LOOKING AT POLITICAL DEBATES’ SORDID, CANDY-CROWLEY-SOAKED HISTORY, John Fund concludes that the GOP is right to take control of its debates. Should’ve done it years ago.
Archive for 2013
August 16, 2013
MICKEY KAUS: Corporatism or a Border? Your call! “Here’s my plan: Stop importing unskilled immigrants until labor markets tighten and wages rise as employers compete for harder-to-get workers. Then admit immigrants only to the extent it won’t deny workers at the bottom reasonable wage increases.”
BYRON YORK: Fractured GOP Struggles To Exploit Obama’s Weakness. Well, don’t nominate someone in 2016 who doesn’t excite the base. That’s been tried twice, with disastrous results.
ED DRISCOLL IS ENJOYING the Blue-On-Blue Missouri Rodeo Action.
JAMES TARANTO: Queen Hillary? Political rent-seeking and her expected coronation.
What intrigues us is the way in which laws restricting political speech–in the areas of both campaign finance and taxation–are vital to, as Firestone puts it, “Ms. Clinton’s political future.”
We noted Tuesday that Mrs. Clinton is using her sinecure at the Clinton Foundation–a charity that is fully tax-exempt under Section 501(c)(3) of the tax code–as a “formal apparatus” to prepare for a prospective campaign for president in 2016. Yesterday’s Times features a lengthy investigative report on the foundation. . . .
Difficult it no doubt is. It would be insurmountable if the Clintons (Bill in particular) lacked the star power that makes raising a $250 million endowment a feasible goal. That kind of money will enable the Clintons to buy the legal expertise to make sure everything they do complies with the letter of the law–no matter how shady it may seem to use a 501(c)(3) charity as a political vehicle. . . .
On Tuesday we asked if the Internal Revenue Service would investigate the Clinton Foundation for evidently acting as a front group for a political campaign. The question was facetious; as we wrote, the Obama IRS only goes after little guys.
The biggest problem with the IRS scandal, of course, is that it involved viewpoint discrimination: Conservative groups were at far greater risk than liberal ones of intrusive scrutiny. That is why one cannot rule out the possibility that the 2012 election was stolen on Obama’s behalf.
Democrats have tried to wave this problem away by pointing to a handful of unlucky lefties that got caught in the net. The scandal would be less severe if the IRS had in fact been evenhanded in its persecution of small political groups. But it would still have been a problem for American democracy, and the Clinton Foundation story shows why.
Read the whole thing.
THE HILL: Officials add millions of dollars to ObamaCare enrollment drive.
Related: Administration awards $67M to ‘navigators’ promoting ObamaCare.
Also: Issa Threatens To Subpoena Treasury Records On ObamaCare. “Issa believes Treasury and the IRS are illegally implementing the law’s insurance subsidies.”
ASHLEY MCGUIRE: The Stroller Ban: Are Cities Anti-Kids?
DELEVERAGING: Total US Household Debt at Lowest Level in Seven Years. This is generally good news — though I suppose a reluctance to carry debt doesn’t bespeak great confidence. But since I think most people, even seven years ago, were carrying too much debt, it’s an improvement.
Except for this: “There’s still a lot of work to do, especially when it comes to student loans. As long as a college education remains both essential to securing a good job and increasingly expensive, student loans will continue to burden households.” The current student-loan system is immoral and needs to be fix. And, by the way, a bailout isn’t a fix.
THE NEW REPUBLIC: Obama Trips Over Himself Again on Egypt. Must be more of that “smart diplomacy” we were promised.
August 15, 2013
JOURNALISM: Ex-WaPo ombud’s advice to Jeff Bezos: Crush dissent. “See, it’s not that Pexton doesn’t like her conservative views, whatever those might be. It’s that she says silly right-wing things! She doesn’t have the depth and readability of, say, Ezra Klein or Greg Sargent or the rest of the WaPo staffers who Pexton happens to agree with politically.”
FROM XENI JARDIN AT BOINGBOING, a roundup on the new NSA scandal.
Related: Remember when Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers? He was wrong. Wrong, lying, whatever.
Plus: “So the NSA has, in fact, been ‘listening in on people’s phone calls.’ . . . The NSA can — and, apparently, did — hide misconduct from the court that’s supposedly supervising its activities.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Pictures Do Lie.
AT AMAZON, Warehouse Deals in Outdoors & Camping.
Also, 30% off on telescopes.
MICHAEL WALSH: The Two-Front War.
Related: A Republic, If We Can Keep It.
ROGER KIMBALL: Three Weapons To Win The Culture War.
TRUST YOUR LEADERS (CONT’D): Holder and FBI admit lying about data released before election last year.
SARAH HOYT: I am Spartacus. “I am Spartacus because for all too long I stayed quiet. I stayed quiet because baby needed shoes (often literally) and I needed work in a biased field that would blacklist me as soon as they knew my true self. . . . I am no longer quiet.”
PAULINE MAIER HAS DIED.
I highly recommend her From Resistance To Revolution, which offers a fascinating look at the Framing-era’s nuanced response to worries about tyranny, against a background of Anglo-American traditions in “out of doors” political activity.
AT AMAZON, bestsellers in Home & Kitchen.
HARDWARE: Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in the dying brain. “High-frequency neurophysiological activity in the near-death state exceeded levels found during the conscious waking state. These data demonstrate that the mammalian brain can, albeit paradoxically, generate neural correlates of heightened conscious processing at near-death.” Uploading a backup to the cloud.
USA TODAY: Egypt’s Christians under attack.
TRUST YOUR LEADERS: NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds.
The National Security Agency has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times each year since Congress granted the agency broad new powers in 2008, according to an internal audit and other top-secret documents.
Most of the infractions involve unauthorized surveillance of Americans or foreign intelligence targets in the United States, both of which are restricted by law and executive order. They range from significant violations of law to typographical errors that resulted in unintended interception of U.S. e-mails and telephone calls.
The documents, provided earlier this summer to The Washington Post by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, include a level of detail and analysis that is not routinely shared with Congress or the special court that oversees surveillance. In one of the documents, agency personnel are instructed to remove details and substitute more generic language in reports to the Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
In one instance, the NSA decided that it need not report the unintended surveillance of Americans. A notable example in 2008 was the interception of a “large number” of calls placed from Washington when a programming error confused U.S. area code 202 for 20, the international dialing code for Egypt, according to a “quality assurance” review that was not distributed to the NSA’s oversight staff.
In another case, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has authority over some NSA operations, did not learn about a new collection method until it had been in operation for many months. The court ruled it unconstitutional.
Read the whole thing. Believe it or not, it gets worse. Related: Court: Ability to police U.S. spying program limited. “The court’s description of its practical limitations contrasts with repeated assurances from the Obama administration and intelligence agency leaders that the court provides central checks and balances on the government’s broad spying efforts. They have said that Americans should feel comfortable that the secret intelligence court provides robust oversight of government surveillance and protects their privacy from rogue intrusions.”
“SMART DIPLOMACY:” It’s Official: Obama Has Surpassed Jimmy Carter.
DISCRIMINATORY ILLEGAL PROFILING: NYC Hotel Kicks Out ‘Duck Dynasty’ Star After Confusing Him For Homeless Man.