Columnist.
If voters knew how America's economy would look after two terms of President Barack Obama's administration, Mitt Romney would win in a landslide. In the 2008 campaign, President Obama told the San Francisco Chronicle that the "notion of no coal ... is an illusion." He noted that he favors a cap-and-trade system "[s]o if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted." While Obama did not get to implement cap-and-trade, he found other ways to shut down coal burning power plants.
We are used to hearing that America defends Israel. President Obama assures Israel that he has their back. That may be convincing talk in the 'hood, but it rings hollow from this invertebrate administration to talk about anyone's back. Actually, we may have all that backward. It may well be that Israel that is defending us. Israel may yet prove America's Shield. All the usual chin-pullers and deep thinkers are warning of the parade of horribles that will descend on the world if Israel strikes Iran to prevent the mullahs from getting nuclear weapons. Why, says Georgetown University think tanker Anthony Cordesman, "a strike by Israel will give rise to regional instability and conflict as well as terrorism."
It's been twenty years since Vice President Dan Quayle left town. He was hooted and booted out of office. The press had a field day with his misspelling of "potatoe," or rather, potato. What a dunce, they wrote. Of course, that is standard treatment for conservatives, Christians, or anyone else who doesn't go along with the right thinking, which is to say, the left thinking legions of progressivism. No sooner had the former vice president left Washington for the greener golf courses of Arizona than social scientist Barbara Dafoe Whitehead took to the pages of *The Atlantic*. In April, 1993, she bravely wrote: "Dan Quayle was Right."
Apple is a great American success story and we can say of the late Steve Jobs: You *did* build that. But there's a problem with Apple in China. The Beijing government's forced abortion policy is worming its way into the factories of Apple, Inc. Twenty-four of these factories, it is reported, have helped the Communist government's brutal efforts to prevent so-called unauthorized births to Chinese mothers. Exiled human rights champion Chen Guangcheng is reporting on the collaboration of Apple in compulsory pregnancy testing of Apple's Chinese employees. Chen told Bloomberg news agency that Apple should refuse to comply with such gross violations of human rights in their facilities. Chen urged Apple to take a stand for human rights -- to stop the Beijing government's cruel pursuit of young mothers. This, we know, is the real "war on women." And it's currently being waged with active collaboration of U.S. companies.
In the dreary years of Depression and drift leading up to World War II, there was always a difference of perception between Britain and France about the Hitler threat. France wanted to strike Hitler when he marched into the Rhineland in 1936. This was a direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles and France felt its very life was threatened by a re-militarized Rhineland on her border. The French premier was invited to London by Prime Minister Baldwin -- *for talks*. Four years later, France fell under the Nazi boot. Britain always had the advantage of distance from Germany. Britain had a 22-mile anti-tank trench called the English Channel. France naturally resented Britain's talking, talking, talking while Hitler moved. This is useful history as we view the situation in Israel today. The Iranian mullahs are motivated by the same anti-Jewish hatred that poisoned Hitler. They are developing a nuclear weapon, while claiming only to want nuclear energy for "peaceful purposes." Why a country like Iran that is sitting on a sea of oil needs a nuclear power program is left for the credulous of the world to consider. The mullahs want the bomb.
President Obama continues to get high marks in all public opinion polls on foreign policy. Much of that, doubtless, is due to his crisp dispatch of Osama bin Laden last year.
That's not a typographical error. I'm not mistaking the Democratic Platform's definition of all things progressive. I'm not misapplying their slogan: *Forward*. *Froward* is admittedly an archaic word, but it's a very good one. It describes what is actually happening in that Democratic Platform with respect -- or should I say with *disrespect?* -- to marriage.
It's good to see Bill Clinton looking so healthy. He has given up meat after his heart operation, but his performance last night proves he can still handle a whopper. It was vintage Bill Clinton -- wonky, funny, overlong and drawn out, self-centered and fundamentally untrue. His biggest applause lines came when he "contrasted" job creation under Democratic and Republican administrations. He went all the way back to 1961. He told us the Democrats have held the White House 24 years since that date; Republicans were in the Oval Office 28 years. Then, he proceeded to his point-by-point comparison. All plausible -- even applausible -- if you forgot who ran Congress in those years.
Team Obama is desperate to shore up support for their man in the American Jewish community. They are so desperate, in fact, that they are showing Israeli President Shimon Peres' video to their convention delegates in Charlotte, N.C. Israel's president is a largely ceremonial office, lacking real power. But Peres is Israel's most famous dove. Like Mr. Obama, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. Like Mr. Obama, many people today ask: Where's the Peace? Mr. Peres tells convention goers that Barack Obama is "the best president for Israel."
"Where Everything's Free But Us"
The progressive mindset is set. It believes that whatever it pursues at the moment must be progress. Think Progress is one of the groups that is convinced progress is achieved by the right people thinking the right thoughts. Or, the right people thinking the *left* thoughts. "We are the people we've been waiting for," said candidate Obama four years ago. Better to wait for Godot. The president's re-election slogan is an expression of this mindset. *Forward*. Just that one word. It's not as bad perhaps as MSNBC's "Lean Forward." Imagine you're on a cliff, looking over into the vast chasm below. And someone at MSNBC gets the bright idea: Lean forward. We are all on that cliff. The combination of the largest tax hikes in history with the most draconian federal spending cuts is confronting us with what many have called "Taxmadgeddon." The most fatuous application of *Forward*. has to be the Democratic Convention's plans to end marriage as we know it. Determined to do follow what is "inevitable," very liberal delegates will embrace platform proposals that will spell the end of marriage. Do they fully realize what they are doing?
The national media was clearly tired of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright rants broadcast over and over again on talk radio and shown on FOX News four years ago. The press was only too happy when candidate Barack Obama disavowed the man he said he could never disavow. Well, that's over. Clearly, they were tired of "America's chickens coming home to roost" and the unreverend clergyman's appeals for God to d___n America. Voters, too, seemed to have heard enough of it. Fifty-three percent of the American electorate appears to have endorsed the view of 95% of the media: the Reverend Wright is old news. Let's move on.
We do not know who will win the White House in November. But we do know that American politics has crossed the Rubicon on spending and entitlements, and these issues will at long last complete the journey from a forbidden third rail to a central element of national politics. Even if Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan lose this year's battle to Barack Obama, they will win the war on the challenge of our generation. Congressman Paul Ryan is best known for his budget, the Ryan Roadmap, which ties together the two sides of our fiscal-crisis coin: First, the major entitlements of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will soon be bankrupt and unable to provide for millions of beneficiaries. And second, our growing $16 trillion debt will result in an unprecedented economic disaster if not balanced and then paid off.
There are precedents for what Iran's "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has just done. Khamenei is the top in Tehran who is threatening to wipe Israel off the map. Khamenei said "the fake Zionist (regime) will disappear from the landscape of geography." He said this to a meeting of Iran-Iraq war veterans. That 1980s war claimed millions of lives and was fought for what? Both Saddam Hussein of Iraq and the mullahs of Iran showed a complete disregard for human lives in that pointless brutal and inconclusive decade-long struggle.
We thought Joe Biden couldn't top -- or bottom -- the appalling gaffe of calling a 2010 White House bill signing ceremony "a big f___ing deal." But he just did it. In Danville, Virginia this week, Biden told a largely black audience the Republicans were going to "put y'all in chains." Now, of course, his staff is backpedaling furiously. He meant the banks. He was talking about banking de-regulation, they bleat frantically. Sure he was. If any conservative, any Republican had made such a statement, he'd have been fired. Agriculture Sec. Earl Butz was fired in 1976 within hours of telling a dirty joke offensive to black Americans (and most others). Majority Leader Trent Lott lost his post when he joked about Strom Thurmond being elected president. Old Strom had been a segregationist candidate in 1948.
Ben is a young friend of ours who was an intern in our Washington office. This summer, Ben is working on yard crews and in restaurants prior to going into the military. This recent college grad is getting quite an education working with the working poor. Ben challenges us: What can you say to young men and women who are working at minimum wage, who are not concerned about social issues like abortion and marriage, who are unchurched and uninterested in the threats we see to religious liberty? These young Americans are just trying to keep their heads above water. There are millions of younger people in America who are working at such entry level jobs. They don't have health care coverage.
As a longtime school choice advocate, I am always in favor of giving parents the tools they need to ensure their children receive a high quality education, which is necessary to compete in today’s global marketplace. And as a visiting professor of law at Liberty University and former associate professor at Xavier University, I know how a rigorous education is critical for students to be prepared to get the most value out of their time at college. Therefore, I am disturbed by a recent development in states such as Idaho, where members of the school board are questioning the worth of this program despite its value to students. Or in New Hampshire, where fringe activists claiming to be members of the Tea Party are supporting bills to shut down a rigorous education program.
When the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed in Congress in 1996, the vote was bi-partisan and overwhelming. In the House, the tally was 342-67. Only the farthest left of Democrats and a handful of Republicans voted against it. A *majority of Democrats supported marriage*. In the Senate, the vote was even more lopsided and bi-partisan, 85-14. *Again, most Democrats backed marriage*. In both houses of Congress, the DOMA passed with such strong margins that President Clinton could clearly see the measure had better than "veto strength." That is, if he had vetoed the Defense of Marriage Act, Congress could have passed it over his veto. That would have required 67 votes in the Senate and 292 votes in the House. Bowing to the inevitable, Clinton signed the bill.
I have written recently of President Obama's "covert zeal" for the spread of abortion. I took that phrase from Abraham Lincoln's description of how President Franklin Pierce and Sen. Stephen A. Douglas sought--covertly--to spread slavery in the 1850s. In that column, I noted specific actions of this president to advance abortion-on-demand and to force us all to pay for it. Now, I want to focus on something Mr. Obama is *not* doing. He is not charging Nidal Hasan, the accused Fort Hood killer, with violation of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UVVA). This law was passed and signed in 2004. After the highly publicized conviction of Scott Peterson in California for the murder of his wife and her unborn child, the law was named the Laci and Conner Peterson Unborn Victims of Violence Act.
Every fall, it seems, Americans are subjected to the ugly spectacle of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad coming to New York to address the UN General Assembly. There, at the podium, he is placed on a par with President Obama, Prime Minister David Cameron, France's Francois Hollande, and other leaders of civilized states. Ahmadinejad has used this podium to spew his anti-American, anti-Israel hatred. And yet he receives hearty applause from the Islamist delegates seated before him. Iran signed the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights as long ago as 1948. That's when Iran was ruled by the Shah. That UNDHR contains this provision, Article 18.
