Here’s some legislation that’s long overdue. It may take another election to make it into law, though. It would be a big civil-rights breakthrough.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
Obama’s Quiver
…is empty.
It always was — it just took this long for people to figure it out.
The New York Post Headline
Elizabeth Scalia is disappointed, and offers some better alternatives.
Won’t Get Fooled Again
Stanley Kurtz explains why yesterday’s New York election is so devastating to the Democrats’ hopes for next year:
Koch stands for those traditionalist Democrats who enthusiastically supported Barack Obama in 2008, sincerely believing his claim to be a post-partisan pragmatist and friend of Israel. These are the Democrats who discounted warnings based on Obama’s radical past, and put faith in his smooth assurances. Now that the mask has slipped, it will be tough to get it back on.
He’s lost them, and he’s not going to get them back. They may not necessarily support the Republican, but they’re not going to be sending any money to Obama, and they’re not going to work to reelect him.
Campus Lunacy In Flagstaff
Students at Northern Arizona University had the police called on them by the administration for handing out American flags to commemorate 911:
The first administrator was followed by another administrator, who told the students that the university could use “time, place and manner” rules to determine that they were not allowed to pass out flags there without a permit. This administrator was followed by yet another administrator who claimed that the First Amendment meant “free speech in a designated time, place, and manner.”
That’s a reading of the First Amendment that only a bureaucrat could love. The Supreme Court has indeed determined that the government may enforce time, place and manner restrictions on expression, but these restrictions must be reasonable, content-neutral, narrowly tailored to serve a significant government interest and must leave open ample alternative means of communication. So when the expression consists of a couple of people handing out flags while standing against the wall of a large room, one wonders what “governmental interest” is involved in telling students they can’t do so.
The fourth administrator to confront the students repeated “time, place and manner” four times when the students challenged her on how the university could stop its own students from standing around and passing out flags. After that, NAU called the cops. A police officer (who looked like she’d rather be somewhere else) came and took the names of the two remaining participants, saying that it wasn’t a legal matter but a university code of conduct matter.
Until Monday evening, when NAU most likely realized how bad punishing people for this was going to look, the students faced charges of “failure to comply with a university official” and “interfering with university activities.” The first charge only made sense if “Hey, you two, stop passing out flags to commemorate 9/11” is the sort of order you think university officials should be giving, while the second only made sense if “not observing the anniversary of 9/11” counts as a university activity.
These are the people who should be first to go when the bubble pops.
Jenny McCarthyism
I agree with Adam Keiper and Yuval Levin that Michele Bachmann jumped the shark with her ignorant comments about Gardasil. I usually don’t care that much about Democrat whining about Republicans being “anti-science,” particularly when they are themselves, and in much more politically destructive ways, but she has to be held to account for this nonsense.
Desperation
Who are you going to believe, Attackwatch, or your lying eyes?
[Update a while later]
Here’s the commercial for it. Hilarious.
[Update]
More from the Hawk:
“I actually sympathize with #AttackWatch. They remind me of the time I got my head wedged in a bowling ball return chute.”
[Update mid morning]
The Hill has a story on it.
[Afternoon update]
Well, that didn’t take long. Go get your Attack Watch tee shirt.
The Fake War
…on unemployment. Even Robert Reich thinks the president isn’t serious:
Reich is still confused, though:
If the president was never really serious about getting Republican votes in the first place–if his jobs bill and the tax increase on the wealthy were always going to be part of his 2012 election year pitch–why didn’t he make his jobs bill big enough to do the job?
Let’s accept for the sake of argument the creationist premise that an omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent government can create all the jobs it wants simply by borrowing and spending enough money. Let’s also assume Reich’s premise that “enough,” in this case, is some figure considerably in excess of $447 billion.
Why didn’t Obama ask for enough? That seems obvious. If the answer is “no,” and the point of asking the question is to elicit a negative response, then the practical difference between what you get if you ask for $447 billion and, say, $5 trillion is not $4.553 trillion but zero. If Obama is asking for the money only for appearance’ sake, as Reich concedes he is, then it’s more important that $447 billion appears more reasonable than $5 trillion.
Either way, Megan McArdle wishes “that Obama hadn’t wasted my Thursday evening, and that of 31 million other Americans, listening to a jobs plan that was only designed to produce one job–a second term for Barack Obama.” Most of those viewers–those of us who write about this stuff for a living being obvious exceptions–didn’t actually have to watch the speech, so we’re not able to work up much sympathy for those who didn’t have the good sense to change the channel or go out and live a little.
But let’s take this by the numbers. Obama’s speech lasted about 42 minutes. Multiply that by 31 million viewers and, say, $20 an hour, and you end up with the man-hour equivalent of about $434 million. It’s a shameful waste, but much less of one than if Stimulus Jr. actually became law.
No danger of that, fortunately. The neo-Keynesians have finally completely destroyed whatever credibility they ever had.
“Strategic Misrepresentation”
I have some thoughts on cost overruns on federal transportation projects, including space transportation, over at Open Market.
The Coming Ugliness In Egypt
…is it the end game? This will be a horrific human catastrophe, the result of decades of malgovernment. If the generals abandon their peace treaty and pick a fight with Israel, it should take the opportunity to expand its territory and buy more border security.