Andrew Cline wrote an amusing article for The American Spectator on the passage of a disastrous farm-welfare bill. If you are not a farmer, this is the only joy you will get out of this bill’s passage.
The good folks over at Citizens Against Government Waste released the 2008 edition of their annual Pig Book.
Hillary Clinton loves pork! In 2007, she took 281 earmarks totaling an astounding $296.2 million.
Barack took 53 earmarks totaling $97.4 million. At least we can put to rest the notion that Barack Hussein Obama is a secret Muslim.
On the other hand, John McCain, in 22 years in the Senate, has NEVER taken an earmark. The difference in this year’s election is stark. We may not agree with everything McCain stands for, but on this issue, he is as conservative as they come.
It is California after all.
Now, thanks to Justice Walter Croskey and two of his fellow appellate judges, California has made a serious bid to be recognized as the King of the Regulatory States (although such an appellation may be too patriarchal to be politically correct - perhaps Monarch of the Regulatory States would be better and less sexist). Last February 28, the California Court of Appeals ruled that it is illegal to instruct children without a certification from the state, effectively outlawing home schooling. According to Justice Croskey, “parents do not have the constitutional right to home school their children.” In fact, “[b]ecause parents have a legal duty to see to their children’s schooling within the provisions of these laws, parents who fail to do so may be subject to a criminal complaint against them, found guilty of an infraction, and subject to imposition of fines or an order to complete a parent education and counseling program.”
Apparently the Court has been itching to placate the teachers’ union for some time, because the justification for this sweeping ruling, affecting 166,000 families, was a single incidence of child abuse of a homeschooled child. Repeatedly throughout the decision, the Court states that parents have no constitutional basis for opting out of the public school morass and that these cases do not present a federal question (at least in the Ninth Circuit). I know quite a few people who home school their children and generally they do it out of religious conviction. In fact, the family under California’s boot did assert their First Amendment right about which the Court stated:
The parents in the instant case have asserted in a declaration that it is because of their “sincerely held religious beliefs” that they home school their children and those religious beliefs “are based on Biblical teachings and principles.” Even if the parents’ declaration had been signed under penalty of perjury, which it was not, those assertions are not the quality of evidence that permits us to say that application of California’s compulsory public school education law to them violates their First Amendment rights. Their statements are conclusional, not factually specific. Moreover, such sparse representations are too easily asserted by any parent who wishes to home school his or her child.
Apparently, before a person’s religious rights may be recognized in California, the burden is on the person asserting them to prove their genuineness. This Court is telling parents that the regulatory power of the State is sufficiently powerful to countermand their right to their exercise of religion and the rearing of their children in that religion. Especially if one simply asserts their right without justifying why the State should allow you to exercise it.
Let us hope that transfer is granted and this terrible decision is rectified at the California Supreme Court soon. If not through the courts, then the legislature. But, it would be nice to think that a court of law can still exercise some self-restraint.
I read this on the Corner and immediately thought Mr. Steyn was being dramatic. There is no way that England padded the streetlights on an entire street to protect engrossed text-messagers from injuring themselves.
The USDA announced the recall over 143 million pounds of beef from a southern California meat producer/packer. The recall has scared many from buying or consuming beef products. The scare rippled through the nation, over the seas and on to foreign shores. The largest recall prior to the current was of only 35 million pounds! This recall truly is monumental. The question is, was the recall justified? Continue Reading »
James Poulos of Postmodern Conservative has endorsed Romney and Obama for the nominating constests. Poulos on Obama:
The best way to standardize respect in this country is to standardize citizenship, and return to citizens the ability to administer their shared affairs together face to face. For all his liberalism, Obama is unique in his ability to inspire the desire for that kind of respect and real political participation. … There is a profound desire in the culture today to escape from politics and citizenship — to enjoy the feeling of togetherness rather than do the hard work that makes togetherness worthwhile. Obama’s style and substance tempts and rewards this desire. But it also tempts and rewards its opposite. … Obama inspires people to not abandon politics to the experts, to recognize the goods of taking control of their own lives to common purpose. I may disagree with him on nearly all the issues, but I earnestly hope that the chance he presents, especially on the left, is seized before all the life of true citizen politics is drained away.
I see little evidence that Obama’s brand of governing would inspire such “true citizen politics.” Continue Reading »
Walter Williams has an alarming story concerning a proposed energy amendment in California. Apparently there is a proposal whereby any newly installed thermostat will be required to have the capability of being remotely controlled by the government. Why in the world would anyone want that? Well, to control energy usage. Let’s get California greener.
The California Energy Commission has recently proposed amendments to its standards for energy efficiency (www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-400-2007-017/CEC-400-2007-017-45DAY.PDF). These standards include a requirement that any new or modified heating or air conditioning system must include a programmable communicating thermostat (PCT) whose settings can be remotely controlled by government authorities. A thermostat czar, sitting in Sacramento, would be empowered to remotely reduce the heating or cooling of your house during what he deems as an “emergency event.”
Say you disagree with the czar’s temperature setting for your house, the California Energy Commission is one step ahead of you with the provision: “The PCT shall not allow customer changes to thermostat settings during emergency events.” In other words, the thermostat must be configured in a way that doesn’t allow the customer to override the czar’s decision.
The offending provision is on pages 63-64.
In a completely unrelated, but somehow pertinent, article. Michelle Malkin expresses her desire for a man. A man who rejects Big Nanny government. It would seem that Walter joins you in such a desire. Although, he would (as we would) probably find a different way to express it.
We are now racking up, as a nation, $1 million per minute in debt. Let me write that out for you: $1,000,000 per minute; $16, 667 per second; $60,000,000 per hour; $1,440,000,000 per day (that’s in the billions folks!). Staggering, I know. And yet, we persist in thinking that a national drug plan is a good idea. Even Republicans (link requires a subscription to National Review, which really, you ought to have anyway) according to Ramesh Ponnuru.
Ramesh makes the point that Americans generally believe that they believe in smaller government when asked, but mention a specific program and you get the whole, “well, I’m not sure about that program” routine. The facts speak for themselves. Democrats own the organ of spending (Congress), spending shoots up. Republicans take over the organ of spending (on a program of fiscal restraint ironically enough), spending shoots up. Unfortunately, folks, we’ve run out of parties unless the Libertarians ever gain traction. The moral of this story is unlimber your wallets, because the ride could get bumpy from here on out.
It turns out the government has been playing fast and loose with our Fourth Amendment protections. This story says that federal agents have been tracking people through their cellphones without first obtaining a warrant based upon probable cause.
“Law enforcement has absolutely no interest in tracking the locations of law-abiding citizens. None whatsoever,” [Justice Department spokesman Dean] Boyd said. “What we’re doing is going through the courts to lawfully obtain data that will help us locate criminal targets, sometimes in cases where lives are literally hanging in the balance, such as a child abduction or serial murderer on the loose.”
Remember my buddy “Nick” who “steadfastly refuses to own a vehicle that contains the OnStar system because he’s pretty sure the government uses it to track the whereabouts of citizens and, in particular, him. Yet, he carries a cell phone everywhere he goes?” He may want to reconsider his mode of communication, Dean Boyd’s reassurances notwithstanding.
I have a friend. Let us call him Nick. (Since it is unlikely that he will ever read this blog - unless we first convert it to a video blog and then air it on the USA Network between Mannix and The Rockford Files - I feel confident I can use his real name.) Nick is the sort of person who becomes quite alarmed at the slightest hint of government interference in his personal life, but inconsistently so. For instance, he steadfastly refuses to own a vehicle that contains the OnStar system because he’s pretty sure the government uses it to track the whereabouts of citizens and, in particular, him. Yet, he carries a cell phone everywhere he goes.
I met Nick in 1990 at the “Smoker’s Corner” outside the engineering building at Purdue’s Indianapolis campus. There were quite a few of us who would huddle outside the door and smoke cigarettes. Nick was the guy that every single one of us would have sworn would be the last guy on earth to quit smoking. In fact, we used to joke that someone needed to be with him at all times so that when he died, we could pry the smoldering cigarette out of his fingers, lest he burn the house down around his corpse. He always said he would quit smoking when the government had taxed them to the point where they cost $2 per pack (they were just over a dollar then). “Yeah, yeah, Nick,” we would say not believing a word of it. Cigarettes hit $2, Nick is now a non-smoker. We were all stunned.
When the government passed the seatbelt laws but exempted trucks, Nick traded in his Cougar for an Explorer. When cigarettes hit $3 a pack, Nick warned me that they would be going after alcohol next. <Shudder>. Apparently, he had judged that argument as being the most likely thing to scare the bejeezus out of me and maybe cause me to start taking this whole threat seriously.
I tell this shaggy dog story for the sole purpose of introducing this excellent piece in Reason Magazine.
I would just like to publicly acknowledge that Nick was right and I was wrong. The government does want to ride around in my back pocket, keeping me safe from myself. And I don’t like it!
Thomas, a recent commenter on awb’s latest post, said:
Something truly scary exists within this mess of school laws: namely, the slippery slope of authoritarian nature of school itself.
Would any true advocate of real freedom and liberty ever support a law forcing groups of people to all do the same thing at the same time? Where else in American society does such a law exist? Yet, school is based on such lack of personal freedom — for all students, and even more so for their teachers!
So, the core of this mess is the authoritarian nature of “school” — where students are forced day-long to all do the same thing at the same time (as they are being “trained” to become adults within a free society — hah, absolutely crazy).
If students had any real freedom, they could easily have their own “moments of silence” — with no one caring, nor noticing even!
The real solution here is for the students to resist the authoritarian regime they are confined within — in order to learn real “lessons of life”, as they prepare and practice civil disobediance, as needed, in order to insist on their own religious freedoms.
Free people do not seek or ask permission to be free — instead, they learn to act (in order to best declare, claim and exercise their freedoms)!
Wimps await permission to be free — no law will ever deliver real freedom to people unwilling to be free (either within classrooms, or outside in our “real world”).
Make sense?
To answer the question posed at the end, I understand where you are coming from, I just don’t agree with it very much. Here’s why: Continue Reading »
This NYTimes op-ed piece recites a very brief history of the French Revolution: Bush’s Dangerous Liaisons. Without being so pedantic as to spell everything out for you in tedious detail, I will simply say, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”
Apropos of Karl and Mike’s comments on paleoconservatism and traditionalism, I thought I would throw out a few disorganized thoughts of my own on the subject.
Paleos are known as the vocal (and often angry) faction of the conservative movement that stands outside, and is endlessly critical of, the FOX News-National Review-GOP complex. What’s interesting to me is that paleoconservatism itself, like conservatism, is a coalition of distinct strains of thought. For example, the libertarian followers of Ludwig Von Mises and the Austrian School of economics who gather at LewRockwell.com comprise a major component. Then there are those Russell Kirk-following traditionalists (like our own Karl), once well represented in the National Review orbit, who now find themselves increasingly alienated from the mainstream conservative movement, and may or may not self-identify as paleos. Closely related are advocates of localism and community, in the mold of social theorist Robert Nisbet. Then you’ve got the Old Right-types, the inheritors of the isolationists of the 1930s who criticized the New Deal and opposed the American entry into World War II. Continue Reading »
From time to time, often over several beers and grain alcohol, my distinguished blog colleagues and I engage in sagacious political and cultural conversations. More often than not I am labeled the “Podhoretz-type, world-war-IV neoconservative” (brilliant Willmoore), told to read Russell Kirk and to sit at the end of the bar. While I am sure that there will be many debates over our foreign policy (which is about the only thing, in any way, I can agree with neocons about) and other minutiae of the neo/paleo divide I thought I would extend the olive branch to my paleo brethren and share my disgust. While perusing the news today I came across this article. The headline alone felt like a punch to my stomach and a kick to the groin. I knew that President Bush and our esteemed Republican Congress for the past six years had been way too spend happy, but biggest spender since LBJ? It’s worse than I could ever imagine. Its things like this that have even me considering the “nuclear option” that SM and Willmoore proffer, and vote third party in 2008. That or not vote at all.
Steven Greenhut has this wonderful post on Lew Rockwell’s site today. I agree with a majority of what Steven says, especially concerning the bifurcation of GOP conservatives and libertarians after the implosion of communist Russia: “During the Cold War, an inspiring leader such as Reagan was able to keep internal peace, as both factions battled their mutual enemies: the Soviet empire and tax-and-spend Democrats. The former is gone, and the latter is still with us, but many libertarians have come to realize that they are as far apart from their conservative “allies” on the big issues of the day as they are from their liberal adversaries.”
Libertarians aren’t being duped into war by their neocrony counterparts. Russia was a legitimate threat because of its military might coupled with a horrid collectivist philosophy. The neocronies, if they hope to defeat Shillary, will have to do better than Iran. It’s not surprising that Putin is now creeping his way back onto the GOP’s “naughty” list. And the ex-KGB lifer loves the attention. He’s “reestablishing” ties with Iran to “secure the region” and kept Condi Rice waiting forty minutes in a Moscow foyer. Ironically, Rice criticized his “power-grab” in the Kremlin, stating that too much concentrated power, without countervailing institutions, is “problematic” for democratic development. It seems that the neocronies aren’t just expanding executive power to monolithic proportions, but also trying to resurrect an old enemy to make sure that their own power-grab remains intact. Luckily the libertarians aren’t buying into this old, new enemy and will not be budged from the far right.
After the debate this evening, Hannity & Colmes hosted another UVOTE Poll. Once again, Ron Paul won the poll and, as expected, Sean Hannity came absolutely unglued, shouting, “They’re stacking the deck.”
I’m not sure what “deck” Ron Paul supporters are “stacking,” because I ran a little experiment with the good folks over at UVOTE: I voted for Ron Paul twice. The first auto-response text message thanked me for voting and reminded me to watch Hannity & Colmes for the results. No thanks, but I’ll stay tuned just to see Hannity squirm when Paul takes a seat in the “Spin Zone,” the appropriately-named dais where H & C interview all the GOP nominees post-debate.
After texting UVOTE a second time, I received the following message: “Y0u have already voted on tonight’s debate. Thank you for your participation.” Apparently, the system works: one person, one vote.
So perhaps Paul garners more support than neoconservatives like Hannity give him credit for. When Hannity asked Paul why he thinks he always wins these Fox post-debate polls, Paul responded, ”The American people are agreeing with this…they like their personal liberties.” Hannity looked stupified, as if he was mulling over the difference between rights and liberties in his mind, and deciding which were worse for Americans.
However, I’ll concede that Paul probably did not win this debate (I think Mike Huckabee really shined) and the moment of the night was not Paul’s, but rather belonged to Benito Giuliani when lambasting Hillary: “She made a statement last week…I have a million ideas; America can’t afford them all. No kidding, Hillary. America can’t afford you.” The applause was absolutely thunderous in Orlando for Benito. Now if he could only prove himself a social conservative and take a strong stance on cutting taxes and spending.
(Note: McCain also had a great moment when he referred to Woodstock as a “pharmaceutical event,” and noted that although it might have been a great experience he was “tied up at the time,” referring jokingly to his detention in a POW camp.)
…or you could watch this Ron Paul video and avoid all the puffery!
Some highlights include:
1. an explanation and breakdown of the six criteria for Just War theory;
2. Ron quoting Matthew 5:9: “Blessed are the peacemakers…” in front of Congress;
3. Ron’s take on what the Revolution and drafting of the Constitution really mean, i.e. taking the power to unilaterally declare war away from the executive branch;
4. Ron’s take on the U.N.: “I don’t think the U.N. serves our interests at all. I’d just as soon be out of the U.N.”;
5. “The [philosophy of freedom] brings people together; the Constitution brings people together.” Right on, Ron. He goes on to criticize welfarism and the nanny state, which work in tandem to strip us of notions like personal responsibility and freedom. “Giving things away,” presumably the liberal answer to all of life’s problems, has worked to the benefit of the Democrats, who claim this serves as the exemplar of “compassionate” government. Ron thinks compassion comes from personal responsibility and freedom. I agree.
I think Ron’s onto something with this whole freedom “thing.”
RSS
