Our Tyrant is Himself a Servile Bastard

As Jonah Goldberg reminds us here:

More to the point, once the president concluded that the law [Clinton's Defense of Marriage Act] was unconstitutional, he would be bound by his oath to ignore it, and challenge it in every way possible.

President Obama says DOMA is unconstitutional, and yet the “law professor” says he will continue to enforce it.

In a properly ordered constitutional republic, this would be a scandal. But in America today, it’s cause for eye-rolling, shrugs, and platitudes about the demands of politics.

Translation for those of you in Rio Linda: the president is violating his oath of office to defend the constitution when he enforces an unconstitutional law, and is bowing to the Judicial branch of government by deferring to it to decide the fate of the law  instead of asserting the co-equal power of the Executive branch, of which he is the head.

Such servility in the soul is a prerequisite for a tyrant. Obama often can't bring himself to assert the power of the Executive, which helps explain the dithering, idling, and lack of urgency which characterizes his decision making, especially in crises, the bowing to foreign leaders, the apologizing for America's sins abroad, etc.

It's all one important reason our opposition to Obama has a good chance of succeeding, and is. He is weak.

Democrats: The New Party of No

"Here stand the Democrats, avatars of reactionary liberalism, desperately trying to hang on to the gains of their glory years - from unsustainable federal entitlements for the elderly enacted when life expectancy was 62 to the massive promissory notes issued to government unions when state coffers were full and no one was looking.

"Obama's Democrats have become the party of no. Real cuts to the federal budget? No. Entitlement reform? No. Tax reform? No. Breaking the corrupt and fiscally unsustainable symbiosis between public-sector unions and state governments? Hell, no.

"We have heard everyone - from Obama's own debt commission to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - call the looming debt a mortal threat to the nation. We have watched Greece self-immolate. We can see the future. The only question has been: When will the country finally rouse itself?

"Amazingly, the answer is: now. Led by famously progressive Wisconsin - Scott Walker at the state level and Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan at the congressional level - a new generation of Republicans has looked at the debt and is crossing the Rubicon. Recklessly principled, they are putting the question to the nation: Are we a serious people?"

-- Charles Krauthammer, at his finest, in The Washington Post, here

Rep. Paul Ryan: "I Didn't Like ObamaCare, But I Didn't Walk Out On It"

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, here.

Hear! Hear!

Gold's Gift: Stable, Long-Term, Low Interest Rates

In Great Britain thanks to John Locke and William of Orange, as discussed here by Nathan Lewis.

The gold standard: The sine qua non for prosperity, greatness, and liberty.

Flee-Baggers: Elected Democrats Who Run Away to Shut Down Government

The New York Times romanticizes them as exiles when it's Democrats who shut down duly elected government by running away from their jobs:

Illinois suddenly found itself as the refuge of choice for outnumbered Democrats fleeing their states to block the passage of such bills. By Wednesday evening, most of Indiana’s 40 Democratic state representatives were living in rooms (“plain but all we need,” in the words of one) at the Comfort Suites in Urbana, Ill., about 100 miles west of the state Capitol in Indianapolis. Wisconsin’s Senate Democrats were preparing to mark their first full week, on Thursday, somewhere in northern Illinois.

Meanwhile, The Washington Times reports that the US Senate, still controlled by Democrats, has bugged out of town while Republicans in the US House have been working very hard to cut spending and keep the government engine operating on a leaner mixture:

House Republicans said they’ve done their work. They stayed in session until 1 a.m. twice, worked until 3:43 a.m. another day, and then pushed until nearly 5 a.m. Saturday morning to get their bill done. Along the way, they considered hundreds of amendments and held more than 100 recorded votes.

The Senate, meanwhile, hasn’t touched spending since before Christmas. Instead, senators have worked on a bill to update federal aviation rules, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support on Feb. 17.

Senators then left Washington, adjourning by unanimous consent, which means no lawmakers objected to the decision.

Freshmen House members were incredulous.

“It’s just remarkable that we have this deadline looming and apparently they’re not working on it,” said Rep. Robert Hurt, Virginia Republican. “It’s incumbent on them to get the work done — either adopt the measure as we’ve sent it over or get it back to us as soon as possible so we can work out the details.”

Fleabaggers Infest Wisconsin State Capitol Building: Odd Lurking Smells Everywhere

As observed by an imported (!) protester here:

Many of the protesters have been here for days, some without a change of clothes. While some Madison residents have opened up their homes to people who need a shower, and many people clean up daily in the washrooms with buckets of soapy water, there are still, as protester Nathan Christ from Chicago put it, "odd, lurking smells everywhere."

Republican Super-Majority in MT Scares the Bejeebers Out of Dem. Governor

And out of the Associated Press, showcasing a story designed to inflame reaction in the moribund left:

Some residents, Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer and even some Republican lawmakers say the bills are making Montana into a laughingstock. And, they say, the push to nullify federal laws could be dangerous.

"We are the United States of America," said Schweitzer. "This talk of nullifying is pretty toxic talk. That led to the Civil War."

More at the link here.

How Doctrinaire Libertarians Co-Opt the Tea Party Illustrated

The latest example comes from Senator Rand Paul, son of Representative Ron Paul. Republicans, maybe. Libertarians for sure, who, like all our collectivist enemies, believe in permanent revolution:

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels Doesn't Have the Cojones to be President

CNBC reports that Gov. Daniels doesn't have the cojones to stand up to the unions like Reagan did:

In Indiana, top Republican legislators have declared dead a "right to work" bill that would prohibit union representation fees from being a condition of employment at most private companies. Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, who is considering a presidential run, had been saying since December that he wanted to avoid a showdown with labor that could distract lawmakers from moving on proposals such as revamping public schools and the state budget.

As in Wisconsin, the clash has drawn hundreds of protesters to the Indiana Statehouse and led most House Democrats to leave the state to shut down legislative business on the union bill and a slate of other issues. Daniels has appealed to the lawmakers to return because "their conscience tells them they should do their duty."

More here.

Freddie Mac is a mess, and so is the reporting on it.

Compare this from AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon here:

Government-controlled mortgage buyer Freddie Mac managed a narrower loss of $1.7 billion for the October-December quarter of last year. But it has asked for an additional $500 million in federal aid - up from the $100 million it sought in the previous quarter.

Freddie Mac also posted a $19.8 billion loss for all of 2010.

With this from Philip van Doorn for The Street here:

Freddie Mac on Thursday reported a fourth-quarter net loss of $113 million, and would need another sip from the government trough.

The loss narrowed from a $2.5 billion net loss during the third quarter. For all of 2010, the government-sponsored mortgage giant lost $14 billion, following a $21.6 billion loss during 2009.

So, in Q4 2010 Freddie lost either $1.7 billion, or $113 million.

And for all of 2010 Freddie lost either $19.8 billion, or $14 billion.

But who's counting. They're just numbers.

If I ever straighten this one out, I'll let you know.

Politico Reveals Obama Holds Hundreds of Secret Meetings with Lobbyists

All the while claiming a new transparency:

Obama’s administration has touted its release of White House visitors logs as a breakthrough in transparency, as the first White House team to reveal the comings and goings around the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building.

The Jackson Place townhouses are a different story.

There are no records of meetings at the row houses just off Lafayette Square that house the White House Conference Center and the Council on Environmental Quality, home to two of the busiest meeting spaces. The White House can’t say who attended meetings there, or how often. The Secret Service doesn’t log in visitors or require a background check the way it does at the main gates of the White House.

Read it all here.

Unlike Some People Caroline Baum Still Believes in American Exceptionalism

And she notices its Anglo-Saxon character, too, here:

What about other indicators that challenge the notion the US is going the way of empires past? Students from across the globe flock to the US for college and post-graduate education. Six of the top 10 universities in the world are located in the US, according to US News & World Report. The other four are in the UK, that other emblem of Empire Passe.

US students may score poorly in math and science, but somehow they manage to overcome that handicap to become world-class researchers. The US can claim more Nobel Prizes than any country: 320 versus 116 for runner-up UK. In areas such as physics, chemistry and medicine, the US has two to three times as many Nobels as its closest competitor, which is either the UK or Germany. ...

The number of patents issued to US residents in 2009 (93,727) was about the same as those issued to residents of all other countries combined (96,395), according to the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Let's ask Great Britain to send that statue of Churchill Obama didn't want in the Oval Office to Caroline.

She's marvelous, and she's right.

National Popular Vote Virus Spreads to Vermont

The whole point of writing the constitution to allocate two senators each to the States was to reassure the smaller ones by population that the larger ones would not be able to exert unfair advantage over them in the nation's Legislative branch, and to get them thereby to join the union.

Another way of stating this principle is that population was meant to be reflected in the composition of the US House, but deflected in the Senate. The latter was originally designed to be a creature of the States, not of the people. That is why State Legislatures elected US Senators until the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913, the same year that gave us the Federal Reserve and the income tax. Bad things always seem to happen in threes.

Today it is reported here that the senate of the only State of the union which has a Socialist for a US Senator, Vermont, has decided to advance the NPV measure, which should not be confused with the acronym for the Human Papilloma Virus. The National Popular Vote initiative, already passed in 6 States and DC, seeks to deny the will of the voters in a State by allocating its electoral votes to the national popular vote winner, not necessarily to the winner of that State.

In the same way that the 17th Amendment sought to weaken the power of the State governments, the National Popular Vote initiative would make it even more irrelevant. What is more, the scheme really represents a rival electoral college which seeks to make the president, like US Senators, a creature directly of the people, in this case of the whole people, and a simple majority of the whole people at that.

If you thought the States have not mattered much in recent years, under the NPV they will mean even less than they already do. Large urban population centers, Democrat bastions, will increasingly replace States not just as campaign stops, but as constituencies. And it is they to whom presidents will become increasingly responsive, at the expense of State capitals.

The States are not dead yet, as people who live in the 26 which have successfully challenged Obamacare in court will tell you. But it is a sign of their weakened sense of themselves that so many are staking everything on their appeals in the courts instead of passing counter legislation and forcing the Federals to sue them. Arizona is a striking exception in this regard in the immigration area, and should be imitated more widely and more often, which prospect the recent and deep Republican resurgence in the States may portend.

When pestilences like the National Popular Vote initiative stop getting traction in the Legislatures, we'll have more reason to be sanguine about the future of the Republic. 

    

Sympathy for the Muslims: We Never Imagined It Either

"Now, ruling America is a black man from our continent, an African from Arab descent, from Muslim descent, and this is something we never imagined – that from Reagan we would get to Barakeh Obama."

"He is someone I consider a friend. He knows he is a son of Africa. Regardless of his African belonging, he is of Arab Sudanese descent, or of Muslim descent. He is a man whose policy should be supported, and he should be assisted in implementing it in any way possible, since he is now leaning towards peace."

"I urge all peoples to give him this chance and to support this policy, because America is a country that, when its policy is bad – harms the world, and when it is good – it helps the world."

[I hope that] "the dream that Obama has for a world free of nuclear weapons will come true. This is something that no previous American president has proposed. Obama is a man who opposes wars that previous American presidents were entangled in; he has declared that he will withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq – something which has never been proposed before."

"The Arabs hate America, there is no doubt. There is not an Arab that loves America, and even the leaders who the United States considers allies or friends – hate it. The external love is merely hypocrisy or pragmatism. The reason for this is clear – Palestine."

"The Palestinians today are like the Jews of the past – dispersed in exile and persecuted. Now the Palestinians are at a point where they deserve to have the United States on their side and not on the side of the Israelis."

-- Colonel Gaddafi, quoted here, in better days

Democrat Congressman Urges Union Members "To Get Out On The Streets And Get A Little Bloody"

Speaking of intimidation and militancy. There's your party of crackers, and then there's your party of head-crackers.

Couldn't he at least wait til Giffords gets out of the hospital?

As reported here:

Sometimes it's necessary to get out on the streets and "get a little bloody," a Massachusetts Democrat said Tuesday in reference to labor battles in Wisconsin.

Rep. Michael Capuano (D-Mass.) fired up a group of union members in Boston with a speech urging them to work down in the trenches to fend off limits to workers' rights like those proposed in Wisconsin.

"I’m proud to be here with people who understand that it’s more than just sending an email to get you going," Capuano said, according to the Statehouse News. "Every once and awhile you need to get out on the streets and get a little bloody when necessary."

Cost of Obama's Stimulus Revised (Again), Up $34 Billion to $821 Billion

As reported here.

What if the Declaration of Independence Said . . .

. . . The history of the present president of the united States is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. A president whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people?

Crowd Based Confuting

What we are really witnessing in Wisconsin and Indiana and Ohio is the reaction of the duly elected representatives of Americans who are finally fed up with the intimidation and militancy of unions first legalized under FDR with the Wagner Act, says Richard Salsman in "Ochlocracy and the Menace of Government Unions" for Forbes here.

Rule by the mob, or the crowd (the "ochlos" in Greek), used to mean you paid way too much for a big American car with tail fins that broke down too often (F.O.R.D. = fix or repair daily). Now it means your property taxes go up and up to pay the salary of a fat Physical Education teacher who routinely gets a substitute to teach his classes while he sits behind a keyboard or schmoozes with the staff as your kid still struggles to tell analog time in the fourth grade:

Government teachers ensure that students (future voters) are illiterate and innumerate, while populist “leaders” appeal not to voters’ reason but to their passions. Sacrificed in an ochlocracy is respect for individual rights, constitutionalism, and the rule of law. Peaceful assembly, petition and persuasion are displaced by the scream, the curse, and the threat.

Don't miss the rest at the link.

Teachers Averaged $272,000 in Salary Under Obama's Stimulus Bill

Stimulus funds preserved 367,524 teacher jobs in 2009-2010, and the amount spent on saving these education-related jobs in the nation's public schools was nearly $100 billion, according to a story in The Baltimore Sun which relies on data from the US Department of Education.

That's about $272,000 for each teacher. Wow. Those must be some kind of wonderful teachers.

That also means taxpayers all across America ended up on the hook for the salaries of about 7,350 teachers per state.

Formerly these teachers were paid directly from local property tax revenues, not borrowed funds, but these revenues have been in dramatic decline due to the crash in the housing market and due to skyrocketing unemployment and home foreclosures.

It is highly unlikely that more stimulus funds are on the way, and it is highly unlikely that property tax revenues will be raised easily in this economy, so isn't it time for the teachers in Wisconsin to pack it in already and quit the illegal strike?

They should be thankful just to have a job.

Wisconsin Teachers Haven't Earned Their Very Generous Pay and Benefits

As the regime itself admits:

In 1998, according to the U.S. Department of Education, Wisconsin public school eighth graders scored an average of 266 out of 500 on the NAEP reading test. In 2009, Wisconsin public school eighth graders once again scored an average of 266 out of 500 on the NAEP reading test. Meanwhile, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil expenditures from $4,956 per pupil in 1998 to 10,791 per pupil in 2008. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator the $4,956 Wisconsin spent per pupil in 1998 dollars equaled $6,546 in 2008 dollars. That means that from 1998 to 2008, Wisconsin public schools increased their per pupil spending by $4,245 in real terms yet did not add a single point to the reading scores of their eighth graders and still could lift only one-third of their eighth graders to at least a “proficient” level in reading. ...


Nationwide, only 30 percent of public school eighth graders earned a rating of “proficient” or better in reading, and the average reading score on the NAEP test was 262 out of 500.

More here.