Freedom Line Blog

After letting medical marijuana dispensaries illegally mushroom to about 1,000 within city limits, L.A.’s city council is imposing tough new restrictions designed to reduce that number to between 70 and 130 within six months.  Under the recently passed ordinance, violators could be fined up to $2,500 a day, and possibly face jail time.

Here’s a mind-blowing perspective:

“The sky isn’t going to fall down,” Asha Greenberg, assistant city attorney, told National Public Radio. “LAPD isn’t going to go around kicking down doors, etc. Initially we’re going to be doing information gathering.”

At least there’s one deleterious activity the people running L.A.’s City Council are willing to fight against.  (At least until November…)

It’s amazing in the modern era where information is so plentiful that news pieces more often look like a schizophrenic’s diary entry than a well thought out update on a continuing story.  Today’s example is courtesy of an article in the UK’s The Guardian.  The story begins with the serious, but by no means startling, news that Iran is publicly offering to escort future convoys to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Some readers may remember this is the same regime which sponsored a Holocaust denial conference, maintains a president who promises to destroy the Jewish State, and is the primary supplier of arms and rockets to the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas.

Iran also doesn’t have much love for the United States.  Neither does one of radical Islam’s most corrupt Western supporters, former British MP George Galloway.  An unrepentant Socialist, Galloway seems like many other A-list apologists for totalitarian governments, having secured his status with a speech praising Saddam Hussein in the dictator’s presence, and excoriating American foreign policy in an appearance before the U.S. Senate.

Given just that bit of information, you might think mentioning him at the end of a news story about the coming flare up between Israel and Iran would be adequate:

George Galloway, the founder of Viva Palestina, announced in London that two simultaneous convoys “one by land via Egypt and the other by sea” would set out in September to break the Gaza blockade. The sea convoy of up to 60 ships will travel around the Mediterranean gathering ships, cargo and volunteers.

The paragraph could have introduced Galloway as “Current Hamas financial contributor George Galloway,” or “Oil for Food profiteer George Galloway,” to give a much clearer understanding of the man organizing the September “solidarity” sailing trip.    At the very least, the article could have quoted the announcement from the Viva Palestina website detailing that the talks to plan the trip occurred in Istanbul, Turkey, with Galloway saying he wanted Egypt to guarantee safe passage for the next convoy.  But instead of linking Galloway to the corrupt groups running various Middle East governments, the article reads like he is unconnected from the people he gets paid to support.

Thankfully, David Horowitz and the folks over at Discover the Networks provide much more background and documentation than The Guardian’s Middle East editor.

So, the next time you read or hear a news story and wonder if you’ve heard the name, place, or group before, run it through Discover the Networks before moving on.  Within ten minutes you’ll be way more informed than most of the information gatekeepers in the MSM.

You will if John Eastman wins next Tuesday’s Republican primary.  Eastman is a former law school dean, clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, and appellate litigator with experience in over 50 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.  He is also a dyed-in-the-wool conservative.  His nomination for CA AG would instantly make the race the most important contest going into November for state voters.  Why?  Because unlike any of the gubernatorial candidates, Eastman is laying out a comprehensive strategy to fight for lower taxes, stronger borders, and less federal intrusion in the state’s prison and pension systems – all by suing to enforce existing laws.  It’s not often that the expert most likely to be the principal office holder’s deputy runs for the top job.  If Eastman emerges with the California GOP’s nomination next week, get ready for a full court press of conservative first principles.

Did you hear about the Glenn Beck vs. Ivory Tower tiff?  A California history professor blogged on the Huffington Post that America’s highest profile fan of the Founders needs to get some perspective before spouting off like he knows something.  In particular, Joseph Palermo argues that – consistent with liberal elite opinion – looking to the Founding Generation for any type of guidance is silly because…well, things are different now.  Per Palermo, “The United States Constitution is a ‘living document’ no matter how often Beck and others repeat the lie that it isn’t.”

Forgive this former collegian if Dr. Palermo’s conclusory, unsourced statement leaves a bit much to be desired.

Thankfully, Amity Shlaes came to Beck’s defense.  Since she too (along with Jonah Goldberg) was blamed for misleading millions of Americans about the “goodness” of FDR’s handling of the Great Depression, Shlaes felt the need to explain the main attraction of Beck.  He gets deep into his subjects.  Moreover, he provides a sustained conversation with his audience about an alternative set of books that won’t show up on many university reading lists, no matter how well researched they are.

Every author is glad to sell books. But the victory is far more Mr. Beck’s than any individual writer’s or publisher’s. His genius has been in his recognition that viewers do not want merely the odd, one-off book, duly pegged to news. They want a coherent vision, a competing canon that the regulated airwaves and academy have denied them. So he, Glenn Beck, is building that canon, book by book from the forgotten shelf. Since the man is a riveting entertainer, the professors are correct to be concerned. He’s not just reacting or shaping individual thoughts. He is bringing competition into the Ed Biz.

In a word, Glenn Beck gives people a choice when it comes to getting well written, well researched histories about the people and issues that matter.  If he keeps it up, maybe reading history during college will be as enlightening – and enjoyable – as it is before and after.

With all the attention focused on the aftermath of the Turkish flotilla incident, former CIA Director Jim Woolsey enlarges the picture to encompass Israel’s most lethal foe: Iran.  He pens a sobering essay outlining the similarities between the rise of the Nazis in Germany to the increasing power of Iran’s mullahs.  Both faced restrained opposition from the West due to domestic economic concerns, and elite opinion that a civilized culture cannot produce a totalitarian, neighbor-terrorizing regime.  They’re too smart for that.

Maybe not.  Or rather, perhaps elite opinion shouldn’t run the risk of assuming that all governments represent the will of the people they govern.

So, what’s America to do?  According to Woolsey, there isn’t much time left.

But now, as was the case in the mid-1930s, we may have very little time left. There still may be a chance for the U.S. and at least a few of its allies to do something effective: to impose on Iran crippling economic sanctions orders of magnitude more severe than the modest ones used to date, to provide substantial and effective aid to the Iranian reformers, or otherwise to help bring about a tectonic shift in the nature of the Iranian regime. We may still have an opportunity to keep “engagement” from becoming the “appeasement” of our time, a synonym for “weakness leading to war.” The key determinant is whether our leaders decide to use Chamberlain or Churchill as their model of statesmanship.

Much will hinge on their choice.

Hopefully, President Obama won’t need a Bay of Pigs disaster to serve as a rehearsal for his own Cuban Missile Crisis.

H/T: National Review

So far, President Barack Obama is 0-for-everything when it comes to getting directly involved in any campaign other than his own.  In a three month span, he helped lose Democratic campaigns for governor in Virginia and New Jersey, and the special election for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Now, it looks like he picked losers in two Democratic primaries.  Just when it seemed like the Joe Sestak pay-not-to-play offer couldn’t get weirder, the challenger in Colorado’s contested primary confirms that he too was approached about dropping out.  For those keeping score, Sestak beat Arlen Specter and Andrew Romanoff currently leads 60%-40% over the appointed incumbent Michael Bennet.  Whatever happened to the will of the people?

But what should we expect from a chief executive whose only “win” so far in office is a scandalously passed health care industry takeover that may go down as the most corrupt bargain ever brokered between a president and Congress.  The lesson here is that this president is as hapless at electoral horse trading as he is with legislative deal making.

How much longer ‘til 2012?

For those paying attention to the U.S. Senate race in California, it would be a forgivable sin of omission if one thought that all of Senator Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) campaign opponents sported an “R” after their name.  But apparently, she’s got competition in her Democratic primary next Tuesday: Slate contributor Mickey Kaus.

Surprisingly, Kaus is running to Boxer’s right on issues like firing bad public school teachers (supports), and amnesty for illegal immigrants (opposes).  And for those who would tar and feather Kaus as an ideological heretic, consider his response:

I’d argue these are the positions a liberal who cared about government and inequality would take. Why do Democrats reject them? They increasingly say it’s not so much because of policy, but because of politics: they have to turn out the “base” to win the next election, and the “base” consists of union members and Latinos (plus African Americans, who are badly hurt by illegal immigration but whom the party takes for granted).

Never mind that this theory is nearly unfalsifiable–if the Democrats lose, its proponents will always say that they just didn’t please the base enough. Has base-pleasing ever panned out? Looking back over recent elections, I can only think of one where the “base” was clearly more important than the moderate middle–that was the presidential election of 2004, when George W. Bush turned out millions of new right-wing voters many people thought didn’t exist. But most recent mid-term elections have been preceded by predictions that “Hey, given the low turnout it all depends on mobilizing the base!”–only to be followed by acknowledgments that it was moderate swing voters who swung the result.

If only Senator Boxer would debate this guy…

H/T: Huffington Post

Ordinarily, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd refers to President Obama as Spock, as in the Star Trek Vulcan who lacked emotion.  Today, she passes on that appellation, but describes the same manner of dispassion that – if it continues – will likely prove to be the main reason this president serves only one term.

The oil won’t stop flowing, but the magic has.

Barack Obama is a guy who is accustomed to having stuff go right for him. He’s gotten a lot of breaks: two opponents in his U.S. Senate race in Illinois felled by personal scandals; a mismanaged presidential campaign by Hillary Clinton; an economic collapse that set the stage for a historic win, memorably described by the satiric Onion newspaper as “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”

Welcome to the big chair.  The frustration this president is supposedly feeling isn’t any different than a business owner dreaming of growth, but stifled by new regulations; or the family man trying to meet his responsibilities while attempting to make a profitable career transition.  There are two sides to the leadership coin: maintaining a vision, and overcoming obstacles to it.  Unlike a predecessor of his, Obama has “the vision thing.”  Too bad for the Gulf Coast, American economy, and Iranian democracy advocates that their problems are interpreted as annoyances to be minimized rather than challenges to be overcome.

How strange it is to watch a president lauded for his rhetorical prowess appear absolutely powerless to summon the will to roll up his sleeves and take charge of any crisis that occurs outside Washington, D.C.

Florida’s most infamous party-switcher is realizing the pain of political divorce.  From an interview with The Hill:

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist says it is “very lonely” running as an independent.

Since he quit his party, Crist says he has discovered that people he thought were friends turned out to be only Republican friends, who dropped Crist after he left the GOP.

Crist has lost so many campaign staffers that his sister is now running his third-party effort.

“When you’re not affiliated with a party, it can be very lonely, particularly initially,” Crist told The Hill in an hourlong phone interview.

He cannot be serious.  For a perpetual campaign machine like Crist who ran for and won statewide office in 2000, 2002, and 2006, to think that his fundraisers, staff, and get-out-the-vote activists supported him because he’s Charlie instead of because, as a Republican, he (supposedly) championed Republican causes, is comical.  If anything, Crist’s constant appeals to Democrats and Independents probably made Florida Republicans wonder why they worked so hard to advance his career.

Now that Crist has shown himself to be motivated by nothing more than his own ambition, his U.S. Senate race is the truest reflection of his political career: emptiness masquerading as conviction.

Last week, CFIF highlighted the rise of female conservatives as a political force.  Last night, voters had their say.  Republican primary voters in Mississippi’s first congressional district deflected Fox News analyst Angela McGlowan’s overtures, handing her a distant third place finish.  McGlowan’s political future will depend on whether she steps up her local presence in Oxford, MS, to build towards another race.

For Susana Martinez, though, the future is now.  After handily beating her male opponent in the GOP primary yesterday, Martinez is poised to be a “game changing” candidate if elected governor of New Mexico later this year.

If you haven’t heard of Martinez, you will.  She’s served thirteen years as the Las Cruces-based District Attorney where she secured reelection twice despite Democrats outnumbering Republicans 3-to1 in her county.  Most impressively for the governor’s race, she has a detailed plan to fix New Mexico’s sputtering economy.  Hmm…tough career prosecutor with a detailed fiscally conservative vision.  Sound familiar?  Thankfully, she’s a lot prettier than New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

If she’s half as forceful, in a few years New Mexico might join New Jersey as two of the friendliest states to business and consumers.

Fresh off revelations over his involvement in Sestak-gate, former president Bill Clinton pounded the podium yesterday in support of a fellow member of the Democratic Party’s endangered species: moderates.  Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) is facing a tough run-off against the sitting Lt. Governor who is allied with a vast leftwing conspiracy to make an example out of the on again, off again liberal.

And Bill Clinton doesn’t like it.

Playing on both local pride and a wariness of outside influence, he suggested voters would be mere pawns for an agenda of party purification if they opposed Lincoln.

“If you want to be used that way, have at it,’ he said to about 200 Democrats at Philander Smith College, speaking without notes for 20 minutes

With a detailed recitation of Lincoln’s work on behalf of Arkansas down to the jobs she saved at a manufacturer in Ft. Smith, Clinton exhorted voters to not direct their discontent at her.

Good luck with that.  Of all the endangered political species this election cycle, none seems as likely for a population reduction than “moderate” Democrats.  Liberals, like conservatives, like politicians who take a consistent ideological stand for issues.  Too often being a “moderate” is just code for policymaking as situational ethics.  If Clinton fails to push Lincoln over the 50% mark, he’ll be on the hook for letting down yet another female senator seeking federal office (his wife Hillary being the other).  With Obama 0-for-3 in hotly contested races, that means Democrats running for reelection in 2010 will have to look to someone other than the two most recent Democratic presidents to gin up enough support to get a win on Election Day.

Is Jimmy Carter available?

H/T: Politico

Former Bush advisor Peter Wehner pens one of the more helpful analyses of the Obama White House today for Politics Daily:

We can hope that Obama, an intelligent man, learns from the errors of his ways. But the great danger in all of this is that in the face of his troubles Obama and his aides become increasingly defensive, display a greater sense of entitlement and even a touch of paranoia. When arrogant men lose control of events it can easily lead to feelings of isolation, to striking out at critics, to bullying opponents, and to straying across lines that should not be crossed.

And so the president needs to surround himself with people who can tamp down on the uglier impulses within his administration, who are willing to tell Obama that the lore created by him, Axelrod, Plouffe, and Gibbs during the campaign has given way to reality, that cockiness is not the same as wisdom, and that spin is no substitute for substantive achievements. And Obama needs someone who has standing in his life to tell him that the presidency is a revered institution that should not be treated as if it were a ward in Chicago.

The last line is the most telling because it goes to the nub of the problem facing every president: you go with what you know.  For top level politics, that means once you assume high office the learning is over; all you have time for is applying your principles and experiences to the situation of the moment.  For Obama, that means two things: rallying the troops for an us-vs.-them campaign, and treating every political decision as though being president is the same as being the mayor of Chicago – which is to say, a distributor of political patronage.

The criminal silliness of the Sestak Scandal can only be understood in the context of brash, Illinois-style horse trading.  That it happened isn’t much of a surprise.  That it happened without much subtlety and discretion is – to me – much more troubling.  Like Obama’s naïve approach to America’s enemies and his self-indulgent speeches, this is yet another example of his immaturity.

That’s the point made by Daniel Henninger in today’s Wall Street Journal.

I would argue that the Reform wave building in the land is not antigovernment, but pro-government. When people call themselves Americans, Californians, New Yorkers, Illinoisans, Texans or, yes, New Jerseyans, they aren’t just talking about a place name, but a fought-for legal entity with a grand political history. Anger at Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, Trenton and Washington, D.C., isn’t antigovernment. It’s rightful rage at years of misgovernance.

I think Henninger’s argument is the best description of the anger roiling supporters and critics of the Obama Administration’s handling of the Gulf Oil Spill.  It may very be that there are limited options for “plugging the hole,” but the fact remains that people expect leaders to show they know how to prioritize problems, and work towards a solution.  Even James Carville is apoplectic at Obama’s seeming inability to do either during this crisis.

For the president who promised competence, we’re getting an awful lot of failing grades in Leadership 101.

Since the Obama Administration and newly minted Senate candidate Joe Sestak (D-PA) won’t discuss Sestak’s February allegation that a White House official offered him a job not to primary party-switching Arlen Specter, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) is looking into the matter.  As CFIF readers remember, Issa’s interest is not desired by most people in public life.  The conservative foil to liberal Investigator-in-Chief Henry Waxman (D-CA), Issa is now comparing the Obama-Sestak offer to the Watergate fiasco.

That may be going a bit far, but the facts – and the stonewalling – are at least as important to uncover as the Valerie Plame Affair.  In that case, the Vice President’s Chief of Staff was convicted of four felonies for lying to federal agents and obstructing their investigation.  Notice any similarities with Press Secretary Robert Gibbs’ refusal to comment, and the White House declining to appoint an independent investigator?

It sounds old to keep comparing how the media would be covering Obama’s actions if done by Bush, but the contrasts are still striking.  This is now the second time potentially illegal negotiations over a United States Senate seat have been linked to Obama’s White House.  The first instance cost Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich his job and may yet lead to a prison sentence.  Now, another round of Chicago-style deal making may imperil Joe Sestak’s senate campaign.  At some point, you’d think lower level Democrats would start reconsidering their allegiance to a president who clearly favors backroom deals to open electoral processes.

It’s become a bit of a cliché in the Obama Administration to blame George W. Bush for…well, just about everything wrong with the country.  Job numbers are down because of the previous administration’s mismanagement of the economy.  The deficit is exploding because Bush & Co. started two allegedly needless wars.  Even the Gulf Oil Spill catastrophe is being laid at the feet of alleged coziness between Bush Era regulators and BP management.  If nothing else, the Obama White House knows how to trace problems occurring on its watch to other people.

Will it do the same with success?  According to Gallup polls of foreign nations, America is most popular in Sub-Saharan Africa.  The fact that President Obama’s ancestry touches the region doesn’t explain fully the reason.

So you might be asking yourself, “why Africa?”

It’s a good question, one our friends over at Gallup have given some consideration in past surveys. Since 2008, Sub-Saharan Africa may be the one region of the world where the United States has reaped the highest benefits of what has been termed “The Obama Effect.” Being of Kenyan descent, Obama enjoys high approval ratings throughout much of Africa. More substantively, 5 out of the 7 listed nations have been targeted in the president’s $3.5 billion Feed the Future initiative.

And let’s not give the 44th president all of the credit. Obama’s predecessor, George W. Bush, invested American aid and resources into Africa at a record pace. President Bush’s PEPFAR program was a groundbreaking policy endeavor, and while Bush’s domestic approval numbers were low upon leaving office, U.S. approval throughout much of Africa remained rather strong.

As with much of his social spending, the most recent President Bush doesn’t get the credit he deserves for the good – and goodwill – many of his initiatives achieved.  Still, it must give W some sort of quiet pride to know that America’s popularity in Africa can be traced directly to his policy decisions.

H/T: RealClearWorld

For my fellow limited government types out there, here’s an idea to save money and get the decennial census done competently: hire postal workers to count heads.  The suggestion comes from one of the Census Bureau’s “seasonal” workers quoted in the New York Post.

I am totally convinced that the Census work could be very easily done by the US Postal Service.

“When I was trying to look for an address or had a question about a building, I would ask the postman on the beat. They knew the history of the route and can expand in detail who moved in or out etc. I have found it interesting that if someone works one hour, they are included in the labor statistics as a new job being full.

Yes, you read that last sentence correctly.  Whenever the Census Bureau hires a person for at least one hour of work, they can report to the Labor Department that a new job has been created.  And that’s true even if the one-hour worker gets fired and rehired multiple times – multiple hires equal multiple “jobs.”  Our tax dollars at work.  (Or, is it play?)

With these facts, it seems like the census could be achieved much more efficiently by getting the postal worker on the street to knock on the door, deliver some mail, and casually ask how many people live in the unit.  Since people are already comfortable with their usual postal worker, having them ask the questions would be much more likely to guarantee a response.  And, it would save taxpayers the indignity of funding inflated job creation numbers.

The most toxic substance floating around Louisiana’s coastline isn’t oil – it’s the confusion that comes with the federal government’s alphabet soup of bureaucracy.  Click on any article describing the feds’ response, and you get a myriad of people and institutions allegedly “in charge” of directing the cleanup activity.  So far, the heads of the EPA, Interior Department, Homeland Security, and Coast Guard have all visited the state and personally weighed in on what should be done.  Now, they are contradicting each other.

In a news conference on Sunday outside the BP headquarters in Houston, Mr. Salazar repeated the phrase that the government would keep its “boot on BP’s neck” for results. He also said the company had repeatedly missed deadlines and had not been open with the public.

Mr. Salazar added, “If we find they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.”

That statement, however, conflicted with comments made only hours earlier by the Coast Guard commandant, Adm. Thad W. Allen, who said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program that the access BP has to the mile-deep well site meant that the government could not take over the lead in efforts to stop the leak.

“They are necessarily the modality by which this is going to get solved,” he said.

One of the consequences of bloated bureaucracies is overlapping areas of responsibility.  Coupled with a politician’s aversion to risk (an element of bold decision making), and the result is many people responsible, but no one is ultimately in charge.

And while they dither, 65 miles of Louisiana coastline are “oiled.”

The last few days offered a study in contrasts.  Charles Djou won a plurality special election becoming just the third Republican to represent Hawaii in Congress.  He did so by sticking relentlessly to a pro-growth, low tax message that resonated in a heavily Democratic district.  While Djou won’t vote with the GOP on every issue, his commitment to fiscal conservatism will be a huge factor in whether he gets reelected to a full term in November.

Contrast Djou’s steady drum beat approach to Rand Paul’s improvisational jazz.  The Kentucky GOP senate nominee erased the euphoria of a double digit beat down of the establishment candidate last Tuesday by questioning the constitutionality of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a federal law mandating racial equality.  His points aside, Paul took his eye off the ball by engaging the issue.  The 2010 midterm election results – and Rand Paul’s popularity – are not the product of a national rethink on the scope of Congress’s power to enforce the 14^th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

It’s about the economy, Rand.  The safest ground for limited government types this cycle is to stay on message that tax-and-spend must end.  Just Djou it.

Not only is North Korea responsible for the unprovoked sinking of a South Korean warship, the American intelligence community concludes that the government’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-Il ordered the attack.  It’s difficult to fathom any government other than North Korea’s being able to kill 46 members of another country’s military personnel by executive fiat, and be threatened with – at most – a United Nations sanction.

Since North Korea’s “Dear Leader” has it in his power to kill other people’s sailors at whim and expect almost no response, maybe he is the powerful man in the world.  If not, wait ‘til he gets a nuclear bomb.

Republican Charles Djou appears to be closing in on the special election victory CFIF highlighted months ago.  If he does become the congressman from President Barack Obama’s Hawaiian hometown, not only will the Aloha State be sending a staunch fiscal conservative to the House of Representatives, it will mean Djou will have the power of incumbency in the fall.  Assuming he wins, it will be interesting to see how he uses his voting record to maintain his conservative credentials while not alienating a majority of voters in a heavily Democratic district.