Angry at Obama’s wasteful and fraudulent stimulus package? Feel like you might call up lawmakers to complain about it? Sorry, you stupid peasant, that’s no longer allowed in Obamatopia.
In a blog posting Friday afternoon, White House ethics adviser Norm Eisen said the Obama Administration had decided to revise a rule which banned registered lobbyists from having any verbal contacts with federal officials about projects seeking stimulus monies. The original rule had drawn protests from lobbying and civil liberties groups who said it violated the First Amendment.
Under the new policy, the ban on oral communications about stimulus projects will apply from when an application is submitted until a grant is awarded, rather than at any time.
However, “all persons, not just federally registered lobbyists” are now prohibited from having conversations with federal officials about the projects during that time window.
War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength…and Silence is Free Speech.
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Because I believe the context of her speech derails the pathetic attempts by the white house press office to smooth over her radical views, here I quote more of Sonia Sotomayor’s infamous Berkely speech:
Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Hence, one must accept the proposition that a difference there will be by the presence of women and people of color on the bench. Personal experiences affect the facts that judges choose to see. My hope is that I will take the good from my experiences and extrapolate them further into areas with which I am unfamiliar. I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.
This is a terrible person to put on the bench. Basically, what she’s saying here is that she’s accepted that her racial identity has left her biased, and she will employ this bias in interpreting law. Actually, she goes farther than that, contending that this bias will actually make her a better judge than others who don’t share her bias. I would hope that any judge, but especially a supreme court justice, would make an effort to keep her bias under control and weigh against the law every fact relevant to a case, not just those which resonate with her prejudices.
I must disagree somewhat with Brian’s assessment that this is a good political play for Obama. In the short term, it certainly plays to his strengths (identity politics, arbitrary historical milestones, etc.). But it will not help Obama any in terms of his legacy. And it will hurt him more than it helps him come reelection time. Obama won by fooling folks into believing him a moderate. That will be a tougher sell when he’s nominating extremist judicial activists to the bench (as if nationalizing corporations, even entire industries, wasn’t enough to do the trick). FDR learned this lesson when he attempted to stack the supreme court with additional puppet justices in addition to the customary nine, in order to ram through policies which the court opposed. It was a political disaster, and it damaged his ability to implement his expansive New Deal policies.
Is this really the type of precedent the democrats want to set for supreme court appointments? What will they say when a republican president hypothetically appoints a reactionary right-winger – “You can’t do that!” “Why not, you did”? I would caution the democrats to recall that despite democrat legislative successes, the republicans have controlled the presidency for most of the past 40 years – and therefore have made many more republican appointments to the court. These have been mostly moderate, as evidenced by the current makeup of the court, and aside from a few disastrous rulings, this moderation has served to maintain the supreme court’s most valuable service to our republic – stability. Without a consistent application of law over long periods, everything falls apart. Moreover, the trend of republicans holding the presidency will not likely end soon, so it may be unwise for democrats to open Pandora’s Box on the supreme court, tuning it into an instrument of extremist politics. The unsuing tug-of-war would be extremely damaging to the republic. They may win this initial battle but ultimately lose their war. That is why this flavor of the day type of extremist appointment is a bad idea, even from the democrats’ point of view.
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Charges Against ‘New Black Panthers’ Dropped by Obama Justice Dept
Charges brought against three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense under the Bush administration have been dropped by the Obama Justice Department, FOX News has learned.
The charges stemmed from an incident at a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day 2008 when three members of the party were accused of trying to threaten voters and block poll and campaign workers by the threat of force — one even brandishing what prosecutors call a deadly weapon.
The three black panthers, Minister King Samir Shabazz, Malik Zulu Shabazz and Jerry Jackson were charged in a civil complaint in the final days of the Bush administration with violating the voter rights act by using coercion, threats and intimidation. Shabazz allegedly held a nightstick or baton that prosecutors said he pointed at people and menacingly tapped it. Prosecutors also say he “supports racially motivated violence against non-blacks and Jews.”
The Obama administration won the case last month, but moved to dismiss the charges on May 15.
…In his affidavit, obtained by FOX News, Bull wrote “I watched the two uniformed men confront voters and attempt to intimidate voters. They were positioned in a location that forced every voter to pass in close proximity to them. The weapon was openly displayed and brandished in plain sight of voters.”
He also said they tried to “interfere with the work of other poll observers … whom the uniformed men apparently believed did not share their preferences politically,” noting that one of the panthers turned toward the white poll observers and said “you are about to be ruled by the black man, cracker.”
I think this travesty speaks for itself.
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How often were we told that America was hating because of Bush? How many implications were made that, if we just we a little bit nicer, we wouldn’t have America-hating countries making spurious allegations against us? I don’t know the exact answer to either of those questions, but whatever the number, it was too many:
An Iranian official accused the United States on Friday of involvement in a mosque bombing that killed more than 20 people in volatile southeastern Iran, two weeks before a presidential election.
Washington denied the allegation.
Jalal Sayyah, of the governor’s office in Sistan-Baluchestan province, said three people had been arrested in connection with blast on Thursday in a crowded Shi’ite mosque in the city of Zahedan, in a region where many of Iran’s minority Sunnis live.
“The terrorists, who were equipped by America in one of our neighbouring countries, carried out this criminal act in their efforts to create religious conflict and fear and to influence the presidential election,” Sayyah told state radio.
How could they accuse Dear Leader of such a thing? It turns out the enemies of America are still the enemies of America, regardless of who the president is.
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President Barack Obama has announced his replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter. It is going to be Sonia Sotomayor, a judge who embodies not only the American dream, but the President’s stated criteria for what makes a good Supreme Court judge. Unfortunately, those criteria are misguided and have delivered a judge with a philosophy antithetical to the proper role of the judiciary in a constitutional republic.
The politics of the pick are overwhelmingly positive for the President. Sonia Sotomayor is a great American story. She rose from poverty to attend the top law schools in the nation and, today, has been appointed to the highest staiton in her chosen field. That’s great. It’s a testament to the pre-Obama America, and that it was never the horrible place that he, and his wife, have made it out to be.
But that’s not the real genuis of the pick. To put it simply, it’s all about identity politics. The left is already wrapping her up in her gender/ethnicity to protect her from criticisms on her substantive record. I say once again, welcome to Obama’s post-racial America, where everything is about race. Those remaining racists in America, who insist on seeing every event through the distorted goggles of race, celebrate the pick without the slightest consideration to what actually matters on the court: judicial philosophy. They celebrate it because they think more people are now “represented” on the court. But the court does have representatives, it has judges. It’s members are not their to advance interests of constuency groups; they are there to follow the law. The text of the law does not change based on the ethnic background of the person reading it.
Sonia Sotomayor does not understand this. She has gone on record not only stating a dangerous judicial philosophy, but one littered with bigoted comments based on leftist identity politics. In a constitutional republic, the law is made through the people’s representatives in the legislature. The Executive then carries out that law, and the courts settled disputes based upon it. There is no room in this system for the courts to make law. Doing so removes the people from the equation, and thus undermines claims that we are, in fact, a republic. Yet Sotomayor has made it clear that her view is that the court is a place where policy is made. Moreover, she thinks she’ll be better at making policy from the bench than a white male, due to her gender and ethnic background. This rank ignorance of the function of the judiciary is why Sonia Sotomayor must be opposed, but our race obsessed society, molded as it is by years of leftist identity politics, make it impossible to talk about her merits instead of her utter irrelevant characteristics, such as her gender and ethnic background.
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Tom Galisano, billionaire owner of the Sabres, is fed up and ready to leave New York. He tells us why:
I love New York. But how much should it cost to call New York home? Decades of out of control budgets, spending increases and relentless borrowing have made New York simply too expensive.
Politicians like to talk about incentives: incentives for businesses to relocate, incentives to buy local and incentives to make smart decisions. After reviewing the 2009 budget I have identified the most compelling incentive of all: a major tax break immediately available to all New Yorkers. To be eligible, you need only do one thing: move out of New York State.
Modern economic thought provides with a very simple explanation: incentives matter. Russel Roberts on incentives:
…Incentives matter. The most famous example in economics is the idea of the demand curve—when something gets more expensive, people buy less of it. When it gets less expensive, people buy more of it.
Some find this bedrock principle of economics hard to accept, based on introspection. “When the price of gas goes up, I still buy gasoline,” says the skeptic. Or in its more extreme form: “You need gasoline, so people will keep buying it even when it gets more expensive.”
You may still buy gasoline when it gets more expensive. But you will try and find ways to buy less. Not necessarily zero, less.
For the wealthy, the price of living in New York has just gone up. The predictable consequence is that there will be less wealthy people choosing to “purchase” the privilege to live there.
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This Washington Post story confirms what we already knew, but the left refuses to admit: Obama has assumed control over private sector businesses.
The Obama administration is preparing to send General Motors into bankruptcy as early as the end of next week under a plan that would give the automaker tens of billions of dollars more in public financing as the company seeks to shrink and reemerge as a global competitor, sources familiar with the discussions said.
The move comes as the administration prepares to lift the nation’s other faltering car company, Chrysler, from bankruptcy protection as soon as next week, industry sources said.
The American experiment with freedom and free enterprise is over.
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The House voted down an attempt to eliminate a Murtha earmark to a largely unused airport affectionately known as the “airport for no one:”
Democrats beat back a motion to recommit the Federal Aviation Administration authorization bill that was sponsored by Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.) and supported by Republican leaders. The motion to recommit would have attached language to the FAA bill blocking all future funding for the Murtha airport.
That effort failed on a 154-263 vote, with 11 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote with Republicans and 28 Republicans voting with the Democratic majority.
“To say this is wasteful understates how bad it really is,” Campbell said.
Transportation and Infrastructure Chairman James Oberstar (D-Minn.) gave a rousing defense of the airport, saying that it provided service for 1,000 military personnel, including the National Guard.
“This is an attack on essential air service to rural America,” Oberstar thundered.
When Republicans responded with laughter, Oberstar grew even more incensed.
“Those on the other side who are laughing won’t be laughing when airports in their communities are attacked,” he said.
The airport under question is hardly ever used. It is heavily subsidized and handles maybe half a dozen flights per day.
Here’s Oberstar whining, oddly enough, that somehow Congress can’t decide “by fiat” what it funds, and lamenting that other member pork projects will be “at risk.”
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The realization that Obama isn’t the change we are looking for is costing democrats dearly as horrified voters switch their party affiliation and independents shy away from the democrats.
From Gallup:
In politics, as of today, do you consider yourself a Republican, a Democrat, or an independent? (Asked of independents: As of today, do you lean more to the Democratic Party or the Republican Party?)
Selected Trend on Party Affiliation: 2004-2009
Rep.
Ind.
Dem.
Republicans
(including
“leaners”)Democrats
(including
“leaners”)%
%
%
%
%
2009 May 7-10 32
34
32
45
45
2009 Apr 20-21 27
36
36
39
50
2009 Apr 6-9 24
40
35
34
53
2009 Mar 27-29 28
35
35
40
51
2009 Mar 5-8 25
35
38
35
53
2009 Feb 20-22 27
36
34
39
51
2009 Feb 9-12 29
36
33
39
51
2009 Jan 30-Feb 1 27
35
36
38
53
2009 Jan 9-11 30
33
36
41
51
2008 Dec 12-14 26
35
37
35
52
2008 Dec 4-7 27
33
37
39
51
2008 Nov 13-16 26
35
39
37
55
2008 Nov 7-9 28
37
33
40
51
The five point shift since the election is the entirely predictable result of campaigning on a pretense of moderation, and subsequently governing from the extreme left. The Republicans can capitalize on the momentum of this shift through continued opposition to Obama’s massive deficit expenditures. They should not fear identification as the “party of no”. Indeed, when faced with a $2 trillion dollar budget shortfall, “no” is the only thing I care to hear from my elected officials’ mouths on the subject of additional waste. Wear it proudly – restraint is an alternative to fiscal insanity, and the people know it. With the exception of a few liberal infiltrators in the Senate, the Republicans said “no” to the porkulus, and now stand unstained by the utter failure to accomplish the purpose of the legislation, and the squandering of a massive amount of American wealth. “No” was the right position. “No” is the message of the Tea Party movement, which the Republicans would be wise to court as the best opportunity they’ve had in over a decade to galvanize the broader conservative movement in coalition with independant sensibilities and turn it into a landslide machine.
Obviously “no” isn’t enough. The Republicans need to present alternative solutions to issues which concern people, and they are doing so. But when the media mischaracterizes these plans, as they do, and the democrats bury them in committee, as they must, then “no” is a perfectly acceptable position, because saying “no” to the democrats means saying “yes” to keeping around, for a little while longer, the America we’ve known all our lives.
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While listing off his foreign policy cabinet, Obama falsely referred to the Secretary of Defense as William Gates. His name is Robert Gates.
It’s a minor slip not worth a post by itself, but now look at this media response. UPI offers this “transcript:”
Thank you all for being here. Let me just acknowledge the presence of some of my outstanding Cabinet members and advisers. We’ve got our secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. We have our CIA director, Leon Panetta. We have our secretary of defense, Robert Gates.
Really?
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I am a libertarian-conservative blogger living in the DC area. I have a Master's degree in Political Science, but please don't hold that against me.
