Archive for 2012
March 20, 2012
ALEXIS GARCIA: The Obama Administration’s Crusade Against Voter ID Laws.
KEITH HENNESSEY: President Obama’s proposed medium-term deficits.
ANN ALTHOUSE TO TNR’s Jonathan Cohn: Bush v. Gore didn’t “change history” because Bush won all the recounts.
CBS NEWS: National Debt has increased more under Obama than under Bush. “The National Debt has now increased more during President Obama’s three years and two months in office than it did during 8 years of the George W. Bush presidency.”
WHO IS JOHN GALT? Apple says $60 billion will remain overseas until US tax law changes.
AVIK S.A. ROY: Liberals Are Wrong: Free Market Health Care Is Possible.
DO INTERRACIAL COUPLES have special political obligations?
YEAH, BUT WHO TAKES THREATS FROM JOHN KERRY SERIOUSLY? Dems Warn Of ‘Grave Damage’ To SCOTUS If ‘Obamacare’ Is Struck Down. Dudes, the old Court-packing scheme days are over. Congress polls so much lower than the Supreme Court nobody’s going to be scared by threats or predictions that overturning ObamaCare will hurt the Supreme Court. ObamaCare is overwhelmingly unpopular, just like Congress.
Meanwhile, Jennifer Rubin is savoring the hypocrisy:
But on this one, it’s the hypocrisy that is so stunning. On abortion, gay rights, extension of the Sixth Amendment to enemy combatants, and dozens of other hot-button issues, the left has gone to the courts, asking that it not be bound by the mere words of the Constitution. It’s the left that dreams up penembras, goes running for international law books, appeals to empathy and cites the collective consensus of evolving morals (or something; I can’t begin to make up stuff as shamelessly as non-textualists). If you think the left believes the courts should stay out of second-guessing the elected branches, spend a morning in an elite law school. You’ll hear how the courts can do all sorts of nifty things.
Which is why lefty attacks on the courts ultimately do their cause more harm than good. If, that is, anybody even listens.
ECO-FASCISTS don their jackboots.
MICKEY KAUS: WaPo on Grand Bargain: Obama Blew It. “Yikes. The offer in question included raising the Medicare age. In other words, Obama still endorses it. Hello? Republican attack ad artists? Here’s your 30-second hit: ‘Democrats want to eliminate Medicare for 65 year olds! And replace it with … Obamacare.’ You don’t even need the second sentence.”
March 19, 2012
WISCONSIN: Last year: Another attack on Althouse.
I would add that the biggest evidence of a European immigration problem is that European politicians have been afraid to take some actions for fear of rioting by noncitizen immigrants. When your foreign and domestic policy are hostage to people who aren’t your voters, you’ve got a problem.
Indeed.
HOW’S THAT “SMART DIPLOMACY” WORKIN’ OUT FOR YA? Russian Anti-Terror Troops Arrive in Syria.
OKAY, PEOPLE KEEP WRITING ME ABOUT THIS EXECUTIVE ORDER ON “NATURAL RESOURCES PREPAREDNESS.” It’s not some sort of new Obama power grab. Instead, it’s just an update of an old power grab.
It’s not that such powers are necessarily a good idea, but they’re not new. That reminds me of what I wrote back during the Bush Administration: “Some of the backlash against things that the Bush Administration has been doing probably stems from a lack of understanding of just how bad the law has always been in many areas, leading to a false impression that things represent shocking new departures from the Constitution when they really represent . . . er, . . well-settled departures from the Constitution. Search, seizure, and privacy law, of course, was already seriously damaged by the Drug War long before Bush ever took office, something that tends to be forgotten in discussions of FISA or the Patriot Act. But it goes beyond that sort of thing. Sweeping Executive authority, for example, is nothing new.”
Follow the link for the horrifying story of U.S. v. Spawr Optical, where a felony conviction resulted from violating an expired statute because that statute’s provisions had been continued by Executive Order. An order emanating from President Gerald Ford. Excessive Presidential power is nothing new. I’m not sure I buy Jack Goldsmith’s thesis that presidents today are actually more limited in their authority than they used to be — though I’m not sure it’s wrong, either — but these kinds of orders are not evidence of a new form of tyranny. Maybe an old one, though.
TINA KORBE: The Ragged Return of Occupy. The Republicans hope they’ll stay until November.
Kinda like the whole “war against women” schtick, the Dems thought they were going to get mileage out of this, but now it’s the Republicans who keep bringing it up over and over.
VOX DAY TO PEGGY NOONAN: You don’t understand my generation at all.
Related: Charles Murray’s one-sided shaming. Seems there’s lots of anti-Boomer pushback from the Pickup Artist community.
HEADS SHOULD BE ROLLING: New documents: ATF had “Fast & Furious” prime suspect in custody in 2010 — and let him go.
And the ATF should be abolished.
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: I hope it’s OK I just proposed on Facebook.
SILENCING TINNITUS by retuning the brain.
AT AMAZON, it’s the Home Improvement Value Center.
SHOULD YOU TRADE IN YOUR IPAD 2 FOR A NEW ONE? I looked at an iPad3 and while the display was prettier than the one on my iPad2, the difference wasn’t so striking that I couldn’t live without it. I also noticed that it seemed to run considerably hotter. But as the article notes, Apple will give you a trade-in credit on your old iPad if you can’t resist.
Also, as the article notes, Amazon is taking trade-ins, too and offers more than Apple.
UPDATE: Roger Simon emails: “Got one for PJTV (we’ve ordered 3 in all) and the shooting video quality is quite extraordinary and considerably better than the 2. We will be testing out to see if we can use for streaming. It would be amazing if this relatively cheap device can do virtually same thing as our live stream backpack was doing.”