Laughing Away the Problems

The annual White House Correspondents' Dinner was on Saturday night, and from what I saw and read, it seems to have been somewhat funny.  Jimmy Kimmel, who I don't think is particularly funny, did seem to hit both sides pretty equally.  Of course the jokes, as always, were geared towards lampooning Democrats for their perpetual weakness in not standing up to those evil Republicans who always push through any legislation they want.

I think that overall, I feel a lot like how John Hinderaker felt after watching it:

Events like last night’s always leave me feeling in need of a shower. Partly it is because there some truth to Kimmel’s joke, after noting that the room was full of politicians, members of the media and celebrities, that “Everything that is wrong with America is here in this room.” Partly is is due to the sense that everyone involved in the event is pretending. The politicians pretend to engage in self-deprecation that shows they don’t take themselves too seriously. The comics pretend that they are just trying to be funny, lampooning politicians impartially in search of laughs. But, even though some of the lines are indeed funny, the premise of the event is fundamentally false. In fact, politicians, comedians and even the celebrities present are pursuing an agenda that is both self-aggrandizing and political. That is why, I think, such events always leave me feeling unclean.

And I agree with Pat Sajak that the dinner should probably be gotten rid of, just as should the State of the Union address in its current form.

Reinventing the Truth

Remember when Nancy Pelosi said that she had not been briefed about the use of waterboarding in interrogations?  Well, that's not exactly what actually happened.  In a new book Jose Rodriguez, a former CIA counterterrosim chief and the man who briefed Pelosi, says that Pelosi was well aware of all interrogation techniques being used. Rodriguez tells Marc Thiessen details about the briefing:

“We explained that as a result of the techniques, Abu Zubaydah was compliant and providing good intelligence. We made crystal clear that authorized techniques, including waterboarding, had by then been used on Zubaydah.” Rodriguez writes that he told Pelosi everything, adding, “We held back nothing.”

How did she respond when presented with this information? Rodriguez writes that neither Pelosi nor anyone else in the briefing objected to the techniques being used. Indeed, he notes, when one member of his team described another technique that had been considered but not authorized or used, “Pelosi piped up immediately and said that in her view, use of that technique (which I will not describe) would have been ‘wrong.’ ” She raised no such concern about waterboarding, he writes. “Since she felt free to label one considered-and-rejected technique as wrong,” Rodriguez adds, “we went away with the clear impression that she harbored no such feelings about the ten tactics [including waterboarding] that we told her were in use.”

But it's more than simply he said-she said: 

Rodriguez writes that there’s contemporaneous evidence to back his account of the briefing. Six days after the meeting took place, Rodriguez reveals, “a cable went out from headquarters to the black site informing them that the briefing for the House leadership had taken place.” He explains that “[t]he cable to the field made clear that Goss and Pelosi had been briefed on the state of AZ’s interrogation, specifically including the use of the waterboard and other enhanced interrogation techniques.”

I hope that Pelosi herself asks for the cables to be declassified, but I would not be surprised if we never get to the bottom of this.

When Bullying is OK

I'm pretty much lost for words on this story:

As many as 100 high school students walked out of a national journalism conference after an anti-bullying speaker began cursing, attacked the Bible and reportedly called those who refused to listen to his rant “pansy assed.”

The speaker was Dan Savage, founder of the “It Gets Better” project, an anti-bullying campaign that has reached more than 40 million viewers with contributors ranging from President Obama to Hollywood stars. Savage also writes a sex advice column called “Savage Love.”

Campaign Ad

"Is Slow Growth Actually Good For The Economy?"  I guess that was an actual headline at NPR earlier today.  It was later changed to read "Is Moderate Growth Actually Good For The Economy?"  (The second headline doesn't even make sense.  NPR was obviously going for something completely counter-intuitive and still decided to stick with it no matter the context.)

Tim Groseclose at Ricochet has some thoughts on this:

The headline not only exposes  the Obama-water-carrying attitudes at NPR, it also exposes the fact that NPR is filled with what I call "insular progressives."  The latter are people with extremely liberal views, who have surrounded themselves with like-minded people.  As a consequence, they are apt to say things that moderates and conservatives find ridiculous.  But they never or rarely learn that because they have so little interaction with moderates and conservatives.  Probably most professors and most mainstream journalists, I believe, could reasonably be called "insular progressives."

This is getting so old by now but please indulge me:  Just think about the possibility of a headline like the first one appearing anytime during the Bush Administration.

The Problem with the American People

Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein have discovered the problem with Washington:  it's all the Republicans' fault.  In the Washington Post, they say that,

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

Mann and Ornstein charge that Republicans have caused a more "complete gridlock than we have ever seen in our time in Washington."  They lay this on this fact:

In the first two years of the Obama administration, nearly every presidential initiative met with vehement, rancorous and unanimous Republican opposition in the House and the Senate, followed by efforts to delegitimize the results and repeal the policies.

Except the odd part left out is that Democrats had majorities in both the House and Senate during Obama's first two years.  Since government is not run by the minority, it's a wonder as to how Republicans could have caused all the supposed damage.  And the other thing that should not go unmentioned is that during the Bush Administration, filibustering nominees and stopping legislation was the highest form of patriotism; now it's the chief evil of our times.

Mann and Ornstein also criticize Republicans for their over-the-top and extreme rhetoric as evidenced by Rep. Allen West recently claiming that there are at least 70-80 socialist Democrats:

What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

But as Karl at HotAir shows, where have Ornstein and Mann been? Here is just a small sample of comments made by leaders at all levels of the Democratic Party, which they choose not to condemn:

Although Ornstein and Mann claim to “have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted,” they provide no links to all the op-eds they did about the extreme statements about Republicans being Un-American, comparing them to fascists, Nazis, racists and so on made by Democratic Reps. Nancy Pelosi (on her own and with Steny Hoyer), George Miller, Debbie Wasserman-Shultz, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Jerrold Nadler, Jesse Jackson Jr., Sam Gibbons, Tom Lantos, Keith Ellison, Baron Hill, Jared Polis, Steve Cohen, Sheila Jackson Lee, Eleanor Holmes Norton and Louise Slaughter. Or Senators Robert Byrd and Blanche Lincoln. Or current Califonia governor Jerry Brown. Or repeat offender Al Gore. People might be forgiven for thinking Democrats, not to mention Ornstein and Mann, take that extreme rhetoric for granted in their rush to condemn the GOP.

Since I do not want to waste your time going through more of the essay, I will quote Peter Robinson on this whole charade:

For decades, Mann and Ornstein, both attached to Washington think tanks, have passed themselves off as above-the-fray, utterly impartial, interested not in ideology but in getting things done.  Which is to say, of course, that they reflect, without the smallest flaw or distortion, the conventional wisdom of the mainstream media and the Democratic Party, both of which believe that ever-expanding government is simply the result of responsible governance.

Now here's what's interesting.  During the very period Mann and Ornstein deride, the supposed crackpot and marginal GOP has captured the House of Representatives in one of the biggest electoral swings in congressional history, picked up seven seats in the Senate, and chosen to nominate Mitt Romney, who, even though in many ways a remarkably weak candidate, nevertheless is already virtually even with the Democratic incumbent in national polls.

Mann and Ornstein don't have a problem with the GOP, in other words, they have a problem with the American people.  "Shut up, sit down, and let people like us run the country."  That's what Mann and Ornstein--and, again, the media and Democratic Party--have convinced themselves is the message, the responsible message, to carry into this election year.

Peter is really on to something in the sentence in bold.

No Argument

Jonah Goldberg has a great column in the Washington Post today (I know, I've been hawking him a lot lately) on the most used cliches that go for serious argument in politics.  Here are some highlights:

‘Violence never solved anything’

It’s a nice idea, but it’s manifestly absurd. If violence never solved anything, police would not have guns or nightsticks. Obama helped solve the problem of Moammar Gaddafi with violence, and FDR helped solve the problem — far too late — of the Holocaust and Hitler with violence. Invariably, the slogan (or its close cousin “War is not the answer”) is invoked not as a blanket exhortation against violence, but as a narrow injunction against the United States, NATO or Republican presidents from trying to solve threats of violence with violence.

And this one is so true it hurts:

‘The living Constitution’

It is dogma among liberals that sophisticated people understand that the Constitution is a “living, breathing document.” The idea was largely introduced into the political bloodstream by Woodrow Wilson and his allies, who were desperate to be free of the constraints of the founders’ vision. Wilson explained that he preferred an evolving, “organic,” “Darwinian” Constitution that empowered progressives to breathe whatever meaning they wished into it. It is a wildly ideological view of the nature of our political system.

It is also a font of unending hypocrisy. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, conservatives argued that the country needed to adapt to a new asymmetrical warfare against non-state actors who posed an existential threat. They believed they were working within the bounds of the Constitution. But even if they were stretching things, why shouldn’t that be acceptable — if our Constitution is supposed to evolve with the times?

Yet acolytes of the living Constitution immediately started quoting the wisdom of the founders and the sanctity of the Constitution. Apparently the document is alive when the Supreme Court finds novel rationalizations for abortion rights, but when we need to figure out how to deal with terrorists, suddenly nothing should pry original meaning from the Constitution’s cold, dead hands.

By the way, conservatives do not believe that the Constitution should not change; they just believe that it should change constitutionally — through the amendment process.

Jonah concludes the piece perfectly with this sentence:  "[Liberals are] trying to win an argument without having it at all."

I've noticed more and more that many liberals just aren't that interested in their own intellectual history; they tend to take their own political thought as self-evident without the littlest need for examination.

The Never-Ending Campaign

President Obama's official visits campaign stops have been generating some press lately but virtually none of it from media on this side of the pond.  This story in the Daily Mail notes President Obama's frequent fundraisers (124 so far this year as compared with George W. Bush's 57 that were held in 2004) and recent official stops to certain states that just so happen to be battleground states in the upcoming election.

Reading that story reminded me of an aside I wrote in a recent post on how hard it is to tell the difference between an official visit and a campaign stop.  I want to give a good illustration of this point.  The following is from remarks President Obama made on April 24th in North Carolina:

But I’ve got to tell you, the Republicans who run the House of Representatives have not yet said whether or not they’ll stop your rates from doubling.  And they’ve hinted that the only way they’d do it is if they cut things like aid for low-income students.  So let me scratch my head there for a second.  Think about that.  We’re going to help some students by messing with other students.  That’s not a good answer.  How many people think that’s a good answer?

AUDIENCE MEMBERS:  No!

THE PRESIDENT:  No, I didn’t think so.  One of these members of Congress -- sometimes I like just getting these quotes, because I’m always interested in how folks talk about this issue. You’ve got one member of Congress who compared these student loans -- I’m not kidding here -- to a "stage-three cancer of socialism."

AUDIENCE:  Booo --

THE PRESIDENT:  Stage-three cancer?  (Laughter.)  I don’t know where to start.  What do you mean?  (Laughter.)  What are you talking about?  (Applause.)  Come on.  Just when you think you’ve heard it all in Washington, somebody comes up with a new way to go off the deep end.  (Laughter.) 

And then, you’ve got the spokesman for the Speaker of the House who says, we’re -- meaning me, my administration -- we're just talking about student loans to distract people from the economy.  Now, think about that for a second.  Because these guys don’t get it -- this is the economy.  (Applause.)  This is the economy.  This is about your job security.  This is about your future.  If you do well, the economy does well.  This is about the economy.  (Applause.)

And here is what he said at an event in Michigan on April 18th:

And we need to build in America -- roads, bridges, ports, airports, broadband lines.  That’s what this museum reminds us of, is what it means to build.  It’s time we stop taking the money that we’re spending at war -- use half of it to pay down our debt, use the other half to do some nation building here at home. (Applause.)  And when we talk about the deficit --

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love you, Obama!

THE PRESIDENT:  I love you, baby.  (Laughter and applause.) Thank you.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  We love you more!  (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT:  When we talk about the deficit, it’s a real problem.  It is something that we’re going to have to address.  We can’t leave a bunch of unpaid bills for our kids and our grandkids.  And so that means that we’ve got to make some tough decisions, get rid of programs that don’t work to make sure that we can invest in programs that do.  But we’ve also got to make sure that the tax system reflects everybody doing their fair share.  (Applause.) 

The Republicans in the Senate just rejected the Buffett Rule --

AUDIENCE:  Booo --

THE PRESIDENT:  -- wouldn’t let it come up for a vote.  Simple idea that if you make more than $1 million a year, you shouldn’t pay a lower tax rate than your secretary.  Now, the reason that’s important is because if we abided by that rule, then we could say to folks what I have repeatedly said, which is, the 98 percent of Americans who make $250,000 a year or less, your taxes shouldn’t go up.  And that idea is not -- it's not class warfare to say that somebody like me can afford to do a little bit more.  It’s just basic math.

Which one is the campaign stop and which one is the official visit?  That's for you to decide.

From Reverend to Doctor

Ken Blackwell on what is missing from the new MLK monument:  God.  As he rightly notes:

Even though Dr. King was a Baptist minister and his history-altering speeches about civil liberties are saturated with references to natural rights and profound theological constructs, none of the 14 quotes carefully etched into his stone monument contain references to God.

For the Founders, the idea of natural rights was always anchored in the Creator or God.  Morality surely was important but it alone wasn't sufficient to keep man away from his natural state.  So thought George Washington:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Another point to ponder (which also makes Blackwell's case on the secularization of King) is the transformation from Rev. King to Dr. King in recent years.  Consider that years ago not everyone who received a doctorate was grouped together as Ph.D.'s.

Rand vs. Aquinas

Robert Costa has a great piece today on Paul Ryan and his answer for the critics who label him as a blind follower of Ayn Rand.  Here is Ryan's blunt answer on what he thinks of  Rand's overarching philosophy:

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

Ryan on what his budget proposal is really about:

“This is about more than numbers,” Ryan says. “It’s about what kind of country we want to be, what kind of people we want to be. It’s about perfecting the American idea — a land of opportunity and upward mobility. That idea is at risk of being severed for the next generation if we get it wrong. We’re at a very precarious moment in our nation’s history. We need to see it for what it is, and it’s important to reapply those core founding principles which are so consistent with Church teachings, to get back to an opportunity society with a safety net.”

I think the office of VP would be below Rep. Ryan.

Obama Lies, Students...

At NRO, Katrina Trinko takes notice of a certain "story" President Obama told to college students at the University of North Carolina in a speech earlier today:

“[Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.)] said she had ‘very little tolerance for people who tell me they graduate with debt because there’s no reason for that,’” Obama told the students at UNC Chapel Hill. “I’m just quoting here, I’m just quoting.”

“She said students who rack up student loan debt are just ‘sitting on their butts having opportunity dumped in your lap,” he added. “I’m reading it here. So I didn’t make this up.”

But the full Foxx quote is very different.

“I have very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because there’s no reason for that,” Foxx said last week, per the Huffington Post. (Emphasis mine.)

Of course Obama makes Rep. Foxx look like a raving lunatic, seemingly going after anyone who has taken out college loans.  And it should be noted that whenever President Obama goes out of his way to tell everyone that he is "just quoting" and that he "didn't make this up," that's exactly what he is doing.  Somewhere, Bill Clinton is smiling.

Partly National, Partly Federal

Colleen Sheehan, Professor of Political Science at Villanova, has a great essay at Liberty Forum on James Madison, the Principles of 1798, and the theory of Nullification.  Sheehan argues that unlike Jefferson, who she says did argue for something similar to what John C. Calhoun would later champion in the nullification controversy in the the 1830s, James Madison "forcefully but carefully set forth his arguments in the Virginia Resolutions, charging the national government with violating the most fundamental principles of liberty, but simultaneously declaring Virginia’s membership in and sincere attachment to the Union of the American states."

Sheehan on Madison's thoughts on the composition of the Union:

According to James Madison, the sovereign people of America did not create a confederacy of sovereign states nor did they create a unitary national government.  Instead, they thoughtfully and very deliberately created a compound federal republican polity.[16]  Those who would deny the compound nature of our partly federal, partly national political system would necessarily convert it into one wholly federal or wholly consolidated.  All who are friends of free government, Madison pleaded, must see that this is tantamount to aiming “a deadly blow at the last hope of true liberty on the face of the Earth.”

For Madison, whose Virginia Resolution never mentioned the word nullification, single states could not annul federal law.  Instead, the resolution was aimed at ginning up public antipathy towards the now notorious Alien and Sedition Acts, enacted by the administration of John Adams.  Contrary to Jefferson (and there is still some question in my mind whether Jefferson truly believed in something like single state nullification), Madison reasoned that republican government was grounded on the consent of the people, the same people who created both the state and federal governments.  

Madison's Report of 1800 and his letter to Edward Everett make clear that he did not believe he was arguing for nullification and, ultimately, secession.  This really needs to be understood, especially by Tea Partiers and others who have been reading too many books by Paleocons that talk of the compatibility between nullification and secession and the principles of the American Founding.

Shredding the First Amendment

An absolutely shocking thing happened recently in the political world (and no, the shocking thing wasn't the MSM tarring Chuck Colson after his death over the weekend):  A groups of Democrats headed by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is endorsing a movement to amend the First Amendment so that speech by anything other than an individual will be open to regulation by Congress.  Here is Pelosi in her own words:

“Our Founders had an idea. It was called democracy. It said elections are determined by the people, the voice and the vote of the people, not by the bankrolls of the privileged few. This Supreme Court decision flies in the face of our Founders’ vision and we want to reverse it.” 

For one, I don't think democracy was an idea first thought up by the Founders, nor did they understand that they were simply establishing a democracy.  But I digress.  Here is more:

“I mean, in my view, a corporation is not a person. It is not an individual,” said [Rep. Donna] Edwards. “The rights that it has are those that are granted by the state, granted by the, by the Congress.” 

But, as the editors of National Review understand,

If this amendment were to be enacted, the cardinal rights protected by the First Amendment — free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances — would be redefined and reduced to the point of unrecognizability. The amendment would hold that the rights protected by the Constitution are enjoyed only by individuals acting individually; individuals acting in collaboration with others would be stripped of those rights.

And on the irony of the Left's position:

But “corporate personhood” is simply the notion that incorporated groups — businesses, political parties, unions, nonprofits, etc. — are single entities under the law. One would think that the Left would find this convenient: If Monsanto is not a “person” under the law, it cannot be regulated, taxed, sued, or fined, because for the purposes of the law it does not exist. Without the ability to treat enterprises as a single legal entity, there would be no redress for damages caused by a defective GM vehicle except to file claims against each individual owner of the 1.57 billion shares of GM stock outstanding.

On the Pandora's Box this amendment would open up:

One of the great dangers of such efforts to regulate political speech is that it puts incumbents in charge of setting the rules of the game under which their power and their position may be challenged. That is a recipe for abuse and corruption, and for smothering those critics who would draw attention to abuse and corruption.

It is a good thing that liberals have finally realized that in order to change the Constitution, amendments are required (unlike their preferred method:  the on-going constitutional convention with judges acting as representatives).

Cliches as Principle

For his upcoming book The Tyranny of Cliches:  How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, Jonah Goldberg has a new blog that, as you might have guessed, deals with some of the prevalent cliches that go for high principle.  Here is a good take down of a line that was supposedly said by Einstein:

For instance, one phrase that drives me crazy that we hear from politicians of all stripes is “Einstein defined insanity as ‘doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

First of all does anyone know if he really said that?

Second, this is absurd. You know a better word for “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”?

“Practice.”

Golfers do the same thing over and over again hoping different results. Dart throwers, writers, prostitutes, singers, dancers, musicians, knitters and just about everybody who wants to get better at something repeat the same behavior over and over again. The saying “practice makes perfect” makes a hell of a lot more sense than “practice makes you crazy,” though I suppose practice has driven some people crazy. But you get the point.

I laughed out loud upon reading that one.  Can't wait to get the book.

Constitution 101

In case you need some refreshing about the American Founding, the relationship between the Constitution and the Declaration, the statesmanship of Lincoln, and the assault Woodrow Wilson and other Progressives made on the Constitution and it's principles, then sign up for Constitution 101.  It's very good and very straightforward.  Here is the link.

Politics, Chicago Style

By way of Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard, Allahpundit notes that Jon Corzine, the former Gov. of New Jersey and who is currently embroiled in the MF Global scandal, is still raising money for the Obama campaign.  On the shady dealings at MF Global:

News broke that more than a billion dollars in MF Global client funds had apparently been “vaporized” in the firm’s collapse, with investigators clueless as to where the money might have gone. As recently as last month, new evidence emerged pointing to Corzine’s direct involvement in using clients’ cash to cover the firm’s debts. And yet, presumably, he was squeezing his rich friends for dough for Obama the whole time. Ace asks a good question: “Why is a man under investigation by a government agency permitted to raise money for the man who controls that agency?” Wouldn’t be the first time Corzine’s used his political leverage to personal advantage.

This is getting old (about as old as politicians referring to the famous "shocked, shocked" line in Casablanca), but what if something like this had happened during the Bush Administration?  And what happened to all of the lectures about the unprecedented transparency this administration was going to be implementing?

Issues vs. Distractions

In light of Hilary Rosen's comments about Ann Romney and the backfire that resulted, Jonah Goldberg points out a trend in the media's treatment of political controversies:

My complaint isn’t about distractions, it’s about the press’s tendency to treat controversies that help Republicans as “distractions” and ones that hurt Republicans as Very Serious Issues.

As Jonah rightly notes, the backlash to Rosen was absolutely manufactured by Romney and Republicans (and which was joined in by Obama's own David Axlerod and Jim Messina) to point out the baseless "War on Women" attacks by the Democrats, which of course for the media was a real issue.  (Wait I thought during the Republican debates that the real issues were the economy and jobs and it was Republicans distracting us with side issues??)  The problem is that the media feels the need to tell us which of these controversies is real or imagined and that their analysis always seems to disproportionately help out one side over the other. 

A Reading From the Book of Obama

Michelle Obama recently said the following during a campaign stop (10$ to anyone who can tell the difference between an "official" WH visit and a campaign stop) in Knoxville, TN:

"I am so in," Michelle Obama said toward the end of her remarks. "I am going to be working so hard. We have an amazing story to tell. This president has brought us out of the dark and into the light."

If this is the light, I definitely don't want to know what the dark is like... 

And of course,

In the book of Matthew, we read, "the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." (Matthew 4:16) The phrase is used to describe the words Jesus preached. 

Bipartisanship

The New York Times reports:

WASHINGTON — President Obama is finding himself increasingly boxed in on the Keystone pipeline fight as more Congressional Democrats are joining Republicans in backing the project, which has strong labor support and could generate significant numbers of jobs in economically hard-hit states.

On Wednesday, the House passed a short-term transportation bill that included a provision that would pave the way for the construction of the next stage of the oil pipeline, a measure that Mr. Obama has said he would veto. The bill passed 293 to 127, with 69 Democrats supporting it.

It is the fourth time the House has passed a measure to expedite the project; one failed narrowly in the Senate only after Mr. Obama personally lobbied some Democrats to vote no. With the House vote, Mr. Obama finds himself, for the first time in his presidency, threatening a veto on a significant piece of legislation that enjoys the support of an increasing number of Democrats, as well as the vast majority of Republicans in Congress.

This is going to get interesting.

(H/T: Daniel Halper)

NOW's Constitution

The National Organization of Women (NOW) is still trying to get Rush Limbaugh kicked off the airwaves for his comments regarding liberal activist Sandra Fluke.  Terry O'Neill, President of NOW, stated the following on why Rush should be fired:

“He is going to be whining and calling us out about his First Amendment rights” Terry O’Neill, president of NOW, told The Daily Caller about how she expects Limbaugh to react to their campaign. “There is nothing in the Constitution that says Rush Limbaugh gets $38 million a year for being on a radio show.”

I guess this begs the question:  Why should Terry O'Neill get paid whatever she gets paid?  There is nothing in the Constitution about her pay whatsoever.

Social Darwinism Reconsidered

In this Weekly Standard essay, Jonah Goldberg takes those to task who have been accusing Republicans of being modern day Social Darwinists.  Here is the key paragraph:

But here’s the interesting part: Almost no one else called himself a Social Darwinist either (including [Herbert] Spencer’s alleged co-conspirator William Graham Sumner). Simply put, there was no remotely serious intellectual movement—at least not in America or Britain—called Social Darwinism, and the evil views attributed to so-called Social Darwinists were not held by its alleged founders. Geoffrey Hodgson conducted a survey of all of the leading English-language academic journals from the mid-1800s until 1937 and couldn’t find any evidence that Spencer and Sumner were part of, never mind leaders of, an intellectual movement called “Social Darwinism.” Even more amazing: In the entire body of Anglo-American scholarly publications spanning more than a century, there is only one article that actually advocates—rather than criticizes—something called “Social Darwinism.” And it not only wasn’t written by Spencer, it doesn’t mention him either.

But after reading the piece in its entirety, I am left wondering about Jonah's defense of Spencer and Sumner.  While they certainly didn't see themselves as Social Darwinists, they certainly prepared the way by rejecting the principles of the American Founding.  Steve Hayward picks up on this over at Power Line:

They did this by rejecting the Founding Eras philosophical doctrine of individual natural right, which became the cornerstone of Progressivism. Sumner hated the Declaration of Independence, and explicitly embraced the John C. Calhoun and Stephen Douglas view Jefferson’s handiwork.

“Before the tribunal of nature,” Sumner wrote in his most memorable formulation, “a man has no more rights than a rattlesnake; he has no more right to liberty than any wild beast.” Spencer argued, following Bentham (“nonsense on stilts”) that the idea of natural rights should be abandoned.

I think it is extremely important to point this out because conservatives should not feel the need to defend every last thing Spencer and Sumner said and did in order to rescue them from being used as pawns in a political shell game.

In case you are interested, Bradley C.S. Watson explores the intellectual evolution of Progressivism (Spencer and Sumner included) in Living Constitution, Dying Faith:  Progressivism and the New Science of Jurisprudence.

Just Like Reagan

Michael Ramirez on Obama's false claim that he is just following in Reagan's footsteps:

As Ramirez describes, the comparison is "utter nonsense" because,

Obama believes government is the solution. He supports a hyper-regulated, crony socialism, distibution of wealth, anti-business Keynesian disaster. Reagan cut taxes across the board by 25%. The Economic Recovery Tax Act that Reagan signed into law in 1981 was the engine for economic growth for over two decades. The Obama Eonomic Stimulus Plan spent over a TRILLION dollars and got very little in return for the investment. In September of last year, President Obama proposed another government based jobs plan. In the same time period during Reagan's first term, Reagan's economy was roaring back to life and created 1.1 million jobs in September alone, the biggest one-month job gain since the BLS began tracking employment statistics in 1939. Even though the Obama recovery began just five months after he took office, his policies have created the slowest economic recovery since the Great depression.

Slick Willie

(H/T Rob Long)

Progress or Return?

At No Left Turns Ken Thomas notes the interesting irony in the charges of social Darwinism coming from the Left:

Yesterday marked the 153rd anniversary of the death of Alexis de Tocqueville, the extraordinary biographer of America, in all its splendor and its deficiencies. His principal virtue was his insight that liberty-smothering bureaucracy--what he termed "centralized administration"--was at the core of contemporary ills, and it would worsen, as this scandal  (more serious than the GSA) reminds us.

This Tocqueville anniversary coincides with the 100th anniversary of Woodrow Wilson's bold attack on the American founders and his celebration of the administrative state, "What is Progress?" The presidential campaign address also proclaimed the need for Darwinian science to form the basis of our political science. The contrast between Wilson--who equated democracy and socialism--and Tocqueville, who denied such equivalence is most instructive.

Obama's ill-informed attribution of "Darwinism" to Paul Ryan, et al. flies in the face of his own Progressive, Darwinian assumptions, which repudiate constitutional government and justify tyranny.

Here is an excerpt from "What is Progress?" that every American should read and think about:

The makers of our Federal Constitution read Montesquieu with true scientific enthusiasm. They were scientists in their way—the best way of their age—those fathers of the nation. Jefferson wrote of "the laws of Nature"—and then by way of afterthought—"and of Nature’s God." And they constructed a government as they would have constructed an orrery—to display the laws of nature. Politics in their thought was a variety of mechanics. The Constitution was founded on the law of gravitation. The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of "checks and balances."

The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls, not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. No living thing can have its organs offset against each other, as checks, and live.

Strikeout

Ozzie Guillen, manager of the Miami Marlins and perennial loudmouth of baseball, recently started a firestorm when in an interview with Time, he stated that he "loved Castro."  Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig stated the following on Guillen's comments:

“Major League Baseball supports today’s decision by the Marlins to suspend Ozzie Guillen.  As I have often said, Baseball is a social institution with important social responsibilities.  All of our 30 Clubs play significant roles within their local communities, and I expect those who represent Major League Baseball to act with the kind of respect and sensitivity that the game’s many cultures deserve.  Mr. Guillen’s remarks, which were offensive to an important part of the Miami community and others throughout the world, have no place in our game.”

Dennis Prager points out the obvious missing from this statement:   

In other words, according to the commissioner of baseball, what is objectionable is not that Guillen said that he loves the world’s longest-reigning tyrant, the killer and torturer of democratic dissidents in his country, the destroyer of the Cuban economy, and the man who singlehandedly deadened more than a generation of Cubans’ ability to enjoy life. What is objectionable is that Guillen may have offended an important minority in Florida.

It says a lot that Selig can't even bring himself to condemn a tyrant whose regime is openly at war with the natural rights of the people he lords over.  All he can muster is that he knows Guillen's statements were offensive to a certain part of the Miami community.  Really sad.

Selig didn't have much of a problem sitting next to the guy either:

Rather Not

Dan Rather still believes that the documents purported to be proof that President Bush received preferential treatment while serving as a pilot for the Texas Air National Guard are 100 percent true.  Rather said that he "never ceased believing that they are genuine" and that he is "optimistic that somebody, somewhere will one day come forward and reveal the truth."  Rather, still broadcasting on the little-watched HDNet, is still of course one of a handful of people, other than those who think Bush=Hitler, that still thinks this to be true.  I wish the rest of us has the "courage" that Rather continues to display to this day.

Allan Bloom and the American Mind

In The Weekly Standard Andrew Ferguson writes on the 25th anniversary of Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, that surprise bestseller that was a direct indictment of the modern university and the students who populate them (or, ironically, the people who were buying Bloom's books off the shelf).

Ferguson describes the crisis in education as Bloom saw it:

The crisis was​—​is​—​a crisis of confidence in the principle that serves as the premise of liberal education: that reason, informed by learning and experience, can arrive at truth, and that one truth may be truer than another. This loss of faith had consequences and causes far beyond higher ed. Bloom was a believer in intellectual trickle-down theory, and it is the comprehensiveness of his thesis that may have attracted readers to him and his book. The coarsening of public manners, the decline in academic achievement, the general dumbing down of America​—​even Jerry Springer​—​had a long pedigree that Bloom was at pains to describe for a general reader.

And how Bloom's surprise success made him the subject of withering attacks from those in the ivory towers of academia:

In time the academic establishment’s horror of Bloom grew too vast for mere paper and ink to contain. Drastic action had to be taken: Conferences had to be held. They were convened to declare Bloom anathema. At one, in Manhattan, an administrator at the (elite!) Dalton School called him a “Hitlerite.” For left-wing academics in 1987, Hitler was almost as bad as Oliver North. Richard Bernstein, then a reporter for the New York Times, chronicled a gathering sponsored by Duke and the University of North Carolina, where Bloom, though not in attendance, was “derided, scorned and laughed at” by a large group of humanities professors.

Ferguson though really gets at something in this interesting aside:

There is no element of moral uplift in Bloom’s brief against modern life. Discussing the collapse of the traditional family, which has of course only accelerated since his time, he writes: “I am not arguing here that the old family arrangements were good or that we should or could go back to them.”

It was this slight crack in the armor that lead some to see that all Bloom was really offering was "humanizing doubts" and "impoverishing certitudes" in the face of modern rationalism as brought on by Nietzsche and Heidegger--to at least be aware of the abyss of nihilism which we are hurtling towards.  Instead of basing his critiques of the relativism and, ultimately, nihilism, that he witnessed at Cornell and later the University of Toronto on reason and natural law, Bloom instead seemed to want to make sure that our relativism was a thoughtful relativism, not the easy-going kind that pervaded (and still pervades) the university.  The university as originally understood was the only place that could supply the tools needed to emerge from the cave, the road to Socratic wisdom.  Bloom himself implicitly and explicitly makes this case by referencing his bleak childhood in the barren lands of the Midwest only to finally discover the life of meaning while at the University of Chicago.  Bloom could then not look at the things done by people in everyday life and glean any sort of higher meaning out of it:  that could only be done by reading what philosophers wrote in books.        

For so much talk about Americans, Bloom never takes time to see Americans as they understand themselves.  It was because Bloom did not want to rely on the natural right and natural rights principles of the Declaration of Independence as the antidote to the problems affecting America (and the rest of the world).  As he saw it, the Founders allegedly built the American republic on the very low ground.  The principles of the Founders were supplied by the atheistic and materialist Hobbes and Locke, which they themselves discovered while foraging on the continent first discovered by Machiavelli.  Far be it a saving grace, the principles of the Founders actually contained the poison which has so thoroughly infected the country today.

But in a critique (it begins on page 113) of Bloom, Harry Jaffa has written that contra to Bloom,

The teaching of the Founding, expressed in the Declaration and the Federalist, takes nature as the ground of political life in the teleological sense, not in the nonmoral purposeless sense of modern science. Bloom has completely misread not only the American Founding, but all political life, since he does not read political speeches to discover the form of the consciousness of political men. He assumes that political men are mere epigones of philosophers whether they know it or not. The political nature of man is however understood by the Founders if one reads what they say, and not only what Hobbes or Locke or Kant say in the light of the inequality of man and beast, as well as in the light of the inequality of man and God. This understanding corresponds very closely with the first book of the Politics, and as it does with the first chapter of Genesis. But such inequalities imply that morality and the principles of political right are grounded in a purposeful reality accessible to reason, one that corresponds as well to the teachings of biblical faith. When Madison speaks of the sacrifice of all institutions to the safety and happiness of society, he implies a fortiori that the safety and happiness of individuals may or must be sacrificed too. For the Founders, the safety or happiness of society that is to say, of a society constructed according to the principles of legitimacy and right set forth in the Declaration of Independence always takes precedence over the mere interests or subjective judgments of individuals. That is why Lincoln in 1861, while conceding that the citizens of the seceding States possessed the same right of revolution as their Revolutionary ancestors, denied that they ought to exercise that right for any purpose inconsistent with the purposes for which their ancestors had exercised that right. To extend slavery was inconsistent with the purposes of the Revolution.   

Fortunately in spite of Bloom, Americans have begun  to return back to the Constitution and the principles of the Declaration.  They have wanted to return to a politics based universal, unchanging principles that are not affected by history and are just as true now as they were when they were first articulated.  More and more Americans have, without any help from Bloom, found the antidote that Bloom never supplied.

A Second Obama Term and the Supreme Court

Pete Spiliakos has some thoughts on really the most important reason why Obama should be defeated in the upcoming election:  keeping the current balance of the Supreme Court intact.  Here is Pete:

So what would it mean to have a Supreme Court where Stephen Breyer was the ideologically median Justice?  Off the top of my head I’m guessing that HELLER and MCDONALD V. CHICAGO would likely be reversed.  Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee (Sonia Sotomayor) voted against incorporating the Second Amendment against the states.  I don’t expect Kagan to vote any different if the issue came up.  Obama doesn’t talk much about gun control, but he is one Supreme Court pick (if it is for any of the five not-consistently-liberal seats) away from a Supreme Court ”collective right” interpretation of the Constitution.  One more liberal Supreme Court Justice also means that overturning (or even the eroding) of ROE is much more difficult and lengthy.  It also means a more radicalized abortion jurisprudence.  Say goodbye to the federal (and any attempted state) prohibitions on partial birth abortion.

This is really scary to think about.

As Pete notes, Anthony Kennedy is 75 and Antonin Scalia is 76, which means if Obama wins another term, either one or both could step down in the next four years. (Ginsburg would more than likely also step down, but it would be less damaging the current makeup of the Court.)  

How Romney should talk about the Supreme Court while on the campaign trail:

As a political matter, Romney would do well to hit, with specificity, on the policy implications of an Obama Supreme Court.  If he can frame the issue as an Obama reelection meaning a) the end of constitutional Second Amendment protections, b) the return of partial birth abortion and c) a Commerce Clause interpretation in which Congress can force anyone to contract with  a private company to buy a product they don’t want, then Romney has a strong case that he can take to both conservatives who might be leery of him and to swing voters who are leery of judicial liberalism (to the extent they are reminded what judicial liberalism means in practice.) 

Talking this way would appeal not only to conservatives:  it would appeal to unaffiliated voters, independent voters, and even a certain number of Democrats who carry a concealed carry license and don't much like the prospects of returning to the days of partial birth abortions.  

Also (sorry for too much praise), Pete is right that conservatives should treat anyone Romney may nominate with considerable unease.  It is interesting to note the difference in the outcry from Right, or lack thereof, when George H.W. Bush nominated the unknown David Souter and when his son nominated Harriet Miers.

Free Ride

Charles Krauthammer calls President Obama on his plan bluff he laid out this week regarding the necessity of the so-called Buffet Rule--a disingenuous piece of political propaganda:

At the beginning of his presidency, Barack Obama argued that the country’s spiraling debt was largely the result of exploding health-care costs. That was true. He then said the cure for these exploding costs would be his health-care reform. That was not true.

It was obvious at the time that it could never be true. If government gives health insurance to 33 million uninsured, that costs. Costs a lot. There’s no free lunch.

Obama has made the case that the Buffet Rule, which would be the institution of a 30 percent minimum tax rates on those making over a million dollars, would bring about fairness for the American people and growth for the economy.  His campaign pushed recently back specifically against the charge that the Buffet Rule was in any way directed towards deficit reduction.  But even Obama himself argued way back last September that “[t]he money is going to have to come from someplace. And if we’re not willing to ask those who’ve done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit ... that’s unacceptable to me.”

Here is how much revenue would be generated by the Buffet Rule:

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates this new tax would yield between $4 billion and $5 billion a year. If we collect the Buffett tax for the next 250 years — a span longer than the life of this republic — it would not cover the Obama deficit for 2011 alone.

A primer on what the Buffet Rule actually does:

The reason Buffett and Mitt Romney pay roughly 15 percent in taxes is that their income is principally capital gains. The Buffett Rule is, in fact, a disguised tax hike on capital gains. But Obama prefers to present it as just an alternative minimum tax because 50 years of economic history show that raising the capital-gains tax backfires: It reduces federal revenues, while lowering the tax raises revenues.

And to answer Charles's rhetorical question if the President believes we are all this stupid to accept this with arms wide open, the answer is most definitely a yes.

The Serious Statesman

John Hinderaker got to hear Rep. Paul Ryan give a speech today on the fiscal calamity in which we find ourselves today and how to begin dealing with this serious crisis (pretty much opposite of the unserious and meaningless policies touted by President Obama, e.g., the Buffet Rule, etc.).  Ryan is not only a policy wonk, but he understands the foundations on which policy is supposed to be built upon:  the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

This made me laugh just thinking about the possibilities:

 Ryan was asked about Mitt Romney and the vice-presidency. He spoke highly of Romney, who he says has the high character that he associates with World War II veterans he has known, and a businessman’s understanding of economics. He brushed off, naturally, any talk about the vice-presidency. It is entertaining to contemplate a matchup between Ryan and Joe Biden, which would be even more one-sided than the 2004 “debate” between Dick Cheney and John Edwards. For that matter, no one would be better able to expose the fatuous demagoguery of Barack Obama than Paul Ryan. For better or worse, that is a spectacle to which we will not be treated.

If you thought the Cheney/Edwards VP debate of 2004 was one-sided, wait until you see the Ryan/Biden VP debate.  That would surely be one for the ages.

The Source of Our Rights

In his latest column Hadley Arkes elucidates on the natural law principles that underlay the American Republic.  Arkes on the nature of the Union and the source of our rights:

 

As Abraham Lincoln understood, the American republic did not begin with the Constitution. What we have come to know as the Constitution is really our second Constitution, coming in 1788. The American regime began with the Declaration of Independence, with the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” with the Creator who “endowed” us with certain natural, “unalienable rights.”  

The task of a Constitution was to arrange a practical structure of governance that would be consistent with those underlying principles. And that was why some of the most notable Founders were resistant to adding a “Bill of Rights.” The Constitution was not the source of our rights, and there was a concern that the mention of some rights would imply the lesser importance of those not mentioned.

These teachings are what should be providing the ground of opposition to the politics and policies of the Obama Administration.

Punchline

Yesterday, VP Joe Biden called Wisconsin Senate Al Franken a "leading legal scholar." 

That's what is called a punchline.

The Law as Teacher

If you haven't been following this story Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino has been embroiled in scandal that began when he got into a motorcycle accident last week.  At the time, he reported that he was only one on the bike when he wrecked it.  It was later found out that Petrino, who is married and has four children, was not the only one on his motorcycle at the time; a woman of 25 years old with whom he also had an "inappropriate relationship" was on the bike as well.  Things were further complicated when it was revealed that she was recently hired on to serve as a fundraising coordinator for the Razorback Foundation.  News just minutes ago broke that Petrino will be terminated, which, to the dismay of Arkansas football fans everywhere, is a just action.

I lay out the above to frame what I heard this morning on Mike and Mike while driving to work.  As typical when scandals like this break, it was asserted over and over again by all parties on the show that what is morally reprehensible is not always against the law.  Very true as far as that goes.  But what then is the law based on?  Hypothetically, what if there was no law against murder?  What about Jim Crow laws?  Would we will still assert that same standard about the supposed separation of law and morality then?  Or does the law point to something deeper, something that extends from rights and wrongs that are discoverable from human reason, in which wrongs committed are not only wrong for one single person but wrong for anyone?  This standard, the natural law standard on which this country is philosophically based, is what desperately needs to be recovered in the public square.

Who is the Social Darwinist?

President Obama, in the midst of another temper tantrum, called Paul Ryan's budget "thinly veiled Social Darwinsim" last week during a press conference. (I keep waiting for his serious, intemperate and professorial responses to anything in which he disagrees the slightest.)  Rich Lowry has some thoughts on all of this:

If social Darwinism is merely the belief that the market is the best system for allocating capital and wealth, and that a free society will necessarily be an unequal one, then almost everyone in America is a social Darwinist. Even the president constantly pledges fealty to the market and doesn’t want to confiscate all of Mark Zuckerberg’s income. He is using social Darwinism as a free-floating pejorative for people whose policy preferences he doesn’t like, which is entirely appropriate.

And obviously if the policy is now opposed by Obama, it is bad no questions asked (even if, as Rich notes, he supported many proposals similar to Ryan's in his own budgets).

Rich also has an interesting aside that I always find worthy to note:  "In this respect, liberalism hasn’t evolved at all down through the decades: Seventy years later, it’s still the same witless insult, for the same reason."  For all the talk of Progress and "being on the right side of History" and being in-tune with the times, it sure is strange to still be clinging to political ideas more than 70 years old.  I thought the Democratic Party was the Progressive party?

Santorum Bows Out

Congrats to Rick Santorum on running a campaign that, quite frankly, no one saw coming.  Here is a good rundown of the almost improbable run that just concluded today.  I think Rick would make a very good HHS Secretary in the next administration, certainly far superior than the current occupant of that office.

Diversity

Take a look at this picture:

Think this is Mitt Romney's campaign staff?  A gathering of young Republicans at the RNC HQ?  No, it's a picture of Barack Obama's Chicago campaign staff.  I guess diversity matters only in speech for cynical political gain.

Mitch's Misstep

This is from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in a speech to a group in Kentucky last week regarding Obama's Supreme Court teachings:

Well, fortunately, in matters of constitutional interpretation, we’ve got a final arbiter in this country, and that’s the Supreme Court. So I and many others brought our legal arguments to the Court last week. And after a careful study of the law and the precedents, and after weighing the arguments on both sides, the Court will make its final determination. Whether I agree with it or not, I’ll respect the decision.

The father of the Republican Party would have to disagree:

I do not forget the position assumed by some, that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court; nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case, upon the parties to a suit, as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration, in all paralel cases, by all other departments of the government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be over-ruled, and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions, affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties, in personal actions, the people will have ceased, to be their own rulers, having, to that extent, practically resigned their government, into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there, in this view, any assault upon the court, or the judges. It is a duty, from which they may not shrink, to decide cases properly brought before them; and it is no fault of theirs, if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.

In defending the Constitution against Obamacare, it is a huge mistake for Republicans to then go the extra step and assert that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of the Constitution.

A Conservative Argument

In thinking more about my post yesterday on President's Obama's "teachings" regarding the Supreme Court, I did not mention his criticism of the Court--a mirror of conservative criticism of the Court over the years--as practicing "judicial activism" and being a bunch of "unelected" judges who rule over us.  Charges of judicial activism, however, were first leveled at the Court by conservatives for reading things into the law that were not there, not for limiting the power of Congress.  In fact, the Supreme Court erecting limits of any kind on Congress is more unprecedented than anything else. 

Also, the conservative argument railing against unelected judges was always dumb.  Since the ratification of the Constitution, Article III judges were always unelected.  The Founders thought that this would help insulate the Court from being swayed by politics and popular opinions of the time.  The problem was never the fact that judges were unelected; the problem centered on the bad decisions that those judges make on a too frequent basis (a result of legal positivism being taught in law schools).  Putting terms on judges would only make this worse over time.  In an irony, conservatives who want to abide by the Founders principles instead rail against the constitutional framework the Founders set in place.  Obama really cares nothing about the constitutional framework, but he nonetheless copies the same arguments for purposes opposite of the politicians who first made them. (Conservatives first started using these arguments during the original intent debates during the Reagan Administration.)  That should also tell us something about the merits of both arguments on their face.  

He is Risen

<sup>Happy Easter!

1</sup> After the Sabbath, at dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.
 ² There was a violent earthquake, for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. ³ His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes were white as snow. ⁴ The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.
 ⁵ The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. ⁶ He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. ⁷ Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.”
 ⁸ So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples. ⁹ Suddenly Jesus met them. “Greetings,” he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshiped him. ¹⁰ Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

The Guards’ Report

 ¹¹ While the women were on their way, some of the guards went into the city and reported to the chief priests everything that had happened. ¹² When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan, they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, ¹³ telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ ¹⁴ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” ¹⁵ So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed. And this story has been widely circulated among the Jews to this very day.

The Great Commission

 ¹⁶ Then the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had told them to go. ¹⁷ When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸ Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹ Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Remedial Constitutional Theory

I am finally back after a much needed vacation.  It looks as though I missed some interesting things this past week, with the most interesting being this teaching from President Obama on how the Supreme Court should rule regarding Obamacare:

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.  And I'd just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is, the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint -- that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law.  Well, this is a good example.  And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.

First of all--if we are actually to take him at his word--Obamacare passed the House by a vote of 219-212, hardly a "strong majority."  Secondly, in Marbury v. Madison (1803) Chief Justice John Marshall famously expounded on judicial review, or the basic job description of the Supreme Court in the constitutional architecture.  Judicial review is the idea that the Supreme Court has the power under the Judicial Power in Article III to strike down acts of Congress that they find to be unconstitutional (this doesn't mean they are the final arbiters of the constitution).  To act as though it is unprecedented for the Supreme Court to strike down an act of Congress--even an act passed by democratic means--is sheer lunacy.  Besides, I thought Democrats rather enjoyed the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade that at once struck down laws duly enacted by the people in all 50 states.

And it finally:  it says something about the current state of law schools, and Obama himself as a deep thinker of all things constitutional, when he is concerned above all with the processes of democracy and not the substance of a law itself.  Odd for a guy who taught about the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment at the University of Chicago.