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Archive for 2013
October 10, 2013
LET’S HOPE THIS PANS OUT: Alzheimer’s treatment breakthrough: British scientists pave way for simple pill to cure disease.
JOE PAPPALARDO: Defense: 3 Reasons Why the Pivot to the Pacific is Not Dead.
SPYING: “The thing that the government most wanted us to remove was the names of the nine companies. The argument, roughly speaking, was that we will lose cooperation from companies if you expose them in this way.”
All is proceeding as I have foreseen.
SOME CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, FROM NICK ROSENKRANZ: James Madison Anticipates the Possibility of Government Shutdown–and Predicts that the House of Representatives Can and Should Prevail.
SHUT UP, YOU TERRORIST HOSTAGE-TAKER! Obama Not Practicing What He’s Preached On Civility.
IN THE MAIL: From Jordan Leah Hunter, The Erl King’s Children.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 154. Lots of material today, and again, Paul Caron deserves thanks for his tireless efforts in compiling this stuff every day.
SINCE SHIRLEY SHERROD IS GOING AFTER ANDREW BREITBART’S WIDOW, HERE’S A PIGFORD ROUNDUP:
‘Breitbart is smiling’: NYT vindicates Andrew Breitbart with major story on Pigford scandal.
New York Times: Farm Loan Bias Claims, Often Unsupported, Cost U.S. Millions.
CHANGE: Sex Selective Abortion Gains Ground in the West.
Two startling stories about sex selective abortion in the West hit papers this week. First is one about Dr. Mark Hobart, an Australian doctor who is under investigation for refusing to preform a sex selective abortion and then failing to refer the couple seeking the abortion to another doctor. Dr. Hobart could lose his job or even his medical license. The investigation has apparently been going on for five months now, but it has just started to generate more media and political attention, with an MP recently speaking out on his behalf.
There are circumstances that mitigate the importance of this case in civilizational terms: Dr. Hobart is receiving a lot of support from the public, and the investigation itself may have been politically motivated. Moreover, the couple originally seeking the abortion was Indian, so the whole incident may say more about cultural norms in that country than in the West.
But when viewed in conjunction with the news out of Britain, the picture begins to look more troubling. In recent weeks, the British government has decided not to prosecute two doctors who were caught on tape agreeing to arrange sex-selective abortions. One defense the government has offered of its position is that it would be impossible to determine if the abortions were preformed solely for gender reasons, or if, in addition to the gender reasons, there were also other health factors involved.
What could go wrong?
HOPEY-CHANGEY: U.S. Adds Two Times More Debt than Economic Output in Last 2 Years. Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
FREE SHIPPING, PLUS UNLIMITED TV AND MOVIE STREAMING, with a 30-day free trial of Amazon Prime.
Also, it’s the Fall Rugs Rollout.
And, today only: On sale: “Deadwood: The Complete Series” on DVD and Blu-ray.
DANA LOESCH moving to Glenn Beck’s network. The guy has an eye for talent.
SLATE BURSTS A BUBBLE: Sorry Liberals, The Koch Brothers Aren’t Behind The Government Shutdown. Of course not. If they were, it would be handled competently.
HOPEY-CHANGEY: How Federal Workers Became Obama’s Private Army. “Seventy-four years later, the civil-service system has been exposed as a failure – at least in this administration. Instead of an independent workforce of professionals who implement federal regulation in an even-handed and competent manner, we have returned to the era of partisan retribution and politically-motivated malevolence. . . . It’s part of a disturbing pattern emerging in the second term of Barack Obama. When law enforcement and tax enforcement become rankly political, Americans can no longer trust in their federal government, even when it’s not shut down – and that won’t stop after Obama leaves office, either. We are getting a clear lesson on the risks of larger government and regulatory overreach, and those risks go far beyond incompetence.” It’s also disturbing how little pushback there has been from the supposedly nonpartisan civil service — which, of course, is composed overwhelmingly of Democrats.
As I’ve suggested before, a return to the “spoils system” would be more honest — and politicians might be less willing to grant so much power to the government if they knew that sooner or later it would be in the hands of their political enemies. It would also mean, of course, that a government job would no longer be a lifelong proposition — but that might not be a bug, but a feature, too.
GOVERNMENT IS JUST A WORD FOR THE THINGS WE DO TOGETHER. LIKE THIS: ‘Our veterans deserve a clean lawn’: Shutdown-busting gardener tells how he was ordered off Lincoln Memorial by ‘bully robocops.’ Your tax dollars at work, doing shutdown theater. We need the names of these officers publicized. They may not like doing this stuff, but that’s no reason to give them a pass. And frankly, too many of them seem to be enjoying a chance to throw their weight around.
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE (CONT’D): Smoking gun exposed–D.C. police chief covers up giving Feinstein illegal ‘assault weapons.’ “Washington Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier seems to think that gun-control laws don’t apply to the liberal elite. The police chief helped Sen. Dianne Feinstein acquire ‘assault weapons,’ which are illegal to possess in the District, for a news conference early this year to promote a ban on these firearms, then tried to cover up the police involvement. Now, a response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request reveals Chief Lanier’s shocking willingness to bend the rules for partisan and ideological purposes.” David Gregory will be all over this story, I’m sure.
HEALTHCARE.GOV NOT ONLY THE WORLD’S WORST WEBSITE, it’s also the world’s most expensive, with a price tag of $634,320,919. Somebody look up the folks at CGI Federal, which got the money, and see what their connections to the Administration are. . . .
JAMES TARANTO: Let’s Get Cynical: Why should we trust the government–especially now?
“An old friend who has been active in politics for more than 30 years tells me he’s giving up,” claims Robert Reich in a Puffington Host post: ” ‘I can’t stomach what’s going on in Washington anymore,’ he says. ‘The hell with all of them. I have better things to do with my life.’ ”
Reich is a proven fabulist, so one has to assume any story he tells is a tall tale. But we’re interested in the supposed moral of the parable of Reich’s Disgusted Imaginary Friend: “My friend is falling exactly into the trap that the extreme right wants all of us to fall into–such disgust and cynicism that we all give up on politics.” The “Tea Bag Republicans,” as the homophobic Reich calls them, “want to sow even greater cynicism about the capacity of government to do much of anything.”
In reality, nobody is more disgusted or cynical about government than Tea Party activists themselves–and they have much to be cynical about. The Washington Examiner reports that TeaParty.net “has finally received its tax-exempt status after a three-year delay” caused by the repurposing of the Internal Revenue Service into a political operation aimed at suppressing opposition to Barack Obama’s re-election campaign . . . .
Ronald Reagan was the last president who had a basic skepticism of Big Government, but Barack Obama may end up having done more than any of his predecessors to promote that feeling among the public.
Reminder: In 2009, President Obama “joked” about having the IRS audit his enemies.
OBAMA’S LIBYA POLICY NOT WORKING OUT ESPECIALLY WELL.