By Timothy B. Lee

A striking trend in Congress’s reaction to Wednesday’s protests against the PROTECT IP Act and the Stop Online Piracy Act was the partisan divide in the Senate. At least 16 Republican Senators—more than a third of all GOP members in the body—declared their opposition to PIPA for the first time on Wednesday. In contrast, as far as we can tell, only three Democrats jumped off the bandwagon that day.

Why were Republicans so quick to abandon PIPA? For an inside perspective, Ars talked to two conservative operatives who have long opposed Hollywood’s campaign for ever-more draconian copyright laws. Reihan Salam is a blogger at National Review and a policy advisor at Economics 21, a conservative think tank. And Patrick Ruffini is a conservative political strategist and founder of the PR firm Engage.

Salam and Ruffini told Ars on Thursday that the differing reactions to the online protests reflects structural and philosophical differences between the two parties. They said Democrats have deep ties to Hollywood and to labor unions who staff Hollywood productions, which makes it hard for them to buck these interests and vote against PIPA. In contrast, they said, Republicans have few ties to groups that support PIPA, and they have a Tea Party faction that has grown increasingly invested in Internet freedom as it has become more reliant on the web for its own organization.

The IT industry could be a rich source of both votes and campaign cash, but so far neither party has done a good job of championing its interests in Congress. Salam and Ruffini believe that Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture is a perfect fit for the GOP’s free-market policy agenda, and they told Ars that the fight over PIPA is a golden opportunity for the GOP to build a lasting political alliance with Silicon Valley.
“Holder is coming to take the Internet”

The Motion Picture Association of America is a key interest group behind the PROTECT IP Act, and Ruffini argued it has much stronger ties to the Democratic Party than to Republicans. The MPAA is headed by Chris Dodd, previously a Democratic member of the Senate. Hollywood is also heavily unionized, and labor unions are a major Democratic constituency. And Hollywood’s wealthy creative professionals have long made it an important stop on the Democratic fundraising circuit. Indeed, Hollywood now has one of its own, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), in the Senate. He is a PIPA co-sponsor.

Ruffini said that the GOP has fewer ties to the interest groups behind PIPA. The US Chamber of Commerce, a traditionally Republican group, has supported PIPA, but the legislation is just one of many items on its legislative agenda. At the same time, another key Republican constituency, social conservatives, have long despised Hollywood for the sex and violence in its products.

Salam pointed to the rise of the Tea Party as another key factor in Republican skepticism toward PIPA. The Tea Party is a decentralized movement organized largely online. As the Internet has become a more important means of political organization for conservatives, they have also grown more invested in protecting it from harmful regulation.

The arguments against these bills also appeal to conservatives’ general suspicion of big government. Ruffini told Ars that SOPA and PIPA have emerged as major issues on conservative talk radio. “Their perception on this has been that [Obama attorney general] Eric Holder is coming to take the Internet,” Ruffini said.

Meanwhile, as we’ve reported, conservative and libertarian bloggers and think tanks have been lining up against PIPA. Scholars at the libertarian Cato Institute (where I’m an adjunct scholar) and the conservative Heritage Foundation, conservative bloggers like Matt Drudge and Erick Erickson, and Tea Party politicians like Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-MN) had all declared their opposition to the bills in the weeks before Wednesday’s protest.

As a result, Republican support for PIPA has been very soft. “People hadn’t thought about the issues very deeply,” Salam told Ars. “There was no one advocating the case against these policies. Once people articulated the case,” support for the policies “crumbled fast.”

The Tea Party movement scared Republican members of Congress in 2010 when they mounted primary challenges to several Republican incumbents. The defeat of incumbents like Bob Bennett lent credibility to Erickson’s threat to recruit primary challengers for Republicans who supported SOPA.

“Nobody wants a primary challenger,” Ruffini told Ars. “The Tea Party has demonstrated vote-getting potential. If I have to choose between the Tea Party or the Chamber of Commerce, I pick the Tea Party.”
An alliance with Silicon Valley?

Salam and Ruffini believe that Republicans have a chance to cultivate a new base of political support in the technology industry.

Ruffini argued that Republican philosophy naturally aligns with the creative destruction that is a hallmark of the technology industry. “Republicans are a free-market party,” he said. “They are more inclined toward economic disruption. Certain industries will inevitably go by the wayside due to technological changes. Nothing in Republican governing philosophy says there’s anything wrong with that.”

Salam agreed with this, pointing to the Tea Party’s intense opposition to bailouts for Wall Street and Detroit.

Ruffini argued that the controversy over PIPA gives the GOP “a chance to flip the tech community,” winning Republicans a new donor base, or at least making it harder for Democrats to raise money in Silicon Valley. He noted that Republican politicans have already begun visiting technology companies seeking support. By picking a fight with the Democratic leadership over PIPA, they could win lasting respect from technologists.

Ruffini encouraged Republican leaders to “make a partisan issue out of it. It’s not like this is an obscure issue,” Ruffini said. “Millions of people are watching this.”

“People talk about how polarization is bad,” Salam said. But polarization can help ensure that both sides of the debate are strongly represented, he noted. The lack of polarization has meant that both parties consistently side with Hollywood.
The death of PIPA

Events have moved quickly since we talked to Salam and Ruffini on Thursday afternoon. The leader of the Senate Republicans, Mitch McConnell (R-KY) called for Reid to delay the vote on PIPA on Thursday afternoon. On Thursday evening, four GOP candidates declared their opposition to SOPA. Former speaker Newt Gingrich explicitly tied his opposition to his broader antipathy toward Hollywood liberals.

On Friday morning, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) postponed next Tuesday’s PIPA vote, but vowed to continue fighting for the legislation. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) was furious. And Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) announced that he would be delaying consideration of SOPA.

So both parties are backing away from SOPA and PIPA. But so far the Democrats have shown more interest in reviving the legislation. Reid and Leahy have pledged to bring a modified version of the legislation back to the Senate floor later in the year. On the House side, Smith has continued to champion his proposal, but he has gotten no real support from the House Republican leadership, which has pledged to put the bill on hold until a consensus is reached. House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi is also opposed to SOPA.

Meanwhile, a growing number of Republicans have been attacking the bill, explicitly tying their opposition to GOP themes like limited government, free markets, and antipathy to Hollywood. If Republicans play their cards right, the last week could mark the dawn of a new political alliance between Silicon Valley and the Grand Old Party.

Michael A. Walsh

Friday’s ruling by the Department of Health and Human Services proved yet again that ObamaCare’s critics are right. It’s a breathtaking attack not only on the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom, but also on the separation of church and state.

Kathleen Sebelius, the nominally Catholic HHS chief, bluntly informed religious medical institutions that offer services to the general public that she will indeed compel them to offer free birth control, sterilization and “morning after” pills as part of their employees’ health-care plans. They have exactly one year to get with the program or suffer the consequences.

That’s all their vehement objections to her August “guidelines” got them: “This additional year will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule,” read a department statement defending HHS’ insistence on what it euphemistically calls “preventive services.”

In other words, they have a year to figure out how to violate their religious beliefs and contravene church teaching. And if they choose to cancel their health-care plans rather than submit, they’ll incur a hefty annual fine under the tender mercies of ObamaCare.

Added bonus: This contemptuous slap at Catholicism and for mainstream Christianity in general comes wrapped in the guise of “compassion.”

Never mind that the administration just got its head handed to it by the Supreme Court over religious freedom. In a slam-dunk 9-0 vote, the justices this month slapped down Team Obama’s claim that it, not religious institutions, has the right to decide who qualifies for the “ministerial exception” to employment-discrimination laws.

Liberal and conservative justices alike rejected the Justice Department’s ludicrous argument that religious teachers are no different than, say, soda jerks.

And yet it’s right there in the first words of the First Amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” had Attorney General Eric Holder’s ideologues bothered to look.

Now Sebelius follows up with more of the same. Conservatives have been howling for years about the left’s war on traditional faith, and now here it is in all its naked, unabashed glory.
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(CNSNews.com) – President Barack Obama says the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is the chance to recognize the “fundamental constitutional right” to abortion and to “continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”

The 1973 U.S. Supreme Court nationalized abortion law, prohibiting states from deciding on the matter. In his written statement, Obama acknowledged that abortion has been a divisive political issue.

Obama, while serving in the Illinois State Legislature and as president of the United States, has taken a hard line on abortion rights.

In his statement on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, Obama said it reflects the broader principles of America.

“As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman’s health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters,” Obama said. “I remain committed to protecting a woman’s right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right.

“While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue — no matter what our views, we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption,” Obama said.

“And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.”

As a state lawmaker in Illinois, he voted four times against legislation to protect the life of a baby that survived a botched abortion. He voted against such legislation at the state level in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

The 2003 bill was assigned to the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which Obama chaired at the time. It mirrored a law passed by Congress, which said nothing in federal law should be construed to undermine the Roe v. Wade ruling.

As president, Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, which would appropriate federal money toward insurance plans that pay for abortions.

On Friday, the Obama administration finalized regulations that order Americans – unless they work directly at a church – to purchase government-approved health insurance plans that cover sterilizations and contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

Planned Parenthood also marked the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s abortion ruling by setting up a Web site “to show the world exactly what Roe has meant in the past and still means today.”

The “Since Roe” Web site invites women to add their own comments about “how Roe v. Wade has made a difference in your life.”

By Regina Sztajer

Hate has no bounds, be it in ones personal life, workplace or politics. I was so shocked by Brit Hume’s
hatred against Newt Gingrich spewing out of his mouth these past few weeks. What is his problem I wondered. After all Fox is not biased and is supposed to be fair and balanced. Fox should remove him from making any political comments until after the election because of his obvious prejudice against Gingrich.
Being an investigative reporter I decided to delve into Hume’s past and did so using Wikipedia encyclopedia. It took only a few minutes to come up with the answer. Hume blames Gingrich with the fact his son committed suicide. In life we are all responsible for one person ourselves. You can’t blame any one person for what happens in your own family, especially suicide.
Brit Hume is a television journalist and political commentator. He was a correspondent for ABC for twenty years, including Chief White House Correspondent. He spent ten years as the managing editor of fox News and anchor of Special Report with Brit Hume. Since 2008, in retirement, he announced Bret Baier would become chief White House correspondent for Fox News. Hume remains the senior political analyst and panelist for Fox News.
In Jan. 2010, as a guest commentator on Fox News Sunday, he advised Tiger Woods to convert to Christianity in the wake of Wood’s revelations of habitual adultery and deterioration of his relationship with his family. Those who give such advise should practice what they preach. Bill O’Reilly of Fox News more or less accused Hume of insulting Buddhism which Wood’s and his mother practice.
He best not knock Gingrich for his three marriages because he divorced his first wife Clare Jacobs Stoner and married Kim Schiller Hume, Fox News Vice president and former Washington bureau chief.
His son Sandy Hume, a Washington journalist and reporter for The Hill broke the story of the aborted 1997, coup against Speaker of the House Gingrich. In 1998, Sandy Hume committed suicide and in 2008, when Brit Hume retired he commented on his son’s death. He had found Christ!!!
When a person professes they have found their faith in religion they should practice it. Hume is consumed with hatred against Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has no guilt in his son’s death. But it is obvious his hatred has no bounds and it is very disturbing and cruel.

from Powerline

In response to my post this morning about Muggeridge’s “The Great Liberal Death Wish,” Power Line reader David Gray writes in to remind me of a companion book to that theme, James Burnham’s classic book from the early 1960s, Suicide of the West: An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny of Liberalism. After a busy day of back-to-back-to-back meetings, I rushed this evening to dust off my copy.

Although Suicide of the West might seem on the surface like a period piece of the Cold War, many passages read as fresh in the Age of Obama as they did in the Age of Arthur Schlesinger and JFK. Like Muggeridge, Burnham was an ex-Communist, who thought that “liberalism is the ideology of American suicide.” There are so many great passages that apply to the current scene; perhaps I’ll make a new series out of these as I did last fall with that other 1961 book, The Constitution of Liberty. Here’s one that, with due regard for updating the names mentioned at the end, clearly fits the leading lights of liberals today:

Liberals, unless they are professional politicians seeking votes in the hinterland, are not subject to strong feelings of national patriotism and are likely to feel uneasy at patriotic ceremonies. These, like the organizations in whose conduct they are still manifest, are dismissed by liberals rather scornfully as ‘flag-waving’ and ‘100 percent Americanism.’ The national anthem is not customarily sung or the flag shown, unless prescribed by law, at meetings of liberal associations. When a liberal journalist uses the phrase ‘patriotic organization,’ the adjective is equivalent in meaning to ‘stupid, reactionary and rather ludicrous.’ The rise of liberalism to predominance in the controlling sectors of American opinion is in almost exact correlation with the decline in the ceremonial celebration of the Fourth of July, traditionally regarded as the nation’s major holiday. To the liberal mind, the patriotic oratory is not only banal but subversive of rational ideals; and judged by liberalism’s humanitarian morality, the enthusiasm and pleasures that simple souls might have got from the fireworks could not compensate the occasional damage to the eye or finger of an unwary youngster. The purer liberals of the Norman Cousins strain, in the tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt, are more likely to celebrate UN day than the Fourth of July.

Need I mention that Ronaldus Magnus saw fit to award Burnham the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983, in the same batch as the posthumous award to Whittaker Chambers. That was a bitter day for the Left.

And not to worry: I’m not done with excerpts from Muggeridge yet either. But I have to travel to Denver Thursday and Friday, so I may be a bit slow keeping up.

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says The euro is pushing Italy into depression

There is no clearer indictment of the dysfunctional nature of monetary union. Italy is being pushed into depression. Criminal.

Obviously, Italy and Germany can no longer share the same monetary policy. Ergo, Germany should leave EMU, pronto.

The Banca said Italy’s economy contracted by 0.5pc in the last quarter of 2011. It will shrink by a further 1.5pc this year, with no growth in 2013.

This is a direct result of the misguided pro-cyclical austerity policies imposed by Angela Merkel and the ECB – the infamous Trichet letter – without offsetting monetary and exchange stimulus.

This will of course play havoc with Italy’s debt trajectory.

Non-Performing Spanish Loans Hit 134 Billion Euros, 7.51% of All Loans

Italy may be headed for depression, but Greece, Spain, and Portugal are already in depression. The most important country in that sad group is Spain, and the Spanish hit-parade keeps right on rolling.

Via Google Translate, please consider Non-Performing Spanish Loans Highest in 17 Years.

The NPL ratio of credit granted by banks, savings banks, cooperatives and credit institutions rose in November to 7.51%, the highest percentage for seventeen years due to increased volume of bad loans, which exceeded the 134,000 million euros. [134 billion]

According to provisional data published today by the Bank of Spain, this new increase of one tenth compared to 7.41% last month, is the fifth in a row after the small cuts that took place in June.

As the volume of bad loans, the loan portfolio of banks, savings banks, cooperatives and credit institutions rose in November to 1.785 billion euros [1.785 trillion euros in US notation], from 1.778 billion [trillion] in October.

Eurozone Unemployment Rates

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By Marc Siegel

The final verdict may not be in yet, but some of the early returns on “ObamaCare” are not good. Indeed, many doctors are becoming wary of the law at a time when only one in three Americans support it.

In late December, a survey of 501 physicians was released by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions research group, whose parent company serves clients in the health care industry. Nearly half (48%) expected health reform to hurt their incomes this year, while 73% said it would not reduce costs.

Though this isn’t a scientific survey, and other such surveys have and will show physicians’ support for the Affordable Care Act, the early glimpse of the law’s potential impact will likely lead to economic pain for doctors and a diminished system for their patients. Indeed, the Deloitte survey found that 69% of the physicians are “pessimistic about the future of medicine” because of the law.

I’m not here to judge doctors who back ObamaCare. But as a practicing physician, I simply need to look at the economics of medicine, apply my own experience and see the law as it unfolds to know that physicians across this country should be demanding if not a new system, at least a better one.

The early days

In June 2009, when President Obama attended a “white coat” ceremony at the American Medical Association headquarters in Chicago, and this organization of physicians (roughly 17% are members) went on to deliver its endorsement of the president’s legislation, physicians had a nagging question: Did we agree with the AMA’s position, or was the organization taking us for a ride? The answer is becoming clearer as the law is being implemented.

An online survey in September by the Jackson & Coker physician recruitment firm — based on 1,611 doctors who chose to respond — reflected that the majority of doctors don’t believe that the AMA represents their views. The primary reason: the AMA’s support of the legislation. Just 13% of those surveyed backed the Affordable Care Act.

Doctors traditionally have been unhappy with insurance mandates because third-party payers, whether public or private, represent a seemingly unnecessary interface between us and our patients. Many doctors today prefer to accept cash, even at a great discount, rather than having to deal with the burden imposed by insurers.

Yet the glaring inadequacy of the health care reform law is that putting the bureaucratic burdens on steroids does little to change the trajectory of health care spending. The law also floods the system with patients while tightening the financial screws on those in the health care industry.

We’re two years into this experiment, and the realities of the law — more regulations, more patients with low-paying insurance, higher costs but lower payments to doctors — are sinking in.

When surveyed by Deloitte, 83% of doctors said one likely change to the medical system as a result of the law would be increased wait times — an inevitable outcome of insuring millions more patients without a matching increase in the number of doctors. Not too surprising. Most doctors surveyed also noted that the changes will “pose considerable implementation challenges.” I suspect it would be hard to find someone in the health care industry — or any employer, for that matter — who would disagree with that expectation.

And it doesn’t get better

It’s one thing to mandate insurance for all, but quite another to do so without incentivizing physicians or those considering the profession. In fact, the law does the opposite: For many doctors, there becomes a financial disincentive to practice medicine.

The Association of American Medical Colleges estimates that the USA will be 160,000 physicians short by 2025 (when all patients would be insured under ObamaCare), and this is without even considering those doctors who will limit their practice to insured patients because of decreasing reimbursements or who retire early when faced with increasing costs with little return.

Doctors are catching on fast to the essential deficiencies of ObamaCare, but so are America’s patients. The concern of doctors is reflected among the American people: Support for the law has sunk to 29% in the latest Associated Press poll.

Think of ObamaCare as a heavy horse-drawn cart loaded with all of America’s patients and best technologies. As the cart gets heavier and heavier, does it make sense that we don’t add more horses but instead feed the ones we have less and less while expecting them to pull the additional weight?

I think more and more doctors are going to pull up lame if the law’s many shortfalls aren’t addressed — and stat.

By Regina Sztajer

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, President Barack Obama’s Democratic National Chairperson, is the evil twin of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi ,only she is the East coast version. She is the official get Obama re-elected no matter how down and dirty you have to get. She is running for re-election in Florida and the Conservatives are nipping at her heels.
She is capable of a nasty smear campaign to defeat any Republican nominee. She is hand picked by Obama to coordinate propaganda efforts of the Hollywood liberals and labor unions and will do anything possible to promote Obama’s radical left-wing agenda.
She attacks the Tea Party as racists and she considers Conservative Paul Ryan’s plan to solve America’s budget crises as a “death trap.” Schultz also considers Conservative woman such as Sarah Palin as people who “don’t know anything.”
She uses her position as a Jewish-American leader to defend Obama’s offensive Israel policies even as Obama drove the U.S. Israeli relationship to its lowest relationship in decades. As a Jewish leader she doesn’t speak for me!!!
She is more radical than Obama!!!
She attacks Tea Party members as racists and spews sexist and radical feminist rhetoric against Republicans for defending life and the rights of the unborn. Schultz claims Republicans want to go back to “Jim Crow” laws and block access to voting polls. She supports amnesty for illegal aliens and promotes and votes for big government programs like Obamcare that take our freedom away.
Rejects plans to curtail government spending and to reduce the deficit while supporting Obama’s failed $787 billion stimulus program as one that helped our economy. She votes for ear-marked laden pork barrel budgets that run our deficit up. Schultz also pushed hard and voted for Obama’s cap and tax bill that will drive-up energy costs.
Congressman Allen West has called her, “the most vile, unprofessional, and despicable member of the United States Congress.” She is one attack dog that belongs in the dog pound! Schultz has the backing of Obama’s entire election machine. She and other liberals don’t understand how someone can succeed without government handouts and bailouts.
She is blinded by an allegiance to Obama that has no bounds. She has lied so much even the liberal media in Florida has labeled her a “chump and loser of the week.” She is bad for America and a disgrace!!!

We, too, can lose our civilization.

By Victor Davis Hanson

In Greek mythology, the prophetess Cassandra was doomed both to tell the truth and to be ignored. Our modern version is a bankrupt Greece that we seem to discount.

News accounts abound now of impoverished Athens residents scrounging pharmacies for scarce aspirin — as Greece is squeezed to make interest payments to the supposedly euro-pinching German banks.

Such accounts may be exaggerations, but they should warn us that yearly progress is never assured. Instead, history offers plenty of examples of life becoming far worse than it had been centuries earlier. The biographer Plutarch, writing 500 years after the glories of classical Greece, lamented that in his time weeds grew amid the empty colonnades of the once-impressive Greek city-states. In America, most would prefer to live in the Detroit of 1941 than the Detroit of 2011. The quality of today’s air travel has regressed to the climate of yesterday’s bus service.

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In 2000, Greeks apparently assumed that they had struck it rich with their newfound money-laden European Union lenders — even though they certainly had not earned their new riches through increased productivity, the discovery of more natural resources, or greater collective investment and savings.

The brief euro mirage has vanished. Life in Athens is zooming backward to the pre-EU days of the 1970s. Then, most imported goods were too expensive to buy, medical care was often premodern, and the city resembled more a Turkish Istanbul than a European Munich.

The United States should pay heed to the modern Greek Cassandra, since our own rendezvous with reality is rapidly approaching. The costs of servicing a growing national debt of more than $15 trillion are starting to squeeze out other budget expenditures. Americans are no longer affluent enough to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars to import oil, while we snub our noses at vast new oil and gas deposits beneath our own soil and seas.

In my state, Californians for 40 years have hiked taxes; grown their government; vastly expanded entitlements; put farmland, timberland, and oil and gas lands off limits; and opened their borders to millions of illegal aliens. They apparently assumed that they had inherited so much wealth from prior generations and that their state was so naturally rich, that a continually better life was their natural birthright.

It wasn’t. Now, as in Greece, the veneer of civilization is proving pretty thin in California. Hospitals no longer have the money to offer sophisticated long-term medical care to the indigent. Cities no longer have the funds to self-insure themselves from the accustomed barrage of monthly lawsuits. When thieves rip copper wire out of street lights, the streets stay dark. Most state residents would rather go to the dentist these days than queue up and take a number at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Hospital emergency rooms neither have room nor act as if there’s much of an emergency.

Traffic flows no better on most of the state’s freeways than it did 40 years ago — and often much worse, given the crumbling infrastructure and increased traffic. Once-excellent K–12 public schools now score near the bottom in nationwide tests. The California state-university system keeps adding administrators to the point where they have almost matched the number of faculty, though half of the students who enter CSU need remedial reading and math. Despite millions of dollars in tutoring, half the students still don’t graduate. The taxpayer is blamed in constant harangues for not ponying up more money, rather than administrators being faulted for a lack of reform.
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By CHRISTIAN SCHNEIDER

Opponents of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker have now succeeded in collecting over 1 million signatures for mounting a recall election, which now appears certain to take place later this year. Will the enemies of reform succeed in removing him?

They’ll have plenty of outside money for that cause. The state is the focus of the national battle to rein in the power of public-employee unions. And Wisconsin is a must-win swing-state for President Obama this fall, so Democrats want to start rolling back the wave that put Walker, a Republican, in office.

But if voters judge by results, the governor should be safe. The evidence so far contradicts the unions’ claim that the reforms have rendered the state ungovernable.

By the time Walker took office last year, the overwhelming majority of state and local government workers paid nothing toward the annual contributions to their pension accounts, which equaled roughly 10 percent of their salaries per year. The average employee also covered just 6.2 percent of his health-insurance premium. Walker moved to requiring them to pay 5.8 percent of salary (on average) toward their pensions and to double their health-insurance payments to 12.4 percent of premiums.

These two changes, the governor estimated, would save local governments $724 million a year, letting him cut state aid to localities and trim the state’s $3.6 billion biennial deficit.

Walker’s other moves angered unions even more. One was to allow government employees to bargain collectively only when negotiating wages; benefits and other areas would no longer be part of the contract-making process.

And he ended mandatory dues collection. Wisconsin unions were collecting up to $1,100 a year per member in these obligatory payments, which they then spent on getting sympathetic politicians elected. Walker’s reform let government workers opt out of paying these dues — potentially strangling the unions’ election spending.

The unions argued that the changes would damage public services beyond repair. In fact, they’re saving money already, with little disruption to services. In early August, noticing the trend, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Milwaukee would save more in health-care and pension costs than it would lose in state aid, leaving the city $11 million ahead in 2012.

School districts are yielding big dividends, too. Before the reform, many union contracts required districts to buy health insurance from WEA Trust, a nonprofit affiliated with the state’s largest teachers union. Once the law forbade such contract provisions, districts could start bidding for health care on the open market. When the Appleton School District put its insurance up for bid, for instance, WEA Trust suddenly lowered its rates and promised to match any competitor’s price. Appleton will save $3 million in the current school year.

According to a report by the MacIver Institute, as of Sept. 1, “at least 25 school districts in the Badger State had reported switching health-care providers/plans or opening insurance bidding to outside companies.”

The unions also predicted mass layoffs, but events have confirmed Walker’s claim that his reforms were a job-retention program for teachers, with districts’ savings on benefits allowing them to spare hundreds of jobs. So far, the Madison School District has laid off no teachers at all, a pattern that has held in many of the state’s other large school districts.

Will the recall succeed? An October poll for the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (where I work) found that 71 percent of Wisconsinites believe that the state’s public schools have either stayed the same or improved over the previous half-year. More than three-quarters expect the state’s economy either to get better or to stay the same in the next year, up from 60 percent during the height of the union tumult in March.

So if Walker’s task is to convince the public that the state hasn’t devolved into unfunded anarchy, he may have an easier case to make than you’d think.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/will_unions_unseat_wisconsin_gov_rfV85DwJt50n8UrkIhC16H#ixzz1k049Q0KU

Greeks aren’t Germans.

A Belgian journalist who interviewed me recently about the European debt crisis asked me whether I believed in the European Project. I replied that I would answer her question—if she would tell me what the European Project actually was. By revealing my doubts, I proved to her that I suffered from the strange kind of mental debility known as Euroskepticism, a condition supposedly compounded of low intelligence and aggressive xenophobia. The low intelligence manifests itself in the patient’s view of European institutions as a gravy train for a transnational nomenklatura, rather than as the beginning of a new, generous, and free-spirited type of postnational identity. The xenophobia manifests itself as a secret desire for conflict and war, the European Union and its predecessors supposedly having been responsible for the avoidance of war on the Continent over the last 65 years.
Who’s the boss?

The journalist then asked whether I thought that nationalism was dangerous. The question implied that the choice before Europe was between the European Union and fascism: that all that stood between us and the ascension to power of new Mussolinis, Francos, and Hitlers were the free lunches of senior Eurocrats. I replied that dangerous forms of nationalism existed, of course, but that in the present circumstances, supranationalism represented by far the greater danger. Not only was such supranationalism undemocratic, for it reflected no widespread demand or sentiment among the population; it also risked provoking the very kind of nationalism against which it was to stand as the bulwark. Further, the breakup of supranational polities in Europe tends to be messy, as history demonstrates.

I was not entirely fair, however, in implying that no one could say what the European Project was. José Manuel Barroso, a fiery Portuguese Maoist student leader who became the preternaturally dull president of the European Commission—perhaps not as great a change as one might suppose, many a revolutionary being a frustrated bureaucrat—once let the cat out of the bag. Asked the same question that the journalist asked me, Barroso responded, “Sometimes I like to compare the European Union as a creation to the organization of empires.” He hastened to add that the E.U. was not a traditional empire. But it is surely the case that an empire in Europe, large, rich, and powerful, would assuage the feelings of a political class frustrated by having inherited a smaller role in world affairs than that of their predecessors, who ruled real empires many times larger than their own countries.

Reflection on the situation in tiny Belgium might introduce an element of doubt into the minds of the most fervent believers in the European Project. Belgium has existed ever since it was cobbled together in 1830; yet in all that time, it has not been able to create a durable national identity. One of its many prime ministers, Yves Leterme, once said that just three things held Belgium together: beer, soccer, and the king. As I write, Belgium has not had a central government for more than 500 days. While I must admit, as an occasional visitor to that country, that the difference between Belgium with and Belgium without a central government is not apparent on casual inspection, this interregnum may take the theory of limited government too far.

The reason that Belgium has lacked a government for so long is that the country is divided into two populations (actually three, but the third is too small to count) with incompatible politics: French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders. Belgium is officially bilingual, yet you see not a word of Dutch in Wallonia and not a word of French in Flanders. The division could not be starker if barbed wire separated the two provinces. Only in the capital, Brussels, does one find any concession to bilingualism.

Historical and economic factors deepen the division between the two regions. Wallonia, though it contained a minority of Belgium’s population, long dominated its culture and economy. Even the Flemish upper class spoke French at home, while Dutch was the language of the peasantry; until recently, Belgian schools forbade children from speaking Dutch in class. With the decline of Wallonia’s coal and steel industries and the economic rise of Flanders, however, the pattern of dominance changed. Flanders went from being the poor relation to being the rich one, albeit with something of an inferiority complex. In the process, it started to make large transfer payments to Wallonia, which suffered from comparatively high unemployment. Such payments rarely promote goodwill between groups. Resentment is common among both the donors, who harbor suspicions that the recipients are exploiting them, and the recipients, who indulge in mental contortions to explain their dependency away.

It is no surprise, therefore, that the largest political parties in Flanders are either nationalist or free-market; both philosophies lead to reducing or stopping the transfer payments. It is equally unsurprising that the largest political party in Wallonia is socialist and wants the payments to continue or increase. The Wallonian socialist party’s patronage powers in its territory are almost feudal in nature and extent; the last thing that the party of social change wants is actual change. But neither the Flemish parties nor the Wallonian socialists are strong enough to impose a government on the whole country.

Belgium’s inability to form a central government would not matter so much if the country did not need to reduce its public spending. Though Belgium is the largest per-capita exporter of goods and services in the world and has healthy private savings, it also has a large and growing public debt—nearly 100 percent of GDP—and an annual budget deficit of more than 5 percent. With growth negligible and government bond yields rising in a currency (the euro) that the Belgians cannot inflate, retrenchment is essential, but the Walloons and the Flemish cannot agree on how to do it. The Walloons want higher taxes to maintain the current arrangements; the Flemish want lower taxes and reduced spending to promote long-term growth. The result is a stalemate. Wallonia and Flanders are like a married couple who no longer can live together but find divorce impossible because of difficulties over the settlement.

It happens that the central offices of the E.U. are located in Brussels. Yet the political difficulties of Belgium do not give the European unionists pause for thought—or, if they do pause, they reach a peculiar conclusion: that what has not worked in two centuries in a small area with only two populations will work in a few years in a much larger area with a multitude of populations. It does not occur to the unionists that different countries really are different: not a little bit, but radically, in culture, language, history, traditions, and economies. The term “European” is not meaningless, but whatever content the term may have, it is not sufficient for the formation of a viable polity. (more…)

By JAMES TARANTO

Why They Stood and Cheered
The live-audience reaction to Republican presidential debates is a matter of great public significance–so great that even the president of the United States takes time out from his duties to evaluate it. We anxiously await President Obama’s comment on what, as far as we know, is a first in the history of presidential debates: a standing ovation.

It happened at last night’s debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., which was sponsored by Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal. FoxNewsInsider.com describes the exchange that prompted it:

Juan Williams questioned Newt Gingrich about his recent comments that black Americans should “demand jobs, not food stamps,” and that Obama is a “Food Stamp President.” When asked if he could see why these comments might be insulting to African-Americans, Gingrich said flatly, “No, I don’t see that.”

He then went onto [sic] propose a janitorial program that would allow students to do light janitorial work while continuing their studies, paying them and teaching them the value of work. He said that they would be earning money, “which is a good thing if you’re poor. Only the elites despise earning money.”

Williams then pressed, suggesting that Gingrich’s comments, including references to President Obama as a “Food Stamp President,” were intended to belittle the poor and racial minorities.

Gingrich responded, “The fact is more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.”

He proclaimed, “I believe every American of every background has been endowed by their Creator with the right to pursue happiness, and if that makes liberals unhappy, I’m going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job, learn how to get a better job, and learn someday to own the job.”

One might ask: What’s race got to do with it? An essay carrying that title appeared on the New York Times website two days before the debate, but the question turned out not to be rhetorical. The author, Lee Siegel, was writing about Mitt Romney’s campaign, not Gingrich’s, but there is a clarifying resonance between his piece and Gingrich’s response to Williams.

James Taranto on the Fox News debate and Newt Gingrich’s exchange with Juan Williams.

Siegel writes that “Mitt Romney is the whitest white man to run for president in recent memory.” That sounds like a promising start to a Chris Rock comedy riff, but Siegel means it as a serious thesis.

“I’m not talking about a strict count of melanin density,” Siegel writes. Rather, he refers to something he imagines is less ludicrous: Romney’s “whiteness grounded in a retro vision of the country, one of white picket fences and stay-at-home moms and fathers unashamed of working hard for corporate America.”

This is almost like a Peggy Noonan observation from a few months ago:

Mr. Romney’s added value is his persona. He’s a little like the father in one of those 1950s or ’60s sitcoms that terrorized and comforted a generation of children from non-functioning families: Somewhere there was a functioning one, and it was nice enough to visit you on Wednesday at 8. He’s like Robert Young in “Father Knows Best,” or Fred MacMurray in “My Three Sons”: You’d quake at telling him about the fender-bender, but after the lecture on safety and personal responsibility, he’d buck you up and throw you the keys.

Almost but not quite, for Noonan did not racialize the type. In her telling, it is Romney’s confident, responsible masculinity that is reassuring. In Siegel’s, it is the color of Romney’s skin.

Siegel also conflates Romney’s ideological criticism of Obama with “whiteness”:

While Mr. Romney may, in some people’s eyes, be a non-Christian, he is better than any of his opponents at synching his worldview with that of the evangelicals. He likes to present, with theological urgency, a stark choice between, in his words, President Obama’s “entitlement society” and the true American freedom of an “opportunity society.” . . .

In this way, whether he means to or not, Mr. Romney connects with a central evangelic fantasy: that the Barack Obama years, far from being the way forward, are in fact a historical aberration, a tear in the white space-time continuum.

Siegel isn’t the first to define the “opportunity society” as being for whites only. Last June, as we noted, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews accused Romney of having employed a “slur” for observing of Obama that in his approach to economic policy, “he’s awfully European.” Matthews apparently is unaware that Europe’s biggest export to America has been white people.

Romney and his fellow Republicans are making a case (at least relative to President Obama) for economic freedom and against the expansion of government. To be sure, one may prefer Obama’s policies on reasoned grounds that have nothing to do with race. It is also true that for most of America’s history, and as recently as the 1960s, blacks were denied the freedoms, economic and otherwise, that whites took for granted.
[botwt0117] Getty Images

That’s telling them. (more…)

from Powerline

Newt Gingrich has labeled President Obama the food stamp president. In last night’s South Carolina debate, Juan Williams, in an already-famous exchange, tried to push back on that characterization, unsuccessfully. “The fact is more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history,” Gingrich told Williams. The White House apparently doesn’t like the association between Obama and food stamps; Jay Carney said that the claim that President Obama’s policies have added to the food stamp rolls is “crazy.”

As happens so often with White House statements, Carney’s characterization had no basis in fact. We wrote about the metastasizing food stamp program in Food Stamp Nation:

Food stamp use has exploded during the Obama administration, reaching an all-time high of 45.8 million in August. This chart, prepared by Republicans on the Senate Budget Committee, depicts the extraordinary growth in the program that began when Barack Obama took office in 2009:

That is right: federal spending on food stamps has doubled since George W. Bush left office. In large part, this is due to fraud–another emblem of the Obama administration. As Jeff Sessions said:

The agriculture bill we are considering this week…would result in a quadrupling of food stamp funds from their 2001 levels. At a proposed $80 billion a year, food stamps are becoming one of the largest items in our budget….

There is little if any oversight of the program, resulting in the extraordinary waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. … In some cases, the only thing you need to become food-stamp eligible is have a brochure from the federal government be sent to you in the mail. …

This program is not being run honestly, effectively, or fairly. It is deeply disappointing and extremely telling that the Democrat-led Senate voted down even this modest effort to address the almost shameless mishandling of taxpayer funds. We’re in a fiscal crisis that is already killing jobs, and these bills just increase spending—and destroy confidence—that much more.

Obama, of course, has done nothing to crack down on fraud or try to get a grip on food stamp spending. So, more recently, Sessions has again written to the Obama administration to ask for its cooperation in getting food stamp spending under control. You can read his letter here. An excerpt:

???I am writing about widespread reports of fraud and abuse in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as food stamps. At $89 billion, the annual food stamp budget is the largest of nearly eighty federal welfare programs that cost taxpayers around $900 billion a year. Following growing concern over lax oversight, the USDA recently issued a press release announcing “new tactics to combat fraud and enhance SNAP program integrity.”

While the weak economy has increased the number of people on food stamps, spending on the program has dramatically outpaced the rise in unemployment. … [A]ccording to research by University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, most of the increased spending on welfare programs (including food stamps) since 2007 is the result of expansions of eligibility, rather than increases in the number of people who would have been eligible under pre-recession rules. …

Records released last month show a couple in Washington State living in a $1.2 million home but still receiving benefits; a Michigan lottery winner was allowed to continue receiving benefits after receiving a $2 million payout (that state also discovered 30,000 ineligible college students its food stamp rolls, later taking action to remove them); and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that Wisconsin food stamp recipients routinely sell their benefit cards on Facebook.

As the Ranking Member of the Senate Budget Committee, I have a responsibility on behalf of taxpayers to hold federal agencies accountable for how public funds are being spent. I would therefore ask that the Committee be immediately provided with a thorough explanation of all oversight actions your Department is taking, as well as a list of recommended federal reforms that would reduce waste, inefficiency, and abuse in the food stamp program.

To my knowledge, the Obama administration has not yet responded to this request for accountability, but I will publicize any response the Department of Agriculture makes. In the meantime, was Gingrich correct in dubbing Barack Obama the food stamp president? Actually, Gingrich was being charitable: he could have called Obama the food stamp fraud president.

By Janet Tassel

It was the first week in October in Newton, an upscale suburb of Boston, and Tony Pagliuso’s daughter, a sophomore at Newton South High School, was visibly disturbed. When Tony asked her the problem, she showed him a passage from the chapter she was assigned in her World History Class. It was a chapter called “Women, an Essay,” from a supplemental text called The Arab World Notebook. In a paragraph devoted to women “in the struggle for independence from colonial powers,” we find:

Over the past four decades, women have been active in the Palestinian resistance movement. Several hundred have been imprisoned, tortured, and killed by Israeli occupation forces since the latest uprising, “intifada,” in the Israeli occupied territories.

Pagliuso assured his daughter that this was “total propaganda,” and took the matter up with the young teacher, a Miss Jessica Engel, who couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. The material had been “vetted” and was deemed “appropriate,” she said, “and would stay in the curriculum. After all, she continued, the head of the history department had gotten this material at an outreach workshop of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard!

Thence to the principal, Joel Stembridge, who glared at Pagliuso and asked, “How do you pronounce ‘Pagliuso’?” and dismissing him brusquely with a refusal to apologize, added: “If you’re unhappy with this, you should know that next year we’re planning to teach material that will be even more inflammatory to your sensibilities.” (Where is Ferris Bueller when you need him?) Since Miss Jessica Engel had devoted one day each to Judaism and Christianity while spending 2 ½ weeks on Islam, Tony wasn’t sure how much more inflammatory things could get.

A couple of weeks later, nine stalwart Newton citizens presented themselves at the Newton School Committee meeting, where superintendent David Fleischman, and even the mayor, Setti Warren, were present. The citizens were courteously received, and as it happens Fleishman announced shortly thereafter that indeed the chapter “didn’t meet the learning goals of the class” and had been removed from the curriculum.

“Didn’t meet the learning goals” is Eduspeak for “What the hell is this and how the hell did it get in?” The answer to the latter is, as noted, Harvard, which, as it happens, held a seminar on Israel and Palestine at Newton South in April 2011. And Newton is far from the only community to take its lead on matters Islamic from Harvard. Public and private schools all over Massachusetts send teachers to the Outreach Center at Harvard for guidance and (free) materials. The program, like the Center for Middle Eastern Studies itself, is heavily Saudi-funded.

The answer to what it is can be found in a number of places. In 2005, responding to a complaint from a teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, the American Jewish Committee published a thorough critique of the Notebook (the full report Propaganda, Proselytizing, and Public Education, is available at the AJC website), thanks to which Anchorage stopped using the book. As background, the AJC report explains:

The Arab World Studies Notebook was first published in 1990 under the title Arab World Notebook [apparently Newton was using this edition], but was updated and republished in 1998 with its current title. The funding for the publication was provided by the Middle East Policy Council, formerly the Arab American Affairs Council….The Notebook was published in conjunction with Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR), founded by Audrey Shabbas, who penned many of the articles…as well as the editorial commentary throughout.

Who is this Audrey Shabbas? The moving spirit behind AWAIR, she says all she wants from teachers is to “let you step with me to the inside, to see what a Muslim worldview looks like and feels like, so you can bring it back to your students.” This from an adoring 2002 interview posted, fittingly, at Saudi Aramco World.

A little earlier than the AJC’s report, in 2003, William J. Bennetta, president of The Textbook League, produced a preliminary assessment of the Notebook. He gives a little background:

The Middle East Policy Council, a pressure group based in Washington. D.C…adopted its present name in 1991. The MEPC’s activities include the sponsoring of “teacher workshops” that allegedly equip educators to teach about “the Arab World and Islam. AWAIR, which operates from Abiquiu, New Mexico, distributes printed items and videos for “ALL LEVELS-Elementary to College” and runs the “teacher workshops” sponsored by the MEPC.”

But on to the meat in Mr Bennetta’s scathing report:

The promotion of Islam in the Notebook is unrestrained, and the religious-indoctrination material that the Notebook dispenses is virulent. Muslim myths, including myths about how Islam and the Koran originated, are retailed as matters of fact, while legitimate historical appraisals of the origins of Islam and the Koran are excluded. [Audrey] Shabbas wants to turn teachers into agents who, in their classrooms, will present Muslim myths as “history,” will endorse Muslim religious claims, and will propagate Islamic fundamentalism. In a public-school setting, the religious-indoctrination work which Shabbas wants teachers to perform would clearly be illegal.

Or, in the words of Tony Pagliuso, “total propaganda.” What is striking, though, is how amateurish the chapter on women is. Taqiyya — telling falsehoods for Islam — is a well-known tool of Islamic propagandists, but this shoddy merchandise is so riddled with lies and half-truths that no respectable Arab merchant in the shuk would hang it in his market. Just a sample:

Women’s Rights in Islam. There is no basis in Islam for the subjugation of women or their relegation to a secondary role. Far in advance of women’s emancipation in Europe, Islam made revolutionary changes in the lives of women in 6th-century Arabia.

The alert reader will observe that there was no Islam yet in 6th-century Arabia, Muhammad himself having been born in about 570, and having been tapped by the angel Gabriel no earlier then about 609. Then too we think of the unpleasantries swept under the Oriental carpet — such as permissible rape, clitorectomies, honor killings, child marriage, indeed the whole sorry gamut of women’s trials under Islam, including those specifically decreed by the Koran. As Robert Spencer sums up:

–Women are inferior to men, and must be ruled by them: “Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other” (4:34).

–It [the Koran] likens a woman to a field (tilth), to be used by a man as he wills: “Your women are a tilth for you to cultivate so go to your tilth as ye will” (2:223).

–It declares that a woman’s legal testimony is worth half that of a man: “Get two witnesses, out of your own men, and if there are not two men, then a man and two women, such as ye choose, for witnesses, so that if one of them errs, the other can remind her” (2:282).

–It allows men to marry up to four wives, and also to have sex with slave girls: “If ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly with the orphans, marry women of your choice, two or three or four; but if ye fear that ye shall not be able to deal justly (with them), then only one, or (a captive) that your right hands possess, that will be more suitable, to prevent you from doing injustice” (4:3).

–It rules that a son’s inheritance should be twice the size of that of a daughter: “Allah (thus) directs you as regards your children’s (inheritance): to the male, a portion equal to that of two females” (4:11).

–It allows for marriage to pre-pubescent girls, stipulating that Islamic divorce procedures “shall apply to those who have not yet menstruated” (65.4).

“Such a verse might have made its way into the Koran,” writes Spencer, “because of the notorious fact that Muhammed himself had a child bride.” That would be Aisha: As the hadith says, “The prophet married her when she was six years old and he consummated his marriage when she was nine years old, and then she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).” Newton’s Notebook chapter mentions Aisha in passing, that she heroically promulgated Islam after the Prophet’s death, but neglects to tell us how old she was when Muhammed found her, as the story goes, playing on a swing.

It turns out, not surprisingly, that most of the Notebook is as slipshod, even farcical, as the chapter on women. But it is no less dangerous for being slovenly. As the AJC report confirms, “Teachers are subjected to heavy propaganda, both in the Notebook and in the teacher workshops sponsored by MEPC and conducted by AWAIR, in which the Notebook is the primary source material….The Notebook critiques other educational materials for being Eurocentric; yet it provides students with a completely Muslim-centered perspective.”

Worst of all, educationally speaking, in addition to inventing history, the Notebook is guilty of two cardinal sins, according to the AJC: “It uses no qualifiers to differentiate between fact and interpretation; and it fails to clarify that, like the stories behind many other religions, some of the stories within traditional Islam are disputed or unverifiable.” The all-important qualifier, “Muslims believe,” or “Islam teaches that” is entirely eliminated. Imagine all the Miss Engels in the world preaching to the class, “And God chose Abraham.” Or “Jesus performed miracles.”

Other innovations from the Notebook, these concerning what the author calls “the Israeli ‘fetish of Jerusalem’”:

When people talk of Jerusalem and consider the historic rights over the city and claims to it, they are not talking about the European-type colonial suburb-turned-city which foreign Jews built next to the historic religious city-shrine, even though they called it Jerusalem too. They are talking about the walled city, fully built up, containing a small Jewish quarter, it is true, but almost exclusively a home to Christian and Muslim Palestinian Arabs.
(more…)

Posted by Jim Hoft

Intercepted communications indicated Asimullah Mehsud was killed in a drone strike in the North Waziristan tribal area. In about a half a dozen intercepts the militants discussed whether their chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed on January 12.
FOX News reported:

Intercepted militant radio communications indicate the leader of the Pakistani Taliban may have been killed in a recent U.S. drone strike, Pakistani intelligence officials said Sunday. A Taliban official denied that.

The report coincided with sectarian violence — a bomb blast in eastern Pakistan that killed 14 people in a Shiite religious procession.

The claim that the Pakistani Taliban chief was killed came from officials who said they intercepted a number of Taliban radio conversations. In about a half a dozen intercepts, the militants discussed whether their chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed on Jan. 12 in the North Waziristan tribal area. Some militants confirmed Mehsud was dead, and one criticized others for talking about the issue over the radio.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Pakistani Taliban spokesman Asimullah Mehsud denied the group’s leader was killed and said he was not in the area where the drone strike occurred.

from Powerline

The Laffer Curve—the conceptual device illustrating how high marginal tax rates reduced revenue and economic growth—helped revolutionize tax policy around the world thirty five years ago. Every advanced nation followed the United States in lowering tax rates on income (both personal and corporate) and capital investment in the 1980s; many did so more vigorously than we did. (The definitive treatment of the subject is Brian Domitrovic’s Econoclasts. Belongs on everyone’s economics bookshelf.) While the Left kvetches against the Laffer Curve, I note that not even the most leftist governments in the industrialized world propose restoring pre-Laffer Curve income and capital gains tax rates. Game over.

Today we need a new Laffer Curve—for regulation. The thought comes to mind in contemplating George Will’s column this morning discussing the impending difficulties in deepening the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina by five feet in order to accommodate a new generation of larger container ships soon to be sailing the ocean blue:

Newsome says the study for deepening Savannah’s harbor was made in 1999. It is 2012, and studies for the environmental impact statement are not finished. When they are, the project will take five years to construct. “But before that,” he says laconically, “they’re going to be sued by groups concerned about the environmental impact.” A Newsome axiom — that institutions become risk-averse as they get challenged — is increasingly pertinent as America changes from a nation that celebrated getting things done to a nation that celebrates people and groups who prevent things from being done. . .

The Empire State Building was built in 14 months during the Depression, the Pentagon in 16 in wartime. The aircraft carrier USS Yorktown, which earned 11 battle stars in the Pacific and now is anchored here, was built in less than 17 months, back when America was serious about moving forward. Is it necessary to take eight years — just two years less than it took to build the Panama Canal with yellow fever and without computers — to deepen this harbor five feet?

It is one thing to argue that the economic benefits of health and safety regulations, such as air and water pollution, etc., outweigh the costs, though the EPA’s methodology for making these calculations is highly convenient. But we can leave that head-splitting methodological argument for another time. How can the economic benefits possibly outweigh the massive delays which amount to outright prevention of projects from being built (see: Keystone XL pipeline, or see the Project/NoProject? website for a cumulative rundown of projects currently held up in the environmental review process)? More to the point, does the long, litigation-heavy environmental review process we currently use actually deliver environmental benefits? More often it is simply used as an obstructionist measure. (I noted in watching a Keystone pipeline hearing that most of the complaints were simply blanket opposition to building the pipelines at all, not specific complaints about a harm that needed to be avoided somehow.)

Here’s where we need the regulatory equivalent of the Laffer Curve. Take the Keystone pipeline as an example. The pipeline is likely to be approved eventually, but only after more years of review and litigation. Certainly measures will need to be taken to reduce the environmental risks of the pipeline, but is there any safety measure that we will eventually impose that we didn’t recognize in the first six months of the review process? It’s not like we’ve never built a pipeline before, or learned from previous pipeline accidents (like the one in Montana last summer). Are there really any potential environmental impacts of deepening a harbor in South Carolina by five feet that require six to ten years of review and litigation, and a three-thousand page Environmental Impact Statement?

Clearly the review process we have now is largely deadweight loss, just as high marginal tax rates discouraged capital formation, investment, and productivity improvements in the high-inflation 1970s. We can arguably afford the extravagance of regulatory suffocation when the economy is booming at 4 percent growth a year or better (as in the late 1990s) and unemployment is 5 percent. We cannot afford it under the current stagnant circumstances. A Laffer Curve for regulation will explore just how much economic growth and how many jobs were are sacrificing for this artificial punctiliousness.

What needs to be done? The regulatory review process ought to have a short deadline. Agency review should be completed within six or nine months, with a presumption in favor of granting permission unless an agency can delineate a substantively new problem based on precedents from previous similar projects (that is, no speculative objections based on what global warming might do 75 years from now, as actually happened to a proposed project in California a few years back where regulators denied a building permit on the theory that rising sea levels would make the land habitat for an endangered species that would want to move upland). Standing to sue to block projects should be tightened, and the threshold for hearing such suits made much more restrictive. And how about requiring that all Environmental Impact Statements be no longer than 200 pages? I’m sure all the environmental lawyers and consultants who charge by the hour and make a bundle doing these multi-volume EIRs that no one reads will howl, but if the Supreme Court can limit briefs to 50 pages on matters of high constitutional importance, why can’t our regulatory process not emulate a standard of brevity that emphasizes the essential over the frivolous and tedious?

VENTURA (CBS) — A Ventura County Girl Scout is at the center of a national controversy after she released a video calling for a boycott of the group’s popular cookies over what she calls a “radical homosexual agenda”.

The girl — who has only been identified as 14-year-old “Taylor” — cited the recent decision by Girl Scout officials to allow a 7-year-old “transgender” boy to join a Colorado-based troop last fall.

In a video that first appeared Wednesday, Taylor linked proceeds from cookie sales “to push a radical homosexual agenda at the expense of the Scouts’ safety.”

A statement on the group’s website HonestGirlScouts.com called for the Girl Scouts of USA to “eliminate sex education from Girl Scout permission and curricula”.

The group also is calling for the organization to cut ties with the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) for its “friendship” with Planned Parenthood “and its worldwide agenda of explicit sexual education for young children”.

A flier on the website alleged new CEO Anna Maria Chavez to be a member of a “pro-abortion feminist coalition” and suggested former CEO Kathy Cloninger never retracted her stated goal of partnering with Planned Parenthood to provide “good” and “information-based” sex education.

Girl Scout officials have denied that cookie proceeds support any agenda but instead help to fund local troop activities.

Posted by Jim Hoft

FOX News calls the race for Mitt Romney.
Mitt is the first GOP candidate to win both IA and NH since 1976.

Ron Paul placed second.
Jon Huntsman finished third.

The conservative candidates were knocked out of the top three places.

This was interesting…
A majority of voters said they would be pleased with Mitt Romney as their candidate.
Also, a majority of voters said they would not be happy with Ron Paul, Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich as the candidate.

** FOX News is ready to coronate Romney as the GOP candidate.

UPDATE: Mitt says he’ll repeal Romneycare Obamacare when he becomes president.

Mitt gave a good speech overall. He has a handsome family.

UPDATE: John McCain says we can win this thing sooner than we thought. Ron Paul’s second place was surprising.