The Foundation

“Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.” –George Washington

Editorial Exegesis

“It is remarkable that when the scientific consensus on global warming is at its weakest state in years, President Barack Obama has decided to make the issue a new focus of his troubled presidency – and, indeed, that he intends to use the issue as the launching pad for a radical extension of federal power even more significant than his health-care takeover. … [T]he president announced that, on behalf of ‘all of humankind,’ he is in effect directing the EPA to take over the American economy. New power plants will be subject to emissions controls, and existing plants will have to be retrofitted to comply with new standards. New restrictions on heavy trucks will affect the movement of freight and goods across the country. New subsidies will be handed down for politically connected energy firms, and federal lands will be set aside for their use. New federal impositions will affect the construction of factories, commercial buildings, and private homes. The president says that this is all enabled by the ‘overwhelming judgment of science.’ … Every economic activity involving energy or transportation – which is to say, every economic activity – will be affected by the president’s global-warming program. … Most significant, the president telegraphed his intention to torpedo the Keystone XL pipeline project, which has long been ready to go but has been snarled up by politics. … Rather than develop what we already have, the Obama administration is threatening to hamstring our most likely source of economic growth and new jobs for the coming generation in the hopes that fads such as solar power will pay off. That is not justified by science, by economics, or by sensible policy analysis. What it is, in fact, is an attempt by a foundering administration to change the subject from scandal to sunshine.” –National Review

Upright

“[I]n truth Mr. Obama’s target is all forms of carbon energy. Natural gas is next. The higher costs will ripple through the energy chain, which is precisely Mr. Obama’s goal. Only by artificially raising the cost of carbon energy can he make even heavily subsidized ‘renewables’ competitive. In general every $1 billion spent complying with an EPA rule threatens 16,000 jobs and cuts GDP by $1.2 billion – and the agency is now writing scores of multibillion-dollar rules. Keep in mind that last month the Administration quietly raised the ‘social cost’ of carbon by 60% in a regulatory filing related to microwave ovens. That means the EPA can jack up costs by 59.99% and still justify them by claiming the higher benefits. … The Americans who will be harmed will have to console themselves with 99 weeks of jobless benefits, food stamps and ObamaCare.” –The Wall Street Journal

“I think a simpler, fairer immigration system that allows more legal immigration would be good for the country and more humane for those who are currently standing in line to get into this country. I’m not opposed to the idea that a robust legal immigration plan can be a net gain to our economy and our people. I think the majority of those here illegally are here to make a better life for themselves and I’m sympathetic to that, though not totally forgiving. But if such a reform is to allow those who have broken the law coming here to be rewarded for those actions, it should at the very least, offer some assurances that it might actually solve the illegal immigration problem in something close to satisfactory fashion. That seems like a pretty low bar for a bill whose raison d'etre is supposed to be solving the illegal immigration problem.” –blogger Mary Katharine Ham

“Republicans might want to consider the fact that the real threat of a ‘death spiral’ comes from alienating one’s core constituency. A constituency that has made it clear any bill in which border security isn’t the top priority is a deal-breaker. That would be genuine border security, not the so-called triggers and/or the aforementioned flexibility that render it completely impotent. Republicans might want to consider something else as well. Virtually all of the progressive agenda is based on the politics of incrementalism. That means this bill represents a point of departure, not the ‘last time’ endgame its supporters in both parties claim it to be. As soon as the ink is dry on any comprehensive reform package, Democrats will be right back to work, attempting to ‘modify’ the more ‘onerous’ and ‘inhumane’ aspects of the bill.” –columnist Arnold Ahlert

“In 2012, the Treasury collected $2.4 trillion in taxes, more than $20,000 per household. Sounds like a lot, and it is. But it wasn’t enough. The federal government spent $3.5 trillion. ‘Lord, the money we do spend on government,’ Will Rogers once quipped. ‘And it’s not one bit better than the government we got for one-third the money 20 years ago.’ More than 80 years after he said that, the problem has only worsened. Too much drag makes it impossible for an airplane to fly. The same is true for economies. Lawmakers need to get serious about taming the debt, not take bows for fleeting improvements.” –former Heritage president Ed Feulner

Editor’s Note

The Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act this morning. DOMA was passed by a bipartisan Congress and signed by Democrat President Bill Clinton in order to protect states from having to recognize the decisions made by other states on marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy, however, wrote, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

We’ll have more on this issue in Friday’s Digest, so stay tuned.

Insight

“But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” –French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850)

“The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful.” –President Calvin Coolidge (1873-1933)

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Nate Jackson
Managing Editor

Demo-gogues

Hot air: “Now, we know that no single weather event is caused solely by climate change. … But we also know that in a world that’s warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by a warming planet.” –Barack Obama

Making it up: “In fact, those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don’t have time to deny it – they’re busy dealing with it. … I had to sit on a meeting with the Department of Interior and Agriculture and some of the rest of my team just to figure out how we’re going to pay for more and more expensive fire seasons.” –BO (In reality, this year’s fire season is the quietest on record.)

“So the question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science … has put all that to rest. Ninety-seven percent of scientists, including, by the way, some who originally disputed the data, have now put that to rest.” –BO (The 97% consensus: “a lie of presidential proportions.”)

Silencing debate isn’t science: “I don’t have much patience for anyone who denies that this challenge is real. We don’t have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society. Sticking your head in the sand might make you feel safer, but it’s not going to protect you from the coming storm.” –BO

Chutzpah: “It’s been 86 days since the Senate passed a budget. Republicans, stop obstructing us from proceeding to conference.” –Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) (Reid went FOUR YEARS without passing a budget in the Senate.)

Hyperbole: “This [immigration issue] has the potential of becoming the next civil rights movement.” –Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Dezinformatsia

A sick joke: “[R]emember … after Superstorm Sandy when the oceans did rise and people died and people lost their homes and people wanted help for their families. So, you know, Obama got the last laugh.” –Salon’s Joan Walsh

World ends, minorities hardest hit: “Whether or not we’ll get a new voting rights act is anybody’s guess. Right now, there is no voting rights act operative in the United States.” –ABC’s Terry Moran

This week’s “Gratuitous Nazi Reference” Award: “Clarence Thomas’s actions [on The Voting Rights Act] here today, though consistent, though tragic to me, are even more so in light of the bulk of decisions he’s rendered in the name of a judicial vote on the Supreme Court. A symbolic Jew has invited a metaphoric Hitler to commit holocaust and genocide upon his own people.” –MSNBC’s Michael Eric Dyson

Utilitarianism is ugly: “Most people intuitively know that an embryo is not a human being, but most people also intuitively know that at 20 weeks or 22 weeks or 24 weeks, the fetus has some sort of value, even if not value that trumps the interests of the mother.” –Newsweek’s Michelle Goldberg

“Republicans face a tremendous deficit with women voters. And so they keep putting on this spectacle over and over and over again. … They’re obsessed with this idea of making women – this isn’t pro-life; this is forced birth. They are obsessed with this notion of shaming, compelling, coercing, whatever they have to do to make women give birth. It’s bizarre, but it is what they are about.” –MNSBC’s Joy Reid

Village Idiots

Nuclear dose of hot air: “The total amount of man-made global warming pollution surrounding the planet and the atmosphere today now traps enough extra energy every 24 hours to equal the energy release by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs going off every single day.” –Al Gore

Civility: “I heard a great program on CurrentTV yesterday about people who deny climate change, and I’m in favor of what their solution was. We don’t have to talk to them anymore about stuff that’s not true and this propaganda that’s a lie. We’re just going to run ‘em over.” –former DNC chief Howard “The Scream” Dean

Non sequitur of the week: “[Abraham Lincoln’s] approach to slavery makes me sure he would move on stopping [climate change] because it is moral issue of our time.” –professor and environmental propagandist Jonathan Overpeck

“The one thing the president really needs to do now is to begin the process of shutting down the conventional coal plants. Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.” –Obama climate adviser Daniel P. Schrag

What direction? “[W]e have an administration today that I am proud to say no longer defends the constitutionality of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act). That’s an enormous step forward.” –Secretary of State John Kerry

Here we go: “It’s time for our culture to wake up and smell the sex pheromones: monogamy is not natural for many, or probably even most, humans. With people living longer than ever before, a greater tolerance toward the human impulse to experience sexual variety is needed. … History and biology suggest that strict monogamy, which has social advantages, is not a 'one size’ fits all proposition.” –author Meghan Laslocky

Short Cuts

“It’s telling that the scare tactics deployed by the proponents of comprehensive immigration reform all revolve around politics: massive rallies on the Washington Mall and an angry Hispanic electorate. In reality, it might be the folks using the scare tactics who are the ones running scared. Maybe they’re afraid that the longer their bill is debated and the more sunshine it’s exposed to, the less likely the American people are to support it.” –National Review’s John Fund

“People who refuse to accept unpleasant truths have no right to complain about politicians who lie to them. What other kind of candidates would such people elect?” –economist Thomas Sowell

“[I]n his commencement speech at Ohio State, Obama warned the graduating class not to listen to those who tell them the tyrant is just around the corner. For once, he was right. The tyrant wasn’t lurking in the wings. He was standing at the podium.” –columnist Burt Prelutsky

“President Obama flew to Germany to address the German people in Berlin. It might cheer him up. He’s been ripped by both U.S. parties lately for being an an authoritarian and a compulsive speech-maker so he might as well go where it’s traditionally appreciated.” –comedian Argus Hamilton

“President Obama got some good news today. The IRS ruled he can write off the first half of his second term as a total loss.” –comedian Jay Leno

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team