Civil rights for the Age of Obama

KUSI reporter Tom Jordan met up with civil rights hustler Al Sharpton in San Diego talking about the city's pension reform initiative. Sharpton had a nine-minute chat with Jordan that, according to KUSI, "became a bit heated." KUSI has edited the conversation down to five minutes of comedy gold.

Sharpton says the city's proposed pension reform initiative is a civil rights violation, and that attention should instead be placed on taxing the wealthy. Jordan asks a few tough questions that stump Sharpton. Sharpton's AFSCME minder -- AFSCME International Secretary Lee Saunders -- jumps in to lend Sharpton a hand, but Jordan stays on Sharpton's case. Jordan not only stays on the case. He exposes a bit of Sharpton's demagoguery. As Sharpton complains that Jordan is trying to debate him, we can't be far from Sharpton alleging that Jordan is violating Sharpton's civil rights.

FOOTNOTE: No post featuring Sharpton should fail to cite Jay Nordlinger's NR profile "Power Dem."

Pawlenty Backs American Power

Barack Obama is more distrustful of American power than any president since Jimmy Carter. At the same time, weariness with foreign policy has infected many Republicans, too. Ron Paul is only the most extreme (and consistent) example. Today Tim Pawlenty delivered a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in which he attempted to stake out a position as the inheritor of Ronald Reagan's foreign policy mantle. It was a good speech that grappled honestly with difficult issues. The complete text is here; these are some highlights:

I want to speak plainly this morning about the opportunities and the dangers we face today in the Middle East. The revolutions now roiling that region offer the promise of a more democratic, more open, and a more prosperous Arab world. From Morocco to the Arabian Gulf, the escape from the dead hand of oppression is now a real possibility.

Now is not the time to retreat from freedom's rise.

Yet at the same time, we know these revolutions can bring to power forces that are neither democratic nor forward-looking. Just as the people of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria and elsewhere see a chance for a better life of genuine freedom, the leaders of radical Islam see a chance to ride political turmoil into power.

The United States has a vital stake in the future of this region. We have been presented with a challenge as great as any we have faced in recent decades. And we must get it right. The question is, are we up to the challenge?

My answer is, of course we are. If we are clear about our interests and guided by our principles, we can help steer events in the right direction. Our nation has done this in the past -- at the end of World War II, in the last decade of the Cold War, and in the more recent war on terror ... and we can do it again.

But President Obama has failed to formulate and carry out an effective and coherent strategy in response to these events. He has been timid, slow, and too often without a clear understanding of our interests or a clear commitment to our principles.

And parts of the Republican Party now seem to be trying to out-bid the Democrats in appealing to isolationist sentiments. This is no time for uncertain leadership in either party. The stakes are simply too high, and the opportunity is simply too great.

***

The Obama "engagement" policy in Syria led the Administration to call Bashar al Assad a "reformer." Even as Assad's regime was shooting hundreds of protesters dead in the street, President Obama announced his plan to give Assad "an alternative vision of himself." Does anyone outside a therapist's office have any idea what that means? This is what passes for moral clarity in the Obama Administration.

By contrast, I called for Assad's departure on March 29; I call for it again today. We should recall our ambassador from Damascus; and I call for that again today. The leader of the United States should never leave those willing to sacrifice their lives in the cause of freedom wondering where America stands. As President, I will not.

***

Elections that produce anti-democratic regimes undermine both freedom and stability. We must do more than monitor polling places. We must redirect foreign aid away from efforts to merely build good will, and toward efforts to build good allies -- genuine democracies governed by free people according to the rule of law. And we must insist that our international partners get off the sidelines and do the same.

We should have no illusions about the difficulty of the transitions faced by Libya, Tunisia, and especially Egypt. ... Beyond Libya, America should always promote the universal principles that undergird freedom. We should press new friends to end discrimination against women, to establish independent courts, and freedom of speech and the press. We must insist on religious freedoms for all, including the region's minorities--whether Christian, Shia, Sunni, or Bahai.

***

By sticking to Bashar al Assad so long, the Obama Administration has not only frustrated Syrians who are fighting for freedom--it has demonstrated strategic blindness. The governments of Iran and Syria are enemies of the United States. They are not reformers and never will be. They support each other. To weaken or replace one, is to weaken or replace the other.

The fall of the Assad mafia in Damascus would weaken Hamas, which is headquartered there. It would weaken Hezbollah, which gets its arms from Iran, through Syria. And it would weaken the Iranian regime itself.

To take advantage of this moment, we should press every diplomatic and economic channel to bring the Assad reign of terror to an end. We need more forceful sanctions to persuade Syria's Sunni business elite that Assad is too expensive to keep backing. We need to work with Turkey and the Arab nations and the Europeans, to further isolate the regime. And we need to encourage opponents of the regime by making our own position very clear, right now: Bashar al-Assad must go.

When he does, the mullahs of Iran will find themselves isolated and vulnerable. Syria is Iran's only Arab ally. If we peel that away, I believe it will hasten the fall of the mullahs. And that is the ultimate goal we must pursue. It's the singular opportunity offered to the world by the brave men and women of the Arab Spring.

***

Today the president doesn't really have a policy toward the peace process. He has an attitude. And let's be frank about what that attitude is: he thinks Israel is the problem. And he thinks the answer is always more pressure on Israel.

I reject that anti-Israel attitude. I reject it because Israel is a close and reliable democratic ally. And I reject it because I know the people of Israel want peace.

***

It is not wrong for Republicans to question the conduct of President Obama's military leadership in Libya. There is much to question. And it is not wrong for Republicans to debate the timing of our military drawdown in Afghanistan-- though my belief is that General Petreaus' voice ought to carry the most weight on that question.

What is wrong, is for the Republican Party to shrink from the challenges of American leadership in the world. History repeatedly warns us that in the long run, weakness in foreign policy costs us and our children much more than we'll save in a budget line item.

America already has one political party devoted to decline, retrenchment, and withdrawal. It does not need a second one.

Our enemies in the War on Terror, just like our opponents in the Cold War, respect and respond to strength. Sometimes strength means military intervention. Sometimes it means diplomatic pressure. It always means moral clarity in word and deed.

That is the legacy of Republican foreign policy at its best, and the banner our next Republican President must carry around the world.

Let Debt Negotiations See Light of Day

Yesterday, Senator Jeff Sessions called for negotiations over raising the federal debt ceiling to be conducted openly:

The ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee says President Obama needs to bring the negotiations over increasing the debt ceiling out into the open.

"We might as well stake it out publicly to see what the disagreements are," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said Friday in an interview with The Hill. "I believe Majority Leader [Harry] Reid and the president desperately are working not to have to reveal their vision for the future, financially. Their vision will include, from what glimpses we've seen, an advocacy for more taxes and less spending cuts."

Sessions said Democrats have been avoiding making public the negotiations and laying out precisely what they want in a debt-limit package because "what they're advocating for, I don't think would be popular."

I think that is correct. The Democrats want to raise taxes, and they are hoping to emerge from secret negotiations over the debt limit with Republican consent to a tax increase. The Democrats couldn't raise taxes when they controlled both the House and the Senate, and everyone knows that no tax increase will pass today's House. So why would Republicans agree to any tax increases in the context of raising the debt limit? Conducting negotiations in the open would not only expose the Democrats for the would-be tax hikers they are, but would also keep the pressure on Republicans to stick to the principles on which they were elected.

Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to sell their usual demagogic bill of goods. While it would have virtually no impact on the budget deficit, the Dems are promoting a special tax increase that would be limited to the five largest American oil companies. The increase would take the form of eliminating the manufacturing rate reduction that is received by all manufacturers. It would have the perverse result that the far larger foreign oil companies headquartered in Russia, Brazil, etc. would pay lower taxes on their American operations than the U.S.-based companies do.

As usual, the Democrats have nothing to offer but demagoguery. Let's let their proposals see the light of day.

UPDATE: On Fox this morning, John Thune spoke powerfully on behalf of resolving issues relating to spending and debt through open debate rather than a last-minute, back room deal:

Courtside Notes

I noted here on June 20 that the left had a really bad day at the Supreme Court, and they had another one yesterday especially with the decision striking down Arizona's welfare-for-politicians campaign matching funds scheme in Arizona Free Enterprise Club's Freedom Club PAC v. Bennett. (Just try to say the plaintiff's name three times fast. Or just once fast.) It was another 5 - 4 decision along familiar lines, which is sure to set off a fresh round of rage on the left. Ah, if only Anthony hadn't tweeted his Weiner, I'm sure his crusade to impeach Justice Clarence Thomas would have succeeded by now. (Sorry; just can't help it.)

In that earlier post I had flagged the Bond v. US decision as a possible straw in the wind about Justice Anthony Kennedy's possible inclinations about the inevitable Obamacare case (while misstating the holding somewhat--thanks to commenters for pointing that out; that's what I get for reading the syllabus too quickly). Today David Rivkin and Lee Casey, the Wall Street Journal editorial page's unofficial legal affairs correspondents, make the same point about Kennedy's language in Bond:

For Supreme Court watchers, Bond is a profound reaffirmation of the centrality of the state-federal "dual sovereignty" system. That's why the decision is bad news for those who defend ObamaCare--the most extravagant challenge to that dual system in our history. . .

Justice Kennedy's opinion posits a vision of federalism in which "[t]he principles of limited national powers and state sovereignty are intertwined." The decision makes it particularly clear that "[i]impermissible interference with state sovereignty is not within the enumerated powers of the National Government." It adds, "an action that exceeds the National Government's enumerated powers undermines the sovereign interests of States."

Well, not so fast, argues Eric Claeys of George Mason Law School in the current issue of National Affairs. Claeys, a former clerk for Chief Justice Rehnquist, thinks there is a good chance that even the Court's conservative justices might not vote to strike down the individual mandate at the heart of Obamacare:

But this conventional wisdom [that the five conservatives will vote to strike down] is wrong -- and adhering to it could prove highly counterproductive for Obamacare's opponents. It is wrong largely because it assumes that the Roberts Court's "judicial conservatives" are members of a monolithic bloc. But in fact, conservative judges are often pulled in different directions by two competing attachments: to "originalism" and to "judicial restraint." In constitutional cases that touch on questions of federalism, Justice Thomas has generally voted and reasoned as a committed originalist. Justices Scalia and Alito, and Chief Justice Roberts, however, have often appealed to judicial restraint to uphold acts of Congress that may be in tension with an originalist reading of the Constitution. One or more of these three judicial conservatives may well do the same with regard to Obamacare.

Claeys thinks, and I agree, that a direct political strategy of congressional repeal is necessary. I've worried from the beginning that relying on the Supreme Court to deliver a political victory would dissipate conservative energy against Obamacare in particular along with Obama's broader agenda. In fact, a Supreme Court victory in favor Obamacare would be a huge blow, as Obama would claim it as a signal of legitimacy for the plan.

I'll add by the way that Claeys is on to something important about the large shadings of jurisprudence among the Court's conservative block. Whenever I hear a Republican politician say (as Giuliani did in 2008, and Bush in 2000) that he'd appoint justices like Thomas and Scalia, I usually ask: "Okay, which one? They're actually quite different in their originalism." A clever reporter might ask some time. But then, clever reporters on this subject are as rare as unicorns.

Power Line Prize Update

The days are dwindling down to a precious few: the Power Line Prize competition ends on July 15. So if you are a creative sort who knows how to make a video, write a song, paint a painting, design a video game--you name it--it is time to get to work. The grand prize is $100,000, and even if you don't win, the runner-up gets $15,000 and two third-place finishers will receive $5,000 each. Go to http://powerlineprize.com for contest rules and all the details:

The grand prize will go to whoever can best use any artistic medium to dramatize the importance of the federal debt crisis. One can divide the voting population into three groups that seem to be of roughly equal size: one group consisting of those who understand the severity of the crisis and want to do something about it; another group that may or may not understand, but are locked into opposition to change because of their dependence on federal largesse; and a third group, consisting in large part of young people, who for whatever reason haven't really focused on the debt crisis, or don't understand it.

The purpose of the Power Line Prize is to get through to that third group--to use the tools of emotional persuasion to explain that our children won't have a future unless we break free of our ridiculous levels of federal spending and our crippling dependence on debt. All entries become our property, and we will disseminate those that we think are effective--not just the prize winners--for maximum impact. We hope to get some time on live national television to award the prize and unveil the winning entries, but, whether that pans out or not, the results of the contest will receive wide publicity.

We have been assembling a top-notch panel of judges to decide who wins the prizes: Hugh Hewitt, Glenn Reynolds, Roger L. Simon, Andrew Breitbart, John Ondrasik and Mary Katharine Ham. We will add another judge or two--young people, since they are, more than anyone, our intended audience--over the next week.

So, if you have the relevant talents, you should enter; if not, you should pass the information on to friends, relatives and colleagues who do. The clock is ticking.

Our Hokey President

Michael Ramirez skewers President Obama for playing politics with our troops in Afghanistan. But then, when does Obama do anything other than play politics? His release of oil from the strategic reserve is a classic: the Democrats tell us that increasing our domestic production won't affect gas prices, until they face a political crisis. Then the clouds part, momentarily, and they remember Economics 1: increasing supply will lower prices. They remember it, however, only until the political crisis passes.

Anyway, here is Ramirez on Obama's Afghanistan machinations. Click to enlarge:

How to Reform Medicaid

Every entitlement program has been a fiscal disaster. With hindsight, it is easy to see that it was folly for Congress to abandon responsibility for budgeting fixed sums for such programs as retirement benefits and seniors' health care, instead setting eligibility criteria that created open-ended liability on the part of the federal government--open-ended, that is, until the programs become patently unsustainable and must be reformed or repealed. Which is where we are today.

Of the major entitlement programs, Medicaid has gotten the least attention. Yet, in fiscal terms, it may be the most disastrous. Dan Mitchell of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity explains how Medicaid can be reformed:

Let's Be Moral

President Obama's spokesman explained today that Obama thinks the Republicans' position on the budget is "immoral." This, just as Obama reportedly is stepping into an active role in the debt limit negotiations. Typical Obama: your position is immoral; now, let's compromise!

Meanwhile, what is Obama's view of the budget? That government spending should be pumped up to ever-higher levels, exclusively on the backs of the very people who are already bearing a disproportionate share of the costs of the administration's waste and crony capitalism. That is what Obama means when he says "moral."

Save the last dance for me

Today is the anniversary of the birth of the great pop songwriter Doc Pomus (Jerome Felder). Pomus was one of the true characters of the Brill Building era of pop songwriting. Together with his partner Mort Shuman, he wrote hit songs for a long list of artists including Elvis, Ray Charles, Dion and the Belmonts, and the Drifters. The Doc Pomus site includes a good biography and list of song highlights. (See also the Songwriters Hall of Fame biography of Pomus.) In the later phase of his career, after a long hiatus following the dissolution of his partnership with Shuman, he teamed up with Dr. John and others to produce a set of lesser-known gems for artists including B.B. King and Joe Cocker.

In the immediate aftermath of Pomus's death in 1991, the late New Orleans soul singer Johnny Adams recorded a stirring tribute to Pomus in Johnny Adams Sings Doc Pomus: The Real Me. Adams chose to forego Pomus's better-known songs in favor of the songs from the later phase of Pomus's career.

I hadn't heard a single one of the songs that Adams covered. Showing the depth of Doc's catalogue, the disc is superb. Adams's "Blinded By Love" is the most beautiful cover of a Pomus song I've ever heard, though there are other contenders on 1995's out-of-print tribute Till the Night is Gone.

Doc had been crippled by polio as a kid. His polio played a role in the writing of "Save the Last Dance For Me." In his New York Times review of Alex Halberstadt's 2007 biography of Pomus, Alan Light explains:

[His] crowning achievement was the Drifters' sublime "Save the Last Dance for Me." In a story straight out of Hollywood, Pomus actually wrote the lyrics on the back of an invitation to his own wedding, remembering how it felt to watch his bride dance with his brother, knowing that he himself was unable to navigate a dance floor. "Under his pen," Halberstadt writes, "the simple declaration of love he set out to write wavered, giving way to vulnerability and fear."

In the video above, Emmylou Harris and her Hot Band slow down the tempo, change the key in the middle of the song and get somewhere close to its heart.

Blago Guilty

This afternoon a federal jury in Chicago found former governor Rod Blagojevich guilty on seventeen counts of corruption--wire fraud, bribery, extortion conspiracy--that related among other things to his effort to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat after the 2008 presidential election. An earlier trial resulted in a hung jury on all counts but one.

So Blagojevich will be the fourth former governor of Illinois to go to jail since 1973. It is quite remarkable that President Obama has been able to avoid any significant association with the political culture from which he emerged.

Good Poll News For Pawlenty?

Regular readers know that I am a fan of former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and have been frustrated by his failure, so far, to make much of a dent in the polls. So this poll result, noted by the Wall Street Journal, is interesting:

[A] new poll of registered voters in Minnesota from SurveyUSA shows he does well against President Obama. The poll, conducted late last week, put Mr. Pawlenty in a dead heat with President Obama in a head to head matchup. This is the same Minnesota that voted for Obama by a margin of 11 points in 2008.

Minnesota is not, of course, a significant state in terms of winning the GOP nomination, but Pawlenty's strong showing suggests a couple of positive implications: voters, even in blue states, are giving up on President Obama and are willing to look at Republican alternatives; and Pawlenty is viewed positively by those who know him best. The same poll, in contrast, had Michele Bachmann losing to Obama by a whopping 14 points.

Now Pawlenty just needs to start making headway with Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire.

To Quote Sir Robin's Minstrel: "They Bravely Ran Away, Away"

Some years ago--1997 in fact--I was invited to participate in a climate change group grope in Denver hosted by former Colorado Senator Tim Wirth, who left the Senate first for a Clinton Administration State Department post, and then to be the head of the UN Foundation, an entity set in motion by Ted Turner's billion-dollar pledge to the United Nations--a pledge that Turner later had to renege on after his fortunes shrank in the aftermath of the disastrous AOL-Time Warner merger. But that's another story.

On the morning of the second day of the meeting, it was solemnly announced that Sen. Wirth had been called suddenly back to Washington and wouldn't be with us that day. In my usual snark mode, I said, "Oh great, now this is a totally Wirthless meeting!" I had forgotten than enviros are totally mirthless, too, for there was not the faintest ripple of a smile to be seen. Maybe I shouldn't have been surprised: the main conclusion of the meeting--this was 1997 remember--was that we needed to institute cap and trade for greenhouse gas emissions right away. So it was indeed a totally worthless meeting, by any rendering of the term.

The mirthless Wirth comes back to mind with this news story about how Wirth thinks the climate campaign needs to "undertake an aggressive program to go after those who are among the deniers, who are putting out these mistruths, and really call them for what they're doing and make a battle out of it. They've had pretty much of a free ride so far, and that time has got to stop."

The easiest way for Wirth to end the "free ride" would be to debate climate skeptics. Okay, so how about a high profile debate, which I am sure a major network would broadcast, especially if it included the human car alarm former Vice President Al Gore. Back in 1993, Vice President Gore went on CNN's Larry King show to debate Ross Perot over the NAFTA Treaty. It was Gore's finest moment. Maybe his only fine moment. So why, with an issue he says is the most important in the history of the universe, and with both an Oscar and Nobel Prize in his hip pocket, does he steadfastly refuse to debate anyone? Back in 2007, Lord Christopher Monckton, Margaret Thatcher's science adviser back in the 1980s, challenged Gore to a public debate. Monckton took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post with display ads so that Gore couldn't say he didn't get the message. And the offer is still open. (And I see the eminently Wirthy worthy Anthony Watts is keen to join the party.)

Gore, Wirth, and the climate campaigners always refuse debate because they say all such forums "legitimize" the skeptics over a matter that is fully settled, don't you know. (We'll pass over for now the thoroughly risible attempt to equate climate skeptics with Holocaust deniers.) Of course, the real reason they won't debate is that they know they will lose. Monckton last year won a formal debate on climate change at the prestigious Oxford Union, and the "skeptics" position has also carried the vote in the Intelligence Squared debate series at NYU. Not exactly audiences of red state, Fox News-watching yokels, those.

Wirth is a perfect example of everything wrong with environmentalism. Way back in 1988, at the beginning of the climate crusade, Sen. Wirth remarked: "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing--in terms of economic policy and environmental policy." There, in one sentence, is a succinct display of the serial bad faith and will to power of modern environmentalism. Even if catastrophic global warming turns out to be correct, would you trust control of America's economy to people like Gore and Wirth? Neither would I.

P.S. In case you don't know the Monty Python reference in the title of this post (or just want a refresher), see this.

The uses of polarization

n 1858 Abraham Lincoln attained national prominence in the Republican Party as the result of the contest for the Senate seat held by Stephen Douglas. It was Lincoln's losing campaign against Douglas that made him a figure of sufficient prominence that he could be the party's 1860 presidential nominee.

At the convention of the Illinois Republican Party in June, Lincoln was the unanimous choice to run against Douglas. After making him its nominee late on the afternoon of June 16, the entire convention returned that evening to hear Lincoln speak. Accepting the convention's nomination, Lincoln gave one of the most incendiary speeches in American history.

Lincoln electrified the convention, asserting that the institution of slavery had made the United States "a house divided against itself." Slavery would either be wiped out or become lawful nationwide, Lincoln predicted, provocatively quoting scriptural authority to the effect that "a house divided against itself cannot stand." Lincoln did not assert that the house would fall, only that it would cease to be divided. Demonstrating how the speech "changed the course of history," Harry Jaffa calls it "The speech that changed the world."

Lincoln's speech had a notable personal element. Lincoln essentially charged that Douglas was part of a conspiracy to legalize slavery throughout the United States. In Crisis of the House Divided, Jaffa explores Lincoln's charge at pages 275-293. Jaffa characterizes the charge as "the rhetorical heart of the speech." Other key conspirators in Lincoln's account were Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney and Presidents Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan.

NEH Chairman Jim Leach cites Lincoln and and the "House Divided" speech in opposing "polarization" and supporting "civility" in American politics and political discourse. Lincoln's speech and the related debates of 1858 nevertheless belie Leach's bromides about as decisively as any historical episode can refute a rule of etiquette. You might almost think Leach doesn't have any idea what he's talking about.

Minnesota cage match, cont'd

In the current budget battle heading toward a possible state government shutdown on July 1, the St. Paul Pioneer Press has served as slight counterweight to the Dayton administration public relations work performed daily by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Over the weekend the Pioneer Press editorial "Unnecessary pain" observed:

Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton has attempted to position himself as interested in compromise. Though both sides have compromised, the governor seems to have had the better of the "I compromised and they didn't" spin.

But it's not that simple. Rather than work out differences and sign off on large portions of the budget on which agreement is within reach, Dayton has as of this writing refused to get deals done and preserve operations in those parts of government. This is not compromise. This is hostage taking.

The governor is threatening to unnecessarily shut down portions of government to have his way on other, more contentious budget matters. We understand his desire to bring the greatest possible pressure to bear on the Legislature in support of his promise to raise taxes on higher incomes. Politics ain't beanbag. But the unnecessary infliction of pain is not consistent with an attitude of compromise.

(Empasis added.) If the Star Tribune political reporters would lift a finger to turn over a rock or two in St. Paul, they would find an interesting story or two behind the looming disasters it bewails in the event of a government shutdown.