Columnist.
Here's the blueprint for how the states can reject three central pillars of Obamacare and set the stage for replacing it, if Mitt Romney takes the White House and the GOP takes the Senate this November. Two reasons compel dismantling Obamacare. First is restoring individual liberty by empowering states against the national government and citizens against both. Second is recognizing that free markets outperform centrally-planned markets, so private-sector healthcare will better serve Americans than government-controlled Obamacare ever could.
Today, I face a challenge similar to the one Abraham Lincoln faced in 1854 when he spoke of the "covert zeal" of President Franklin Pierce and Sen. Steven A. Douglas for the spread of slavery. These leading Democrats never said they were in favor of slavery. They simply viewed the right of whites to choose slavery for blacks as a "sacred principle of self government."Lincoln abhorred this subterfuge. President Obama doesn't talk about abortion much. He famously tried to avoid the question in 2008 when Pastor Rick Warren asked him what rights, if any, unborn children have. "The answer to that question is above my pay grade," he said then. With his strong election victory, Barack Obama was promoted to the office where the buck stops, where such questions demand an answer. His answer has been clear: None. The unborn have no rights at any time, in any context.
Comedian Chris Rock has stoked the flames of controversy with this Fourth of July tweet. The Hollywood comic wrote: "Happy white peoples independence day the slaves weren't free but I'm sure they enjoyed fireworks." Rock's tweet sparked plenty of day-after fireworks. What he wrote went beyond the pale, responded many online, hurt and enraged at Rock's bitter humor. Chris Rock's tweet *was* beyond the pale. It was doubtless his effort to capitalize on the 160th anniversary of that great Fifth of July speech delivered by black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Douglass addressed a huge audience in Rochester, New York on July 5, 1852 on the theme: "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"
Coal today may seem of little relevance to many residents of New York City or other American urban centers. It long ago ceased to fuel the furnaces of their homes and apartment buildings in winter. But long after it disappeared from the uses most visible to city dwellers, coal is still the critical fuel behind the everyday functions of their lives.
In 2010 we published a book arguing that Barack Obama was creating an imperial presidency. The past few months prove that prediction was correct. First President Obama's EPA claimed power to create cap-and-trade through new regulations, rather than Congress passing a law. Then Obama's FCC claimed the power to regulate the Internet, despite a federal appeals court ruling that only Congress could authorize such control through legislation. More recently, Obama's Department of HHS issued regulations requiring Catholic and Evangelical organizations to violate their religious conscience regarding birth control and abortion-related services. Then we got a double-whammy in just one week. First Obama flaunts the fact that he refuses to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, despite the fact that every administration is duty-bound to defend federal statutes, and there would be wailing and gnashing of teeth if a conservative Republican president failed to defend a liberal law in court. Afterward, Obama announces that, having failed to get the DREAM Act through Congress, he will simply accomplish its provisions by ordering the government to stop enforcing the law by not deporting certain illegal aliens, and then break the law by taking the affirmative step of actually issuing those people work visas.
Vice President Joe Biden is almost casual about ending marriage. It's "inevitable," he says. He thinks it's not such a big deal. But it is a big deal. Recognizing same-sex couplings as marriages will mean the end of marriage. That's because saying yes to two men or two women marrying opens the door to polygamy. Those who have delved into the issue know this. George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley believes that conferring legal status on same-sex couples will lead to polygamy -- and he says he's for that. When Turley told a packed house at the Newseum in 2008 that he was for polygamy, his audience cheered wildly. Those cheering for the end of marriage included federal court clerks, grad students, congressional staffers, and journalists -- the Inside-the-Beltway elite. With same-sex couplings and polygamous arrangements recognized, where would that leave marriage? Ended, that's where. When everyone can marry, no one can marry. There is no marriage left.
Every American high school student knows, or should know, that President Ronald Reagan went to the Brandenburg Gate in West Berlin on this date in 1987. The President said: "If you seek liberalization, open this gate...Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." (Yes, kids, there was a West Berlin then.) American journalists were enchanted by Mikhail Gorbachev in those days. The young and charismatic Kremlin boss was "the human face of Communism" that they'd been seeking. Leader of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union ), this dynamic man spoke of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (re-structuring). His words were all the rage then.
Talk show host, Bill Press, doesn't like the Star-Spangled Banner. Imagine: a liberal talk show that's not on NPR! His radio show is simulcast on Current TV. Bill Press likes provoking conservatives, but I'm not sure we should be provoked by his outburst against the National Anthem. Bill Press seems to be testing the old philosopher's question: If a tree falls in the forest and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a noise? If you say something on Current TV, does anyone hear it? Press adds: "It is a major crusade of mine to get rid of the Star-Spangled Banner. Now I know you're going to say I am not a true American, I'm not patriotic. I don't think patriotism has anything to do with it. The National Anthem is just absolutely monumentally un-singable. I mean there's so much wrong with it. I don't know where to start. It's an abomination."
Four years ago, Israeli “dove” Avi Primor cooed over the prospects for a comprehensive peace settlement in the Mideast. The “key” to peace, wrote Israel’s former Ambassador to Germany, lies in Damascus. Amb. Primor wrote if Israel would only agree to give up the Golan Heights she had captured in the 1967 Six-Day War, Syria might yet come around to accepting the existence of the Jewish state and break its dependence on the mullahs in Iran. Hope soared on the wings of a dove. Negotiations between Israel and Syria, although conducted through a Turkish intermediary, seemed promising. The incoming Obama administration, buoyed by the President’s Nobel Peace Prize, celebrated the new direction in world geopolitics by sending an ambassador to Damascus. No more refusals to talk. Now, we would see action on a peace agenda. Hollywood doves Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie shared the hopeful mood and flew into Damascus for a visit to refugees from Iraq. They were, of course, roundly criticized for their photo shoot with the dictator’s fashionable wife, Asma al-Assad. Still, it’s worth noting that Angelina is a UN representative for refugees. The couple was at least urging the world not to forget the thousands of Iraqis who had fled that war-torn country to find a precarious haven in Syria.
Gov. Scott Walker Walked his Talk. He faced down a militant, union-led effort to drive him from office. Scott Walker never lacked courage. It took steely determination not to buckle in the face of militant unions who "occupied" the stately Wisconsin capitol in Madison when Walker's reforms were first voted on. For two years, leftists have been howling. One of their speakers at a get out the (union) vote rally actually compared Scott Walker's reforms to the 9/11 attacks on our country. And this is the crowd that is forever lecturing us on civility. Gov. Walker's stand up courage can be contrasted with President Obama's missing in action stance in the Wisconsin recall effort. Badger State labor unionists have been hard pressed to explain to themselves or to their supporters why the president they helped put in office has abandoned them in their hour of need.
The Obama administration refuses, time and again, to say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. Victoria Nuland, speaking from the State Department, recently repeated over and over that the status of Jerusalem is subject to final status negotiations. Israel thus becomes the only country recognized by the U.S. that is not allowed to name its own capital. But the U.S. recognizes Germany's capital. It's Berlin. This is most curious. The United States, in organizing the United Nations in 1945, required that only those nations that had declared war on Germany could be members. President Roosevelt told Stalin and Churchill at Yalta that he had written to the presidents of the Latin American states urging them to declare war on Germany (Yalta: The Price of Peace, by S.M. Plokhy, p. 194) We did not require that they declare war on Japan, too, since the USSR by agreement would only declare war on that Asian Empire ninety days after Germany surrendered.
We tend naturally to focus on religious freedom issues that rise to the national level. Those cases that come before the Supreme Court rank high in public interest and command the attention of the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and other giants of the main-stream media. One of the most unprecedented and ominous assaults on religious freedom is the proposed Health and Human Services contraception mandate. As I have written in a variety of opinion pieces, there has been nothing comparable to this in 225 years in this country. There is truly no precedent for the threat embodied in the HHS Mandate.
The owner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, I'll Have Another, named the horse for a saying in the family about grandma's cookies -- a noble sentiment. But these days, it's the government that can't keep its hand out of the cookie jar. The Federal government has fallen prey to that mantra for years now -- but the dysfunction is spreading from Washington to the capitals of cash-hungry states. On Christmas Eve last year in a decision with little fan-fare, the Obama administration capitulated to give states their next cash "fix." Reversing 50 years of precedent, President Obama's Justice Department gave states the green light to implement new taxes on the poor in the form of Internet gambling. On petition from Illinois and New York, the DOJ reinterpreted the 1951 Wire Act to allow states to move lotteries online.
Last week, the Washington Post produced a front-page story intended to shock readers with the news of Mitt Romney's leading fellow preppies in cutting the bleach-blond hair of a student at their school. The incident in question took place in 1965, some 47 years ago. The news that Mitt Romney did dumb things in high school was played as if it was most revealing. But, unconnected to anything else, it leaves the reader puzzled? Why this story? Why now?
Sen. Dick Lugar's defeat in a Republican primary last week has not been attributed, as nearly as we can tell, to his 1979 trip to Moscow with Joe Biden. Then, the two members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee left the bosses of the Kremlin with the distinct impression that they cared about arms control and not so much about human rights. Claire Berlinsky's article in the Spring 2010 issue of City Journal ought to be disqualifying. Nor, it seems, did the senator's spearheading of the ill-advised START treaty with the Russians in a lame-duck session in December 2010 lead to his loss by a stunning 61% to 39% vote to a TEA Party-backed challenger.
Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of an embattled Great Britain on May 10, 1940. At last, his political exile was over. Also that day, Adolf Hitler launched his blitzkrieg against Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg, and his armored panzer divisions ripped through the Ardennes forest. Churchill had been warning against this outcome for a decade. It was Churchill, after all, who foresaw the possibilities of tank warfare in the darkest days of World War I. Surely, Churchill pleaded, there must be a better way to employ brave soldiers than having them "chew barbed wire in Flanders."
When politicians want to look busy while avoiding tough decisions during an election year, what do they do? They form commissions and councils. And when President Barack Obama saw Americans struggling with higher gasoline and home energy prices, did he encourage more domestic oil exploration, off-shore drilling, or coal production, while lowering taxes on energy? Of course not. After all, with political observers expecting a close presidential race this year, Obama needs the financial and institutional support far-left environmental groups. The result has been the President anointing certain energy sources - such as wind and natural gas - as energies of the future, while implementing regulatory hurdles for more dependable fuels like oil and coal.
Elections are about choices, and 2012's pivotal election showcases two very different visions for America's future. Governor Mitt Romney is quickly consolidating the Republican base to enthusiastically support him this November. His speech this weekend at Liberty University illustrates these efforts, providing an opportunity to underscore Romney's embrace of American exceptionalism in both his public and private life.
What will come next? Will the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issue a Pork Mandate as part of ObamaCare? Will this be the next shoe to drop? Sound ridiculous? But, wait. Here's what the pork industry says about pork, "the other white meat."
Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, briefed Christian supporters of the Jewish state this morning. He told a hushed audience crowded into his Embassy's Jerusalem Auditorium of a recent visit by U.S. intelligence specialists. They had asked Dr. Oren the historian to compare Israel's situation today with other critical periods in the nation's past. Without hesitation, he answered: In the best case scenario, it's May, 1967. In the worst case, it's May, 1948.
