When Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad popped off last week, to the effect that February 11 would bring “the demise of the liberal capitalist system,” I chuckled that February 11 would obviously be the safest day in the history of the liberal capitalist system; but I did wonder what possible motive the Iranian leadership could have for letting their loose-cannon figurehead make such empty threats. Well, it now appears we have an answer. When the country’s actual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, echoes this threat, declaring that Iran will “punch the arrogance” of the West on February 11, it becomes much more likely that the Iranian regime is plotting to do something spectacularly foolish. I think they are underestimating the U.S. and our president -- interpreting his (and our country’s) desire for peace as weakness. The most spectacular miscalculation of this kind in recent memory was the 9/11 attack: Some of our country’s enemies figured that with a relatively inexperienced (in foreign policy) and politically weak (barely eight months after the Florida recount) new president, they could engage in a massive slaughter of U.S. citizens with impunity. They paid the price for that miscalculation. It’s not too late for Iran to turn back from such a disastrous course: Even evil regimes -- regimes that systematically violate the rights of their own people -- have the use of intellect.  

David Cameron is the prohibitive favorite to replace the politically ailing Gordon Brown as Britain’s prime minister, after elections later this year. Cameron is actively courting the gay vote with his stated support of (his words) “gay equality,” in an interview with the U.K. Independent’s Johann Hari. Says Cameron: “If our Lord Jesus was around today he would very much be backing a strong agenda on equality and equal rights, and not judging people on their sexuality.” It’s an interesting political Rorschach test, as I guess pretty much everything is these days: An American conservative website describes Cameron’s view with the headline “U.K.’s Conservative Leader Pledges Full Support for Gay Agenda.” But Hari himself is skeptical: “David Cameron is a hazy cloud of charm and platitudes: no matter how hard you peer into him, you cannot find anything solid to focus on for long. There are flickers of apparently real pro-gay feeling, but they are soon followed by excuse-making for some of the most anti-gay politicians in Europe. Which is the real Cameron? On this issue, I suspect even he doesn’t know. But over the next four years, we are all going to find out: the beaming lights of power will part this mysterious and contradictory fog.”

It may be that, on this issue, David Cameron is the P. J. O’Rourke of Britain. (The inimitable P. J. wrote a few years ago: “I’m so conservative that I approve of San Francisco City Hall marriages, adoption by same-sex couples, and New Hampshire’s recently ordained Episcopal bishop. Gays want to get married, have children, and go to church. Next they’ll be advocating school vouchers, boycotting HBO, and voting Republican.”) But could Cameron perhaps, on this and other issues, be a British Obama -- long on promises and short on performance? (We all saw the ad saying, “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS.” Hardly encouraging.) Let’s hope that -- if he prevails -- he at least has a better first year than our new president had.

Last week, Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, called the holds another example of the corrupt nature behind lawmakers’ earmarks for pet projects.

In a statement, Mr. Shelby’s spokesman, Jonathan Graffeo, disputed that characterization. The holds, he said, were “to get the White House’s attention on two issues that are critical to our national security,” a refueling tanker that would add jobs in Mobile and an F.B.I. antiterrorism center to be built in Alabama.

Mr. Shelby still has holds on three nominees whose jobs would be related to the tanker project. They are Terry A. Yonkers, nominated for assistant secretary of the Air Force; Frank Kendall III, for principal deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics; and Erin C. Conaton, for under secretary of the Air Force.

Why shouldn’t Iran have nuclear capability? Israel, India, and many other countries which are no more stable than Iran have the capability. Another case of the USA trying to impose it’s homophobic prejudices on the rest of the world...

Indeed. On the other hand, for years Mohamed ElBaradei and the IAEA have operated a Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy with the mullahs.

Both sides agree there are huge problems with the current system, and they even agree on what some of those problems are: there is a shortage of incentives for efficiency, and therefore costs are rising much too quickly, which leaves too many people unable to afford coverage. The system we have is neither a market nor a government program, it’s a private third-party payer system, and so makes very little economic sense. The question is, given that we want to change the existing system, how do we want to change it?

Liberals argue that we should move in the direction of socializing insurance coverage: that the efficiency we lack would be produced by putting as much as possible of the health-care sector into one big “system,” in which the various inefficiencies could be evened and managed out of existence by the rational arrangement of rules and incentives. The problem now, they say, is that the system is chaotic and answers only to the needs of the insurance companies. If it were made more orderly, and answered to the needs of the public as a whole, costs could be controlled more effectively.

Conservatives argue that we should move toward a genuine individual market in insurance coverage: that the efficiency we lack would be produced by allowing for price signals to shape the behavior of both providers and consumers, creating more efficiencies than we could hope to produce on purpose, and allowing competition and informed consumer choices to exercise a downward pressure on prices. The problem now, they say, is that the system is opaque, hiding the cost of everything from everyone and so making real pricing and therefore real economic efficiency impossible. If it were made more transparent and answered to the wishes of consumers, prices could be controlled more effectively.

That means that, beginning from where we are now, liberals and conservatives want to move in roughly opposite directions. And they each tend to think that moving in the other’s direction would be worse than just keeping what we have for now. That’s why the offer of moving in the left’s direction but not quite as far or quite as fast as the left would ideally like isn’t really very attractive to conservatives. It’s why the individual pieces of their bills that the Democrats try to point to as incorporating Republican ideas don’t really win any Republicans—because the question is which direction are you moving the system in on the whole?

There are ways of incorporating market mechanisms in an approach that on the whole moves toward a more socialized insurance sector than we have now (like creating insurance exchanges), and those as part of such an approach would still not appeal to conservatives, who tend to think that even the current system, with all its problems, is preferable to the inefficiency of a true third-party payer system in which the government enforces efficiencies. There are ways of using government quite energetically (and expensively) in an approach that on the whole moves toward a true individual insurance market (like large high-risk pools for those with pre-existing conditions), and those as part of such an approach would still not appeal to liberals, who tend to think that even the current system, with all its problems, is preferable to leaving to the market, with its cold vicissitudes, the allocation of so essential a necessity as health coverage.

The difference between the left and the right is not a difference of degree, but of direction, and each side tends to think that moving even a little in the wrong direction is worse than doing nothing. That’s why a compromise won’t be so easy.

The larger public, I think, is not so tied to either direction, but is opposed to doing anything huge. That’s a big part of what the Democrats have done wrong this year: they have proposed too much. Whichever side is smart enough to propose some modest and sensible incremental steps in its preferred direction will have far better luck with the public. Conservatives would be wise to do so in a serious and concerted way before liberals realize that it’s time to employ some different means toward their same misguided end.

Mr. Emanuel:

We welcome President Obama’s announcement of forthcoming bipartisan health care talks.  In fact, you may remember that last May, Republicans asked President Obama to hold bipartisan discussions on health care in an attempt to find common ground on health care, but he declined and instead chose to work with only Democrats. Since then, the President has given dozens of speeches on health care reform, operating under the premise that the more the American people learn about his plan, the more they will come to like it.  Just the opposite has occurred: a majority of Americans oppose the House and Senate health care bills and want them scrapped so we can start over with a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses. 

Just as important, scrapping the House and Senate health care bills would help end the uncertainty they are creating for workers and businesses and thus strengthen our shared commitment to focusing on creating jobs. Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward on health care in a bipartisan way, does that mean he will agree to start over so that we can develop a bill that is truly worthy of the support and confidence of the American people?  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said today that the President is “absolutely not” resetting the legislative process for health care. 

If the starting point for this meeting is the job-killing bills the American people have already soundly rejected, Republicans would rightly be reluctant to participate. Assuming the President is sincere about moving forward in a bipartisan way, does that mean he has taken off the table the idea of relying solely on Democratic votes and jamming through health care reform by way of reconciliation?  As the President has noted recently, Democrats continue to hold large majorities in the House and Senate, which means they can attempt to pass a health care bill at any time through the reconciliation process. 

Eliminating the possibility of reconciliation would represent an important show of good faith to Republicans and the American people.If the President intends to present any kind of legislative proposal at this discussion, will he make it available to members of Congress and the American people at least 72 hours beforehand?  Our ability to move forward in a bipartisan way through this discussion rests on openness and transparency.  Will the President include in this discussion congressional Democrats who have opposed the House and Senate health care bills?  This bipartisan discussion should reflect the bipartisan opposition to both the House bill and the kickbacks and sweetheart deals in the Senate bill. Will the President be inviting officials and lawmakers from the states to participate in this discussion? 

As you may know, legislation has been introduced in at least 36 state legislatures, similar to the proposal just passed by the Democratic-controlled Virginia State Senate, providing that no individual may be compelled to purchase health insurance.  Additionally, governors of both parties have raised concerns about the additional costs that will be passed along to states under both the House and Senate bills. The President has also mentioned his commitment to have “experts” participate in health care discussions. 

Will the Feb. 25 discussion involve such "experts?"  Will those experts include the actuaries at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), who have determined that the both the House and Senate health care bill raise costs - just the opposite of their intended effect - and jeopardize seniors’ access to high-quality care by imposing massive Medicare cuts?  Will those experts include the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, which has stated that the GOP alternative would reduce premiums by up to 10 percent?  Also, will Republicans be permitted to invite health care experts to participate? Finally, as you know, this is the first televised White House health care meeting involving the President since last March. 

Many health care meetings of the closed-door variety have been held at the White House since then, including one where a sweetheart deal was worked out with union leaders.  Will the special interest groups that the Obama Administration has cut deals with be included in this televised discussion?Of course, Americans have been dismayed by the fact that the President has broken his own pledge to hold televised health care talks.  We can only hope this televised discussion is the beginning, not the end, of attempting to correct that mistake.  Will the President require that any and all future health care discussions, including those held on Capitol Hill, meet this common-sense standard of transparency and openness?

Your answers to these critical questions will help determine whether this will be a truly open, bipartisan discussion or merely an intramural exercise before Democrats attempt to jam through a job-killing health care bill that the American people can’t afford and don’t support.  ‘Bipartisanship’ is not writing proposals of your own behind closed doors, then unveiling them and demanding Republican support.  Bipartisan ends require bipartisan means.These questions are also designed to try and make sense of the widening gap between the President’s rhetoric on bipartisanship and the reality.  We cannot help but notice that each of the President’s recent bipartisan overtures has been coupled with harsh, misleading partisan attacks. For instance, the President decries Republican ‘obstruction’ when it was Republicans who first proposed bipartisan health care talks last May. 

The President says Republicans are ‘sitting on the sidelines’ just days after holding up our health care alternative and reading from it word for word.  The President has every right to use his bully pulpit as he sees fit, but this is the kind of credibility gap that has the American people so fed up with business as usual in Washington.We look forward to receiving your answers and continuing to discuss ways we can move forward in a bipartisan manner to address the challenges facing the American people.

Sincerely,

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)

Could this be a companion piece?

Tax expenditure is the technical name for spending programs run through the tax system -- all of those tax breaks that politicians of both parties love to dole out like Christmas presents. The mortgage interest tax deduction and the exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance are among the most well-known such items.

He makes the case that politicians love tax expenditures because they allow them to pay off their favorite interest groups. Yet it has a price: The higher tax rates they require to raise revenue doesn't cover their cost. True. However, there is no good literature on whether tax expenditures are a better way to provide government services than spending or regulation, so the jury is still out on that point.

I was glad to see that one of his stated goals for going after tax expenditures was to cut marginal rates.

A study published in 2008 found that eliminating all individual income tax expenditures would permit a 44 percent across-the-board cut in tax rates without reducing revenue. The top marginal rate could drop from 35 percent to 20 percent. Conservatives could stand up and cheer.

I could certainly cheer for that. Plus, the more holes and tax credits there are, the farther away we are from a consumption tax. So that would be a step in the right direction, as long as rates are reduced. However, I bet that liberals will be the first to object to the exercise. It is often assumed that tax expenditures primarily benefit the wealthy, but this is not true. For instance, the largest tax expenditures, such as for mortgage interest, primarily benefit the middle class.

However, here is what my main issue with this article is: The very concept of tax expenditures implies that any income that is not taxed due to a tax preference belongs to the government. In an unusual case of candor, President Reagan's FY1984 admitted this fact. The section on tax expenditure includes this paragraph:

[The term "tax expenditures] is . . . unfortunate in that it seems to imply that Government has control over all resources. If revenues which are not collected due to "special" tax provisions represent Government "expenditures," why not consider all tax rates below 100% "special," in which case all resources are effectively Government-controlled?

Reagan has often written against the term "tax expenditure," for that same reason.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article that might revive an old debate. Here is also a good piece to read on the issue.

Andrew Sullivan has a snarky post up on Daily Dish about a soldier who waterboarded his own child. Sullivan writes:

No doubt Marc Thiessen will object that since she wasn't strapped to an actual board and only dunked three or four times, rather than 183, and her father wasn't in the CIA, she wasn't really "waterboarded" as the professionals do it.  But do you notice how a foreign newspaper uses plain English to describe torturing victims by use of near-drowning: the "CIA torture technique."  No US paper has yet to report the story. Why am I not surprised?

That’s the best Sullivan can come up with?  In Courting Disaster, I systematically decimate the specious and shameful comparisons he has made between the CIA’s interrogation techniques and the tortures inflicted by the Gestapo on members of the Norwegian resistance (yes, the Gestapo -- Sullivan has even written that the CIA’s actions were more severe than the tortures inflicted by the Gestapo). 

I demolish his arguments, and he clearly he has no answer -- because all he has come up with since my book came out are childish posts like this. 

Why am I not surprised?

The patient was placed on . . . a kind of trestle with sharp-edged rungs across it like a ladder. It slanted so that the head was lower than the feet and, at the lower end was a depression in which the head sank, while an iron band around the forehead or throat made it immovable. Sharp cords, called cordeles, which cut into the flesh, attached the arms and legs to the side of the trestle and others, known as garrotes, from sticks thrust in them and twisted around like a tourniquet till the cords cut more or less deeply into the flesh, were twined around the upper and lower arms, the thighs and the calves. . . .

The cords on the rack, Lea writes,

were carried to a maestro garrote by which the executioner could control all at once. These worked not only by compression, but by traveling around the limbs, carrying away skin and flesh. Each half round was reckoned a vuelta or turn, six or seven of which was the maximum, but it was usual not to exceed five. Formerly the same was done with the cord around the forehead, but this was abandoned as it was apt to start the eyes from their sockets.

Once the “patient” was secured to the rack, Lea explains,

An iron prong, distended the mouth, a toca, or strip of linen was thrust down the throat to conduct water trickling slowly from a jarra or jar, holding usually a little more than a quart. The patient strangled and gasped and suffocated and, at intervals, the toca was withdrawn and he was adjured to tell the truth. The severity of the infliction was measured by the number of jarras consumed, sometimes reaching six or eight.

Needless to say, none of this even remotely resembles what was done by the CIA. No sharp cords cutting into the flesh; no iron prong distending the mouth; no strip of linen thrust down the throat to carry the water into the internal organs. No comparison whatsoever. But folks like Yglesias continue to make the specious comparison. And so each time I feel obligated to respond, to defend the honor of the courageous men and women of the CIA who kept us safe and who cannot defend themselves.

They deserve better. But at least they can take some satisfaction in knowing that when folks like Yglesias open their mouths on this topic, they demonstrate once again that they are speaking from a pinnacle of near-perfect ignorance.

1. I read somewhere today that "Republican leaders" were still refusing to offer "any specific proposals." Yet according to Klein, they've offered at least six specific ideas. Did Paul Krugman get booted from the JournoList?

2. The legislative provisions that Klein lists are not indicative of Republican ideas. They are Potemkin versions of Republican ideas, incorporated into a framework that is anathema to the Republican philosophy of government.

Let's look at a couple of examples:

Eliminating the tax exclusion for employer-provided health benefits is a good idea, but the Democrats can't really do it -- it would anger organized labor, which benefits from the preferential arrangement. So the Democrats’ Potemkin version -- an excise tax that would effectively cap the value of employer-provided plans -- would exempt unions.

Allowing consumers to purchase insurance across state lines would reduce premiums, but it would weaken states’ power to regulate insurance companies. The Democrats’ Potemkin version -- a provision allowing the formation of state compacts -- is meaningless: Their bill would create a massive federal regulatory apparatus that would render state regulation obsolete!

Klein finally, angrily points out that the Democrats have dropped the “public option.” Great! But it doesn’t matter. Their vision of health-care reform remains completely alien to that of the GOP -- and, apparently, to what most of the public wants.

Yep.

Extra points if you can watch the whole thing.

The Draft Kudlow Committee, which is gathering signatures to encourage the conservative economist to run, added former New York Conservative Party State Chairman and co-founder Serphin Maltese to its ranks Tuesday. Maltese joind Buffalo-based PR consultant Michael Caputo and Dr. David Tukey, a former McCain-Palin deputy regional campaign manager based in New York City.

And John Lakian, the group's new finance chair, told the New York Daily News on Friday that Kudlow is "80 or 90 percent" likely to take on the state's senior senator.

Lakian also said that there's no rush for Kudlow to declare his intentions, saying he could wait as late as April to get into the race.

One of the stranger behaviors of the ever-stranger Obama administration is its sudden adoption of the "wounded fawn" posture.

No opposition was more stridently critical of a sitting president than was the anti-Bush Left. Barack Obama, as candidate and president, could not start a speech without saying "Bush did it." And have we forgotten the 2006-08�canonization of Michael Moore, the silence about the Nazi slurs, the award-winning assassination docudramas, the Knopf novel about killing George Bush, the "General Betray Us" ad, Al Gore's vein-bulging "brownshirts"outburst, and on and on?

But suddenly, pundits and politicians have embraced a new gospel about conciliation and the need to restrain harsh discourse -- which is fine, but many of these advocates for a gentler, kinder dialogue were bomb-throwers just a few years ago.

And now we hear from none�other than John Brennan, the Obama-administration counterterrorism expert, who soberly sermonizes on the lamentable politicization of the war on terror, and particularly the popular derision of the decision to treat the Christmas-day airliner plot as a normal criminal-justice matter.

But isn't Brennan the same official who used to give loud political speeches, heralding not only the superior new Obama anti-terrorism methodology but also the failings of the Bush approach (which kept us safe for seven consecutive years)?

I seem to recall that Brennan recently characterized the former vice president as "ignorant." And in August 2009, Brennan's first official speech lambasted the Bush administation ad nauseam (e.g., "The fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining -- indeed, distorting -- our entire national security and foreign policy"; "President Obama has made it clear that the United States will not be defined simply by what we are against, but by what we are for -- the opportunity, liberties, prosperity, and common aspirations we share with the world"; "Rather than looking at allies and other nations through the narrow prism of terrorism -- whether they are with us or against us -- the administration is now engaging other countries and peoples across a broader range of areas. Rather than treating so many of our foreign affairs programs -- foreign assistance, development, democracy promotion -- as simply extensions of the fight against terrorists"; "We see this new approach most vividly in the president's personal engagement with the world -- his trips, his speeches, his town halls with foreign audiences"; "As many have noted, the president does not describe this as a 'war on terrorism'"; "Likewise, the president does not describe this as a 'global war'"; "Nor does President Obama see this challenge as a fight against 'jihadists.'�Describing terrorists in this way -- using a legitimate term, 'jihad,' meaning to purify oneself or to wage a holy struggle for a moral goal -- risks giving these murderers the religious legitimacy they desperately seek but in no way deserve"; and so on).

In other words, Brennan himself was not content simply to continue America's anti-terrorism protocols, or to modify them in relative silence; instead, he chose to grandstand, often in obsequious fashion, about the superiority of Obama's revisionist approach. And when Obama's approach proved "problematic" -- with the KSM trial, the�Abdulmutallab�mess, the Fort Hood massacre, the continuation of tribunals and renditions, and failed promises on Guantanamo -- Brennan suddenly went from hyper-partisan to nonpartisan.

Then there is the strange case of Richard Clarke. He too has deplored "the partisan rhetoric" about the Obama administration's anti-terrorism policies: "Recent months have seen the party out of power picking fights over the conduct of our efforts against al-Qaeda, often with total disregard to the facts and frequently blowing issues totally out of proportion, while ignoring the more important challenges we face in defeating terrorists." This surely cannot be the same Richard Clarke who in the election year 2004 came out with his partisan�expos�Against All Odds, which damned the Bush administration, after earlier delighting the D.C. press corps with wild charges that George Bush had "undermined the war on terrorism."

(Brennan and Clarke should read the third book of Thucydides on the folly of arrogantly destroying protocol and tradition, and then in dire straits seeking refuge in both.)

There is a rule of thumb with the Obama administration and its most vocal supporters: Those who loudly deplore the new partisanship and acrimony are typically those who in the past were the most partisan and acrimonious.

According to state law, the governor has ten days once the vacancy is officially declared to decide on the date for the special election, which can come no sooner than 60 days following that proclamation.

That likely means the special election will be held on May 18, which is the date already set for federal primaries around the state. (Special elections costs the state huge sums of money and it's likely that Gov. Ed Rendell will choose to go with an already established election day to save some cash.)

UPDATE: Cook Political Reports now rates the race for Pennsylvania's 12th a toss-up.

This is as tidy a summation of sanitized liberal-academic Marxism as I've ever seen. If that doesn't make the rest of his point question-begging and circular, he'd better have a good explanation of why not.

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Popular progressive blog, Firedoglake (FDL), has launched a new poll to identify three 'Fire Dogs' in Congress. Firedoglake will provide the winner with get out the vote tools, voter lists, in district voter registration and fundraising support. This support will help us in our re-election campaign.

We are currently 2nd in the poll out of all the Democratic members of the U.S. House of Representatives. I need your help in getting us into 1st place. Please log onto http://action.firedoglake.com/page/content/fdlpacvote and click the link on the right-hand side of the page to vote for FDL Fire Dogs. Then please enter your contact information and select me as your first choice. After selecting all three choices, then click 'Submit Form'

Firedoglake is evaluating candidates on three criteria:
�� 1) Pledged to vote against any war funding that does not have troop withdrawal provisions
�� 2) Voted against June 2009 war supplemental
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I've been a leader in the effort against the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and led the efforts against funding for the wars. This week I will introduce legislation in Congress on the question of withdrawal from Afghanistan. Together with Representative John Conyers, I've led the effort on single-payer, passed an amendment in committee to protect the rights of states to pursue single-payer and voted in committee for the bill that had a public option. I will continue to oppose any healthcare bill that does not have a robust public option. I will never give up on the dream of Medicare for All! Your continued support makes it possible for me to take strong progressive positions.

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Rush made the point this morning that Republicans should JUST SAY NO to Obama's transparent attempt to put them in the corner as obstructionists with his TV gambit. There's no way that 535 members and senators can succeed in a meaningful dialogue with one guy, especially when that one guy is the president. But if they are incapable of just saying no, then this might be even better: Inform the president that since it's impossible for 535 to engage in a meaningful back and forth dialogue, they have appointed Paul Ryan as their spokesman for the purpose of discussing health care, and then take the president up on his invitation to talk -- but that the conversation will be with Ryan one-on-one for five televised hours.

Oh he doesn't use the E-word, but it's pretty clear that's what he's getting at. He writes (emphasis mine):

First, as the Times article notes, virtually all instructors in the liberal arts are aware of the disparity between their level of education and their financial situation. There's no secret that the liberal arts are the lowest-compensated sector of academe, despite substantially more advanced study than business instructors and the equivalent of those in the natural sciences. Just as important, there are few opportunities for liberal-arts scholars to supplement their incomes by serving on government and corporate boards, filing patents and licenses, and, of course, obtaining generous research grants. You don't have to be a militant Marxist to recognize that people's political persuasions will align pretty well with their economic interests. It's real simple: Those who have less and want more will tend to support social changes that promise to accomplish that; those who are already economic winners will want to conserve their status.

I don't mean to suggest that issues of conscience beyond the confines of crass self-interest don't play an important role for many in the liberal arts, but their basic economic condition virtually assures that those in the liberal arts will be natural-born liberals. Who, after all, would want to preserve a situation in which others who are equivalently educated and experienced -- doctors, engineers, lawyers, scientists, colleagues in other areas, and, yes, chief executives -- receive vastly more compensation, sometimes by a factor of 10 or 100? I wonder what would happen to the academic political spectrum if liberal-arts professors were compensated the same as those in other areas. If an enterprising sociologist wants to conduct such an experiment, I'll certainly volunteer as a subject.

His second reason for academic liberalism is intriguing, but also more annoying. He writes:

A second reason that liberal-arts professors tend to be politically liberal is that they have very likely studied large-scale historical processes and complex cultural dynamics. Conservatives, who tend to evoke the need to preserve traditional connections with the past, have nonetheless contributed least to any detailed or thoughtful study of history. Most (although, of course, by no means all) prominent historians of politics, literature, the arts, religion, and even economics have tended, as conservatives claim, to be liberally biased. Fair enough. But if you actually take the time to look at history and culture, certain conclusions about human nature, society, and economics tend to force themselves on you. History has a trajectory, driven in large part by the desires of underprivileged or oppressed groups to attain parity with the privileged or the oppressor.

Consider the Greek struggle against Persian tyranny, the struggles to preserve the Roman Republic, the peasant uprisings of the Middle Ages, the American and French revolutions, the abolitionist and civil-rights movements, and now movements on behalf of other groups -- women, Latinos, homosexuals, and the physically impaired. As President Obama recently put it, any open-minded review of history (and perhaps especially American history) teaches at least one clear lesson: There is a "right side of history," Obama said -- the side of those who would overcome prejudice, question unearned privilege, and resist oppression in favor of a more just condition.

If you don't study history, whether because it doesn't pad quarterly profits, isn't sufficiently scientific or objective, or threatens your own economic status, then you won't know any of that. But most of those in the liberal arts have concluded that there really isn't any other intellectually respectable way to interpret the broad contours of history and culture. They are liberal, in other words, by deliberate and reasoned choice, based upon the best available evidence.

Mmmm hmmm. This I find quite revealing in its arrogance and myopia. This is the liberal-arts equivalent of invoking the "scientific consensus," only much dumber. If liberal academics are such close and obedient students of the best available evidence, how to explain their refusal -- or, to be more charitable, longstanding tardiness -- to acknowledge, the evidence supporting the superiority of markets, the evils of the Soviet Union or the flaws in various academic fads. To be fair I'm painting with a broad brush (but so is he). Still, as gross generalization, the idea that English, Philosophy, and Sociology professors have been at the forefront of following the evidence wherever it takes them is just hilariously absurd.

Professor Surber might respond that he's defining liberal in terms of recognizing the "social justice" demands of oppressed minorities� and other underprivileged demographics and not all the stuff they so clearly got -- and continue to get -- wrong. But that in itself is a very revealing definition of liberalism and a very selective use of facts. Again, the notion that liberal-arts professors have been at the vanguard of identifying and elucidating the "right side of history" is one of the most palpably absurd contentions an academic can make.

Third, humanities professors are liberal because they were educated in the liberal tradition, which thrives on an atmosphere of tolerence, open-mindedness, and decency and it is their vocation to balance competing values and norms in a sober and clear-eyed way.

I don't know about you, but that is totally my impression of liberal-arts professors. A more open-minded bunch, brimming with tolerance for threatening ideas, you'll never find (at least this side of the North Korean politburo).

Almost in an effort to prove his point, Surber sums up why he and his peers are liberal in a tour de force of openmindedness and intellectual generosity:

It is because we liberal-arts professors have a personal stake in our relative economic status; we have carefully studied the actual dynamics of history and culture; and we have trained ourselves to think in complex, nuanced, and productive ways about the human condition that so many of us are liberals. Most of us agree with President Obama that there is a "right side of history," and we feel morally bound to be on it. Although we'd like to see some parity in compensation with our colleagues, we chose our fields with full awareness of the tradeoff. Part of our compensation lies in knowing that our studies can complement our standing on the "right side," rather than having our basic commitments dictated to us by the limitations of other, narrower professions.

So all you journalists and researchers: Enough with this assumption that liberal-arts professors are liberal as a result of na�vet�, as if our tweed jackets and pipes, as the Times article put it (how much of that do you really see these days?), render us ignorant of the ways of the world. Drop this idea that we were somehow coerced into being liberals by peer pressure or role models. And most of all, don't condescend to suggest that we may just be, as one expert quoted by the Times did, free spirits (read: malcontents and misfits) who couldn't cut it in the serious professions (like Dick Cheney, Kenneth L. Lay, and Jeffrey K. Skilling did?) and found our impecunious niche in teaching the liberal arts.

We're here and mostly liberal by practical deliberation, factual investigation, and rational and moral conviction. We don't mind the lower pay (well, not that much), but don't demean us, when most of our conservative critics would be hard-pressed to make anything remotely approaching the same claims. Remember that one of our most vigorous critics, Sarah Palin, was reportedly unclear about significant events in American history (the First World War? Hmm, lemme think . . .) and had to be given grammar-school geography lessons by her campaign staff. But who knows, if Palin had more of a grounding in the liberal arts, she might have . . . nah!

It's stunning that anyone would even suggest that liberals are condescending.

Sen. Lamar Alexander, a Tennessee Republican and GOP conference chair, tells National Review Online that he is unsure whether President Obama’s bipartisan health-care summit on February 25 will yield any meaningful results. “It is hard for me to see how you can take a bill that is fundamentally flawed and improve it without starting over,” he says.

Alexander also has little faith in the power of summits to mend serious policy differences. “If anything, I would have preferred that the focus was on jobs, debt, and terror,” he says. “While I’m not going to question the president’s motives, I question whether summits work. We had one on health care and one on entitlements last year, and they didn’t do much.”

Alexander says that regardless of his questions about the format, Republicans will be “very prepared” to debate. “We’ll do a lot of work ahead of time,” with the “hope of getting the president to accept some of our ideas to reduce costs and increase access.”

Who will be going from the GOP side? Alexander predicts that Republican leader Mitch McConnell will figure that out with White House aides later this week. A senior GOP Senate aide tells NRO that Republicans, as of Monday afternoon, still “don’t know who is invited, how many, or what the format will be — we just know that he plans to invite us.”

On the newly released unemployment figures:

Marx used to speak about the "army of unemployed" as a creation of capitalists to keep wages low. What we have [today] is a peculiar army of the discouraged unemployed who have an effect on the numbers.

These are people who have given up looking for work, and, as a result, the number of the unemployed is reduced because they are considered out of the workforce. So there has been an increase in those numbers, a rather large one, and as a result the unemployment rate has dropped.

But on the other hand, when times improve, as they ultimately will, you’ll get a reduction in the discouraged unemployed, and that is going to artificially increase the number of the unemployed and it will make the numbers look worse.

So the actual unemployment rate is not that reliable.

In these [new] numbers there were two interesting hard numbers. There was an encouraging drop in the number of the underemployed, and that is people who want to be working full time but who have either part-time [jobs] or have diminished hours, and that number dropped by about a million, which was encouraging.

On the other hand, the number of those who haven't had a job for over six months is now up to 6.3 million, a slight increase, which is the highest ever recorded.

It implies I think that those in certain sectors of the economy are not going to get jobs and [those sectors are] not going to return. On the other hand, in the cyclical elements of our economy, hiring is beginning again.

On the panic-buying and general hysteria as a massive snowstorm approached Washington:

Let me say, having woken up this morning in south Florida and flown into the teeth of this storm so that I could be here and defend truth, justice, and American way against Juan and his snow tie -- I find the hysteria in Washington rather amusing.

But I think it's rather useful. This is a dry run in Washington for Armageddon. I think when the real Armageddon happens, people in Washington will be relaxed. They'll say: "Hey, dude, stay cool, this is just another snowstorm."

While the New Orleans Saints beat the Indianapolis Colts on Feb 7, many viewers tuned in not just for the game, but for the commercials.

A study released in January by The Nielsen Company, a global firm that studies marketing and consumer information, found that 51 percent of Super Bowl viewers watch the game to see the advertisements.

The best ad of the XLIV Super Bowl was a Snickers ad, said Mike Hart of Hart Associates, an advertising and public relations firm in Maumee.

“The Snickers spot featuring Betty White and Abe Vigoda was out of left field. To see them tackle Betty White was very realistic. It was a creative commercial,” he said.

In case you missed it:

While many graduates of American colleges cannot answer basic civics questions, a higher education does make their opinions more liberal on controversial social issues, according to a new report issued on Friday by an academic think tank.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute, an independent group with a tradition-minded view of issues, asked about 2,500 randomly selected people more than 100 questions to gauge their civic knowledge, public philosophy, civic behavior, and demographics.

"The Shaping of the American Mind," the fourth report from the institute on civic literacy, will be formally released on Wednesday.

Richard A. Brake, a co-author of the report, said he and his colleagues had sought to see what civic or social lessons students were learning in college.

The institute found that people who had attained at least a bachelor's degree were more likely than Americans whose formal education ended with a high-school diploma to take a liberal stance on certain controversial social issues. For example, 39 percent of people whose highest level of education was a bachelor's degree supported same-sex marriage, compared with 25 percent with a high-school diploma. The trend continued with advanced degrees: About 46 percent of people with master's degrees supported same-sex marriage, as did 43 percent of people with Ph.D.'s.

Previous surveys have found that, in general, college does not bring students up to a high level of civics knowledge. According to the institute's 2008 report, based on a survey of 2,500, people whose highest level of educational attainment was a bachelor's degree correctly answered 57 percent of the questions, on average. That is three percentage points lower than a passing grade, according to the survey's authors.

Rep. Eric Cantor (R., Va.), the House minority whip, tells National Review Online that President Obama’s plan for a bipartisan health-care summit is a “hopeful sign that the president is willing to look at the solutions being offered from our side.” Still, Cantor says he is “doubtful” that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) will “go along with any of this.”

“Speaker Pelosi controls the gates to the House floor and has yet to give up on the public option or her bill,” Cantor says. “While it is positive that the president is rhetorically embracing bipartisanship, true bipartisan negotiations would entail Speaker Pelosi admitting that the Democrats’ year of pushing a government-controlled health-care system has failed and that it is time to start over, come together, and find ways to bring down costs without taxing businesses.”

Cantor is pleased that the summit, scheduled for February 25, will be televised. “After so many backroom meetings behind closed doors, it’s healthy to ventilate the discussion,” he says. “We were able to have a healthy discussion with the president in Baltimore at the House GOP retreat.” That exchange, he says, “proves that Speaker Pelosi is the big loser in all of this because she continues to avoid having a similar forum in the House — the place where such debates are really needed.”

This reaction from NOW is almost comical. You’d think they would applaud an add were a mom is portrayed as “tough enough” to handle a little rough-housing with her athletic son. Instead it’s violence? Since when did NOW consider women such delicate little flowers?

Daniel Pipes in a National Review Online piece featured by the Jerusalem Post -- “How to Save the Obama Presidency: Bomb Iran” — urges Obama to make a “dramatic gesture to change the public perception of him as a lightweight, bumbling ideologue” by ordering the U.S. military to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Citing six polls, Pipes says Americans support an attack today and will “presumably rally around the flag” when the bombs fall.

Will Obama cynically yield to temptation, play the war card and make “conservatives swoon,”  in Pipes’ phrase, to save himself and his party? We shall see.

Sarah Palin entered the fray yesterday. In a high-profile interview yesterday with Chris Wallace, she spontaneously brought up the topic of Obama’s winning a second term by bombing Iran:

WALLACE: How hard do you think President Obama will be to defeat in 2012?

PALIN: It depends on a few things. Say he played—and I got this from Buchanan, reading one of his columns the other day - say he played the war card. Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really [to] come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like him to do, but - that changes the dynamics in what we can assume is going to happen between now and three years. Because I think if the election were today I do not think Obama would be re-elected. But three years from now, things could change if -- on the national security front . . .

WALLACE: But you’re not suggesting that he would cynically play the war card?

PALIN: I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying if he did, things would dramatically change. If he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure our nation and our allies, I think people would, perhaps, shift their thinking a little bit and decide, “Well, maybe he’s tougher than we think he’s—than he is today,” and there wouldn’t be as much passion to make sure that he doesn’t serve another four years.

Comments: (1) Buchanan disapproves of Obama taking out the Iranian nuclear infrastructure, but Palin and I “would like him to do” that, thereby removing the world’s No. 1 security threat.

(2) After vilification from the Left and tepid reactions on the Right, it’s nice to have a major political figure endorse my idea.

(3) I’ve always liked Palin and been mystified by the fervid hostility she engenders. Perhaps that results from her readiness, as Jeff Bergner puts it, to challenge “The Narrative” formulated by the Democratic Party. True to form, she is, so far, the only politician willing to touch the hot potato of the political implications of bombing Iran.

— Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

This is, by all reports, an actual billboard on I-35 in Wyoming, Minnesota:

Perhaps worse for the president is the number of respondents that report being disappointed by the politics of hope. 47 percent of those surveyed say President Obama has "fallen below their expectations," while just 7 percent say he has exceeded them.

Full results here.

UPDATE: Rassmusen's daily approval tracker has Obama's approval/disapproval split at 46/54 percent.

UPDATE II: A new Gallup poll shows dismal approval numbers for President Obama on health-care policy, the budget deficit, and the economy:

As you can see, the only area in which the president is gaining ground is foreign affairs.

WASHINGTON - The feds may still try the 9/11 terror thugs near Ground Zero, President Obama said yesterday, shocking critics.

"I have not ruled it out, but I think it's important for us to take into account the practical, logistical issues involved," Obama told CBS News anchor Katie Couric.

"I mean, if you have a city that is saying no, and a police department that is saying no, and a mayor that is saying no, that makes it difficult," Obama acknowledged.

Here.

The Women's Media Center, which had objected to Focus on the Family advertising in the Super Bowl, said it was expecting a "benign" ad but not the humor. But the group's president, Jehmu Greene, said the tackle showed an undercurrent of violence against women.

"I think they're attempting to use humor as another tactic of hiding their message and fooling the American people," she said.

Some anger persisted after the ad aired.

NOW president Terry O'Neill said it glorified violence against women. "I am blown away at the celebration of the violence against women in it," she said. "That's what comes across to me even more strongly than the anti-abortion message. I myself am a survivor of domestic violence, and I don't find it charming. I think CBS should be ashamed of itself."

Liberal women -- at least the groups that claim to represent them -- have long hated the Super Bowl. It's nasty and brutish, they claimed for years -- that there was an epidemic of women being beaten because of it. As New Orleans celebrates a great joy that is the culmination of many recontruction joys today, it's hard to argue that the Super Bowl is the source of all evil. So the Tebow ad is their continued target. They're doing it for Pam Tebow, you know, even if she doesn't agree.

The only real violence I saw surrounding the Super Bowl was the violence NOW is doing to its agenda.

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Grace Thrasher of the Canada Council has now written to me explaining why there's nothing to see here:

The Council awarded Mr. Saez a grant on the basis of the recommendations of a peer assessment committee. The grant was to undertake research that would lead to the creation of a geostationary banana. Mr. Saez had submitted an application to a program that provides a two year grant to senior artists for work “designed to advance the long-term artistic and career development of the artist”. The grant did not cover the cost of the actual creation as the artist was going to solicit public contributions to raise the $1 million to cover the construction and flotation costs. Mr. Saez has submitted an interim report to the Council confirming the research work that was completed.

Mr. Saez, along with many other Canadian artists, works internationally with other artists and organizations in the creation of new works. His work has been presented in France and other countries in the past.

So if Pat Buchanan's vacationing in Provence and he's asked if he'd like to see the geostationary fruits, don't assume it's an airborne tour of the Mapplethorpe bullwhip pics.

Maybe next time someone's buried in an Obama T-shirt the president could use it to remind him of the deceased's name.

I took your suggestion and invested $1.98 in KGB's service. �The response to what their thoughts would be about capitalists appropriating their name, they responded, of course, that the service isn't named for the Russian secret service, the name stands for Knowledge Generation Bureau.

When I asked how many people the KGB murdered, this was their answer:

"The Russian KGB is Komitjet Gosudarstvjennoj Bjezopasnosti. �They were so secretive that it's unknown!"

I suppose I should be happy that capitalists are not only trading on their noteriety, but, I hope, profiting from it.

The Boy Scouts of America were born today 100 years ago!

A Congressional charter was issued on Feb. 8, 1910, and that's been the birthday for the BSA ever since; this year is our centennial.

While we've kept our focus on outdoor education, leadership development, and character formation that whole century, and still are going strong, we're being defunded by more and more United Ways, and are blocked or barred from use of schools, public buildings, and camping grounds (many of which 70 years ago we bought and built, but then gave to the same municipalities which are now forbidding our use) -- for no reasons other than (a) we still have one joining requirement for youth, a Scout Oath with the phrase "to do my duty to God and my country," which if you won't say (whatever you mean by God, we don't ask and don't care), then you can't join; and (b) we have leadership standards that say adult leaders' public reputation can be grounds for dismissal (and that applies to gay or straight, although you usually only hear about the gays removed from leadership -- Scouting will also yank adult leader status for heterosexual public misbehavior).

Anyhow, I raise all this because I think some shout-outs to Scouts will go over very well in The Corner today, and I ask for you to throw us a salute or two through this historic day! Scouting is England's best gift to America, in my opinion, and we all celebrated old Baden-Powell's achievement in August of 1907. I hope you can help us mark our national 100th around today.

Glad to help, Sir. I was a CCF grunt myself. It was a binary thing: you joined the Scouts, or the CCF. The Scouts envied our guns, we respected their wilderness skills. I'll admit we snickered at the uniform too; though looking back, we cadets probably looked pretty ridiculous ourselves, squeaking out parade-ground commands in regular army hand-me-down battledress three sizes too big. I've only written at length about scouting once, here. For the current dismal situation in New York City, see this news item from America's Newspaper of Record.

So as a lifelong Massachusetts Republican I appreciate the irony in these pictures. We sent Scott Brown to DC on Thursday and by the weekend hell really had frozen over.

Interrogators will not necessarily read detainees their rights before questioning, instead making that decision on a case-by-case basis, officials said. . . . "It’s not going to, certainly, be automatic in any regard that they are going to be Mirandized," one official said, referring to the practice of reading defendants their rights. "Nor will it be automatic that they are not Mirandized."

In other words, Republicans were assured by the Obama administration that the decision on reading Miranda rights to captured terrorists would be made a on “case-by-case” basis.

So if Brennan is wondering why the Republicans he spoke with did not just assume Abdumutallab would be automatically Mirandized, it is because the Obama administration told them so.

Of course, the HIG was not interrogating Abdulmutallab because -- despite all the fanfare with its announcement -- it had not yet been stood up. But how were Republicans to know that? Especially since Obama’s own director of national intelligence didn’t know that either?

The Times featured a good spread on the agreements between insurer AIG and investment firm Goldman Sachs that led to AIG's September 2008 downfall and the biggest Washington bailout in history.

Through private deals -- that is, financial instruments not traded on any exchange or other proper market -- AIG and Goldman decided starting in 2003 that if tens of billions of dollars' worth of mortgage-backed and related securities went south, AIG would pay Goldman in cash. Furthermore, the two parties decided that if AIG ever suffered a ratings downgrade, the insurer would have to pony up some cash, anyway.

Two takeaways:

Takeaway one. Goldman either made one very savvy bet and one very bad bet, or two very savvy bets, depending on your level of cynicism.

The less cynical view: Goldman bet that the mortgage market would tank -- and it also bet that when the mortgage market did tank, AIG would be able to make good on its promises. Goldman was right -- and wrong. If O. Henry had ever written a short story about credit-default swaps, it would look something like this version.

The more cynical view: Goldman bet that the mortgage market would tank. And the investment firm bet further that when AIG wouldn't be able to make good on its promises, the U.S. government, fearful that AIG's failure would create a Depression, would step in and guarantee AIG's obligations, including the billions of dollars it owed to Goldman.

Takeaway two. Takeaway number one doesn't matter, because the whole situation never should have happened, anyway. The only reason that private agreements between Goldman and AIG were able to take the world's economy hostage was that the trades went ungoverned by prudent, consistent rules meant to protect the economy from inevitable financial excesses.

Consider: AIG was able to make tens of billions of dollars' worth of potential promises -- a form of borrowing -- with no consistent cash down upfront. No properly governed securities markets would allow such a thing.

If AIG had had to put, say, 10 percent down at the outset, and to do its deals on an independent, transparent exchange rather than through murky private agreements, the insurer likely never would have made such reckless speculations. Someone in the AIG executive office would have said to the folks devising the deals, “hey, what are you doing with all of our cash?”

And even if AIG had decided to go ahead, the central exchange on which it consummated its trades would have had AIG's original deposit, along with similar deposits from a multitude of other investors, to cover some of AIG's potential losses if markets turned against the company. Global investors, too, would have known exactly where the residual risk lay -- at the exchange, not, potentially, at dozens of investment banks -- thus obviating the mass-scale panic and the bailout.

The whole discussion around AIG -- and it's been going on nearly 18 months now -- is thus somewhat surreal. It's akin to accident investigators saying, gee, the guys were driving with no licenses, blindfolds on, and no steering wheels, and managed to crash into each other. How could we avoid such a situation in the future?

Hmmm . . .

— Nicole Gelinas, contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal, is author of After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street — and Washington.

It would be a mistake to place too much importance on a single study of black middle-school students in Philadelphia, but the study appears to be sound and its findings are worth further exploration.

GOP candidate Steve Poizner, the state's insurance commissioner, first raised the issue in October, declaring that welfare should be a "transitional assistance program, not a permanent way of life." And last month Poizner's opponent, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, made welfare reform the subject of her first ad focusing on a single policy issue.

In the radio spot, Whitman picked up on a statistic also used by Poizner: California is home to 12 percent of the nation's people but more than 30 percent of its welfare recipients.

Apologists for the status quo argue that California, like other states, implemented welfare reform more than a decade ago and saw cash-assistance rolls drop by half. Yes -- but most states were able to reduce their welfare caseloads to a greater extent by developing and enforcing better rules. California has led the nation only in replacing dependency on cash welfare with dependency on other forms of welfare that never really got reformed in the first place, which is one factor driving its state budget off a cliff.

Dick Morris says Carly Fiorina is running a “fabulous” campaign:

Here are a couple of questions you can text to kgb.com: How many people did the real KGB murder? And what would they think of the capitalists who decided to name an information service after their murderers?

. . . so I always simply root for the underdog in games like this; therefore I’m absolutely thrilled by the Saints’ victory. Bonus: I can’t wait for the video showing Hitler’s reaction to Peyton Manning’s fourth-quarter interception.

The president chose an interview with Katie Couric, aired just hours before the Super Bowl, to extend the offer:

Obama challenged Republicans to come to the discussion armed with their best ideas for how to cover more Americans and fix the health insurance system.

"I want to consult closely with our Republican colleagues," Obama told Couric. "What I want to do is to ask them to put their ideas on the table... I want to come back and have a large meeting, Republicans and Democrats to go through, systematically, all the best ideas that are out there and move it forward."

The invitation to join him later this month follows comments he made on Thursday during a speech at a Democratic fundraiser in which he said he wanted to sit with Republicans and "walk through the [health care plans] in a methodical way so that the American people can see and compare what makes the most sense."

It also comes just weeks after the president received high marks for engaging the House Republicans in a televised, 90-minute discussion at their retreat in Baltimore. The president has been hammered by critics who said his year-long push to revamp the health care system did not live up to his campaign promise to conduct the debate in the open.

On Friday, I told ya so:

Obama is pegging the hopes for health-care reform on a big, televised victory over Republicans on the merits. It's a desperate but admittedly novel gambit. I just don't think it will materialize. For one thing, Obama has been explaining and explaining his bill for over a year now, over which time the polls have shown support fade in inverse proportion to the rhetoric. At the State of the Union, armed with the national stage, Obama waited 50 paragraphs to broach the subject of health care, and when he did he offered nothing new or game-changing.

For another, the Republicans would be foolish to let Democrats stake the fate of this zombie of a bill on a televised publicity stunt. For a year, Democrats have built this trillion-dollar entitlement — every sweetheart deals, every kickback, and every carve-out — in the cloakrooms of Washington. Now, at the moment when transparency is at its most valuable as politics and its least valuable as policy, the administration has found religion, complete with much public wailing and teeth-gnashing about how openness was sacrificed at the altar of efficacy.

Republicans shouldn't let Obama get away with this. The time for Republicans to demonstrate the superiority of a conservative approach for lowering health-care costs and expanding coverage is after Obamacare is defeated, once and for all.

While I don't see a way the Republicans can effectively boycott this meeting, there are probably a number of things they can do to reveal it as the dog-and-pony show it truly is -- just another whistle-stop on the permanent campaign. But as I said, for the past year, all the veto-players in this debate -- Senate Republicans and moderates, House Blue Dogs, and the American people most of all -- have had grave concerns with this bill, even as the Democrats have negotiated its most outrageous features far from the sunlight of public scrutiny. So I doubt even the most masterful of rhetorical performances from President Obama will change the prognosis of the bill -- reconciliation or bust -- but the very fact the White House is resorting to this strategem is a sign of just how few options they have left.

Welcome to the White House:

There's an ice-skating rink in front of the gates:

The snowcopalyse wouldn't keep pro-Iranian-democracy demonstrators away:

George has seen warmer days:

The sun is out:

But the snow is hanging tough:

Some trees in Lafayette Park aren't as resilent:

And they're not alone:

I'm retiring as a D.C. snow guide now; enjoy the game!

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According to this column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, “The biggest open secret in the landmark trial over same-sex marriage being heard in San Francisco is that the federal judge who will decide the case, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, is himself gay.”

In terms of his judicial performance in the anti-Proposition 8 case, the bottom-line question that matters isn’t whether Walker is straight or gay. It’s whether he is capable of ruling impartially. I have no reason to doubt that there are homosexuals who could preside impartially over this case, just as I have no reason to doubt that there are heterosexuals whose bias in favor of, or against, same-sex marriage would unduly skew their handling of the case.

From the outset, Walker’s entire course of conduct in the anti-Prop 8 case has reflected a manifest design to turn the lawsuit into a high-profile, culture-transforming, history-making, Scopes-style show trial of Prop 8’s sponsors. Consider his series of controversial -- and, in many instances, unprecedented -- decisions: 

Take, for example, Walker’s resort to procedural shenanigans and outright illegality in support of his fervent desire to broadcast the trial, in utter disregard of (if not affirmatively welcoming) the harassment and abuse that pro-Prop 8 witnesses would reasonably anticipate. Walker’s decision was ultimately blocked by an extraordinary (and fully warranted) stay order by the Supreme Court in an opinion that was plainly a stinging rebuke of Walker’s lack of impartiality. 

Take Walker’s failure to decide the case, one way or the other (as other courts have done in similar cases), as a matter of law and his concocting of supposed factual issues to be decided at trial. 

Take the incredibly intrusive discovery, grossly underprotective of First Amendment associational rights, that Walker authorized into the internal communications of the Prop 8 sponsors -- a ruling overturned, in part, by an extraordinary writ of mandamus issued by a Ninth Circuit panel consisting entirely of Clinton appointees. 

Take Walker’s insane and unworkable inquiry into the subjective motivations of the more than 7 million Californians who voted in support of Prop 8. 

Take Walker’s permitting a parade of anti-Prop 8 witnesses at trial who gave lengthy testimony that had no conceivable bearing on any factual or legal issues in dispute but who provided useful theater for the anti-Prop 8 cause. 

And so on. 

Walker’s entire course of conduct has only one sensible explanation: that Walker is hellbent to use the case to advance the cause of same-sex marriage. Given his manifest inability to be impartial, Walker should have recused himself from the beginning, and he remains obligated to do so now.

I get that it's a sort of "turnabout is fair play" from the set that must be very annoyed by now at all the prompter jokes. But it misses the point of why the prompter jokes have caught on. A prompter feeds your remarks to you word for word. The idea that you would need such a device to talk to a room full of sixth graders or a meeting of your own staff is funny.

On another level, the prompter jokes took off because they reinforce the substantive argument that Obama is in over his head, because they indicate that he can't perform the the presidency's basic public-speaking duties without a major safety net. I'm not sure what substantive argument Palin's hand-notes are supposed to underline, and I suspect it's not an argument so much as an attitude. The attitude would be that writing on your hand is dumb and low-class. On the left, where this opinion of Palin already prevails, anything which reinforces it will be picked up and cheerfully passed around. And, to the extent that anyone not on the left notices this giddy snobbery, it will play to Palin's strengths.

For example, one might say: "Unlike the guy who needs a three thousand dollar teleprompter to get out of bed in the morning, Palin speaks from concise notes like everybody else. And, like other busy moms, she sometimes writes notes on her hand." The comeback is so obvious that, again, I really can't figure out why Palin's detractors are bringing this up at all.

UPDATE: Within minutes of posting I received this e-mail:

What Republican needs a crib sheet to remember "Tax Cuts"? And who crosses out a mistake on their palm crib sheet?

The woman is a dunce.

And teleprompters are widely used. Reagan used them. Bush used them. It was always a brain dead criticism.

Score! And isn't it amazing how annoyed they are about the prompter jokes? Thank you, kind sir, for illustrating vividly everything I just wrote.

UPDATE II: A reader writes:

Hi Mr. Spruiell,

I think the "illegible" part you referred to in your post, as best I can tell, originally said "Corpsman."

Ha!

The Who's Pete Townshend, in an exclusive interview with Billboard, has revealed that the band's upcoming Super Bowl halftime performance will feature a "compact medley" of their signature classic-rock anthems.

"We're kinda doing a mashup of stuff," the guitarist tells Billboard. "A bit of 'Baba O'Riley,' a bit of 'Pinball Wizard,' a bit of the close of 'Tommy,' a bit of 'Who Are You,' and a bit of 'Won't Get Fooled Again.' It works -- it's quite a saga. A lot of the stuff that we do has that kind of celebratory vibe about it -- we've always tried to make music that allows the audience to go a bit wild if they want to. Hopefully it will hit the spot."

Nice year for the Saints, But, with two weeks to prepare for a defense that is okay but not much more, Peyton will be too much.�Super Bowls are sometimes weird because the better team never eases up�once it gets comfortably ahead. So, while I'd pick a lower score if it were a regular season game, I'm saying:�

Colts 51 - Saints 27.

And if you add up all those points, it still comes out way lower than the ages of the halftime show -- Roger Daltrey�65 - Pete Townsend 64. Let's hope there are no wardrobe malfunctions in this one.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin blasted the Obama administration on Saturday night during her 45-minute keynote address at the inaugural national “tea party” convention in Nashville. Palin said the president must “stop lecturing and start listening” and questioned whether Obama’s 2008 campaign theme was succeeding: “How’s that hopey-changey stuff working out for you?” she asked, to cheers. “It’s time they stop blaming everyone else.”

America is “ready for another revolution,” Palin said. The tea-party movement, she added, “is about the people” and “it’s a lot bigger than any charismatic guy with a teleprompter.” (Palin, interestingly, gave the speech without one.) The 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee also urged the GOP “to absorb as much of the Tea Party as possible.” The Tea Party, she said, “is the future of politics.” It is “inspiring,” she said, “to see real people, not politicos, inside-the-beltway professionals, come out, stand up, and speak out for commonsense conservative principles.” In a sign of her support, Palin pledged to give her compensation from the appearance (reportedly $100,000) “right back to the cause.”

Palin began her speech by saying “happy birthday” to former president Ronald Reagan, who would have been 99 years old on Saturday. She then gave “a special shout-out to America’s newest senator,” Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.). “He looked around and he saw things just weren’t quite right in Washington,” Palin said, admiringly. “He stood up and he decided that he was going to do his part to put our government back on the side of the people. And it took guts, and it took a lot of hard work. But with grassroots support, Scott Brown carried the day.”

Brown’s upset, Palin said, is part of a “beautiful movement” of conservatives winning important elections across America, pointing to Republican gubernatorial wins in New Jersey and Virginia last year as examples. “If there is hope in Massachusetts, there is hope everywhere,” she said. “His victory is a sign of more good things to come.” Obama, she chided, is now “0 and 3” in major elections in the past year. Looking ahead, Palin added that the GOP should not be afraid of contested primaries, saying such contests are “how we’re going to find the cream of the crop to face a challenger in the general.”

On policy matters, Palin’s speech was wide-ranging. She spoke out in favor of a “pro-market agenda” and tax cuts. “Get government out of the way,” she said. “If they would do this, our economy would roar back to life.” On health care, Palin criticized the special deals in the Senate, railing against the “Cornhusker Kickback” and the “Louisiana Purchase.” A bipartisan bill, with tort reform, she said, is needed, as is a “start over” on negotiations. She also praised Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.) for “standing up” for the sanctity of life during the health-care debate and joked about how C-SPAN was “welcome” to cover the tea party, but not welcome to broadcast the White House and congressional deliberations.

When it came to fiscal policy, Palin called President Obama’s proposed 2011 budget “immoral” for heaping trillions onto the national debt. Increasing the deficit, she said, is “generational theft,” “makes us less free,” and “should tick us off.” Kill the “second stimulus,” she advised, and “beware that it is being billed as a jobs bill.” Palin also criticized the administration for being unable to handle multiple policy issues simultaneously: “If you can’t ride two horses at once, you shouldn’t be in the circus,” she said, to laughs.

National-security issues featured prominently. “National security -- that’s one place where you got to call it like it is,” Palin said. She expressed displeasure at the “disturbing” way in which the Obama administration treated the failed Christmas bomb plot of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab -- as a “crime spree” and not as an “act of war.” That kind of thinking, she said, is what helped lead to September 11.

“Treating this like a mere law-enforcement matter places our country at great risk because that’s not how radical Islamic extremists are looking at this,” Palin said. “They know we’re at war, and to win that war we need a commander in chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.” The administration, she worried, uses “misguided thinking” and believes that foreign policy can be “managed through the politics of personality.”

Palin also called for more open dialogue about God in America during a question-and-answer session following the speech. “America’s spirit,” she said, can “rise again by not being afraid to kind of go back to some of our roots as a God-fearing nation where we're not afraid to say -- especially in times of potential trouble in the future -- you know, we don’t have all the answers. As fallible men and women, it would be wise of us to start seeking some divine intervention again in this country, so that we can be safe and secure and prosperous again.” The country, she said, needs politicians unafraid “to go that route, not so afraid of the political correctness . . . to proclaim their alliance to our Creator.”

Andrew Breitbart, the founder of BigGovernment.com, introduced Palin. Her remarks were carried live by C-SPAN and all three major cable-news networks and covered by 240 journalists at the convention hall. When Palin bounded onto the stage, and when she left it, chants of “Run, Sarah, Run” could be heard throughout the audience. On her lapel, Palin wore a small pin with two flags -- for Israel and the United States.

Maybe we can finish the season by playing outside, like the NHL at Wrigley and Fenway.

UPDATE: I've posted a couple of photos on my website.

Journalists are wont to moan that the slow death of newspapers will mean a disastrous loss of investigative reporting. The web is all very well, they say, but who will pay for the tenacious sniffing newshounds to flush out the real story? ‘Climategate’ proves the opposite to be true. It was amateur bloggers who scented the exaggerations, distortions and corruptions in the climate establishment; whereas newspaper reporters, even after the scandal broke, played poodle to their sources.

Mr. Ridley credits various British, Canadian, and American bloggers, and then makes this observation:

Notice that all of these sceptic bloggers are self-employed businessmen. Their strengths are networks and feedback: mistakes get quickly corrected; new leads are opened up; expertise is shared; links are made.

The correcting mechanisms of competitive businesses are largely alien to America's unreadable monodailies, which is why they'll be extinct long before the polar bear. As an example of what Matt Ridley's talking about, consider this piece designed to prop up the increasingly discredited IPCC from ABC Australia's Margot O'Neill. It's a simulacrum of reporting rather than the real thing. It has quotes from impressive sounding experts, but, as Mr. Ridley put it above, she is playing "poodle to her sources":

Here is how Queensland University's Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a world expert on coral reefs and climate change, describes what happened when he contributed a small slice of the 2007 IPCC report:

"The IPCC has one of the most rigorous review processes I have ever experienced. There are various stages of review. The first round involves the working groups picking over the text (hundreds of eyes and qualified expert opinions). If you have been involved in this process, it is a quite an experience which takes months and years - involving a lot of pedantic haggling over detail - but always using the peer-reviewed literature as the base . . ."

And on he yaks, in great detail. Like all the poodles of the environmental beat, Margot O'Neill repeats those magic words "peer review" every couple of paragraphs like a talisman to ward off evil deniers. But, in the course of invoking the phrase "peer review," she never bothers to look at whether the IPCC actually does it. By contrast, without benefit of the resources of a national TV news operation plus salary and benefits, lone blogger Donna Laframboise did a couple of text searches on the IPCC report and discovered multiple predictions of doom -- on Himalayan glacier melt and much else -- resting not on peer-reviewed science but merely on activist groups such as the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace. Miss Laframboise writes:

Nothing prevented Ms. O'Neil from taking a firsthand look at the IPCC report herself. She, like me, could have typed "WWF" (which stands for the activist group, the World Wildlife Fund) into a search box and found the 16 distinct WWF citations in the IPCC's 2007 report. Within a few minutes she could also have found the eight Greenpeace papers listed. . . .

Instead, Ms. O'Neill -- who has 25 years experience as a journalist -- was utterly bamboozled by the PR machine which is the IPCC. She fell for their slick mirage. And then she passed it along to her viewers and readers.

For good measure, Miss Laframboise points out that Margot O'Neill was either suckered by or consciously misrepresented her expert witness:

In the process she might have noticed that one of her scientific experts -- Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg (whom she quoted as saying: "I don't think you could have a more rigorous process") -- is a co-author of one of those non-peer-reviewed Greenpeace papers.

The poodles are heading for the endangered species list, and deservedly so.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's nonvoting representative in the U.S. House, said Democrats would continue to keep up the fight.

"They underestimated us four years ago when we took back the Congress," she said. "They underestimated Barack Obama when he took back the White House. The fight is on. Never underestimate Democrats."

BECK: Rick Santorum is going to be here. Am I gonna get a chance to see
Rick Santorum? I'd like to. That guy could be President.

CO-HOST: He'd be my pick.

BECK: He would be my pick, too, I think.

CO-HOST:� If I could pick from anybody, and every time we say this, the
only one that comes to mind is Rick Santorum.

BECK: See if we can talk to Rick Santorum today.

The meeting isn't happening because Santorum wound up snowbound in the D.C. area.

A helpful aide might get Beck the senator's number -- he could have him on his TV show, they do work for the same network and all.

It's clear what season it is outside of the Four Seasons:

He's happy, he's got a ride:

This boy walked away announcing that he wanted ice cream:

Men@work:

Some added camoflauge:

These cars won't be moving anytime soon:

Don't Luk here for oil:

Snow won't get in the way of joggers:

But many trees have buckled under the pressure:

You'll be waiting a long while for a bus here:

There are many more detours today than this sign lets on:

This kid came prepared:

And he's not alone:

Good luck getting to the Post:

It's Friday's edition anyway:

The real emergency: The market is open but completely out of trimmed leeks:

And you're out of luck if you're looking for Ethiopian food:

You can't see him, but St. Stephen is being martyred by snow:

It's an emergency for some. For others, there's ginger butternut squash available:

I come from something relatively rare: an old Washington family -- I mean, an old Washington, D.C., family. (I guess old Washington State families are rare too.) Washington is a transient town, or at least it used to be: People came, served in government, then left. The Nordlingers have been there since 1865 (not in government -- almost never in government). Why am I boring you with this? I saw a headline on Drudge: “Multiple Roof Collapses Around Region.” This provoked a memory. A terrible, terrible snowstorm in 1922 caused the roof of the Knickerbocker Theatre to collapse. About 100 people were killed. According to my grandmother, everyone claimed, for years, to have been there the night before.

The new National Review Book Service offers hundreds of conservative titles, DVDs, and unique gift ideas.

This is the table on my back deck:

Gay, Mentally Challenged Biracial Male Cheerleader Claims Discrimination

He was allowed to join the high-school cheerleading team but was not given a set of pom-poms and was prevented from wiggling his hips. So naturally he wants Washington to take political action. This sounds like a job for Harry Reid and Rahm Emmanuel, with their well documented interest in biracial males and the mentally challenged.

Today marks the 99th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth. In a telling development, Republicans around the country have begun holding Reagan Day dinners, as they’ve long traditionally done every February for Abraham Lincoln. This is yet another spontaneous display of affection for Reagan.

Having written so much on the man, I get lots of questions about Reagan this time of year, running the gamut from his domestic achievements to his historic foreign-policy triumph: peacefully ending the Cold War. Sometimes I get asked for unreported anecdotes reflecting on his personality and character. I have a bunch of those, which were eagerly shared with me by people who met Reagan (he talked to anyone) or were dug up from the thousands of letters Reagan wrote to everyday Americans over a long lifetime. (See my NRO article on Reagan and Ruth Smith of Idaho.)

Reagan was just plain likable. Of all the subjects I’ve studied, few were as universally liked. Sure, Reagan, as president, was demonized by the Left, but that’s what the Left does: indecent, ugly rage. Still, even most liberals muster nice words about Reagan personally.

Central to that likability was Reagan’s humility. The word “I” didn’t dominate his conversation, unless he was poking fun at himself. He was no narcissist. Ronald Reagan was not full of pride; he was thoroughly unpossessed of self-love.

And so, with that background, I’d like to take the opportunity presented by Reagan’s time of year -- not to mention the month of Presidents’ Day -- to share an anecdote that was told to me by Bill Clark, Reagan’s close friend and most significant adviser.

At the time this happened, Clark was serving as Reagan’s national-security adviser. He had previously been deputy secretary of state, and would later be appointed secretary of the interior. His driver all this time was a man named Joe Bullock, a Georgia native who had moved to Washington during the Great Depression. Joe was a victim of the cruel Jim Crow laws that afflicted the South. He went to Washington for a better life.

Joe first found employment as a mule driver. He eventually began chauffeuring various senior people in the federal government, some of whom, including a high-level figure in the Carter administration, didn’t treat him well; in fact, that previous cabinet secretary didn’t speak a word to Joe in three years.

Thus, Joe was taken aback when Bill Clark not only talked to him, asking questions about his life and family, but also asked whether he could sit up front. Clark rode shotgun with Joe, drawing more than a few stares and safety concerns as well, since Clark, given his influence in national security, was a target of America’s enemies.

One morning, Clark’s father visited Washington. He hit it off with Joe. Clark’s father was a rancher, a man of the West. He gave Joe a gift: a Western-style belt, with a kind of “John Wayne belt buckle,” as Clark described it. Joe loved it, proudly displaying it by always leaving his blue suit-jacket unbuttoned.

That belt soon assumed a life of its own. A state visit by England’s Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip was upcoming, and protocol demanded that the White House provide gifts. Clark, Reagan, and a few others brainstormed following a morning briefing. For Philip, Clark suggested a “Western belt.” He had one in mind, made by Si Jenkins, a Santa Barbara friend of both Clark and the president. (Reagan, too, was a California rancher.)

“Well, what does it look like?” asked Reagan. Clark noted he had a model in the car: Joe, who was wearing the belt. “Send him up,” ordered the president. They called for Joe, who entered via the door of Reagan’s secretary.

Joe had worked for the federal government for half a century, but had never been within 50 yards of the Oval Office. He walked in. He saw Clark, Vice President Bush, the senior aides, and the president of the United States. He was in awe, overcome. Suddenly, this tough six-foot-four man began weeping: He had come so far since Jim Crow and the Great Depression. He was choked up.

No one in the room was prepared for that reaction. They were dead silent, uncomfortable, unable to respond -- except for Ronald Reagan. The president rose, walked over to the driver, extended his hand, breathed in, and said matter-of-factly, “Mr. Bullock, I understand you have a belt to show me?”

It was an “everyman” touch. And it put old Joe immediately at ease. Business-like, Joe showed the belt, and then he and Reagan began swapping stories, chatting away like old friends.

“The rest of us just faded away,” said Bill Clark, “as the two got along famously.” President and driver, remembering the old days.

Bullock left with a story to tell his fellow drivers, and his grandchildren. He died a few years later.

No, this anecdote is nothing dramatic. It’s not like challenging Gorbachev to tear down the wall. It’s simply another of many small stories I hear constantly about Ronald Reagan. This was a good president and a good man. The White House needs more of them. That’s a thought worth bearing in mind this February.

-- Paul Kengor is professor of political science at Grove City College. His books include The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan's Top Hand, God and Ronald Reagan, and The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism.

Last year,�79 crimes against Jewish residents were reported to the Malm� police, roughly double the number reported in 2008. In addition, Jewish cemeteries and synagogues have been repeatedly defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, and a chapel at another Jewish burial site in Malm� was firebombed�last January during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

In the United Kingdom, "Record Number Of Anti-Semitic Attacks":

They included an incident in which a Jewish man driving an electric wheelchair was rammed by a car after leaving a synagogue. The driver shouted ''Jew, Jew'' at him but he escaped with minor injuries.

In Yorkshire, strips of bacon were arranged in the shape of a star of David and stuck the fence of a home where a Jewish family lived with the word ''Jewboy'' written underneath.

A 12-year-old girl, the only Jew at her school, was attacked by a mob of up to 20 fellow pupils who pulled her hair and chanted: ''death to Jews, kill all Jews.''

And in Germany, just because you got rid of all the Jews, why deny yourself the pleasures of Jew-hating?

The leader of Germany's opposition Green party, Cem Oezdemir, who has Turkish roots�himself, calls it a form of "anti-Semitism without Jews."

"These young Muslims are often people who don't know any Jews in person," Oezdemir said. "Their radical views stem from an over-identification with the Middle East conflict, from parents who are willing to employ all the well-known Jew-related cliches, and from schools that don't know how to tackle the problem in classes full of students with migrant backgrounds."

But Abe Foxman thinks Rush Limbaugh is the problem . . .

Make sure to read Reihan’s excellent post on the misunderstanding of Rep. Paul Ryan’s roadmap. While the plan has critics on the right and left, it also appears to be unloved, at least publicly, by the House GOP leadership:

“Paul Ryan, who’s the ranking member on our budget committee, has done an awful lot of work in putting together his roadmap,” Boehner said. “But it’s his. And I know the Democrats are trying to say that it’s the Republican leadership. But they know that's not the case.”

Understandably, Boehner is worried about Ryan’s roadmap being portrayed by Democrats as “the symbol” of how “Republicans would dismantle the social safety net if the GOP took control of Congress.” Yet Boehner admits that off the top of his head, he “couldn’t tell you” what about Ryan’s plan he disagrees with. The House GOP seems comfortable with Ryan as their lone wolf on the budget and wary about him being grouped with the Boehner-Cantor-Pence leadership group.

Ryan noted this dynamic in an interview with Ross Douthat:

At the same time, [Ryan] allowed that “the problem in the minority [is that] you sometimes revert into a posture where ‘I don’t have to do anything controversial, I just can be against that and win by default.’ I’m not interesting in winning by default. And I’m worried that if we get the majority back by default, we’ll screw up again.” And when I brought up Republican politicians who have embraced a “Medicare now, Medicare forever” approach to critiquing the Obama health care proposals, Ryan turned grim in a hurry. “I don’t do that,” he said sharply. “I don’t do that.”

For now, this honesty leaves him in a relatively lonely position — both within his party, and in Washington more generally. (The Obama plan for long-term fiscal solvency is … to appoint a commission charged with proposing plans for long-term fiscal solvency.) “I’m trying to encourage people to jump in the pool with me,” Ryan said ruefully. “I’m in there alone right now.”

Beyond the details of Ryan’s plan or its politics is the larger point. As Ryan told me earlier this week, Obama’s budget “is about more than specific programs or policies — it is really about the American idea, and whether we want to move towards a European-style welfare state.” The roadmap, he said, is part of offering voters “a choice of two futures” and detailing, in policy terms, how the GOP believes that “the individual is the nucleus of American life, and [Democrats] see the government in that role.” That’s the true importance of his plan.

You benefit from Wal-Mart whether you shop there or not.

In most goods and services there are very few active consumers. What happens is, everybody selling a good is affected by Wal-Mart. You benefit from that wherever you are. So many of those who oppose consumer-driven health care use the perfect as the enemy of the good. You’re not going to shop for health care if you’re hit by a bus. That’s not the point. The point is you’re served in a health-care system that’s been tightened up, both from a cost and quality point of view, by the fact that some consumers, for many procedures, are shopping around, and not just on price.

The reality is that if I’d known what I know about this hospital, it’s not where I would have put my father. It’s not that I would have been able to discover that when he got sick. It’s that in the same way that I can find out about almost any business that I choose, their quality record and their pricing, I want the same thing for health care. It doesn’t mean that if you’re hit by a bus you pick up the phone and call ten hospitals.

And I think this misunderstanding of how consumer economies actually work is crucial to a mistake that’s made a lot, which is that it’s much better to have some big, financially interested institution make a decision on your behalf because you’re not smart enough. You don’t have to be smart enough to get the best deal on most things in our economy, because some people care enough to create the Wal-Marts of the world. And that’s all that happens, is that once there’s a Wal-Mart, you’d better be competitive with Wal-Mart, or you’re out of business.

MOST CANDIDATES for local office in Montgomery County covet the endorsement of the county teachers union more than any other, and all of them know the drill: Appear at union events, fill out the union questionnaire, submit to the union interview. The union, representing 11,000 teachers, helpfully provides a road map to candidates seeking its blessing, including 11 criteria spelled out in painstaking detail online. Just one thing is missing from this handy guide: Candidates who receive the union's stamp of approval are also then expected to pay.

As far as we know, this arrangement is unique; in elections elsewhere, unions and other special interests contribute to candidates, not vice versa. But such is the overweening power of the teachers union in Montgomery that the usual rules are turned upside down. And it's no coincidence that the union's toxic influence in local elections is matched by its success in squeezing unaffordable concessions from the county in contract negotiations -- at taxpayers' expense.

Dear Rich:

I read your article, For Government, Let the Good Times Roll.

Check out this spreadsheet from the Sacbee.

http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/the_state_worker/2009/09/see-pre--and-post-furlough-sta.html

Access the controller's month-by-month data by clicking here.

Here's the State of Ca's head count (full time only) as of August 2009:

Here's the State of CA's head count (full time only) as of Dec. 2006: 196,762

These numbers are located at the bottom of the respective tabs.

Although CA is essentially bankrupt, it has added almost 20,000 full time employees between 12/06 and 08/09.

p.s. although the tab shows Jan-June 2009, the spreadsheet indicates the 215,084 number above is from August 2009 pay period.

Conservatives have a number of opportunities for victories in 2010, but none is more important than the chance to defeat Senate majority leader Harry Reid. We must rally behind the right candidate to ensure that we not only defeat Reid but also gain a solid conservative senator. That candidate is Sue Lowden.

I have known Sue and her family for years. I know that she has the fortitude to take on Reid and withstand the onslaught that he and his allies will unleash against her. More importantly, I know that she has strong conservative principles rooted in her personal faith and her belief in free-market ideals. (Sue recently spoke with a group of Nevada tea-party activists.) She is a proven leader with a track record of success, who has earned every opportunity she has had. Many don’t realize that Sue is the daughter of a former coal miner. She and her husband both come from humble backgrounds but have succeeded in business through smart decisions and hard work, not through government handouts or their family name.

In 1992, Lowden won election to the Nevada state senate by defeating the incumbent senate majority leader. Her victory ended Democrats’ control of the chamber, and Sue’s colleagues immediately elected her senate majority whip.

Because of her strong fiscal-conservative principles, Lowden later served as chair of the taxation committee. When pro-tax legislators tried to push through higher taxes, she blocked their efforts. Her panel became known as the “no-taxation” committee. Lowden fought against higher taxes in the state senate, and she will fight against higher taxes in the U.S. Senate.

Today, labor bosses continue their efforts to kill a union member’s right to cast his vote privately without the bosses looking over his shoulder. Will we have a conservative U.S. senator with the fortitude to stand up to them? As a state senator, Lowden cast the deciding vote in the Nevada state senate to protect Nevada’s right-to-work status. She has had unions picket her home and businesses, but she has withstood their onslaught. Lowden will stand with conservatives against union bosses in the U.S. Senate.

On issue after issue, we know where Sue Lowden stands because she has been elected to office and championed conservative principles. She earned the endorsement of the NRA in her race for state senate. She is one of the original architects of Nevada’s charter-school law. As a pro-life advocate, she fought for parental-notification laws. Through her personal family experiences and decades of work with children with muscular dystrophy and Jerry’s Kids, I know Lowden values life. I know she will be a pro-life U.S. senator.

Lowden proudly signed the Americans for Tax Reform Pledge the week she announced her Senate campaign. She has pledged to join Senate conservatives to fight for earmark reform and tax and spending cuts. She is staunchly opposed to taxpayer funding of abortion. Lowden has stated that she would not have voted for President Bush’s TARP bill and is a strong opponent of the “stimulus” bill passed earlier this year. She was the first candidate running against Harry Reid to sign the Club for Growth’s pledge, and she has also signed the Americans for Prosperity anti-climate  tax pledge.

Some conservatives have chosen to support Danny Tarkanian for the Nevada GOP Senate nomination. I say to my friends that they are mistaken in their support for the son of the former UNLV basketball coach. Tarkanian has used his campaign to falsely attack Lowden and try to trick us into believing that she isn’t conservative enough. If Sue Lowden isn’t conservative enough to be a leader in the conservative movement, than neither was Ronald Reagan.

As I’ve listened to Tarkanian ignore the facts and twist Sue’s words, I’ve been reminded of Reagan, who once spoke of what he called “the 11th Commandment”: Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican. Reagan’s words highlight the contrast between Tarkanian’s rhetoric and Lowden’s conservative principles. It’s clear which candidate is best equipped to represent Reagan’s conservative movement.

I know that Sue Lowden is the proven conservative we can and should rally behind. Others do too. In the last quarter of 2009, Lowden raised more than twice as much money as Tarkanian. In fact, she raised more money in her first quarter in the race than he raised in the past two quarters combined. We all know that it will take significant resources to defeat Harry Reid -- and defeating him with a legitimate, tested conservative is our ultimate goal.

Reid is hoping that Tarkanian wins the Republican primary. While Lowden knows what it takes to be successful, Tarkanian has been on the ballot in two of the last three election cycles and failed to win both times. In his last campaign, he earned the endorsement of Sarah Brady and the Brady Campaign because of his liberal positions on the Second Amendment. Instead of taking responsibility for his stance on gun rights, Tarkanian claims it wasn’t his fault.

This is a critical moment when we must have the good judgment to stand behind the right conservative candidates who can win in November. There is a great uprising coming from the American people. We are ready to work and ready to earn real change, not only in government but also in the direction our economy and our country are headed. There is no better leader to join us in this effort than Sue Lowden -- the right candidate to defeat Harry Reid.

-- Saul Anuzis has been a conservative activist for much of his adult life, including serving in leadership positions in the fight against card-check legislation at American Solutions. He is former chairman of the Michigan Republican party.

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