Columnist.
When Congress returns after recess, the astronomical levels of spending included in President Obama's budget will face a vicious show down in this election year, which will make the debt ceiling debate look tame. And while our Campaigner in Chief is busy making jokes about eating dogs and claiming credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama is facing intense scrutiny for his proposed changes to the military which will leave American vulnerable to future terrorist attacks.
Someone in the Obama campaign should find a new line of work. They've adopted as a slogan the single word: Forward! You've heard those complaints from conservatives that Obama is a socialist? Well, Forward! is one sure way to validate those concerns. Forward! has been the slogan of Marxists for more than a century. Vorwärts is not a soccer rival to Harry Potter's Hogwarts school, that home of witchcraft and wizardry. Vorwärts was the German language name of the Socialist newspaper for generations of European leftists.
It was just a short clip on CNN. Reporter Erin Burnett recited some statistics that suggest Iran's oil tankers are all tied up, that the Islamic Republic's oil revenues have been hard hit. Economic sanctions have been tightened on the Mullahs' tyrannical regime by the UN, the European Union, and the U.S. "It appears the sanctions are working," said Burnett. She challenged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's assessment of Iran's headlong drive to build a nuclear weapon.
This month at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast in Washington, the faithful met to worship the Almighty and discuss the latest battles for religious liberty in an increasingly secular culture. When the Knights of Columbus' Supreme Knight Carl Anderson spoke, he made a startling observation about the new Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. monument which has not been widely reported and is quite unique among monuments throughout our nation's capital. Even though Dr. King was a Baptist minister and his history-altering speeches about civil liberties are saturated with references to natural rights and profound theological constructs, all 14 quotes carefully etched into his stone monument completely eschew references to God!
Columnist Charles Krauthammer calls the ceremonial interment of the Shuttle Discovery an act of "willed American decline." He's certainly right about that. It is an historic retreat for America. It was under John F. Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, that America was summoned to greatness. Frustrated by a series of Soviet "firsts" in space -- first earth satellite (Sputnik), first man in space (Yuri Gagarin) -- the young President Kennedy knew that his talk of "betting America moving again" would ring hollow if the Soviets bested us in space.
Secretary Hillary Clinton was at the Naval Academy recently. She went there to deliver a prestigious Forrestal Lecture. And she was well received by the 4,000 Midshipmen and hundreds of students attending the Naval Academy Foreign Affairs Conference. One Midshipman asked Sec. Clinton about the killing of Osama bin Laden. Hillary responded with poised professionalism. She crisply outlined all the steps that were taken and the vast, complex operations that had to come together in time and space to bring success. She tells the story well. And, interestingly, she gives no hint of envy that it was Barack Obama who got to make that critical call, not Hillary herself.
Arizona might be going to the U.S. Supreme Court yet again. A federal appeals court upheld part of the Grand Canyon State's voter-ID law, but struck down another part of Arizona's law as inconsistent with a 1993 federal law. This might become the third citizen/voting Arizona law to go to the Supreme Court in just three years. Arizona allows for citizens to adopt ballot propositions with the force of law, which trump state statutes but fall short of amending the Arizona Constitution. Arizona's voters adopted Proposition 200 in 2004. It requires showing proof of citizenship when you register to vote, and then showing government-issued photo-ID on Election Day when you cast your ballot.
The oppressive monster known as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is not just killing jobs these days -- it is intentionally avoiding transparency that may shed light on the political motivations behind the agency's actions. Started in 1970 by President Richard Nixon, the EPA was a small agency that combined several anti-pollution and clean water agencies into one agency with 4,084 employees and a $1 billion budget. Today, it has 17,000 employees and has evolved from its narrow focus into an unconstitutional, blunt instrument with vast powers that the Obama Administration wields to promote a radical political agenda that is destroying prosperity and ruining lives.
Sadly, some are exploiting the Trayvon Martin shooting to target self-defense laws that protect innocent lives. These laws safeguard law-abiding and peaceable citizens, and are not to blame in the tragic Florida incident. Stand your ground laws did not apply in that situation, and statements to the contrary are irresponsible and misinformed. In some states the law imposes a duty to retreat from physical confrontations. Whether in your home or on the street, if you fought back, you might be prosecuted as a criminal.
America, with its constitutionally protected freedoms and entrepreneurial spirit, has generated prosperity at a level which is unique to the human experience. However, if the mortgage crisis, student loan crisis, and the disastrous failure of green-energy firms have taught us anything, it is government has a unique ability to destroy that prosperity and ruin lives while sticking taxpayers with outrageous bills.
We are often reminded that President Obama is the smartest man ever to occupy the White House. That's how Prof. Michael Beschloss, presidential historian, described him. Of course, Mr. Obama was editor of Harvard Law Review. Most of all, we are informed regularly that Barack Obama taught constitutional law at University of Chicago. That's no mean accomplishment. So, it's really curious how Professor Obama defines constitutional issues. Last week, he told a Rose Garden audience that the U.S. Supreme Court would be engaging in "judicial activism" if it rules his health care takeover unconstitutional.
Anti-war presidential candidate Gene McCarthy once described reporters as being like blackbirds on the telephone lines: One lands, they all land; one flies off, they all fly off. We're seeing those media blackbirds again. They're going on and on about conservatives and their so-called war on women. It seems if you don't think religious institutions -- hospitals, soup kitchens, universities -- should be forced to provide coverage for drugs that can cause abortions, then you are making "war" on women.
President Obama took the oath of office on Tuesday, January 20, 2009. In that Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial year, Mr. Obama sought to stress his admiration for the only other president from Illinois. Millions of people watched as he placed his left hand on the Lincoln Bible and raised his right hand. Around the world, billions viewed the event on television. On the National Mall, army howitzers of the Presidential Salute Battery fired off a 21-gun salute to honor the new commander-in-chief.
President Obama this week took advantage of the fine spring weather and a meeting with Canada's and Mexico's leaders to make an extraordinary statement in the White House Rose Garden. He responded to questions about his health care takeover. ObamaCare is currently being reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court. The nine Justices are expected to rule on the measure by this June. Their ruling could come right in the middle of a heated presidential election campaign.
Britain's Conservative Party, the Tories, lost an empire when America rebelled against their tyranny and foolishness. Edmund Burke said then: "Great empires and little minds go ill together." Now, the Tories are preparing to lose Britain itself. How so? The Tories are ending marriage. Of course, that's not what they think they are doing. They think they are simply acknowledging that Sir Elton and his significant other are as "married" as any other British couple. It used to be said of the Britons with their stiff upper lips that they don't care what you do so long as you don't scare the horses. But the Tories bid to end marriage should scare all of Britain -- horse, foot, and dragoons.
In Washington this week, a rare drama is unfolding in the U.S. Supreme Court. The momentous question that is before the court is this: Shall we be Citizens or Subjects? The high court is considering a historic challenge by twenty-six states to the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. Hundreds of people have stood in line, some of them overnight in the chill March air, to get inside. Our colleague, Ken Klukowski, was one of those fortunate few. We are relying on Ken's reporting and also on the impressions of Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.
Wouldn't you like to have been in the White House Situation Room when the president decided to take out Osama bin Laden? Thrilling, right? You'd have been part of history and have stories to tell your grandchildren. Well, you can't. Not even if you donate a million dollars to the Obama re-election campaign. Sorry, Bill Mocker, you'll have to wait for the movie. It's Top Secret. Nor can you listen in when the President is at one of his G-8 Summits (or is it G-20 by now?) It would doubtless be interesting to learn what the Big Wigs are deciding about international trade and technology issues. It would be valuable, too, as you are filling out your own stock portfolio. Sorry, no entry allowed. Authorized Personnel only. And you are not authorized.
TIME Magazine's nation editor, Amy Sullivan, thinks all this talk of President Obama's "war" on religious liberty is overwrought. She told a recent Georgetown gathering that it was absurd to claim the latest Mandate from HHS ranks with such horrible events in American history as the Philadelphia Bible Riots of 1844. To be sure, those riots were terrible. Catholics and Protestants in the City of Brotherly Love attacked each others' churches in a series of violent clashes that left several dead. In nearby New York , however, the situation remained tense but calm. That's because Catholic Archbishop "Dagger John" Hughes made it clear that if a single Catholic Church was torched, he'd make sure New York looked like "a second Moscow." The reference was to Napoleon's burning the Russian city in 1812. (The "dagger" referred to was for his piercing sermons, and perhaps his Irish wit, not for any weapons he carried. Thank God.)
Protecting the integrity of the ballot box is essential to our democracy. Laws requiring voters to show identification at the polls are commonsense measures to prevent fraud and corruption, and ensure that each year's election returns accurately reflect the will of the people. Yet President Obama's administration and political allies are pursuing a dual-track approach to vilify such tools, in a crass political ploy to aid the president's reelection.
It was Winston Churchill who first used that term, "the crunch" in that way. It means, of course, that crisis when a leader has to make a judgment. It is when lives, perhaps millions of them, hang on the outcome of the decision the leader makes. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower faced such a crunch on June 5, 1944. Storms had already delayed for 24 hours his long-planned invasion of Normandy. There appeared to be a momentary break in the weather. Could he afford to go now and risk the largest landing ever being disrupted and defeated by severe storms on the beaches? Or, could he keep tens of thousands of heavily armed and ready men on board their ships, getting sicker and weaker by the hour? In that crunch, General Eisenhower listened to all the competing claims, all the contradictory advice. Then he said quietly: "OK. Let's go."
