Having recently seen fit to restrict the right and ability of law-abiding citizens to protect themselves from the violent predators, the Liberals dominating Maryland politics couldn’t see the duplicity, not to mention sheer irony, in saddling these same taxpayers with the bill with the upkeep for these same homicidal hooligans useless existence.
As for Jimmy Carter, a fellow-Naval Academy graduate we view with the same level of contempt reserved for The Obamao and the MSM, James Taranto’s assessment of Carter’s eulogy of Venezuela’s former dictator (2nd item down)….
….managed to squirrel away $2 billion….which puts the late Hugo, curiously enough, in the same league as those other heroes of the Left, Fidel Castro and Yasser Arafat.Which just goes to prove two things: first,….
Second, there’s no sin a Socialist dictator can commit the Left will not overlook; be they foreign or domestic! And that hypocrisy has defined the Left since Lenin murdered the Romanovs.
Next up, the WSJ offers its assessment of what we happen to agree is….
Rand Paul’s Drone Rant
Give Rand Paul credit for theatrical timing. As a snow storm descended on Washington, the Kentucky Republican’s old-fashioned filibuster Wednesday filled the attention void on Twitter and cable TV. If only his reasoning matched the showmanship.
Shortly before noon, Senator Paul began a talking filibuster against John Brennan’s nomination to lead the CIA. (Too bad Rand didn’t decide to sound a similar alarm over Chuck Hagel, possibly the most admittedly-ignorant, manifestly unqualified cabinet appointee EVER!) The tactic is rarely used in the Senate and was last seen in 2010. But Senator Paul said an “alarm” had to be sounded about the threat to Americans from their own government. He promised to speak “until the President says, no, he will not kill you at a café.” He meant by a military drone. He’s apparently serious, though his argument isn’t.
Senator Paul had written the White House to inquire about the possibility of a drone strike against a U.S. citizen on American soil. Attorney General Eric Holder replied that the U.S. hasn’t and “has no intention” to bomb any specific territory. Drones are limited to the remotest areas of conflict zones like Pakistan and Yemen. But as a hypothetical Constitutional matter, Mr. Holder acknowledged the President can authorize the use of lethal military force within U.S. territory.
This shocked Senator Paul, who invoked the Constitution and Miranda rights. Under current U.S. policy, Mr. Paul mused on the floor, Jane Fonda could have been legally killed by a Hellfire missile during her tour of Communist Hanoi in 1972. A group of noncombatants sitting in public view in Houston may soon be pulverized, he declared.
Calm down, Senator. Mr. Holder is right, even if hedoesn’t explain the law very well.(Given his other curious concepts of the law, as well as the Constitution, it’s likely because he doesn’t understand either very well.) The U.S. government cannot randomly target American citizens on U.S. soil or anywhere else. What it can do under the laws of war is target an “enemy combatant” anywhere at anytime, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant. The President can designate such a combatant if he belongs to an entity—a government, say, or a terrorist network like al Qaeda—that has taken up arms against the United States as part of an internationally recognized armed conflict. That does not include Hanoi Jane.
Such a conflict exists between the U.S. and al Qaeda, so Mr. Holder is right that the U.S. could have targeted (say) U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki had he continued to live in Virginia. The U.S. killed him in Yemen before he could kill more Americans. But under the law Awlaki was no different than the Nazis who came ashore on Long Island in World War II, were captured and executed. (Though, in the interests of fairness, they were German spies, which does not mean they were Nazis; and they were only executed after at least a semblance of a trial, albeit by military tribunal.)
The country needs more Senators who care about liberty, but if Mr. Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms.He needs to know what he’s talking about.
Anyone who’s read our rantings for any period of time knows we wouldn’t believe Eric Holder….or any other member of Team Tick-Tock….if he told us the sky was blue. But Rand Paul got an honest answer to what we believe was a loaded question.
First, the Paul family concerns us. We’ll never know how many of the 4 million idiots….er,….McCain supporters who couldn’t find their way clear to vote for Mitt Romney were influenced by Rand’s daddy. As Hillary would say, what difference does it make now? What gives us pause is Rand pulling the same, self-centered third-party savior routine in 2016 when someone other than he, e.g., Marco Rubio, gets the Republican nomination.
Second, as the Journal points out, he’s wrong on both the law and as a matter of practicality. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were poor examples, as both were the actions of a foreign power or entity attacking the United States; big surprise coming from Holder.
A more proper example would be a scenario where a sitting President had certain, actionable intelligence of an impending terrorist attack on American soil. Would anyone have faulted Bill Clinton for putting a Hellfire between Timothy McVeigh’s eyes as he drove towards the Morrow building? What about Bobby Kennedy taking out the 6th floor of the Texas Book Depository as JFK’s limo entered Dealey Plaza?
The point is, no one can ever envision every possible eventuality, as evidenced by The Obamao’s reelection. Even Lincoln made the manifestly unconstitutional decision to suspend the writ of habeas corpus rather than lose the Union. As TLJ has often, and correctly, counseled us while raising our sons: pick your battles. It’s our opinion Senator Paul’s picked a loser.
Speaking of unintended humor, it’s the subject of our next item, courtesy of Peter Wehner writing at Commentary Magazine:
The CPAC Clown Act
Just to get this straight, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) has not invited Bob McDonnell or Chris Christie–two popular and accomplished governors–to their annual gathering. It seems they are viewed as insufficiently pure when it comes to holding high the torch of conservatism. But CPAC did announce that Donald Trump—real estate mogul, television reality show producer, and America’s most prominent birther—has received a slot to speak.
“Donald Trump is an American patriot and success story with a massive following among small government conservatives,” American Conservative Union Chairman Al Cardenas said in a press release. (The ACU is the host of CPAC). “I look forward to welcoming him back to the CPAC stage next week. Mr. Trump’s previous CPAC appearance was hugely popular among our attendees and we expect it will be even more popular this year.”
I don’t doubt that Mr. Trump will be popular with the crowd, since clown acts often are. Just for the record, though: Trump has advocated a single-payer health care system (which even ObamaCare doesn’t give us), called for massive tax increases, favored abortion rights, and revealed himself to be hyper-protectionist. Trump has also donated more money to Democrats than Republicans in recent years and was a registered Democrat from 2001 to 2008, when the Democratic Party was dominated by liberals. On top of that, Mr. Trump is vulgar, shallow, narcissistic, buffoonish, and has a fondness for conspiracy theories.
Apparently this combination of traits is enough to warrant an invitation to the Conservative Political Action Conference.
This is obviously a stunt, meant to generate attention to the CPAC event. We all get that. The problem is that in the process, conservatism itself will be harmed, since is will confirm pre-existing caricatures and stereotypes about conservatives. For those who actually care about conservatism and who take seriously its intellectual and moral tradition, what CPAC is doing is unfortunate and destructive, and I hope someone at the conference says so. (A Sister Souljah moment, anyone?)
Mr. Trump will garner much attention, the left and the press will have a field day, and the public will watch all of this unfold and simply shake their head at the childishness and unseriousness of it all.
Well done, CPAC. Well done.
As we learned in marriage counseling, perception is reality. And like it or not, be it fair or wholly undeserved, CPAC has just reinforced many people’s perception of Conservatism.
Moving on, Jonah Goldberg has the courage to touch upon the current that energizes the Third Rail of American politics:
Greatest generation the most entitled
Growth in government spending had its roots during that time, with lessons for today.
One thing nearly everybody agrees upon is that the “sequester” is a silly sideshow to the real challenge facing America: unsustainable spending on entitlements. Ironies abound. Democrats, with large support from young people, tend to believe that we must build on the legacy bequeathed to us by the New Deal and the Great Society. Republicans, who marshaled considerable support from older voters in their so-far losing battle against ObamaCare, argue that we need to start fresh.
Perhaps it’s time for both sides to consider an underappreciated fact of American life: The system we are trying to perpetuate was created for the explicit benefit of the so-called greatest generation, the most coddled and cared for cohort in American history.
I don’t mean to belittle or demean the heroic efforts and sacrifices of those who served in World War II. But the idea that a whole generation deserves credit for what only some did is little more than an attempt to buy glory on the cheap. One of the egalitarian precepts that all Americans are supposed to subscribe to is the idea that one citizen isn’t more worthy than another, simply by accident of birth. If you stormed the beaches of Normandy, you are due praise and honor. If you were simply born the same year as those who stormed the beaches, you’re no more deserving of praise than someone born of any other generation.
Involved government
Moreover, government was bending to the needs of the greatest generation — for good and ill — long before they did anything great. Historians William Strauss and Neal Howe made this argument in their famous 1991 opus Generations. Before Tom Brokaw dubbed them the “greatest generation,” Howe and Strauss called them the “GI Generation.”
“The initials GI can stand for two things — ‘general issue’ and ‘government issue’ — and this generation’s life cycle has stood squarely for both,” they wrote. “The GI life cycle has shown an extraordinary association with the growth of modern government activity, much of it directed toward whatever phase of life they occupied.”
When GIs were children, the White House held its first Conference on Children, and Congress created the first U.S. Children’s Bureau and passed the first federal child labor law. They benefited from government-run schools in large numbers, and after the war from the aptly named GI Bill. And when the first wave of GIs approached old age, Howe and Strauss noted, the White House held its first Conference on Aging. Congress created the National Institute on Aging and passed the first federal age discrimination law.
“The entire modern growth in government spending has coincided with the duration of their adult life cycle,” the authors noted.
Also, the GI Generation was deferential to authority long before anyone was asked to fight the Nazis. It was the most “uniformed generation” in U.S. history, the historians wrote. Nearly all the scouting organizations — Boy Scouts (1910), Girl Scouts (1912), 4-H Clubs (1914) — were launched to accommodate the GI.
Forget the nostalgia
Despite nostalgia for the New Deal, people forget how militaristic it was.President Franklin D. Roosevelt conceived of the New Deal as a “moral equivalent of war” effort and promised to use the tactics of World War I to fight the Depression. Nearly all the New Deal agencies were modeled on the war agencies of the Wilson administration. The Civilian Conservation Corps turned 3 million men into a paramilitary “tree army.”
The National Recovery Administration, run by former general Hugh “Iron Pants” Johnson, aimed to organize the economy along the lines of war mobilization. On Sept. 13, 1933, he organized the largest parade New York had ever seen. Tens of thousands of workers marched in military fashion celebrating the mascot of the NRA, the “Blue Eagle.” Similar militaristic pageants were held across the country.
FDR explained the purpose of the Blue Eagle in a fireside chat: “In war, in the gloom of night attack,” he crooned, “soldiers wear a bright badge on their shoulders to be sure that comrades do not fire on comrades. On that principle, those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance. That is why we have provided a badge of honor for this purpose.”
I have neither the space nor the inclination to pronounce on what was good or bad about all this. But as Washington grapples with the legacy costs of the “greatest generation” — including the unsustainable burden of paying the retirement bills for the GIs’ supremely entitled children, the Baby Boomers, perhaps it is at least worth recognizing that the government and the culture designed to benefit one generation has come at the cost of those that come after it.
We’d like to say it ain’t so….
….but it is! And each subsequent generation unfortunately learns from its progenitors. Can you say “insolvency”? We KNEW you could!
And in “The Bill Of Rights Be Damned” segment, James Taranto details Liberalism’s view of Free Speech:
Public Meeting: Keep Out
If you thought the Tea Party was bad, wait till you read this story from the Boulder (Colo.) Daily Camera:
A town hall meeting [last] week hosted by two state lawmakers in Louisville was organized “to discuss school funding and to answer questions,” according to event announcements. Rep. Mike Foote, D-Lafayette, and Sen. Matt Jones, D-Louisville, invited the public to the Louisville library Wednesday night. The topic–education funding–was noted on Foote’s website, as well as on the Colorado House Democrats website and in the Camera.
But a vast majority of the more than 100 people who packed the meeting were intent on discussing another topic: gun rights, and why Jones should vote against a package of gun-control bills that will begin making their way through the Senate next week. . . .
The two lawmakers aren’t the only Democrats who have had their events crashed by gun-rights advocates.
That’s right, these gun nuts are now crashing public meetings.If we hadn’t read it in the paper, we wouldn’t have thought that was even possible.
Meanwhile, up in the Hollers, a related item; specifically, an interview with West Virginia’s junior Senator, Joe Manchin, that ran in the Sunday edition of Martinsburg’s The Journal:
Q&A with Sen. Joe Manchin
Editor’s note: This question and answer session was permitted under the condition that The Journal would not ask questions regarding gun control legislation or the Second Amendment, as requested by the senator’s staff.
Which brings us, appropriately enough, to today’s installment of Idiots on Parade, as a….
Florida state senator sponsors bill requiring anger management courses for bullet buyers
Audrey Gibson: proof somewhere a village is missing its idiot.
We’d opine America might be better served by requiring anyone interested in public office to pass a basic course in American history and the Constitution.
On the Lighter Side….
Then there’s these two 2nd Amendment reminders from Mark Foster….
….as well as this rather accurate depiction of the once-Free State from our eldest son Jonathon:
Finally, in the Sports Section, James Taranto reports on what the Professionally Sensitive might term….
Male Chauvinist Pigskin
First the hype….
….then the reality….
….followed by what the late, great Paul Harvey termed the REST of the story:
Lauren Silberman this weekend became the first woman to try out for the National Football League, USA Today reports:
Silberman, 28, . . . didn’t exactly stand up to the 37 male kickers during her brief tryout at the New York/New Jersey regional scouting combine Sunday.
Silberman did not take practice kicks. She merely jogged toward a tee and made a faint kicking motion. Her first kick from the 35-yard line–after it took her more than 20 seconds to place the ball on the tee–was a line drive that barely crossed midfield. The second one didn’t get past the 50.
Silberman, who landed awkwardly after her first attempt, then asked if she could see a trainer. The former college club-level soccer player with no football experience limped to the sideline and was examined for 10 minutes.
Silberman vowed to give it another try as she disappeared into the cafeteria. But after she came back onto the field and consulted with combine officials, she decided to call it a day. “I did the right thing by my body by resting it. It would be very dangerous for me to keep pushing my quad if the muscles would continue to tear,” she said.
It just goes to show you that social conditioning continues to hold women back in male-dominated fields.
That’s America, baby; ANYthing for 15 minutes of fame. And if you’re a woman or a “minority”, the MSM is only too happy to assist you in your quest.
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