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John Fund is first today with his column on earmark reform – NOT!
… Pretending that the earmark process will be made transparent and accountable as a result of a phony ethics bill is vital to Congress’s effort to convince voters they’ve sobered up on spending. Among other travesties, the new ethics bill strips out previously agreed-upon language barring members from trading earmarks for votes, and in the Senate vests none other than Majority Leader Reid with the power to determine if an item is subject to earmark-disclosure rules.
Concealing just how the pork-barrel culture works is important to congressmen in both parties, because the process can’t really be defended on the merits. Nothing illustrates that better than the exchange that took place just before Congress broke for its August recess between Democratic Rep. John Murtha, the overlord of spending on the House Appropriations Committee, and GOP Rep. John Campbell, a antipork reformer from California.
Mr. Campbell, a certified accountant, rose to challenge a $2 million earmark for a “paint shield” being developed by the Sherwin-Williams Co. in Cleveland. Since the actual sponsor of the earmark, Rep. Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, chose not to defend her handiwork, Mr. Murtha took up the cudgel on her behalf. Mr. Campbell simply wanted to know if the Pentagon had asked for the paint shield, since the rationale for the spending was that it would “protect people against microbial threats.”
Mr. Murtha imperiously assured Mr. Campbell that the shield was “a very worthwhile project,” and that “I’m sure the military is interested in this kind of research.”
Mr. Campbell persisted and asked if, “in fact, the military has asked for this kind of technology?” When Mr. Murtha was silent, Mr. Campbell said, “I guess the answer to that is no.” …
Bob Novak on the same issue.
With the midnight hour approaching Saturday Aug. 4 near the end of a marathon session, Democratic and Republican leaders alike wanted to pass the Defense appropriations bill quickly and start their summer recess. But Republican Rep. Jeff Flake’s stubborn adherence to principle forced an hour-long delay that revealed unpleasant realities about Congress. …
Jeff Jacoby reminds us there are worse things than the criminal class in congress. It’s true! There’s the criminal class running countries in Africa. Jeff writes on Zimbabwe.
Debra Saunders noticed the foolish Newsweek piece on global warming skeptics.
NEWSWEEK’s global-warming cover story purports to reveal the “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry” which for the last two decades “has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.” It’s the same story run repeatedly in mainstream media: the overwhelming majority of scientists believe the debate on global warming is over — but if there are any dissenting scientists left, they’ve been bought.
Here’s the rub: If dissent is so rare, why do global-warming conformists feel the strong need to argue that minority views should be dismissed as nutty or venal? Why not posit that there is such a thing as honest disagreement on the science? …
Robert Samuelson too. And he writes for Newsweek!
We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week’s NEWSWEEK cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It’s an object lesson of how viewing the world as “good guys vs. bad guys” can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.
If you missed NEWSWEEK’s story, here’s the gist. A “well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change.” This “denial machine” has obstructed action against global warming and is still “running at full throttle.” The story’s thrust: discredit the “denial machine,” and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading.
The global-warming debate’s great un-mentionable is this: we lack the technology to get from here to there. Just because Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to cut emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 doesn’t mean it can happen. At best, we might curb emissions growth. …
… But the overriding reality seems almost un-American: we simply don’t have a solution for this problem. As we debate it, journalists should resist the temptation to portray global warming as a morality tale—as NEWSWEEK did—in which anyone who questions its gravity or proposed solutions may be ridiculed as a fool, a crank or an industry stooge. Dissent is, or should be, the lifeblood of a free society.
George Will shows how common and ordinary Obama is.
Sen. Barack Obama recently told some Iowa farmers that prices of their crops are not high enough, considering what grocers are charging for other stuff: “Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula?” Living near the University of Chicago, Obama has perhaps experienced this outrage, but Iowans, who have no Whole Foods stores, might remember 1987, when Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis urged Iowa farmers to diversify by raising endive. Said a farmer to a Boston reporter, “Your governor scared me just a hair.”
Obama is not scary, just disappointing. Regarding a matter more serious than vegetables — a judicial confirmation — he looks like just another liberal on a leash. His candidacy kindled hope that he might bring down the curtain on the long-running and intensely boring melodrama “Forever Selma,” starring Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. It was hoped Obama would be impatient with the ritualized choreography of synthetic indignation that degrades racial discourse. He is, however, unoriginal and unjust regarding the nomination of Leslie Southwick to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, whose jurisdiction is Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas.
Southwick, currently a law professor, joined the Army Reserve in 1992 at age 42 and transferred in 2003 to a National Guard combat unit heading to Iraq, where he served 17 months. He is 57 and until last December was a member of a Mississippi appellate court. The American Bar Association, not a nest of conservatives, has given him its highest rating (“well qualified”) for the 5th Circuit.
But because he is a white Mississippian, many liberals consider him fair game for unfairness. Many say his defect is “insensitivity,” an accusation invariably made when specific grievances are few and flimsy.
Obama, touching all the Democratic nominating electorate’s erogenous zones, concocts a tortured statistic about Southwick’s “disappointing record on cases involving consumers, employees, racial minorities, women and gays and lesbians. …
The Captain is the first of some of our favorites to post on Rove’s exit.
… It sounds as if he’s through with political consulting. He’s done it for a couple of decades, and the high-profile and high abuse of the last seven years has burnt him out. That didn’t stop him from putting out a few predictions and valedictory advice for the GOP in the Gigot interview. Among them, he predicts that the Democrats will nominate the “fatally flawed” Hillary Clinton — no great surprise — and that the Republicans will beat her.
CQ readers will remember that I have had the pleasure — and I use that word deliberately — of meeting Karl Rove twice, once in DC and once here in the Twin Cities. On both occasions, Rove kept the room laughing while displaying a remarkable recall of numbers and polling trends. Despite everything that had been launched at him, Rove obviously relished his work and enjoyed talking about it. He pulled no punches, and he answered every question asked of him. Many of us were skeptical of his optimism in 2006, and correctly so, as it turned out, but he never took offense or belittled anyone for it.
His departure will no doubt be the subject of celebration for the president’s most vociferous critics, but I think they’ll wind up missing him more than the president’s supporters. They won’t have Rove to kick around any more, and after the shock wears off, it will become apparent how silly all the Rove-kicking was from the beginning.
Hugh Hewitt is next.
Power Line too.
WSJ editors with nice things to say about Hillary. Seriously!
Hillary Clinton has been catching heat for refusing to swear off campaign cash from lobbyists, with critics accusing her of being a stooge of corporate and special interests. We’d say she deserves some credit.
At last week’s YearlyKos event, former Senator John Edwards stooped for an easy applause line by challenging his fellow candidates to refuse donations from “Washington lobbyists.” Mrs. Clinton refused to take the sound-bite bait. When asked if she’d continue taking such cash, she replied: “Yes I will because, you know, a lot of those lobbyists, whether you like it or not, represent real Americans. They actually do. They represent nurses. They represent social workers. Yes, they represent corporations that employ a lot of people.” …