April 30, 2007

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John Fund says campaign finance laws inhibit free speech.

Campaign finance laws are increasingly becoming a tool to suppress political speech, and the courts are finally waking up to the danger. …

A Brit pamphleteer says there are now 266 ways a government creep can enter homes in the UK.

In January I reported a bizarre drama that unfolded on a farm in the Forest of Dean, when 22 agents of the state – two state vets, eight trading standards officials and 12 policemen – descended without warning on the owners of a pet Jersey cow, Harriet, to kill her. On that occasion the officials, acting under EU law, were persuaded to back off until the case went to judicial review (and on March 23 Harriet, sadly, had to be put down after developing kidney problems). But the episode helped inspire a pamphlet published today by the Centre for Policy Studies entitled Crossing the Threshold: 266 ways in which the state can enter your home. …

AdamSmith honors tax freedom day, in the U. S., 32 days to go in England.

George Will writes in Newsweek about the dem campaign to bring back the fairness doctrine.

… Supreme Court justice and liberal icon William Douglas said: “The Fairness Doctrine has no place in our First Amendment regime. It puts the head of the camel inside the tent and enables administration after administration to toy with TV and radio.” The Reagan administration scrapped the doctrine because of its chilling effect on controversial speech, and because the scarcity rationale was becoming absurd. …

OK! It’s George Tenet’s turn. First Chris Hitchens.

… Tenet knows how the kiss-up and kiss-down game is played. And, for a rather mediocre man, he did well enough out of the arrangement while it lasted. …

Roger Simon.

… This is the former DCI we’re talking about here. Is he a moron or a liar or both? …

The Captain; Ed Morrissey.

… Tenet has yet to see his book hit the stores, and it already has serious credibility issues. He misidentifies a Defense Department analyst as a “naval reservist” in an attempt to belittle her credentials. Tenet can’t seem to understand that Iran-Contra involved arming the mullahs, not the dissidents. It’s a great display of why the CIA seems to have been rather incompetent during the years of his leadership. If the boss can’t get his facts straight, how can he have advised two presidents with any degree of competence at all? …

The Captain finishes with a post on Carl Bernstein’s new Hillary book and leads us to his post on the subject in the HeadingRight blog.

WSJ editorial with more on Wolfowitz.

… Ms. Riza will also get her first hearing today in this kangaroo court, and she ought to blast them for the way the bank has violated its own rules in leaking details of her salary and damaged her career — all in the name of preventing a “conflict” that was no fault of her own. The real disgrace here isn’t Mr. Wolfowitz or Ms. Riza but the bank itself and its self-protecting staff and European directors. Their only “ethic” is to oust an American reformer so they can get back to running the foreign aid status quo.

Shorts from John Fund.

Michael Barone with a good gun-law summary.

If you have, or know, a child applying to college this year, this piece in the NY Times by a Harvard grad is for you.

Hugh Hewitt comments on declining newspaper readership.

Humor section starts with a Chi Trib column on the accents of Hillary and other pols.

… America might finally be ready for a white Yale Law School graduate from Park Ridge who is fluent in Southern Woman and various dialects, including Granny Clampett and Black Female Preacher. She commands many different voices — and uses them without blushing — as you may see for yourself on YouTube. …