By Victor Davis Hanson
Sometime around 1212, mystics in Europe cooked up the idea that kids could part the seas, reach the Holy Land, reclaim Jerusalem, and convert the infidel Muslims. Thousands of children in Northern Europe flocked to the Mediterranean in response to such rumors, but when they reached the shore, the seas would not part, and many of them died as they scattered home in hunger.
During his first term, President Obama lectured Latino activists (at the same time he was advising them to “punish our enemies” at the polls) that he was not a tyrant and thus lacked the executive power simply to offer amnesty by fiat. Translated, that meant something along the lines of “Keep cool for another year or two until I am reelected, and then the law becomes irrelevant, and we will have more constituents to enhance our political power.” On cue, after the 2012 election, Obama opened the border and started issuing a series of de facto amnesties to various categories of illegal aliens, especially children.
People in Latin America took note of the erosion of U.S. immigration law, as did our friends in Mexico who facilitated their transit. It is not quite clear whether the recent surges of kids and teens are grass-roots phenomena, or in part orchestrated by the Latin American media and governments. The latter seem to think that the clueless U.S. is not much good for anything other than offering a safety valve for what they consider their own excess population and a source of billions of dollars in cash through remittances.
What we can say for sure is that Obama has nullified U.S. immigration law, made it clear that deportations were de facto over, praised the arrival of young illegal aliens, and thereby prompted a surge northward of thousands more kids without their parents. The apparent thinking of the crusading children was that the U.S. border would open, as the Mediterranean once was supposed to have done. Kids would become near-instantaneous citizens. And they would then be anchors for their patient parents, who had sent them ahead with the promise they would all soon be reunited in the north.
[Read the whole article here.]
Showing posts with label National Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Review. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Thursday, May 22, 2014
The Cloud in the Machine
By Kevin D. Williamson
Politics is not always about somebody getting his way and somebody else failing to get his way. Consider the case of the Veterans Affairs hospitals: Nobody wanted this outcome. That outcome, recall, is a great many dead veterans, the result of medical and managerial malpractice. Democrats did not want the hospitals that care for our veterans to be catastrophically mismanaged while administrators set about systematically destroying the evidence of their incompetence, and Republicans did not want that, either. Independents are firmly opposed to negligently killing veterans. It doesn’t poll well. Everybody is so opposed to that outcome that we created a cabinet-level secretariat to prevent it and installed as its boss Eric Shinseki, a highly regarded former Army general. We spent very large sums of money, billions of dollars, to prevent this outcome, almost trebling VA spending from 2000 to 2013 even as the total number of veterans declined by several million.
Nobody wanted these veterans dead, but dead they are. How is it possible that the government of the United States of America — arguably the most powerful organization of any sort in the history of the human race, in possession of a navy, a nuclear arsenal, and a vast police apparatus — cannot ensure that its own employees and contractors do not negligently kill its other employees and former employees? Never mind providing veterans with world-class medical care — the federal government cannot even prevent bureaucratic homicide. All of the political will is behind having a decent VA, and there is nothing to be gained politically from having a horrific one. How can it be that, with everybody free to vote as he pleases and to propose such policies as please him, we end up with what nobody wants?
[Read the whole article here.]
Politics is not always about somebody getting his way and somebody else failing to get his way. Consider the case of the Veterans Affairs hospitals: Nobody wanted this outcome. That outcome, recall, is a great many dead veterans, the result of medical and managerial malpractice. Democrats did not want the hospitals that care for our veterans to be catastrophically mismanaged while administrators set about systematically destroying the evidence of their incompetence, and Republicans did not want that, either. Independents are firmly opposed to negligently killing veterans. It doesn’t poll well. Everybody is so opposed to that outcome that we created a cabinet-level secretariat to prevent it and installed as its boss Eric Shinseki, a highly regarded former Army general. We spent very large sums of money, billions of dollars, to prevent this outcome, almost trebling VA spending from 2000 to 2013 even as the total number of veterans declined by several million.
Nobody wanted these veterans dead, but dead they are. How is it possible that the government of the United States of America — arguably the most powerful organization of any sort in the history of the human race, in possession of a navy, a nuclear arsenal, and a vast police apparatus — cannot ensure that its own employees and contractors do not negligently kill its other employees and former employees? Never mind providing veterans with world-class medical care — the federal government cannot even prevent bureaucratic homicide. All of the political will is behind having a decent VA, and there is nothing to be gained politically from having a horrific one. How can it be that, with everybody free to vote as he pleases and to propose such policies as please him, we end up with what nobody wants?
[Read the whole article here.]
Saturday, May 17, 2014
The Internal Repression Service
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Through months of Obama administration stonewalling, the redoubtable Judicial Watch perseveres in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, finally uncovering bombshell documents that have eluded several congressional investigations. For the second time in a matter of days, we find that standing oversight committees with competing subject-matter jurisdictions and limited attention spans are incapable of the grand-jury-style probe needed to get to the bottom of administration lawlessness. For that, in the absence of a scrupulous special prosecutor reasonably independent from the Obama Justice Department (not gonna happen), it becomes clear that a select committee will be necessary.
Just two weeks ago, the scandal involved the cover-up of administration duplicity regarding the Benghazi massacre. (See my related article in the new edition of National Review.) Now, it is the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service.
For a year, the administration and IRS headquarters in Gomorrah by the Potomac have attempted to run an implausible con-job: The harassment of organizations opposed to Obama’s policies by an executive-branch agency had nothing to do with the Obama administration — it was just a rogue operation by an IRS office in Cincinnati which, though regrettably overzealous, was apolitical, non-ideological, and without “even a smidgen of corruption.”
The story had about as much credibility as the administration’s “blame the video” script that Susan Rice dutifully performed on the post-Benghazi Sunday shows, or the Justice Department’s 2011 assurance to Congress that its agents would never knowingly allow the transfer of a couple of thousand guns to criminal gangs in Mexico. The “Cincinnati did it” yarn has been unraveling since it was first spun by IRS honcho Lois Lerner and, soon afterwards, by President Obama himself. The lie has now been exploded by e-mails clawed from the IRS by Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act suit.
These include one from a top IRS lawyer in Washington succinctly explaining that “EOT [i.e., the revenue agency’s “Exempt Organization Technical unit” in Washington] is working Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy.” This was in July 2012, which is to say, in the key final months of Obama’s reelection campaign. “Tea party applications” were requests by conservative groups to be granted tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. By selectively setting aside their applications, delaying the conferral of tax-exempt status to which the law entitled them, and putting them through inquisitions that violated their constitutional rights to political speech and association, IRS headquarters prevented them from raising funds and organizing as an effective opposition.
The e-mails elucidate that Cincinnati’s strings were being pulled in Washington: “We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent [in Cincinnati] to use as examples in the development of their cases.” “Tea party applications,” IRS headquarters elaborates, have been isolated as “the subject of an SCR” — meaning “sensitive case report.” To “resolve” such cases would require “coordination with Rob” — a reference, Judicial Watch contends, to Rob Choi, who was then a high-ranking IRS official in Washington.
It is no more conceivable that IRS headquarters was off on its own anti–Tea Party witch-hunt than that the subordinate Cincinnati office was. The fuse, it must be recalled, was lit by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, affirming the First Amendment’s prohibition against government restrictions of political speech by corporations. The ruling enraged the Left and prompted the president’s tongue-lashing of the stunned justices during the 2010 State of the Union address...
[Read the whole article here.]
Through months of Obama administration stonewalling, the redoubtable Judicial Watch perseveres in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, finally uncovering bombshell documents that have eluded several congressional investigations. For the second time in a matter of days, we find that standing oversight committees with competing subject-matter jurisdictions and limited attention spans are incapable of the grand-jury-style probe needed to get to the bottom of administration lawlessness. For that, in the absence of a scrupulous special prosecutor reasonably independent from the Obama Justice Department (not gonna happen), it becomes clear that a select committee will be necessary.
Just two weeks ago, the scandal involved the cover-up of administration duplicity regarding the Benghazi massacre. (See my related article in the new edition of National Review.) Now, it is the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service.
For a year, the administration and IRS headquarters in Gomorrah by the Potomac have attempted to run an implausible con-job: The harassment of organizations opposed to Obama’s policies by an executive-branch agency had nothing to do with the Obama administration — it was just a rogue operation by an IRS office in Cincinnati which, though regrettably overzealous, was apolitical, non-ideological, and without “even a smidgen of corruption.”
The story had about as much credibility as the administration’s “blame the video” script that Susan Rice dutifully performed on the post-Benghazi Sunday shows, or the Justice Department’s 2011 assurance to Congress that its agents would never knowingly allow the transfer of a couple of thousand guns to criminal gangs in Mexico. The “Cincinnati did it” yarn has been unraveling since it was first spun by IRS honcho Lois Lerner and, soon afterwards, by President Obama himself. The lie has now been exploded by e-mails clawed from the IRS by Judicial Watch’s Freedom of Information Act suit.
These include one from a top IRS lawyer in Washington succinctly explaining that “EOT [i.e., the revenue agency’s “Exempt Organization Technical unit” in Washington] is working Tea party applications in coordination with Cincy.” This was in July 2012, which is to say, in the key final months of Obama’s reelection campaign. “Tea party applications” were requests by conservative groups to be granted tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code. By selectively setting aside their applications, delaying the conferral of tax-exempt status to which the law entitled them, and putting them through inquisitions that violated their constitutional rights to political speech and association, IRS headquarters prevented them from raising funds and organizing as an effective opposition.
The e-mails elucidate that Cincinnati’s strings were being pulled in Washington: “We are developing a few applications here in DC and providing copies of our development letters with the agent [in Cincinnati] to use as examples in the development of their cases.” “Tea party applications,” IRS headquarters elaborates, have been isolated as “the subject of an SCR” — meaning “sensitive case report.” To “resolve” such cases would require “coordination with Rob” — a reference, Judicial Watch contends, to Rob Choi, who was then a high-ranking IRS official in Washington.
It is no more conceivable that IRS headquarters was off on its own anti–Tea Party witch-hunt than that the subordinate Cincinnati office was. The fuse, it must be recalled, was lit by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010, affirming the First Amendment’s prohibition against government restrictions of political speech by corporations. The ruling enraged the Left and prompted the president’s tongue-lashing of the stunned justices during the 2010 State of the Union address...
[Read the whole article here.]
Friday, May 9, 2014
Common Core: Bad Program, Bad Politics
By Michelle Malkin
All politics is local. That means Republican politicians with national ambitions had better pay attention to what grassroots parents are saying and doing about the federal education racket known as Common Core. In bellwether Indiana this week, anti–Common Core activists won a pair of pivotal electoral victories against GOP governor Mike Pence.
Pence’s attempt to mollify critics by rebranding and repackaging shoddy Common Core standards is fooling no one.
Tuesday’s Republican primary elections in the Hoosier State resulted in the landslide defeat of two establishment state representatives running for reelection. Pence had endorsed Kathy Heuer over challenger Christopher Judy, and Pence’s lieutenant governor, Sue Ellspermann, had endorsed Rebecca Kubacki over challenger Curt Nisly. The incumbents enjoyed the support of the Common Core–promoting U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
These same big-business elites backed Pence’s ploy to stave off grassroots parental opposition by “withdrawing” from Common Core — and then immediately adopting “new” standards that recycle the same old rotten ones. As Hoosier mom Erin Tuttle put it, Pence’s stunt “gave the appearance of voiding the Common Core, while the Indiana Department of Education and the Center for Education and Career Innovation walked it through the backdoor.”
Challengers Judy and Nisly made their opponents’ refusal to help end Common Core in the state a central issue. Hoosiers Against Common Core, led by moms Tuttle and Heather Crossin, endorsed the dark-horse challengers. With little money and scant press attention, they beat Pence’s machine by astonishingly wide margins: Judy ousted Heuer 57–43; Nisly defeated Kubacki 65–35.
Well before the horrors of Common Core had penetrated cable TV and late-night comedy shows, Indiana parents led the lonely charge. They were at the vanguard of challenging the program’s constitutionality, costs, substandard academic quality, and privacy invasions, as well as the special-interest lobbyists fueling Fed Ed. In 2012, Hoosiers Against Common Core spearheaded the stunning ouster of Tony Bennett, the Indiana GOP’s scandal-plagued former state education secretary who fled to Common Core–peddling former governor Jeb Bush’s Florida for another educrat job.
The way Pence is going, his 2016 ambitions may soon face the same fate. Pence’s hero Ronald Reagan advocated abolishing the federal Department of Education, yet Pence is busy emulating the bureaucratic behemoth. In addition to embracing the expedient “cut and paste” rewrite of Indiana’s academic standards overseen by D.C. Common Core operatives, Pence is now pursuing the construction of a statewide student database. It looks and sounds a lot like the federal data-tracking warehouse championed by Common Core advocates.
[Read the whole article here.]
All politics is local. That means Republican politicians with national ambitions had better pay attention to what grassroots parents are saying and doing about the federal education racket known as Common Core. In bellwether Indiana this week, anti–Common Core activists won a pair of pivotal electoral victories against GOP governor Mike Pence.
Pence’s attempt to mollify critics by rebranding and repackaging shoddy Common Core standards is fooling no one.
Tuesday’s Republican primary elections in the Hoosier State resulted in the landslide defeat of two establishment state representatives running for reelection. Pence had endorsed Kathy Heuer over challenger Christopher Judy, and Pence’s lieutenant governor, Sue Ellspermann, had endorsed Rebecca Kubacki over challenger Curt Nisly. The incumbents enjoyed the support of the Common Core–promoting U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
These same big-business elites backed Pence’s ploy to stave off grassroots parental opposition by “withdrawing” from Common Core — and then immediately adopting “new” standards that recycle the same old rotten ones. As Hoosier mom Erin Tuttle put it, Pence’s stunt “gave the appearance of voiding the Common Core, while the Indiana Department of Education and the Center for Education and Career Innovation walked it through the backdoor.”
Challengers Judy and Nisly made their opponents’ refusal to help end Common Core in the state a central issue. Hoosiers Against Common Core, led by moms Tuttle and Heather Crossin, endorsed the dark-horse challengers. With little money and scant press attention, they beat Pence’s machine by astonishingly wide margins: Judy ousted Heuer 57–43; Nisly defeated Kubacki 65–35.
Well before the horrors of Common Core had penetrated cable TV and late-night comedy shows, Indiana parents led the lonely charge. They were at the vanguard of challenging the program’s constitutionality, costs, substandard academic quality, and privacy invasions, as well as the special-interest lobbyists fueling Fed Ed. In 2012, Hoosiers Against Common Core spearheaded the stunning ouster of Tony Bennett, the Indiana GOP’s scandal-plagued former state education secretary who fled to Common Core–peddling former governor Jeb Bush’s Florida for another educrat job.
The way Pence is going, his 2016 ambitions may soon face the same fate. Pence’s hero Ronald Reagan advocated abolishing the federal Department of Education, yet Pence is busy emulating the bureaucratic behemoth. In addition to embracing the expedient “cut and paste” rewrite of Indiana’s academic standards overseen by D.C. Common Core operatives, Pence is now pursuing the construction of a statewide student database. It looks and sounds a lot like the federal data-tracking warehouse championed by Common Core advocates.
[Read the whole article here.]
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Hillary Clinton and Boko Haram
By Andrew C. McCarthy
“We must stand up to terrorism,” bleated Hillary Clinton a few days ago in a tweet expressing outrage against Boko Haram, the jihadist organization that has abducted hundreds of young girls in Nigeria. Yet, when she was actually in a position to stand up to Boko Haram’s terrorism as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton instead protected the group.
At the Daily Beast, Josh Rogin reports:
While Mrs. Clinton now issues indignant tweets, Mr. Rogin elaborates on her failure to mention
As Mr. Rogin further details, placing an organization on the terrorist list enables the government to use various investigative tools for law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering purposes. It also squeezes the organization by criminalizing the provision of material support and the conduct of business with it.
After numerous Boko Haram atrocities, Republicans attempted to force Secretary Clinton to designate the group or explain why she refused to do so. The State Department heavily lobbied against the legislation. Only after John Kerry replaced Clinton, and after a series of jihadist bombings against churches and other targets, did the State Department finally relent and add Boko Haram to the terrorist list last November.
The excuses now being offered in explanation of Clinton’s dereliction are specious. As Rogin explains, Clinton’s State Department claimed that Boko Haram was merely a local group with parochial grievances that were no threat to the United States. Have a look, though, at the State Department’s list, here. Several of the listed groups are waging local terrorist campaigns that do not threaten our country—the Basque ETA, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Real Irish Republican Army, etc. A significant reason for having the list is to promote international cooperation against terrorism and discourage its use against anyone anywhere. The fact that a terrorist organization may have only local grievances and may not directly imperil the U.S. has never been thought a reason to exclude it from the list.
[Read the whole article here.]
“We must stand up to terrorism,” bleated Hillary Clinton a few days ago in a tweet expressing outrage against Boko Haram, the jihadist organization that has abducted hundreds of young girls in Nigeria. Yet, when she was actually in a position to stand up to Boko Haram’s terrorism as secretary of state, Mrs. Clinton instead protected the group.
At the Daily Beast, Josh Rogin reports:
The State Department under Hillary Clinton fought hard against placing the al Qaeda-linked militant group Boko Haram on its official list of foreign terrorist organizations for two years. And now, lawmakers and former U.S. officials are saying that the decision may have hampered the American government’s ability to confront the Nigerian group that shocked the world by abducting hundreds of innocent girls.
While Mrs. Clinton now issues indignant tweets, Mr. Rogin elaborates on her failure to mention
that her own State Department refused to place Boko Haram on the list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2011, after the group bombed the UN headquarters in Abuja. The refusal came despite the urging of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA, and over a dozen Senators and Congressmen.
“The one thing she could have done, the one tool she had at her disposal, she didn’t use. And nobody can say she wasn’t urged to do it. It’s gross hypocrisy,” said a former senior U.S. official who was involved in the debate. “The FBI, the CIA, and the Justice Department really wanted Boko Haram designated, they wanted the authorities that would provide to go after them, and they voiced that repeatedly to elected officials.”
In May 2012, then-Justice Department official Lisa Monaco (now at the White House) wrote to the State Department to urge Clinton to designate Boko Haram as a terrorist organization. The following month, Gen. Carter Ham, the chief of U.S. Africa Command, said that Boko Haram provided a “safe haven” for al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and was likely sharing explosives and funds with the group. And yet, Hillary Clinton’s State Department still declined to place Boko Haram on its official terrorist roster.
As Mr. Rogin further details, placing an organization on the terrorist list enables the government to use various investigative tools for law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering purposes. It also squeezes the organization by criminalizing the provision of material support and the conduct of business with it.
After numerous Boko Haram atrocities, Republicans attempted to force Secretary Clinton to designate the group or explain why she refused to do so. The State Department heavily lobbied against the legislation. Only after John Kerry replaced Clinton, and after a series of jihadist bombings against churches and other targets, did the State Department finally relent and add Boko Haram to the terrorist list last November.
The excuses now being offered in explanation of Clinton’s dereliction are specious. As Rogin explains, Clinton’s State Department claimed that Boko Haram was merely a local group with parochial grievances that were no threat to the United States. Have a look, though, at the State Department’s list, here. Several of the listed groups are waging local terrorist campaigns that do not threaten our country—the Basque ETA, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the Real Irish Republican Army, etc. A significant reason for having the list is to promote international cooperation against terrorism and discourage its use against anyone anywhere. The fact that a terrorist organization may have only local grievances and may not directly imperil the U.S. has never been thought a reason to exclude it from the list.
[Read the whole article here.]
Let Us Pray
by George Will
After the marshal on Monday spoke the traditional “God save the United States and this honorable court,” the Supreme Court ruled that the upstate New York town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of “establishment of religion” by opening its board of supervisors’ meetings with a prayer. This ruling would not scandalize James Madison and other members of the First Congress, which drafted and sent to the states for ratification the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. The Congress did this after hiring a chaplain.
[Read the whole article here.]
After the marshal on Monday spoke the traditional “God save the United States and this honorable court,” the Supreme Court ruled that the upstate New York town of Greece does not violate the First Amendment’s prohibition of “establishment of religion” by opening its board of supervisors’ meetings with a prayer. This ruling would not scandalize James Madison and other members of the First Congress, which drafted and sent to the states for ratification the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights. The Congress did this after hiring a chaplain.
[Read the whole article here.]
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Foreign Policy: From Bad to None
Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none.
The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. Given that Bush had left office with polls similar to Harry Truman’s final numbers, this seemed to Obama a wise political approach.
If Bush wanted garrison troops left in Iraq to secure the victory of the surge, Obama would pull them out. If Bush had opened Guantanamo, used drones, relied on renditions, reestablished military tribunals, and approved preventive detention, Obama would profess to dismantle that war on terror — even to the point where the Bush-era use of the word “terrorism” and any associations between it and radical Islam would disappear... [Read the whole article at the link]
The first-term foreign policy’s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that he was not George W. Bush. Whatever the latter was for, Obama was mostly against. Given that Bush had left office with polls similar to Harry Truman’s final numbers, this seemed to Obama a wise political approach.
If Bush wanted garrison troops left in Iraq to secure the victory of the surge, Obama would pull them out. If Bush had opened Guantanamo, used drones, relied on renditions, reestablished military tribunals, and approved preventive detention, Obama would profess to dismantle that war on terror — even to the point where the Bush-era use of the word “terrorism” and any associations between it and radical Islam would disappear... [Read the whole article at the link]
Monday, August 23, 2010
The Greatly Ghastly Rand
by Jason Lee Steorts
‘From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged,” Whittaker Chambers wrote here 53 years ago, “a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’” What he did not write is that Ayn Rand throws in a gas chamber.
It’s about two-thirds through, in a chapter called “The Moratorium on Brains,” than which I reread no farther. (Our president seems to have inspired — which is not quite the word — half the country to read Miss Rand, and I wanted to remind myself what she was teaching them.) A train is carrying 300 passengers through the Rocky Mountains to San Francisco. America is falling altogether to pieces, its citizens starving to death, because the prime movers — Rand’s term for the productive men and women on whom economic creation and therefore life-or-death depend — have called a strike. They are hanging out in a mountain valley that their leader, Mr. John Galt, has cleverly hidden from the world by means of refractor-ray shield.
The world scarcely has diesel locomotives. When the one attached to that train breaks down, the only replacements are coal-burning, which is a problem, because the train is about to pass through an eight-mile tunnel that is not properly ventilated for locomotives of this type. It happens that an important looter — Rand’s term for the half-wits running and ruining the country — is on the train and has strong feelings about getting to San Francisco. His name is Kip Chalmers. “It’s not my problem to figure out how you get the train through the tunnel, that’s for you to figure out!” Kip Chalmers screams at a station agent. “But if you don’t get me an engine and don’t start that train, you can kiss good-bye to your jobs, your work permits and this whole goddamn railroad!”
This is persuasive. “The station agent had never heard of Kip Chalmers and did not know the nature of his position. But he knew that this was the day when unknown men in undefined positions held unlimited power — the power of life or death.” And so the station officials, knowing that the loss of their jobs means the loss of their lives, call in a coal engine, procure a drunken engineer, and condemn every passenger on the train to death by asphyxiation.
But that isn’t why I stopped reading. I stopped because Rand thinks they deserve it.
It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet [that’s the train] were not guilty [note that word] or responsible for the thing that happened to them.
The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence. . . .
. . . The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, “I don’t care, it’s only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children.” . . .
. . . These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas.
Now there are two important defenses of Rand. The first is that it is the looters, not the prime movers, who make the gas chamber possible and send the train into it. The second is that Rand’s philosophy is incompatible with totalitarianism, and no one who believed it would ever send anyone to a gas chamber. Both are true. Neither has anything to do with what troubles me about this gas chamber, and about Ayn Rand. And to explain that, I must say something about Rand at her best, which I believe is to be found in the second half of The Fountainhead, a book I did successfully reread...Read the whole article.
‘From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged,” Whittaker Chambers wrote here 53 years ago, “a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber — go!’” What he did not write is that Ayn Rand throws in a gas chamber.
It’s about two-thirds through, in a chapter called “The Moratorium on Brains,” than which I reread no farther. (Our president seems to have inspired — which is not quite the word — half the country to read Miss Rand, and I wanted to remind myself what she was teaching them.) A train is carrying 300 passengers through the Rocky Mountains to San Francisco. America is falling altogether to pieces, its citizens starving to death, because the prime movers — Rand’s term for the productive men and women on whom economic creation and therefore life-or-death depend — have called a strike. They are hanging out in a mountain valley that their leader, Mr. John Galt, has cleverly hidden from the world by means of refractor-ray shield.
The world scarcely has diesel locomotives. When the one attached to that train breaks down, the only replacements are coal-burning, which is a problem, because the train is about to pass through an eight-mile tunnel that is not properly ventilated for locomotives of this type. It happens that an important looter — Rand’s term for the half-wits running and ruining the country — is on the train and has strong feelings about getting to San Francisco. His name is Kip Chalmers. “It’s not my problem to figure out how you get the train through the tunnel, that’s for you to figure out!” Kip Chalmers screams at a station agent. “But if you don’t get me an engine and don’t start that train, you can kiss good-bye to your jobs, your work permits and this whole goddamn railroad!”
This is persuasive. “The station agent had never heard of Kip Chalmers and did not know the nature of his position. But he knew that this was the day when unknown men in undefined positions held unlimited power — the power of life or death.” And so the station officials, knowing that the loss of their jobs means the loss of their lives, call in a coal engine, procure a drunken engineer, and condemn every passenger on the train to death by asphyxiation.
But that isn’t why I stopped reading. I stopped because Rand thinks they deserve it.
It is said that catastrophes are a matter of pure chance, and there were those who would have said that the passengers of the Comet [that’s the train] were not guilty [note that word] or responsible for the thing that happened to them.
The man in Bedroom A, Car No. 1, was a professor of sociology who taught that individual ability is of no consequence. . . .
. . . The woman in Bedroom D, Car No. 10, was a mother who had put her two children to sleep in the berth above her, carefully tucking them in, protecting them from drafts and jolts; a mother whose husband held a government job enforcing directives, which she defended by saying, “I don’t care, it’s only the rich that they hurt. After all, I must think of my children.” . . .
. . . These passengers were awake; there was not a man aboard the train who did not share one or more of their ideas.
Now there are two important defenses of Rand. The first is that it is the looters, not the prime movers, who make the gas chamber possible and send the train into it. The second is that Rand’s philosophy is incompatible with totalitarianism, and no one who believed it would ever send anyone to a gas chamber. Both are true. Neither has anything to do with what troubles me about this gas chamber, and about Ayn Rand. And to explain that, I must say something about Rand at her best, which I believe is to be found in the second half of The Fountainhead, a book I did successfully reread...Read the whole article.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Sacrilege at Ground Zero
Even Mayor Bloomberg acknowledges that the rules are different when it comes to sacred places.
by Charles Krauthammer
A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).
When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there — and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized, or misappropriated.
That’s why Disney’s early ’90s proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition fearing vulgarization of the Civil War (and wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It’s why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It’s why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.
And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place, it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.
Even New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who denounced opponents of the proposed 15-story mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero as tramplers on religious freedom, asked the mosque organizers “to show some special sensitivity to the situation.” Yet, as Rich Lowry pointedly noted, the government has no business telling churches how to conduct their business, shape their message, or show “special sensitivity” to anyone about anything. Bloomberg was thereby inadvertently conceding the claim of those he excoriates for opposing the mosque, namely, that Ground Zero is indeed unlike any other place and, therefore, unique criteria govern what can be done there.
Bloomberg’s implication is clear: If the proposed mosque were controlled by “insensitive” Islamist radicals either excusing or celebrating 9/11, he would not support its construction.
But then, why not? By the mayor’s own expansive view of religious freedom, by what right do we dictate the message of any mosque? Moreover, as a practical matter, there’s no guarantee this couldn’t happen in the future. Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the mosque won’t one day hire an Anwar al-Awlaki — spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and one-time imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists?
An Awlaki preaching in Virginia is a security problem. An Awlaki preaching at Ground Zero is a sacrilege.
Location matters... Read the whole article.
by Charles Krauthammer
A place is made sacred by a widespread belief that it was visited by the miraculous or the transcendent (Lourdes, the Temple Mount), by the presence there once of great nobility and sacrifice (Gettysburg), or by the blood of martyrs and the indescribable suffering of the innocent (Auschwitz).
When we speak of Ground Zero as hallowed ground, what we mean is that it belongs to those who suffered and died there — and that such ownership obliges us, the living, to preserve the dignity and memory of the place, never allowing it to be forgotten, trivialized, or misappropriated.
That’s why Disney’s early ’90s proposal to build an American history theme park near Manassas Battlefield was defeated by a broad coalition fearing vulgarization of the Civil War (and wiser than me; at the time I obtusely saw little harm in the venture). It’s why the commercial viewing tower built right on the border of Gettysburg was taken down by the Park Service. It’s why, while no one objects to Japanese cultural centers, the idea of putting one up at Pearl Harbor would be offensive.
And why Pope John Paul II ordered the Carmelite nuns to leave the convent they had established at Auschwitz. He was in no way devaluing their heartfelt mission to pray for the souls of the dead. He was teaching them a lesson in respect: This is not your place, it belongs to others. However pure your voice, better to let silence reign.
Even New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who denounced opponents of the proposed 15-story mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero as tramplers on religious freedom, asked the mosque organizers “to show some special sensitivity to the situation.” Yet, as Rich Lowry pointedly noted, the government has no business telling churches how to conduct their business, shape their message, or show “special sensitivity” to anyone about anything. Bloomberg was thereby inadvertently conceding the claim of those he excoriates for opposing the mosque, namely, that Ground Zero is indeed unlike any other place and, therefore, unique criteria govern what can be done there.
Bloomberg’s implication is clear: If the proposed mosque were controlled by “insensitive” Islamist radicals either excusing or celebrating 9/11, he would not support its construction.
But then, why not? By the mayor’s own expansive view of religious freedom, by what right do we dictate the message of any mosque? Moreover, as a practical matter, there’s no guarantee this couldn’t happen in the future. Religious institutions in this country are autonomous. Who is to say that the mosque won’t one day hire an Anwar al-Awlaki — spiritual mentor to the Fort Hood shooter and the Christmas Day bomber, and one-time imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 terrorists?
An Awlaki preaching in Virginia is a security problem. An Awlaki preaching at Ground Zero is a sacrilege.
Location matters... Read the whole article.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Applauding Immaturity at Hunter College High School
A graduation speaker blames the messenger.
by Thomas Sowell
A graduating senior at Hunter College High School in New York gave a speech that brought a standing ovation from his teachers and got his picture in the New York Times. I hope it doesn’t go to his head, because what he said was so illogical that it was an indictment of the mush that is being taught at even our elite educational institutions.
Young Justin Hudson, described as “black and Hispanic,” opened by saying how much he appreciated reaching his graduation day at this very select public high school. Then he said, “I don’t deserve any of this. And neither do you.” The reason? He and his classmates were there because of “luck and circumstances.”
Since Hunter College High School selects its applicants from the whole city on the basis of their test scores, “luck” seems a strange way to characterize why some students are admitted and many others are not. If you can’t tell the difference between luck and performance, what has your education given you, except the rhetoric to conceal your confusion from others and perhaps from yourself?
Young Mr. Hudson’s concern, apparently, is about what he referred to as the “demographics” of the school — 41 percent white and 47 percent Asian, with blacks, Hispanics, and others obviously far behind. “I refuse to accept” that “the distribution of intelligence in this city” varies by neighborhood, he said.
Native intelligence may indeed not vary by neighborhood, but actual performance — whether in schools, on the job, or elsewhere — involves far more than native intelligence. Wasted intelligence does nothing for an individual or society... Read the whole article.
by Thomas Sowell
A graduating senior at Hunter College High School in New York gave a speech that brought a standing ovation from his teachers and got his picture in the New York Times. I hope it doesn’t go to his head, because what he said was so illogical that it was an indictment of the mush that is being taught at even our elite educational institutions.
Young Justin Hudson, described as “black and Hispanic,” opened by saying how much he appreciated reaching his graduation day at this very select public high school. Then he said, “I don’t deserve any of this. And neither do you.” The reason? He and his classmates were there because of “luck and circumstances.”
Since Hunter College High School selects its applicants from the whole city on the basis of their test scores, “luck” seems a strange way to characterize why some students are admitted and many others are not. If you can’t tell the difference between luck and performance, what has your education given you, except the rhetoric to conceal your confusion from others and perhaps from yourself?
Young Mr. Hudson’s concern, apparently, is about what he referred to as the “demographics” of the school — 41 percent white and 47 percent Asian, with blacks, Hispanics, and others obviously far behind. “I refuse to accept” that “the distribution of intelligence in this city” varies by neighborhood, he said.
Native intelligence may indeed not vary by neighborhood, but actual performance — whether in schools, on the job, or elsewhere — involves far more than native intelligence. Wasted intelligence does nothing for an individual or society... Read the whole article.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Real Education
The speech every American high-school principal should give.
by Dennis Prager
To the students and faculty of our high school:
I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.
I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers, and against our country.
First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow, or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian, or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.
The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity — your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.
If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial, or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race-, and non-American-nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America, one of its three central values — e pluribus unum, “from many, one.” And this school will be guided by America’s values... Read the whole article.
by Dennis Prager
To the students and faculty of our high school:
I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.
I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers, and against our country.
First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow, or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian, or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.
The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity — your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.
If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial, or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere. We will end all ethnicity-, race-, and non-American-nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America, one of its three central values — e pluribus unum, “from many, one.” And this school will be guided by America’s values... Read the whole article.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
The Cowardice of His Convictions
By James C. Capretta
The reason the health-care debate has been so polarizing is that there is a deep and fundamental divide over what should be done to fix the problems in American health care, especially with regard to rapidly rising costs.
On one side of the debate are those who advocate a decentralized, market-based reform program. Rep. Paul Ryan is among the leaders pushing for such a consumer-driven solution.
On the other side are what you might call the “governmentalists.” The governmentalists believe the way to “bend the cost-curve” is with a centralized, government-led effort to micromanage the entire $2.6 trillion health sector from Washington, D.C.
President Obama, his top aides, and his allies in Congress are all quite clearly health-care governmentalists. The evidence for this is on full display in the bill they jammed through the legislative process. It is filled to the brim with provisions that shift power and authority away from states, individuals, employers, and the private sector to the federal government.
The federal government is now the nationwide regulator of all private health insurance. Federal bureaucrats can pick and choose which insurers are allowed to sell to customers in government-managed “markets.” The federal government will determine what health benefits every citizen and legal resident must secure to avoid paying a punitive tax. The federal government will also decide the appropriate level of cost-sharing for government-certified insurance products.
The new law is also filled with provisions which the sponsors contend will slow cost growth with “delivery-system reform.” The federal government has been put in the driver’s seat of a sprawling effort to force doctors and hospitals to quite literally change how they care for patients and conform to the federal government’s view of what constitutes cost-effective medical practice. Medicare’s administrators will be using new authority to reward those who toe the government’s line and hit budget targets, and punish those who don’t. Government reimbursement will be used to prevent the introduction of medical technologies considered excessively costly.
Although President Obama is quite clearly a committed and enthusiastic health-care governmentalist, he has never admitted as much in public, nor is he ever likely to. He avoids engaging in direct debate over the merits of his position with the market-based reformers. Instead, he argues, as he did at the so-called “bipartisan summit” back in February, that there is no great disagreement over substance; it’s just that those dastardly Republicans are against progress on his watch... Read the whole article.
The reason the health-care debate has been so polarizing is that there is a deep and fundamental divide over what should be done to fix the problems in American health care, especially with regard to rapidly rising costs.
On one side of the debate are those who advocate a decentralized, market-based reform program. Rep. Paul Ryan is among the leaders pushing for such a consumer-driven solution.
On the other side are what you might call the “governmentalists.” The governmentalists believe the way to “bend the cost-curve” is with a centralized, government-led effort to micromanage the entire $2.6 trillion health sector from Washington, D.C.
President Obama, his top aides, and his allies in Congress are all quite clearly health-care governmentalists. The evidence for this is on full display in the bill they jammed through the legislative process. It is filled to the brim with provisions that shift power and authority away from states, individuals, employers, and the private sector to the federal government.
The federal government is now the nationwide regulator of all private health insurance. Federal bureaucrats can pick and choose which insurers are allowed to sell to customers in government-managed “markets.” The federal government will determine what health benefits every citizen and legal resident must secure to avoid paying a punitive tax. The federal government will also decide the appropriate level of cost-sharing for government-certified insurance products.
The new law is also filled with provisions which the sponsors contend will slow cost growth with “delivery-system reform.” The federal government has been put in the driver’s seat of a sprawling effort to force doctors and hospitals to quite literally change how they care for patients and conform to the federal government’s view of what constitutes cost-effective medical practice. Medicare’s administrators will be using new authority to reward those who toe the government’s line and hit budget targets, and punish those who don’t. Government reimbursement will be used to prevent the introduction of medical technologies considered excessively costly.
Although President Obama is quite clearly a committed and enthusiastic health-care governmentalist, he has never admitted as much in public, nor is he ever likely to. He avoids engaging in direct debate over the merits of his position with the market-based reformers. Instead, he argues, as he did at the so-called “bipartisan summit” back in February, that there is no great disagreement over substance; it’s just that those dastardly Republicans are against progress on his watch... Read the whole article.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Byrd Tributes Go Overboard
Why do liberals worship the late West Virginia senator?
by Jonah Goldberg
It is a good rule of thumb not to speak ill of the dead. But what to do when a man is celebrated beyond the limits of decorum or common sense? Must we stay silent as others celebrate the beauty and splendor of the emperor’s invisible clothes?
You probably know why I ask the question. Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of the Senate in American history, died Monday. It was truly a remarkable career. But what’s more remarkable is how he has been lionized by the champions of liberalism.
On Thursday, Byrd’s colleagues took the unusual step of honoring him with a special service on the Senate floor, where he would lay in repose — with some irony — on the Lincoln Catafalque, the bier used to hold the slain body of the president who freed the slaves. The irony stems from the fact that for much of Byrd’s life, his allegiances were with Lincoln’s opponents in that effort. More on that in a moment.
Not long ago, the assembled forces of liberalism were convinced that the Senate was “broken,” that the anachronistic filibuster impeded progress. The Senate itself, with its arcane rules and procedures, had become undemocratic and was in need of vital reform, according to all of the usual voices. John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress and a sort of archbishop of liberalism these days, drew on his deep command of political theory and social science to explain that the American political system “sucks,” in significant part due to the unwieldiness of the Senate.
Well, who better represented those alleged structural problems than Byrd? Nearly every obituary celebrates his “mastery” of the rules. This is from the first paragraph of the Washington Post’s obituary: Byrd “used his masterful knowledge of the institution to shape the federal budget, protect the procedural rules of the Senate and, above all else, tend to the interests of his state.”
Yes, what about his tending to his state’s interests? For several years there’s been a lot of bipartisan indignation over the perfidy of pork and “earmarks.”
Who, pray tell, better represented that practice than Byrd? The man emptied Washington of money and resources with an alacrity and determination not seen since the evacuation of Dunkirk. There are too many of these Byrd droppings in West Virginia to count, but we do know there are at least 30 buildings and other structures in that state named for him. So much for Democrats’ getting the message that Americans are sick of self-aggrandizing politicians.
And so much for the idea that Washington has become calcified by a permanent political class. Better to celebrate the fact that he cast his 18,000th vote in 2007.
And then, of course, there is the issue of race. The common interpretation is that Byrd’s is a story of redemption. A one-time Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, Byrd recruited some 150 members to the chapter he led — that’s led, not “joined,” by the way. (If you doubt his commitment to the cause, try to recruit 150 people to do anything, never mind have them pay a hefty fee up front.)
Byrd filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As Bruce Bartlett notes in his book Wrong on Race, Byrd knew he would fail, but he stood on bedrock principle that integration was evil. His individual filibuster, the second longest in American history, fills 86 pages of fine print in the Congressional Record. “Only a true believer,” writes Bartlett, “would ever undertake such a futile effort.”
Unlike some segregationists’, Byrd’s arguments rested less on the principle of states’ rights than on his conviction that black people were simply biologically inferior.
Sure, he lied for years about his repudiation of the Klan. Sure, he was still referring to “white niggers” as recently as 2001. But everyone agrees his change of heart is sincere. And for all I know, it was.
What’s odd is what passes for proof of his sincerity. Yes, he voted to make Martin Luther King Day a holiday. But to listen to some eulogizers, the real proof came in the fact that he supported ever more lavish government programs — and opposed the Iraq War. Am I alone in taking offense at the idea that supporting big government and opposing the Iraq War somehow count as proof of racial enlightenment?
Robert Byrd was a complicated man, but the explanation for the outsized celebration of his career strikes me as far more simple. He was a powerful man who abandoned his bigoted principles in order to keep power. And his party loved him for it. Read the original article here.
by Jonah Goldberg
It is a good rule of thumb not to speak ill of the dead. But what to do when a man is celebrated beyond the limits of decorum or common sense? Must we stay silent as others celebrate the beauty and splendor of the emperor’s invisible clothes?
You probably know why I ask the question. Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of the Senate in American history, died Monday. It was truly a remarkable career. But what’s more remarkable is how he has been lionized by the champions of liberalism.
On Thursday, Byrd’s colleagues took the unusual step of honoring him with a special service on the Senate floor, where he would lay in repose — with some irony — on the Lincoln Catafalque, the bier used to hold the slain body of the president who freed the slaves. The irony stems from the fact that for much of Byrd’s life, his allegiances were with Lincoln’s opponents in that effort. More on that in a moment.
Not long ago, the assembled forces of liberalism were convinced that the Senate was “broken,” that the anachronistic filibuster impeded progress. The Senate itself, with its arcane rules and procedures, had become undemocratic and was in need of vital reform, according to all of the usual voices. John Podesta, president of the Center for American Progress and a sort of archbishop of liberalism these days, drew on his deep command of political theory and social science to explain that the American political system “sucks,” in significant part due to the unwieldiness of the Senate.
Well, who better represented those alleged structural problems than Byrd? Nearly every obituary celebrates his “mastery” of the rules. This is from the first paragraph of the Washington Post’s obituary: Byrd “used his masterful knowledge of the institution to shape the federal budget, protect the procedural rules of the Senate and, above all else, tend to the interests of his state.”
Yes, what about his tending to his state’s interests? For several years there’s been a lot of bipartisan indignation over the perfidy of pork and “earmarks.”
Who, pray tell, better represented that practice than Byrd? The man emptied Washington of money and resources with an alacrity and determination not seen since the evacuation of Dunkirk. There are too many of these Byrd droppings in West Virginia to count, but we do know there are at least 30 buildings and other structures in that state named for him. So much for Democrats’ getting the message that Americans are sick of self-aggrandizing politicians.
And so much for the idea that Washington has become calcified by a permanent political class. Better to celebrate the fact that he cast his 18,000th vote in 2007.
And then, of course, there is the issue of race. The common interpretation is that Byrd’s is a story of redemption. A one-time Exalted Cyclops of the KKK, Byrd recruited some 150 members to the chapter he led — that’s led, not “joined,” by the way. (If you doubt his commitment to the cause, try to recruit 150 people to do anything, never mind have them pay a hefty fee up front.)
Byrd filibustered the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As Bruce Bartlett notes in his book Wrong on Race, Byrd knew he would fail, but he stood on bedrock principle that integration was evil. His individual filibuster, the second longest in American history, fills 86 pages of fine print in the Congressional Record. “Only a true believer,” writes Bartlett, “would ever undertake such a futile effort.”
Unlike some segregationists’, Byrd’s arguments rested less on the principle of states’ rights than on his conviction that black people were simply biologically inferior.
Sure, he lied for years about his repudiation of the Klan. Sure, he was still referring to “white niggers” as recently as 2001. But everyone agrees his change of heart is sincere. And for all I know, it was.
What’s odd is what passes for proof of his sincerity. Yes, he voted to make Martin Luther King Day a holiday. But to listen to some eulogizers, the real proof came in the fact that he supported ever more lavish government programs — and opposed the Iraq War. Am I alone in taking offense at the idea that supporting big government and opposing the Iraq War somehow count as proof of racial enlightenment?
Robert Byrd was a complicated man, but the explanation for the outsized celebration of his career strikes me as far more simple. He was a powerful man who abandoned his bigoted principles in order to keep power. And his party loved him for it. Read the original article here.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Kagan’s Abortion Distortion
How the Supreme Court nominee manipulated the statement of a medical organization to protect partial-birth abortion.
By Shannen W. Coffin
When President Obama promised in his inaugural address to “restore science to its rightful place,” he never explained what that rightful place would be. Documents recently released in connection with the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan suggest an answer: wherever it can best be used to skew political debate and judicial outcomes.
The documents involved date from the Clinton White House. They show Miss Kagan’s willingness to manipulate medical science to fit the Democratic party’s political agenda on the hot-button issue of abortion. As such, they reflect poorly on both the author and the president who nominated her to the Supreme Court.
There is no better example of this distortion of science than the language the United States Supreme Court cited in striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000. This language purported to come from a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ group. ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.
Years later, when President Bush signed a federal partial-birth-abortion ban (something President Clinton had vetoed), the ACOG official policy statement was front and center in the attack on the legislation. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf, one of the three federal judges that issued orders enjoining the federal ban (later overturned by the Supreme Court), devoted more than 15 pages of his lengthy opinion to ACOG’s policy statement and the integrity of the process that led to it.
Like the Supreme Court majority in the prior dispute over the Nebraska ban, Judge Kopf asserted that the ACOG policy statement was entitled to judicial deference because it was the result of an inscrutable collaborative process among expert medical professionals. “Before and during the task force meeting,” he concluded, “neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed” in the ACOG statement.
In other words, what medical science has pronounced, let no court dare question. The problem is that the critical language of the ACOG statement was not drafted by scientists and doctors. Rather, it was inserted into ACOG’s policy statement at the suggestion of then–Clinton White House policy adviser Elena Kagan... Read the whole article.
By Shannen W. Coffin
When President Obama promised in his inaugural address to “restore science to its rightful place,” he never explained what that rightful place would be. Documents recently released in connection with the Supreme Court nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan suggest an answer: wherever it can best be used to skew political debate and judicial outcomes.
The documents involved date from the Clinton White House. They show Miss Kagan’s willingness to manipulate medical science to fit the Democratic party’s political agenda on the hot-button issue of abortion. As such, they reflect poorly on both the author and the president who nominated her to the Supreme Court.
There is no better example of this distortion of science than the language the United States Supreme Court cited in striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000. This language purported to come from a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ group. ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.
Years later, when President Bush signed a federal partial-birth-abortion ban (something President Clinton had vetoed), the ACOG official policy statement was front and center in the attack on the legislation. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf, one of the three federal judges that issued orders enjoining the federal ban (later overturned by the Supreme Court), devoted more than 15 pages of his lengthy opinion to ACOG’s policy statement and the integrity of the process that led to it.
Like the Supreme Court majority in the prior dispute over the Nebraska ban, Judge Kopf asserted that the ACOG policy statement was entitled to judicial deference because it was the result of an inscrutable collaborative process among expert medical professionals. “Before and during the task force meeting,” he concluded, “neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed” in the ACOG statement.
In other words, what medical science has pronounced, let no court dare question. The problem is that the critical language of the ACOG statement was not drafted by scientists and doctors. Rather, it was inserted into ACOG’s policy statement at the suggestion of then–Clinton White House policy adviser Elena Kagan... Read the whole article.
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Unengaged President
Obama’s lack of interest in the world is evident in his handling of the oil spill and the Afghan War.
By Mark Steyn
What do General McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they’re both Democratic-party supporters.
Or they were. Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The executives of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their “Beyond Petroleum” marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats’ favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam.
But what do McChrystal’s and BP’s defenestration tell us about the president of the United States? Barack Obama is a thin-skinned man and, according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, White House aides indicated that what angered the president most about the Rolling Stone piece was “a McChrystal aide saying that McChrystal had thought that Obama was not engaged when they first met last year.” If finding Obama “not engaged” is now a firing offense, who among us is safe?
Only the other day, Sen. George Lemieux of Florida attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America’s overpaid, over-manned, and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something on the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States: Weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their “super-skimmers”: Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Senator Lemieux found the president unengaged and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” reported the senator.
He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care. “It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” wrote Richard Cohen in the Washington Post last week. “For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. . . . The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.
“This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?”
Gee, if only your newspaper had thought to ask those fascinating questions oh, say, a month before the Iowa caucuses... Read the whole article.
By Mark Steyn
What do General McChrystal and British Petroleum have in common? Aside from the fact that they’re both Democratic-party supporters.
Or they were. Stanley McChrystal is a liberal who voted for Obama and banned Fox News from his HQ TV. Which may at least partly explain how he became the first U.S. general to be lost in combat while giving an interview to Rolling Stone: They’ll be studying that one in war colleges around the world for decades. The executives of BP were unable to vote for Obama, being, as we now know, the most sinister duplicitous bunch of shifty Brits to pitch up offshore since the War of 1812. But, in their “Beyond Petroleum” marketing and beyond, they signed on to every modish nostrum of the eco-Left. Their recently retired chairman, Lord Browne, was one of the most prominent promoters of cap-and-trade. BP was the Democrats’ favorite oil company. They were to Obama what Total Fina Elf was to Saddam.
But what do McChrystal’s and BP’s defenestration tell us about the president of the United States? Barack Obama is a thin-skinned man and, according to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, White House aides indicated that what angered the president most about the Rolling Stone piece was “a McChrystal aide saying that McChrystal had thought that Obama was not engaged when they first met last year.” If finding Obama “not engaged” is now a firing offense, who among us is safe?
Only the other day, Sen. George Lemieux of Florida attempted to rouse the president to jump-start America’s overpaid, over-manned, and oversleeping federal bureaucracy and get it to do something on the oil debacle. There are 2,000 oil skimmers in the United States: Weeks after the spill, only 20 of them are off the coast of Florida. Seventeen friendly nations with great expertise in the field have offered their own skimmers; the Dutch volunteered their “super-skimmers”: Obama turned them all down. Raising the problem, Senator Lemieux found the president unengaged and uninformed. “He doesn’t seem to know the situation about foreign skimmers and domestic skimmers,” reported the senator.
He doesn’t seem to know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t care. “It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama’s foreign policy is no heart at all,” wrote Richard Cohen in the Washington Post last week. “For instance, it’s not clear that Obama is appalled by China’s appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. . . . The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.
“This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?”
Gee, if only your newspaper had thought to ask those fascinating questions oh, say, a month before the Iowa caucuses... Read the whole article.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
The Latest Thievery: Best Friends
Removing best friends from childhood is a barbarous and inhumane act.
by Jonah Goldberg
There’s a great moment in the 1993 movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Ben Kingsley plays a coach for a seven-year-old chess prodigy named Josh. Kingsley wants the boy to stop playing chess in the park and devote himself completely to Kingsley’s tutelage. Josh’s mother doesn’t like the idea, because she’s a jealous guardian of her son’s childhood. “Not playing in the park would kill him. He loves it.”
Kingsley complains that her decision “just makes my job harder.”
“Then your job’s harder,” she responds.
As the father of a seven-year-old myself, I think of that scene all the time — most recently, when I read a profoundly depressing story in the New York Times about how “some educators and other professionals who work with children” don’t think kids should have best friends.
“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at a St. Louis day school. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”
“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”
As a result of this thinking, best friends are broken up. Buddies are put on separate teams, assigned to different classes, etc. It’s not quite the sort of thing cult leaders and North Korean prison guards do, but in principle it’s not too far off either... Read the whole article.
by Jonah Goldberg
There’s a great moment in the 1993 movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Ben Kingsley plays a coach for a seven-year-old chess prodigy named Josh. Kingsley wants the boy to stop playing chess in the park and devote himself completely to Kingsley’s tutelage. Josh’s mother doesn’t like the idea, because she’s a jealous guardian of her son’s childhood. “Not playing in the park would kill him. He loves it.”
Kingsley complains that her decision “just makes my job harder.”
“Then your job’s harder,” she responds.
As the father of a seven-year-old myself, I think of that scene all the time — most recently, when I read a profoundly depressing story in the New York Times about how “some educators and other professionals who work with children” don’t think kids should have best friends.
“I think it is kids’ preference to pair up and have that one best friend. As adults — teachers and counselors — we try to encourage them not to do that,” said Christine Laycob, director of counseling at a St. Louis day school. “We try to talk to kids and work with them to get them to have big groups of friends and not be so possessive about friends.”
“Parents sometimes say Johnny needs that one special friend,” she continued. “We say he doesn’t need a best friend.”
As a result of this thinking, best friends are broken up. Buddies are put on separate teams, assigned to different classes, etc. It’s not quite the sort of thing cult leaders and North Korean prison guards do, but in principle it’s not too far off either... Read the whole article.
Friday, December 11, 2009
The Most Boring Man in the World?
Obama’s speeches all run together into the same mind-numbing oration.
by Rich Lowry
Barack Obama’s vibe used to be a cross between JFK and Beatlemania. Now it’s fading into “Oh, him again?”
There’s nothing wrong with a boring politician. But Obama isn’t becoming boring in a stolid, dependable Angela Merkel kind of way. He’s not boring like a mannerly George H. W. Bush or a thoughtful Bill Bradley. He’s boring like yesterday’s celebrity.
He’s the teen heartthrob who’s grown a little too old. He’s the star from The Real World Denver — three years ago. The cruel vicissitudes of the celebrity culture apply to everyone. If Paris Hilton can be overtaken by the even-more-pointlessly famous Kim Kardashian, no one is safe.
Much of what was new and different about Obama didn’t survive its first contact with reality. His core supporters on the left suffer from what Woodrow Wilson called, in a different context, the “tragedy of disappointment.” They expected a glorious new dispensation. Yet Gitmo remains open, more troops are going to Afghanistan, and the tides haven’t receded.
Swing voters had more modest hopes — responsible, nonideological governance. Nope.
The Obama team believes there is only one person who can redeem his political project — and that’s Barack Obama. He must be deployed early, often, unrelentingly. He’ll talk to your children in the classroom, show up during your Thanksgiving Day NFL game and explain — and explain some more — his policies.
The old preacher’s adage is, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.” Obama might add “repeat as necessary,” including on late-night TV shows... Read the whole article.
by Rich Lowry
Barack Obama’s vibe used to be a cross between JFK and Beatlemania. Now it’s fading into “Oh, him again?”
There’s nothing wrong with a boring politician. But Obama isn’t becoming boring in a stolid, dependable Angela Merkel kind of way. He’s not boring like a mannerly George H. W. Bush or a thoughtful Bill Bradley. He’s boring like yesterday’s celebrity.
He’s the teen heartthrob who’s grown a little too old. He’s the star from The Real World Denver — three years ago. The cruel vicissitudes of the celebrity culture apply to everyone. If Paris Hilton can be overtaken by the even-more-pointlessly famous Kim Kardashian, no one is safe.
Much of what was new and different about Obama didn’t survive its first contact with reality. His core supporters on the left suffer from what Woodrow Wilson called, in a different context, the “tragedy of disappointment.” They expected a glorious new dispensation. Yet Gitmo remains open, more troops are going to Afghanistan, and the tides haven’t receded.
Swing voters had more modest hopes — responsible, nonideological governance. Nope.
The Obama team believes there is only one person who can redeem his political project — and that’s Barack Obama. He must be deployed early, often, unrelentingly. He’ll talk to your children in the classroom, show up during your Thanksgiving Day NFL game and explain — and explain some more — his policies.
The old preacher’s adage is, “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Tell them. Tell them what you told them.” Obama might add “repeat as necessary,” including on late-night TV shows... Read the whole article.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Kill the Bills. Do Health Reform Right.
The bill is irredeemable.
by Charles Krauthammer
The United States has the best health care in the world — but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees, and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.
Worse, they are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes — such as the 118 new boards, commissions, and programs — is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.
The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency. Throw a dart at the Senate tome:
You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.
You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently, insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.
You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.
The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool... Read the whole article.
by Charles Krauthammer
The United States has the best health care in the world — but because of its inefficiencies, also the most expensive. The fundamental problem with the 2,074-page Senate health-care bill (as with its 2,014-page House counterpart) is that it wildly compounds the complexity by adding hundreds of new provisions, regulations, mandates, committees, and other arbitrary bureaucratic inventions.
Worse, they are packed into a monstrous package without any regard to each other. The only thing linking these changes — such as the 118 new boards, commissions, and programs — is political expediency. Each must be able to garner just enough votes to pass. There is not even a pretense of a unifying vision or conceptual harmony.
The result is an overregulated, overbureaucratized system of surpassing arbitrariness and inefficiency. Throw a dart at the Senate tome:
You’ll find mandates with financial penalties — the amounts picked out of a hat.
You’ll find insurance companies (who live and die by their actuarial skills) told exactly what weight to give risk factors, such as age. Currently, insurance premiums for 20-somethings are about one-sixth the premiums for 60-somethings. The House bill dictates the young shall now pay at minimum one-half; the Senate bill, one-third — numbers picked out of a hat.
You’ll find sliding scales for health-insurance subsidies — percentages picked out of a hat — that will radically raise marginal income tax rates for middle-class recipients, among other crazy unintended consequences.
The bill is irredeemable. It should not only be defeated. It should be immolated, its ashes scattered over the Senate swimming pool... Read the whole article.
CRU’s Tree-Ring Circus
Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?
by Mark Steyn
My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the “climate change” racket was Stuart Varney’s interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr. — star of the 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an “activist.” He’s currently in a competition with Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) to see who can have the lowest “carbon footprint.” Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn’t get a reality series out of it. Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain’s Climate Research Unit in which the world’s leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to “hide the decline” and other interesting matters.
Nothing to worry about, folks. “We’ll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies,” said Ed airily. “Those are the key words here, Stuart. ‘Peer-reviewed studies.’"
Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down? Not to worry. Ed said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an open-necked shirt, and, although I don’t have a 76” inch HDTV, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. “If these scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their peers will determine it,” insisted Ed. “Don’t get your information from me, folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with Ph.D. after their names. ‘Peer-reviewed studies is the key words. And if it comes out in peer-reviewed studies . . . ”
Got it: Pier-reviewed studies. You stand on the pier and you notice the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you wonder if it’s something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the polar bears? Is that how it works?
No, no, peer-reviewed studies. “Peer-reviewed studies. Go to Science magazine, folks. Go to Nature,” babbled Ed. “Read peer-reviewed studies. That’s all you need to do. Don’t get it from you or me.”
Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!
The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the UN’s IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet... Read the whole article.
by Mark Steyn
My favorite moment in the Climategate/Climaquiddick scandal currently roiling the “climate change” racket was Stuart Varney’s interview on Fox News with the actor Ed Begley Jr. — star of the 1980s medical drama St. Elsewhere but latterly better known, as is the fashion with members of the thespian community, as an “activist.” He’s currently in a competition with Bill Nye (“the Science Guy”) to see who can have the lowest “carbon footprint.” Pistols at dawn would seem the quickest way of resolving that one, but presumably you couldn’t get a reality series out of it. Anyway, Ed was relaxed about the mountain of documents recently leaked from Britain’s Climate Research Unit in which the world’s leading climate-change warm-mongers e-mail each other back and forth on how to “hide the decline” and other interesting matters.
Nothing to worry about, folks. “We’ll go down the path and see what happens in peer-reviewed studies,” said Ed airily. “Those are the key words here, Stuart. ‘Peer-reviewed studies.’"
Hang on. Could you say that again more slowly so I can write it down? Not to worry. Ed said it every 12 seconds, as if it were the magic charm that could make all the bad publicity go away. He wore an open-necked shirt, and, although I don’t have a 76” inch HDTV, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find a talismanic peer-reviewed amulet nestling in his chest hair for additional protection. “If these scientists have done something wrong, it will be found out and their peers will determine it,” insisted Ed. “Don’t get your information from me, folks, or any newscaster. Get it from people with Ph.D. after their names. ‘Peer-reviewed studies is the key words. And if it comes out in peer-reviewed studies . . . ”
Got it: Pier-reviewed studies. You stand on the pier and you notice the tide seems to be coming in a little higher than it used to and you wonder if it’s something to do with incandescent light bulbs killing the polar bears? Is that how it works?
No, no, peer-reviewed studies. “Peer-reviewed studies. Go to Science magazine, folks. Go to Nature,” babbled Ed. “Read peer-reviewed studies. That’s all you need to do. Don’t get it from you or me.”
Look for the peer-reviewed label! And then just believe whatever it is they tell you!
The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set is that, if you take away one single thing from the leaked documents, it’s that the global warm-mongers have wholly corrupted the “peer-review” process. When it comes to promoting the impending ecopalypse, the Climate Research Unit is the nerve-center of the operation. The “science” of the CRU dominates the “science” behind the UN’s IPCC, which dominates the “science” behind the Congressional cap-and-trade boondoggle, the upcoming Copenhagen shakindownen of the developed world, and the now routine phenomenon of leaders of advanced, prosperous societies talking like gibbering madmen escaped from the padded cell, whether it’s President Obama promising to end the rise of the oceans or the Prince of Wales saying we only have 96 months left to save the planet... Read the whole article.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Saturday Night Fever
GOP senators preview the weekend’s cloture debate for NRO.
by Robert Costa
In the 2008 presidential race, John McCain often dueled with Barack Obama over health care. Over a year later, Obama is in the White House and McCain finds himself back on Capitol Hill. The battle, however, continues.
With the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) making a final push to pass Obamacare in the upper chamber, McCain tells NRO that it is crucial for Senate Republicans to make every effort to defeat Reid’s 2,074-page blueprint, which is expected to come to a cloture vote on Saturday night. That vote will determine whether the bill can move to the Senate floor for a final debate. Reid, who leads a caucus of 58 Democrats and two independents, needs to secure 60 votes in order to proceed.
Democrats, says McCain, “are trying to fundamentally change health care in America.” Reid’s bill, he adds, is “like a big fish in the sun: After a short period of time out there, it really begins to stink.” McCain’s concerns are numerous: the bill’s spending, its new taxes, its Medicare cuts, its abortion language, its public option, its employer mandates, and its lack of medical-malpractice reform. The last item really irks the Arizona senator. “The total absence of meaningful malpractice reform just shows you the incredible influence of the trial lawyers of America,” says McCain. “It’s just blatant.”
The Congressional Budget Office’s recent score of Reid’s bill puts the cost at $848 billion over ten years. McCain says that number is misleading. Unlike the House and Senate Finance Committee health-care bills, whose reforms were set to start in 2013, Reid’s bill pushes back the implementation date to 2014. McCain calls the move “outrageous.”
“People will start paying taxes right away, but now the benefits won’t kick in until years later,” says McCain. “It’s like buying a house and starting mortgage payments only to be told that you have to wait five years to move into your home. And when you look at the actual cost of implementation, once the taxes come into effect, the ten-year cost is $2.5 trillion.”
Beyond the CBO numbers, “this bill is an atrocity, it’s awful,” says Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon. “The overall costs are hidden. A huge part of Medicare that seniors depend on is going to be cut, and the bill includes major new taxes.”
Also worrisome, says Barrasso, is that rationing is on the horizon: “The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel, just came out with an astonishing report on mammograms that [encourages the government to step] between people and their doctors. It’s amazing that the government and the Democrats would show their hand this soon. This report is clearly the first step toward rationing and a glimpse into the future of health care in America.”
Knowing that the public is growing increasingly uneasy about Obamacare, the Senate GOP is more than ready to raise objections at every turn, says McCain... Read the whole article.
by Robert Costa
In the 2008 presidential race, John McCain often dueled with Barack Obama over health care. Over a year later, Obama is in the White House and McCain finds himself back on Capitol Hill. The battle, however, continues.
With the president and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) making a final push to pass Obamacare in the upper chamber, McCain tells NRO that it is crucial for Senate Republicans to make every effort to defeat Reid’s 2,074-page blueprint, which is expected to come to a cloture vote on Saturday night. That vote will determine whether the bill can move to the Senate floor for a final debate. Reid, who leads a caucus of 58 Democrats and two independents, needs to secure 60 votes in order to proceed.
Democrats, says McCain, “are trying to fundamentally change health care in America.” Reid’s bill, he adds, is “like a big fish in the sun: After a short period of time out there, it really begins to stink.” McCain’s concerns are numerous: the bill’s spending, its new taxes, its Medicare cuts, its abortion language, its public option, its employer mandates, and its lack of medical-malpractice reform. The last item really irks the Arizona senator. “The total absence of meaningful malpractice reform just shows you the incredible influence of the trial lawyers of America,” says McCain. “It’s just blatant.”
The Congressional Budget Office’s recent score of Reid’s bill puts the cost at $848 billion over ten years. McCain says that number is misleading. Unlike the House and Senate Finance Committee health-care bills, whose reforms were set to start in 2013, Reid’s bill pushes back the implementation date to 2014. McCain calls the move “outrageous.”
“People will start paying taxes right away, but now the benefits won’t kick in until years later,” says McCain. “It’s like buying a house and starting mortgage payments only to be told that you have to wait five years to move into your home. And when you look at the actual cost of implementation, once the taxes come into effect, the ten-year cost is $2.5 trillion.”
Beyond the CBO numbers, “this bill is an atrocity, it’s awful,” says Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), an orthopedic surgeon. “The overall costs are hidden. A huge part of Medicare that seniors depend on is going to be cut, and the bill includes major new taxes.”
Also worrisome, says Barrasso, is that rationing is on the horizon: “The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, a government panel, just came out with an astonishing report on mammograms that [encourages the government to step] between people and their doctors. It’s amazing that the government and the Democrats would show their hand this soon. This report is clearly the first step toward rationing and a glimpse into the future of health care in America.”
Knowing that the public is growing increasingly uneasy about Obamacare, the Senate GOP is more than ready to raise objections at every turn, says McCain... Read the whole article.
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