Freedom Line Blog

As we gear up for another week of politics-as-usual, it’s helpful to keep our eyes on what we’re arguing for and how we do it. In a splendid little essay about civil discourse rightly understood, political scientists Matt Parks and David Corbin explain how to keep one’s dignity when defending our republic.

What’s a critic of Progressivism to do? Follow the example of Publius: argue vigorously about the common good while judging with charity the aims of one’s opponents. Respect friends of the rights and liberties of the people wherever you find them and seek to correct them when their means don’t match their ends.

Lies should be called lies and there’s no need to assume that well-intentioned plans and proposals will end well, but a healthy measure of forbearance joined with an openness to self-criticism will do more for the cause of republican government than a conservative equivalent of the Big Smathers Lie. The result will either be to reopen the public square to civil discourse by enlivening a debate over the common good or by showing Progressives, in their intransigence, to be both cynical and unserious about the most important political questions.

In other words, we honor the public square when we assume the best of our opponents’ intentions, even if we are compelled by logic and evidence to criticize their ideas.

It’s a high bar to clear, but worth the struggle.

As I discuss in my column this week, the primary beneficiary of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius’s legally suspect lobbying of private health companies is the non-profit community organizing outfit Enroll America.

The group’s Advisory Council includes several members of the liberal establishment such as NAACP, La Raza, Planned Parenthood, and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).

But wait, there’s more:

“Enroll America’s board of directors is made up of insurers and hospital organizations that will benefit from enrolling millions of people in Obamacare. But its management is 100 percent political. Its president is Anne Filipic, formerly deputy director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, where she networked with community organizers. Before that, she had a top job at the Democratic National Committee, and before that she managed Obama’s victorious 2008 Iowa Caucus bid,” according to the Boston Herald.

“To design a media campaign, Enroll America hired Lake Research, which also manages messaging for ACORN, MoveOn.org, LaRaza and 39 members of Congress, all Democrats”

At least now we know how Sebelius is feathering her post-HHS nest – by funneling money to just about every radical liberal group in America.

Matthew Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon has a must-read opinion piece today explaining why President Barack Obama’s policy agenda ignores the economic and employment concerns of millions of Americans to focus on much less salient issues like gun control and amnesty.

In short, to understand Obama’s refusal to concentrate like a laser beam on improving the nation’s economic outlook, one has to remember that the President cares more about wealthy liberal pet projects from the likes of New York’s billionaire mayor Mike Bloomberg than about anyone on Main Street.

The Bloomberg style has several distinctive features. The first is a complete indifference to or dismissal of middle class concerns. In this view, it matters less that the middle class is enjoying full employment or economic independence or a modicum of social mobility or even action on issues it finds important, and more that it has access to government benefits generous enough to shut it up.

Recall that in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy Bloomberg was far more interested in seeing the Yuppie-filled New York City Marathon take place, and in linking the storm to apocalyptic climate change, than in mobilizing the combined forces of municipal and state and federal government to take care of the white working class on Staten Island and in the Rockaways. Similarly, Barack Obama has nothing new to say on the economy or deficit, but delivers speech after speech on gun regulations that would not have stopped the Sandy Hook massacre, while his allies in the Senate work to import low-wage labor on the one hand and high-end Silicon Valley labor on the other. Meanwhile, the vast majority of the nation hopes for better days.

Another hallmark of the Bloomberg style is its insufferable condescension. One need only have heard the tiniest whine of a Bloomberg speech to know what I’m talking about. The preening attitude of superiority manifests itself in a form of moral blackmail. Adversaries of the Bloomberg-Obama agenda are not simply mistaken. There is, it is implied, something wrong with them personally.

Sound familiar? You can read the entire piece here.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) did the Constitution and the nation it protects a service earlier this week by asking Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior liberal Democratic senator and gun control advocate, two simple questions:

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX) The question that I would pose to the senior Senator from California is would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?

Likewise, would she think that the Fourth Amendment’s protection against searches and seizures could properly apply only to the following specified individuals and not to the individuals that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?

Feinstein’s responses were (1) “I’m not a sixth grader,” and (2) “You know, it’s fine you want to lecture me on the Constitution. I appreciate it. Just know I’ve been here for a long time. I’ve passed on a number of bills. I’ve studied the Constitution myself. I am reasonably well educated, and I thank you for your lecture.”

Note that Feinstein completely fails to articulate either a general principle of constitutional lawmaking, or a reason why regulations pertaining to the Second Amendment could be unique.

This, in a nutshell, is the core problem with modern liberalism. Although liberals pay lip service to the Constitution, they cannot defend their policy positions from the text, structure or purpose of the very document that gives them the power to govern.

A sixth grader knows that kind of logical breakdown creates a serious problem of credibility. A U.S. Senator serving for more than 20 years, not so much.

Click here for the video and transcript of the exchange.

H/T: RealClearPolitics

Jim Treacher of The Daily Caller does a public service by compiling all the data points on the man who started the booing of Paul Ryan as the latter walked to Barack Obama’s second inauguration.

Dan Freeman, a civil service (i.e. technically non-political) hire at the Department of Justice’s Voting Rights section, said on his Facebook page that he “Just started the booing when Paul Ryan came out.”  Helpfully, Freeman gave his location as “United States Capitol.”

Sleuthing by the blogosphere netted biographical nuggets like Freeman’s involvement in the Yale Law Democrats, and internships for liberal activist groups.  Among his responsibilities was undermining the Bush Administration’s national security strategy by challenging the state secrets privilege in court.  He also helped defend terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.

If you’re wondering when Freeman had time to learn federal election law, he didn’t.  But at Eric Holder’s Justice Department, the relevant experience was met checking all the liberal activist boxes.

And, thanks to civil service protection, Freeman will have his position for as long as he wants it, regardless of who becomes the Attorney General, or for that matter, President of the United States.

President Barack Obama’s controversial warning to the Supreme Court that a vote to overturn ObamaCare would be “unprecedented” is getting push-back from the federal judiciary.

During oral arguments on a different ObamaCare provision than those argued before the Supreme Court last week, Fifth Circuit Judge Jerry Smith asked a Department of Justice lawyer for clarification.  “Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?”

To drive home the point, Judge Smith ordered DOJ to provide a written explanation of its views “no less than three pages, single spaced.”

The only problem with the homework assignment is that it wasn’t directed to the right person.  President Obama, that one-time constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago, should be the one sitting at the keyboard relearning first year law.

At least then he’d be aware that what’s truly unprecedented is his belief that federal courts are rubber stamps for his liberal agenda.

Ever heard of the Colorado Model?  The brainchild of four rich liberals, it helped turn a reliably Republican state into a lock-down Democratic state in less than a decade.  RedState excerpts the keys to its success:

Eric O’Keefe, chairman of the conservative Sam Adams Alliance in Chicago, says there are seven “capacities” that are required to drive a successful political strategy and keep it on offense: [1] the capacity to generate intellectual ammunition, [2] to pursue investigations, [3] to mobilize for elections, [4] to fight media bias, [5] to pursue strategic litigation, [6] to train new leaders, and [7] to sustain a presence in the new media. Colorado liberals have now created institutions that possess all seven capacities. By working together, they generate political noise and attract press coverage. Explains Caldara, “Build an echo chamber and the media laps it up.”

Throw in some Saul Alinsky-inspired community organizing and the wealth of liberal elites, and you’ve got a strategy being exported to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida, among others.

The good news is that conservatives and Tea Partiers can use these principles to swing the balance of power the other way.  The time is now.

While responsible politicians like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) are busy proposing a bold reform of Medicare, others in Congress are engaging in less helpful behavior on the public dime.

To wit:

Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., embarked on a 24-hour hunger strike in solidarity with four Occupy DC protesters who have gone without food since Dec. 8 to advocate for D.C. voting rights.

Ellison, the first Muslim to serve in the House, met with the hunger strikers Thursday and pledged to read their declaration – which calls for full voting rights for District residents as well as legislative and budget autonomy – on the floor of the House of Representatives to enter it into the congressional record.

Not to be outdone in the brazen department, Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) berated former Senate colleague and multi-millionaire Jon Corzine for his MF Global failures.  Apparently, though, there is at least one other reason for Stabenow’s outrage:

The Democratic senator who savaged Jon Corzine at a high-profile Capitol Hill hearing this week had another reason to go hard on her former colleague — she recently pressed him for campaign contributions but didn’t get any.

“She would literally call once every two or three weeks,” one Corzine intimate said of Sen. Debbie Stabenow (DMich.).

“She called all the time.”

But to no avail.

Sources in Corzine’s inner circle said they were “stunned” and “amazed” by Stabenow’s attack.

The two had served together in the Senate, but Corzine hasn’t delivered with contributions in some time.

So far this year, Corzine’s name has not appeared on Stabenow’s campaign finance reports.

Records show he last donated to her in 2006, contributing $2,000. Corzine and his then-wife, Joanne, each gave Stabenow $1,000 in 1999.

Thankfully, both Ellison and Stabenow are up for reelection next year.  Perhaps their antics will inspire some enterprising campaign lawyer to put together the first Super PAC to defeat loudmouth liberals.

How about it, Renee?

Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute writes a thought-provoking piece for the fall edition of Breakthrough Journal.  In it, the conservative environmental expert and presidential historian discusses how to deal with three facts of modern political life:

(1)   Neither liberals nor conservatives will ever defeat the other side so decisively as to be able to govern without the consent of the other side

(2)   The divisions between Left and Right are fundamental and unbridgeable because each side has conflicting modes of moral reasoning that cannot be easily synthesized or bridged

(3)   The welfare state, or entitlement state, is here to stay

On this last point Hayward voices support for some of the reforms in Paul Ryan’s Path to Prosperity budget plan, and other conservative attempts to make social programs more fiscally sustainable by changing eligibility requirements.  Citing Ronald Reagan’s retreat from serious entitlement reform as a prime example of how unlikely it is for modern conservatives to simply do away with entitlements, Hayward offers a cautionary analysis against perennial cost-control proposals like “starve-the-beast” and balanced budget amendments.

As the GOP presidential voting gets underway in less than 50 days, this is a piece well worth reading, considering, and applying to those who would replace President Barack Obama.

After a stunning recitation of the facts of the Bin Laden raid culled from interviews with Seal Team 6 members who participated in it, a former team leader (Pfarrer) says that the reason the Seals are breaking their customary code of silence is the gross misrepresentations propagated by the Obama Administration.

What infuriated the Seals, according to Pfarrer, was the description of the raid as a kill mission. “I’ve been a Seal for 30 years and I never heard the words ‘kill mission’,” he said. “It’s a Beltway (Washington insider’s) fantasy word. If it was a kill mission you don’t need Seal Team 6; you need a box of hand grenades.”

Add military terminology to the litany of policy subjects the president and his liberal cohort are jarringly unfamiliar with.  “Beltway fantasies,” indeed.

Note: A previous version of this post contained a broken hyperlink.  Google “Bitter Seals tell of killing ‘Bert’ Laden.”  Great stuff.

Our friends at Human Events confirm the money trail between Leftist billionaire George Soros and the Occupy Wall Street movement attracting communists, socialists and anarchists to its ranks.

The nonprofit organization at the receiving end of Soros’ largesse, Alliance for Global Justice, is managing donations benefiting the communists, socialists, anarchists and hippies now occupying Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan.  As of Oct. 19, OWS had taken in a grand total of $435,000 from all sources, including donations made by individuals online and in person, according to reports.

And how’s this for a business model?

Alliance for Global Justice is a “fiscal sponsor,” which means that it serves as a financial clearinghouse for radical causes that haven’t filed papers to incorporate themselves as nonprofit organizations.  Donors give money to the Alliance and are then able to deduct the donations from their income tax even though the cause they are funding isn’t recognized as tax-exempt by the IRS.  Fiscal sponsors take a percentage of donations as management fees, and then pass on the rest to the cause favored by the donor.

As with all things Soros, the irony here is rich.  A Hungarian who fled Nazism and communism sets up a “shadow party” to move America closer to a state-run tyranny.  A decrier of capitalism’s excesses, he made his name manipulating England’s currency and imperiled a nation through an act verging on financial terrorism.  Now, he’s a billionaire hedge fund manager who props up a nationwide anti-Wall Street protest.

However her presidential campaign turns out, Michele Bachmann deserves continued credit for speaking the truth no matter what the forum.  During question time after a speech in the liberal haven of San Francisco, the conservative firebrand made these distinctions between the “occupy” movement and the Tea Party:

“The tea party picks up its trash after it has a demonstration, so there’s a difference,” the Minnesota congresswoman quipped during a question-and-answer period after her speech to the Commonwealth Club of California.

On a more serious note, the two movements have “two different views of how to solve the problems” our nation faces, she said. Occupy activists believe in “government-directed solutions based on temporary gimmicks,” she said, while tea partyers believe in “permanent solutions driven from the private sector.”

Amen, sister.

H/T: San Jose Mercury-News

Recently, I wrote about the Social Security Trust Fund being a piggy bank for other federal spending programs.  In return, federal spenders put worthless IOUs back in piggy with an implied promise to pay back the debt with higher taxes in future years.

Now, there is word that Social Security Disability Insurance – yet another expense drawn from the empty retirement Trust Fund – will go bankrupt by 2017.  The reason for the rapid insolvency of disability insurance is simple: eligibility for disability can begin before reaching retirement age.  Per the Associated Press:

Applications are up nearly 50 percent over a decade ago as people with disabilities lose their jobs and can’t find new ones in an economy that has shed nearly 7 million jobs.

The more President Obama’s Washington dithers on enacting policies to spur economic growth, the more unemployed people will be forced to find money wherever they can.  The vast majority of Americans want to work, but Obama’s job-killing policies just aren’t giving them the chance.

It would be an unnecessary irony if a liberal like Obama presided over an austerity government that not only raised taxes, but also cut services like Social Security that liberals love.  Yet that is the path we’re on as a recessed economy lurches from market plunges to debt downgrades to a contracting job market.

We need an “opportunity president,” and this one surely isn’t it.

It’s always nice when liberals deign to give advice to conservatives on whom should be admitted to the next Tea Party rally.  Commenting on excerpted parts of Texas Republican Governor Rick Perry’s book Fed Up!, Kevin Drum of Mother Jones thinks Rick Perry is wrong to think that it’s unconstitutional for the federal government to regulate banks, consumer financial choices, the environment, guns, civil rights, a minimum wage, and create programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

At least Drum acknowledges that Perry makes certain exceptions for federal regulations on racial discrimination since that fulfills “the intent behind the passage of the Reconstruction Era amendments.”

What makes liberals like Drum gasp is the fact that Perry thinks that, as James Madison argued in Federalist 45, “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.”

But if a secondary source won’t cut it for Drum, here’s the text of the Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

If they cared to, Drum and other liberals would look in vain to find an enumerated grant of power to the federal government to regulate the items on the list above.  That’s why they rely on activist judges to read into the Constitution federal powers that do not exist.

The Tea Party – like Perry, Michele Bachmann, and other constitutional conservatives – know their Constitution and the meaning behind it.  If liberals like Drum are aghast, it’s only because a grassroots movement is forming to challenge nearly 80 years of unconstitutional jurisprudence.

Byron York eviscerates the common liberal meme that former President George W. Bush was worse on spending and taxes than President Barack Obama.  After showing that Bush’s tax cuts increased federal revenues and shrank deficits while Obama has increased the national debt at twice Bush’s pace, York ends with a resounding rebuke of the common “eight years of Republican rule” canard.

None of this is to say that George W. Bush had a good record on spending. He didn’t, and he’s fair game for criticism. But is it honest to condemn reckless spending in “eight years of Republican rule” when Democrats controlled the Senate for four of those years and the House for two? Is it honest to talk about the “cost” of the Bush tax cuts when federal revenues increased significantly while they were in effect? And is it honest to refer to Bush’s ballooning deficits when deficits actually trended down for much of his presidency — at least before Democrats won control of Congress?

Of course Obama partisans would like to pin the president’s troubles on Bush. But they should get their facts straight first.

Rasmussen Reports says that 40% of Americans are still undecided on whether to support the “Path to Prosperity” budget plan by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).  CFIF strongly endorses the House Budget Committee Chairman’s attempt to rein in federal spending, while giving Medicare beneficiaries more choices in their health care decisions.

According to the poll, 26% of likely voters support Ryan’s plan, while 34% oppose it.  That leaves 40% who still don’t know enough about Ryan’s proposal to have an opinion.

The liberal media is already waging a misinformation campaign against Ryan and other sensible fiscal conservatives.  For a primer on the “Path to Prosperity” go here.

In order to change the culture in Washington, voters need to change the terms of the debate.  Educating yourself and others on Ryan’s plan gives fiscal conservatives the ammunition they need to win the hearts and minds of the 40% still undecided.

From Charles Krauthammer on the Right to Peggy Noonan in the middle, denunciation of President Barack Obama’s handling of the war in Libya is expected.  But tough talk from a reliable liberal like Eugene Robinson?  Now, that’s progressive.

Robinson has done his best to keep up with Obama’s ever-shifting views on military involvement in Libya.  No more.  Today, Robinson apparently can’t interpret the blizzard of mealy-mouthed talking points flying out the White House press office.  So, he’s asking for a little clarity:

So what the hell are we doing? I realize that President Obama and his advisers have answered this question many times, but I feel it’s necessary to keep asking until the answers begin to make sense.

What’s that you say, Mr. Robinson?  Obama isn’t making sense?  Welcome to the club.

If at first liberals don’t succeed, they plead their case to a friendly judge.  Last Friday, a Wisconsin judge granted a temporary restraining order to block publication of the state’s recently passed union law.  (State law requires the Secretary of State to publish the contents of the law to the public in order for the law to be valid.)

The law’s opponents claim Wisconsin Republicans violated the state’s open meetings law by negotiating the substance of the bill outside the normal committee hearing process.  The judge says all Republicans have to do is re-pass the bill with adequate notice (i.e. 24 hours instead of 2).

Where were these process-conscience Democrats when their federal counterparts rammed through ObamaCare while violating almost every legislative procedure?  Where was the outrage when the Reid-Pelosi gang used the budget reconciliation process and ‘deem-and-pass’ to thwart deliberation?  At least Wisconsin Republicans gave their absentee opponents a heads-up.

As if we needed another issue to highlight the differences between conservatives and liberals, the skyrocketing price of gasoline is showing each side’s true colors.

Fox News reports that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) wants to put forward several ‘bite-sized’ bills to expand domestic energy production through increased oil drilling, easier permitting, and promoting nuclear power plant construction.  (The piecemeal legislation is also intended to be a jab at Democrats’ penchant for ‘comprehensive’ legislative fixes.)

Liberals like Ed Markey (D-MA) want to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to drop prices by increasing supply.

How brazenly foolish.  As usual, liberals want to blow a savings account instead of increasing their revenue streams.  Shattering the nation’s energy piggy bank isn’t a solution to the problem – it’s a delaying tactic that puts off the hard decisions until later.

The time for stop-gap measures is over.  If liberals continue to show a genetic inability to create sustainable budget and energy policies, conservatives should bypass them and get America back on a sound footing.

The news just keeps getting worse for the primary resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  With his party facing historic defeat in the congressional midterms, President Barack Obama should also be worried about the coming crack-up among two vital parts of his base: teachers unions and wealthy liberal donors.  The first wants job protection; the latter better student outcomes.

Their collision course is expertly analyzed by Alvin Felzenberg.  A sample:

We have seen hints of rising tensions between these two elements of the president’s base for over a year. First, there came David Callahan’s “Traitors to their Class: The New Super Rich,” in the New Yorker, an account of how the information-based elites that rallied to Barack Obama break with their fellow Democrats on such matters as free trade, “card check,” and, yes, public sector monopolies over the delivery of education. There was the now infamous District of Columbia mayoral primary, which pit the reformist mayor Adrian Fenty against challenger Vincent Gray. No issue sparked greater controversy than the record of school superintendent Michelle Rhee, who Obama publicly hailed along with Fenty in a televised presidential debate. And no public official prior to Rhee has spent more time thinking of what D.C. children should be taught and evaluated since Thomas Jefferson. While Rhee proved Fenty’s greatest asset in his re-election campaign, the unions clearly did a better job in getting out the vote than did parents whose children benefitted from Rhee’s efforts.

Read the entire article here.

H/T: U.S. News & World Report