MISTER, WE COULD USE SOME MEN LIKE GROVER CLEVELAND AGAIN. “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should I think be steadfastly resisted to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the government the government should not support the people.”
Archive for 2009
September 6, 2009
HOW DEMOCRACIES PERISH.
MARK HEMINGWAY ON THE VAN JONES STORY: “Remember Chas Freeman? This is actually the second time an Obama appointee has been sunk due to a protracted controversy over past statements and the NYT didn’t write a single word about the controversy until after the fact.”
UPDATE: Well, according to Politico, Van Jones was pretty well connected: “Jones has deep ties to the current liberal elite: He was a top aide to Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington’s 2003 campaign for governor of California, and Sunday won praise from, among others, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean.” So it makes sense they’d keep mum. Some news isn’t fit to print.
AT AMAZON, a Labor Day kitchen sale.
KEITH ELLISON: Public option is path to single payer.
EUGENE VOLOKH: “Others have pointed out that having offices called ‘czars’ is an odd naming choice for a democracy. But czars weren’t just authoritarians. They were ultimately authoritarians who left their country far poorer than their more democratic counterparts, lost a world war, and of course paved the way for an even worse system of government. The label ‘czar’ thus doesn’t historically connect to a model of strongman effectiveness — it connects to a model of strongman failure.”
TOM MAGUIRE ON THE VAN JONES RESIGNATION: “The controversy has escalated for weeks, and his resignation finally forced the Times to cover it. Folks living in the Times bubble are possibly becoming accustomed to these moments of whiplash – the Times’ first coverage of the Eason Jordan [scandal] at CNN also came with his resignation.”
UPDATE: Vetting mysteries unsolved.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Vetting mysteries explained.
MITCH POTTER: How Barack Obama Lost His Mojo.
THE TROUBLING FUTURE of “brain puppetry.”
CAR LUST: Remembering the Caprice Classic. “Sure, the 1991 Caprice inspires a vague sense of nausea in most people, but I love it.”
“Where do you find in the Constitution any authority to give away the public money in charity?”
That question was asked not of President Obama nor of Sen. Max Baucus or Rep. Nancy Pelosi, but of the less well-known Tennessee congressman, David Crockett. . . . But back to our story, which comes from an 1884 biography, “The Life of Colonel David Crockett” by Edward S. Ellis, it is instructive to note the puzzlement of Rep. Crockett when he was challenged by his constituent Horatio Bunce while out stumping for votes. Bunce told Crockett in no uncertain terms that he could not vote for him again.
“You gave a vote last winter which shows that either you have not capacity to understand the Constitution, or that you are wanting in the honesty and firmness to be guided by it. In either case you are not the man to represent me,” Bunce said in the story, as allegedly recounted by Crockett.
By today’s mainstream-media standards, Bunce would clearly be known as a right-wing extremist, and if he expressed his concerns at a town-hall meeting this summer he would have been labeled “un-American.”
Even Crockett, before finding out what was on Bunce’s mind, said, “I had been making up my mind that he was one of those churlish fellows who care for nobody but themselves, and take bluntness for independence.”
But that was before the Tennessee farmer had asked his devastating question, which Crockett described colorfully as a ‘sockdologer!” which roughly translated means a comment that could set a person to thinking.
Read the whole thing. More sockdologers, please. We clearly aren’t seeing enough thinking from Congress.
IN CALIFORNIA, a funeral for ObamaCare.
INFANTS TO BE OFFERED places at Fat Camp.
LET MY PEOPLE GO-GO.
WHY NEWSPAPERS ARE going broke.
BEST USE OF A $20 BILL at a Town Hall meeting.
THANKS TO FACEBOOK, I found that a friend of mine from college is running a tutoring service in Chicago. The nicest thing about Facebook — to me at least — is the way it’s let me catch up with people I’d lost touch with entirely.
GUITAR LESSONS from Col. Bruce Hampton.
PRIORITIES: “What with the steep decline in contributions to charities such as food banks, imagine how relieved I was to learn that public radio stations are raising money in record amounts.” The upper-middle-class gives to itself.
SEX AND THE city of the future. “Tokyo, let us remember, is still by far the largest, the richest and the most complex city the human race has ever devised. And it’s by far the most perverse, the most erotically intricate. Is this a coincidence? I think not.”
SCIENCE FICTION’S MOST BEAUTIFUL STARS: 1933-2008.
Plus, those hot Vulcan women.
MICHAEL YON posts another dispatch from Afghanistan.