…in the Supreme Court. The issue here isn’t constitutionality per se, but severability. As it says, the Department of Justice (particularly one as corrupt and incompetent as this one) has its work cut out.
Disquieting Heroic Fantasies
Thoughts on Barack Obama’s delusions about himself:
I have written before about Obama’s deep, almost desperate, need to portray himself as the opposite of what he is, to conceive of himself in a way that is at odds with reality. We have seen it in all sorts of areas, including claiming himself to be a voice of civility, portraying himself as a champion of bi-partisanship, lecturing others about profligate spending, and saying he is the only responsible “adult” in Washington. Now we see this habit in a new arena – this time, the president as Obama the Stoic, a man so committed to “pressing on” for the cause of social justice he just doesn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. Indeed, he has now decided to sermonize to others not to complain, not to grumble, and to “stop crying.”
This is akin to John Edwards hosting a weekend seminar on the importance of marital fidelity.
The question is: does he believe it himself, or is he just trying to fool us? Either way it is, as he says, disquieting.
Light Blogging
I’m going down to Long Beach to the AIAA space conference, and probably won’t take a laptop. I may post something or tweet from my phone, but probably not a lot.
Going After The Space Pork
The Tea Party in Space praises Tom McClintock’s effort to shutdown the congressional SLS porkfest.
Mike Griffin’s Chicanery
…exposed.
Grasshopper
I asked Elon if he could discuss it on the record. His response: “Sorry, but SpaceX is not commenting on Grasshopper at this time, except to say that it is part of a reusability strategy that I’ve had in mind for a long time.”
That fits in with everything else I’ve ever heard (and his adamance that he was going to recover the first stage when I asked him after the first flight). But that doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be a lot more to it, of course,
A Bumper Sticker
“Cain Versus Not Able.” Plus if people don’t vote for Cain they’ll be twice as racist, because he’s at least twice as black as Obama.
Roach Motels
Joe Wilson (gotta love him) comes up with a great metaphor for states that aren’t right to work. Hope Michigan is paying attention.
Only Now In Doubt?
Obama’s reelection has been in doubt since his first election:
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: yes, Obama beat McCain in 2008. Which is to say, Obama beat a Republican candidate who was too tired to fight, too slow to realize that his signature issue (national security) was temporarily downgraded, and too inflexible to switch gears away from the campaign that McCain expected to run against Hillary Clinton; and Obama did this in the atmosphere of a sudden collapse in the economy, at the worst possible moment for the GOP. Congratulations. Huzzah. Feel the magic – but since then? Well, let’s just say that the magic had a very, very short half-life…
It never existed, for me. Many others have seen through the charade as well, now.
Tom Friedman’s Latest Book
Andrew Ferguson reviews it:
The slovenliness of our language, George Orwell wrote, makes it easier to have foolish thoughts, and while Mr. Friedman’s language has been tidied up a bit, the thinking remains what it has always been. The authors call themselves “frustrated optimists.” Their frustration is owing to the depredations of the last decade, which they call (Mr. Mandelbaum nods) the Terrible Twos. But self-contradiction is also part of the Friedman brand. In many other passages, the authors specifically trace the American slide to the end of the Cold War—though still elsewhere they remark that the 1990s were “positive for America.” It doesn’t help their argument, such as it is, that the evidence of decline they cite—crumbling infrastructure, a failing public-education system—predates both 2001 and 1989 by a long stretch. Our potholes and schools have been favorites of declinists for generations.
If the authors’ frustration is unoriginal and ill-defined, their optimism is terrifying. America will rebound—we will become the us that we used to be again, you might say and Mr. Friedman does—when we regain our ability to do “big things” through “collective action.” Collective action is a phrase that means “the federal government.” Among the big things that we will do are rework American industry, through regulation and taxation, to drastically cut carbon emissions. Another one of our big things is a big increase in the gasoline tax. We will also impose on us a new big carbon tax. We will use revenues to create a “clean energy” industry with millions of “green jobs” like the ones that were eliminated earlier this month at Solyndra. Readers will wonder, like the early environmentalist Tonto, “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe?”
Go read the whole thing. You know you want to.