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

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

I can think of no one better to ring in the Fourth of July than our 40th president, Ronald Wilson Reagan.  Happy Birthday, America.

Near the end of Deroy Murdock’s column discussing the insanity of the federal government’s upcoming incandescent light bulb ban in favor of a mercury-laden replacement comes the iconic gem above.

It’s a detailed “how-to” label design provided ever so helpfully by the Federal Trade Commission to guide bulb packagers.  I don’t know whether to be relieved that the bureaucracy is trying to be this helpful in its mandates or crestfallen that taxpayer money is going to finance this kind of project.

That’s the contention of Slate’s Steve Kornacki, who heard more than an aw-shucks defense of the late Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) from the former president.  Byrd was a former Klansman who Clinton seems to think rode the changing tides of racial (in)tolerance to an unbroken 51 year Senate career.

But to hear Clinton tell it, Byrd’s Klan membership — and, more broadly, the ghastly record on racial issues that marked his first three decades in Congress — was more the product of a cynical career calculation. He knew it was wrong but figured it would help him get ahead, and then, when he finally did establish himself in Washington, he tried to make up for it by using his power for good. (A similar portrait of LBJ emerges in Robert Caro’s exhaustive biographical series.)

Watching Clinton today, I couldn’t help thinking that the former president, intentionally or not, was also talking about himself and his own approach to politics. Like LBJ, Clinton never really saw the point in making principled-but-unpopular stands in election years. The important thing, he seemed to believe, was to be in office and to make as many right decisions then as politics would allow.

Ah, the courage to be conniving.  Thanks to Kornacki’s insight, Americans can relearn a lesson they’d probably prefer to forget: When it comes to rationalizing bad behavior by politicians, Bill Clinton is the undisputed master.

While it may mark me a heretic to praise both an Englishman and a Liberal Democrat on the eve of the eve of the Fourth of July, I hope my recent paean to Everyday Americans evens the ledger.

I think it has to be said that Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is the most fascinating politician in the English-speaking world.  Unlike his rival for that title in the United States, Clegg has already made a positive contribution to the politics of his country.

Yesterday, Clegg announced the launch of a government website called “YourFreedom.”  It’s part of Clegg’s commitment to radically reduce the size of government in Britain in a direct reversal of the Labour Party’s thirteen years of increasing control of nearly everything Brits do.

I’d tell you more about it, but Clegg does better than I ever could:

What was once mostly a little used device is now becoming the Democrat majority’s favorite way to pass legislation.  So-called “deem and pass” – the highly controversial maneuver that greased the skids for ObamaCare’s passage – was used late last night to pass a $1.1 TRILLION dollar budget.  The corruption of the legislative process was doubly dirty because the non-voted measure was added to an emergency war spending bill.

And just in case you’re wondering, this is the main operating budget for the federal government this year.  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) sent up a smoke signal a few days ago that this kind of “budget enforcement resolution” might happen; especially since Democrats think American voters are too stupid to realize that “passing” a bill is the same as “voting on” a bill.

November can’t get here fast enough.

Never underestimate the speed and focus possible when the politicos in charge of government set their minds to getting something done.  Less than four days after the United States Supreme Court said that the U.S. Constitution’s 2^nd Amendment applied to states and municipalities like Chicago, the Second City’s aldermen rose to the challenge.

Unfortunately, they responded by deliberately passing a law to discriminate against gun owners to the maximum extent the Constitution might allow.  (Lost amid most of the coverage this week on the result in McDonald v. City of Chicago is that Justice Alito’s plurality opinion announces only that the 2^nd Amendment right to bear arms applies to Chicago.  It leaves to lower courts the careful work of figuring out which gun control laws are in fact unconstitutional.)

Let’s try a mind experiment.  Suppose a controversial Supreme Court opinion came down applying a universal right guaranteed in the Constitution against states and municipalities that had to do with, oh, let’s say…racial discrimination.  If the losing city in the decision responded in less than four days with an ordinance that deliberately tried to see how far it could still discriminate and pass constitutional muster, would that city council be lauded for its activism?

Maybe there’s a North Coast bias.

Last week, I wrote that even as august a figure as David Petraeus may not be enough to save the American military endeavor in Afghanistan given that country’s poor suitability for a counterinsurgency strategy.

Writing in today’s D.C. Examiner, Byron York looks at what General Petraeus’s testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee reveals about the war’s shortcomings:

“For example, nearly seven million Afghan children are now in school as opposed to less than one million a decade ago under Taliban control,” Petraeus said. “Immunization rates for children have gone up substantially and are now in the 70 to 90 percent range nationwide. Cell phones are ubiquitous in a country that had virtually none during the Taliban days.”

It was an extraordinary moment. Americans overwhelmingly supported the invasion of Afghanistan after the September 11 terrorist attacks. In eight and a half years of war there, 1,149 American servicemembers have died. And after all that sacrifice, the top American commander is measuring the war’s progress by school attendance, child immunization and cell phone use.

Petraeus is a military hero, deserving of every accolade that has been heaped upon him for the success of the surge in Iraq. But defining victory in Afghanistan as erecting a functional civil society overseen by a competent government is a “boil the ocean” strategy that may not be achievable in 18 years, let alone 18 months. And it’s relation to our legitimate national security interests in Central Asia is tangential at best.

Rather than letting the current strategy atrophy into withdrawal, it’s time for the administration to start developing an approach in Afghanistan that protects our legitimate security priorities without indulging in nation-building that has neither the domestic support nor the timeframe necessary to succeed.

In an interview with CFIF, Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, discusses what makes for a truly great Supreme Court Justice and the nomination and confirmation process as it relates Elena Kagan.

Listen to the interview here.

Take a look at Table 2.1, “Receipts by Source: 1934-2015” here on the White House Office of Management and Budget website.  For the year 2009, the federal government took in $915 billion in income tax receipts.  Then take a look at this Congressional Budget Office report that the Obama “stimulus,” which was originally estimated to cost $787 billion, in fact cost $862 billion.

And to what effect?  The Obama White House promised that his “stimulus” would keep unemployment below 8%, but we’ve instead suffered months of approximately 10% unemployment.  Gross domestic product reports are tepid and often revised downward, and the Labor Department reported this week that unemployment claims increased just as Obama and Biden embarked on their “Recovery Summer” tour.

Obama’s “stimulus” has only succeeded in adding almost $1 trillion to our nation’s unsustainable debt, while failing in its stated goals.  For the same cost, we could have completely eliminated the income tax for an entire year.  That’s right – no income tax at all for 2009.  Imagine the real-world stimulative effect that would have had.  Unfortunately, Obama and liberals prefer more government spending and control of taxpayer dollars to the true stimulative effect that the income tax elimination would have instead provided.  They know that once Americans suddenly saw those dollars in their pockets, it would be nearly impossible to corral them back into Washington’s usual tax-and-borrow-and-spend ranch.

Today’s BigGovernment.com queue includes our commentary on the disturbingly cozy marriage of convenience between BP and the Obama Administration.

BP and the Obama Agenda

By Timothy H. Lee

For years, liberals in Washington have tirelessly thwarted America from tapping its domestic sources of energy, while hypocritically lamenting our “addiction to foreign oil.” They have forsworn abundant energy supplies just off our coasts and erected boundaries against drilling and energy development right here at home. The unfortunate effect of their effort is to unnecessarily drive exploration further and further offshore, to deeper and deeper depths.

Suddenly, those same forces are forging a marriage of convenience with BP to scapegoat the entire energy industry for BP’s individualized failures. In his Oval Office speech to the nation, for instance, President Obama resorted to sloppy slurs against “oil industry lobbyists” and “an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.” …

Read the entire piece here.

It’s the latest in a series of improbable questions to emanate from the Garden State since Chris Christie took over as governor earlier this year. But Joe Scarborough raises it here and after watching his interview with the big man, you may begin to understand how Christie inspires the gypsy sentiment in conservatives’ hearts.

As the confirmation hearings for Elena Kagan, President Obama’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court,  proceed, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez sums up her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Answer: quite possibly, the margin of victory for Republicans in the United States Senate.

According to a new report from Public Policy Polling today, the largely unknown Johnson (a plastics manufacturer from Oshkosh) is within two points of the Badger State’s liberal stalwart, Senator Russ Feingold.  If the Wisconsin seat flips, it puts Republicans very close to retaking the Senate. Here’s the succint explanation.

Republicans currently have 41 seats in the Senate. Since the tie-breaking vote in the Senate belongs to the Democratic Vice President, Republicans would need a net pickup of 10 seats to retake the majority — an extremely high threshold.

To start with, that means having no Republican incumbents get beat. That shouldn’t be too hard. There aren’t many GOP incumbents around these days, and the ones that are are fairly safe. Only North Carolina’s Richard Burr looks vulnerable this year and he’ll probably be able to ride it out.

The next step is hanging on to the seven open GOP seats: one due to a Republican primary in Utah, the other six owing to retirements in Kansas, Ohio, Kentucky, Missouri, Florida, and New Hampshire. Utah, Kansas, and New Hampshire look very safe right now. Kentucky will be close and will likely hinge on how cautious Rand Paul can learn to be. Florida has scrambled into a three-way race with Charlie Crist’s decision to run as an independent, but look for Marco Rubio to make a strong showing as the year continues. Ohio and Missouri will likely stay tight up through election day.

Assuming a perfect defense, then, Republicans will still need to pickup 10 seats on offense. There are a few pieces of low-lying fruit: North Dakota Governor John Hoeven will almost certaintly win the seat being vacated by Byron Dorgan. The odds also look quite favorable for Dan Coats in Indiana and Mike Castle in Delaware to pick up open seats, and for John Boozman in Arkansas to defeat incumbent Blanche Lincoln.

Factor in those wins and Republicans still need six seats for a majority. And with the Wisconsin race competitive, they now have seven prospects. In addition to Johnson’s challenge to Feingold, there are also serious threats to Democratic incumbents in California, Nevada, Colorado, and Washington. With Republicans competitive for open seats in Illinois and Pennsylvania, the Wisconsin race actually gives the GOP an ever-so-slight margin of error for taking back a majority come election day.

And who is this great white hope of the upper midwest? George Will’s profile in the Washington Post last month provides some insight. If he’s right, this may be one more member of an exceptional senate class in 2010. To wit:

The theme of his campaign, the genesis of which was an invitation to address a Tea Party rally, is: “First of all, freedom.” Then? “Then you’ve got to put meat on the bones.” He gets much of his meat from the Wall Street Journal’s opinion pages. And from a Wisconsin congressman, Paul Ryan, whose “road map” for entitlement reform Johnson praises. Health care? “Mitch Daniels has the solution.” Indiana’s Republican governor has offered state employees the choice of consumer-controlled health savings accounts, and 70 percent now choose them.

“The most basic right,” Johnson says, “is the right to keep your property.” Remembering the golden age when, thanks to Ronald Reagan, the top income tax rate was 28 percent, Johnson says: “For a brief moment we were 72 percent free.” Johnson’s daughter — now a nurse in neonatal intensive care — was born with a serious heart defect. The operations “when her heart was only the size of a small plum” made him passionate about protecting the incentives that bring forth excellent physicians.

This sounds like a conservative who nows how to connect first principles to daily governance. Dare we dream such a thing?

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

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

Before leaving office, then President George W. Bush allowed his State Department to take North Korea off the department’s list of “State Sponsors of Terror.”  Earlier this year, an international panel concluded that North Korea was responsible for firing on and sinking a South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors.  Today, President Barack Obama’s State Department said this:

State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said during a regular news conference that the sinking was the act of one state’s military against another’s and not an act of terrorism. Thus, it is not ground to put North Korea back on the U.S. terror blacklist.

“It is our judgment that the sinking of the Cheonan is not an act of international terrorism and by itself would not trigger placing North Korea on the U.S. state (sponsors) of terrorism list,” he said.

But Crowley assured head-scratching journalists that if North Korea complies better with “sponsoring” terrorism, the regime will be rewarded.

“We will not hesitate to take action if we have information that North Korea has repeatedly provided support for acts of terrorism,” Crowley added.

So, it sounds like there are two reasons for no relisting North Korea on the “Sponsors of Terror” list.  Both require quibbling with definitions.  First, when a sovereign nation’s military kills members of another sovereign nation’s military, it is not an act of terrorism.  Okay, but it is most certainly an act of war.  Is the Obama State Department implying that North Korea engaged in an act of war?  If so, it seems like there should be consequences for such an act above and beyond concluding that it doesn’t meet an overly technical definition of terrorism.  (Anyone think the South Korean sailors weren’t terrorized as they died?)

The second reason is that “sponsoring” terrorism apparently requires a sovereign nation to have “repeatedly provided support” for acts of terrorism.  But when did sponsoring something require “repeated” support?  Is the local car dealership not a sponsor of a Little League team unless it “repeatedly” sponsors them?  At this point, does “repeated” mean twice, or more than twice?  And is North Korea staying off the list because they did an act directly instead of just “sponsoring” it?  Just tell the North Korean government what it has to do to get back on that list, Mr. Crowley!

People are dying to know.

These days, it seems like war is only the extension of politics by other means; except that even the means are political.

Last week, President Barack Obama minimized conservative harrumphing after firing General Stanley McChrystal by appointing General David Petraeus as his replacement.  Though politically savvy, CFIF Senior Fellow Troy Senik correctly notes that reassigning Petraeus may be a pyrrhic victory since most of the conditions for successfully implementing his counterinsurgency strategy are missing.  When he gets in country, Petraeus’ biggest enemy won’t be the Taliban or a corrupt Karzai government; it’ll be trying to deliver a victory conservatives can stomach on a timetable and troop count demanded by liberals.

Heading back to Washington the war on rationality gets even rougher.  This morning four out of five Supreme Court right-of-center justices voted to extend the Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual’s right to own a gun to the several states.  The result produces two effects.  First, complete government bans on gun possession are unconstitutional.  Second, eight of the current justices are now on record supporting a liberal theory of constitutional jurisprudence: Substantive Due Process.  Only Justice Clarence Thomas opted for a textually supported, historically rooted commonsense reading of the Fourteenth Amendment.  Since no one tried to dispute his reasoning, it can be assumed that everyone accepted his conclusion – they just didn’t like his premises.

The only element these storylines have in common is one man bearing quiet witness to the power of clear thinking.  While the political class may be unable to sustain a coherent framework for addressing pressing issues, it is a comfort knowing that at least some of those they appoint are capable – and willing – to tackle important matters with precision and daring.

Well, not actually.  But reading this list of queries makes one pine for a Senator Will on the Judiciary Committee when its members meet on Monday to begin Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan’s confirmation process.

Here’s a sampling:

• In Federalist 45, James Madison said: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the state governments are numerous and indefinite.”

What did the Father of the Constitution not understand about the Constitution? Are you a Madisonian? Does the doctrine of enumerated powers impose any limits on the federal government? Can you cite some things that, because of that doctrine, the federal government has no constitutional power to do?

• Is it constitutional for Arizona to devote state resources to enforcing federal immigration laws?

• Is there anything novel about the Arizona law empowering police officers to act on a “reasonable suspicion” that someone encountered in the performance of the officers’ duties might be in the country illegally?

• The Fifth Amendment mandates “just compensation” when government uses its eminent domain power to take private property for “public use.” In its 2005 Kelo decision, the court said government can seize property for the “public use” of transferring it to wealthier private interests who will pay more taxes. Do you agree?

• Should proper respect for precedent prevent the court from reversing Kelo? If so, was the court wrong to undo Plessy v. Ferguson’s 1896 ruling that segregating the races with “separate but equal” facilities is constitutional?

If you ever nursed the idea that taxation isn’t a form of punishment, President Barack Obama is here to disabuse you.  A day after Congress passed massive new regulations on the financial industry, the president today called for passage of a 10 year, $90 billion tax on banks and hedge funds to pay for the 2008 financial bailout.  To quote the president:

“We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis — so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

And yet the tax/fee/legalized theft won’t be levied on just “the biggest beneficiaries.”  It will hit every bank with assets over $50 billion and hedge funds with more than $10 billion.  That means even the financial institutions that have already repaid their bailout debts will be hit with the 0.15% increase in the cost of doing business.

But remember: businesses don’t pay taxes (or fees) – people do.  Keep that in mind when your monthly service fees jump through the roof.

… comes from a non-candidate. Sic Semper Tyrannis: