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In the NY Times, Ross Douthat discusses abortion.

…In every era, there’s been a tragic contrast between the burden of unwanted pregnancies and the burden of infertility. But this gap used to be bridged by adoption far more frequently than it is today. Prior to 1973, 20 percent of births to white, unmarried women (and 9 percent of unwed births over all) led to an adoption. Today, just 1 percent of babies born to unwed mothers are adopted, and would-be adoptive parents face a waiting list that has lengthened beyond reason.

Some of this shift reflects the growing acceptance of single parenting. But some of it reflects the impact of Roe v. Wade. Since 1973, countless lives that might have been welcomed into families like Thernstrom’s — which looked into adoption, and gave it up as hopeless — have been cut short in utero instead.

And lives are what they are. On the MTV special, the people around Durham swaddle abortion in euphemism. The being inside her is just “pregnancy tissue.” After the abortion, she recalls being warned not to humanize it: “If you think of it like [a person], you’re going to make yourself depressed.” Instead, “think of it as what it is: nothing but a little ball of cells.”

It’s left to Durham herself to cut through the evasion. Sitting with her boyfriend afterward, she begins to cry when he calls the embryo a “thing.” Gesturing to their infant daughter, she says, “A ‘thing’ can turn out like that. That’s what I remember … ‘Nothing but a bunch of cells’ can be her.”  …

…This is the paradox of America’s unborn. No life is so desperately sought after, so hungrily desired, so carefully nurtured. And yet no life is so legally unprotected, and so frequently destroyed.

In the NY Post, Rich Lowry comments on cutting government back.

President Obama’s first two years in office were for the ages: Rarely has so much been spent so wantonly with so little discernible public benefit.

Nondefense discretionary spending accounted for $434 billion of the federal budget in 2008…

In 2010, such spending was $537 billion of the budget, a 24 percent increase. Throw in the stimulus and its $259 billion of discretionary spending — a category that excludes entitlements — and the run-up is much higher. Most departments saw double-digit increases, and some saw triple-digit increases. For the federal government, 2008-2010 were the fat years.

…This isn’t Tom DeLay’s GOP Congress, fat and happy in Washington. It’s fired with an ardor to deliver on its promise to limit government. Nearly 90 GOP caucus members are freshmen, shaped in the crucible of the Tea Party. In this context, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan — who has a far-reaching plan to reform taxes and entitlements — is practically the establishment.

The first order of business is to take nondefense discretionary spending back to 2008 levels. A two-year rollback doesn’t sound overly ambitious, even though it would represent more than a 20 percent cut in spending. This would be a spectacular feat, less like turning an ocean liner around than throwing it in reverse and backing it up. Every inertial force in Washington will resist this change. …

No reason for Pelosi to come to her senses now. Professor Bainbridge comments.

Outgoing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (let’s just pause to savor that “outgoing” qualifier) exits with an immense lie:

At her final press conference as House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, “Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go.”

The numbers tell a different story.

When the Pelosi Democrats took control of Congress on January 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. The last day of the 111th Congress and Pelosi’s Speakership on December 22, 2010 the national debt was $13,858,529,371,601.09 – a roughly $5.2 trillion increase in just four years. Furthermore, the year over year federal deficit has roughly quadrupled during Pelosi’s four years as speaker, from $342 billion in fiscal year 2007 to an estimated $1.6 trillion at the end of fiscal year 2010.

“Yesterday, during a speech, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the CIA misleads us all the time…You know, unlike Congress.” –Jay Leno

Contrast Pelosi’s prevarication with John Boehner’s speech. Peter Wehner has a short post.

In his first speech as Speaker of the House, John Boehner struck just the right tone, I thought. Though hardly a spellbinding orator, Boehner’s remarks were short and gracious, modest and at times elegant. He spoke about the power of ideas and the importance of fairness to the minority party. He also placed the job of the House within the framework of self-government, saying

“The American people have humbled us. They have refreshed our memories as to just how temporary the privilege to serve is. They have reminded us that everything here is on loan from them. That includes this gavel, which I accept cheerfully and gratefully, knowing I am but its caretaker. After all, this is the people’s House. This is their Congress. It’s about them, not us. What they want is a government that is honest, accountable and responsive to their needs. A government that respects individual liberty, honors our heritage, and bows before the public it serves.”

…By the end of his tenure, what Boehner said today will be long forgotten. He will be judged on his record and that of the 112th Congress, as he should. But at the outset of this journey, Mr. Boehner struck the right notes in the right way. …

Jennifer Rubin highlights some inspiring words in Speaker Boehner’s speech.

John Boehner has benefited from low expectations. Liberals scoffed at the idea that he would be an adequate rival to the president. Republicans had their own doubts. But in his maiden speech, he did about as well as a pol can in delivering a core message: We are humble. We heard the voters. We’re here to end the spend-a-thon. In his words:

“We gather here today at a time of great challenges. Nearly one in ten of our neighbors are looking for work. Health-care costs are still rising for families and small businesses. Our spending has caught up with us, and our debt will soon eclipse the size of our entire economy. Hard work and tough decisions will be required of the 112th Congress. No longer can we fall short. No longer can we kick the can down the road. The people voted to end business as usual, and today we begin carrying out their instructions.”

…But when it came to the country, he was surprisingly eloquent. “More than a country, America is an idea, and it is our job to pass on to our posterity the blessings bestowed to us.” One of the 2012 presidential contenders should steal that. …

Roger Simon liked the speech too.

… His opening ad-lib quieting thunderous applause – “It’s still just me” – should be an instructional moment in public behavior in our celebrity culture. Can you imagine Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, Barack Obama or even, alas, Sarah Palin saying such a thing with the authenticity Boehner clearly had at such a moment?

He spoke graciously for a brief twelve minutes — as compared with his predecessor Pelosi, who spoke for thirteen before passing him the gavel. And unlike Pelosi, he spoke about us, the people, and very little about himself. (She spent the better part of the thirteen minutes listing her own accomplishments. But enough about Pelosi — let’s hope for a long time.) Boehner emphasized comity and civility, virtues the almost feel extinct in our society.

Was all this humility a pose or was it real? Of course, I don’t know. But I suspect it was a mix, as many things are. Still, I would like to think that Boehner is a genuinely humble man because he is a assuming the role of speaker at what is arguably the most critical moment of our history since WWII …

Thomas Sowell treads some controversial ground in discussing the government propping up home prices. The salient point is that government interfered in the housing market to “help” some Americans buy homes. Government interference created distorted economic incentives. People made economic decisions based on these government created distortions. And so, the Robin Hoodlums have helped create economic misery for millions more people than they ever helped.

…Why are politicians so focused on one set of people, at the expense of other people? Because “saving” one set of people increases the chances of getting those people’s votes. Letting supply and demand determine what happens in the housing market gets nobody’s votes.

If current occupants are put out of their homes and the prices come down to a level where others can afford to buy those homes, nobody will give politicians credit– or, more to the point, their votes. Nor should they.

Rescuing particular people at the expense of other people– whether the others are taxpayers, savers or prospective home buyers– produces votes. It also produces dependency on government, which is good for politicians, but bad for society. …

In the WSJ, Todd Zywicki looks at more financial consequences from government laws.

The least surprising event of 2010 was that, in the wake of new federal limits on how credit-card issuers can price risk and adjust interest rates, more Americans had to go to payday lenders, pawn shops and local loan sharks in order to get credit. It’s simply the latest installment in the old story of regulators thinking they can wish away the unintended consequences of consumer credit regulation.

Proponents of the 2009 Credit CARD (Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure) Act argued that it would protect Americans from exploitative credit-card companies by limiting penalty fees and interest-rate adjustments. For many Americans, though, the law meant higher interest rates, an increase in other fees, and reduced credit limits.

…Regulators cannot wish away the need of low-income consumers for credit: If your car’s transmission blows, you need $2,000 for repairs to get to work, whether or not you have it saved in the bank (and most low-income Americans don’t). If you can’t get a credit card, you’re going to have to get that money from a payday lender, pawn shop or loan shark. …

In the Financial Times, Javier Blass reports on an increase in global food prices. Let’s have some more ethanol mandates!

Food prices hit a record high last month, surpassing the levels seen during the 2007-08 crisis, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation said on Wednesday.

…The increase in food costs will also hit developed economies, with companies from McDonald’s to Kraft raising retail prices.

Higher food prices are also boosting overall inflation, which is above the preferred targets of central banks in Europe.

…The increasing costs of sugar, whose price recently hit a 30-year high, oilseeds and meat are the main reason behind the rise in the FAO food index.

…Agricultural commodities prices have surged following a series of crop failures caused by bad weather. The situation was aggravated when top producers such as Russia and Ukraine imposed export restrictions, prompting importers in the Middle East and North Africa to hoard supplies. 

The weakness of the US dollar, in which most food commodities are denominated, has also contributed to higher prices. …

The nanny state turns us into liars. Story from Mother Nature Network about a German businessman who has rebranded incandescent light bulbs as ”heat balls” to evade EU regulations.

You gotta hand it to German businessman Siegfried Rotthaeuser, who came up with a brilliant run around the European Union ban on conventional incandescent light bulbs — he rebranded them as “Heat Balls” and is importing them for sale as a “small heating device.”

Rotthaeuser’s website is in German, but Google does a passable job of translation. First, he’s clear that the Heat Ball isn’t for lighting, stating (in German, the following is translated) “A HEAT BALL ® is not a lamp, but it fits in the same version!” …

For another little lie, Volokh Conspiracy tells us about changes to Huckleberry Finn.

… Twain scholar Alan Gribben and NewSouth Books plan to release a version of Huckleberry Finn, in a single volume with The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, that does away with the “n” word (as well as the “in” word, “Injun”) by replacing it with the word “slave.”

Abe Greenwald has some thoughts on the controversy.

… Here’s the joke: These protectors of fragile sensibilities think “slave” is safe from the larger PC police force. I’m in a slightly unique position to know otherwise. In another lifetime, I worked in educational publishing. Political correctness does not inform that industry; it defines it. The purpose of children’s textbooks is to orient kids to a PC worldview.

One time, I worked on a third-grade social-studies textbook for a Southern school district. A few weeks after completing the project — which covered regional history from before Columbus’s arrival to the present day — a directive came from on high: the chapters on slavery, the Civil War, and the Reconstruction had to be reworked. There was, we were told, excessive use of a forbidden word. Dare to guess? Slave. The term, you see, was dehumanizing and had to be replaced with “enslaved person.” …

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In the WSJ, Kimberley Strassel reviews how the liberals are experiencing constitutional derangement syndrome.

…in order to avoid the political inconvenience of a “tax,” Democrats based the very core of their bill on a new and untested legal premise—one that is a far bigger affront to the Constitution than New Deal legislation. That’s why Judge Hudson struck it down. And since Congress adopted this theory sloppily, in response to political pressure, it has left a record that is killing the Justice Department in court.

Knowing how audacious the commerce-clause theory is, Justice has been trying to argue that the penalty is, in fact . . . a tax. This has only annoyed Judge Vinson, who is well aware of the history, and in fact rapped the Justice Department for the bait-and-switch.

“Congress should not be permitted to secure and cast politically difficult votes on controversial legislation by deliberately calling something one thing,” Judge Vinson wrote in October, “after which the defenders of that legislation take an ‘Alice-in-Wonderland’ tack and argue in court that Congress really meant something else entirely.” Ouch.

And yet the Justice Department has continued to put forward wild theories in court—about the Commerce Clause, about the Necessary and Proper Clause—that have no basis in the statutory language of ObamaCare. And it is now playing games with the appeal of Judge Hudson’s ruling, arguing against having it go straight to the Supreme Court, where the nation could get some quick clarity. The administration believes its best shot is to drag out the litigation, and hope that time pressures the courts to leave the law alone. …

Victor Davis Hanson looks at various sectors of the angry, spoiled Left.

…The green lobby got all it wanted—subsidies, insider dealers, fame, money, influence. And then came Climategate, the multimillionaire Al Gore’s personal and professional meltdown, the coldest, iciest, and snowiest winters in memory, all the false warnings about record hurricanes and tsunamis becoming the new norm, the Orwellian metamorphosizing nomenclature (global warming begat climate change that is now begetting “climate chaos”).

Gorism is becoming a permanent fixture of late night comedians. When the New York Times keeps publishing op-eds about how record cold proves record global warming, the world wonders: what would record heat prove?

But whom to blame? The bad earth that is not boiling this winter? Right-wing zealots who cannot comprehend that very cold proves very hot. Red-state yahoos that don’t understand the brilliance of cap and trade? Broke governments that did not subsidize enough green power, green farming, and green energy? …

David Warren draws an accurate analogy between Robin Hood, and how the Left romanticizes stealing from taxpayers to fund their dream programs.

…The attraction of Robin Hood, perhaps then as now, to youthful and disordered minds, is that he himself “cuts to the chase,” or cuts the corner, discovering an effective method for redistributing wealth, centuries before the imposition of the Nanny State. He becomes, thus, a “romantic hero,” or to my mind, a wonderful illustration of the close connection between the “do-gooder” impulse, and the criminal one; or as Ann Coulter might put it, between a “liberal” and a “psycho.”

…We enter a new year in which, despite the usual setbacks from reality, Robin Hoodlumism is alive and well, both as esthetic flourish and bureaucratic policy. Vast government departments continue to do what the outlaws did on medieval highways — though on a fiscal scale and with a crushing efficiency unimaginable in former times, upon travellers denied any of the traditional defences. Attempts to romanticize this operation, in which human generosity itself is obviated by arbitrary power, will continue for as long as the criminal impulse can be sublimated in moral pride, which is to say, probably forever.

Example, U.S. President Barack Obama is reported to be attending church again, and shows a “fresh start,” by persistently misquoting from the Book of Genesis, chapter four. “I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper,” he suggests it says. Check out the original. It is a scene in which no sisters appear, and the brothers in question are Cain and Abel. In particular, the intellectual leap from “you must not murder your brother,” to “you must create and sustain a vast and ponderous welfare system, that is funded by taxing him and borrowing the rest from China,” is not Biblical. …

As NYC recovers from the blizzard, Nicole Gelinas, in the NYPost, makes a great case for what is wrong with government decisions. The mayor has cut sanitation department services and employees, while leaving unsustainable pensions and benefits in place. The result?

…When Bloomberg took office, Gotham spent $1.3 billion annually on the Sanitation Department.

Today, we spend more than $2.2 billion on “New York’s Strongest.”

That increase is almost 3½ times the inflation rate. …

Today’s budgeted sanitation force — from supervisors to garbage collectors — is 392 people smaller than nine years ago, a 4 percent decline even as New York City’s population is up. And the department will shrink further, as Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith knocks 200 people off the rolls to save $21 million by “modifying the supervisor span of control.”

Where did the money go? To pensions, health care and debt. Taxpayers now spend $144,000 in salary and benefits for each sanitation worker, up from $79,000 nearly a decade ago.

Nine years ago, taxpayers contributed about $10.5 million annually to support sanitation pensions. This year, it’ll cost $240 million — a more than 20-fold increase. Back then, health and other “fringe” benefits for the department cost $150 million; they’ve since more than doubled to $313 million. …

…Plus, the snowstorm has made it obvious that New York under Bloomberg has not perfected public-sector management to such an extent that it can cut and cut and cut to feed the benefits monster without harming the public. …

A story about bogus environmental fears with pictures of a buxom woman is tailor-made for UK’s Daily Mail. They give us the story of Erin Brockovich and the growing suspicion the cancer scare in her California town was overblown .

…Today, however, more than a ­decade on from one of the most ­celebrated ‘David and Goliath’ legal battles of recent times, a less flattering assessment is emerging.

Fresh scientific evidence has come to light that casts doubt on Brockovich’s claims that PG&E was ­responsible for the continuing ­legacy of ill-health in Hinkley.

That evidence is contained in a new survey by the California Cancer ­Registry and its key, controversial finding that the number of people diagnosed with cancer in the ­Hinkley area between 1996 and 2008 was not only not excessive, but was lower than would normally be expected for a town of its size — 196 cancer cases over the 12-year period of the study, when the statistical expectation for the region was 224. …

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In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Nile Gardiner blogs about events of 2010.

…The political landscape still looks strikingly bleak for the “transformational president” as he goes into 2011. 2010 was a stunningly bad year for Barack Obama, no matter how much the likes of The New York Times or The Washington Post might try to sugar coat it. Here are four key reasons why it was a year Obama will want to forget:

…2. Conservatism grew increasingly dominant in America

The midterms were certainly no flash in the pan, but part of a broader conservative revolution that swept America in 2010. As a recent Gallup survey showed, 48 percent of Americans now describe themselves as “conservative”, compared to 32 percent who call themselves “moderate”, and just 20 percent who call themselves “liberal”. Conservatives now outnumber liberals by nearly 2.5 to 1, a ratio that is likely to increase in 2011. The percentage of Americans who are conservative has risen six points since 2006 and eight points since 1994. Barack Obama, the most liberal US president of the modern era, has a natural liberal constituency comprised of just one in five Americans, which certainly does not bode well for 2012.

…4. The Tea Party became more powerful than the president at the ballot box

The Tea Party was the big victor of 2010, and spectacularly humiliated the White House by running rings around it. A small grassroots movement with barely any resources evolved into the most successful US political movement of this generation, sparking a national protest against the Big Government policies of the Obama administration, and a powerful call for a return to America’s founding principles. The Tea Party was initially mocked and jeered by its political opponents, including the president, but later came to be feared by the Left as it flexed tremendous political muscle. As I noted in September, a CNN poll showed that “while just 37 percent of Americans are more likely to vote for a candidate if backed by Barack Obama, a far larger 50 percent will vote for a Tea-Party endorsed candidate.” The Tea Party continues to gain momentum following the midterms, where it scored significant successes, and a late November USA Today/Gallup poll showed the Tea Party virtually neck and neck with President Obama in terms of voter opinion on who should influence government policy.

Also in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Toby Harnden has a post on the Gitmo closing that wasn’t.

…Mr Obama’s act of “closing” Guantanamo Bay was hailed around the world as a courageous break with the evil Bush administration. “We are full of hope that the world is on the path to reason and peace,” said President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Except, of course, the prison has not closed. Two years after the dramatic order – the directive of a commander-in-chief and not a mere campaign promise – it clearer than ever that Guantanamo Bay is here to stay. There are still 174 inmates there, only three of whom have been tried and found guilty.

Privately, White House officials concede that the facility will be open on November 6 2012, when Obama faces re-election. Asking when the order might be acted upon, however, almost invariably provokes a scowl of disapproval. Merely asking about Guantanamo is akin to farting in church. …

Nile Gardiner also blogs about the Tea Party movement.

…I described in an earlier piece why I thought the Tea Party was so successful in contrast to the declining fortunes of the Obama presidency:

The reason for the Tea Party’s stunning success and President Obama’s equally remarkable decline is relatively simple. A truly popular grassroots movement has captured the fears and concerns of tens of millions of Americans over the relentless rise of Big Government and the growing threat to economic and individual freedom under the Obama administration, while channeling their hopes and aspirations for the future based upon a return to the founding ideals of the Constitution.

In contrast, an out of touch presidency that exudes arrogance and elitism at every turn continues to contemptuously spend other people’s money with abandon, building up a crippling debt that will ultimately destroy America’s long-term prosperity if left unchecked. It is a stark choice that the two sides offer, and it’s not surprising that a clear majority of Americans are opting for political revolution rather than the status quo. …

And one more from the Telegraph Blogs, UK. James Delingpole has a brilliant blog on green fascism, ending with a prescient quote from Alexis de Tocqueville.

My final post of the year is not about Global Warming. Or rather, it is, but only in the most tangential way. As the sharper among you will long since have recognised, the reason I bang on about AGW is not because I’m obsessed with “Climate Change” but because I recognise it as a strategically vital campaign in a much broader global culture war. On the outcome of this war depends not only the future of Western civilisation but also more immediately concerning things like whether or not our children and grandchildren have jobs, and whether or not we live in a state of liberty or tyranny.

This is why I believe this year’s most important publication is not any of the superb crop of books on AGW – eg Andrew Montford’s The Hockey Stick Illusion; Bob Carter’s Climate Change: The Counter Consensus; Slaying The Sky Dragon; Steve Goreham’s Climatism!; Steven Mosher and Thomas Fuller’s Climategate: The CRUtape Letters – but the book that goes closest to the heart of this great ideological struggle, Christopher Snowdon’s The Spirit Level Delusion.

…I’ll let Snowdon himself explain why:

Apologists for Marxism have made myriad excuses for their ideology’s failure to provide the same standard of living and liberty as was enjoyed in capitalist nations. Until recently, few have been so brazen as to claim that lowering living standards and curtailing freedom were the intended consequences, let alone that people would be happier with less of either. In that sense, books like The Spirit Level represent a departure for the left. Limiting choice, reducing wealth and lowering aspirations are now openly advocated as desirable ends in themselves. …

Jennifer Rubin posts on upcoming investigations into the New Black Panther scandal at the Justice Department. Yes we can demand accountability.

With Attorney General Eric Holder, one never is certain whether he is disingenuous or simply badly informed. He counseled the president that there was no choice but to disclose detainee abuse photos. The advice was wrong, and the recommendation was countermanded after a firestorm of criticism. He told the country that a civilian trial for 9/11 terrorists would offer a greater chance of conviction than a military tribunal. He memorably stumbled before the Senate Judiciary Committee in trying to defend that unfounded assertion. There, too, his advice seems destined to be ignored.

Then there is the New Black Panther Party scandal, a case about egregious voter intimidation brought by the Bush administration and dismissed by Obama political appointees after a default judgment had been obtained. As The Post and I have detailed, there is ample evidence from former Justice Department employees and from documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that the administration concealed evidence of political appointees’ role in dismissing a blatant case of voter intimidation and that in the department’s voting section career employees and political appointees adhere to the view that voting rights laws should not be enforced against non-White defendants. And then there is Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Thomas Perez’s misleading testimony under oath.

…Well, it is time, finally, for Holder and Perez to be examined under oath.Similarly, the political appointee Julie Fernandes, who instructed Department attorneys not to pursue cases against African American defendants, should be summoned to give her account of events. The new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Lamar Smith (R.-Tex.), has been trying to get to the bottom of the controversy for over eighteen months. Now he has the power to convene hearings and subpoena witnesses and evidence. At some point soon, Holder will be asked why he is unaware or unwilling to address the appearance of serious wrongdoing in the Justice Department, which he promised to rid of corruption and politicization when he took office.

Rubin also discusses the recess appointment of James Cole.

You can expect that Republican congressmen and senators when they return this week will continue to decry the recess appointment of James Cole to the post of deputy attorney general. There is no doubt that recess appointments are constitutionally-authorized; but the question here is Cole’s fitness to serve. And there is reason for Republicans and Democrats alike to be deeply concerned over the appointment. True, Cole will hold the position for only a year, but the number-two man in the Justice Department, who oversees myriad key decisions, can do quite a lot of harm in 12 months.

On Dec. 2, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.) took to the floor to explain his objections to Cole’s then pending nomination:

Why does the President want to appoint somebody who thinks 9/11 was a criminal act and not an act of war? I think it is a big deal, so that is one of the reasons we have raised it. Is he going to bring some balance to Attorney General Holder or are they going to move even further left in their approach to these issues?

I would also note he was given a highly paid position as an independent monitor of AIG. This is the big insurance company whose credit default swaps and insurance dealings really triggered this entire collapse of the economic system. He was in the company at the time as a government monitor, and he did not blow the whistle on what was going on throughout this period of time. …

…So the question remains: why would the president and the attorney general select Cole from among all the qualified attorneys in the country to fill the number-two spot in the Justice Department? Now surely, Democrats certainly must be as concerned as Sessions — not only about Cole’s position on the war on terror (which has been generally rejected not only by the administration but by many Democratic senators), but about his lack of diligence at AIG. It would seem both Cole and Eric Holder should do some explaining, under oath, once Congress reconvenes.

Jeff Jacoby points out the problems with a House of Representatives that has not grown for one hundred years. It is hard to see the efficacy of sending more criminals to DC, but he might have a point.

… According to the Census Bureau, there are now 710,767 Americans in the average congressional district. But with every state constitutionally entitled to at least one House seat, and with the membership of the House frozen at 435, districts can deviate widely from the average. Wyoming’s single US representative has just 568,000 constituents; the member from neighboring South Dakota has 820,000. That means a vote cast in Wyoming has nearly 1.5 times the impact of a South Dakotan’s vote.

An even more egregious violation of the “one man, one vote’’ principle is the inequality between Rhode Island’s two congressional districts, with 528,000 voters each, and Montana’s lone district, with 994,000. So great is that disparity, observes Scott Scharpen, the founder of an organization called Apportionment.US, that it takes 188 voters in Montana to equal 100 voters in Rhode Island.

The Supreme Court earlier this month refused to take up a lawsuit, initiated by Scharpen and others, that sought an order forcing Congress to dramatically enlarge the House of Representatives in order to equalize congressional districts. Unsurprisingly, the court ruled that the size of Congress is for members of Congress, not judges, to decide. …

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Today we have admonitions from Peter Schiff on housing and stamps. Unrelated topics, except for the continuing refusal of the political class to face reality. Then for comic relief, Dave Barry’s End of the Year Review.

Peter Schiff believes that government interventions have merely postponed a full correction and recovery in the housing market.

…How has the market found the strength to stop its descent? No one is making the case that fundamentals have improved. Instead, there is widespread agreement that government intervention stopped the free fall. The home buyer’s tax credit, record low interest rates, government mortgage-assistance programs, and the increased presence of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration in the mortgage-buying business have, for now, put something of a floor under house prices. Without these artificial props, prices would have likely continued to fall.

Where would prices go if these props were removed? Given the current conditions in the real-estate market, with bloated inventories, 9.8% unemployment, a dysfunctional mortgage industry and shattered illusions of real-estate riches, does it makes sense that prices should simply fall back to the trend line? I would argue that they should overshoot on the downside.

With a bleak economic prospect stretching far out into the future, I feel that a 10% dip below the 100-year trend line is a reasonable expectation within the next five years, particularly if mortgage rates rise to more typical levels of 6%. That would put the index at 114.02, or prices 28.3% below where we are now. Even a 5% dip would put us at 120.36, or 24.32% below current prices. If rates stay low, price dips may be less severe, but inflation will be higher. …

Peter Schiff sees trouble behind a post office policy change.

The United States Postal Service announced this week that all future first class postage stamps sold will be the so–called “forever stamps” that have no face value but are guaranteed to cover the cost of mailing a first class letter, regardless of how high that cost may rise in the future. Currently these stamps are sold for 44 cents, but will increase in price if and when the Post Office hikes rates.

…But the real reason behind the permanent switch is that it allows the Post Office to hide its insolvency behind phony accounting numbers, setting itself up for a massive taxpayer financed bailout in the not too distant future.

Much the way Greece used phony accounting to qualify for euro zone inclusion, the USPS is using creative accounting to avoid making significant cuts in current wages and benefits. By offering forever stamps, the Post Office moves forward future revenues to pay current expenses. But every forever stamp sold today represents a stamp not sold in the future. The revenues booked now will not be put in escrow to deal with revenue shortfalls that are guaranteed to plague the Post Office in the years ahead. This simply kicks farther down the road any intractable fiscal problems that the USPS can’t solve through more conventional means. …

Finally, we locate Dave Barry’s End of the Year Review in the Quad Cities Dispatch.

Let’s put things into perspective: 2010 was not the worst year ever. There have been MUCH worse years. For example, toward the end of the Cretaceous Period, the Earth was struck by an asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of all the species on the planet. Can we honestly say that we had a worse year than those species did? Yes we can, because they were not exposed to “Jersey Shore.”

So on second thought we see that this was, in fact, the worst year ever. The perfect symbol for the awfulness of 2010 was the BP oil spill, which oozed up from the depths and spread, totally out of control, like some kind of hideous uncontrollable metaphor. (Or, “Jersey Shore.”) The scariest thing about the spill was, nobody in charge seemed to know what to do about it. Time and again, top political leaders personally flew down to the Gulf of Mexico to look at the situation first-hand and hold press availabilities. And yet somehow, despite these efforts,  the oil continued to leak. This forced us to face the disturbing truth that even top policy thinkers with postgraduate degrees from Harvard University — Harvard University! — could not stop it.

The leak was eventually plugged by non-policy people using machinery of some kind. But by then our faith in our leaders had been shaken, especially since they also seemed to have no idea what to do about this pesky recession. Congress tried every remedy it knows, ranging all the way from borrowing money from China and spending it on government programs, to borrowing MORE money from China and spending it on government programs. But in the end, all of this stimulus created few actual jobs, and most of those were in the field of tar-ball collecting.

Things were even worse abroad. North Korea continued to show why it is known as “the international equivalent of Charlie Sheen.” The entire nation of Greece went into foreclosure and had to move out; it is now living with relatives in Bulgaria. Iran continued to develop nuclear weapons, all the while insisting that they would be used only for peaceful scientific research, such as — to quote President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — “seeing what happens when you drop one on Israel.” Closer to home, the already strained relationship between the U.S. and Mexico reached a new low following the theft, by a Juarez-based drug cartel, of the Grand Canyon.

This is not to say that 2010 was all bad. There were bright spots. Three, to be exact:

1. The Yankees did not even get into the World Series.

2. There were several days during which Lindsay Lohan was neither going into, nor getting out of, rehab.

3. Apple released the hugely anticipated iPad, giving iPhone people, at long last, something to fondle with their other hand.

Other than that, 2010 was a disaster. To make absolutely sure that we do not repeat it, let’s remind ourselves just how bad it was. Let’s put this year into a full-body scanner and check out its junk, starting with

January
… which begins grimly, with the pesky unemployment rate remaining high. Every poll shows that the major concerns of the American people are federal spending, the exploding deficit, and — above all — jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs: This is what the public is worried about. In a word, the big issue is: jobs. So the Obama administration, displaying the keen awareness that has become its trademark, decides to focus like a laser on: health-care reform. The centerpiece of this effort is a historic bill that will either (a) guarantee everybody excellent free health care, or (b) permit federal bureaucrats to club old people to death. Nobody knows which, because nobody has read the bill, which in printed form has the same mass as a UPS truck.

The first indication that the health-care bill is not wildly popular comes when Republican Scott Brown, who opposes the bill, is elected to the U.S. Senate by Massachusetts voters, who in normal times would elect a crustacean before they would vote Republican. The vote shocks the Obama administration, which — recognizing that it is perceived as having its priorities wrong — decides that the president will make a series of high-profile speeches on the urgent need for: health-care reform.

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Facing a growing global population and growing energy consumption, it seems logical to assume that oil prices have increased significantly. John Tierney and other Cornucopians prove that assumption is wrong. Tierney notes he is following in the footsteps of the great Julian Simon’s famous wager with Paul “Malthus” Ehrlich. Tierney wrote about it 20 years ago in the NY Times Magazine in a 5,600 word article

…It’s true that the real price of oil is slightly higher now than it was in 2005, and it’s always possible that oil prices will spike again in the future. But the overall energy situation today looks a lot like a Cornucopian feast, as my colleagues Matt Wald and Cliff Krauss have recently reported. Giant new oil fields have been discovered off the coasts of Africa and Brazil. The new oil sands projects in Canada now supply more oil to the United States than Saudi Arabia does. Oil production in the United States increased last year, and the Department of Energy projects further increases over the next two decades.

The really good news is the discovery of vast quantities of natural gas. It’s now selling for less than half of what it was five years ago. There’s so much available that the Energy Department is predicting low prices for gas and electricity for the next quarter-century. Lobbyists for wind farms, once again, have been telling Washington that the “sustainable energy” industry can’t sustain itself without further subsidies.

As gas replaces dirtier fossil fuels, the rise in greenhouse gas emissions will be tempered, according to the Department of Energy. It projects that no new coal power plants will be built, and that the level of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States will remain below the rate of 2005 for the next 15 years even if no new restrictions are imposed.

Maybe something unexpected will change these happy trends, but for now I’d say that Julian Simon’s advice remains as good as ever. You can always make news with doomsday predictions, but you can usually make money betting against them.

Noemie Emery discusses Obamacare: liberals’ pyrrhic victory that may still be, in Emery’s words, a catastrophic success.

…A parallel line of attack will be opened up by state governments, where the new crop of governors (and state representatives) will come in quite handy indeed. Complaining that compliance with the new law would bankrupt her state, Governor-elect Nikki Haley of South Carolina urged Obama to repeal his signature act outright, and then asked for opt-outs for some of its major provisions. In Virginia, the State Senate declared it illegal to mandate that the state’s residents buy health insurance, setting up a confrontation with the federal government. In Minnesota, Governor Tim Pawlenty directed state agencies to “reject participation in Obamacare unless required by law or consistent with existing state policy.” Some states are asking for waivers to opt out of parts of the health care reform act, others are considering dropping the Medicaid program in response to the expansion the new act demands. …

…Along with the lawsuits, and fights in the House and statehouses, there seems to exist a distinct possibility that the act may collapse of its weight. Assembled in haste??—?one might say desperation??—?and larded with deals to secure votes and backing, it is a 2,000-plus page assemblage of time bombs with varying fuse lengths that are starting to blow up in succession, causing large numbers of people inconvenience, or money, or both. Almost every provision seems to have some part that conflicts with another or contrives in some way to screw up the market in ways hitherto unforeseen. Increased costs are causing employers to drop people from coverage, to charge more for coverage, or to drop drug coverage for employees’ children. Thus far, 222 waivers have been granted to members of interest groups who favor the Democrats, enabling them to opt out of parts of the plan that might become onerous. Doctors are planning to shutter their practices. The promises made by Obama?—?about being able to keep your own plan or doctor?—?are turning out to be hollow. “Firms Feel Pain from Health Law” ran a recent article in the Wall Street Journal describing the problems faced by large and middle-sized businesses in trying to understand, much less to comply with, the act. 

“There’s [an] administrative burden just to try and understand the 2,400 pages,” said one executive, describing the pain of spending so much time and money on things that aren’t helping their companies grow. …

In the NYPost, Michael Walsh comments on the MSM spin for Obama.

So the year ends with the media pushing the notion that Barack Obama — having had one of the worst years in presidential history — has salvaged both his presidency and his re-election chances with his stunning “comeback” in the dwindling hours of the lame-duck session.

Don’t believe a word of it.

If generals are always fighting the last war, then the pundits are always reaching for the last cliché. …

…try as the media might, there’s simply no way that a few lesser legislative victories translate into a refreshed political potency. When you’ve been humbled on taxes by the minority Republicans and failed to pass an omnibus budget, you’ve been beaten soundly on matters of domestic policy — a clear signal that the incoming Tea Party-infused Republican majority in the House is already having an effect. … 

Tony Blankley gives a better assessment of the lame duck session than we find in the MSM.

…In the first week or so, the president capitulated to Ronald Reagan’s supply side theory that tax cuts expand the economy, and tax increases contract it. The central policy was to not let expire the Bush tax cuts, not only because it would be tough on middle-class taxpayers, but also, the White House argued,because keeping tax rates down would be good for the economy.

…And don’t think Obama merely took a week of embarrassment for that concession in December. We economic conservatives are still cheerfully reminding the public half a century later that President John Kennedy endorsed supply side marginal tax cuts. You can bet that Republicans will be reminding the public decades from now that “even Barack Obama” agreed to supply side tax-cut theory “way back in 2010.”

This is a historical intellectual capitulation of the first order by the Democratic Party president. …

Jennifer Rubin reviews the strong opposition to Obama’s recess appointments.

On Wednesday, Obama shed any pretense of bipartisanship in making six recess appointments. As were his previous recess appointments, this batch included two individuals whose records are so controversial that they could not obtain confirmation even with 59 Democratic senators. Also included was Stephen Ford, nominated as ambassador to Syria and stymied as a forceful rebuttal to Obama’s failed Syrian engagement policy. Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute voiced objection to bypassing the Senate, arguing that: “there were credible reasons why the Senate refused to confirm the several nominees Obama has just now given recess appointments, reasons that warranted full and proper Senate confirmation hearings.” He contends that “the striking feature here is that once again, as in the lame duck session, this Congress and the president managed to put off these important matters until after the November elections, which will result in this case in officers serving without the benefit of the legitimacy that comes from Senate confirmation.” A senior adviser to a key Republican senator was more succinct: “It is an outrage.”

The most egregious appointment is undoubtedly James Cole, installed as the deputy attorney general. There were good reasons why he could not secure Senate confirmation. The Web site Main Justice explained that Sen. Jeff Sessions (R.-Ala.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has strenuously objected to Cole’s controversial stance on the War on Terror, which Cole expressed in a 2002 op-ed. …

Sessions and other Republicans also objected to Cole’s work on behalf of AIG. Moreover, he represented a Saudi prince against 9-11 families …

…What, if anything, can be done by the imperious recess appointments of such controversial nominees? Todd Gaziano of the Heritage Foundation emails me, “The real threat (which Robert C. Byrd famously did once) is for the entire GOP caucus” to refuse to consent to any further nominees unless Obama agrees to refrain from issuing more recess appointments. Gaziano says that Republicans “could refuse to confirm another judge, diplomat, etc. until they extract their promise.” There is also the power of oversight (to grill appointees on how they intend to perform their jobs) and of the bully pulpit (to publicize the records of these nominees). But the lesson for the GOP here may be to refrain from offering too many open hands to an administration only too eager to slap them and demonstrate disdain for a co-equal branch of government.

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In the NYTimes, Sharon LaFraniere describes bleak living conditions in North Korea.

… A six-day visit to Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, that ended last Tuesday offered carefully monitored glimpses of a land where reality and fantasy are routinely conflated. While there were no obvious signs of impending collapse or political intrigue swirling around the fate of North Korea’s ailing leader, the visit offered hints of why the North might be particularly eager now to resume international aid and trade.

For nearly four years, an unrelenting barrage of government propaganda has promised that North Korea will be strong and prosperous by 2012, the centennial of the birth of Kim Il-sung, the nation’s founder and the father of the current leader, Kim Jong-il.

That is now 18 months away. And prosperous is the last word one would use to describe North Korea’s shuttered factories, skimpy harvests and stunted children.

Perhaps with that deadline in mind, North Korea’s leaders last week made what might be a bid to reduce their isolation. They offered concessions that could help open up and limit the country’s increasingly sophisticated nuclear program.

And after promising to retaliate militarily should South Korea renew artillery drills near disputed waters, they have reacted — so far — only with words. But North Korea has made conciliatory gestures before, to extract aid at times of economic need or political transition, only to turn hostile later.

Of the nation’s 24 million citizens, the three million in Pyongyang are the most privileged. North Koreans need a special permit to live or come here. Still, signs of hardship are evident. … 

…Economists say coal production is, at best, half that of two decades ago, and Pyongyang has regular power shortages. At the elite Foreign Language Revolution School, students warmed themselves around stoves fed by coal or wood. In much of the city, residents report only a few hours of electricity daily.

…Elsewhere, especially in northern provinces, residents report that child beggars haunt street markets, families scavenge hillsides for sprouts and mushrooms and workers at state enterprises receive nominal salaries, at best. Workers in Pyongyang are said to be much better compensated. …

Jennifer Rubin blogs that liberals still don’t understand why America doesn’t want socialized medicine.

Jill Lawrence writing in Politics Daily personifies liberal cluelessness on the subject of ObamaCare:

The biggest mystery of 2010 may be Democrats’ failure to explain and sell their landmark health law, and the public’s sustained resistance to it despite the popularity of many of its components. …

A mystery? Well, yes, the left can’t fathom why people would be disenchanted with a bill that requires them to buy insurance whether they like it or not, that constitutes another weighty entitlement program, that is now acknowledged not to bend the cost curve downward and that is already causing employers to dump or change their employees’ health-care coverage. But for those of us remotely in touch with the public zeitgeist, it’s no mystery at all.

Moreover, the contention that the Democrats’ problem is a communication one is a persistent fable that underscores just how sheltered the ObamaCare spinners remain from public antipathy toward a program that, among other things, is going to slash Medicare Advantage and impose a raft of mandates on new business. Obama graced us with hundreds of speeches and press conferences, and even a health-care forum. The more the voters heard the less they liked. …

Rubin also comments on Obamacare poll numbers.

…If there is a silver lining for the White House in the CNN poll, it is that although 54 percent oppose ObamaCare, that is down five points from a high in March, while support is up to 43 percent. Yes, those are still rather dismal figures for such an “historic” piece of legislation.

…The House will hold an up or down vote on repeal. Then Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will have a problem: does he allow a vote, thereby exposing his members to the wrath of voters? And if so and a number of those moderate Democrats bolt, where does that leave Obama’s argument that there is broad-based support for his legacy legislation?

Last time around, the White House and the Democratic leadership convinced their members to ignore the polls and vote for ObamaCare. But in the wake of a midterm election wipeout, will Democrats again defy the will of the voters? Stay tuned.

In Commentary, Tevi Troy reviews how Democrats forced Obamacare on an unwilling nation.

…The stronger case to be made, however, is that health care did in fact drive the election results. According to GOP pollster Bill McInturff, “This election was a clear signal that voters do not want President Obama’s health-care plan.” McInturff looked mainly at the battleground elections rather than including the heavily Democratic safe districts and found that in the 100 most closely contested House districts, 51 percent of voters described their votes as a message to the president on health care. In addition, more than half of independent voters told McInturff that they were voting against the health-care law. Independents supported Republicans over Democrats by a margin of 18 percent.

Another analysis, by Jeffrey Anderson, found that in “comparable districts, anti-Obamacare Democrats won reelection at twice the rate of pro-Obamacare Democrats.” According to Anderson, this meant that Democratic House members in swing districts who voted for the health-care bill “cut their chances of gaining reelection approximately in half.”

…Republicans are taking over the House of Representatives with a justified belief that the American people have given them a mandate to “repeal and replace” the health-care bill. They can’t succeed at it. Even if a repeal vote passes the House—and it is likely that such a vote will take place early in the year—Republicans will not be able to get that bill through the Democratic-controlled Senate, and President Obama would veto it in any event. As a result, House Republicans will have to spend the next two years making the case for repeal, using the tools of the majority—gavels, more staff, and subpoena power—to highlight the case.

There are, however, two possible means of repeal. There is actual legislative repeal, passed by both Houses and signed by the president, which cannot happen until 2013 at the earliest. And there is effective repeal, in which the body politic rejects the substance of the bill, seeks waivers and exemptions, supports defunding important provisions, and challenges it in court, all of which would have the effect of making the whole scheme unworkable. This could be the ultimate fate of Obama’s signature legislation. …

James Delingpole, in the Telegraph Blogs, UK, blogs about some global warming conspirators who had predicted no more snow for the UK.

…Here, for example, is a quote from a book published as recently as 2004: (H/T Ishmael2009)

…It was the traditional British winter, everyone’s dream of a white Christmas. And what no one knows – or likes to admit – is that it’s probably gone for good.

I haven’t seen snow like this for over seven years in Oxford, which isn’t too far from where I grew up. … In fact snow has become so rare that when it does fall – often just for a few hours – everything grinds to a halt. In early 2003 a ‘mighty’ five-centimetre snowfall in southeast England caused such severe traffic jams that many motorists had to stay in their cars overnight. Today’s kids are missing out: I haven’t seen a snowball fight in years, and I can’t even remember the last time I saw a snowman.

Like the Christmas snow, the holly and the ivy may soon be distant memories.

The book was called High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis. And it’s by Mark Lynas. This would be the same Mark Lynas who has done very nicely thank you out of advising the Maldives Government on its ‘climate change’ strategy…

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Mark Helprin addresses some of the problems with our declining military strength.

…The president’s point was that despite whatever dangers we may face, the military must wait for the economy. But this is not so. Rather than dragging the economy down, putting the country on a war footing in 1940 revived it. Rearmament was a super-potent organizing principle and engine of production. Between 1931 and 1940 average GDP was $77.5 billion, and average unemployment 19%. By 1944, GDP had increased 271%, to $210 billion, unemployment had dropped to 1.2%, and real personal income had more than doubled. All this despite the fact that by 1945 the country was spending just under 40% of GDP, and 86% of the federal budget, on defense, at a time when a much greater proportion of income was devoted to necessities. And subsequently the war debt was retired with relative ease even as we enabled the rebuilding of Europe and defended it for half a century.

What does this tell us about defense spending? It tells us not only that it is not a poison, it can be an elixir. It tells us that it should proceed, therefore, not according to an ahistorical false premise, but in line with what is actually required to defend the United States. It tells us that, entirely independent of economic considerations, although not a dime should be appropriated to the military if it is not necessary, not a dime should be withheld if it is. The proof of this, so often and so tragically forgotten, is that the costs of providing an undauntable defense, whatever they may be, pale before blood and defeat. As for gauging necessity, we will have to deal with the rise of China, the growing power of Russia, and the nuclearization of fanatic regimes.

The strange, suicidal conviction now fashionable among the elite is that the customary vast reserves of power with which America maneuvers in the international system and, in extremis, wields in its defense, have become irrelevant to security and detrimental to the economy. All across the country, children are growing up who, in the fire next time, may pay for this prejudice with their lives. For a nation that has lost the unapologetic drive to defend itself cannot escape the consequences no matter how deft its self-deceptions or the extent to which, in contradiction of history and fact, error is ratified by common belief. …

Roger Simon points to one item Congress can cut out of the budget – the UN. 

When I was a kid, I thought the United Nations was the most righteous and positively idealistic organization in the world. It was the hope of humanity and I worshipped it. (My father — a doctor — volunteered for WHO and I would accompany him to the New York headquarters about once a month, gawking at the colorful Third World costumes and wishing I could speak French, la langue diplomatique.)

Man, times have changed. I now regard the UN as a kind of global racket with three principal, often related, areas of, in Mafia style, special interest: propaganda for totalitarian countries, massive corruption (e.g. Oil-for-Food) and spying. …

…of all of the despicable malfeasances of the United Nations, nothing surpasses the international body’s mega-Orwellian approach to human rights known as the “World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,” later shortened to the “World Conference Against Racism” (WCAR), aka Durbans I, II and, now, incredible as it may seem, III.

…They are the reverse of what they pretend to be and should be labeled the “World Conference for the Promotion of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance.” I attended Durban II in Geneva – you can see some reports here and here — and I can say personally that I have never seen anything as quite literally insane. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the keynote speaker of a human rights conference.

The whole thing virtually broke down when several European delegates walked out on the Iranian despot in the midst of one of his predictable anti-Semitic screeds (the US, despite some equivocation, had ultimately declined to go in the first place). UN officials ran and hid from the media after this debacle and you would think they wouldn’t want to repeat such a disgrace but… here they go again with Durban III this September… and in New York, of all places.

…Enough already. When the new Congress comes in in January, they should move to defund the UN if they persist in promoting these proto-fascistic conferences…We elected them to cut the budget. They should start with the UN.

Caroline Glick discusses Hamas and Fatah plans against Israel, and what Israel needs to do to counter them, in the Jerusalem Post.

…The Durban II conference last year in Geneva was supposed to reinvigorate the political war that was launched in 2001. But it was a bust. The only head of state to address the proceedings was Iranian dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He used the occasion to again call for the eradication of the Jewish state.

To prevent another flop, last month the Palestinians and their supporters agreed that the 10th anniversary conference will be held in New York during the opening of UN General Assembly. Their goal is to piggyback on that conference to get heads of state that are in New York already to join in their anti-Israel political war.

And they have every reason for optimism. Although Canada and Israel have announced their plans to boycott the conference, the Obama administration has been noticeably unwilling to distance itself from it.

…Israel must also rally its allies to its side. We must ask our friends in the US Congress to defund the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA. The PA is a terroristic and criminal syndicate that uses US taxpayer dollars to finance terrorism and pad the pockets of terror masters and apparachiks. UNRWA, which is supposed to be a welfare organization, openly acknowledges that it employs terrorists, allows its schools and camps to be used as jihad indoctrination centers, training camps and missile launching pads. The Congressional Research Service has stated that it is impossible to claim that US funds to UNRWA do not at least indirectly finance terror groups. …

David Harsanyi defends Sarah Palin’s comments on the government telling parents what to feed their kids.

During what I assume was an action-packed episode of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” on TLC, the former vice presidential candidate poked some gentle fun at First Lady Michelle Obama’s ubiquitous children’s health crusade.

…when Palin claims that the Obamas do not trust people “to make decisions for their own children,” she is not unleashing some Bircher hyperbole; she is summing up the driving idea of two years of public policy and paraphrasing the first lady, who recently explained that, when it comes to eating, “We can’t just leave it up to the parents.”

…Now, Sarah Palin may not always be the most sophisticated spokesperson for conservative ideology, but she is right on the money here. With all the sneering about her comments, she might want to turn to one of her favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, who also understood that “moral busybodies” who “torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

In Contentions, Abe Greenwald reviews Gallup poll numbers on who Americans most admire.

…Now for the fun part: Guess who has the No. 2 spot. None other than George W. Bush. Normally, there’d be nothing remarkable in the last president being the second-most admired man in the country. But because the anti-Bush attack machine had so doggedly tried to paint him as a frightening historical outlier it’s stunning to see him treated like any American president…Bush only goes up from here.

…Amazing what two years of bad liberal policy will do to sharpen the assessment facilities of the American people. …

…the Democrats’ national nightmare, Sarah Palin, came in second to Hillary. Palin beat out none other than omnipresent cultural goddess Oprah Winfrey, who came in third (Both beat out First Lady Michelle Obama, who came in fourth).

To my mind, the big win goes to Palin. For all the pundit chatter about her not being a viable contender for president, the public admires her more than the most beloved media personality in the country. Like Oprah, Palin channeled her talent to connect with Americans toward its most efficient use.  The Tea Party allowed her to showcase her ability, raise her market value, and serve a cause she believes in: America. Right before the eyes of antagonistic columnists and hostile comics she became the credible face of the most transformative political movement the country has seen in decades. …

Peter Wehner comments on W’s successful book.

According to the UK’s Daily Mail, President George W. Bush’s book, Decision Points, has sold 2 million copies since it was released early last month. By way of comparison, President Clinton’s memoir, My Life, has sold 2.2 million since it was published in 2004. A spokesman for Crown, which published Decision Points, called the performance “remarkable” and said that he could not think of any other non-fiction hardback book that has sold even a million copies in 2010.

…President Bush’s memoir is extremely well done, particularly for a presidential memoir (they tend to be poorly written and not terribly revealing). It provides readers with keen insights into the decision-making process that defined the Bush presidency, from stem cells to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to the Freedom Agenda to AIDS and malaria initiatives and much more.

As has often been the case with this two-term president, Mr. Bush’s critics misunderestimated him. His presidency is in the process of undergoing a significant reevaluation; the success of Decision Points is simply more testimony to this.

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In the Boston Globe, Yvonne Abraham tells a heartwarming story about a teen’s service to a grateful family.

On Tuesday night, Patty and Rick Parker were in their cramped kitchen with their 8-year-old son Ben. Dinner was over. Bedtime was near.

Ben’s twin brother, Sammy, lay on a cot in the narrow hallway just outside the kitchen. Unable to see or speak or control his limbs, he coughed or let out a little moan every now and then. Rick and Patty took turns feeding Sammy, who has cerebral palsy, through a stomach tube. He cooed when they kissed his face or stroked his cheek, and when they cooed back, he opened his mouth into a wide, joyful O.

A few feet away was the narrow, winding stairway that is the family’s biggest burden lately.

Which is where 17-year-old Rudy’s simple, life-changing act of kindness comes in. …

More good news. In the Jerusalem Post, Yaakov Katz writes about the damage to the Iranian nuclear operations reportedly created by the Stuxnet virus.

…Last week, The Jerusalem Post interviewed Ralph Langer, a top German computer consultant who was one of the first experts to analyze Stuxnet’s code. It was possible the worm had set back Iran’s nuclear program by two years, Langer said.

…David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, told the Post that during a study of the Stuxnet code, he discovered that the virus caused the engines in Iran’s IR-1 centrifuges to increase and decrease their speed. The report cited an unnamed government official who claimed that Iran usually ran its motors at 1,007 cycles per second to prevent damage, while Stuxnet seemed to increase the motor speed to 1,064 cycles per second.

…Albright said that the number of centrifuges damaged – 1,000 – also appeared to indicate that Stuxnet – if it caused the breakage – was meant to be subtle and work slowly by causing small amounts of damage to the systems that would not make the Iranians suspect that something foreign – like malware – had been infiltrated into their computers. “It could be that Stuxnet was meant to be subtle to disrupt and break more and have less enriched uranium produced,” he said.

Mark Perry and Robert Dell, in the American.com, posit that the recession was due to government failure, and identify six government policies that created the most damaging incentives in the economy.

…To fully explain the banking crisis, one must account for its timing, severity, and global impact. One must also confront a startling historical contrast. … we find that in the period 1875-1913, a period of marked expansion in international trade and capital flows comparable to the last three decades, there were only four banking crises worldwide.1 By contrast, in the period 1978-2009, a period of much more extensive bank regulation, central bank intervention, government protection of depositors and other bank creditors, and government control of mortgage markets, about 140 banking crises occurred worldwide. Of these, 20 were more severe than any crisis from the earlier period of 1875-1913, in terms of total bank losses as a percent of GDP.

In answer to the questions posed above about what specific factors explain the…causes and timing of the banking crisis and the extraordinary departure from historically sound underwriting and securitization standards for residential mortgages, we identify a potent mix of six major government policies that together rewarded short-sighted collective risk-taking and penalized long-term business leadership…

Underlying all these six government policies is the underappreciated problem of government failure, a problem rooted in the absence of incentives to reconcile a policy’s social costs and benefits with the costs and benefits to the policy makers. Therefore, the banking crisis should be understood more fundamentally as a government failure than as a market or business failure.

…The crisis certainly could not have occurred without certain private firms (e.g., Citigroup, UBS, Merrill Lynch) engaging in excessive corporate short-termism (or perhaps “greed”) along the same lines as Fannie and Freddie. But greed is a timeless and universal component of human nature, and it influences the public sphere at least as much as the private sector. As such, greed has little relevance in explaining the timing and crucial facts of the recent crisis—such as why credit standards and due diligence practices in housing finance deteriorated so much more dramatically than in any other credit segment. …

…A more accurate interpretation of the financial crisis as predominantly a government failure could pave the way for real financial reforms that would contribute to both future financial stability and productivity. These reforms would include: 1) the gradual reduction of government intervention in mortgage markets through legislation such as the GSE Bailout Elimination and Taxpayer Protection Act (HR 4889), sponsored by Representative Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas); 2) a reduction in federal deposit insurance and other transparent policy rules to reduce or eliminate creditor expectations of future bailouts, especially the “too big to fail” guarantee; 3) the replacement of elaborate regulatory micromanagement with more equity capital; and 4) a monetary policy rule or quasi-rule to govern the Federal Reserve’s policy making. …

The WSJ editors comment on how Oregon raised taxes and collected less than expected.

Oregon raised its income tax on the richest 2% of its residents last year to fix its budget hole, but now the state treasury admits it collected nearly one-third less revenue than the bean counters projected. The sun also rose in the east, and the Cubs didn’t win the World Series.

…The biggest loss of revenues came from capital gains receipts. The new 11% top tax rate applies to stock and asset sales, which means that Oregonians now pay virtually the highest capital gains tax in North America. Instead of $3.5 billion of capital gains in 2009, there was only $2 billion to tax—43% less. Successful entrepreneurs like Nike owner Phil Knight don’t get rich by being fools with their money. They don’t sell tens of millions of dollars of assets when capital gains taxes go up.

…All of this is an instant replay of what happened in Maryland in 2008 when the legislature in Annapolis instituted a millionaire tax. There roughly one-third of the state’s millionaire households vanished from the tax rolls after rates went up.

If Salem officials want to find where the millionaires went, they might start the search in Texas, the state that leads the nation in job creation—and has a top income and capital gains tax rate 11 percentage points lower than Oregon’s.

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Jennifer Rubin tells us what the GOP got from the START treaty.

… All of that, along with reporting requirements concerning efforts to modernize our nuclear weapons, is quite a reversal for a president who pledge to “rid the world” of nuclear weapons.

It took a poorly negotiated treaty, a tenacious Jon Kyl and the efforts of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to coax Obama into a reasonable position on nuclear weapons and defense. And if the Russians cheat or withdraw, we will still, if Congress holds the president’s feet to the fire, have a modern nuclear weapons system and a robust missile defense. That’s not nothing.

NY Post editors comment on the Clapper flap.

…. On Monday, Diane Sawyer asked the White House’s top anti-terrorism brains about the fallout from the sweeping arrests of 12 men in the UK early that morning.

Clapper’s response: Silence. Crickets. The sound of one career, well, imploding. Pressed by Sawyer, he admitted he simply hadn’t heard of the matter.

It was a mortifying lapse given Clapper’s position: As DNI, he oversees all 16 US intelligence agencies and serves as chief intel adviser to the president. …

IBD editors too.

James Clapper’s ignorance of a major counter-terrorist success is less distressing than why he got his job as director of national intelligence: to “Obamacize” America’s spy operations.

Why was the nation’s top intelligence official unaware in an ABC News interview this week that Britain had, many hours earlier, foiled an al-Qaida-related plot of multiple suicide bombings targeting Christmas shoppers?

The White House at first claimed Director Clapper was busy all day preventing another Korean War and getting the New START treaty ratified. It was eventually admitted he hadn’t been briefed.

Could the truth be that Clapper is too busy as mega-bureaucrat? Science fiction novelist Jerry Pournelle has an “Iron Law of Bureaucracy”: “In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself.”

Worst of all, “The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization.” …

Jennifer Rubin draws important conclusions from the event.

… Putting aside the hapless Clapper, this should raise a more fundamental question: Do we need the DNI post at all? The elaborate reworking of our intelligence structure after Sept. 11 has made the system more cumbersome. But has it made us safer? Well, if it’s no big deal that the DNI missed a significant terror incident, then maybe his job and many layers of bureaucracy can be eliminated.

Michael Barone takes a quick glance at the meaning of new census numbers.

For those of us who are demographic buffs, Christmas came four days early when Census Bureau director Robert Groves announced on Tuesday the first results of the 2010 census and the reapportionment of House seats (and therefore electoral votes) among the states.

The resident population of the United States, he told us in a webcast, was 308,745,538. That’s an increase of 9.7 percent from the 281,421,906 in the 2000 census — the smallest proportional increase than in any decade other than the Depression 1930s but a pretty robust increase for an advanced nation. It’s hard to get a grasp on such large numbers. So let me share a few observations on what they mean.

First, the great engine of growth in America is not the Northeast Megalopolis, which was growing faster than average in the mid-20th century, or California, which grew lustily in the succeeding half-century. It is Texas. …

You may remember in December 16th Pickings the essay by Brooks and Wehner about competing human nature narratives when time was spent debunking the “noble savage” fairy tale from Rousseau and the Marxists. We have a couple of items that perfectly illustrate “nasty, brutish and short” – the concept of natural human life of Thomas Hobbs. First a NY Times story from Northern Spain where the examination of the bones of a Neanderthal family discovers they were cannibalized.

Deep in a cave in the forests of northern Spain are the remains of a gruesome massacre. The first clues came to light in 1994, when explorers came across a pair of what they thought were human jawbones in the cave, called El Sidrón. At first, the bones were believed to date to the Spanish Civil War. Back then, Republican fighters used the cave as a hide-out. The police discovered more bone fragments in El Sidrón, which they sent to forensic scientists, who determined that the bones did not belong to soldiers, or even to modern humans. They were the remains of Neanderthals who died 50,000 years ago.

Today, El Sidrón is one of the most important sites on Earth for learning about Neanderthals, who thrived across Europe and Asia from about 240,000 to 30,000 years ago. Scientists have found 1,800 more Neanderthal bone fragments in the cave, some of which have yielded snippets of DNA.

But the mystery has lingered on for 16 years. What happened to the El Sidrón victims? In a paper this week in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Spanish scientists who analyzed the bones and DNA report the gruesome answer. The victims were a dozen members of an extended family, slaughtered by cannibals. …

Next item making the “noble savage” advocates look like fools comes from Google. Turns out 45 people have been lynched in Haiti over the past few weeks. They were suspected of being sorcerers who spread cholera. “Nasty, brutish and short”, and ruled by superstition says Pickerhead.

Angry Haitian mobs have lynched at least 45 people in recent weeks, accusing them of spreading a cholera outbreak that has killed over 2,500 people across the country, officials said Wednesday.

The number included at least 14 suspected sorcerers previously known to have been lynched in the far southwestern region of Grand’Anse as local people feared they were spreading cholera with a magical substance. The area has been largely spared by the outbreak. …

Interesting WaPo story about Michael Jordan’s two sons who play for U of Central Florida. UCF was 10-0 at press time and broke into the top 25 rankings for the first time ever.

After sophomore guard Marcus Jordan misfired on a jump shot minutes into a Central Florida game against Miami last Saturday, a fan sitting a few rows from the court taunted gleefully.

“You’re not your father!” the man said. “Did you get a DNA test? Are you sure?”

Heckling rains every time the Knights hit the road, and Jordan’s expression never changes. His head never turns. He knows he lacks his famous father’s size and ability to hover by the rim. He wears silver Air Jordan shoes and a black Air Jordan headband, but this heir Jordan did not get all of his father’s gifts.

In many ways, Jordan isn’t like Mike at all. He sports black-rimmed glasses, a goatee and mustache, and tattoos up and down both arms. …

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Picking’s staff will be off for a bit during the holidays. Be back soon.

We start today with more interesting WikiLeaks, this time on the administration’s attitude toward Honduras. Rick Richman has great commentary in Contentions.

In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Mary Anastasia O’Grady wrote that cables released by WikiLeaks show that the administration knew Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had threatened Honduran democracy — but supported him in order to offer President Obama a “bonding opportunity” with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and a chance to ingratiate himself with Latin America’s hard left.

…I have a simpler explanation — not inconsistent with O’Grady’s analysis but closer to the common theme in Obama’s foreign policy in other areas. The day after Zelaya was removed, Obama pronounced it a “coup.” That snap judgment remained American policy even as more and more facts contradicting Obama’s description emerged. After months pushing a reinstatement that virtually every element of Honduran political and civil society opposed, and even though the proper and practical solution was apparent, Obama still engaged in mystifying diplomacy, cutting off aid to a poverty-stricken ally. …

…Obama brought to the Oval Office a self-regard probably unmatched in American history. He apologized for his country while praising it for electing him. He thought that Iran could be handled with his outstretched hand; that a foreign head of state should receive an iPod with his speeches on it; that a video of him was sufficient for the Berlin Wall anniversary; that a prime minister should be summoned to the White House after-hours without press or pictures; that a Palestinian state would be created because this time they had Him. Russia and China were treated with respect, as was Iran, even as it held a fraudulent election and blew through his successive “deadlines.” But allies such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Israel, and Britain were treated differently.

What was visited upon Honduras last year was of a piece.

Mary Anastasia O’Grady has the in-depth story on Honduras in the WSJ.

“The last year and a half of the [President Manuel] Zelaya Administration will be, in my view, extraordinarily difficult for our bilateral relationship. His pursuit of immunity from the numerous activities of organized crime carried out in his administration will cause him to threaten the rule of law and institutional stability.”

—Charles Ford, U.S. ambassador to Honduras, May 15, 2008

…In the opening summary, Mr. Ford wrote: “Ever the rebellious teenager, Zelaya’s principal goal in office is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests.” The State Department says it does not comment on classified documents.

…Though Mr. Zelaya can be “gracious and charming,” wrote Mr. Ford, “there also exists a sinister Zelaya, surrounded by a few close advisors with ties to both Venezuela and Cuba and organized crime.” He eerily observed what Zelaya opponents would repeatedly allege privately in the year to come: “Due to his close association with persons believed to be involved with international organized crime,” the president could not be trusted. “I am unable to brief Zelaya on sensitive law enforcement and counter-narcotics actions due [to] my concern that this would put the lives of U.S. officials in jeopardy.”

The insightful diplomat also recognized Mr. Zelaya’s disdain for other institutions. He “resents the very existence of the Congress, the Attorney General and Supreme Court.” That resentment rose to the surface in June 2009 when the Supreme Court ruled that a referendum on his re-election was unconstitutional. Mr. Zelaya responded by leading a mob to break into a military installation where the ballots for his initiative were being stored.

Hondurans were appalled. The Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant, the military deported him, and Congress voted to remove him from office. …

Robert Samuelson writes that state and local governments have been doing fine thanks to the stimulus, but the real fiscal headache that is coming is underfunded retirements benefits.

…All in all, the present squeeze on states and localities is overstated. The truly bad news lies in the future with massive retiree pension and health benefits that haven’t been prefunded. How big are the shortfalls? All estimates are huge, though they vary depending on technical assumptions and coverage.

…Whatever the ultimate costs, they threaten future levels of public services. The generous benefits encourage workers to retire in their late 50s or early 60s after 25 years of service. The health benefits typically provide coverage until retirees qualify for Medicare at 65. To pay for unfunded benefits, government services must either be cut or taxes raised. How much is (again) unclear. Even low estimates by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College indicate that annual pension payments for some states could roughly double. In Illinois, they could go from 4.5 percent of spending to 8.7 percent. Covering retiree health benefits would add to that.

So support for schools, police, roads and other state and local activities is undermined by careless—or corrupt—bargains between politicians and their public-worker unions. Promises of generous future retirement benefits were expedient contract sweeteners, with most costs conveniently deferred. Even when pension contributions were supposed to be made, they were often reduced or postponed when budgets were tight. If these arrangements look familiar, they should. The U.S. auto industry adopted the same model; the costs helped bankrupt General Motors and Chrysler.

What states and localities can do about this is limited. Pension promises to existing employees are probably legally inviolate. Retiree health benefits are apparently less so and should be reduced or eliminated to limit incentives for early retirement. Even if politicians manage this arduous feat, past decisions will burden the future. Along with an unwillingness to curb Social Security and Medicare costs, America’s leaders have created another way to cheat their children.

The Daily Mail, UK, reports on snow and record cold temperatures in the UK. Any quotes from the Climate Research Unit geniuses?

Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.

And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.

The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910. …

Just to remind everyone how pervasive the greenist conspiracy had once been, let’s take a look back. In 2000, Charles Onians reported on global warming in the Independent, UK.

…Global warming, the heating of the atmosphere by increased amounts of industrial gases, is now accepted as a reality by the international community. Average temperatures in Britain were nearly 0.6°C higher in the Nineties than in 1960-90, and it is estimated that they will increase by 0.2C every decade over the coming century. Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said. …

The Economist reports on an amazing cell phone milestone, and what the future holds.

SOMETIME in the next few months, the number of mobile phones in use will exceed 3.3 billion, or half the world’s population. No technology has ever spread faster around the globe: the mobile phone took less than two decades to reach this degree of penetration. But the ever-restless wireless industry has already set its sights on getting the other half connected. Two recent reports analyse how to add the “next billion” to the subscriber list. …

…Yet even as the industry strives to make handsets and services cheaper, governments keep adding costs—mainly by levying taxes and customs duties. And these are particularly high in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a report released this week by Frontier Economics, a consultancy, at the behest of the GSM Association (GSMA), an industry lobby. The average ratio of tax payments to operator revenues is 30%. On average the mobile industry, which accounts for 4% of GDP, contributes 7% of national tax revenue.

This enthusiasm for taxation is easy to explain: governments have to tax something, and mobile phones are an easy target, since operators’ billing systems do all the hard work. But treating mobile phones as a cash cow is shortsighted, says Gabriel Solomon of the GSMA, because mobile-specific taxes reduce demand. If governments did away with them and charged only VAT, tax revenues from the mobile industry would be around 3% higher by 2012, the report found, and the average penetration rate would increase from 33% to 41%. (Studies have found that in a typical developing country, an increase in mobile penetration of 10% boosts GDP growth by around one percentage point.)

Whether or not finance ministers are not convinced by such calculations, operators seem to be. Some have offered to guarantee tax revenues if mobile-specific levies are scrapped. …