Kudos to the Associated Press

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

This from our good friends at Reason TV.

Buckle up or go to prison

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

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?

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)

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

May we meet again, on the other side.

A parting shot (and a remembrance)

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

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?

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

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

We should spend more effort on winning in Afghanistan.

Here are a couple of pretty good thoughts.

They think Americans are idiots

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)

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

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

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.