Freedom Line Blog

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out.  Below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  “Guns Is Not the Answer” – Shoot an Armed Home Invader, Invite the Wrath of Chicago’s Mayor?
Ellis:  Will Boston Boycott Massachusetts?
Senik:  “The Boss” Takes Charge in New Jersey
CFIF Staff:  Obama’s Waterloo? Katrina? Iranian Hostage Crisis? Bay of Pigs? Watergate? Killer Rabbit?

Freedom Minute Video:  Unanswered Questions About the Sestak Deal
Podcast:  Florida State Senator Discusses BP Oil Spill
Jester’s Courtroom:  Pedestrian Sues Google for Bad Directions

Editorial Cartoons:  Latest Cartoons of Michael Ramirez
Quiz:  Question of the Week
Notable Quotes:  Quotes of the Week

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In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the ongoing White House scandal involving Congressman Joe Sestak and key questions that those involved should have to answer before the White House is let off the hook.

As a candidate for the White House, when it was easy to throw rocks at the Bush Administration from afar, Barack Obama falsely attributed international disaccord to Bush’s policies.  Obama famously raised eyebrows in 2007 when he promised to meet such leaders as Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and North Korea’s Kim Jong Il “without preconditions.”  As he sanctimoniously put it, “the notion that somehow not talking to countries is punishment to them, which has been the guiding diplomatic principle of this administration, is ridiculous.”

At approximately the same time, Obama predicted that not only would Bush’s troop surge strategy in Iraq not succeed, it would somehow make things worse.

The scorecard three years later is not kind to Obama.  The Iraq surge has succeeded beyond anyone’s most optimistic expectations, while Obama’s doctrine of “peace through apology” is failing miserably.

Turkey now provides another vivid illustration of the continuing failure of this Obama Doctrine.

Not long ago, Turkey stood as an important pro-American ally.  Indeed, Turkey was Israel’s most friendly neighbor, and the site for one of Obama’s more disgraceful “Apology Tour” speeches.  Today, however, Turkey has shifted its friendly gestures from Israel to Iran.  Turkey also sanctions the militant group IHH that attacked Israeli commandos and attempted to run the Gaza blockade, and lectured Obama that his condemnation of Israel’s act of self-defense wasn’t strong enough.

Along with North Korea, Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Syria, Turkey provides another instructive illustration that Obama’s spineless foreign policy has degraded, not improved, international relations.

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

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

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.

Apparently trying to contain the damage from last week’s blowup over allegations that the White House used President Clinton as the middleman in an attempt to bribe Rep. Joe Sestak out of the Pennsylvania senate race, the Obama Administration is now leaking that they did something similar in Colorado. From the AP:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration dangled the possibility of a government job for former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff last year in hopes he would forgo a challenge to Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, officials said Wednesday, just days after the White House admitted orchestrating a job offer in the Pennsylvania Senate race.

These officials declined to specify the job that was floated or the name of the administration official who approached Romanoff, and said no formal offer was ever made. They spoke on condition of anonymity, saying they were not cleared to discuss private conversations.

Romanoff is mounting a primary challenge to Senator Michael Bennet in the Centennial State’s Democratic primary, which won’t be held until August 10. By leaking this information now, the Obama Administration looks to be cynically trying to avoid a repeat of the Sestak controversy as the Colorado race progresses. With two months left and a candidate who has thus far been more tight-lipped than Sestak, the odds are against them. And while this may feed widespread notions of administration corruption, it also has the potential to divide Democrats who resent the White House choosing sides within the Democratic Party. Stay tuned: this could get interesting.

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.

We all know that driving with one foot on the gas and the other  on the brake  just slows you down.  And that dieting by day while binging by night will negate your weight loss efforts.

Similarly, spending billions of taxpayer dollars to “stimulate” the economy and job growth, while simultaneously proposing tax increases that would stymie investments in new jobs, won’t help us get our economy back on track.

Unfortunately, that is just the proposal before the U.S. Congress, in the form of the so-called Baucus/Levin American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act. What’s doubly unfortunate is the rush by some Congressional leaders to hastily pass this legislation without any public debate.

Among the provisions in the bill is a tax increase on “carried interest,” which is the profit from a successful investment. Carried interest earnings are often used to spur further investment, and don’t fairly constitute regular job income because the return on investment isn’t guaranteed like a paycheck is. The proposed increase would take the tax from the current capital gains tax level of 15% (20% in 2011) to a punishing 40%.  Consequently, investment partnerships would not invest as much as they do now.

Even some Senate Democrats recognize the folly in discouraging job-creating investments with this sort of tax increase. Four Democrats—Patty Murray (WA), Mark Warner (VA), Bob Casey (PA), and Jeanne Shaheen (NH)—along with Scott Brown (R-MA) have said that taxing venture firms at higher rates would merely hurt job creation and “could not occur at a worse time.”

There are additional reasons the carried-interest tax hike is a bad idea:

• While President Obama has admitted that small businesses are responsible for 70 percent of the nation’s net new jobs in the last decade, this legislation would translate to an $11.2 billion tax increase on some of those same small businesses.   How can this be an engine of job creation?

• The tax hike would also discourage investment and take away money used to start, grow and rescue companies.

• Under such high tax rates, the United States would be at a severe global disadvantage in terms of attracting investment.  The winners would be countries such as India, China, and the U.K., with carried interest tax rates of 0%, 10% and 18%, respectively.  Why drive jobs and businesses to overseas competitors?

Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and Representative Sander Levin (D-MI) just introduced their ill-advised legislation on May 20, yet they are driving for quick passage.  This rush only serves to deprive everyday constituents of the ability to weigh in with their elected representatives on the legislation.

Is it any wonder that with such stealth legislating, millions of Americans are losing their confidence and trust in Congress’s ability to boost the economy?

As the Center for Individual Freedom sees it, this is another case of government “help” we can’t afford.

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

You may not know his name (though you’ve seen it here at CFIF before), but you probably know his work. O’Keefe is the 25-year old renegade conservative filmaker whose undercover exposes of groups like Planned Parenthood and ACORN have revealed institutional corruption on the left.

Well, he’s back. And this time his target is the U.S. Census Bureau. Are the results as damning this time? Judge for yourself:

Few events could better illustrate the moral and intellectual decadence of the “international community.”  To wit, a collective global yawn greets North Korea after sinking a South Korean naval ship and killing 46, while feigned outrage greets Israeli commandos’ self-defense against an attacking militant mob.

Let’s recap:  A flotilla of 800 militants, which The Wall Street Journal aptly notes “falsely billed itself as a ‘humanitarian’ mission – organized by a radical Turkish group with close ties to Hamas, the terrorist group that illegally seized pwer in Gaza in 2007,” belligerently steams toward Gaza.  Gaza, of course, stands subject to a mutual blockade by both Egypt and Israel to prevent importation of weapons.  That blockade already allows passage of food, medical supplies and other legitimately “humanitarian” materials, meaning that there would be no need for any truly humanitarian shipment to challenge it.  The Israeli Navy repeatedly warns the flotilla that it must either turn back or submit to inspection for weapons.  After repeated advisories, the Israelis announce that they will have no choice but to board the vessels, just as any nation would do with a convoy approaching its shores.  Israeli commandos then repel from helicopters to the ships, at which point a violent mob attacks them with clubs, knives and the commandos’ own weapons.  One Israeli is even beaten and hurled overboard.

And all of this is caught on video.

Threatened with potentially deadly force against their soldiers, the Israeli Defense Forces then respond in self-defense, ultimately killing nine attackers.

Predictably, the “international community” – composed predominantly by dictators, kleptocrats, anti-American and anti-Semitic thugs – expresses its outrage, and the United Nations Security Council convenes an “emergency meeting” to consider condemning Israel.

It’s all something to remember the next time one hears appeals to the United Nations or international consensus by Barack Obama or other fatuous leaders.

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