Showing posts with label National Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Review. Show all posts

Saturday, September 5, 2015

So, What About the Clerk Who Won’t Issue Concealed-Carry Permits?

Throughout the online battles over Kim Davis, the counterfactual I’m most presented with is along the lines of the following: “You wouldn’t support or respect a clerk who refuses to issue concealed-carry permits, so why do you support Davis?” I have two thoughts in response. 

First, I do — in fact — respect genuine conscientious objections, even when I disagree. While I obviously wouldn’t agree on substance with the clerk’s stance on handguns and the Second Amendment, my response would depend to a great degree on the real-world effect of the clerk’s actions. If the situation is truly analogous to the Davis case, then I’d simply drive 20 extra minutes to get my carry permit then work to defeat the dissenting clerk in the next election. I may also try to impeach them (depending on the political environment). If I had no way to obtain a handgun without the clerk’s assistance, then the situation is dramatically different — necessitating immediate legal action with escalating penalties for noncompliance. Critically, however, jail is the last resort, not the first resort, for conscientious objection, and courts have broad powers to craft equitable remedies that vindicate constitutional rights without resort to imprisonment. In Kentucky, Judge Bunning’s focus was on punishing Davis, not granting marriage licenses.  


Second, while I generally respect conscientious objection, I reject the notions that all objections are equivalently meritorious. Indeed, American law has long distinguished among various types of conscientious objections, protecting some more than others. A state official who objects to protecting enumerated constitutional liberties is hardly in the same position as a person objecting to facilitating a “right” five justices created out of whole cloth (historically speaking) five minutes ago. If one can’t see the difference in those propositions, then we should just give up on public discourse entirely because reason and logic no longer matter. So, no, supporting Davis does not mean that I “have to” support any other clerk or government official who’s defying a court order. Give me their reasons, and I’ll give you my opinion.



Sunday, August 30, 2015

The Data Destroyers


Government fears accountability above all. 

A few weeks ago, the California education department did a peculiar thing: It scrubbed historical data about standardized-test scores from its public DataQuest website. This being a government agency, it immediately began to lie to the public about why it had done this.

California law forbids using comparisons between different tests to set policy or evaluate programs. This makes sense: If last year 40 percent of students received 85th-percentile ratings on a standardized test and then this year 70 percent of students received 85th-percentile ratings on a different standardized test, it is likely that the radical difference is in the test, not in students’ performance. 

The law, however, says not one word about making historical test-score data available to the public or suppressing that data. Naturally, California then cooked up a new lie: The data hadn’t been deleted at all, the education department said, simply moved to another part of the website. That might be technically true, inasmuch as the data was no longer available on the section of the website where — get this — historical data about test scores is published; the department says it was still made available to researchers. 

That’s one definition of public service: making it more difficult for citizens to access information about their government, obstructing informed democracy, and being a general pain in the Trump. RELATED: The Obama Administration’s Newly Political Approach to FOIAs All that was really required was an asterisk. California is changing its standardized-testing practices to bring itself into alignment with Common Core standards. 

The results from the new tests will not be comparable to the old ones on a point-by-point basis. What actually seems to have happened here is that the California department of education was worried that the old data and the new data would be used to make invalid comparisons. Which is to say, the people who run California’s schools have put forward the self-indicting thesis that Californians are too stupid to understand the issue. They should know.


Tuesday, August 25, 2015

The Democrats: Too Old and Too White?

Leftwingers’ taunts in 2008 and 2012 have come back to haunt them. 


In the jubilation of the Obama election victories of 2008 and 2012, the Left warned Republicans that the party of McCain and Romney was now “too old, too white, too male — and too few.” Columnists between 2008 and 2012 ad nauseam berated Republicans on the grounds that their national candidates “no longer looked like America.” The New York Times stable crowed that the Republicans of 2008 were “all white and nearly all male” — not too long before McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running-mate. In reaction to the defeats of McCain and Romney, Salon and Harper’s ran stories on the “Grand Old White Party” and “Angry White Men.”

For Democratic progressives, Hawaiian Barack Obama could not be of mixed ancestry and decidedly middle class, but simply “black” or “African American” — as if he had shared the Jim Crow experience of Clarence Thomas. Nor was there any allowance that race itself had become hard to sort into neat categories in a nation of immigration, intermarriage, and assimilation, in which millions of Americans were one-half this and one-quarter that. Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King proved that well enough by successfully constructing themselves as white for quite a long time. 



Liberals had reversed the vision of Martin Luther King Jr.: The color of our skin, not the content of our character, is what matters. Superficial appearance, the ossified politics of the tribe — the curse of the world outside the United States, where corpses have piled up in the Balkans, Rwanda, and Iraq — alone mattered. Identity politics dictated that a shrinking white insular conservative party lacked the Democrats’ “inclusiveness” and “commitment to diversity.” Icons like Barack Obama were what mattered.



Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Obama: Earning Contempt, at Home and Abroad

president getting off air force one - Google Search
From Thucydides’s Athens to 21st-century America, appeasement is not a winner. 

The common bond among the various elements of the failed Obama foreign policy — from reset with Putin to concessions to the Iranians — is a misreading of human nature. The so-called Enlightened mind claims that the more rationally and deferentially one treats someone pathological, the more likely it is that he will respond and reform — or at least behave. The medieval mind, within us all, claims the opposite is more likely to be true. 


Read Gerhard Weinberg’s A World at Arms or Richard Overy’s 1939, for an account of the negotiations preceding World War II, and you will find that an underappreciated theme emerges: the autocratic accentuation of the human tendency to interpret concession and empathy not as magnanimity to be reciprocated, but rather as weakness to be exploited or as a confession of culpability worthy of contempt.

The more Britain’s Chamberlain and France’s Daladier in 1938 genuinely sought to reassure Hitler of their benign intentions, the more the Nazi hierarchy saw them as little more than “worms” — squirming to appease the stronger spirit. Both were seen as unsure of who they were and what they stood for, ready to forfeit the memory of the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of their own on the false altar of a supposedly mean and unfair Versailles Treaty. 



Hitler perversely admired Stalin after the latter liquidated a million German prisoners, and hated FDR, whose armies treated German POWs with relative humanity. In matters big and small, from Sophocles’ Antigone to Shakespeare’s King Lear, we see the noble and dutiful treated worse by their beneficiaries than the duplicitous and traitorous. Awareness of this pernicious trait is not cynical encouragement to adopt such pathologies and accept our dog-eat-dog world. Rather, in the postmodern, high-tech 21st century, we sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we have evolved to a higher level than what Thucydides saw at Melos or Corcyra — a conceit that is dangerous for the powerful and often fatal for the weaker.



Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Is Hillary above the Law?


Hillary Clinton is in trouble. Or more accurately put, she should be in trouble — very big trouble, in fact. The latest from the Department of Justice is that, yes, they have seized Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server and an accompanying thumb drive. The FBI has reportedly confiscated copies of the same e-mails from Hillary’s lawyer because it deemed the information contained in them too sensitive for him to keep.

While attempting to defend the indefensible, a Clinton spokesman said that this merely shows that the former secretary of state is cooperating with a “security inquiry.” That pathetic spin was meant to prevent the American people from recognizing there is not just smoke but fire to the Hillary e-mail scandal. Too late. Already, the flames are visible. The most damning revelation about Hillary’s e-mails from the last 24 hours is not the details of the investigation into her homebrew server. What’s making headlines across the political spectrum is that some of the material she sent via her personal server was so sensitive that it was designated “Top Secret.” This is a jaw-slaps-the-table moment. 


Even for those of us who hold a very low opinion of Mrs. Clinton’s character, integrity, and judgment, this is a graver offense than many had contemplated. Merely the storage of “Top Secret” e-mails – never mind their dissemination over open channels to some individuals likely not cleared to read them — is a federal felony. On top of that, it is unthinkable that Hillary could have sent such sensitive information and not known at the time that it was sensitive. RELATED: Hillary’s E-mails Contained Classified Information — Hold Her Accountable  She knew what she was doing, and she knew what was at stake. When you are dealing with classified material, information security — “InfoSec” — is not a game. There are good reasons for the laws that protect the data. “Top Secret” is a term we are all familiar with from the pop-culture spy world, but it has very specific implications. 

A “TS” designation means that “exceptionally grave injury” could be expected to befall the United States should that information be disclosed to unauthorized personnel. 

Hillary had a sacred duty to exercise proper caution and protect classified material in her possession by keeping it within proper channels. Keep in mind that Hillary Clinton’s obligation as a U.S. government official with classified access went far beyond the need to avoid intentional disclosure to foreign powers (which is espionage). We are talking about a Cabinet-level appointee — one with almost total access to sensitive national-security information and who is responsible for the safety and security of thousands of State Department employees all over the world. She must set an example for other government employees. I’ve seen CIA interns with more security sense than Madame Secretary had.

 Hillary had a sacred duty to exercise proper caution and protect classified material in her possession by keeping it within proper channels. Lives were quite literally at stake. Instead, she created her own little digital-information clearinghouse — for herself and even for some employees – and, at a minimum, exposed critical national-security information to foreign penetration. 





Tuesday, August 4, 2015

This Housing Bubble Will End Badly, Too

We’ve inflated another bubble; count on the crash. People complain about high prices when they’re buying, not when they’re selling, and that’s why housing bubbles are always politically popular: The sort of people who own homes are the sort of people who vote and volunteer on political campaigns and make donations. And the fact that tax revenue tends to increase as housing prices rise doesn’t go unnoticed by the nation’s mayors and governors. Renters tend to have more sensible views — you’ll never hear a renter say, “Hey, my rent is doubling this year — that’s awesome! The economy must be doing great!” But nobody listens to them. 


And that’s why we’ve inflated a second housing bubble.

In some ways, the current housing bubble is even more bonkers than the last one — which, if you’ll recall, sorta-kinda almost destroyed the world’s financial system. 


As of this writing, the median U.S. home price is just 3 percent shy of its 2007 peak. (Existing-home prices already are at a record high.) But that does not even begin to capture the story. In San Francisco, the median price of a single-family home has doubled since 2012. The median San Francisco home is now nearly $1.4 million, or 50 percent higher than it was at the peak of the last bubble. The median household income in San Francisco is about $77,000. Put another way: The median home price in San Francisco is now 18 times the median household income. 


Does that sound like a stable position to you? 

Via: National Review


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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

WHINOs, RINOs, Donald Trump, Bright, Shiny Objects, and The Intervention.

In the tech industry, many of us refer to a lot of the new technologies that come down the line as “bright, shiny objects” – things that tech people look at that are new and potentially interesting but rarely turn out to be anything other than an attention-grabber and a distraction from more important things.  Applied to the election season, this should sound familiar.  But if you’re missing the analogy..here’s a reality-check, people: Donald Trump is this week’s bright, shiny object, and he is not going to amount to anything but a couple of magazine covers and some (once again) very disappointed, misguided individuals who thought he was The Great Conservative Hope.
I don’t like “National Review” much, given the social liberal bent they often display. Right now, though, they seem to be on a tear.  And I do like two of the NR writers quite a lot: Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson. They’re great writers, solid conservatives, and are virtually always spot on target. Williamson is more of a libertarian than most, but he doesn’t let it get in the way of his intellect…. ;-)This past weekend, both Goldberg and Williamson addressed the blonde-haired (toupee’d) gnat that is Donald Trump. Let’s take a look at how they characterize Trump and the Trump-pets (Jonah’s term for the fans of this election season’s allegedly conservative, GOP-wannabe bright, shiny object). Goldberg starts off:
I don’t like “National Review” much, given the social liberal bent they often display. Right now, though, they seem to be on a tear.  And I do like two of the NR writers quite a lot: Jonah Goldberg and Kevin Williamson. They’re great writers, solid conservatives, and are virtually always spot on target. Williamson is more of a libertarian than most, but he doesn’t let it get in the way of his intellect…. ;-)This past weekend, both Goldberg and Williamson addressed the blonde-haired (toupee’d) gnat that is Donald Trump. Let’s take a look at how they characterize Trump and the Trump-pets (Jonah’s term for the fans of this election season’s allegedly conservative, GOP-wannabe bright, shiny object). Goldbergstarts off:
There have been times in the past when I’ve gotten crosswise with certain segments of the conservative base and/or with the readership of National Review. And, because, like the Elephant Man, I am a not an animal but a human being, I have always had at least some self-doubt. That’s as it should be. People who share principles should not only hear each other out when they disagree; they should be able to see each other’s points and hold open the possibility that one’s opponents have the better argument.
This is not one of those times, at least not for me.
I truly, honestly, and with all my heart and mind think Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters are making a yuuuuuuge mistake. I think they are being conned and played. I feel like a guy whose brother is being taken advantage of by a grifter. I’m watching helplessly as the con artist congratulates him for taking out a third mortgage.
“Grifter” is the perfect word.

grift•er

n. Slang.
1. person who operates a sideshow at a circus, fair, etc., esp. a gambling attraction.
2. swindler, dishonest gambler, or the like.
Trump is a grifter.  He’s a sideshow act – an attraction. But that’s what Trump does. I don’t begrudge him being a business man. I begrudge him doing it as a fake conservative who is trying to promote his own interests. He’s a fraud. Goldberg proceeds to promote what I believe is a good course of action: an intervention for the Trump-pets.
I’ve written many times about how I hate the term RINO because conservatives should consider themselves Republicans in Name Only. The Republican Party is a vessel, a tool for achieving conservative ends. It’s nothing more than a team. Conservatism is different. It’s a body of ideas, beliefs, and temperaments. The amazing thing is that Trump is both a RINO and a CINO. I’m sure he has some authentic and sincere conservative views down in there somewhere. But the idea that he’s more plausibly conservative — or more loyally Republican — than Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) 100%Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) 84%, Scott Walker, or any of the others is just flatly absurd. It is vastly more plausible that he is a stalking horse for his dear friend Hillary Clinton than he is a sincere conservative.
Trump supporters need an intervention. I want to sit them down at the kitchen table, reach into a manila envelope, and pull out the proof that he’s a fraud. The conversation would go something like this…
And then Goldberg proceeds to lay out the reality of Trump’s alleged “conservatism” and the reality of where he has stood for years. Could Trump have had an epiphany and changed course? Perhaps. But on ALL of these: Immigration, Abortion, Obamacare, Hillary, Economics? Bloody unlikely. (I’m not going to quote Jonah’s documentation of all of Trump’s left-wing beliefs on these topics. You can read his article or look at Isaac Cohen’s breakdown).
Via: Red State
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Sunday, July 12, 2015

Nevada's Road to Nowhere - and Why You Need to Drive It

 While Traveling From Michigan to Lake Tahoe, One Road Tripping Fanatic Recounts Why US 50 is One of the Greatest Roads He's Ever Traveled 

I first became aware of the Loneliest Road (US 50) when I was planning a trip to Lake Tahoe to attend my niece's wedding.  I found out that in 1968 Life magazine had dubbed US 50 in Nevada the "Loneliest Road in America" and that the State of Nevada would provide travelers of US 50 with a certificate and pin once they had had traversed it.  Well that did it for me, I was going to travel US 50 to Lake Tahoe.  When I traced the route on the map I also found that US 50 would be the shortest route to my destination as it passes right through South Lake Tahoe on it's way into California.  Coming down out of the Rocky Mountains on I-70 you pick up US 50 in Utah at Salinas.  It then passes  I-15 through Delta, Utah before you enter Nevada. 

It was a marvelous experience to get off the interstate on to US 50 and have this marvelous 2 lane blacktop road all to yourself.  I made it to Ely the first day and spent the night and the next day I made it all the way to Carson City. 

What was amazing to me was the 17 mountain ranges I crossed and the spacious valleys between them.  It's like the mountains ripple across Nevada like the waves out on the sea. In December they are mostly show capped and you can see them looming in front of you for many miles before you ascend the pass that crosses them.   The road slithers like a reptile, snaking between mountains like an ancient river bed before disappearing behind the next mountain range you must cross.


The vistas along US 50 are breathtaking. Coming down the Austin Summit pass in the Toiyabe Range was amazing, in my humble opinion. Here, you can see for miles and miles. As I told many a friend and family member, I felt the horizon was 360 degrees and looked like I could see the natural curvature of the Earth. The land seemed to envelope me and I felt naked and exposed as if gravity would fail me and I would float up into the great American west. 





Thursday, June 4, 2015

[VIDEO] Woman In New TV Ad Claiming Obamacare Saved Her Life Bought Private Insurance Year Before Obamacare Started…

A new ad featuring a woman who credits Obamacare with alleviating her fear of falling ill while uninsured omits the fact that she already had coverage before enrolling in the government program. “For 20 years, I was afraid — afraid of getting sick and having no health insurance,” Julie Adams of Nashville, Tenn., says in the ad. “But when I got cancer, I finally had a health plan I could afford. . . . I’ll always remember how affordable health care saved my life.”

Ms. Adams’s life might have been saved by the health insurance plan she bought before enrolling for Obamacare, though. ‘The liberal political activist in the ad claiming she was uninsured until Obamacare saved her life actually bought a private plan a year before Obamacare started’ “What a relief!” she writes in a Facebook post announcing a trip to the doctor. “I waited forever because I didn’t have health insurance until this year. Thank you Obama.”  That message was published in March of 2013; the Affordable Care Act didn’t provide benefits until 2014. “The liberal political activist in the ad claiming she was uninsured until Obamacare saved her life actually bought a private plan a year before Obamacare started,” says Phil Kerpen of American Commitment, a conservative nonprofit.  “And the same media ‘fact checkers’ who viciously attacked cancer patients who spoke out against Obamacare 

A spokesman for the group that produced the ad acknowledged that Adams had purchased private coverage. “The plan Julie purchased was too expensive for her to keep long-term (more than double what she pays now), and she really bought it as a patch knowing she would try to apply for affordable coverage through the ACA,” says Kathy Melley of Community Catalyst Action Fund.  “In January of 2014, Julie’s health coverage through the ACA kicked in and about six months later that year she was diagnosed with cancer.” — Joel Gehrke is a political reporter for National Review.

Via: National Review


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Monday, November 11, 2013

Limbaugh Blasts GOP for Not Wanting Obamacare to ‘Hurt People’: ‘Why Not, If They Voted for It?’

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh tore into the “establishment” within the Republican Party on Monday for backing efforts to ease the pain that Americans are experiencing as a result of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Limbaugh wondered why the GOP is now attempting to save the American people from feeling the full effects of what they voted for.
Limbaugh began by introducing a clip of National Review editor Jonah Goldberg who, he said, “often times will tell you what the establishment thinks.”
Goldberg, appearing on Fox News Channel, responded to Limbaugh who had previously advocated for the GOP to take a hands-off approach to mitigating the pain felt by average Americans who are losing their health care plans as a result of the ACA. “That’s a hard political message for Republicans to sell,” Goldberg said.
Limbaugh said that this clip was telling in light of a “test” he was performing. “If I adopted the position of the establishment, I wanted to see what the establishment would do,” Limbaugh said. “It appears from this comment that there is no taste now for letting it implode because letting it implode would hurt people.”
“Why, a month ago, was it okay for it to implode and by definition cause pain and suffering happen?” Limbaugh asked. “Why were they ever in favor of this?”
“Is the establishment changing their opinion because I’ve agreed with them and they don’t want me on their side?” he asked.
Limbaugh went on to detail how the ACA implementation has devastated President Barack Obama’s approval ratings.
Limbaugh again asked why, if the GOP establishment was advocating for letting the ACA implode during the shutdown, they no longer think that is a viable option. “Now that it is imploding, it appears that there’s not the stomach for letting that happen,” Limbaugh asked. “Because the establishment thinks, ‘Well, it’s not a good lesson for the American people to have to suffer and be in great pain just to learn how bad Obamacare is.’ Why not, if they voted for it?”

Saturday, November 9, 2013

If Obama were a corporate executive, he'd be prosecuted for fraud

Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor of distinction, has written an important column for National Review Online, laying out what would happen to a corporate executive who behaved as President Obama has, selling an insurance product. I laid out the case that Obama was guilty of fraud late last month, but McCarthy's expertise and careful explication are of a much higher level.
The entire article deserves to be read in its entirety. But here is a sample:
Fraud is a serious federal felony, usually punishable by up to 20 years' imprisonment - with every repetition of a fraudulent communication chargeable as a separate crime. In computing sentences, federal sentencing guidelines factor in such considerations as the dollar value of the fraud, the number of victims, and the degree to which the offender's treachery breaches any special fiduciary duties he owes. Cases of multi-million-dollar corporate frauds - to say nothing of multi-billion-dollar, Bernie Madoff-level scams that nevertheless pale beside Obamacare's dimensions - often result in terms amounting to decades in the slammer.
Justice Department guidelines, set forth in the U.S. Attorneys Manual, recommend prosecution for fraud in situations involving "any scheme which in its nature is directed to defrauding a class of persons, or the general public, with a substantial pattern of conduct." So, for example, if a schemer were intentionally to deceive all Americans, or a class of Americans (e.g., people who had health insurance purchased on the individual market), by repeating numerous times - over the airwaves, in mailings, and in electronic announcements - an assertion the schemer knew to be false and misleading, that would constitute an actionable fraud - particularly if the statements induced the victims to take action to their detriment, or lulled the victims into a false sense of security.
Via: American Thinker

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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Steyn: ‘Obama is cool’ meme disproved by botched health-care rollout

National Review columnist Mark Steyn said Monday the lackluster rollout of the health-care law has crushed the “cool guy” impression of President Barack Obama.
“It’s fascinating to me because it’s the reality of what ‘Obama is cool’ means,” Steyn said in an appearance on Dennis Miller’s radio show. “People just thought because they generally just responded to his vibe — that Obama’s version of government health care would just be way cooler, way modern. It would be iPhone 5 or whatever we’re up to by now of government health care. And in fact, it’s even worse than the most incompetent, sclerotic government health-care system — you know, government health care was introduced in the United Kingdom on July 5, 1948. On July 3, you went to the doctor. You wrote a check. On July 6, you went to the doctor, and you didn’t have to write a check. Three-and-a-half million people have been kicked off their insurance planes. And it turns out the cool guy can’t actually do anything, like a lot of cool guys.”
The author of “After America: Get Ready for Armageddon” predicted the administration will escape this controversy by simply moving on to the next policy endeavor, which could likely be immigration reform.
Via: Daily Caller

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Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Action Figure - Heritage Action’s Mike Needham is just getting started.

Heritage Action, the conservative group that orchestrated the defund-Obamacare campaign, emerged from the recent shutdown with few legislative victories. But it didn’t walk away empty-handed; it won influence, especially among activists, who view the group as the operational muscle behind Senator Ted Cruz.

How Heritage Action wields its newfound authority (and its Cruz ties) in the coming months will say much about its place in the conservative firmament — and its ability to shape the GOP’s strategy.

To get a better sense of its agenda, National Review sat down with Mike Needham, Heritage Action’s 31-year-old CEO, at a Capitol Hill coffee shop. He remains disappointed about the way his defund strategy fizzled, but he’s convinced he can win the brewing conservative debate over best practices during divided government.

When I mention how some Republicans think Cruz and his group were damaged by the showdown, Needham tells me, “They haven’t been more than five miles outside D.C. if they think that.”

At the top of Needham’s to-do list: encouraging House Republicans to take the lead on both tactics and policy, regardless of resistance from their Senate counterparts. “Speaker John Boehner and Eric Cantor fought during the shutdown,” Needham says. “They fought to keep the message on Obamacare. But they were kneecapped constantly by the Republicans in the Senate.”

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

The Hungry and the Well Fed

William F. Buckley Holding BookIn William F. Buckley’s mission statement for National Review, written in 1955, he did not mention winning elections. That’s not to say it is unimportant, unneeded, or unwanted. But it was not mentioned. In fact, Buckley wrote, “We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience.”
What was mentioned was standing athwart history yelling stop. Buckley sought to build a National Review that provided commentary on the landscape of American politics and culture, building an intellectual case for conservatism. Today’s National Review is willing occasionally to yell Stop. It did so notably on the proliferation of porn in culture. But on many of the day’s fights, the editorial positions read more like those of the Republican National Committee than the standard bearer of American conservatism.
In 1955, William F. Buckley wrote,
Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is serious question whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by the Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.
The present editors of National Review, over the last several years, have made it clearer and clearer that they now speak mostly for the well-fed right and not for conservatives hungering for a fight against the leviathan. They have made their peace with the New Deal, moving beyond Buckley. For that matter, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and most of the defunders have largely made their peace with the New Deal. And still National Review is too timid to join the merry band of defunders themselves too timid to approach the parameters under which William F. Buckley started his charge. The editors have conformed to the politics of necessary victories instead of the policy of standing “athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

Friday, October 25, 2013

Thursday, October 10, 2013

ObamaCare's Original Sin

Democrats tell us that ObamaCare is "the law of the land," and that the Supreme Court declared it constitutional, and that we should get used to it -- it's here to stay. Actually, the Court found ObamaCare unconstitutional on two counts, but let it pass anyway.
The problem for defenders of ObamaCare is that its court challenges just keep coming. One place to check up on them is the website Health Care Lawsuits. In September, the American Enterprise Institute ran an article by Chris Conover headlined "Will the Courts Derail Obamacare?" The article covers several of the ongoing court challenges to ObamaCare, including the status of each case. (The article also ran at Forbes.)
On October 5, National Review ran a terrific article by former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy that addresses a specific legal challenge:
It is not just that the intensely unpopular Obamacare was unconstitutional as fraudulently portrayed by the president and congressional Democrats who strong-armed and pot-sweetened its way to passage. It is that Obamacare is unconstitutional as rewritten by Roberts. It is a violation of the Origination Clause -- not only as I have expansively construed it, but even under Matt's narrow interpretation of the Clause. [...] The Clause requires that tax bills must originate in the House of Representatives. Obamacare did not.
McCarthy refers to the individual mandate, which Justice Roberts "rewrote" as a tax. However, the Senate bill that became ObamaCare had several other taxes, such as the tax on medical devices, before Roberts ever got to the law.

Via: American Thinker

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