Freedom Line Blog

Last week, I wrote in my column that “So far, consensus around the FAA’s thinking indicates that domestic drones would not be approved to fly with weapons.”

That was in reference to the Federal Aviation Administration’s announcement that it will ease restrictions on civilian use of unmanned drones for use in surveillance and research.  The institutions most interested in using drones are law enforcement entities ranging from the FBI to local police departments.

Now, consider this:

Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in Texas told The Daily that his department is considering using rubber bullets and tear gas on its drone.

“Those are things that law enforcement utilizes day in and day out and in certain situations it might be advantageous to have this type of system on the UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle),” McDaniel told The Daily.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer was criticized last week for saying, “I don’t want regulations, I don’t want restrictions, I want a ban on this.”  Call it a slippery slope or inevitable logic, but Krauthammer’s instinct was right.  Regulations and restrictions open the door for interpretations like the Texas sheriff’s office; i.e. that a drone – apparently unlike a police cruiser or helicopter – is a physical extension of a cop and should be equipped with rubber bullets and tear gas.  If this is allowed, there is no logical reason to prohibit other more lethal devices.

In his comments, Krauthammer said that “the first guy who uses a Second Amendment weapon to bring a drone down that’s been hovering over his house is going to be a folk hero in this country.”

Not if the drone shoots him first.

I think we can all agree that this is probably the death rattle of American liberty. From the Washington Examiner:

President Obama’s eco-friendly EPA inked a green partnership deal with high-octane NASCAR Monday to promote recycling and environmentally-friendly products to the sport’s millions of fans.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, NASCAR will encourage fans to buy “sustainable concessions” at races, expand the use of “safer chemical products,” conserve water, reduce waste, promote recycling, push products approved by the EPA that have a small enviro footprint and encourage suppliers to get an “E3 tuneup” aimed at promoting sustainable manufacturing.

Yes, you read that right: NASCAR. Civic religion of the red states. Featuring cars that reach speeds around 200 MPH, with fuel economies as low as two miles per gallon.

We’ve gone ’round the bend, ladies and gentlemen. All we can hope is that someday this will be included in the chronicles of the last, delusional days of the Obama Administration.

CFIF’s Quin Hillyer discusses America’s debt crisis on CBN News.

One of the great triumphs of the federal welfare reform legislation passed in the mid-1990s was an insistence that states lay down tough work requirements for welfare recipients as a condition of receiving federal assistance. Though the fact is little publicized, however, another provision of the law allows states to substitute increased welfare spending for the work requirements and still receive money from Washington. That, of course, is an invitation to mischief, as reported by CNSnews, quoting Congressman Geoff Davis

“Many States have scoured their budgets to find other current program spending–such as for Pre-K, child care, and after school programs–they could report as TANF [welfare] spending,” Davis said at a hearing on Thursday. ”Others began counting third-party spending–such as assistance offered by food banks and Boys and Girls clubs–as TANF spending.  One State even apparently found a way to count the value of volunteer hours by Girl Scout troop leaders as State TANF ’spending.’

This is, by the way, all entirely legal under the law as written.

This is a worthwhile reminder: even legislation as noble as federal welfare reform is only as strong as those charged with carrying it out. The right laws are deeply important. But so are the right lawmakers.

In light of my earlier post just below on Obama’s assault on religious liberty and the American Way (along with on truth and justice!), Monica Crowley also has a terrific column on the subject. Here’s how it starts:

Team Obama has always acted like the Chicago mafia operation that it is: they intimidate, arm-twist, threaten, and punish just like an organized crime syndicate. When it comes to rolling like gangsters, the Clintons were pikers compared to Team Obama.

A few months ago, they bullied the Catholic Church and other religious organizations by mandating that they provide insurance coverage for birth control, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs—in violation of their most deeply held beliefs and of religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.

Thugocracy reigns… but, one can hope, not for long. The courts can still rein it in.

With today’s filing of lawsuits (against ObamaCare’s abortifacient mandate) in 12 federal districts by 40 different Catholic organizations, the issue is now squarely at hand: Are Americans allowed free consciences and free exercise of religion, or not? The Obama administration, its tyrannical impulses(and fundamental lawlessness alien to the American tradition) now available for all to see, says no. These 40 Catholic entitities — supported even before their suits by statements of support from many other denominations — say yes, we are free people with free consciences and the right to freely exercise our religion.

At NRO today, the great George Weigel explains it all better than I’ve seen anywhere else:

As the battle continues, it will be important, amidst the litigators’ argument and the administration’s attempts to reply, to remember that what is at stake here is nothing less than the future of civil society in the United States.

A victory in the lawsuits filed against the administration’s mandate will be more than a victory for religious freedom, important as that will be. It will be a victory in defense of the social architecture of American democracy. Government is not the only custodian of the common good. The institutions of civil society bear a significant and irreducible responsibility for the common good, a responsibility they must be able to fulfill freely, without unwarranted interference from an overweening state that is ignorant of the limits of its legitimate reach.

Hear, hear.

Military historian Victor Davis Hanson trots out an underappreciated statistic that should give European opponents of Germany’s austerity measures a reason to reflect:

There is one general rule about the history of the modern state of Germany since its inception in 1871: Anytime Germany has been both unified and isolated, armed conflict has followed.

The Greeks can’t form a government to implement Germany’s austerity measures, and are rioting rather than reforming.  Spain is teetering on the edge of a shredded social contract where more than 40% of young adults can’t find work.  France just elected a Socialist president who claims that “My real enemy is the world of finance.”

And there sits Germany with the most money on the Continent, vilified for insisting on the same frugality from its debtors.

While it’s almost impossible to think that Germany would resort to military force to press its claims, it is within the realm of possibility to see it pulling back from the European Union in a way that cuts its losses and leaves the big spending countries to defaults and devaluations.

If that happens, expect to hear at least a few Europeans wishing Germany had just annexed their country.  At least then they would be a part of a more stable economy.

And yes, it is right here in these United States. George Will’s column is a must-read for anybody who cares about liberty. This is sickening stuff we are seeing, and most Americans keep marching toward the executioner.

Writing about a motel owned by one Russ Caswell, a law-abiding citizen, here’s Will:

The U.S. Department of Justice intends to seize it, sell it for perhaps $1.5 million and give up to 80 percent of that to the Tewksbury Police Department, whose budget is just $5.5 million. The Caswells have not been charged with, let alone convicted of, a crime. They are being persecuted by two governments eager to profit from what is antiseptically called the “equitable sharing” of the fruits of civil forfeiture, a process of government enrichment that often is indistinguishable from robbery.

Scary stuff. The government increasingly has become evil.

When asked by the Washington Examiner about the policy choices facing American voters this election, Paul Ryan painted a picture of stark contrasts, beginning with the Obama Administration’s high-tax, high-spending approach:

“Those kinds of packages won’t succeed in preventing a debt crisis. We’ll pass one round of austerity, that won’t work, then the bond markets will get us, then we’ll do another round and another round, just like what Europe is going through now. We will have chosen to go on the path to decline and we’ll have a lost decade,” Ryan explained. “We see the president and his party are basically practicing lost decade economics,” he finished.

Moving to the Republican alternative, Ryan explained, “We think we have one more great chance, if the elections go the right way, to turn this thing around once and for all. And address it, the right way, up front. With real entitlement reform, restructuring these programs. Real tax reform to get back to growth. We want growth we want opportunity, we want reform, so that we fix this the American way.”

In terms of jobs and economic opportunity, it certainly has been a lost half-decade under President Obama.  Doubling down on more of the same for another presidential term would likely consign an entire generation of workers to a lifetime earnings amount much lower than their parents.

President Obama may be willing to tolerate being the first leader to see a generation of kids live below their parents’ standard of living since World War II.  (What else explains his campaign’s “Life of Julia” foolishness?)  However, my suspicion is that a majority of voters are not interested in either Lost Decade Economics or much less a lost generation of opportunity.

Good sound bites convey truth in a memorable way.  Kudos to Ryan for correctly identifying the likely result of Obama’s wasteful policies.

Businessweek provides a snapshot of California state government’s fiscal insanity:

California Governor Jerry Brown is seeking a 38,000 percent spending increase for a proposed high- speed rail system, even as he plans to raise taxes, cut state worker pay and reduce social programs to narrow a $15.7 billion deficit.

The “38,000 percent” translates into a requested budget increase from $15.9 million to $6.1 billion for construction costs of California’s fantastical high-speed rail project.  The kicker: all that money builds only the first 130 miles of an estimated 800 mile route from Los Angeles to San Francisco.

A lot of internet ink has been spilt rightly decrying this total waste of taxpayer money.  What I want to emphasize in this post is that Governor Brown’s budget request should anger liberals even more than conservatives.

Can it really be true that with California’s budget deficit recently surging from $9.2 billion to more than $15.7 billion that welfare and salaries must be cut and taxes raised so that someone’s bullet train dream can come true?

This is insane.  If Californians – the unions included – can’t rouse themselves to kill high-speed rail for the sake of preserving food stamps and health care for the poor, the rest of the nation should wash its hands of the state and let it implode.

Ending any and all spending related to the L.A.-S.F. bullet train should be done today.  It’s a no-brainer.  Unfortunately, that’s also true of the folks in charge of the public fisc.

In a stinging op-ed published yesterday in the LA Times, CFIF senior fellow Troy Senik focuses the blame for California’s failing public education system squarely where it belongs: the California Teachers Association (”CTA”).  Senik writes:

California’s education tailspin has been blamed on class sizes, on the property tax restrictions enforced by Proposition 13, on an influx of Spanish-speaking students. But no portrait of the schools’ downfall would be complete without mention of the California Teachers Assn., or CTA, arguably the state’s most powerful union and a political behemoth that has blocked meaningful education reform, protected failing and even criminal educators, and pushed for pay raises and benefits that have reached unsustainable levels.

Senik goes on to explain how the CTA is using its “fat bank account fed by mandatory dues that can run to more than $1,000 per member” to maintain and build its political dominance in the state.  In the past decade alone, Senik notes, “the CTA had spent more than $210 million…on political campaigning — more than any other donor in the state.”

Fortunately, there are signs of hope to help counter the CTA’s political stranglehold that has enabled it to prop up its own interests over that of students: Parents are starting to revolt against the union’s orthodoxy.  And  “unlike elected officials, parents are hard for the union to demonize.”

Read the entire piece here.

This year, Armed Forces Week runs from May 12 until May 19.  In this week’s Freedom Minute, the Center for Individual Freedom salutes all the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces for their bravery, honor and service to our country.

At a time when Spain is in the news because it lingers on the edge of a full-blown economic meltdown, it’s instructive to remember that this is the country that’s supposed to be the model for the green jobs revolution that President Obama continually claims will help revitalize the American economy. Over at The Blaze, the American Enterprise Institute’s Kenneth Green looks at the factual case and finds it far from compelling:

Now, to the empirical evidence. When talking about our bold green energy future, President Obama held up Spain as an example of what America should be doing. Spain invested heavily in wind power and other types of renewable energy. Alas, after studying the Spanish Experience, Professor Gabriel Calzada Álvarez and colleagues at Spain’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos found if America followed Spain’s example, for every renewable energy job that the U.S. managed to create, the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 traditional jobs on average. And they found that green jobs are costly: each green job created in Spain’s effort cost about $750,000, and only one in 10 of the new green jobs were permanent. Doing the math on that, creating even 3 million new green jobs would cost $2.25 trillion. Even in a time where the trillion is the new billion, that’s a lot of money.

Indeed it is. But the money isn’t the real issue. Any “jobs plan” that entails a net loss in jobs shouldn’t be taken seriously by anybody, let alone the President of the United States. If green jobs really are the future of the economy, then sufficient market demand will arise to compel their creation. If, as is far more likely, they are simply a progressive fantasy financed at taxpayer expense, they deserve to have their grip on the public purse shaken as abruptly as possible.

In an interview with CFIF, John R. Lott, Jr., economist and bestselling author of “More Guns, Less Crime” and “The Bias Against Guns,” discusses the statistical relationship between Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws and the reduction in violent crimes, whether Florida’s Stand Your Ground law applies in the George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin case, and his latest book, “Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do to Regain Our Future.”

Listen to the interview here.

You read that right.

After the House voted down President Barack Obama’s budget proposal 414 – 0 in March, today the Senate defeated it 99 – 0.  There are 51 Democrats in the Senate (and two Independents that caucus with them).  Not one voted for their president’s budget.  There are 190 Democrats in the House.  Not one voted for their president’s budget.

There are only 535 members in Congress.  As of today, 513 are on record opposing Barack Obama’s 2012 budget.  No one is on record supporting it.

By contrast, Paul Ryan’s budget passed the House on March 29^th with 228 Republican votes, and only 10 party members against.  Today, 41 of 47 Republicans voted for Ryan’s budget; short of the 51 needed for passage.

Only one party is trying to govern.  The other is refusing to.  The American people should take notice and vote accordingly.

Tech billionaire and owner of the reigning NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks Mark Cuban correctly identifies the disconnect between the way policymakers talk about higher education spending and its true value to college students:

The President has introduced programs that try to reward schools that don’t raise tuition and costs. They won’t work.  Right now there is a never ending supply of buyers. Students who can’t get jobs or who think that by going to college they enhance their chances to get a job. Its the collegiate equivalent of flipping houses. You borrow as much money as you can for the best school you can get into and afford and then you “flip” that education for the great job you are going to get when you graduate.

Except those great jobs aren’t always there. I don’t think any college kid took on tens of thousands of dollars in debt with the expectation they would get a job working for minimum wage against tips.

At some point potential students will realize that they can’t flip their student loans for a job in 4 years. In fact they will realize that college may be the option for fun and entertainment, but not for education.

One of the hardest hit employment segments in the Obama Economy are college grads with too much education, too much education debt, and not enough work experience.  In a contracting economy, jobs go to those with years of on-the-job training and the financial flexibility to work multiple opportunities.

If Mitt Romney wants to put Barack Obama’s most blindly loyal constituency in play this election, he should pull no punches tying Obama’s spending and business regulations to the dearth of job opportunities available to college students and recent grads.

President Obama’s views on energy have always been defined by a sense of false scarcity. This is the man, after all, who told Oregon voters in 2008, “We can’t drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times.”; who constantly invokes the fact that “the U.S. has only 2 percent of the world’s oil supplies” (an utterly misleading statistic that would be irrelevant even if it were literally true); who admitted to wanting the price of coal “to necessarily skyrocket”; and who hired an Energy Secretary who longs to see American gasoline prices reach the stratospheric levels of Europe.

Testifying before the House Science Subcommittee on Energy and Environment last week, Anu Mittal, Director of Natural Resources and Environment at the Government Accountability Office delivered some stunning news about the amount of oil shale available in the Mountain West.

Here’s how CNSNews reports the story:

“USGS estimates that the Green River Formation contains about 3 trillion barrels of oil, and about half of this may be recoverable, depending on available technology and economic conditions,” Mittal testified.

“The Rand Corporation, a nonprofit research organization, estimates that 30 to 60 percent of the oil shale in the Green River Formation can be recovered,” Mittal told the subcommittee. “At the midpoint of this estimate, almost half of the 3 trillion barrels of oil would be recoverable. This is an amount about equal to the entire world’s proven oil reserves.”

Read that again. If less than half of this oil shale is recoverable, it still represents an amount equal to that available in the rest of the world. By extrapolation, that means that as future extraction methods become more technologically sophisticated (and more economical) we could be talking about a grand haul equal to more than double current global reserves. And that’s only in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming — not in the other 47 states.

There are huge policy implications here because of the simple fact that most of this shale occurs on federal lands. That means that getting this material out of the ground will require a proactive effort from government. The current President — who likes to boast about record oil production without noting that the vast majority of it is coming from private land — is not the person to kick start this new era of energy abundance. One more reason to send him packing in November.

Below is one of the latest cartoons from two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

As the 2012 election cycle has progressed, one of the growing memes on the left has been that the Tea Party has lost a lot of the anti-establishment momentum it had in 2010, when it was responsible for electing U.S. Senators like Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Kentucky’s Rand Paul, and Florida’s Marco Rubio. The pundits have been a little quick on the trigger finger.

Last week, 35-year Senate veteran Richard Lugar went down to defeat in Indiana at the hands of the Tea Party candidate, State Treasurer Richard Mourdock, a race that we chronicled at length here at CFIF. Today, voters heading to the polls in Nebraska may deliver a similar shock to the GOP establishment.

The establishment choice, state Attorney General Jon Bruning, has been under fire for exactly the kind of crony capitalism that has come to define Tea Party distaste for business as usual. It was long thought that State Treasurer Don Stenberg — who enjoyed the support of Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks, and the Club for Growth — would be the conservative alternative to Bruning. But in recent days, Bruning’s numbers are falling without Stenberg’s rising proportionately.

The reason is a third candidate, State Senator Deb Fischer, who has recently emerged from relative obscurity thanks to endorsements from Sarah Palin and Congressman Jeff Fortenberry. According to recent polling, there’s a very real possibility of Fischer pulling off an upset of epic proportions and walking away with the nomination. And while Stenberg’s supporters aren’t happy to see their man failing to close, they’re already suggesting that Fischer would be an acceptable alternative to Bruning and the business as usual he represents.

We’ll have to watch the polls tonight to see how this thing resolves, but one thing’s for sure: even the worst-case scenario for Tea Partiers (a narrow win by Bruning) would send a powerful message to the GOP establishment in Washington: the Tea Party is here to stay.