Freedom Line Blog

This week’s edition of the Liberty Update, CFIF’s weekly e-newsletter, is out.  For those readers who don’t receive it in their e-mail inboxes or if you haven’t had a chance to read it yet, below is a summary of its contents:

Lee:  Obama Blames His Record Deficits On Bush. He’s Not Being Honest.
Humber:  In Praise of James O’Keefe
Senik:  When Man Looked Up

Freedom Minute Video:  KSM Plan Should be DOA
Podcast:  Steve Forbes Discusses How Capitalism Will Save Us
Jester’s Courtroom:  Fine Imposed for Filing Frivolous Lawsuits

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, sign up here.

Not that many moons ago, Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana was haughtily correcting reporters that the price tag for the so-called “Louisiana Purchase” of her vote for the now-stalled health care reform bill was not the early-reported $100 million, but closer to $300 million (there are estimates approaching $400 million).

Yesterday, Miss Piggy Landrieu took to the Senate floor to whine about the attacks on her resulting, well, for her pigginess.  Among her remarks, “I know what I am inside.  I don’t need anyone to remind me of the goodness I have inside…”

We must have missed all those stories that attempted to remind her of the goodness she has inside.

From Josh Kraushaar, politico.com: 

On the same day Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn officially claimed the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, he found out that his newly-minted running mate has a rap sheet that includes alleged domestic battery and tax evasion.  The revelation has shocked Democrats, leading to worries that his presence could taint the entire statewide ticket.

“According to court records obtained by the Chicago Tribune, Scott Lee Cohen, a millionaire pawnbroker who prevailed with a narrow plurality in the crowded primary for lieutenant governor, was accused by his ex-girlfriend, a prostitute, of holding a knife to her neck in a 2005 domestic dispute.”

Read the whole story here.

In this week’s Freedom Minute, CFIF’s Renee Giachino discusses the Obama Administration’s plan to give the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks a civilian trial in NYC and how it’s past time for our nation to get serious about winning the War on Terror.

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.

As the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter memorably put it, the free market is about “creative destruction” —  rank, privilege, and status mean nothing if you can’t compete in the marketplace. Bad companies and products wilt under competition from more capable rivals.

Applying these kinds of first principles to policy debates can be unwieldy at times, however, if they don’t exactly square with your political coalition. Republicans have been wed to the business establishment for decades on the notion that those who philosophically support the free market and those who actually grind the gears of commerce on a daily basis are natural allies. Not necessarily, says Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan in an interview with RealClearPolitics. When asked about the current state of the economy:

Republicans messed this up too. We have to remember that we’re also to blame for having practiced crony capitalism. But where we are right now — it’s a systematic expansion of this doctrine. For us, it’s easier to fix because we just have to rededicate ourselves to our principles. For Democrats, they would have to repudiate theirs, because crony capitalism sits nicely with their philosophy. You can sort of see an alignment here where big business and big government find a common agreement and that is a very big danger to our free market system. So we need to go back to being pro-market, instead of just pro-business. And there is a difference.

Ryan is one of the brightest members of Congress around (his comprehensive plan for restoring America’s economic health is referenced extensively in the interview and can be found here) and it’s nice to see an elected official finally making this too-oft ignored distinction.

…so go aslyums masquerading as state governments throughout the nation. Despite the fact that the Golden State is staring a $20 billion budget deficit in the face (and facing the prospect of cutting off much of the revenue they’ll need to get out of the hole thanks to a Byzantine global warming law), policy entreprenuership is alive and well in Sacramento. The latest big idea:

California is going to be first state in the nation to monitor cow gas emission. The state plans to install a network of computerized devices to measure methane gas emissions in places where there are lots of dairy ranches and landfills.

Sounds like the state’s bureaucrats are competing with the bovines to see who can produce the most … waste.

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.

Fresh off his famous catastrophes on the healthcare and deficit reduction fronts, Barack Obama momentarily shifted his bumbling gaze yesterday to Net Neutrality.

What exactly is Net Neutrality, you ask?

Well, think of it as ObamaCare for the Internet, and you get the essential idea.  Net Neutrality would federally bureaucratize Internet service by dictating rigid price controls and traffic surge management to providers, among other toxic provisions.  The Internet seemed to be doing just fine so far, what with the ongoing explosion of content delivery and devices like the iPhone.  But why should that stop Obama from “fixing” something that isn’t broken?

In an unintentionally amusing commentary entitled “President Obama Hearts Net Neutrality,” Stacey Higginbotham praises Obama, who appears to be shifting his Midas-in-reverse focus to this dangerous campaign.  When asked about Net Neutrality, Obama responded:

I’m a big believer in Net Neutrality.  I campaigned on this.  I continue to be a strong supporter of it.  My FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has indicated that he shares the view that we’ve got to keep the Internet open, that we don’t want to create a bunch of gateways that prevent somebody who doesn’t have a lot of money but has a good idea from being able to start their next YouTube or their next Google on the Internet.  So this is something we’re committed to.

Consider the absurdity of Obama’s comment.  He curiously demands that we “keep the Internet open,” even though it has somehow managed to remain open all this time without the need for crippling Net Neutrality regulations.  And he suggests that Net Neutrality is necessary to allow innovators to “start their next YouTube or their next Google,” leaving one to wonder how anyone ever managed to start YouTube or Google in the first place without Net Neutrality.

Net Neutrality advocates dishonestly concoct the bogeyman of sinister Internet service providers blocking web content, but the reality is that America faces a continuing exponential increase in Internet traffic.  This rapid growth will require innovations and investment by Internet service providers to carry it, just as they have done to date.  Obama wrongly alleges that Net Neutrality is somehow necessary to allow the next YouTube or Google, but the truth is that the next YouTube or Google will be impossible if network providers are prohibited by bureaucratic Net Neutrality regulations from managing the surge in data traffic.

The need for freedom and flexibility of network providers to innovate will become even more critical as Americans increasingly shift to smart phones.

As noted by a report in today’s Wall Street Journal, “carriers are already running at over 80% capacity,” and “are scrambling to build out next-generation networks that promise higher bandwidth and faster speeds.”  If Obama and his FCC succeed in imposing suffocating Net Neutrality regulations that they recently proposed, however, service providers’ difficulties will only increase as Obama bureaucratizes the Internet in the same way that he attempted to bureaucratize healthcare.

Americans concerned about the future of Internet growth and innovation must therefore act quickly to stop Obama’s reverse-Midas Net Neutrality scheme.  Please contact your Senators and Representative immediately and demand a stop to this destructive scheme before it’s too late.

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.

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

Virginia is now one of many states pushing through a legislative response to complete federal control of health care.  Today, 23 Virginia Senators voted to exempt the Commonwealth from ObamaCare’s individual health insurance mandate.  Five Democrats joined all 18 Republicans to enact the measure in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

If President Obama’s health care bill does come back to life in the U.S. Congress, it appears that more states will follow Virginia’s lead to fight ObamaCare locally.

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.

Talk about “inconvenient truths.”

The global warming cacophony has become even more dissonant in recent months, as global temperature data continues to confirm a decade-long temperature decline since 1998.  How could this happen, considering substantial increases in carbon output as China and India have rapidly industrialized, and the United States economy witnessed a decade of unprecedented growth?  On top of that, the “Climategate” scandal in recent months exposed the rotten infrastructure of lies, pettiness and data manipulation that constitutes the global warming community.

Now, along comes an unintentionally amusing report that climatologists are “puzzled” that the planet’s stratospheric cycles may have cooled the globe despite their claims that humans control our climate.

As reported by Gautam Naik of The Wall Street Journal, “climatologists have puzzled” over global cooling over the past decade, and “new research suggests that lower levels of water vapor in the stratosphere may partly explain the anomaly.” The report proceeds to discuss a Science magazine study showing that “concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere has dropped about 10% in the past decade, triggered by unexplained cooler temperatures at certain high altitudes above the tropics.”

Further, “the study concludes that in the last decade the decline in water vapor slowed the rate of rising temperatures by about 25%, thus partly negating the heat-trapping effect of increasing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.”

In other words, natural and unpredictable global cycles and solar activity far beyond human control overwhelm the alleged effects of human activity on the planet.

The only people “puzzled” by this are the global warming zealots who are at long last watching their claims to vanity evaporate in the face of reality.

According to The Hill newspaper, Democrats reached a tentative compromise on health care just days before Massachusetts elected Scott Brown.  Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) stated that an agreement was reached on January 15. 

Of course, it is an indictment of this Administration’s transparency pledge that you’re reading about this news in February and didn’t watch the discussions live on C-SPAN.  Senator Harkin’s revelation underscores just how deceptive the White House was in negotiating the future of health care behind closed doors and how important Scott Brown’s victory was in defeating ObamaCare.

A few million Americans in Massachusetts made their voices heard loud and clear, but judging from last week’s State of the Union Address, the White House is still not listening.

Today, the White House officially released its Budget for Fiscal Year 2011.  It is $3.8 trillion and consumes four large volumes.  What does it say about fiscal responsibility when your budget is thousands of pages and costs $236?

After a $1.4 trillion deficit in 2009, the White House projects a larger $1.56 trillion gap in this fiscal year.  To “trim” the massive sinkhole of red ink, the Administration proposes raising income taxes (though President Obama bragged about his tax record during his State of the Union Address) and energy taxes to reach a “manageable” $1.27 trillion shortfall next year.

Click here for the Office of Management and Budget website to review the budget, historical tables and analytical perspectives.

Politico – Five Years, $5.08 Trillion in Debt
The Hill – White House Still Wants New York Terror Trials
Washington Examiner – Move Terrorist Trials Back to Military Courts
WSJ Editorial – Deficit Lip Service

Washington Times – Troubling Democratic Tremors
National Review Online – Rigging the Numbers on Terror Trials
Red State – SOTU from an Energy Perspective
Washington Post – Primaries in Illinois Turn Nasty

Federal Debt: $12.351 trillion

… is that nothing’s ever that satisfying. In the D.C. Examiner, the always lucid Byron York asks the compelling question: “Has Obama Become Bored Being President?”

From the piece:

He’s in his second year as president, and he’s discovered that even with all the powers of office, he can’t do everything he wants to do, like remake America. Doing stuff is hard. In the past, prosaic work has held little appeal for Obama, and it’s prompted him to think about moving on.

A little later:

What drove Obama was not just ambition, although he is certainly ambitious. As he became frustrated in each job, Obama concluded that the problem was not having the power to do the things he wanted to do. So he sought a more powerful position.

Today he is in the most powerful position in the world. Yet he has spent a year struggling, and failing, to enact far-reaching makeovers of the American economy. So now, even in the Oval Office, there are signs that the old dissatisfaction is creeping back in.

Thought for the day: what does it say about someone’s temperament if being President of the United States isn’t enough to satisfy him?

My answer: that he should probably be teaching existentialist philosophy at a community college somewhere.