legislated it intentionally.

The Wall Street Journal describes Congress' "cap and trade bill" as the single largest tax increase in the history of the United States (counting another strike against President Barack Obama's "not any tax" campaign promise).

Facing difficulty jamming the 900-page proposal (which almost nobody has read) through the House of Representatives, today the potentates in Congress bribed a few members with a 300-page amendment (which almost nobody has read). With the promise of a few sweetening handouts (which almost nobody has read), Waxman-Markey passed on a 219-212 vote.

Even Mr. Obama's hometown newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, says the bill (supported by the Obama Administration) is far too radical. Careful analysis of cap and trade shows that, 25 years from now, it will cost a family of four as much as $6,800 a year. (For those keeping score at home, $6,800 is a lot.)

For a moment, consider what government is capping and trading: Carbon emissions. Everything we do emits carbon! Driving cars, turning on light switches, riding buses, Twittering, cooking, washing laundry, operating electric shavers, even breathing. What insanity has so enveloped Washington that it thinks it can morally tax all that? And what stupidity has struck it that it thinks doing so won't be an economic disaster?

Government twits won't advertise that they intend to tax every second of every day of our lives, at least not at first. But when the income tax was established in 1913, it was 1 percent. The beta version of this tax will be its most affordable version.

All this to stop "global warming" -- the left's most bizarre concoction since its insistence that the ice age was coming. Now that the man-made global warming hysteria has been rejected by everyone with a brain (and by many countries that tried and failed to change the weather by fiat, and then realized they were wasting their time and harming their citizens), leftists in the American government are hoping to enact the most idiotic, restrictive, expensive "anti-global-warming" plan yet.

Yes, it's embarrassing. But more than that, it'll do far more damage to America than all the carbon emissions in all the history of the world.

They will try to destroy this man

2009-06-24T22:40:00.011-05:00

Sarah Palin's reputation has been (unfairly) damaged by her opponents. Bobby Jindal is too young, and he has to run for re-election in 2011 (he can't very well run for president a few months later). Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are yesterday's news. Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty suffer a severe name-recognition deficit.

So now that Mark Sanford's personal flaws have trumped any hope he might have harbored for the Big Chair, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has moved to the front of the line of Republican candidates to challenge President Barack Obama in 2012.

A normal American can look at Hurricane Katrina and see Mr. Barbour's effectiveness as an administrator: We heard much about the suffering of Louisianans during that time. Our knowledge of Mississippians' plight is far less robust.

This could be because Mr. Barbour is a competent governor (compared to Louisiana's Kathleen Blanco) who had an adequate response plan in place and intelligent officials running the show. Or, it could be that the thousand-mile-wide storm decided to spare Mississippians. How lucky.

Columnist Robert Novack described Democrats' thirst to beat Barbour in October, 2003. Even back then, Democrats knew what they were facing: Let this man win the governorship, they reasoned, and we might see him again further down the line.

They could not beat him then, and he was elected governor of Mississippi. (He beat an incumbent Democrat who had received the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.) And now we have the very real possibility that Democrats will have to face him again.

The casual observer might think of Mrs. Palin as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination. But the astute observer, I think, will see that Mr. Barbour is the man Democrats will have to beat.

As much as I detest the never-ending campaign that started in early 2005, and as much as I promised myself I would not be a party to it, I feel confident in betting on this much: In the coming months, we will see many news stories disparaging Haley Barbour's character. His accomplishments will be besmirched. His successes downplayed. His failures distorted, warped and magnified. We will see ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR and CNN -- not to mention the Democratic National Committee -- go to tremendous lengths to destroy this man.

Gov. Sanford's long weekend

2009-06-24T17:11:00.005-05:00

The humorous notion of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford trekking through the woods naked has been replaced by the sad reality of a man cheating on his family. To his discredit, Mr. Sanford has had an extramarital affair for about a year, he said today. To his credit, he stood in front of the world and came clean to his constituents (his wife already knew about the affair), admitted guilt, begged for forgiveness in time — and then took questions.

That is all between Mr. Sanford and his family, and then between he and South Carolinians. Today I only wish to reaffirm what I've said previously about the governor leaving the office and turning off his phone for a time: Mr. Sanford flew clear out of the hemisphere, and nobody even got their eye put out.

There is a clear difference between the political class of Americans and the normal class of Americans, and it was demonstrated in coverage of the governor's absence. Sanford's political opponents (in both parties), his state's separately elected lieutenant governor, media members, cable news contributors (including Mike Huckabee, who is largely sympathetic to many of Sanford's causes) and other members of the political/ruling class denounced the governor in near unanimous fashion for leaving the state and calling his office only infrequently.

"There has to be a line of command," insisted Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, discussing his appall at Sanford's temporary hiatus.

What Mr. Bauer ought to know is that the line of command is quite clear: In the governor's absence, the lieutenant governor has authority to act during emergencies. Had the earth quaked and a giant fissure opened in the middle of Charleston, Mr. Bauer would have had legal authority to call up the National Guard and state police to assist, and to request federal aid from Washington.

Furthermore, if we examine the fears put forth by Mr. Sanford's critics, the end result is pretty clear. Suppose, in Mr. Sanford's absence, the earth quaked mightily and opened a giant fissure in Charleston. Even if the succession provision were absent from the state's constitution, Mr. Bauer would still call the National Guard, and the National Guard would still listen (unless both he and the guard's commander are indefensibly stupid).

The indignation from Sanford's opponents was rife, but South Carolinians seemed less so. For all the coverage of Sanford's time away, I have found only one comment from a constituent. It was in the Wall Street Journal, from a retired woman named Sarah Porter. She was strikingly unconcerned that Mr. Sanford was not there to hold her hand.

"Maybe he just wanted to be alone," she said. (She was guessing wrong, but her tone is of an entirely different chord from that by those in government.)

Bauer, the lieutenant governor, says : "Not to be able to get in touch with a person who is responsible for 4.5 million people is a concern."

Porter, the normal human being, knows that there are 4.5 million people in South Carolina and almost all of them know how to be responsible for themselves.

Racism and Republicans

2009-06-24T00:13:00.010-05:00

I've long heard descriptions of the Republican Party as racist. It's always been a source of confusion — which in turn leads to frustration, and ultimately rage — for me, but always before I've tried to internalize that anger.

I don't really know why I decided to externalize that feeling this time. Maybe it was just another straw, and finally it was one too many. In any case, I will not allow a column by commentator Leonard Pitts to go unanswered. Not this time. Not again.

He's hardly alone, of course. Leftists and Democrats have called Republicans "racists" for decades. Even some people I count as good friends have accused me of being a racist, just because I'm a Republican. And they have accused the Republican Party of institutional racism, without an ounce of evidence to back it up. But today I'm not going to take it without response.

In their efforts to win elections by piecing together near-unanimous conglomerations of minority groups, the Democratic Party has championed the notion that everyone is a member of an oppressed minority, and everyone deserves some "extra" consideration from "the system." In doing so, Democrats have fought for inner-city unemployment, illiteracy, imprisonment and perpetual poverty. Teachers' unions, which have forever found a patron in Democrats, do more harm in urban schools — where a vast majority of students are black — than they have done in any other part of the country.

Democrats have insisted that violent criminals are just "misunderstood" and ought to be released back into their homes, where they can continue to prey (as they have done for decades) on members of the very communities where they came from. In all too many cases, the victims of crime are black or Hispanic. Indefensible levels of taxes, regulations, government waste and central control of peoples' lives have obstructed economic development — more so in the mostly-black communities of inner cities than in the country at large.

With that record of human destruction, the only thing Democrats can do to win votes is call Republicans racists.

Yet there is only one major political party in America that was founded because no other would abolish slavery.

There is only one major political party in America that championed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act — and long before that, the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.

A president from only one major political party in America has sent the U.S. Army into an American city to enforce school desegregation at gunpoint.

There is only one major political party in America that seeks to treat all Americans as equal individuals under the law, rather than categorizing millions of human beings into narrowly defined groups that must compete against each other and can achieve success only at the expense of another.

That is the Republican Party.

On the other hand, there is only one major political party in America that has championed slavery. There is only one major political party in America that has seceded from the Union, has taken its states to war against its countrymen, has shot bullets at fellow Americans, and has assassinated a president, for the right to own another human being, just because that other human being was of a different race.

There is only one major political party in America that proudly claims among its members a United States senator who was once a member of the Ku Klux Klan. Indeed, when Klansman David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana claiming to be a Republican, Republican President George Bush campaigned against him. Duke's opponent was known criminal Edwin Edwards, a former governor. The slogan of that campaign was: "Vote for the crook, it's important."

There is only one major political party in America that filibustered — for days on end — passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

There is only one major political party in America that has, in the last 25 years at least, nominated to the Supreme Court a judge who claims members of one race are inherently smarter than members of another race.

That is the Democratic Party.

The Republican Party is far from infallible. And the Democratic Party is far from worthless. But from all my years of watching politics and studying history, I've learned this much: If one party is guilty of institutional racism, it is the Democratic Party; and if one party deserves praise for championing the equality of all human beings, it is the Republican Party.

The columnist Mr. Pitts can continue to insist that the GOP has a "race problem." He can also stand between Bob Barker and Taylor Swift, and write that Swift is way too old.

Gov. Sanford's long, perhaps naked, hike

2009-06-23T07:39:00.017-05:00

Tuesday morning, a Google search of "Appalachian Trail" revealed some 1.2 million hits. The top result was a news story about South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford skipping out of his state for a few days to visit the trail over the weekend.

The second hit (I'm assuming this is a coincidence) was a feature story about Naked Hiking Day.

Whether or not Mr. Sanford wore clothes on his outing afield is his own business. Today I discuss the reactions from other South Carolina state officials, past and present.

Evidently, Sanford sneaked out for multiple days without telling the lieutenant governor (a separately elected position in that state, and in this case a political rival), legislators, his security detail, or even his wife, precisely where he was going. He turned off his cell phones and only infrequently called back to check in.

Staff members were aware of Sanford's intentions and of his vague destination. But they were unable to pinpoint exact geocoordinates of his location, nor were they able to speak to him on the hour every hour.

Some, including Bob McAlister, who served as chief of staff for a previous governor of that state, have argued that Sanford's actions were egregiously irresponsible and unprofessional. "From a professional standpoint, this can't happen," McAlister said. "It's very disconcerting."

State Sen. Jake Knotts shares Sanford's party but also has long been a rival to the governor (from what I've read, Sanford is far more popular with his constituents than he is with his coworkers in the state capitol). Knotts also has insisted on near-continuous connectivity with the governor.

"As the head of our state, in the unfortunate event of a state of emergency or homeland security situation, Governor Sanford should be available at all times," Knotts said. "I want to know immediately who is running the executive branch in the governor’s absence."

To an extent, this smacks of the universal criticism that politicians can lately expect from their political rivals; such actions have, unfortunately, become standard operating procedure in many political circles.

But I think it belies a reality far more disconcerting that the one worrying Messrs. Knotts and McAlister. That is the point I wish to address here, and it has absolutely nothing to do with my continued fondness for Mr. Sanford.

In his absence from South Carolina, there have been no hurricanes, riots or floods. (And if there had, the state's Constitution grants the lieutenant governor authority to act in the governor's absence during emergencies. The National Guard can be duly called out, and requests for federal aid can be expeditiously made, even if the governor is in Timbuktu and has sworn a vow of silence.) Neither the hordes, nor the Yankees, have invaded. The state's police forces, its cities' fire departments, it's highways and bridges, they have all remained. Wal-Marts did not close down. Attorneys continue to litigate, doctors to heal, factories to produce, loggers to chop.

Despite Mr. Knox's demand to "know immediately who is running the executive branch," I have seen no reporting of private citizens sharing the same concerns. The lives of South Carolinians are entirely unaffected.

A governor is not the president of the United States — he has neither the responsibility nor the authority to handle foreign relations matters that do not rest. A governor (or senator, or other potentate of almost all description) can walk away for a few days and most people won't even notice if they don't see it on TV.

For all the attention paid to Mr. Sanford's (four days and counting) vacation, the world has not stopped. We don't need a guardian to remain in the governor's mansion, or even a phone call away, on call for every second of every day. Knox and McAlister seem to think that because the governor is on vacation, the rest of us will forget to wash our hands after we go to the bathroom, or to buckle up when we get in the car. They're wrong. We can survive just fine on our own.

Many news reports of Mr. Sanford's outing have used descriptors like "bizarre" to tell this story of a man who has a stressful job and wants a few days away. I have a theory on that: Mr. Sanford is a committed conservative who resisted the idiotic "economic stimulus" plan passed by the federal government earlier this year. He will command a tremendous and growing amount of respect in coming years as more people realize that the stimulus was a sham and a trillion dollars was wasted. My sense is, those who call his trip "bizarre" are trying desperately to paint him as an oddball.

Maybe he is. Maybe on Sunday he wandered the Appalachian Trail in full naked glory, with all the other oddballs. That doesn't matter that much, in the long run.

What matters is, for a few days an elected official did not insist on "fixing" something, did not seek a new rule to enact or a new tax to levy. He spent a few days not regulating, not managing, not enforcing. Or to put it another way, he spent a few days not trying "to improve peoples' lives."

And people's lives continued just fine.

Note to Barbie: It's a job, not a title

2009-06-21T20:21:00.003-05:00

Barbara Boxer, who is an elected representative of Californians in the U.S. Senate, surely embarrassed herself this week when she dressed down Army Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh for calling her "ma'am."

Obviously, little miss Barbie doesn't understand protocol: "Ma'am" is a title of respect. But she showed a far more important and more unflattering side of herself. She thinks her office is a "title," instead of an office of service.

The last time Americans had a government that insisted so fiercely on titles was in the 1770s — and we shot at them until they left. When an elected official starts feeling this self-important, they need to get out of the business.

Speaking out for freedom

2009-06-21T16:53:00.013-05:00

It is a wonderful thing to see history.

I vaguely remember watching the news when the Berlin Wall fell, though I was far too young to grasp the event's significance. I more clearly remember the Persian Gulf War. The toppling of that massive Saddam Hussein statue.

Now we can watch the angry uprising of people who want to be free, against a vile government that thinks they ought not. I've previously praised Americans who rallied against our government, who had to endure a blustery, windy day to do so. The folks in Iran right now deserve far more honor: They're getting shot at.

We don't yet know if these events will reach the historical significance as those listed above. But they are beautiful to see.

Peggy Noonan made an interesting observation in her most recent column. Americans instinctively love freedom. When there is a conflict anywhere in the world, we naturally stand with the oppressed, with the ones seeking freedom. She writes:

'If you don't understand who the American people are for, put down this newspaper or get up from your computer, walk into the street and grab the first non-insane-looking person you meet. Say, "Did you see the demonstrations in Iran? It's the ayatollahs versus the reformers. Who do you want to win?" You won't just get "the reformers," you'll get the perplexed-puppy look, a tilt of the head and a wondering stare: You have to ask?'

When some of his political opponents chide President Barack Obama for failing to favor the Iranian people vociferously enough, Obama has an explanation with at least some validity. "The last thing that I want to do is to have the United States be a foil for those forces inside Iran who would love nothing better than to make this an argument about the United States."

We seem uninclined to rout by force the Ayatollah's government, and if we are not going to do so then the Iranian people must seize their freedom on their own — at least, any help offered from the outside must be more covert than overt.

Ultimately, U.S. activity in this regard ought to be whatever activity is most helpful to Iranians, and there are competing ideas on what will be most helpful.

But I suspect Obama has caught himself in a dilemma largely of his own making.

From the beginning, he has observed the framework that diplomacy is the only way to deal with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the Ayatollahs, that this evil government currently in place in Tehran is the only entity that can be dealt with because it's the one making the decisions.

Obama has since operated in a way that takes great care to avoid offending Ahmadinejad. In public appearances, speeches, greetings, Obama has rarely criticized or contradicted that government. The exception is his mention of Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust — but that Holocaust denial isn't nearly as evil as Ahmadinejad's repeated promises to melt Israel as soon as he gets a chance.

The larger point is, Obama knows Iran is one of our most important enemies, and he knows he needs to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. He has chosen to go about dealing with Iran via diplomacy, kind talk, listening. I think that has influenced his quieted reaction to the Iranian peoples' rallies for freedom.

I fear the harsh realities we see in Iran right now prove that — no matter how many kind overtures anyone makes — the government in Iran is only evil. It will only continue to do as it pleases, until someone throws it out. Attempting to negotiate the hatred away from the Ayatollahs will be no more effective than it was to negotiate the evil out of Hitler.

To the extent that he thinks speaking out forcefully will only hurt the cause of the freedom-seekers in Iran, Obama ought to hold his tongue. But to the extent that he is reserving himself to protect the prospect of more normalized relations with the Ayatollah government, he ought to give it up and call evil by name.

An interesting Senate race

2009-06-17T21:31:00.006-05:00

The 2010 election is already getting interesting (especially if you're a Republican).

Tonight I read a piece that pertained mostly to the U.S. Senate seat up for contesting that year — the one held now by Michael Bennett, who was appointed to replace Ken Salazar when Salazar became Secretary of the Interior.

From my early research (I've really only done about 4 minutes' worth, which you can see yourself below), my favorite candidate is 32-year-old Ryan Frazier, a city council member in Aurora.

Another 32-year-old, state Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, is considering a run for governor. We are, it seems, living in the day of the young.

For your viewing pleasure, a speech from Mr. Frazier:

'Everyone guessed wrong'

2009-06-15T22:17:00.003-05:00

Vice President Joe Biden says "everyone guessed wrong" about the effects the massive spending bill passed earlier this year would have.

It turns out, much to the perplexity of Congressional Democrats and the Obama Administration, dumping a half-billion (borrowed) dollars into unnecessary construction projects isn't a good way to ease a recession caused by excessive debt.

While the pro-"stimulus" crowd was demanding the corpulent bill's immediate passage, they warned: If we don't spend all this money, unemployment could top 8 percent!

Well, the bill was passed. The money is being dumped into ... wherever it's being dumped into. And unemployment is pushing 9.5 percent.

The thing is, not "everyone guessed wrong." In fact, there were several people at the time who weren't guessing at all: They were using common sense, and they said the "stimulus" wouldn't work.

Thieves and Fools, Part VI

2009-06-14T19:51:00.012-05:00

This post is the sixth installment of an ongoing series, entitled : If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool.

Today I share my own personal (admittedly far from comprehensive) experience with nationalized health care, as it is applied in Canada.

Part 1: A defense of the free market system

When I was quite young, one of my cousins was born with dramatic heart and lung defects. Any life she could have would require heroic, drastic, imaginative, amazing health care methods. It wasn't gonna be cheap.

My aunt and uncle reviewed all their options, including immigrating to Canada, where health care is "free." Quickly, they realized moving to Canada was out. Bureaucracy, quotas and federal budgets made the Canadian health care system worse than incompetent. My cousin needed the best care available in the world, and that was available only in the United States.

Eventually, my cousin received a heart- and double-lung transplant, which was performed by a surgeon living in the Los Angeles area. We were told her doctors were the best on the planet — after researching that, I believe it.

I was also told that my aunt's and uncles' credit was wrecked by the ordeal. Bake sales and raffles and an assortment of other various fundraisers helped pay for expenses, and the insurance company they subscribed to surely took a beating. And still, my aunt and uncle's credit was wrecked. But my cousin got the doctoring that she needed, and her life (and quality of life) was dramatically improved because of it. It's a real-live "only in America" story.

Part 2: An indictment of the command-structure system

Fast forward to my college days. One of my friends was talking about the virtues of the Canadian "free" health care system.

My friend described an acquaintance (we'll call him Terrance, for expedience)'s experience in Canada. Terrance was being visited by his American friend (Phillip), when Phillip caught a cold.

"Let's go to the doctor!" Terrance urged. Phillip, of course, thought Terrance was insane. A doctor, just for a cold? That'd be a profound waste of money.

But Terrance explained to Phillip: "In Canada, visits to the doctor don't cost anything! They're free, and everyone has a right to go!"

Part 3: Conclusions

Free enterprise plays a heavy role in this story. My cousin's doctors — the best in the world — received hefty fees for their work. And they worked in the United States, one of the few places on the planet where their own free enterprise was legal. Because they stood to make a ton of money, they continued to practice medicine right here.

And my aunt and uncle were willing to wreck their credit, and to ask their friends and neighbors for help, because it was for their daughter. Most of us aren't willing to go to such dramatic lengths for strangers, but we will do so for our own — that's only human nature. We pay for something what we think it's worth.

The events described in Parts 1 and 2 are entirely truthful, although some names are made up. And they seem unrelated, but one undoubtedly affects the other.

When a visit to the doctor is a "right" the doctor has an obligation to treat each patient that comes before him (regardless of the patient's ability to pay him, or of the patient's real need to see a doctor).

When Phillip caught his cold, there was nothing a doctor could do for him that a mother with a can of chicken soup couldn't. But the doctor had to spend 20 minutes of his day seeing that patient, anyway, and telling him to go eat the soup. That means someone else — someone with a real need to see a doctor, someone who stood to benefit from a doctor's expertise — had to wait, possibly for so long that, by the time the doctor arrived to see them, it was too late.

Visits to the doctor's office are not "free." They cost the doctor's fee (whoever pays it) and they cost the doctor's time. Doctors are not unlimited, and their time is not unlimited either.

When government steps in and "guarantees" that all people can go to the doctor at any time, they really only guarantee that the doctor is unavailable when we really need them.

Leftists, not liberals

2009-06-13T22:36:00.003-05:00

Lots of conservative commentary describes its ideological opponents as "liberals." A great deal of the time, that term is improperly applied. "Liberal" implies a love of freedom or liberty -- that's where the word comes from. All too often, those on the American left have no desire to advance freedom and would greatly prefer restrictions on it.

True, honorable liberalism is the ideal that a broad discussion of all possibilities will lead the participants to select the left-leaning alternative. Angry, hateful, violent leftism is the ideal that the left-leaning alternative is the only moral choice to be made, and all other options must be stamped out by force (because, so often, people choose the non-left-leaning alternative). Far too frequently, those on the American left fall in the camp of leftists, not liberals.

Such is the case at Oregon State University, where last week it was reported that The Liberty, a conservative-leaning newspaper, was restricted in its circulation methods. For years, The Liberty had used a dozen distribution racks across the OSU campus; now university administrators have demanded that almost all of the racks be disposed of.

Policy-makers at Oregon State are not interested in "diversity," an entity that so many people have insisted universities have an inherent interest in. They're interested in restricting speech-making by their students.

This is fascism, not liberalism. It's totalitarianism at its worst. It's the silencing of ideas and thoughts. It's Thought Police, and every administrator who signed off on the decision ought to be thrown out on their cans.

As near as I could tell, Oregon State's official newspaper, The Barometer, was fairly non-partisan. But whether or not this hushing of The Liberty is based on ideology is irrelevant. It's a hushing -- that in and of itself is a vile, criminal, evil thing.

Universities have gained a stereotype as left-leaning institutions; most of the time, this stereotype is entirely warranted. But that does not make them liberal. If they were liberal, they would embrace openness and discussion, they would encourage the free flow of ideas and thoughts, they would champion liberty of thought and word.

Instead, in way too many cases, they act as anti-liberals. They act as militant leftists, who think their point of view is the only one that can be correct, and everyone who disagrees need not enjoy the same rights to free speech and due process as they claim for themselves.

For as long as this behavior is tolerated, freedom and real liberalism are in danger.

Thieves and Fools, Part V

2009-06-13T00:03:00.008-05:00

This post is the fifth installment of an ongoing series, entitled : If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool.

Whenever President Obama and his ilk make promises about Americans being able to keep their doctors and health care plans if they want to, we ought to expect he's fudging things a bit. In just a few months, the president has managed to spend almost the entirety of his administration breaking the oaths he swore when he was convincing citizens to elect him.

When asking for votes, he said he would publish all legislation on the White House Web site for five days of public scrutiny before considering signing it. After elected and safely in office, Obama signed the "economic stimulus bill," the single largest spending measure in Congress' history, multiple days short of that goal.

When asking for votes, he said 99 percent of Americans, everyone but the filthiest rich, would see a net tax cut, and would never see a single cent in tax increases on sales taxes, income taxes, personal property taxes, etc. His words: "I can make a firm pledge ... Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes." After elected and safely in office, Obama signed an enormous increase on tobacco taxes, nearly doubling the tax on a pack of cigarettes.

Today, Bloomberg News reported on a health care reform plan under construction in the House of Representatives. Details remain sketchy because the would-be health care Nazis are playing things close to the vest; the more people hear about the socialization of the health care industry, the less people will like it. What is clear is that Obama's "not any of your taxes" pledge will again be cast aside. Six hundred billion dollars (at least) in tax increases will accompany the House Democrats' proposal.

Now Obama is campaigning for support for dramatic nationalization of our health care system and he is promising non-nationalization. "When you hear people saying socialized medicine, understand, I don't know anybody in Washington who is proposing that," he said.

The president did not tell the truth about taxes last summer, and he is not telling the truth about socialized medicine -- or keeping a doctor or a health care plan you like -- this summer. Hopefully enough Americans realize this before it's too late.

Thieves and Fools, Part IV

2009-06-11T21:49:00.005-05:00

This post is the fourth installment of an ongoing series, entitled : If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool.

The other day I saw a headline proclaiming "Democrats will seek universal mental health, dental care."

At the time I thought: What about people with false teeth?

It sounds goofy, but it raises a significant question. If a "universal health care" plan is adopted providing "free" medical care to all Americans, how do we define "medical care"? What should be included?

Not everyone needs dental care. Some are blessed with fine enough dental health that they need not see a dentist regularly. Others were not blessed with such dental health, and their teeth have fallen out and been replaced by synthetics. "Universal dental care" would charge those in both camps (via taxes) for services that they did not want, need, or pay for when it was their choice.

Many of us get along fine without the services of a psychiatrist. Most don't visit chiropractors regularly. Acupuncture, massage therapy, orthopedics, orthodontics, and a host of other specialties today fall under the realm of ... specialties. Should they be included in the "public option" health care system leftists wish to adopt?

What about alternative medicines? Medical marijuana? Dietary supplements? Nutrition specialists? Personal trainers? Memberships to a fitness center? Hot tubs? Should these be classified as "health-necessary"? Isn't owning a hot tub a right?

Of course the answer is no.

Today two hundred million Americans live individual lives, they make decisions for themselves based on personal preferences and circumstances, they review options and choose their own futures, based on what is available, what they can afford, and what they prefer.

When I have a backache, I don't rush out and see a chiropractor and expect someone else to pay for it. I drink a glass of whiskey. (I don't expect someone else to pay for that, either.) Other people will choose to drink a glass of whiskey, or to take a Tylenol, or to go to a chiropractor. Some go sit in their hot tub -- it all depends on the individual's circumstances and preferences. These folks also don't (and shouldn't) expect someone else to pay for it. Because when someone else starts paying, someone else starts making the choices.

The central ideal here is that health care is a quite personal, individual responsibility. America is a big place with lots of cultures, lots of points of view, lots of people thinking their own choices a are the best. The key is: They are all right. Tylenol, the hot tub, the chiropractor, and whiskey, they all work!

Each person is quite capable of making the best choice for himself, and in many cases a person in Arizona will select differently from a person in Maine. In many cases a 24-year-old single man will make a different choice different from that made by a 49-year-old mother of four. Despite all assurances to the contrary, any government sponsored "universal health care" program will kill that individuality.

Surrendering the high ground

2009-06-06T23:13:00.003-05:00

Under an "odd news" link I found an Associated Press story about the semi-humorous upcoming "bring your gun to church day" being planned by Pastor Ken Pagano of the New Bethel Church in Louisville, Ky. Pagano says he scheduled the event, a week before Independence Day, as a celebration of the nation's founding and of the Second Amendment. The AP provided a broad discussion of the separation of church and gun — in the context of last week's murder of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider who was shot in the head while ushering at his own house of worship.

Pagano said the church will require visitors to unload their pieces, that the event will celebrate liberty and heritage. The raffling-off of a handgun will raise money for charity.

"Firearms can be evil and they can be useful," Pagano said.

The AP, oddly, quotes Pastor John Phillips, who was shot while preaching at his former church in Arkansas in the 1980s. Presumably unarmed during the sermon in which he was attacked, Phillips denounces New Bethel's event: "A church is designated as a safe haven ... It is unconscionable to me to think that a church would be a place that you would even want to bring a weapon."

Unfortunately, none of them — Pagano, Phillips or the AP — gets it. And we see one more incarnation of the gun laws/gun rights debate begun from an intellectually dishonest (or maybe just plain stupid) foundation.

Phillips declares churches as a safe haven yet, from my research, I found just one place on this earth at which Phillips has ever been shot: His church. It is possible that Phillips is so devoutly religious and peaceful that he would sooner accept his own murder than to fight back with violence; that sentiment is principled and noble, but not all men share it, and no man has the right to convey it upon another.

In this goofy, off-beat story, the AP insists on quoting a rare victim of a church-shooting incident: Phillips. Conspicuously, Tiller was unavailable for comment: He was dead, killed in his "designated safe haven." Had Tiller been armed at the time of his attack, it is possible that he would have survived it. He was unarmed, and he died last Sunday. The man who shot him was quite armed, and is still alive and unharmed.

Sadly, Pagano's actions are the most egregious because he is acting under the guise of celebrating gun rights, while he voluntarily surrenders the moral and intellectual high ground that gun rights supports should never surrender.

He says guns "can be evil" and he says that — for safety — his church is requiring parishioners to unload their weapons outside.

He's wrong on the first part: Guns are no more capable of evil than a can of soda pop. They can be used for evil, but evil is only achieved when a competent being makes a knowing choice to do undeserved and unnecessary harm to another. A gun is a hunk of metal, perfected by men to serve as a tool. That tool can be used for evil, but cannot itself be evil.

And he's near insane on the second part. His event mixes most of the ingredients for a tremendous tragedy. If some maniac — like the one who shot Phillips 20 years ago, or the one who shot Tiller last week — enters New Bethel Church with a gun and picks out targets, the entire congregation could be armed yet powerless. Even 200 people with guns are not very effective, if they have no bullets.

Lawmakers act with alleged "good intentions" when they pass statutes banning guns from schools, courthouses and bars. At school, our children shouldn't have to worry about someone carrying a gun! Courthouses are places of government business; we don't want anyone to fret about getting shot there! Bars are places of intoxication and wrong-mindedness, where men and women lose their cognition and common sense. We can't let drunks carry guns.

The real tragedy in these arguments is that anyone believes them. Some don't think self-defense is a right. But most do, and those who do, and still buy into the notion that schools should be "gun free zones" because kids "shouldn't have to worry about that," those people do far more harm than they will ever know.

For it is those folks — the ones who believe in the Second Amendment, but think there are "common-sense," and "reasonable" exceptions — it is they who will allow for its destruction. It is those men who allow Second Amendment opponents to nibble away at their rights, assuming the likes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin, Timothy McVeigh, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, et al will be bound by the same rules as John Q. American. Inanimate objects like guns are incapable of evil — but men, clearly, are not.

If a man is willing to violate the rules and the law to commit murder, it is foolish to think he will not violate the rules and the law to carry a gun into a "gun-free zone." Until gun rights owners stop leaving their intellectual and moral ammunition at home, the battle to defend our freedom will remain difficult to win.

The Longest Day

2009-06-06T22:39:00.003-05:00

The Longest Day really does star everyone. And it really does have its moments of wit, of poignancy, of terror and of pride. It's quite lengthy but definitely worthy of a few hours' time.

I watched The Longest Day last weekend and I was reminded of my favorite scene — actually, it has moved up to take a place among my favorite scenes in any movie:

Just before the guns of the Allied armada took to fire, a series of officers address their pre-invasion troops. In the movie, the last to speak before the shooting match was a Frenchman who solemnly described the battles already undertaken in Africa and other parts of the world. Then, even more soberly, he said, "Today we fire at our homeland. This is the price of freedom."

Cut to motors turning gun turrets and adjusting for windage and elevation. And ... then ...

Explosions from the breeches of cannons, flames from the muzzles, incessant shelling on the beach, the likes of which no man had ever seen before.

A French civilian, living with his wife directly in the line of fire, is awakened by 16-inch gun shells landing in his back yard, by earth flying up and then down on him, by his entire house and property being shaken in the face of the destruction. Having lived under Nazi rule for years, the man (ignoring his wife, who insists on them seeking shelter) digs his French flag out of hiding, opens his window and starts waving the banner and singing at the top of his lungs.

* * *

My grandfather was in the Navy during World War II, aboard he destroyer escort USS Sanders. During one battle with the Japanese navy, a Kamikaze plane struck, sending shrapnel and probably flames showering into the air ... and then back down.

Grandpa carried tiny pieces of that metal in his forehead and his elbow for the next 40 years. And he made out better than a lot of guys.

Many times in my life I've heard that we're "lucky" to live in such a free, prosperous country as America. I've even furthered that notion myself (in my younger days) but have since realized its folly.

Yes, we live in the greatest, freest, wealthiest nation in the history of the world. But luck did not have a single thing to do with it.

Our nation is great and prosperous because it is free, and it is free — not because of some random stroke of chance — because great men and women before us made it so.

Grandpa and his generation destroyed the Nazi and Japanese empires. And they did it with courage, steel and the sacrifice of their own comfort, safety and (in many cases) future — not with the rabbit's foot in their pocket. Many generations before theirs did similar. Americans have won freedom in battle, not in a lottery.

* * *

The D-Day anniversary each year is the fashionable time for honoring the veterans who won World War II. The logistics of that invasion are mind-blowing, even when compared to today's world of unlimited communication. And the logistics pale in comparison to the profound courage from the individuals involved.

For your enjoyment, I've included a short clip from The Longest Day. (And for the uninitiated: John Wayne's character had suffered a leg injury, he was not simply insisting upon being chauffeured across the European Theater for his own luxury.)

Change: From private ownership to nothingness

2009-06-06T20:38:00.005-05:00

There was some comment last week about how Chrysler made decisions about which automobile dealerships across the country would be closed, as part of the fat-trimming quasi-bankruptcy the company is undertaking.

The whole scenario is odd on face value because most car dealerships are independently owned — by private citizens, not the Chrysler corporation — and pose no real expense to the company. Also, fewer dealerships means (presumably) fewer cars sold.

Most egregious, of course, is the allegation that dealership owners have been selectively chosen, based on their political leanings. There is some evidence that suggests owners who donated money to President Barack Obama and other Democrats will continue with their dealerships — while Republican-donor dealers have been chosen for discontinuance.

That's a serious charge, no doubt. But I'm afraid that's the sort of thing one can expect when government gets into the car business. (It's what happens when government gets into every other business.)

That's a long introduction for the real purpose of this post, courtesy of Congressman Jerry Moran.

Naturally, with an allegation this severe, one cannot justly leap to conclusions without a careful review of the situation. But if Jerry is alleging corruption, it's a pretty safe bet that there's some corruption going on somewhere.

Thieves and Fools, Part III

2009-06-02T22:50:00.004-05:00

This post is the third installment of an ongoing series, entitled : If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool.

This video, from our good friends at Reason TV, shows the Virginia DMV at work proving government should never be put in charge of ... anything. As I've said before: If our government "gives" us a "universal health care system," people will die from it.

More on the Supreme Court

2009-05-29T00:37:00.004-05:00

There are two ways of thinking about this.

Obviously, Sonia Sotomayor has no business being a member of the Supreme Court. She's a blatant racist and covets the notion of appellate court judges setting all national policies. Her personal character and view of herself as dictator ought to disqualify her candidacy.

But since we're living in the Changed Land, where truth and reason are irrelevant, Sotomayor has been appointed to the Supreme Court.

With her lack of respect for the Second Amendment) among others), and her long, thorough record of voting against freedom, her opponents should include conservatives, libertarians, free-speechers, (real) liberals, judicial restraintists and more. Basically everyone but the fascists claiming to be "progressive." Sotomayor's views on the Constitution, on democracy and on America are far beyond anything most Americans would feel comfortable with.

That's the problem, so what's the solution?

I've previously written that I hoped President Obama would appoint an incompetent leftist to the Court: it's better for us if someone stupid is trying to take our rights than if someone clever is. The stupid person is less likely to succeed. And Sotomayor is, indeed, stupid. Appeals to her judicial decisions have been taken up by the Supreme Court six times in her career; five of those, she was overturned. Even the Detroit Lions were wise enough to fire Coach Rod Marinelli after his team went 0-16 last year.

So Sotomayor opponents could strategically agree to her nomination, knowing we are likely to like Obama's second choice little better than his first. Remember: Leftists helped block President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the court, citing a lack of qualifications. Conservatives also were unhappy with the choice for that reason and for an unproven record of conservatism. Bush's second choice for that seat was Justice Samuel Alito, a sharp conservative who might influence judicial philosophy for decades.

The other choice is to fight like hell. In a straight-up vote, Sotomayor will win confirmation in a runaway because Republicans just don't have the votes to stop one. But Democrats were in a quite similar position when Bush nominated Miers. Intense public review of Sotomayor's qualifications, competence and opinions on the judiciary's role in America -- perhaps compared to those of competent alternatives, even liberals -- could turn embarrassing in a hurry.

Democrats' tone in discussing the upcoming confirmation process suggests that it might be just possible to derail her.

New York's Sen. Chuck Schumer made the preposterous claim that it is 40 Republicans in the Senate (not even enough to properly filibuster) who should be under the microscope in the next few months, not the judge who wishes to become one ninth of the highest court in the land. "I think the confirmation process will be more of a test of the Republican Party than it is of Judge Sotomayor," he said.

And White House spokesman Robert Gibbs has insisted that critics must be "exceedingly careful" about what they say in this debate.

These guys are quite desperate to avoid a confrontation here. That means we ought to give them one.

Our devious side might consider it a small victory to see Sotomayor on the court, instead of Alito's brilliant-but-leftist counterpart. But our best judgment is that Sonia Sotomayor does not belong there. We have to fight like hell.

Morticians Association endorses Obama plan

2009-05-26T19:24:00.003-05:00

Another good one from our friends at Reason TV.

Thieves and Fools, Part II

2009-05-19T18:24:00.007-05:00

This column is the second installment of an ongoing series, entitled : If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool.

With a sympathetic-to-the-cause president and huge sympathetic majorities in Congress, we find ourselves in grave danger of getting a "universal health care" system crammed down our throats.

Rather, as The Wall Street Journal editorialized today, we risk having such a program — there's just no way around this one — shoved up our asses.

According to the Journal, Medicare bean-counters recently decided to deny funding for virtual colonoscopies. Such procedures, described as CT scans of the abdomen, can detect polyps that lead to deadly colon cancer. Better still, they can do so with far less discomfort and personal ... intrusion ... than traditional colonoscopies, in which optical equipment is inserted into the body.

But the procedures are too costly for Medicare, which faces almost $40 trillion of promised benefits in coming years. So the government, which decades ago promised medical care to millions of Americans, cannot today afford high-quality, new-era services. So instead, bureaucrats think it appropriate to relegate patients to a thorough — and quite uncomfortable, no doubt — gut-check.

On the Supreme Court

2009-05-18T20:55:00.008-05:00

When I read The Brethren a few years ago, my exceedingly high opinion of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist swelled even further.

Some tales in that book describe how Rehnquist was not only a jurist respectful of freedom, but that he was also so brilliant that he could write opinions that swayed even his liberty-hating colleagues. Some of his writings were so compelling that the statist justices voting against him on some cases realized they had to narrow the scope of their own opinions.

So when President Barack Obama nominates a replacement for the evil-minded Justice David Hackett Souter, I'm hopeful that he continues to consider Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm.

My own vision of a Supreme Court justice is an immensely talented, witty, diligent, workaholic with an unyielding desire to protect freedom, whose respects the Bill of Rights more than any other earthly thing.

Before nominating a person to the Supreme Court, I would wish to have satisfied every curiosity about the person's commitment to individual rights and liberties, and about the person's intellect and ability.

Granholm is among America's worst and dumbest elected officials. So if she is the one trying to persuade other court members to rob our rights, our rights should be fairly safe.

Where is the humanitarianism?

2009-05-13T10:57:00.003-05:00

The Democratic Party claims to be the chief humanitarian political movement in America. It insists on quality education as a goal for all Americans, because children without education are hopeless.

The Democratic Party, which enacted the Great Society and the New Deal, has no qualms about spending our money to improve peoples' lives.

Until it is faced with a relatively inexpensive spending program, that is. Until it is faced with one of the few programs that is actually effective. Then the Democrats make every effort possible to kill it.

And so goes the D.C. school voucher program. President Barack Obama is smart enough to send his children to a quality private school because the public schools in that city are worthless. Now he and his Congressional allies are taking that same opportunity away from poorer kids.

Thieves and Fools, Part I

2009-05-12T23:34:00.005-05:00

This column is the first installment of an ongoing series, which I'm calling: If you think your health care is my responsibility, you are a thief. If you think our health care system would be better if the government would intervene, you're a fool. This piece addresses the title's second article.

Today we've learned of a plan to levy taxes on soda pop because it's bad for you. Also, other sugary drinks will be subject. And Red Bull, Gatorade, iced tea, and anything else deemed "unhealthy" could see an excise tax, if the meddling fools in government have their way.

If unhealthy things are taxed, the notion goes, John Q. American will be less likely to indulge. Thus, a lesser burden will weigh on the nation's health care system in coming years (because fewer Jan Q. Americans will suffer with high blood pressure, diabetes and general fatness). In short, everybody wins!

Except that we all lose.

If government conjures a health care entitlement and administers Benadryl to everyone with an sniffle, it will create a corollary responsibility to monitor and, whenever possible, reduce costs of that Benadryl-distribution program. So any unhealthy, or potentially unhealthy, food and drink will be subject to far-reaching regulation.

Imagine: Sin taxes on chocolate, peanut-butter cookies, ice cream, pretzels, tomato juice, eggs, beef kept on the grill too long and butter. Excises on skydiving, unprotected sex, coffee and mayonnaise. Surcharges on cheese and 147 varieties of alcoholic beverage. Hefty fees on Spam, bologna, bacon, avocados, whole milk and cheesecake.

We can discuss whether or not participating in said items is healthy. In many cases, it is not. But no other man on earth has a legitimate moral authority to make such decisions for me.

Perhaps worse still: With the corrupt and nitwitted nature of policy-making bureaucrats, "unhealthy" and "dangerous" won't be the standard used for setting such behavior-controlling taxes. Bribery, friends in high places, irrational P.R. campaigns and mindless agency mission statements will matter far more.

Take, for instance, another story we saw today. Cheerios, a healthy foodstuff, is under threat by the Food and Drug Administration for being too healthy. Because eating that breakfast cereal will lower cholesterol (and because many people with high cholesterol want to lower it on their own, without legislated mandate), the makers advertise that it will lower cholesterol. Hence, according to the FDA, that food is therefore really a drug — and not regulated nearly enough.

This is not 'our tax dollars at work.' This is our tax dollars being burned as the fuel to power engines that are destroying us.

'I hope his kidneys fail'

2009-05-11T11:05:00.003-05:00

The White House Correspondents' Association dinner has long been a forum for good natured fun-poking at the president or his administration.

Yet here we have President Barack Obama laughing when a comedian accuses Rush Limbaugh of participating in 9-11, and then saying she hopes he dies.

Classy, Mr. President. Very classy.

Our budget makes Russia look well-managed

2009-05-11T10:40:00.005-05:00

Nancy Pelosi is a stupid teenage girl with daddy's credit card.

Harry Reid is a financial moron who thinks it wise to buy, buy, buy on lines of credit and make minimum monthly payments into perpetuity.

Barack Obama has followed one of the most fiscally irresponsible administrations in American history -- that of George W. Bush -- and in a matter of days he has made it look like a cheapskate.

Obama has made (very public) proposals to cut spending on two occasions. First, when he encouraged the executive bureaucracy to save $100 million over 90 days by simply turning out the lights when everybody leaves and using e-mails instead of paper memos and the like. More recently he promoted the idea of cutting $17 billion from inefficient or unneeded government programs.

Compared to the trillion-dollar bailouts, trillion-dollar 'stimulus' packages, the multi-billion-dollar loans (who really thinks those will get repaid?), the balooning budgets of bureaucracies and the scary-big proposals for new giveaway programs, those cut numbers are microscopic. (The New York Times described them as laughable.) And Congress probably won't make them, anyway.

The Associated Press today reported that this year's budget deficit will approach $2 trillion, or four times the record set under the Bush Administration last year, at $90 billion. We have a national debt of $11 trillion, which has accumulated over hundreds of years, two world wars, the New Deal, the Great Society, the mission to the moon and that 40-year effort to bring down the Soviet Union.

This year alone, we'll add another $2 trillion. And that's if Obama doesn't nationalize the health care system, too.

Rubicon in our rear-view

2009-05-06T11:28:00.006-05:00

Show of hands: Who remembers a federal government agency that has decreased its budget or cut its operation. Ever?

Yes, sir, you in the back. Oh ... you were stretching.

Ronald Reagan's 'A Time for Choosing' Speech in 1964 contained the sentence: "Federal bureaus are the closest thing we will ever see to eternal life on this planet." That line is funny; the truth it espouses is anything but.

Yesterday a couple of news outlets reported that state governments are receiving more money from federal grants than from state property or income taxes, or from any other source.

I encourage you to ask a handful of public school teachers about No Child Left Behind. Or a pharmacist about Medicare. I suspect you will find that, when the federal government starts doling out cash it also starts grabbing powers for itself. And, far too often, it creates burdens that don't achieve anything good, don't make any sense, and are just as likely to run people out of their business as they are to help anyone.

I fear we have Crossed the Rubicon on federalism. Without dramatic, revolutionary change on a scale not managed by American politicians since the Constitution was written, federalism is dead. And it is us who have killed it.

We would not accept radical encroachments on our privacy and our personal decisions if they came in one grand sweep. But they have come in many small nibbles at our liberty, and we have gone along with them without complaint.

About a month ago I wrote about the government's creeping way of taking over our lives. The feds don't have Constitutional authority to set drinking age laws or to administer public schools. But they pass out trillions of dollars a year, and they attach any strings they want to along with it.

We have to start electing legislators and executives to national office who will say, "no more money from the federal government for bail-outs to the states." And we have to start electing state officials who will say the same.

Today, the states are more beholden to the federal government than ever before. Show of hands: Who thinks that's a good thing? Yes sir, you in the back? Oh. That's right ... you were stretching.

The Internet saved my tongue

2009-05-05T10:16:00.004-05:00

I just read a great piece from Reason about a tremendous battle for freedom. Thank God for men like Ezra Levant.

To see the story, click HERE.

Also, enjoy the video below.

Kudos to the Associated Press

2009-04-30T15:54:00.005-05:00

For the second time this month, the Associated Press deserves praise for removing the media's collective nose from the Obama Administration's collective brown-spot.

After last night's press conference, the AP published a Fact Check piece pointing out that President Obama does, in fact, share in the responsibility for the enormous debt and deficits our government faces. After all, Obama was in the U.S. Senate when the Wall Street bail-outs began and was hardly a spending-hawk at that time.

At the start of April, the AP called out Obama when he violated a campaign promise against new tax increases. Obama's support of a massive new tobacco tax isn't quite George H.W. Bush's "read my lips" moment, but the principle is exactly the same. Obama won an election by (in part) promising most people that their taxes would go down and not up, yet one of his first orders of business was signing an enormous tax increase.

Too often, the newsmedia has played a blind, overenthusiastic cheerleader to Obama and his team. That's good for Obama's popularity but bad for the country.

The Associated Press, however, has done its job and done it well.

And now, a word from France

2009-04-30T09:04:00.001-05:00

This from our good friends at Reason TV.

Buckle up or go to prison

2009-04-29T03:10:00.004-05:00

Colorado is poised to enact a law allowing police officers to stop drivers for failing to wear a seat belt.

As it stands in that state, drivers can only be cited if they are stopped for another, primary infraction and are also found to be not wearing their seat belt. This law will give cops the authority to stop a driver for no other violation than the seat belt negligence.

The bill's proponents in Colorado say passage will save about 26 lives per year in that state, and prevent more than 300 serious injuries. They're probably right. You'd have to be out of your cotton-pickin' mind to go anywhere in a car without wearing a seat belt.

But isn't that enough?

Q: Who will the state of Colorado protect with this law?
A: The drivers and passengers who would not otherwise buckle up, and not a soul more.

Non-seat-belt users have as much right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as the next guy. But when every danger that they are being protect from is brought on by their own behavior, it's time for the legislature to move on to other things.

When this law passes, Colorado Highway Patrol officers will be distracted from monitoring criminally dangerous drivers (who often push the upper 80s on steep, curvy mountain roads) and hunting drug traffickers to instead conduct parenting patrols on every other driver in the state.

Today, seat belts are the "widely accepted" and "obvious" measure that every person "should do, for their own good." What will it be tomorrow? Alcohol use? Skipping the morning jog? Eating cheese?

The government is not my mommy. You shouldn't let it be yours, either.

You hit what you aim at

2009-04-27T15:49:00.004-05:00

I appreciate President Obama's proposal to elevate scientific research and research and development as national priorities. Their importance cannot be overstated.

Technology won World War II, the Cold War and the Persian Gulf War, has improved health care and prolonged peoples' lives, and it has provided us with the highest quality of life any humans have ever known.

My observation is more related to the approach we take. Obama said he wants the U.S. to invest 3 percent of its GDP in science. If I were the one making the statement, I'd set a goal of results, not spending.

During the 1940s America's greatest minds rushed to achieve a nuclear bomb, not to spend a pre-set dollar amount. When racing Hitler's inventors to The Bomb, the money we spent was irrelivent. Had Hitler beaten us to nuclear-force weapons, "We spent a billion gajillion dollars on it!" would have been no consolation.

John F. Kennedy is not remembered for challenging the nation to spend billions of dollars on NASA. He's remembered for challenging the nation to land a man on the moon. If the goal had been to employ 400,000 people and spend $25 billion, it could have been achieved without the dramatic victory of Apollo 11.

My point is not to criticize Obama's language but to point out a fact of human nature. For the most part, we are industrious, intelligent, creative and resilient. If a goal is set, we can probably reach it. The goals we set should be measured the right way.

When I first took up running as an exercise regimen, I set a goal of running for 12 minutes three times per week. And I achieved it. Each time I ran the distance I managed got a bit shorter, but my timed goal was met. So I altered my goal, and instead began running at least 1.5 miles at each setting.

You'd be surprised how much faster a man runs when his goal is to run a distance, and not for a minimum time.

Are TV bailouts next?

2009-04-24T15:06:00.003-05:00

Almost weekly, there's another member of Congress floating the idea of a "bailout" (though they rarely use that word) of the most popular newspaper in their district. A new study from the Pew Research Center indicates more and more Americans think of television sets and other common household items, as a luxury and not a necessity. This could be, in part, because we are in recession and more people are forced to prioritize.

But I think the bigger issue is unrelated to the economy as it is right now. These items are becoming a luxury because they are being replaced by other items.

The need for a TV is far less today than it was even 5 years ago. Fans of TV shows can watch them online or on rented DVDs on computers. Other content on the internet provides a huge selection of diversions available so the near-monopoly that TV enjoyed on entertainment for decades is gone. I read more newspapers than anyone else I know -- but I am not a subscriber because I can read them all for free.

The Pew Research Center's information, if it's correct, will bring bad results for the makers of television sets. If those manufacturers don't find a new business model to keep up with today's technology, they will lose money in the coming years.

My hope is that we will learn from our experience with the G.M. and Chrysler car companies. I haven't heard a person yet who thinks Chrysler will survive, despite billions of dollars in "loans" from the federal government. And there aren't any serious people who think G.M. won't have to file bankruptcy, despite billions more in loans.

These companies produced more cars than drivers would consume. They paid more employees than they needed. They went broke, and it doesn't appear they'll come out of it easily.

Hopefully we're smart enough to see we can't save every industry. And hopefully we're wise enough to realize we shouldn't try.

Obama should cut $100 million (and then some)

2009-04-23T10:21:00.005-05:00

Much fun has been poked at President Obama since he challenged his cabinet to cut spending by $100 million over the next 90 days by cutting down on printed paper, turning off unneeded lights and other small means.

Two jabs stand out to me as my favorites. The fiscally conservative Republican Study Committee issued a press release about Obama's 0.0025 percent spending cut. And The New York Times report on Obama's challenge contained the following sentence: "Budget analysts promptly burst out laughing."

When compared to the trillion-dollar stimulus and pork programs, or Obama's $600 billion health care reform proposal, $100 million is a minuscule (even laughable) amount.

But Obama is right to challenge his cabinet to save $100 million over the next 90 days. At the end of that 90 days, he should challenge the cabinet to save $150 million over the following 90 days. The Congress should follow suit in its own bureaucracies (as should the state governments across the country).

The massive spending problems we've developed are, for the most part, creations of a long period of time. Each government entity has spend a little bit more, and a little bit more. We haven't had much success in making huge cuts; maybe it'll be easier to cut a little at a time.

So long, old friend

2009-04-22T22:28:00.005-05:00

May we meet again, on the other side.

A parting shot (and a remembrance)

2009-04-21T11:26:00.003-05:00

Author's note: This column was the author's final piece in The Hays Daily News, where he worked as a reporter from 2005 to 2007. It is not the final column on this blog, but rather it is re-printed printed here in remembrance of the victims of the massacre 10 years ago at Columbine High School.

Some of my friends have those stupid "Make Art, Not War" bumper stickers. Each time I see one I bristle. Art has never ever ever freed a slave. War has.

Years ago, I stopped — whenever possible — doing business with companies that paste idiotic "no guns" signs on their doors, as if a homicidal maniac on a rampage would see the sign and walk away, dejected. Those signs came into style after the Legislature legalized concealed weapons for those who can pass a background check, and they make about as much sense as it would to replace the walls at every prison in the country with banners that read "no escaping." Rules have never ever ever prevented a murder. A good guy with a gun has.

But this, my parting shot, is not a column about how evil (and that is not too strong a word) gun control is, or about how dumb (also, not too strong a word) anti-war-ism is.

This, my parting shot, is about the pervasive nonsense we see these days, the nonsense that teaches John Q. American to cooperate with muggers so as to avoid further harm, to give them what they want and let the authorities sort it out, to keep his seat on a hijacked airline in hopes of avoiding violence, to not fight.

Last week I read a story about Mark Beverly, an overnight gas-station employee in Roseville, Minn. Beverly was fired after a March 26 incident in which a masked robber entered the store where he worked and attacked a co-worker. Beverly jumped the robber, slammed the bad guy against the counter, and chased him off the premises.

He, evidently, violated company policy because he did not "cooperate" with some guy who was beating up a friend. Resistance to a thief, even to protect an innocent victim, is a firing offense.

At risk of offending the delicate sensibilities of certain Democratic presidential candidates, that is the kind of thinking that led to Hitler invading Poland. Let the Nazis have the Sudetenland. They'll be content with that, and nobody will get hurt. Peace in our time.

Simply put, passivity is going to get us all killed.

On 9-11, when Americans were passive toward their hijackers — doing what they were told to do — their plane crashed into the World Trade Center, killing some 3,000 innocent people. When they fought back the plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field; all aboard died but no others were harmed.

This is why I joined the National Rifle Association about a year ago. Each month, the NRA publishes three magazines — one related to hunting, one about sport shooting, one describing legal and legislative action regarding gun rights — to serve three major factions of its membership. But each magazine shares an identical page, called The Armed Citizen. It's a set of news briefs from the last month, from across the country, detailing examples of Jane Q. American defending herself from a burglar, a rapist or a murderer. Sometimes Jane merely brandishes her gun. Sometimes she shoots and kills. But each time, the perpetrator flees or is gunned down, and Jane — the real victim in a real crime — ends up the better for it.

If good people lose the ability or the will to defend themselves from bad people, the world is lost. The stakes are no lower than that.

I've regularly written columns for six years now. And in this one, my parting shot, I say if I've convinced just one person in all that time of just one thing, I hope it's that we must never ever ever be content to let the authorities sort it out. We must never ever ever refuse to fight back, no matter what company policy is. We can never ever ever afford to sit in our airline seat and hope the hijackers won't use the plane to blow up the World Trade Center. We must always be prepared to fight back and crash the plane into an uninhabited field instead.

Yes, a few people could get hurt. But if we let the bad guys have free reign, the consequences will be far worse.

'Patriotic' taxes

2009-04-18T23:45:00.008-05:00

Vice President Joe Biden insists rich folk should "be patriotic" and agree to pay higher and higher levels of income taxes (forgetting, evidently, that rich folk pay most of the income taxes already).

Is it patriotic for a homeowner to leave her house unlocked so burglars can steal her TV?

On Wednesday, CNN's Paul Begala wrote a column describing how "April 15 is the one day a year when our country asks something of us -- or at least the vast majority of us." Begala called tax day "Patriots Day." As if "our government" and "our country" meant the same thing.

"Freedom isn't free," Begala pointed out later in his commentary, as if paying taxes would or could purchase freedom. Freedom and peace cannot be bought; they can only be taken and protected by force. Bribing the immoral might convince them to leave you alone, for a little while. But for as long as they think they can get something from you, they will consider coming to take it.

Some things (e.g. roads) the government was created to provide. It does so fairly well and it needs money to do so; the necessity of taxes is beyond dispute. But the idea that it's "patriotic" to approve of our current system, or even one that will take much more money from those who earned it, is beneath contempt.

Congressmen receive more money today than ever before as compensation for their services; are they doing better now than at any time in American history? This year we will spend more on public education than ever before; are our schools second to no previous time? More tax money has been spent in the past year on bailing out banks and car companies than any other year for the last 200; are those banks and car companies performing better today than they were during every other year for the last 200?

More often than is morally acceptable, tax money goes to enrich a lazy bureaucrat, convene a worthless commission or comfort someone who does not deserve to be on a public payroll.

In way too many cases, more tax money does not mean a better quality of life or a better government, it just means poorer citizens.

There is nothing patriotic about dumping more money down the rat-hole of bad government.

This is torture?

2009-04-16T21:21:00.005-05:00

At long last, we've learned the horrific, allegedly Nazi-esque interrogation tactics used by the United States against terrorists.

President Barack Obama and others ran for office full of indignation, demanding the "torture" by the United States stop. Many months ago, Sen. Dick Durbin said the American interrogators were no better than the Nazis. Sen. Patrick Leahy threatened to prosecute interrogators for being too mean.

Today Obama ordered the release of top secret-classified documents related to the interrogation of terrorist Abu Zubaydah.

But according to the documents, when the CIA learned Zubaydah had information relevant to possible impending terrorist attacks, they sought and received the Justice Department's approval for enhanced interrogation methods, to try to learn more about the attacks so as to prevent them. These methods go beyond the ultra-humane standards mandated by the Department of Defense for the treatment of prisoners of war.

They include water boarding, which is sometimes called torture (even though it does no harm and causes no pain to the subject). Sleep deprivation (which the U.S. military does to every new recruit in boot camp). Slamming the subject into a false wall (to scare him, it doesn't hurt). Slapping (again, not hard enough to cause pain, just enough to surprise).

And locking Zubaydah in a tight box with (gasp!) caterpillars.

The documents detailing this interrogation system was classified for a reason. Part of enhanced interrogation is the fear of the unknown: If a terrorist does not know what awaits him on the other side of a door, he is more afraid of it and he might be more likely to talk. That fear of the unknown is no longer available.

Because of a lawsuit from the ACLU, the Obama Administration was under court order to release the documents. They should have told the ACLU and the courts to take a hike.

But they did not, and there will probably be consequences. For one, the interrogation methods detailed therein have been rendered less effective. That's bad (and, ironically, might require the future use of methods that are more forceful).

On the other hand, we now know exactly what the terrorists in custody have been put through. We know the "torture" that they have "suffered."

And we know that we can go through the rest of our lives and never again have to spend a single second worrying about how the terrorists are treated.

This is big

2009-04-16T00:58:00.005-05:00

I turned on the TV and saw an enormous crowd at a protest in Atlanta. Organizers said the crowd was 15- to 20,000 strong. They were conservatives. Usually, conservatives don't protest.

The guy on the news interviewed others at rallies across the country, similar to the one in Atlanta (though Atlanta's was the biggest). Thousands of Americans angry about out-of-control government spending, bailing-out of failure, tax rates so high they can be described only as criminal, and unfathomable public debt took to the streets across the country.

Many held signs: "King George didn't listen to us either." "Read my lipstick, no new taxes." "I'll keep my tax money, you keep the change." "Socialism kills freedom." "You can't fix stupid — but you can vote them out." "I liked my old Uncle Sam better than my new Big Brother." "What would Reagan do?" One little girl wore a T-shirt reading "Stop spending my future." One rallier paid homage to Ayn Rand with a "Who is John Galt?" sign. (If you don't understand that, read Atlas Shrugged — you won't be disappointed.)

Tax Day Tea Party protests were planned in all 50 states. According to The Wichita Eagle, there were more than 30 rallies in Kansas alone.

The one that I found most striking was the one in my hometown of Lakin, Kan. Some 30 or so of our neighbors stood next to the highway holding signs cleverer than what I could write. My mom and I joined this group for a few minutes, but we didn't stay to stand in the bluster of Kansas like a lot of those folks did. God bless 'em.

As cars and trucks passed, many honked their horns. Reporters were present. Usually, conservatives don't protest.

I've heard of one protest in Lakin. Many years ago, a high school principal was (unduly) fired. Not everyone liked him, but most (including many of his students) respected him. Folks knew it was wrong and they met in the high school gym to make sure the school board knew they were mad.

It's taken this to get folks to rally again. Nine thousand asinine earmarks in a spending bill — passed by the Congress that promised earmark reform and signed by the president who claims to be the public's defender from it. Multiple members of President Barack Obama's cabinet (and some folks in Congress) that don't pay their own taxes. Eight years under former President George W. Bush when spending and debt went way out of control — and now three months under President Obama when it's only gotten worse. Seven hundred billion dollars to bail out banks for bad business — that's more than has been spent on the war in Iraq. (War is expensive!) Eight hundred billion dollars in "stimulus" garbage — garbage that nobody read until after it was written into law and money was spent. A tax code that is 60,000 pages long and entirely unfathomable by humans. A president that promised "95 percent of all Americans will receive a tax cut" ... "no tax increase" ... "not any tax" — and then signed an enormous tax increase on tobacco, and has promised new taxes on energy. Big-spending Republicans in Congress who can only be bested by bigger-spending Democrats.

Americans are not saying "Enough." We're saying "Way too damn much!"

The staggering numbers of protest-goers is a sign of something big. Conservatives have never taken to the streets in groups so large, so organized, so demanding that they be listened to.

This was historic.

Winning in Afghanistan

2009-04-13T02:09:00.004-05:00

We should spend more effort on winning in Afghanistan.

Here are a couple of pretty good thoughts.

They think Americans are idiots

2009-04-09T23:04:00.008-05:00

This story's roots are fairly un-newsworthy, but the Obama Administration's handling of it demonstrates something quite significant.

If acting unduly respectful to a foreign monarch is the biggest statecraft blunder Barack Obama ever makes, we won't have much to complain about. However, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs claims the president did not bow to the king of Saudi Arabia. Instead, Gibbs says, Obama merely bent down to shake hands because Obama is taller than the king. Anybody who watched the event can see otherwise.

Not only did Obama bow, he did so quite obviously.

This indicates one of two things, and they're both far more important than the president's overzealous manners. One possibility is the Obama Administration thinks it's OK to look us in the eye and lie. The other is they think we're all pretty stupid.

Throw the bums out (peacefully, if possible)

2009-04-07T00:10:00.005-05:00

The casual reader might find my previous post – an advocacy of pre-emptive war – to be a bit cavalier. And it certainly is. The case I mentioned then (America’s action to invade Iraq and impose regime change by force) is a rare one, and it has been bloody expensive. It has cost thousands of good Americans their lives, and it’s cost tremendous political capital and huge heaps of cash.

But I maintain: It was worth it, and I hold to what I wrote before. Today we’re standing by idly and allowing North Korea, Iran or other psychopathic-leaning governments to develop and trade nuclear weapons – we cannot do that and expect that nothing bad will come. Even if the only other option is a full-scale invasion.

Fortunately, full-scale invasion is not the only other option. Non-violent revolution and peaceful regime change has happened before and it ought to be tried again.

My favorite example is that of Poland. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II conspired, in the 1980s, to assist the Polish Solidarity movement in its efforts to drive out that nation’s Soviet oppressors.

With financial, moral and logistical support from the "Troika" of anti-communists, Solidarity swept in and ran the Reds out of town. And Poland was the better for it – and the Polish government remembers. That’s one reason these days they’re begging us to install the missile defense system we’ve proposed, even if the Russians disapprove. They remember how “benevolent” the Russians were from 1939 to 1989.

The United States has no beef with most Iranians, nor with most North Koreans. Most world citizens have little interest in destroying Israel or launching an ICBM at any target in the same hemisphere as the United States. It’s the lunatic governments in those countries that we cannot afford to trust.

Also, it’s the normal folks in those countries that suffer the most under their current governments. And it’s those folks that have the most to gain by regime change.

The United States ought to have military contingencies for invasions of those, and all other threatening countries, contingencies that we hope we’ll never have to use. And right now, we ought to be employing clever, dedicated, tenacious plans to empower the liberty-hungry friends we have all over the world. We ought to be helping North Korean and Iranian citizens to throw out the bums that are oppressing them and threatening us.

In doing so, we would be bringing regime change without the bullets.

In defense of pre-emptive war

2009-04-05T22:43:00.006-05:00

Though President Bush seemed widely repudiated by the time he left office, much of what we see these days vindicates his biggest presidential decision: When he ordered the invasion of Iraq and the ouster of Saddam Hussein, he was right.

North Korea just launched a multi-stage, long-range missile in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions. In response, the UNSC took the decisive and bold action of calling a meeting. As of this publishing, it was unlikely that another resolution would be issued.

These are the "serious consequences" State Secretary Hillary Clinton warned North Korea about.

One day the North Korean government will launch such a missile, and it will be armed with a nuclear warhead. It will target Alaska, Hawaii, or one of our allies in the far east. If we are surprised when this happens, we are fools.

Iran is attempting to build nuclear weapons. The international community says "hey, you stop that! That's not nice!" Mahmoud Ahmadinejad laughs, says Israel is a stinking corpse, and goes back to his weapons manufacturing.

One day the tyrannical and fanatical Iranian government will have a nuclear missile. The only thing preventing that missile being launched at Israel will be our threat of retaliation. That worked with the atheist Soviet Union — is there anybody who thinks it will work with the Islamofascist, 77-virgins-waiting-for-me-after-I-destroy-the-infidel Ahmadinejad?

If we are surprised when that nuclear missile is launched, we are fools.

One might notice the conspicuous absence of one country from this discussion: Iraq. Saddam Hussein is not attempting to build nuclear weapons to use against us and our friends. Neither is the government in Iraq. This is not because he decided he loves peace and wanted to join the free peoples of the world. It's because he's dead. (This is not an accident.)

The crazies in North Korea and the fanatics in the Middle East are attempting to develop weapons of unimaginable danger. The only way to stop them, history has shown us, is to stop them by force. Clinton can threaten her "serious consequences" all she wants — she ought to remember that such tactics did not work for her husband. North Korea will see the world's ridiculous attempt to administer punishment through the U.N., and will only be emboldened.

Barack Obama can be cordial with the terrorist states of southwest Asia. He can send them candy, flowers and chocolate chip cookies. He can talk all he wants, and he can listen until Ahmadinejad is blue in the face. And Ahmadinejad will think he's weak for it, will continue to develop his nuclear weapons, and — as soon as he has them — will attack Israel in astounding and terrible ways.

Teddy Roosevelt suggested walking softly and carrying a big stick. But our leaders today don't get it: That stick only works if the other guy is afraid we might use it.

Baby steps towards statism

2009-04-01T13:54:00.004-05:00

Here's why government should never be the first entity turned to for financial assistance. (And why, when someone does turn to government for help, the rest of us should tell our congressmen to say "you're on your own.")

Legislators in eight states are championing bills to require welfare recipients to submit to random drug tests. It seems perfectly reasonable: I don't want my tax money to be transferred to somebody else because they're too high on meth to get a job and support themselves.

During the auto bailout bill debate, we heard Sen. Chris Dodd et al describing their conditions for lending billions to failing car companies. More tiny "green cars" (that nobody wants to buy) to save the world from global warming. Sell the corporate jet. Build vans to provide public transit. Never make a move without first submitting to a government-appointed (read "hack") car czar. It seems perfectly reasonable: I don't want my tax money going to a car company without the car companies having to answer for it.

Now President Obama has fired the CEO at General Motors, and the new "boss" there is an Obama puppet — he has to be, to save his own job.

Bonuses might be taxed at the morally indefensible rate of 90 percent if a company has received bailout money. And Rep. Barney Frank has expressed his desire to determine which employees at such companies are "productive" and to set their compensation accordingly. It seems perfectly reasonable: What a company does with its own money is the company's private business. What a company does with my money is not.

These attached strings seem small and are often perfectly reasonable. But sometimes they are entirely unreasonable. And even when they are reasonable, they do not go away when the need for short-term financial assistance ends. Actually, the need rarely ever ends, usually is expanded over time, envelops people and organizations unwittingly, and eventually saddles everyone with cumbersome — and sometimes worse — regulation.

Consider the minimum drinking age in the United States. Our Constitution does not give the federal government the authority to regulate alcohol distribution, so federal bureaucrats sidestep the founding fathers by tying the age limit to highway dollars. For a state to receive federal money for highways, that state must set a (also morally indefensible) minimum drinking age of 21 or higher. After a few years of this nonsense, every state in the union is addicted to federal highway money and will never risk giving it up. So while the Constitution explicitly denies the federal government the authority to set such a regulation, it sets it all the same — and states welcome that because the feds are "giving" the states money.

What happens when Congress says all people are government welfare recipients? We all drive on highways and most of us go to public schools. Do I, then, have to submit to random drug tests to prove I'm innocent? Does Wal-Mart have to run its hiring practices by President Obama, just because its customers drive on public roadways to get to the store? Based on what I've seen of government in the past, and during the first few months of the Obama Administration, I'd say the day is coming when some politicians will demand such steps.

Congress raises our taxes, pretends to "give it back" in various forms, then controls one more aspect of our life. Because how we spend taxpayer dollars is not a private matter — it's up to Congress to tell us how to do it.