Digest

Friday, November 6, 2009

There is a groundswell of conservative activism rising up across our great nation, as citizens are awakening to this ominous threat of constitutional adulteration and tyranny. Citizens are speaking out at public forums, attending grassroots "Tea Parties," making a stand for Liberty.

Make no mistake, however. These victories are as much a rejection of Obama's arrogance and ineptitude by people who aren't "conservative" as they are a call for the restoration of constitutional authority. But it's a place to start.


Jonah Goldberg

The End of an Era That Never Began

· Friday, November 6, 2009

It's all so terribly sad. To listen to liberals and the White House spin election results, you'd think all was well with the world. Barack Obama is still personally popular! The evil right-wing extremists lost in New York's 23rd congressional district and a Democrat (who was arguably more conservative than the Republican nominee) won. Virginia was always a red state (no matter what we all said about it turning blue with Obama's victory), and the election hinged on local issues. Defeated New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine was personally unpopular (let's all forget that the White House tried to turn the race into a referendum on Obama's agenda). In short, the White House spin is: "There's nothing to see here, folks. All is well."


The Brushfires of Freedom

· Thursday, November 5, 2009

A year ago, the election of Barack Hussein Obama was an egregious affront to our national legacy and a clarion call to action for many good citizens who honor the rights and obligations of liberty.

In November 2008, it was difficult to accept that a majority of our countrymen had fallen into such a stupor that they could be lulled by the dullard droll of "hope 'n' change"; that they could be conned into electing an inexperienced charlatan, an unapologetic socialist, to the office of president.


R. Emmett Tyrrell

The Off-Year Elections and the Politics of the Obvious

· Thursday, November 5, 2009

What strikes me about politics over the past couple of years is how obvious it all has been. In 2008, as the junior senator from Illinois campaigned across the country, demonstrating his gifts as a motivational speaker and community organizer, all one had to do was review his recent life to know that he was about to bring down on the country -- ever so incompetently -- the most left-wing government in American history. And so he has -- with the utmost incompetence.


Chronicle

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The Washington Times: "The irrational exuberance of the 2008 race has since crashed down to cold, hard reality. Mr. Obama ran on a vaguely defined 'hope and change' platform, and Americans have discovered that the devil is in the details. Mr. Obama's election brought the United States astronomical public debt, a slumping currency, increasing government control of the economy, continued job losses, radical judges, a disastrous foreign policy, a proposed government takeover of health care and a job-killing energy bill. Americans -- some unwittingly -- put in place the most radical government in generations, and they now are realizing what they have wrought."


Michael Gerson

Funding Health Care on the Backs of the Young

· Wednesday, November 4, 2009

WASHINGTON -- As I was talking recently with the founder of a large American corporation, the conversation turned (inevitably) to health care reform. His employees in their 20s, on average, cost the company about $1,500 a year in health bills. Those in their 50s cost at least 10 times more. The effect of proposed health care reform -- which limits the ability of insurers to charge higher premiums for older adults -- would be, he said, a large shift of America's health care burden to the younger generation. This is not an unintended consequence of reform; it is the whole purpose. It is not a side effect; it is the main funding mechanism.


Republicans Offer Second Opinion on Health Care Reform

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

For what it's worth, House Republicans have introduced their own health care reform plan. The 230-page draft is far shorter than the Democrats' 2,000-page mammoth bill, and focuses on reducing the cost of care rather than providing it for everyone.


William Murchison

Can Washington Make You Buy Health Insurance?

· Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Yes, yes, says White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Congress has the power to make everyone buy health insurance. "I don't believe there's a lot of case law that would demonstrate the veracity" of comments to the contrary. Thank you, Mr. Justice Gibbs. We'll see about all that when -- if -- the matter of Congress' power over private commercial judgments of this nature gets to the U.S. Supreme Court. Meanwhile the knock-down, drag-out over health insurance "reform" shouldn't be allowed to fuzz up another immensely vital question; to wit, how in James Madison's name have we reached the point that Congress can so much as contemplate telling you, and you, and you, and all of us that we'll buy health insurance, like it or not, Buster? Why do we have to? Because the government says so, isn't that reason enough?


Brief

Monday, November 2, 2009

Thomas Sowell: "Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year -- each bill more than a thousand pages long -- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question -- and the biggest question for this generation."


Jeff Jacoby

Hyperbole in the Health Debate

· Monday, November 2, 2009

Two things supporters of a government-run "public option" for health insurance know for sure. One is that private health insurers are raking in obscenely high profits. The other is that only a government rival can force them to compete on price.


George Will

Disclosure as Liberal Coercion

· Sunday, November 1, 2009

SEATTLE -- Conservatives here, a droll minority, say that under this city's quota system, when a conservative enters the city, one already here is required to leave. They also say Washington is actually two states: There is what you can see from atop this city's Space Needle -- meaning, this liberal city -- and there is everything else, extending to the Oregon, Idaho and Canadian borders.


Peggy Noonan

We're Governed by Callous Children

· Saturday, October 31, 2009

The new economic statistics put growth at a healthy 3.5% for the third quarter. We should be dancing in the streets. No one is, because no one has any faith in these numbers. Waves of money are sloshing through the system, creating a false rising tide that lifts all boats for the moment. The tide will recede. The boats aren't rising, they're bobbing, and will settle. No one believes the bad time is over.


Digest

Friday, October 30, 2009

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) unveiled an $894 billion health care takeover bill Thursday; the Congressional Budget Office puts the cost at $1.055 trillion. The bill, a combination of three separate committee bills, should be light reading for our nation's lawmakers, though -- it weighs in at a scant 1,990 pounds, er, pages. And it includes the dreaded "public option" that many thought might be dead and buried.


Charles Krauthammer

The Three Envelopes

· Friday, October 30, 2009

WASHINGTON -- Old Soviet joke: Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev. "Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble." A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe." A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: "Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe." Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: "Prepare three envelopes." In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn't blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad -- everything but swine flu.


'Nobody Questions That'?

· Thursday, October 29, 2009

"In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution." --Thomas Jefferson

Never before has there been more evidence of outright contempt for our Constitution than under the current liberal hegemony presiding over the executive and legislative branches of our federal government.



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