Prosecutorial Misconduct in Hutaree Case May Lead to Mistrial

Prosecutors withheld evidence about the key FBI operative's handling of an informant gone wild and now in the pokey in an unrelated case, as detailed here:

According to defense lawyers, the government’s star witness in the Hutaree case, FBI agent Stephen Haug — who spent months spying on the group while undercover — was the FBI handler for the New Jersey informant. The informant, Hal Turner, was a right-wing radio host and blogger who made threats against critics and public officials while on the FBI payroll. 

FliFliFliFliFliFlip-Flops.Great.

How the 1980s paved the way for today's politicians, we hardly knew.

At about 1:10 here:

Jonah Goldberg Wants More Federalism, Doesn't Realize It's Spelled 'Representation'

In the closest thing yet to a nationally recognized columnist calling for the founders' vision of localization of the political, Jonah Goldberg here misses an opportunity to score a blow for constitutional originalism:

What if instead the solution is to disempower the national elites who think they’ve got the answers to everything?

Federalism — the process whereby you push most political questions to the lowest democratic level possible — has been ripe on the right for years now. ...

But that may be changing. In an essay for the spring issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Yale law professor Heather K. Gerken offers the case for “A New Progressive Federalism.”

Gerken’s chief concern is how to empower “minorities and dissenters.” ... [S]he makes the very compelling point that the current understanding of diversity — having minority members as tokens of inclusion — pretty much guarantees that racial minorities will always be political minorities as well. ...

A Left-Right federalist compromise would make America a happier, freer, more prosperous and interesting country. It would also dethrone those in both parties who think they know what’s best for more than 300 million Americans.

The theoretical talk is welcome, but the practical application is the rub.

That's what's missing from these discussions, and where the genius of the authors of the constitution shone brighest.

The founders long ago conceived of just such a compromise between political extremes in Article 1 of the constitution when they proposed one representative for every 30,000 of population. Today we have one for every 708,000 on average because Congress arrogated power to itself in the 1920s by limiting representation to the then-current number apportioned, or 435. If you want to know where elitism started in our politics, look there.

By all rights we should have over 10,000 representatives today, a more interesting country indeed.

 

After 10 Million Votes Republicans Still Prefer Anyone But Romney 1.5 to 1

See here at Real Clear Politics for the data:

Romney is Nearly Half Way to Needed Delegates After IL Victory

The Wall Street Journal tracks the contests and totals here:

With Malia Obama in Off-Limits-For-Everyone-Else Mexico With 25 Secret Service Agents, The Whole Family Is Milking The Presidency

And Moochelle Obama protests on Letterman she's trying to preserve South Side of Chicago values in The White House.

Uh huh.

Here's a South Side value: When you want to be safe on the South Side, bring the Blackstone Rangers.

Stories here and here. And here.

She gotta new gang now.

My Plan For Middle East Peace

• Evacuate all persons from the Holy Land
• Muslims get Nevada
• Jews get Florida
• Christians get to settle anywhere in the US
• Disney becomes the concessionaire of the Holy Land
• America gets 50 percent of the take
• Disney gets 40 percent
• Nevada and Florida split the rest
• Muslims cannot visit Florida anytime, nor the Holy Land in February, April, June, September, and November
• Jews cannot visit Nevada anytime, nor the Holy Land in January, March, May, July, August, October and December

US Postal Service Worker Links Obama To Marxist Ayers Family in Glen Ellyn, IL in 1980s

Jerome Corsi breaks down the story for WND.com here, speculating that Bill Ayers' parents were responsible for financing at least some of Barack Obama's education.

Perhaps the most interesting point of the whole story is how much damage one well-placed commie can do to a country. And I don't mean Obama, but Bill Ayers' father, who was formerly president and CEO of Com Ed, the electric utility:

"[The postman Allen] Hulton recalls that he had one conversation with Tom Ayers, who was retired as CEO and chairman of Commonwealth Edison, shortly after the Ayers family moved into their home in Glen Ellyn.

'He asked me how I liked my job, and he started into what seemed to me a Marxist viewpoint on what it is like for the working man, trying to convince me that working people like me were exploited by their employers,' Hulton remembers of the conversation.

'As an American citizen, I appreciated everything I had, and I was not at war with people who had more than I had,' [Hulton] says. 'It surprised me to hear somebody who had been president of Consolidated [sic] Edison talking in these terms.'

Hulton says he got the feeling that Tom Ayers thought he knew more about the plight of the workingman than he did."

Having lived near and worked in that area between 1989 and 1997 I can say that the postman's recollections of Glen Ellyn ring true.

What are the chances that Big Sis will give Allen Hulton an award for saying something?

The Individual Mandate: An Unprecedented Assertion of Government Power

Adam J. White for The Weekly Standard here makes the case that the Supreme Court of the United States has quite a history of ruling against sweeping innovations which have no precedent, which means ObamaCare just might not pass muster:

"[T]he [Obama] administration’s latest actions encapsulate precisely the concerns embodied in the Roberts Court’s decisions regarding Sarbanes-Oxley, Guantánamo, and preelection book banning, as well as the New Deal Court’s unanimous refusal to simply acquiesce to FDR. Unprecedented powers asserted by the government threaten to give rise to stark abuses of power​—​some foreseeable, perhaps many more unforeseeable. Faced with similarly novel assertions of government power in previous cases, the Court drew a constitutional line in the sand, out of an abundance of caution. The Court’s review of the individual mandate poses no less a challenge, and merits no less a response."

We're all in deep trouble if the individual mandate survives.

Socialists Agree: Obama's Their Man

As seen here:

STERN: You like Obama?

MACPHERSON: Yeah, I’m living in London and I’m socialist. What do you expect?


Can't wait until he confiscates her $60 million net worth.

Oh wait, he can't. Obama's only President of the United States. Elle Macpherson (Eleanor Nancy Gow) is Australian.

ABC News/WaPo Poll Finds 67 Percent Opposed to ObamaCare Mandate

As usual, people want the goodies in the plan, without the compulsion which is necessary to fund it.

Story here.

In Case You Missed It, Noted Libertarian RC Whalen Endorsed Newt Gingrich

RC Whalen's expertise with all things banking frequently is on display at ZeroHedge, where his endorsement of Newt Gingrich appeared, no doubt to the chagrin of its many liberal readers.

Here is the concluding paragraph:

"To me Newt is the only credible conservative in the presidential race for 2012, but one who brings a mixture of core American values, real world experience and a pragmatic, compassionate approach to a range of issues.  Gingrich wants to facilitate real change in America, while Romney only wants to run the welfare state better.  And Newt Gingrich is not afraid to call Barack Obama a socialist in a national presidential debate.  That is why I support Newt Gingrich for the Republican nomination for the presidency."

A Marine in Missouri Will Vote For the Republican Candidate, But Gives $ Only to Newt

From the LA Times, here:

Jim Crossland, a retired Marine handing out flyers about the national debt after a Santorum speech in northern St. Louis, shrugged when asked about the candidate, the apparent local favorite. “In Pennsylvania, his nickname was ‘Tricky Ricky’ -- talks one way, votes another,” Crossland said. “But if he’s elected for our side, I’ll get behind him.”

“I’m still sending money to Newt,” he confessed. So what if it’s Romney, like a lot of people predict?

Crossland paused. “I’ll vote for him,” he said, “but I won’t send him any money.”

A Real Recovery is not Confined to Sectors, But is Ubiquitous

From Jeffrey Snider, here:

I think what is happening in oil, gasoline, electricity and energy is a microcosm of this recovery. In many ways this is not a recovery, certainly not in the sense that most people have of what a recovery is supposed to be. This is the speculators' recovery, as free money finds its way into (and then rushed out of) risky financial assets all over the world. ... 

[I]f you take the perspective of the real economy over the now long-term, what appears to be a cycling period of inflation might start to look like a single period of depression, an economy trapped in artificial financial risk, unable to awaken into a healthy long-term recovery where marginal actors freely choose to accept and welcome true risk so that any economic "success" is no longer concentrated in a few sectors.

A Nation of Renters Does Not Spend on the Nest

The Fiscal Times, here, tries to put a pretty face on the current economic situation in "Real Recovery: America's Debt is on the Decline," but the underlying facts show, as the article concludes, that there is no driver for jobs and thus nothing driving increases in real income, without which prospects for growth going forward are poor:

[A] new report from the McKinsey Global Institute says U.S. consumers are unlikely to assume their historic posture as spender of last resort for the global economy. ...

The lingering impact of the Great Recession is turning America into a “renter nation,” and that will have major implications for the rest of the economy over the next few years. ...

U.S. households have reduced their debt-to-disposable-income ratio by 15 percentage points to about 110 percent, which is a greater reduction than any of the ten largest industrial economies over the last four years. ...

The $150 billion in reduced mortgage debt – deleveraging – was more than offset by the $170 billion in new consumer credit. ...

[M]uch of the reduced mortgage debt is due to banks foreclosing on properties and writing off loans, not people paying off debts.


(image source)

Powerline Blog Says Santorum Was A Three Term Senator, Fiscal Moderate

He was a two term senator, not a three. How do you get that wrong?

But it's true Santorum lacks credibility as a fiscal hawk, and Romney is correct to go after him on that score.

The story is here.

The Inflation Quotation of the Second Millennium for the Third

"Inflation is like a banana. Once you see one brown spot, it's too late."

-- attributed to central banker Henry Wallich by Jerry Jordan of the Cleveland Federal Reserve  (source)

China's Boom is a Debt Boom, Misallocated to Real Estate

It's the same as it ever was.

This time, just like most times everywhere, cheap money in China has been massively misallocated to real estate.

Gwynne Dyer (who isn't especially alarmed about Iran) for The Japan Times, here:

People in the West want to believe that China's economy will go on growing fast because the fragile recovery in Western economies depends on it. Twenty years of 10 percent-plus annual growth have made China the engine of the world economy, even though most Chinese remain poor. But the engine is fuelled by cheap credit, and most of that cheap money, as usual, has gone into real estate.

Is there such a thing as a good commie?

Good commies would invite the rural hordes to live in all that new, mostly unoccupied, real estate.

Human nature being what it is, I wouldn't count on it. Revolution is more likely.

Obama Has Deliberately Obscured His Life-long Marxist Extremism

From Investor's Business Daily:

The videotape of Obama praising and hugging his America-bashing, Constitution-trashing law professor Derrick Bell isn't the only evidence that's been hidden from the public. A 1998 video of Obama praising the late Marxist agitator Saul "The Red" Alinsky alongside a panel of hard-core Chicago communists also exists. ...

[A] 2003 video of Obama speaking at a Chicago dinner held in honor of former PLO spokesman Rashid Khalidi. ... [T]he radical Khalidi — a close friend and neighbor of Obama, who held a 2000 political fundraiser in his home for him — has strongly defended the use of violence by Palestinians against Israel, while expressing clearly anti-American views. ...

[W]hy did Obama disguise the name of his radical Alinsky trainer Jerry Kellman in his memoir? And why did he also try to shield from readers the identity of his Alinsky mentor John McKnight, who wrote him a letter of recommendation to Harvard? ...

[W]hy did Obama leave out his weeks-long training at Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation in Los Angeles? This station of the cross for Alinsky acolytes is strangely missing from all 500 pages of his tediously detailed memoir. For that matter, the late Alinsky is not cited by name in either of the president's autobiographies, even though leftist activists confess this father of community organizing had a powerful influence on Obama.

Moreover, if communist Frank Marshall Davis wasn't a controversial factor in Obama's life, why did Obama also mask his identity in his first memoir? If listening, spellbound, at the feet of a known subversive isn't a red flag, why keep his real profile a secret?

Obama also couldn't find room in "Dreams From My Father" to mention the most striking thing about his father's politics. Obama Sr. was a pro-Soviet socialist, who as a government economist wrote a communist tract for Kenya in 1965. If this published paper wasn't a big deal, as Obama apologists have suggested, why is it conveniently missing from the 143-page section Obama devoted to boast about his father's career in Kenya? ...

[Obama] never mentioned Bell or the Harvard strike he led on his beloved professor's behalf in either autobiography. If he wasn't trying to fool people, why leave this seminal event out?

Even more radical — and influential — than Bell was Harvard law professor Robert Unger, who taught Obama a couple of courses, including one called "Reinventing Democracy." Like Bell, Unger called U.S. jurisprudence a sham system designed to protect the rich at the expense of the poor. But Unger also taught Obama how to dismantle it. He argued for seizing all private capital and redistributing it.

Obama kept up communications with Unger long after he graduated, but those contacts stopped in 2008. "I am a leftist, and by conviction as well as by temperament, a revolutionary," Unger explains. "Any association of mine with Barack Obama in the course of the campaign could do only harm."

Read the complete op-ed here.

The Tyrant Fears His Own: All His Life Long He Is Beset With Fear

"He who is the real tyrant, whatever men may think, is the real slave, and is obliged to practise the greatest adulation and servility, and to be the flatterer of the vilest of mankind. He has desires which he is utterly unable to satisfy, and has more wants than any one, and is truly poor, if you know how to inspect the whole soul of him: all his life long he is beset with fear and is full of convulsions, and distractions, even as the State which he resembles."

-- Plato's Republic, Book IX