Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

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Miss Me Yet? George W. Bush’s Clarity Exposes Obama’s Deficiencies Print
By Troy Senik
Thursday, November 18 2010
For unlike Obama, Bush demonstrated two traits that we should celebrate in any American president: clarity and a set of principles that embraced some of the nation’s best traditions.

DALLAS -- Most truths in American life reveal themselves in the market long before they seep into the broader public consciousness. A tourist walking the crowded streets of Washington in January 2009 would have seen every storefront window crowded with iconography heralding the incoming Obama Administration, from life-size cardboard cutouts to the ubiquitous “hope” t-shirts that portrayed Obama in a stenciled aesthetic uncomfortably reminiscent of Jim Fitzpatrick’s legendary Che Guevara poster.
 
Then something curious happened. Within several months, Obama apparel began to fill a lot more retail shelves and a lot fewer closets. Sales grew sluggish and then virtually comatose.
 
Into this vacuum crawled an image whose popularity would have been inconceivable on the brisk January day when Obama placed his hand on the Bible and swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. A picture of President George W. Bush waving from the South Lawn of the White House with an impish grin appeared on a billboard in rural Minnesota with the caption, “Miss Me Yet?” Soon appropriated for every manner of conceivable merchandise, the brisk sales of the Bush nostalgia tchotchkes indicated that the answer was “yes” – at least for a large subsection of the population.
 
How did this revival take place for a president who was excoriated beyond comparison during his two terms in office? In looking to answer that question, one couldn’t have chosen a better location than the campus of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, where President Bush broke ground on his presidential library earlier this week.
 
As a former member of the president’s staff, I don’t claim objectivity in this matter, even though I shared many of the policy concerns of other conservatives who at times grew uneasy with the administration’s direction. But for supporters, detractors and fair-weather fans alike, the 43rd president’s remarks on Tuesday provided a study in contrasts to the current inhabitant of the White House. For unlike Obama, Bush demonstrated two traits that we should celebrate in any American president: clarity and a set of principles that embraced some of the nation’s best traditions.
 
In his remarks, Bush touted his commitment to dissidents living under oppressive regimes – particularly poignant in light of Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent release from captivity after seven years and jailed Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo’s October receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize. Other goals, such as education reform and aiding global health initiatives may have given pause to conservatives mistrustful of activist government no matter what its partisan inclinations. But all tied together into what Bush defined as his guiding principles:
 
“We believe that freedom is universal and the hope of every soul and the ultimate path to peace. We believe that free markets are the best way to empower individuals at home and to lift people abroad out of poverty. We believe you can spend your money better than the United States government can spend your money. We believe that America’s interests and conscience demand engagement in the world, because what happens elsewhere inevitably affects us here. We believe the call to serve and the admonition that to whom much is given, much is required. And I believe that the ultimate responsibility of a leader is to not do what is easy or popular, but to do what is necessary and right.”
 
Arguments will long rage over how capable a steward of those beliefs Bush was. But it is far less contentious that celebrating these tenets – all of which are axiomatic to the American creed – would sound out of place at the groundbreaking of the next presidential library in Chicago. Few sadder commentaries could be issued on the current state of American politics.

Miss him yet?

Notable Quote   
 
Happy Easter!…[more]
 
 
— From All of Us at CFIF
 
Liberty Poll   

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