Freedom Line Blog

If the rumors are true and Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsberg wind up stepping down from the bench in tandem, President Obama could throw a bone to Republicans and nominate one of their choices.  That would almost assure both nominees of confirmation.  But since that isn’t likely to happen, it will be interesting to see which Democratic identity group is first in line to claim the seat(s).

But wouldn’t it be nice if interpretive method were the controlling factor?  No matter who is on the current shortlist, it isn’t complete unless it includes Yale law professor Akhil Amar, the prolific author of Originalist constitutional works from a progressive viewpoint.  Though I don’t share all of Amar’s interpretations, I welcome the chance to have a brilliant jurist of the Left that agrees with Justices Scalia and Thomas that constitutional interpretation should begin with the text and its meaning at the time it was ratified.  Already, Amar is the most cited constitutional law scholar of his generation.  It would be nice to see such achievement rewarded with a position where he could put his theories into practice – and do battle with Scalia and Thomas.

Privacy advocates should be excused if for the last few days they’ve been trudging about in sackcloth and ashes mourning the integration of tech and state. After all, Phil did see his shadow. On the heels of a report that there is a growing movement towards creating a national network for police at all levels to electronically request and receive information from internet service providers, today it is announced that Google is negotiating with the National Security Agency (NSA). The deal would somehow allow the NSA to analyze and advise Google on how to avoid high level hacking while shielding Gmail and other users from Big Brother’s watchful eye.

Good luck. While I would hope NSA employs some of the best and brightest cyber security minds available, I’d be surprised if Google couldn’t hire them away. Moreover, why does Google see the need to “partner” with governments in areas where the probability of losing its independence is extremely high? First, it was gulping back China’s human rights record and censorship practices. Now, the most influential tech company in the world is asking Uncle Sam to set up shop in its control room.

Be on the lookout for that national police network. With partners in the permanent government, it may not be long until Google gets asked to help usher in a British-style CCTV (closed circuit television) monitoring program. All for the good of the country, of course.

Who knew White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has a foul mouth and a penchant for insulting people?  Apparently, after hearing that liberal activists were planning to shame moderate Democrats critical of ObamaCare with television ads, “Rahm-bo” told them they were “f—ing retarded.”  This all came to light because thereafter he called to apologize.  To the activists?  No; the head of the Special Olympics.

The reasoning makes a lot of sense if you subscribe to this tenet of political correctness: If an insult is uttered yet the group most likely to be offended isn’t around to hear it, an apology is warranted because eventually they will.  Unfortunately for Emanuel, the Special Olympics is on a campaign to end the practice of using the word “retarded” as an insult.  Thus, the need to apologize to an organization that he was not even thinking about when he said the word.  Curiously, it’s unclear if the Special Olympics is equally as interested in promoting more civil discourse by ending all insults, whether or not the offending words specifically relate to the group’s core constituency.

All of this A insults B, so A apologizes to C silliness makes one wonder what public figures would do if they had no readily identifiable group to turn to and say I’m sorry.  Perhaps then they’d be forced to mend fences with the people they actually offended, instead of getting a get-out-of-jail free card from a group claiming to represent the emotions of all those conceivably covered by its mission statement.

It must have been Groundhog Day yesterday, because another major Democratic politician was accused of severely damaging the profitability of an American industry. This time it was President Barack Obama, who said at a New Hampshire town hall meeting:

“When times are tough, you tighten your belts,” the president said. “You don’t go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college.”

Not much to quibble with there – unless you happen to live and work in Las Vegas. The president’s sensible remarks (which would be totally un-remarkable if not said by a major politician) didn’t sit well with the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which claimed that a previous critical statement about corporations using bailout money for Vegas junkets cost the city millions in cancelled trips.

Even if that’s true, though, is the president wrong? Trips to Vegas – or Disney World, a Red Sox game, or an evening at the movies – are luxuries that (should) depend on disposable income. If you can’t pay your mortgage, or in the case of bailed out companies, your debts, you shouldn’t be jetting off to expensive locales at taxpayer expense. The same holds true for a family on a budget.  Isn’t this the paradigmatic “kitchen table conversation”?

Nonetheless, Nevada’s senators responded with bipartisan denunciation, and extracted a written apology from the president. One hopes it was delivered in the form of an IOU.

Ironically, the president’s truth telling about where Sin City fits on the priority list did a lot less verifiable damage than Senator Harry Reid’s cryptic comments about a “major American insurer” “whose name is familiar to everyone” last October. After pairing those talismanic phrases with a statement that the mystery company was about to go bankrupt, MetLife, The Hartford, and Prudential all lost between 11 and 32% of their stock value within a day. Other than backtracking a bit, Senator Reid apparently didn’t feel the need to write a public apology to these companies. Maybe they’d prefer he save the stationary and pass some regulatory relief instead.

The president is wrong about a lot of issues, but using Vegas as an example of how not to spend your nest egg isn’t one of them. America isn’t going to get its savings rate and overall economy back on track by spending more money at casinos. Then again, his insightful criticism not to spend gobs of credit card money on fleeting emotional experiences probably won’t migrate into the president’s thinking on how best to structure his deficit-exploding progressive agenda.

Nobel laureate in literature – and Nigerian democracy advocate – Wole Soyinka is angry that his country was put on the terrorism watch list in the wake of his countryman’s attempt to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day 2009.  The finger of blame, he argues, shouldn’t be pointed at Nigeria, but at England.

The man did not get radicalized in Nigeria. It happened in England, where he went to university.

“England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there.”

Why is Britain the way it is? “This is part of the character of Great Britain,” Mr. Soyinka declares. “Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.” And so it is, he says, that Britain lets everyone preach whatever they want: It confirms a self-image of greatness.

Later on, Soyinka identifies the cause of the present religious war of all against all: the Ayatollah Khomeini.  Why?  Because the fatwa against Salman Rushdie escalated the range of acceptable physical aggression within certain spheres of the Muslim world.  That heightened acceptable aggression eventually trickled down to other radical Muslim groups, sanctioning terrorism and murder for groups like Al Qaeda.

Luckily, Soyinka thinks radical Islam won’t take root in America because Muslims have gone mainstream through the work of the Nation of Islam.  I guess it’s all relative.

H/T: Daily Beast

Unfortunately, we all know a couple where at least one of the partners lashes out at others instead of manfully (or womanly) dealing with the relationship’s problems. For people like this, holidays like Valentine’s Day or anniversaries are no respite from the tension. If anything, they heighten it.

So it can be with nations. This morning brings news of a scheduled widening of the rift between Iran’s government and its people. Opposition leaders plan to stage massive protests on February 11th – the 31st anniversary of the Islamic Revolution that installed the current regime. The executions of two men accused of stoking earlier street protests were the straws that broke the camel’s back. In response, the ruling elite’s mouthpiece, er, president, said that on the same day the government would deliver a harsh blow to “global arrogance.”

Who are these “global arrogant”? Certainly not Barack Obama’s America, which has taken a decidedly hands-off approach to the internal affairs of its equal-in-worth-if-not-in-Security-Council-member-prestige UN partner. Also off the offender list must be China and Russia, two of the Iranian government’s biggest patrons.

No, it sounds like the mullahs who run the country are looking for a distraction from dealing with the widespread disgust of the people it claims to repress – I mean, represent. If anything, the harsh blow hurtling its way towards Israel, America, the West, etc. is the best confirmation that the people who run Iran are desperately trying to avoid losing power. But as bad relationships attest, failure to change in time almost always leads to being left behind.

If it isn’t careful, Iran’s government could bring a harsh rebuke not only from the globally arrogant, but also from its own people. This is one way to start a civil war.

The basic point of departure between progressives and classical liberals (a term I’m using to encompass any political ideology that supports a free market) when it comes to solving an economic problem is how each deals with scarcity. Scarcity occurs when the demand for a resource like land, labor, or capital is greater than its supply. The lack of the resource (i.e. it’s scarcity) leads to prioritizing how to use that resource most efficiently. This is where public policy disagreements come into play. Typically, progressives see just about everything as scarce, and argue for a neutral government to allocate scarce items fairly. For progressives, there is almost never an instance where the policy impulse to find a way to create more of something. Instead, government’s task is to “spread the wealth around” – be it energy through carbon credits, capital through welfare redistribution, or health care through rationing.

Classical liberals are of a different mindset. They start by questioning whether the scarce resource is correctly is really scarce. Consider health care. A progressive would argue that if the number of licensed doctors became static or declined, limiting the amount of patient visits per year would be appropriate in order to “share” the scarce resource of medical expertise over the largest amount of people. A classical liberal, though, would ask whether a licensed nurse could be allowed to take on more responsibility for diagnosing and treating patients with common ailments like colds, cuts, and other minor medical problems. By expanding the amount of people who are licensed to treat patients, the scarcity vanishes because people are allowed to visit a medical professional as much as they need to.

Now to the issue of job creation. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) is proposing a bill to give people as young as 60 years old a financial incentive to retire early by offering early retirement with social security benefits and health care subsidies paid for from COBRA. The thinking is that are a finite amount of jobs in the American economy, and the federal government must find a way to get older workers out to create room for younger workers. Sounds like jobs are “scarce” these days, right?

Not so fast. The workers who have survived the rash of lay-offs are most likely to be those who are highly producing because businesses can no longer afford to carry dead wood on their payrolls. Moreover, if older workers are convinced to leave the job market, that means centuries of accumulated knowledge and expertise will be leaving with them. In the alternative, if it is the low-skilled elderly that Kucinich is targeting (a more likely scenario since guaranteed Social Security and COBRA benefits aren’t enticements for people making more than minimum wage), the vacancies they create won’t be enough to support younger workers with families trying to get out of apartments and into all those foreclosed houses.

The better way to look at how to create jobs isn’t to figure out how to best allocate the ones in existence – it’s figuring out how to encourage even more to be created. With more people working the economy will be that much stronger, which will eventually lead to the kind of scarcity only an employer fears: not enough hard-working, qualified people to fill all their employment needs.

After a week’s worth of forgettable speeches, President Obama finally made an appearance worth watching. Yesterday’s Q&A with House Republicans was a refreshing reminder that the much maligned political class in Washington, D.C., does, in fact, know something about policy. The ninety-minute exchange also took the focus off elections that are still ten months away. That in itself is enough to commend a repeat meeting because there is still way too much time left in the current congressional session to waste strategizing about outcomes that – at this point – cannot be projected. It is a much better use of everyone’s time to remember that the 111th Congress is barely halfway finished debating the people’s business.

And what a debate it was! I can’t remember the last time I agreed with anything David Corn wrote, but I agree with part his column yesterday about the future implications of the historic Q&A between President Obama and House GOP members. Corn thinks a regular meet-and-debate session would fundamentally change the type and skill set of a person running for president. If that means someone who has a deep command of issues, is quick on his feet, and can use a bit of humor – I’m all for it. Besides, it is obvious Republicans want to engage the president on his policies. (In two out of three speeches to joint sessions of Congress, the president has elicited responses from Rep. Joe Wilson and Justice Samuel Alito.) Why not at least give members of Congress – and the president himself – a crack at the opposition face-to-face. While I don’t agree with Corn that the president “cleaned the clock” of the House GOP, I do think he set a standard for depth and poise that should be emulated.

Now, for a criticism. The president needs to refer to his interlocutors with the same courtesy for their positions as they do for his. No one will ever call him anything other than “Mr. President”, but his repeated use of representatives’ first name became tiresome. It was also rude. If he’s striving for friendly informality, he should find another way than telling “John” (Boehner, Republican Leader), “Eric” (Cantor, Republican Whip), and “Mike” (Pence, Conference Chairman) why he doesn’t like their proposals. As usual, it comes across as the president speaking down to people. At best, it is a silly verbal tick that needs to be corrected.

A final suggestion. Republicans need to embrace this format because it gives them an unparalleled opportunity to debate the president’s policies directly and for the benefit of the American people. This kind of exchange reflects a confident republic at work, and it would go a long way towards softening the partisan tone while at the same time strengthening the quality of policy differences. Instead of criticizing the president for staging a photo-op, Republicans need to talk up his newfound willingness to be open and transparent. Invite him back to speak soon, and often. Keep up the pressure to have a weekly, televised Q&A between the parties and the branches. If nothing else, it will finally reward politicians who study policy and have a knack for making memorable, persuasive arguments.

So, can Californians get rid of it?  After all:

A new study from the nonprofit Highway Loss Data Institute found that rates of crashes before and after the landmark law took effect in 2008 have not significantly changed. It also found that the trend of California’s crashes before and after the law followed that of neighboring states — like Arizona and Nevada — that do not have bans on hand-held phones.

“The laws aren’t reducing crashes, even though we know that such laws have reduced hand-held phone use, and several studies have established that phoning while driving increases crash risk,” Adrian Lund, president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and its affiliate, the data institute, said in a statement.

I’m just saying, it seems like the science/evidence/proof/etc. is pretty settled…

A good friend of mine is fond of pointing out that majority opinion condemned both Socrates and Jesus to death for speaking truth to power. One wonders if the political equivalent will happen to Greek Prime Minister George Papandreau now that his country has avoided being booted from the European Union for it’s out of control deficits. Part of the deal keeping Greece in the EU fold is Athens’ promise to do “whatever it takes” in order to get the nation’s fiscal house in order. The other part is the knowledge that the EU will not bail Greece out of its problems. For his part, the prime minister gets it:

“Greece is in a situation where we need to take very strong measures and structural changes in our country,” he said. “We’re determined to implement the programme.”

Unfortunately, the current solution is to sell a series of bond measures to finance the debt. This is exactly the same situation facing the State of California. Yearly budget shortfalls should no longer be patched with accounting gimmicks and stimulus money from the feds. Instead, if the state is going to avoid running out of money on April 1st, Sacramento needs to cut spending – NOW. But the only way that’s going to happen is with a sustained, detail-oriented presentation about the need for systemic reform from someone with access to the media. In effect, California needs a public figure willing to get the electorate to sober up on spending and make a priorities list funded with at least 10% less money than the state has taken in since 2007.

True, that won’t be politically expedient for any of the main contenders running to replace Schwarzenegger next year. It may even cost them the election. Then again, no one who’s running needs the job. Republicans Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner have over a billion dollars in wealth between them, and Democrat Jerry Brown wants a third turn at the governor’s mansion. If any of them want to start their tenure off on a realistic foot, they’d be talking about ways to cut, not ways to spend. As Greece shows, at some point the money runs out. Crazy thought: Why not start correcting the problems before they’re too big to fix?  Put another way, anybody willing to be a potential martyr for sake of actually telling people the truth?

Well, this is interesting.  Apparently, Ford Motor Company shocked Wall Street by announcing it made a profit last quarter, and expects to carry that good news over the entire 2010 year.  But how can this be?  Ford was the only U.S. automaker that didn’t accept a government bailout.  In fact, the measures Ford took to regain its profitability look like a blueprint for government owned General Motors and Chrysler: cost cutting, a nearly $700 million profit in its credit line of business, and sales of popular models like the Ford Fusion and Escape.

Here’s a thought: since the president doesn’t want to run car companies, why not hire some of the talent (or at least adopt some of the strategies) that got Ford back on the road to sustainability?  That way, he could un-nationalize General Motors and Chrysler, putting more money back into the economy, spurring job creation and more tax receipts to fund all his pet projects?  You know; the stuff he really does want to do like health care “reform,” cap and tax, and more stimulus packages.

Of course, that kind of policy would only make sense if Progressives like the president actually cared about creating a sustainable create-tax-and-spend model to support their statist policies.  Anybody want to start a pool wagering how long it will be before the White House starts attacking the “fat cats” at Ford for their non-government-funded prosperity?

Those watching last night’s State of the Union Address may have noticed that a third of the Supreme Court wasn’t in attendance. It couldn’t have been an ideological statement because the absentees included Associate Justices John Paul Stevens, Antonin Scalia, and Clarence Thomas. After President Obama castigated the Court’s recent ruling on national television, ABC’s Jake Tapper reports that insult could lead to the other six members finding better things to do during next year’s speech.

At the end of Tapper’s piece is an intriguing quote from Franklin D. Roosevelt about his thoughts while getting sworn in by the Chief Justice for his second term as president.

After his second inaugural, FDR recalled to an aide, when “the Chief Justice read me the oath and came to the words ‘support the Constitution of the United States’ I felt like saying: ‘Yes, but it’s the Constitution as I understand it, flexible enough to meet any new problem of democracy—not the kind of Constitution your Court has raised up as a barrier to progress and democracy.’”

Tapper doesn’t comment on the quote, but it’s worth mentioning that FDR’s deviation from the Constitutionally-prescribed oath says a lot about the Executive’s abuse of power up through Obama. Is there any doubt FDR’s current successor feels any differently about his ability to judge how flexible our fundamental laws are?

In the wake of Massachusetts Senator-elect Scott Brown’s upset victory, it looks like there might be slogan for other Republican senatorial candidates to ride to victory.  Brown got the nation’s attention when he reminded David Gergen that the seat he was running for didn’t belong to the Kennedy family or the Democratic Party.  It is “the people’s seat”.  Now the Republican frontrunner to take President Obama’s old senate seat is saying the same thing in Illinois.  That kind of populist shout-out certainly energizes the voters and activists disdainful of machine politics.  But it also serves as a reminder of how different U.S. Senate elections have become since the Founding Fathers framed them.

Originally, state legislatures elected United States Senators.  The idea was to give the states themselves a voice in the national government.  The effect was to make a state’s U.S. Senator similar to a prime minister because a vote for a state legislator was (indirectly) a vote for a U.S. Senate candidate.  (Incidentally, John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” has a delightful chapter about one such race featuring Missouri’s incomparable Thomas Benton.)  Of course, the Seventeenth Amendment changed all that when it made senators directly elected by a state’s voting public.  Had the original constitutional structure been retained, Scott Brown would likely not be Massachusetts’ new senator because the state’s legislature is dominated by Democrats.  On the other hand, if it were still in effect, would it be more or less likely to have senators who thought of themselves as mini-presidents?  If less, it seems likely that representatives of one government to another would be much more likely to question the expansion of the federal at the expense of the states.

Maybe then we wouldn’t need to worry so much about senators getting captured by the trappings of office.  Their state legislature would be quick to pry them out if ever they forgot for whom they worked.

It’s gallows humor, but there is something darkly funny about witnessing a Democratic president and his advisors get thoroughly mugged by reality and respond with denial. Domestically, President Barack Obama and his courtiers can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that good ole’ reliable Massachusetts just slapped them across the face in front of the whole country, knowing full well the sting would last until November.

Now, it looks like the engine powering the axis of evil is taking shots and looking for weaknesses. Apparently, after years of encouraging its citizens to hack into American mainframes, China is alleging cyber warfare from Uncle Sam. Of course, it just so happens that Google is leaving the country over concerns its system is under constant attack from inside China with government approval. For good measure, Chinese officials damned the United States for actively encouraging Iran’s pro-democracy movement. (In case you forgot, Obama’s official policy towards the protesters is to offer rhetorical support while they are shot and imprisoned.)

And all this comes after almost a month after Iran missed Obama’s “deadline” for halting its nuclear enrichment operation. When looking at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is there anyone with Oval Office privileges that realizes foes think the president is weak and friends think him tone deaf? More importantly, does anybody in the room care?

Apparently, if you poke an earthworm a few hundred times, it eventually starts avoiding your finger. In California state politics, it’s looking like a few liberal stalwarts are starting to think twice about the Democrat Party’s sweetheart pension deals given to public employee unions. Any rational person that looks at the financial benefits of becoming a California cop, firefighter, or prison guard (among others) is bound to give serious thought to abandoning any other career option. Why? Because you can retire at 50 and get 90% of your last year’s pay. For the rest of your life. Guaranteed.

Think you can get that kind of compensation in the private sector? There’s a reason – it’s unsustainable. So says Democratic State Treasurer Bill Lockyear. But with the state facing a $20 billion deficit this year and Arnold Schwarzenegger entering his last as governor, it looks like Golden State taxpayers are in for another round of deferred maintenance on state budgeting. All this insanity kinda makes one wonder why anyone would want to be governor of California – or even a citizen.

H/T: Wall Street Journal

While some may have seen former Massachusetts governor and 2008 presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking at Senator-elect Scott Brown’s victory rally on Tuesday night, it may not have been apparent how deeply Romney was involved in getting Brown past the post.  Once again, Romney displayed a stunningly effective campaign machine that was slick, nimble, and full of money.  Unfortunately, Brown’s signature campaign issue was running against ObamaCare, which is achingly similar to RomneyCare – the one term governor’s biggest legislative legacy.

In less than four years, Massachusetts voters are so displeased with their state’s version of universal health care that they sent a Republican to Washington to be the vote that stops ObamaCare.  But Brown has a problem too.  He voted for RomneyCare while a state senator.  Since being elected, he’s said he supports expanding coverage as long as costs are reduced.  Good luck.  Though Brown will vote for a do-over on health care reform he is clearly signaling that he won’t just be a no; rather, a yes-but.  As in, yes, I agree we need to expand health care coverage – maybe even individually mandated universal health care coverage – but I don’t like some of the elements of the Democrats’ current plan.  If that’s the case, then Brown may be less a Tea Party go-er and more of a tinkerer.

The same is true for Romney.  He likes details and policy and loves to get into the weeds of government to make it run more like a business.  Since that’s his background as a highly successful turnaround artist, it makes sense.  But that may not be the path to the Republican nomination in 2012 when so many voters want leaders who will say no to tinkering, and yes to rolling back federal programs, bureaucracies, and spending.  Now that Romney has helped elect Brown, maybe it’s time for Brown to show Romney whether a Massachusetts Republican can gain a national following being a yes-but politician.

That’s the point argued by UC Irvine law school dean, Erwin Chemerinsky, in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling yesterday restoring political free speech. He says:

But if judicial activism has any meaning, it surely refers to decisions that overturn laws and overrule precedents. In contrast, judicial restraint occurs when courts defer to the other branches of government and follow precedents.

While Chemerinsky makes a neat distinction, his argument hides the fact that liberals have stacked the deck in their favor. If it’s true that judicial activism is always characterized by deferring to other branches of government and following precedents, then once an activist decision departs from the norm it immediately becomes sacrosanct because it is now a precedent. And if conservatives want to avoid hypocrisy, then they must swallow hard and accept path-breaking precedent under the doctrine of stare decisis. That is, until their liberal colleagues decide that more heresy-turned-orthodoxy is warranted.

Liberals applaud themselves for eschewing precedent when they see fit, but then accuse conservatives of hypocrisy when the latter seeks to return the law to its understanding prior to the liberals’ departure. Only then do progressives make a pretense of respecting legal tradition under the guise of “super duper” precedents that serve their policy agendas.

Conservatives aren’t guilty of activism when they restore the law to what it was before. As George Will notes, announcing that the First Amendment protects political speech about the government is only radical because of the unconstitutional legislation and opinions about it over the last forty years. Chemerinsky is too smart not to know that; it’s just a whole lot easier to argue for selective adherence to stare decisis while reversing your opponent’s criticisms.

It’s not often that a member of the MSM like CNN’s Christiane Amanpour gets told on her own show that she lied to her viewers.  During an appearance by former George W. Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, Amanpour was confronted with remarks she made comparing water torture techniques used by the Khmer Rouge to the CIA’s use of water boarding.  Thiessen – like the Bush Administration, CIA, and legal scholars like John Yoo – distinguished the two on the following criteria.

First, of all the people submitted to water torture (submerged into a bucket of water while handcuffed to the sides) in S-21 by the Khmer Rouge, only seven people survived, while 14,000 died.  No one died as a result of CIA water boarding (simulated drowning).  Second, the point of water torture is to eventually kill the victim.  By contrast, the point of water boarding is to create a psychological state so panic-ridden that people will think they are about to die.  But at no time are subjects actually at risk of death.  That doesn’t mean it’s a comfortable experience.  It does, however, mean that equating tactics designed to kill with those intended to break a person’s will is a dangerously misleading formula.

Along with John Yoo’s gentle smackdown of Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, the Thiessen interview is another indication that the MSM can’t be bothered to get informed about the distinctions that save lives and reputations.

H/T: Human Events

Today’s Wall Street Journal features an op-ed by Daniel Henninger that traces the rising stranglehold of public employee unions on the Democratic Party. Prior to 1962, federal workers were not unionized. That changed with a JFK executive order. Many states soon followed suit.

Looking back, the change in policy continued the Democrats’ long association with unions, but for the first time there were substantial numbers of union members that worked in jobs uncoupled from business realities like profit and loss. Instead, their budgets were the product of taxing and spending.

The results, as we all know, have been catastrophic for government budget writers at all levels. Public sector unions claim members from the ranks of teachers, cops, fire fighters, DMV personnel, and a myriad of other support workers. As membership increases, so do demands for higher wages, bigger pensions, and greater emphasis on seniority rather than performance. Since governments themselves aren’t measured on the taxpayers’ return on investment, it’s been easy for Democrats to champion public employee unions, trading money for votes, and vice versa.

That may be coming to an end. Henninger notes that Republicans have a unique – and short – window to align themselves as the party of spending restraint by vowing to take on the public employee unions and their entitlements. It won’t be easy because taking on these groups can actually be worse than attacking another politician. Organized labor is the Democratic Party’s grassroots, so challenging them is a request to have millions raised in opposition while thousands of government employees work phone banks, neighborhoods, and break rooms lobbying for support. As California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger learned in 2005, all it takes to create a union’s war chest is a few dollars increase in each member’s dues.

But it’s worth it, especially in a campaign year when most of the people out of work are from the private sector. Because of the stimulus money, most state and local governments were able to “create or save” jobs. Of course, the federal government has been on a hiring spree to keep pace with President Obama’s rapid expansion of the public sector. If this is truly the year when fiscal conservatives taste victory in coastal bastions of liberalism, it will be because GOP nominees take the time to educate and persuade voters that public employee unions are some of the greatest threats to our economic recovery.

In the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Butch keeps asking about their relentless pursuers, “Who are those guys?”  With President Barack Obama’s approval ratings plummeting, a supposedly “safe” Senate seat in danger, and health care “reform” on the ropes, the same question could be asked about the so-called White House strategists.  In the wake of a national and state-specific repudiation of President Obama and his policies, his advisors are promising defiance, not conciliation.

According to Politico, the real lesson to learn from Scott Brown’s surging popularity is voter frustration with the lack of progress Democrats have made on Obama’s agenda.  Huh?  Let them explain.

But the president’s advisers plan to spin it as a validation of the underdog arguments that fueled Obama’s insurgent candidacy.

“The painstaking campaign for change over two years in 2007 and 2008 has become a painstaking effort in the White House, too,” the official said. “The old habits of Washington aren’t going away easy.”

More likely is that the old hacks practicing The Chicago Way are doing the only thing they know how to do – fight like hell regardless of the reality.  Butch and Sundance made a similar decision at the end of their lives (and the movie).  How did that work out for them?