At least if you judge by media coverage, or lack thereof, of rising gas prices. Funny how nobody mentions that gas prices have doubled since Obama took office. Gas prices rising while a Republican is president equals big news. Gas prices doubling while a Democrat is president equals nothing to report.
Count former NPR employee Juan Williams as the latest among intellectually honest liberals (yes, there are a few of those still around) calling on Congress to defund NPR:
Even after they fired me, called me a bigot and publicly advised me to only share my thoughts with a psychiatrist, I did not call for defunding NPR. I am a journalist, and NPR is an important platform for journalism.
But last week my line of defense for NPR ran into harsh political realities. Rep. Steve Israel (D- N.Y.) chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent out a fundraising letter with the following argument for maintaining public funding of NPR:
“They [Republicans] know NPR plays a vital role in providing quality news programming — from rural radio stations to in-depth coverage of foreign affairs. If the Republicans had their way, we’d only be left with the likes of Glenn Beck, Limbaugh and Sarah Palin to dominate the airwaves.”
With that statement, Congressman Israel made the case better than any Republican critic that NPR is radio by and for liberal Democrats. He is openly asking liberal Democrats to give money to liberal Democrats in Congress so they can funnel federal dollars into news radio programs designed to counter and defeat conservative Republican voices.
Well said.
Hat tip: Hot Air
Rep. Israel has unintentionally endorsed every conservative complaint about NPR as a liberal mouthpiece. And to me, as a journalist, it is also a statement of why NPR’s troubled management team has turned its fundraising efforts into a weapon to be used against its essential product — top quality, balanced reporting. No journalist should have to work with one finger in the political winds, anxiously waiting to see if Democrats continue to be pleased with what they hear on NPR as a counter to what they don’t like hearing from Rush Limbaugh.
Via Hot Air, Senator Rand Paul schools administration officials on the issue of “choice”. Under liberals’ logic, it’s okay to kill babies but we can’t buy light bulbs we want or a toilet that will flush. Click the image to watch.
For weeks, Wisconsin’s Democratic State Senators have been hiding out in Illinois to prevent a vote on a budget bill that would strip public employee unions of their collective bargaining rights. Republicans became so fed up with the Democrats’ run and hide strategy they decided to separate the collective bargaining provision from the rest of the budget and vote on it anyway:
Wisconsin lawmakers voted Thursday to strip nearly all collective bargaining rights from the state’s public workers, ending a heated standoff over labor rights and delivering a key victory to Republicans who have targeted unions in efforts to slash government spending nationwide.
The state’s Assembly passed Gov. Scott Walker’s explosive proposal 53-42 without any Democratic support and four no votes from the GOP. Protesters in the gallery erupted into screams of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” as Republican lawmakers filed out of the chamber and into the speaker’s office.
The state’s Senate used a procedural move to bypass missing Democrats and move the measure forward Wednesday night, meaning the plan that delivers one of the strongest blows to union power in years now requires only Walker’s signature to take effect.
He says he’ll sign the measure, which he introduced to plug a $137 million budget shortfall, as quickly as possible — which could be as early as Thursday.
“We were willing to talk, we were willing to work, but in the end at some point the public wants us to move forward,” Walker said before the Assembly’s vote.
This is the first step in Wisconsin’s efforts to regain fiscal sanity and Governor Walker and his fellow Republicans should be applauded for their courage in standing up to the bullying tactics of the unions and the Left.
By the way, if you’re still in doubt about whether public unions are bad for our country, check out this post by Mike Flynn at Big Government which will tell you all that you need to know.
It’s not every day that I will link to an article by Kirsten Powers but this one is worth reading in its entirety:
During the recent debate over whether to cut off government funding to Planned Parenthood, the organization claimed that its contraceptive services prevent a half-million abortions a year. Without their services, the group’s officials insist, more women will get abortions.
I’ll admit I bought the argument—it makes intuitive sense—and initially opposed cutting off funding for precisely that reason.
Then I did a little research.
Turns out, a 2009 study by the journal Contraception found, in a 10-year study of women in Spain, that as overall contraceptive use increased from around 49 percent to 80 percent, the elective abortion rate more than doubled. This doesn’t mean that access to contraception causes more abortion—though some believe that—but that it doesn’t necessarily reduce it.
In the U.S., the story isn’t much different. A January 2011 fact sheet by the pro-abortion rights Guttmacher Institute listed all the reasons that women who have had an abortion give for their unexpected pregnancy, and not one of them is lack of access to contraception. In fact, 54 percent of women who had abortions had used a contraceptive method, if incorrectly, in the month they got pregnant. For the 46 percent who had not used contraception, 33 percent had perceived themselves to be at low risk for pregnancy; 32 percent had had concerns about contraceptive methods; 26 percent had had unexpected sex, and 1 percent had been forced to have sex. Not one fraction of 1 percent said they got pregnant because they lacked access to contraception. Some described having unexpected sex, but all that can be said about them is that they are irresponsible, not that they felt they lacked access to contraception.
Today’s vote by the Virginia Senate makes me proud to be a Virginian:
With the backing of two Democrats and a tie-breaking vote cast by Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, Republicans in the Virginia Senate today won approval of an amended health bill that would require the state’s abortion clinics to be regulated like hospitals.
The 20-20 vote on Senate Bill 924, which now heads to Gov. Bob McDonnell, represents a significant victory for anti-abortion activists, who have been trying for years to restrict access to abortion in Virginia, only to have bills killed in the Democrat-controlled Senate Education and Health Committee. McDonnell has indicated he would sign the legislation.
Democratic lawmakers and women’s rights advocates decried legislation, which was altered on the floor of the House earlier in the week through an amendment tacked onto an unrelated bill by Del. Kathy Byron, R-Campbell and came to the Senate without being debated or discussed in committee.
They said it would effectively restrict a woman’s access to abortion services by forcing the state’s 21 clinics to meet standards set by the Board of Health regulating hospitals — standards that include things like expanded hallways, parking lots and elevators that most clinics could not afford.
Currently, first-trimester abortions are considered medical procedures that can be performed in physicians’ offices, similar to medical procedures such as colonoscopies, vision correction surgery, cosmetic surgeryand dental surgery. Abortions in the second trimester or later must be performed in a hospital setting.
The amended legislation would require that any medical office performing more than five first-trimester abortions per month be classified as a hospital and subject to regulations devised by the State Board of Health — a body that is appointed by the governor.
This is sensible legislation and reasonable in light of recent stories such as the massacre in Philadelphia last month. Hats off to the Senators who had the courage to stand up and do the right thing and protect the cause of life.
UPDATE: The Associated Press claims this is a tactic to force abortion clinics to close:
Virginia took a big step Thursday toward eliminating most of the state’s 21 abortion clinics, approving a bill that would likely make rules so strict the medical centers would be forced to close, Democrats and abortion rights supporters said.
Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican and Catholic, supports the measure and when he signs it into law, Virginia will become the first state to require clinics that provide first-trimester abortions to meet the same standards as hospitals. The requirements could include anything from expensive structural changes like widening hallways to increased training and mandatory equipment the clinics currently don’t have.
While abortion providers must be licensed in Virginia, the clinics resemble dentists’ offices and are considered physicians offices, similar to those that provide plastic and corrective eye surgeries, colonoscopies and a host of other medical procedures.
Democrats and abortion rights supporters said the change would put an estimated 17 of the state’s 21 clinics out of business. Most of the clinics also provide birth control, cancer screenings and other women’s health services.
“This is not about safety for women. This is about ideology, and this is about politics,” said Tarina Keene, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia. “The women of the commonwealth are going to be the ones left to suffer.”
Abortion rights supporters warned of legal challenges while supporters heralded it as a way to make the procedures safer.
“It is not about banning abortions,” said Sen. Jill Vogel, R-Winchester. “It is simply caring for women who are about to have an invasive surgical procedure and creating an environment for them where they have the opportunity to do that in a place that is safe.”
No other state requires clinics that provide early abortions to meet hospital standards.
For years, abortion advocates have claimed that they want to make abortions safe. But as opponents of this bill have revealed what they really want is for abortion to be available on demand at any time. Their concern for the health of the woman ends when reasonable regulations to insure a woman’s health are introduced. Once again the hypocrisy of abortion advocates is in plain view for all to see.
Georgetown University Law Professor Randy Barnett provides a succinct explanation of what’s wrong with the Obamacare individual mandate:
Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine that I tell you 100 things that you may not do tomorrow. For example, you cannot run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. While your liberty would be restricted, there would still be an infinite number of things you may still do.
Now suppose I tell you 100 things that you must do tomorrow. You must run on a treadmill, eat broccoli, buy a car, and 97 other things. These 100 mandates could potentially occupy all your time and consume all your financial resources.
You can see why economic mandates such as the individual mandate in Obamacare are so much more onerous than either economic regulations or prohibitions, and why so dangerous an unwritten congressional power should not be implied.
Be sure to read the whole thing.
Like a lot of folks, I’ve been watching a lot of news coverage of this past weekend’s shooting in Tuscon. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.
A couple of thoughts about the tragedy and its aftermath:
1. I never fail to be surprised at the lengths people will go to score political points from such a tragedy. I think most voters see such politicians for what they really are and they’ll get their just desserts the next time an election rolls around.
2. A Predictable Tragedy in Tuscon in today’s Wall Street Journal is a worthwhile read. And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with political speech. Instead, it focuses on one of the most underreported aspects of the story: the fact that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, had untreated mental illnesses. As long as we continue to ignore the problem of how we as a society deal with treatment of the mentally ill we’ll see these type of events continue to occur. All you have to do is look back at similar events and see how many of the perpetrators had a history of mental illness.
3. A related point to #2 above: Tuscon police missed the warning signs about Loughner’s behavior?
4. Another question that is begging to be asked and answered: why weren’t the police at Congresswoman Giffords’ event? If the political rhetoric is as dangerous as Sheriff Dupnik says then why didn’t he have any deputies there to provide security?
5. A natural response in the aftermath of a tragedy such as this is to talk about passing tougher gun control laws. But consider this quote:
Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” –Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book
6. Leave it to Michael Ramirez to provide astute media analysis.
As citizens struggle to figure out how to rein in a runaway federal government, some Constitutional scholars are taking a closer look at the pros and cons of an Article V Convention as a way to pass amendments that will help limit the size of government:
In August, Missouri became the latest state to rebel against the new national health care law when 71 percent of voters supported a ballot initiative rejecting the legislation’s requirement that individuals purchase government-approved insurance. Several other states will consider similar measures on the ballot this November.
However satisfying this backlash against ObamaCare may be to opponents of the law, these state-based efforts could all be for naught if the U.S. Supreme Court sides with Congress and rules that the legislation’s individual mandate is constitutional.
Such a decision would have far-reaching consequences, giving broad new power to the federal government over individuals and states. It would mean that the interstate Commerce Clause would have been interpreted so broadly as to allow the federal government to regulate the activities of people who choose not to engage in commerce, and within a health insurance market where businesses aren’t even allowed to sell their products across state lines. It would represent the culmination of decades in erosion of the concept of the separation of powers between federal and state governments, and the boldest example of congressional over-reach in the age of Obama.
In that scenario, short of repeal, the only remaining way to fight the law would be to amend the Constitution. Given how polarized the modern U.S. Senate is, it’s highly unlikely that a proposed amendment would garner the necessary 67 votes needed to amend the Constitution in the traditional manner. Yet the Founding Fathers left the states one last check on federal power.
Under Article V of the Constitution, “Congress… on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which… shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States.”
The Constitution has never been amended through a convention of the states, and this route remains controversial, with many conservatives fearing that the meeting would turn into a circus in the modern media age, and open the door to a wholesale rewriting of the nation’s founding document. Yet a new body of research suggests that these fears are unwarranted, and that there are enough checks built into the system to prevent what scholars refer to as a “runaway convention.” With state legislators and grassroots activists searching for ways to limit the abuses of Congress, the possibility has begun to generate more chatter.
The article is lengthy but well worth reading as it closely examines the pros and cons of executing this Constitutional option.
Hat tip: The Volokh Conspiracy
So not only will proposed cap and trade legislation dramatically hike your utility rates, it’s also becoming something of a political career killer just like Obamacare:
Even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi twisted arms for the final votes to pass her climate bill in June 2009, Democrats feared they might be “BTU’d.” Many of them recalled how Al Gore had forced the House to vote in 1993 for an energy tax, a vote Democrats later blamed for helping their 1994 defeat.
The politics isn’t the same this time around. This time, it’s much, much worse.
Ask Rick Boucher, the coal-country Democrat who for nearly 30 years has represented southwest Virginia’s ninth district. The 64-year-old is among the most powerful House Democrats, an incumbent who hasn’t been seriously challenged since the early 1980s. Mr. Boucher has nonetheless worked himself onto this year’s list of vulnerable Democrats. He managed it with one vote: support for cap and trade.
Anger over the BTU tax was spread across the country in 1994; the tax hit everything, even nuclear and hydropower. And the anger was wrapped into general unhappiness with Clinton initiatives. Some Democrats who voted for BTU but otherwise distanced themselves from the White House were spared. Mr. Boucher, for instance.
Cap and trade is different. The bill is designed to crush certain industries, namely coal. As coal-state voters have realized this, the vote has become a jobs issue, and one that is explosive. It is no accident that Democrats face particularly tough terrain in such key electoral states as Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as Kentucky, West Virginia and Indiana. They are being laser-targeted for their votes to kill home-state industries.
As the article goes on to point out, Mr. Boucher’s position on cap and trade (including his authorship of the legislation) may prove to be his undoing:
Mr. Boucher sensed danger earlier this year and has run right: He voted against ObamaCare and has a newfound love for Bush tax cuts. But he’s in a defensive crouch on the main issue, reduced to excuses for his cap-and-trade vote. A top one is the old chestnut that he got involved to make the bill better. He points to money he had inserted for “clean coal,” and has somehow spun his work into an ad claiming he “took on his own party” to “protect coal jobs” in the, ahem, “energy” bill.
Yet as the race has tightened, the Boucher campaign has looked more desperate. It nitpicked the Americans for Job Security ad and demanded TV stations pull it. The union bosses for United Mine Workers of America had to step up, inviting Mr. Boucher to keynote a picnic to try to shore up coal workers. He’s newly passionate about reining in an anti-coal EPA.
Mr. Boucher appears to still lead, but with a GOP wave building, no Democrat with an anti-job vote against his own constituents is safe. Virginia’s ninth has already delivered one of the lessons of 2010: Cap-and-trade policy is terrible. Cap-and-trade politics is deadly.
Hat tip: Powerline
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) includes what it calls an “individual responsibility requirement” that all persons buy health insurance from a private company. Congress justified this mandate under its power to regulate commerce among the several states: “The individual responsibility requirement provided for in this section,” the law says, “. . . is commercial and economic in nature, and substantially affects interstate commerce, as a result of the effects described in paragraph (2).” Paragraph (2) then begins: “The requirement regulates activity that is commercial and economic in nature: economic and financial decisions about how and when health care is paid for, and when health insurance is purchased.”
In this way, the statute speciously tries to convert inactivity into the “activity” of making a “decision.” By this reasoning, your “decision” not to take a job, not to sell your house, or not to buy a Chevrolet is an “activity that is commercial and economic in nature” that can be mandated by Congress.
It is true that the Supreme Court has interpreted the Commerce Clause broadly enough to reach wholly intrastate economic “activity” that substantially affects interstate commerce. But the Court has never upheld a requirement that
individuals who are doing nothing must engage in economic activity by entering
into a contractual relationship with a private company. Such a claim of power is
literally unprecedented.
The pro-life movement in America is growing in leaps and bounds, attracting young, zealous women to defend the unborn in droves – a fact that even the president of NARAL has now admitted.
NARAL’s Nancy Keenan told Newsweek last week that she considers herself a member of the “postmenopausal militia” – a phrase that captures the situation of pro-abortion leaders who are aging across the board, including the leadership of Planned Parenthood, and the National Organization for Women. Newsweek’s Sarah Kliff notes that “these leaders will retire in a decade or so.”
Keenan also remarked on the enormity of this year’s March for Life in Washington, D.C., and, according to Newsweek, is troubled that such passion has faded among the youth on her side of the movement.
“I just thought, my gosh, they are so young,” Keenan said about stumbling on this year’s March for Life in Washington. “There are so many of them, and they are so young.”
While March for Life estimates it drew 400,000 pro-lifers to Washington for this year’s March, Planned Parenthood’s “Stop Stupak” rally in December only
drew about 1,300 attendees.In addition, Newsweek revealed that NARAL’s own research on American youth shows more reason for Keenan to worry: a survey conducted by the group found that, while 51 percent of pro-life voters under 30 considered abortion a “very important” voting issue, only 26 percent of abortion supporters in the same demographic felt similarly.
James Taranto attributes this “enthusiasm gap” among abortion activists to what he terms “the Roe Effect“. In simple terms, the theory is that pro-abortion women are not having babies and therefore are not raising children to carry on their pro-abortion beliefs. While it may still take a while to play out politically, perhaps we are finally starting to see signs that America is becoming a more pro-life nation at last
I’m pro-choice, and Tebow clearly is not. But based on what I’ve heard in the past week, I’ll take his side against the group-think, elitism and condescension of the “National Organization of Fewer and Fewer Women All The Time.” For one thing, Tebow seems smarter than they do.
Tebow’s 30-second ad hasn’t even run yet, but it already has provoked “The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us” to reveal something
important about themselves: They aren’t actually “pro-choice” so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn’t be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikinis selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn’t.
There’s not enough space in the sports pages for the serious weighing of values that constitutes this debate, but surely everyone in both camps, pro-choice or pro-life, wishes the “need” for abortions wasn’t so great. Which is precisely why NOW is so wrong to take aim at Tebow’s ad.
Be sure to read the whole thing. Hats off to Ms. Jenkins for calling out the intolerant critics on the Left who wish to demonize the Tebows. Though we may not agree on whether abortion is wrong we can at least agree that we can respectfully disagree with each other.
Follow up on an item I previously noted and a very happy ending. A 90 year old Medal of Honor winner won his battle with his homeowner’s association with an assist from both of Virginia U. S. Senators (hat tip: Hot Air):
RICHMOND, Va. — A 90-year-old Medal of Honor recipient can keep his 21-foot flagpole in his front yard after a homeowner’s association dropped its request to remove it, a spokesman for Democratic Virginia Sen. Mark Warner said Tuesday.
The Sussex Square homeowners’ association likewise has agreed to drop threats to take legal action against retired Army Col. Van T. Barfoot, Warner spokesman Kevin Hall said.
The association had threatened to take Barfoot to court if he failed to remove the pole from his suburban Richmond home by Friday. It had said the pole violated the neighborhood’s aesthetic guidelines.
This was a no-win situation for the homeowners’ association and they made the right decision. Hats off to Senator Mark Warner and Senator Jim Webb for standing up for Col. Barfoot. The homeowners’ association also made the right decision by allowing this American hero to keep his flag.
The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor Naval Station on December 7, 1941 marked one of the darkest days in America history and prompted our entry into World War II. Fifteen servicemen were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor on that day but only five survived the battle. Lt. John William Finn, who turned 100 years old this past summer is the only remaining survivor of those fifteen men. He reportedly was headed to Pearl Harbor today for commemoration ceremonies. Mary Katherine Ham has a wonderful profile of this genuine American hero that is well worth reading.
Ed Morrissey reminds us also of the enduring lesson of Pearl Harbor:
The lesson from that war is that appeasement and complacency doesn’t keep one from having to fight a war. It usually forces one to fight from an extreme disadvantage. That’s a lesson we have not remembered in dealing with expansionist powers in our own time, even after a second shock like 9/11 after years of complacency in dealing with al-Qaeda. We’re falling back to treating radical Islamist terrorism like a Law and Order episode, and allowing one of the main drivers of radical Islamist terror, Iran, to arm itself with nuclear weapons with no consequences whatsoever.
We must never forget Pearl Harbor.
