Freedom Line Blog

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to put the American people at ease by stating “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it?”  

She was talking about ObamaCare, just prior to its final passage.  At the time, few people – including Pelosi and her Congressional colleagues – actually understood the consequences of passing the unpopular 2,000-plus-page bill.  But to Pelosi and her liberal majority, it was “very, very exciting.”  Never mind that it will actually raise health care costs, force people who like their insurance to get a new plan approved by government bureaucrats and limit access to care. Despite all the warnings and opposition from the American people, hindsight is 20/20, you know.

Well, now it appears that another member of the Congressional leadership has decided to follow Pelosi’s lead while announcing his own excitement about the prospect of passing yet another 2,000-page “reform” bill.

At 5:39 EST this morning – when most Americans were still asleep – key House and Senate lawmakers struck a deal on Financial Regulatory Reform, legislation that gives the federal government broad powers over the nation’s financial sector.   As Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) aptly noted, “it deals with every single aspect of our lives.” 

What does that mean for the average American family out there?  Well, according to Mr. Dodd, “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” 

Huh?  When the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a chief architect of this legislation admits that he doesn’t know – indeed, that “no one will know” – the  consequences of a bill that he largely wrote and that “deals with every single aspect of our lives,” shouldn’t that be reason enough to oppose it?

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the Obama Administration’s “Recovery Summer” public relations tour. 

As Giachino points out in the video, “If initiatives like the stimulus package and Obamacare really worked, [the President] wouldn’t have to be touring the country trying to promote them after they have already passed. No amount of speeches will put Americans back to work or plug the gusher in the Gulf of Mexico. It’ll take long hours, hard work and tough decisions.  And unfortunately, those don’t come loaded into the teleprompter.”

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.

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

Senik:  David Petraeus: An Indispensable Man for an Impossible Mission?
Ellis:  Obama Administration Fails at Leadership; Opts for Lawsuits Instead
Lee:  Obama Realizing the Presidency Isn’t a Videogame

Freedom Minute Video:  Obama’s Recovery Summer
Podcast:  Interview with Quin Hillyer, senior editorial writer at the Washington Times and senior editor of The American Spectator
Jester’s Courtroom:  Unhappy Meals

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

If you are not already signed up to receive CFIF’s Liberty Update by e-mail, sign up here.

More than two months after the BP oil spill began in the Gulf, and amid warranted public anger, President Obama still appears more interested in not letting the crisis go to waste than providing the leadership necessary to help “plug the damn hole.”

The latest evidence is outlined in a piece published earlier this week on Forbes.com, authored by Dr. Michael Economides, an energy analyst, petroleum engineer and Editor-in-Chief of Energy Tribune.

Dr. Economides notes that the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling, which is charged with providing recommendations on how to prevent and mitigate the impact of future spills,  is “well-stocked with anti-drilling activists and high-ranking officers of environmental groups” and is “devoid of a single expert on oil production or offshore development.”

Take for example Richard Lazarus, the man President Obama appointed Executive Director of the Commission.   As Dr. Economides points out, “Lazarus’ background is far from technical and, perhaps more ominously, far from unbiased. Lazarus is an environmental lawyer who has, in fact, argued 30 cases in front of the Supreme Court on behalf of environmental interests. Quite simply, Lazarus is an incredibly accomplished, incredibly talented opponent of offshore drilling.” 

And, to say that the resumes of the rest of the members on the Commission are thin on any real technical experience would be an understatement. 

The devastating accident in the Gulf was the result of a complex series of events.  Providing real answers should include the work of experts with industry and technical knowledge, rather than just partisan activists.

In addition to appointing a politically motivated Commission, President Obama’s short-sighted moratorium on offshore drilling, now overturned by the courts, was nothing more than a political decision to score political points.  Strangling commerce and the flow of energy in the U.S. would have severe consequences for those already suffering in the Gulf.   Jobs, revenue and entire local communities are at stake. 

The energy industry and the American economy are in a precarious position.  Now is the time to consider smart policy options, not for more political maneuvering. 

Read Dr. Economides’ entire article here.

In an interview with CFIF, Quin Hillyer, senior editorial writer at the Washington Times and senior editor of The American Spectator, discusses the Helen Thomas controversy and changes in the White House press room, as well as what he calls “Ninja bureaucrats on the loose.”

Listen to the interview here.

Following on our observations last week about Paul McCartney’s shameless dig at former President Bush during a recent White House concert and Elton John’s brave decision to defy calls to boycott Israel (and Rush Limbaugh’s wedding), it seems the two British rockers are still showing their respective stripes.

In an interview in today’s edition of the British tabloid The Sun, McCartney puts the environmental left’s most poisonous arrow in his quiver:

The Beatles legend said: “Sadly we need disasters like this [the BP oil spill] to show people. Some people don’t believe in climate warming – like those who don’t believe there was a Holocaust.

We’ll leave it to Sir Paul to tell us exactly how an explosion on an oil rig is supposed to provide compelling proof of the reality of global warming.

A better example from amongst the knights of the realm comes from Sir Elton John. While Sir Elton has been known to wander off the sanity reservation from time to time (he famously blamed opposition to Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid on sexism and, on another occasion, fantasized about outlawing the Internet), his recent performance in Tel Aviv wasn’t the rocket man’s only principled stand in the region.  Just a few weeks before, Islamists in Morocco were calling for Elton to be banned from performing in Rabat at the country’s largest musical festival because of his homosexuality. Despite the threats, he refused to cancel his appearance. The audience reportedly ate it up.

At a time when Comedy Central curls into a ball everytime the jihad machine starts warming up, here’s to hoping for more stars with the courage of Elton John.

House Democrats are planning to force a vote TODAY on H.R. 5175, the so-called DISCLOSE Act.  CFIF is asking its activists — and all Americans — to call their Representatives in Congress now to demand they vote “No” on this assault on the First Amendment.

Billed by proponents as a response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, the DISCLOSE Act is nothing more than another attempt by career politicians to silence their critics during elections.  Specifically, the legislation seeks to subject small non-profit organizations like CFIF and others to burdensome and expensive disclosure requirements that will make it virtually impossible to speak out on important public policy issues at times when it is most important to do so – in the months leading up to elections.
 
Alarmingly, the DISCLOSE Act exempts labor unions and other large powerful organizations.  In other words, Congress wants to arbitrarily preserve the free speech and association rights of a handful of politically-favored interests, while at the same time muzzle the voices of smaller groups of Americans, including Tea Party groups.

Such a flagrant assault on the First Amendment must be stopped.  Remember, a vote on the DISCLOSE Act in the House of Representatives is expected to take place today.  

Call your Representative in Congress and urge him or her to vote “No” on H.R. 5175, the DISCLOSE Act.  To find your representative’s contact information, click here.

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.

See if you can make sense of the following two paragraphs:

Tens of thousands of gallons more oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday after an undersea robot bumped a venting system, forcing BP to remove the cap that had been containing some of the crude.

The setback, yet another in the nine-week effort to stop the gusher, came as thick pools of oil washed up on Pensacola Beach in Florida and the Obama administration tried to figure out how to resurrect a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. (Emphasis mine)

Why on this great blue marble of ours is the Obama Administration trying to force the shut-down of nearly three dozen properly working oil rigs when there are now tens of thousands more gallons of oil gushing into the Gulf from a totally different site?

Maybe it’s debatable whether a moratorium should be sought.  But how can it be that this seems to be the only solution the White House is willing to fight for when it could be doing a lot more good getting the federal bureaucracy to start helping state and local governments clean up the mess right now?  Is the Office of the President of the United States really this impotent?

Well, that settles it.  If immigration-friendly Mexico supports invalidating Arizona’s illegal immigration law, then I guess the debate is over.

This can’t come as good news to the Obama Administration.  It’s bad enough that “only” an overwhelming majority of Americans support Arizona’s SB 1070.  Now, the biggest cheerleader for Attorney General Holder’s lawsuit comes from the government whose inability to police the drug cartels or provide a stable economic environment for its citizens helps drive illegal immigrants north.

I wonder how long it will be before the president sends his buddy Felipe Calderon a note saying “No gracias, amigo.”

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.

While no one in the vast right-wing conspiracy is going to outdo CFIF’s own Timothy Lee for principled and prolonged resistance to the FCC’s attempt at a backdoor takeover of the Internet, we appreciate the assist from the folks at Reason. Here, Nick Gillespie lays out three reasons to oppose Washington’s proposed conquest of cyberspace:

As we noted yesterday, Senator Jon Kyl (R – Arizona) stunned a weekend townhall audience with his disclosure that President Obama told him during a private Oval Office meeting, “the problem is if we secure the border, then you all won’t have a reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.”

In other words, Obama considers our nation’s very territorial integrity little more than a partisan bargaining chip. Or, as stated by Sen. Kyl, “they’re holding it hostage.”

In response, the Obama White House essentially labeled Sen. Kyl, a man respected across party lines for his intellectual heft and moral integrity, a liar.  Speaking yesterday to White House correspondents, Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said, “the President didn’t say that, Senator Kyl knows the President didn’t say that…  It’s not true.”   Senator Kyl, however, maintains his version of events.

So whom to believe?  Well, this is the same White House that is accused by two separate Democratic candidates for Senate of offering appointments in exchange for dropping out of their campaigns.  This is also the same White House that falsely justified its offshore drilling moratorium (which threatens innumerable jobs in the Gulf region) by citing the opinions of drilling engineers.  Those engineers subsequently objected to the White House’s false attribution in the strongest of terms.

Those are just two recent examples of White House dishonesty.  It’s difficult to imagine a scenario under which both the White House and Sen. Kyl are correct, so who possesses the better record of honesty and integrity?

Some articles must be read in their entirety in order to believe them, and that certainly qualifies for this gem at Fox News.  Mindboggling is the only word that seems appropriate to describe the pay-to-play scheme involving annual negotiations between the Department of Interior and the Border Patrol where the latter winds up paying $50 million just to get access to the border!

What in the name of the Sierra Club is going on?  It’s an unholy alliance between the Environmental Left and the open-borders crowd that drains the Border Patrol of access and money.  The effect is an unauthorized transfer of Congressional appropriations that has the Border Patrol paying for studies on its officers’ impact on the environment.

Republicans are calling it extortion.

Rep. Rob Bishop, R-Utah, said the kicker in the multimillion-dollar tradeoff is that the money doesn’t even guarantee the Border Patrol open access to the land. Agents still have to follow particular rules to drive into wilderness areas to pursue suspects or set up routine patrols.

“That conflict has got to be resolved,” he said. “If the Border Patrol was allowed to have free access to patrol the borders at will … it would have the same effect that they’re doing in other areas.”

Bishop in March called on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to stop “extorting” the money from Homeland Security. “Money appropriated for border security should only be spent on making our borders more secure, and not diverted to unrelated DOI spending projects,” he said in a statement at the time. According to Bishop’s office, Salazar has not responded.

Looks like British Petroleum isn’t the only “BP” with Secretary Salazar’s boot planted firmly on its neck.

The press is abuzz today with rumors that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will be leaving his West Wing post in the near future, likely after the midterm elections. While the White House denies the allegations, the UK Telegraph lays out the following rationale:

It is well known in Washington that arguments have developed between pragmatic Mr Emanuel, a veteran in Congress where he was known for driving through compromises, and the idealistic inner circle who followed Mr Obama to the White House.

And it’s equally well known that Rahmbo has consistently lost. As Jonathan Alter relates in his new book “The Promise” (which, in its lust for Obama, would be better titled “The Gospel According to Jon”), Emanuel vigorously fought the Administration’s plan for a comprehensive transformation of health care in favor of smaller, more incremental victories. For all of his bravado, Emanuel — who, along with Chuck Schumer, engineered his party’s takeover of Congress by embracing moderate and conservative Democrats — is indeed a pragmatist, not a liberal True Believer unable to brook compromise.

This staff shakeup, should it happen, will put the White House on a dangerous trajectory. Emanuel’s incrementalist views have been steamrolled during most of his tenure in the administration. If, even in that position of weakened power, he can’t be accomodated in the halls of the West Wing, then we can expect the “idealists” to be running the show in the second half of Obama’s term. That means that in the aftermath of what will likely be at least a partial Republican takeover of Congress, Obama will be moving further and further towards liberal purity.

If you think the administration is out of touch now, wait until they banish even internal dissent.

No one beats the Brits for being able to find the funny in any circumstance; especially when it comes to politics.  For a bit of gallows humor, David Cameron’s Conservative Party released this three-page document framing the recently deceased Labour government’s legacy as a last will and testament.  Here’s the cover:

The Last Will and Testament of Labour 1997 – 2010

To my successors, I leave no money, only waste,

debt and the deepest cuts of modern times.

To the young people of Britain, I leave one in five of you

without work.

To pensioners, I bequeath you lower pensions. I reduced the value of

pension funds by billions. I leave you working longer for less.

In 13 years, I have wasted the inheritance left to me.

Of the gold bullion my predecessors bequeathed me,

I sold over 350 tonnes at the worst possible price.

I have spent and spent and spent again – and every man, woman and

child will have £22,400 to pay for my profligacy.

I have taken your hard-earned money and wasted it. I lost £3 billion

in benefit overpayments and paid the dead £10 million in tax credits.

I leave Britain a bigger deficit than France, Germany and Japan,

greater than Greece, Italy and Portugal.

I leave 2.47 million of you without a job.

With more time I could have done more.

I leave no apology, no regret, no comfort, and not an ounce of

contrition.

I leave you years of painful and difficult decisions.

This is my legacy to you.

Rising conservative Kris Kobach lays out a succinct analysis that puts to rest any notion that the Obama Administration has any legal justification for suing Arizona over its tough new illegal immigration law, and concluding with the only plausible explanation:

But even if one were to imagine that the Obama administration had a strong legal argument, there would be yet another reason not to file the lawsuit: It is completely unnecessary. Five suits have already been filed by the ACLU and their fellow travelers. The issue is already teed up for the federal courts to decide. The administration achieves nothing by launching its own litigation. Except, of course, for rallying the Democrats’ open-borders base before the 2010 elections.

In a previous part of his National Review Online entry Kobach shows that every federal appeals court who’s considered the issue “support the authority of Arizona to enact its law.”  Since the lawsuits arrayed against SB 1070 are almost guaranteed to fail, it will be interesting to see how many open-borders supporters will convince themselves that the Administration’s ploy is worth the bother.

Typically, discretion isn’t a virtue associated with government; yet under the Obama Administration it’s being treated like a mortal sin.

The latest example comes in the aftermath of the president’s decision to impose a six-month moratorium on all deepwater (i.e. 500 feet or more below sea level) drilling.  The stated reason is to ensure that no other oil rigs accidentally blow up and gush more black crude into American waters.

But mandating stasis will do more than head-off a highly improbable second Gulf Oil Spill, says Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell.  In papers supporting a lawsuit against the moratorium, Caldwell is calling for a “balanced approach” response instead of the current policy that is “costing between $165 million and $330 million each month in lost wages for Louisiana jobs tied to the drilling,” according to the effected companies.

Caldwell argued that drilling can be safely resumed within 30 days if federal inspectors are permanently stationed on each rig. The inspectors would re-certify all blowout prevention equipment, enforce compliance with all drilling procedures, and ensure training of all rig personnel to industry standards, including any new safety recommendations made by the presidential commission.

“After confirming the correctness and preparedness of each rig and well design, these deepwater rigs should be permitted to resume work, and the Department of Interior should resume issuing permits,” Caldwell said in yesterday’s brief. Such a “balanced approach” would allow safe resumption of a vital portion of the state’s economy “without the necessity of shutting down an entire industry segment,” he said.

It is tragic that the Louisiana Attorney General has to point out this basic fact in federal court papers.  Like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal’s recent decision to defy the Coast Guard after repeated attempts to go through the proper channels, we can assume that Caldwell is only doing this because previous informal requests went unanswered.

Only in a managerial labyrinth like the federal government could a common sense plan to address the real problems of deepwater drilling be ignored in favor of an across-the-board job killer like a half-year moratorium.

H/T: Bloomberg News

In taking the Constitution’s oath of office, President Barack Obama solemnly swore to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Does faithfully executing the office to the best of his ability include holding our nation’s border security hostage to “comprehensive immigration reform” legislation?

In a truly stunning revelation recorded on video during an Arizona weekend townhall meeting, Senator Jon Kyl (R -AZ) recounted a one-on-one discussion in which Obama explicitly said that border security is a bargaining chip for comprehensive immigration reform, a.k.a. amnesty.

I met with the President, in the Oval Office, just the two of us – I kicked the rest of the people out…  Here’s what the President said:  ‘The problem is,’ he said, ‘if we secure the border, then you all won’t have a reason to support comprehensive immigration reform.’  In other words, they’re holding it hostage.”

So there you have it.  To Barack Obama, our nation’s border security, and its very territorial integrity, is nothing more than an expedient bargaining chip for his partisan political agenda and expansion of his potential voting bloc.  That admission occurs just as his Department of Justice plans to sue the state of Arizona for passing an illegal alien statute that merely parallels the existing federal statute.

Less than two years into his tenure, it is becoming increasingly clear that Barack Obama isn’t merely incompetent, but dangerous.