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Jennifer Rubin wonders if Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who voted for Obamacare, will have an explanation to go along with his backpedaling.

My home-state senator, Jim Webb (D.-Va.), made a remarkable statement yesterday. The Virginian-Pilot reported on his appearance in Norfolk:

The Obama administration “did a really terrible job handling health care reform,” he said, because the president relied on Congress to draft a plan.

“You can’t turn something that complicated loose on the United States Congress,” he said, adding that the resulting debate led to great public confusion. …

Wait a second. Didn’t he vote for the monstrous bill? Well, sure. He was the 60th Senator — each Democrat was — on the critical cloture vote. So is he saying he didn’t know how bad the bill was, or is he saying he cast a bad vote? Neither answer is a winner.

It’s not clear that he is going to seek re-election, but if so, he better be able to answer those questions.

John Stossel asks if our Congress will have the guts to make the tough fiscal decisions that Canada has made.

…Economist David R. Henderson points out that our neighbors to the north faced a similar crisis. In 1994, the debt that Canada owed to investors was 67 percent of GDP. Today, it’s less than 30 percent.

What did Canada do? It cut spending from 17.5 percent of GDP to 11.3 percent.

This wasn’t merely a cut in the growth of spending, a favorite trick of congressional committees. These were actual reductions in absolute spending.

…All but one of Canada’s 22 federal departments experienced real cuts in spending. While Canada raised taxes slightly, spending was cut six to seven times more.

These supposedly painful cuts didn’t cause terrible pain. In fact, there was much more gain than pain. Unemployment dropped, the economy boomed, and the Canadian dollar — then worth about 71 cents U.S. — today is about equal to the American dollar. …

In the Corner, Rory Cooper has an well-written article on how Obama’s green agenda, specifically on oil drilling, circumvents the Constitution and hurts the economy. Soon people are going to start noticing the rise in gas prices and the president will own them.

…Nobody denies that important safety reforms are necessary in the wake of the tragic Deepwater Horizon accident and oil spill. In fact, the Heritage Foundation introduced a plan for reform in August 2010 that increased liability caps; created an insurance pool for claims over $1 billion; and installed safeguards against industry risk-taking. The Heritage model would’ve promoted safety; assigned full liability; protected taxpayers; and allowed oil and gas exploration to continue.

But the Obama commission apparently failed to consider the impact of reforms on taxpayers and on our energy industry. While the commission correctly included a focus on risk-based assessment for all individual offshore activities and operations, they spent entirely too much time appeasing environmental activists with proposals for ways to slow the industry down, like expanding the time it takes for a lease application to be reviewed and recommending a vast amount of new industry-wide regulations.

This is exactly what President Obama aims to do: slow down or stop entirely the drilling of fossil fuels in the U.S., raise the price of existing and new supply wherever it comes from, and use unilateral executive-branch action to make gas so expensive that alternative energy sources will become viable dollar-to-dollar.

Obama started down this track with his reckless across-the-board drilling moratorium, which was declared illegal by two federal courts. President Obama persisted anyway, and even after announcing he was lifting the moratorium, continued with a de facto moratorium. In fact, since Obama “lifted” the moratorium, deepwater permit issuance is down 88 percent, with only two new permits in that time.

…Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in 2008, “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Outside the drilling moratorium, President Obama directed his Interior secretary, Ken Salazar, to ban offshore drilling in over 85 percent of American waters (even while he spends billions subsidizing Brazil’s offshore industry) and directed EPA administrator Lisa Jackson to impose new global-warming regulations on oil refineries.

The Hill reports that, in response to the commission’s report, President Obama asked the commission what else he can do unilaterally, without congressional approval…

…Federal government revenue is also suffering. For the first time since 1959, the U.S. could go an entire year without a lease sale. According to Heritage, as a result, the government will “lose more than $1 billion in bonus bids, less revenue from rental payments and significantly fewer royalties.” And state governments will also suffer forfeiting upwards of $100 million in tax revenue. …

David Warren shares his thoughts on the consequences of the current political debate.

…The advantage of insinuations over hard arguments is that they bypass critical thought. No one can respond precisely to a charge that is utterly vague or to accusers who will envelope any reply in a poisonous fog of further insinuations. The best that can be said is that the accusations in question here were fatuous. Yet they were also entirely predictable, given the extraordinarily low standards in contemporary political debate.

…The motive behind it is obvious: to tar political opponents. And there is no excuse for this. For every “incendiary” or “vitriolic” remark made on the right of the U.S. political spectrum, a matching remark may be found on the left. The tarring is hypocritically selective.

And it is consequential. The further intention behind these smears is to advance “hate speech” legislation for the very purpose of silencing opponents in debate.

Words are not deeds. The distinction between them is written deeply into the history of our common law. It is a distinction that is crucial to a free society. If words can be prosecuted as if they were deeds (except in the most extreme situations), we cannot discuss anything openly. …

David Harsanyi thinks that the Right should walk away from the debate on the political climate. Engaging in a discussion with an opponent that doesn’t use logic or facts does seem like a waste of time, at the very least.

No doubt some of you are upset by the hysterical politicization of the murders in Tucson. Be heartened that a new CBS poll found that 57 percent of respondents believed the political tone in the nation had nothing to do with this particular madman’s rampage.

…But this impending conversation about civility and our climate of hate is not only a useless one, it also is meant to discourage dissent. It is a rigged talk, because not only do we — by any standard and context available — reside in a highly civil and peaceful political system, violence is almost non-existent. The Tea Party didn’t pick up pitchforks and storm the White House; they knocked off Republicans in primaries. …

In Slate, Annie Lowrey reports on new advertising phenomenons – Groupon and what is supposed to come next.

…In the past few years, millions of Americans—more than 50 million, in fact—have signed up for a “daily deal” or “group coupon” site. It works like this: You give the online company your ZIP code. Once a day, it sends you an e-mail with a deal from a local business, whether a salon or a sushi joint. The discount is usually steep—generally, 50 percent to 90 percent—and the offer generally expires after a day or two. If you decide you want that $20 massage for $10, you pay up, then print your coupon.

The two dominant players in the field are LivingSocial and Groupon—and both are highly successful. Washington-based LivingSocial has more than 16 million members, and Chicago-based Groupon more than 44 million. …

…Advertising analysts also expect the daily deal/group buying/social discount sites to become a lot more sophisticated. For one, that means that some will start asking for more than your ZIP code. (The more an advertising company knows about you, of course, the more valuable you are to it and to advertisers.) Some curated sites might request your profession, salary, hobbies—even your favorite restaurants or brands, or your exact block—to better tailor deals to you.

Finally, expect more big businesses to get in the game—with chain stores and social networking sites starting to send out deeply discounted, tailored, and location-based offers. In November, for instance, Facebook announced a new function inspired by the success of Groupon: “Deals.” Users can check in at malls and coffee bars, and businesses near them can offer them discounts. …

In the WaPo, Donna St. George tells how one parent turned the tables on the local school board.

…Awakened at 4:33 a.m. Wednesday by a ringing phone, Aaron Titus jumped out of bed in a panic. Maybe something terrible had happened, he thought. Even if nothing was wrong, his heart raced with other considerations: His five children, ages 5 and under, including his week-old daughter, were mercifully still asleep, and he wanted to keep it that way.

In a blurry rush, Titus answered the phone halfway into the second ring, listening in disbelief to an automated caller tell him what he already knew: It was a snow day. School would open two hours late. In other words, he and his family could sleep.

But now he couldn’t.

…Sometime later in the day, the 31-year-old father from Fort Washington, a lawyer who knows a thing or two about technology, made a decision that might well bring amused satisfaction to like-minded parents everywhere.

Titus arranged for an automated message of his own. …

Just before the cartoons we have links to some stunning time-lapse video of the Northern Lights. That’s to make up for taking tomorrow off.

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Bill Kristol already has his picks for the 2012 race.

Having just returned from the e21 and Manhattan Institute-sponsored Conversation with Paul Ryan (very ably conducted by Paul Gigot)–and having seen Marco Rubio speak recently as well, I’ll just say this: Wouldn’t it be easier just to agree now on a Ryan-Rubio ticket, and save everyone an awful lot of time, effort, and money over the next year and a half?

UPDATE: For what it’s worth, these were the first four of many e-mails to arrive, responding to the Ryan-Rubio blog post:

“Excellent, excellent choices!  Unbeatable pair! I’m so excited – a reason for hope!”

“All I can say is: YES!!!!!”

“I don’t want to take away from some of the other potentially great candidates, but you are so right. Rubio is inspirational and Ryan is simply the best out there. His knowledge of the issues, particularly issues related to the budget, is second to none and he is able to communicate his position in a concise and understandable way.”

“Love it.”

In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Nile Gardiner comments on the president’s recent snub of the UK for the French. Perhaps Gardiner can remind the British that there are lots of bitter Americans, clinging to our guns and religion, who think very highly of the US-UK relationship. This presidency, too, shall pass.

The Obama administration is not known for its pro-British track record, but this is by far the strongest indication yet that the current White House has little regard for the Special Relationship and its unique role in modern American history. At a White House photo opportunity with French President Nicolas Sarkozy today, recorded by C-Span (view the video at 2:45 for the remark), President Obama had this to say:

“We don’t have a stronger friend and stronger ally than Nicolas Sarkozy, and the French people.”

…There is of course no comparison between the extremely close-knit relationship between the United States and Great Britain, from defence and intelligence ties to economic investment and cultural exchange. It is an alliance forged over the course of 70 years, from the beaches of Normandy to the battlefields of Afghanistan. Today in the war against the Taliban there are more than 10,000 British troops fighting alongside their US allies, compared to 3,850 Frenchmen. Nearly 350 British soldiers have laid down their lives in Afghanistan in contrast to French losses of 53.

These kinds of presidential statements matter. No US president in modern times has described France as America’s closest ally, and such a remark is not only factually wrong but also insulting to Britain, not least coming just a few years after the French famously knifed Washington in the back over the war in Iraq.

Perhaps the White House would like to confirm that this is what the President of the United States firmly believes, or clarify the comments? Either way, this latest remark from Barack Obama will only further strengthen the impression of a president who is both woefully out of his depth on the world stage, as well as contemptuous of traditional friends and alliances.

In Contentions, Jonathan Tobin has a post on new construction in Jerusalem. He tells the rest of the story that the NY Times neglected to get.

…When the New York Times reported the fact that ground was being broken for the new housing in Sheikh Jarrah in a story published on Sunday, what it did was to focus on the destruction of what it claimed was a Palestinian “landmark.” What landmark, you ask? Was it a medieval structure that in some way represents the longstanding Arab presence in the city or its culture? No. The building that was toppled to make way for some new apartment houses was just a large home that was built in the 1930s as a villa for one of the most notorious figures in 20th-century history: Haj Amin al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem. Husseini may never have spent much time in what eventually was renamed the Shepherd Hotel, but he did make his mark on the region by inspiring bloody pogroms against the Jews then living in the country. After the outbreak of World War II, he joined forces with the Nazis, meeting with Hitler and then spending the war making Arabic propaganda broadcasts for the Axis and successfully recruiting Muslims (mostly Bosnians) to serve in a special SS brigade. He was promised that, in the event of a German victory, he would be made the puppet ruler of what is now Israel, where he would assist the Nazis in the massacre of the several hundred thousand Jews who lived there.

That a home that was in any way connected to Husseini or any other Nazi would be considered a landmark whose demolition inspired statements of sadness from contemporary Palestinian leaders like Saeb Erekat speaks volumes about the nature of Palestinian politics. That the intended home of the man who dreamed of wiping out every last Jew in Jerusalem is coming down to make room for Jewish homes is certainly ironic. One needn’t necessarily agree with the politics of Daniel Luria, a representative of Ateret Cohanim, the group that promotes Jewish building throughout Jerusalem, to appreciate what he termed the “beautiful poetic justice” of this event.

David Segal’s article on the law school bubble is the topic of conversation at NRO’s Phi Beta Cons. Nathan Harden opens with this post.

The New York Times has a lengthy article on how America’s law schools are juicing their numbers — Enron-style, inflating statistics about their graduates’ employment prospects in order to attract more applicants. In reality, new law-school grads face dim job prospects in this economy:

“A generation of J.D.’s face the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated…

But improbably enough, law schools have concluded that life for newly minted grads is getting sweeter, at least by one crucial measure. In 1997, when U.S. News first published a statistic called “graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation,” law schools reported an average employment rate of 84 percent. In the most recent U.S. News rankings, 93 percent of grads were working — nearly a 10-point jump.

…How do law schools depict a feast amid so much famine?”

Phi Beta Cons continues: Jason Fertig quotes the sad comments of a recent grad.

Great job, Nathan and Jane, for noting that Times article on law-school fuzzy math. What is even more troubling in that piece is the story of the young individual with $250,000 of student-loan debt. This young man’s troubles are weaved throughout the article to emphasize the overselling of the J.D., and the last few paragraphs of the article are perhaps the most valuable:

Another of [his] techniques for remaining cool in a serious financial pickle: believe that the pickle might somehow disappear.

“Bank bailouts, company bailouts — I don’t know, we’re the generation of bailouts,” he says in a hallway during a break from his Peak Discovery job. “And like, this debt of mine is just sort of, it’s a little illusory. I feel like at some point, I’ll negotiate it away, or they won’t collect it.”

He gives a slight shrug and a smile as he heads back to work. “It could be worse,” he says. “It’s not like they can put me jail.”

Like a good steak, those comments stand up fine on their own. I don’t need to add anything.

Phi Beta Cons: George Leef makes some excellent points about the legality of the law school reports, and the wider economic issue of the barrier to entry into the law profession.

…I wonder how long it will be before some aggressive member of the trial bar finds an underemployed law grad to serve as plaintiff in a suit against one of the schools that fudge their numbers. That looks like fraud; it’s no different than a homeowner hiding the fact that his basement leaks from a purchaser.

My disappointment in the article was that no one mentioned the principal reason that legal education costs so much — the requirement in nearly all states that you must earn a degree from an ABA-accredited law school before you can take the bar exam. The ABA insists on a three-year course of study, but just about everyone who has gone through law school will tell you that the second and third years are almost entirely useless. You take a lot of courses in subjects that you will never need to know anything about. There is some benefit to the first year, especially learning legal research and writing and key fields like contracts and torts — but there is no reason that you should have to learn even that in a law school.

All in all, forcing prospective legal practitioners through the portal of an accredited law school is nothing but a gigantic subsidy to the legal-education establishment, and it increases the cost of legal services. If state governments allowed people to take the bar exam without first earning an approved J.D., some of those going into the profession would probably be willing to take cases from poorer people who, as the ABA admits, are often unable to find counsel when they need it.

The mandated three-year law school was originally conceived as a barrier to entry that would keep down the number of lawyers, part of the legal profession’s cartel maintenance. What with the increasing wealth of society and the availability of government financial aid, it no longer serves that function. The U.S. is glutted with law grads, but the schools profit handsomely from continuing to churn them out. …

And the last post from Phi Beta Cons, George Leef adds more history and an opportunity to learn more on the topic.

One commenter asks whether lawyers really need to go to law school at all. Prior to the ABA’s big push in the 1920s for “higher standards,” most lawyers had not gone to law school, and many of the law schools then in existence had programs lasting less than three years. Using the typical smokescreen of concern for consumers, the legal profession went about lobbying for the requirement that prospective lawyers must get a degree from an ABA-accredited law school before being allowed to take the bar exam. There were some incompetent lawyers back then, and there still are. It isn’t formal legal schooling that makes for a competent practitioner. I covered all of that and the legal profession’s main cartel trick of prosecuting anyone who does anything resembling legal work, no matter how competently, for “unauthorized practice of law” in a Cato Policy Analysis, “The Case for a Free Market in Legal Services.”

Charles Krauthammer discusses the hate-filled Left and the mentally-ill killer.

…Not only is there no evidence that Loughner was impelled to violence by any of those upon whom Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, the New York Times, the Tucson sheriff and other rabid partisans are fixated. There is no evidence that he was responding to anything, political or otherwise, outside of his own head.

…His ravings, said one high school classmate, were interspersed with “unnerving, long stupors of silence” during which he would “stare fixedly at his buddies,” reported the Wall Street Journal. His own writings are confused, incoherent, punctuated with private numerology and inscrutable taxonomy. He warns of government brainwashing and thought control through “grammar.” He was obsessed with “conscious dreaming,” a fairly good synonym for hallucinations.

This is not political behavior. These are the signs of a clinical thought disorder – ideas disconnected from each other, incoherent, delusional, detached from reality.

These are all the hallmarks of a paranoid schizophrenic. And a dangerous one. A classmate found him so terrifyingly mentally disturbed that, she e-mailed friends and family, she expected to find his picture on TV after his perpetrating a mass murder. This was no idle speculation: In class “I sit by the door with my purse handy” so that she could get out fast when the shooting began.

…The origins of Loughner’s delusions are clear: mental illness. What are the origins of Krugman’s?

Peter Wehner comments on Charles Krauthammer’s column.

Sometimes, a future Hall of Fame pitcher is, during a key moment, asked to pitch out of rotation. So, too, with certain columnists.

Charles Krauthammer’s regular slot in the Washington Post is Friday — but he was moved up in order to address the liberal libel that the Tucson massacre was the result of a “climate of hate” created by conservatives. The result is a spectacularly good column. And it concludes with a devastating knockout of the New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has earned the distinction of being the most scurrilous and irresponsible commentator on the Tucson killings (the competition was stiff).

“The origins of [Jared] Loughner’s delusions are clear: mental illness,” Krauthammer writes. “What are the origins of Krugman’s?”

An excellent question. And whatever the answer is, Paul Krugman — based on his grotesque conduct during the past five days and Krauthammer’s withering takedown — will not recover. He may continue to write, but he has become, in serious circles, an object of ridicule as well as contempt.

John Steele Gordon adds his thoughts on Paul Krugman’s ignominy.

…I also agree that this may be a tipping point in Krugman’s disgraceful career as a columnist. For one thing, he is intellectually lazy and seems to operate on the principle that a Krugman assertion is, ipso facto, an established fact. He rarely buttresses his assertions with evidence. His one bit of evidence that ”eliminationist rhetoric” in American political life is overwhelmingly on the right was to quote Rep. Michelle Bachmann as saying that people who oppose the Obama agenda should be “armed and dangerous.”

Far worse, however, he is intellectually dishonest. Even the Times’s first public editor, Daniel Okrent, said that Krugman has a “disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” He is no less cavalier with quotes. As John Hinderacker at Power Line shows, complete with a recording of the entire interview, Michelle Bachmann was merely using a metaphor. She was holding a town hall meeting with constituents regarding the cap-and-trade bill and said, “I’m going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back.” She was arming them with information, not bullets, so they could successfully oppose a terrible bill, not shoot politicians.

On June 19, 1954, Joseph Welch asked Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” It turned out to be the tipping point in McCarthy’s career, the moment when public opinion turned decisively against him. …

…I hope that Krugman’s column on Monday, when he shamelessly used a tragedy to smear his political opponents, will be his have-you-no-decency-sir moment. …

The Washington Examiner editors point out the First Amendment implications, and the hypocrisy, of the rantings from the Left.

…Another self-righteous voice in this debate is left-wing blogger Markos Moulitsas, who said in June 2008 that he was placing a “bull’s-eye” on Giffords’ and other Democratic moderates’ districts because of their vote on an intelligence bill, by which they had “sold out the Constitution.” Last week, a Kos diarist even wrote an angry rant about Giffords, declaring, “My CongressWOMAN voted against Nancy Pelosi! And is now DEAD to me!”

Let’s be clear: The Tucson crimes were not encouraged by any such heated rhetoric. Neither Kos with its rhetorical bull’s-eyes, nor the cross hair graphics on Sarah Palin’s Web site, nor the cross hairs used in the ads of nearby Arizona Democratic Rep. Harry Mitchell’s campaign in 2006, nor the bull’s-eyes used by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to “target” Republicans in 2009 have any relevance to this discussion. Their elimination for the sake of political correctness would not have saved — and will not save — a single life…Unless our endgame involves burning books, banning certain kinds of speech and censoring the Internet, lest something someone says or writes might inspire some crazy person to kill someone, the discussion about “toxic political rhetoric” is a waste of time. Unless your aim is to use it as a pretext to repeal somebody’s First Amendment rights.

Jennifer Rubin has more on Krugman’s shameful opinions. She also highlights a liberal commentator who takes the hypocrites to task.

Longtime readers know I have my differences with David Brooks. But the Arizona massacre is the sort of incident for which David Brooks writing — calm, measured and moderate — is much needed. Today he writes:

“…These accusations — that political actors contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl — are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness. …”

And John Steele Gordon wraps things up with a post on how the Internet brings accountability to the commentators.

Someone should tell liberals that the old days are over. Not so long ago, if you wanted to prove that a member of the chattering classes had flatly contradicted himself in order to advance a political agenda, you had to go to the library, get a roll of microfilm, insert it into a machine, and then search for the earlier statement. If your memory was faulty as to where or when the earlier statement had appeared, this process could take hours, even days. Often it wasn’t worth the bother.

Today you need only click the icons for Google and/or YouTube, push a few keys, and bam! — you have proof positive of the chatterers’ shameless hypocrisy. A few more clicks and their intellectual perfidy is all over the Internet.

The recent spate of liberals decrying the hostile rhetoric of the right following the tragedy in Tucson is a case in point. One would think that the incivility had started on January 20, 2009, and that political conversation of the previous eight years had been a modern-day Socratic dialogue. As Michelle Malkin demonstrates – in spades! — that is not exactly the case.

I don’t know how long it took Michelle to come up with her list, but I bet it was less time than she would have needed to take the bus to the library.

It is worthwhile having a look at Michelle Malkin’s long post. Here’s another link.

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On Monday, January 9th, we posted a wonderful article. Yasmine El-Rashidi, in Ahram On-Line, had an amazing story of Muslims protecting Coptic Christians in Egypt, in the wake of a church bombing. The movement for religious tolerance in Egypt that has inspired millions, rallies to the phrase, “Egypt for All.” David Warren hopes that this story will move Canadians to stand against religious persecution in Canada.

…The recent bomb blast in Alexandria was hardly an isolated event, and well before that happened, Islamist websites were posting the names, faces, and home addresses of leading Copts in Ottawa, as well as elsewhere, with instructions to kill them; and addresses of churches with instructions to bomb them. Direct threats have been received by many Copts. And even here — in a free country, where the liberty of worship is supposedly guaranteed — they may be privately advised to keep their heads down, and not make their memorials to the dead, or their celebration of Christmas, too conspicuous.

This is not as it should be. Freedom — including especially freedom of belief and worship, at the heart of all other freedoms — has always required courage. It requires the refusal to be intimidated, and that in turn demands the solidarity of the whole society against those who would intimidate.

…Canadians, too, must learn to perform such spontaneous acts of solidarity when our neighbours are threatened. We must not think, “the police will take care of it,” for the police follow orders, only. We must have the courage to give the orders, and when necessary, risk our own necks. …

In the NY Times, David Segal looks at the bleak future of law school graduates, and how law schools are lying with statistics. Segal also touches on a theme we see in the housing crash: how government interference has created distorted market incentives.

…In reality, and based on every other source of information, …a generation of J.D.’s face the grimmest job market in decades. Since 2008, some 15,000 attorney and legal-staff jobs at large firms have vanished, according to a Northwestern Law study. Associates have been laid off, partners nudged out the door and recruitment programs have been scaled back or eliminated.

…But improbably enough, law schools have concluded that life for newly minted grads is getting sweeter, at least by one crucial measure. In 1997, when U.S. News first published a statistic called “graduates known to be employed nine months after graduation,” law schools reported an average employment rate of 84 percent. In the most recent U.S. News rankings, 93 percent of grads were working — nearly a 10-point jump.

…How do law schools depict a feast amid so much famine?

“Enron-type accounting standards have become the norm,” says William Henderson of Indiana University, one of many exasperated law professors who are asking the American Bar Association to overhaul the way law schools assess themselves. “Every time I look at this data, I feel dirty.” …

…A law grad, for instance, counts as “employed after nine months” even if he or she has a job that doesn’t require a law degree. Waiting tables at Applebee’s? You’re employed. Stocking aisles at Home Depot? You’re working, too.

… Job openings for lawyers have plunged, but law schools are not dialing back enrollment. About 43,000 J.D.’s were handed out in 2009, 11 percent more than a decade earlier, and the number of law schools keeps rising — nine new ones in the last 10 years, and five more seeking approval to open in the future.

Apparently, there is no shortage of 22-year-olds who think that law school is the perfect place to wait out a lousy economy and the gasoline that fuels this system — federally backed student loans — is still widely available. But the legal market has always been obsessed with academic credentials, and today, few students except those with strong grade-point averages at top national and regional schools can expect a come-hither from a deep-pocketed firm. Nearly everyone else is in for a struggle. Which is why many law school professors privately are appalled by what they describe as a huge and continuing transfer of wealth, from students short on cash to richly salaried academics. Or perhaps this is more like a game of three-card monte, with law schools flipping the aces and a long line of eager players, most wagering borrowed cash, in a contest that few of them can win.

And all those losers can remain cash-poor for a long time. “I think the student loans that kids leave law school with are more scandalous than payday loans,” says Andrew Morriss, a law professor at the University of Alabama. “And because it’s so easy to get a student loan, law school tuition has grossly outpaced the rate of inflation for the last 20 years. It’s now astonishingly high.” …

In the Telegraph Blogs, UK, Toby Harnden wonders if Obama will underestimate the new House Speaker.

…Boehner has no aspiration to be president. One of 12 children born into a working class Roman Catholic family in the suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio, he worked in his father’s bar and later as a janitor before entering politics.

His performance in accepting the Speakership was notable for how low-key it was. “The American people have humbled us,” he said. “What they want is a government that is honest, accountable and responsive to their needs. A government that respects individual liberty, honours our heritage, and bows before the public it serves.”

When the chamber erupted into applause, Boehner looked almost embarrassed and said: “It’s still just me.”

…When the health care bill came to the House floor, Boehner yelled: “Hell no!” It turned out most Americans were with him. Obama explained the benefits of his reform like a Vulcan and it didn’t compute with him when the majority disagreed. …

Michael Barone has a post on Bill Daley.

Was it just my imagination, or was there a note of one-upsmanship in Bill Daley’s noting, in his remarks after being announced as the next White House chief of staff, that he had been in the White House fifty years ago this month?

Fifty years ago this month Barack Obama was a fetus and Bill Daley was a 12-year-old visiting the White House. Not, one is safe in assuming, in an ordinary tourist visit but as the guest of the “young president” Daley referred to but did not name, John Kennedy. And Daley even at 12 was surely aware that he and his parents and siblings were there because his father had done more than anyone else (exactly how much remains a matter in dispute) to deliver Illinois’s 27 electoral votes to Kennedy.

The implied message to Obama: I’ve been around a lot longer than you have, and I know how things work. This looks something like the opposite of groveling.

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We open with Craig Pirrong, aka Streetwise Professor. He responds to liberal Paul Krugman’s disgusting commentary on the Tucson shooter, and Krugman’s intellectually dishonest article on Texas.

…If you want a more reasonable conjecture about the Tuscon shooter, I suggest Shannon Love’s piece at Chicago Boyz.  The conclusion is spot on:

The left plays a dangerous and ultimately self-defeating game when in every case to date, they have immediately, often literally within minutes, of a reported act of political violence, sprung out to denounce ordinary non-lefitsts as culpable in the attack. Since it is widely known that such attackers are either seriously mentally ill or individuals with highly egocentric and idiosyncratic ideologies, seeking to link such attacks to their mainstream political opposition makes it clear that they see instances of political violence merely as chances to advance their political power. Moreover, since such attackers have a hodgepodge ideology, one can just as easily blame leftist’s rhetoric for such attacks as non-leftists.

More darkly, by linking ordinary, mainstream political opponents to such political violence, the left appears to be creating a context for suppressing or even violently attacking such opposition. They are desperately trying to create an equation in which disagreeing with a leftists is tantamount to a violent attack. …

Victor Davis Hanson weighs in on “political vultures” who try to spin tragedy to fit their repugnant world view.

…There is much talk that Sarah Palin’s “crosshairs” ad pushed Loughner over the edge. But if sloppy use of gun metaphors can drive anyone to shoot congressional representatives, think what we are up against when the president of the United States invokes violent imagery to galvanize his supporters. What are we to make of Obama’s warning of “hand-to-hand combat” if the Republicans take over; or his comment that one of his supporters could “tear [Sean Hannity] up”; or his Untouchables boast that “if they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun”; or his advice to supporters of his presidential campaign to argue with Republicans and independents and “get in their face”?

…Yet do we really wish to tie crude presidential metaphors, similes, and bombast to the next violent attack on a conservative political figure? Are we to suggest that President Obama’s occasional indiscretions have created a climate of fear that someday will lead to violence against his political adversaries? Or, did Obama merely from time to time indulge in sloppy thinking and clumsy expression? Even as someone who did not vote for Barack Obama, I do not think the president’s ill-advised and juvenile similes and allusions will ever drive a liberal extremist into “bringing a gun” to a political fight or literally “tearing up” a political opponent.

…the outrage of Daly, Krugman, Sullivan, and others is partisan and transparently self-serving. Paul Krugman would have more credibility on the topic of extreme rhetoric had he written a column a few years ago warning Americans that it was one thing to oppose George W. Bush, but quite another to publish a novel envisioning the assassination of the president, or to award first prize at the Toronto Film Festival to a “docudrama” constructing the shooting of Bush…

…If crazed gunmen are sadly a periodic characteristic of American culture, so are political vultures who scavenge political capital as they pick through the horrific violence.

In the WSJ, Glenn Reynolds makes several excellent points about the shameful comments made by some liberals after Tucson.

…American journalists know how to be exquisitely sensitive when they want to be. As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York pointed out on Sunday, after Major Nidal Hasan shot up Fort Hood while shouting “Allahu Akhbar!” the press was full of cautions about not drawing premature conclusions about a connection to Islamist terrorism. “Where,” asked Mr. York, “was that caution after the shootings in Arizona?”

Set aside as inconvenient, apparently. There was no waiting for the facts on Saturday. Likewise, last May New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and CBS anchor Katie Couric speculated, without any evidence, that the Times Square bomber might be a tea partier upset with the ObamaCare bill.

…To be clear, if you’re using this event to criticize the “rhetoric” of Mrs. Palin or others with whom you disagree, then you’re either: (a) asserting a connection between the “rhetoric” and the shooting, which based on evidence to date would be what we call a vicious lie; or (b) you’re not, in which case you’re just seizing on a tragedy to try to score unrelated political points, which is contemptible. Which is it?

I understand the desperation that Democrats must feel after taking a historic beating in the midterm elections and seeing the popularity of ObamaCare plummet while voters flee the party in droves. But those who purport to care about the health of our political community demonstrate precious little actual concern for America’s political well-being when they seize on any pretext, however flimsy, to call their political opponents accomplices to murder. …

Jennifer Rubin notes some of the people who demonstrated dignity in their responses to the Tucson shootings.

The horrific shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.), the death of six (including a 9 year old and a federal judge) and the injuring of a total of 18 revealed the best and the worst in American politics.

First, let’s look at the best. President Obama issued an eloquent statement as did Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Obama, having learned something about emergency incidents, quickly dispatched the FBI chief and appeared on top of the incident. Congress appropriately put off its business for the week. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) paid tribute to the slain federal court judge. They all conducted themselves in a calm and dignified fashion.

…To his credit, Howard Kurtz blasted the blame game. He wrote, “This isn’t about a nearly year-old Sarah Palin map [targeting Giffords's seat]; it’s about a lone nutjob who doesn’t value human life. It would be nice if we briefly put aside partisan differences and came together with sympathy and support for Gabby Giffords and the other victims, rather than opening rhetorical fire ourselves.” Likewise, Howard Fineman wrote: “The deaths there are not about politics, ideology or party. From what we know, Jared Loughman’s acts were those of a madman divorced from reality, let alone from public debate.” Bravo. …

And we wind things up with NRO Shorts. Here are three:

Morgan Tsvangirai is the prime minister of Zimbabwe and the leader of the democratic opposition: the opposition to the president and strongman, Robert Mugabe. Tsvangirai is one of the bravest men in Africa, or anywhere. As the Zimbabwe Mail put it, “Tsvangirai has survived several attempts on his life, had his wife killed in an ‘accident’ and was a hunted man for years. Only the unwaiving attention of the world’s powers kept him alive.” He will need such attention now. In a conversation with American and European diplomats, he said that he supported sanctions on Mugabe and his cronies, because they were forcing concessions from them. He could not support the sanctions in public, however, because Mugabe had succeeded in painting them as anti-Zimbabwe instead of anti-regime. How do we know about this conversation? Because a U.S. diplomat memorialized it in a cable, and this was one of the thousands of such cables released by WikiLeaks. Tsvangirai will now be investigated for treason, and faces the death penalty. The Zimbabwe Mail said, “Wikileaks may have just signed Morgan Tsvangirai’s death warrant. It will take an enormous effort on the part of the diplomatic corps of many nations to prevent that.” Let them make that effort, then. It seems strange, doesn’t it? Brave democrats are in jeopardy while Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, accepts applause and largesse as a freedom fighter.

We’ve been beating the hell out of the Taliban in and around its traditional stronghold of Kandahar. A mid-level Taliban commander quoted by the New York Times complained that “the government has the upper hand now.” The conventional wisdom about the war hasn’t yet caught up with this military progress — a phenomenon that General Petraeus must consider standard operating procedure by now. The corruption and unreliability of Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the double-dealing and instability of our ally Pakistan remain, of course, enormous problems. They aren’t susceptible to any easy solution, but we can at least minimize the hedging of Karzai and the Pakistanis if we convince them that we intend to stay until we finish the job. It helps that the administration has walked back its self-defeating July 2011 deadline for the beginning of withdrawal; it doesn’t help that Vice President Biden says the new deadline of 2014 will bring the withdrawal of all U.S. troops come “hell or high water.” Biden has an infallible instinct for saying whatever is most foolish or damaging. Regardless, events on the ground show that the futility of this war has been greatly exaggerated.

On Labor Day, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Cuomo published an op-ed in the New York Daily News that, though making many rhetorical genuflections, said what had once been sayable only by New York’s conservative think tanks: “Public employees unions must make sacrifices.” And Cuomo has kept up the pleasant surprises post–blowout election. “The words ‘government in Albany’ have become a national punchline,” he acknowledged at his January 1 inauguration, a symbolically terse one. “This state has no future if it is going to be the tax capital of the nation.” He then gave himself a 5 percent pay cut and requested a one-year government-employee pay freeze. Maybe only Andrew Cuomo — a creature of the Albany Democratic-machine/public-sector-union complex — can solve the bloated-government crisis that his father’s governorship, seminal in the creation of the union-kickback system that has enabled Democratic ascendance in Albany, wrought. We hope Cuomo II will keep his harsh word — but hope rarely triumphs over experience.

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In the City Journal, Heather Mac Donald reviews the success of conservative policies on crime and welfare.

…New York’s demolition of conventional thinking about crime was even more momentous. Since 1990, New York has experienced the largest and longest sustained drop in street crime of any big city in the developed world. In less than a generation, many major felonies have fallen 80 percent or more. New York did this by rejecting everything that the criminology and social-work professions counseled about crime. Police Chief William Bratton announced in 1994 that the police, not some big-government welfare program, would lower crime by 10 percent in just one year. He not only met his goal, he bested it—by ruthlessly holding precinct commanders accountable for the safety of their beats, by the rigorous analysis of crime data, and by empowering street cops to intervene in suspicious behavior before a crime actually happened.

Just as the liberal philosophy of exempting the poor from bourgeois standards of behavior set up a vicious cycle of fatherlessness, crime, and dependency, the conservative philosophy of universal standards set up a virtuous cycle of urban renovation. With crime in free fall across New York in the 1990s, the tourism and hospitality industries boomed, triggering demand for the low-skilled welfare mothers whom welfare reform was nudging into the workplace. Businesses moved back into formerly violence-plagued areas, creating more jobs. Neighborhoods were transformed.

…The national crime drop of 41 percent since 1991 is also the longest and largest national decline in modern history, one wholly unforeseen by criminologists. It was made possible by the increased incarceration rate, which achieved its maximum effect in the 1990s, and by the spread of New York–style data-driven policing. Most significant is that the national crime rate has fallen in each of the last three years, putting the final nail in the coffin of the liberal conceit that a bad economy drives otherwise law-abiding individuals into crime. …

In the Exchequer, Kevin Williamson comments on Texas’ projected budget deficit and how the adults in government there handled a similar situation in 2003.

…Texas doesn’t do shortfalls. Texas starts from scratch: Every year is basically Year Zero when it comes to the state budget — there is no assumption that next year’s funding will match or exceed this year’s, and the state’s constitution explicitly forbids any legislature to tie the hands of a subsequent legislature, financially or otherwise. When necessary, Texas implements zero-baseline budgets, in order to keep the state living within its means…

…In 2003, Governor Perry and Texas Republicans took the state’s budget baseline to zero, and told state agencies to write new budgets, based on what they actually needed to spend to accomplish their missions, rather than based on increasing by 3 percent or 4 percent or 30 percent or 40  percent what they spent last year. And the Republicans handled the politics pretty well: Instead of calling state agency chiefs down to the legislature to be dressed down by pompous elected types or denouncing them from the governor’s office, they had a bunch of what must have been drearily tedious private meetings with them, and helped them to sweat their budgets down in a rigorous but respectful way. It worked. Texas balanced the books, and the place does not look like Afghanistan.

…Texas’s low-B.S. approach has had some salubrious effects, as I’ve documented here and here. It also left Texas with surpluses that allowed the state to put about $10 billion in its rainy-day fund, which could come in handy now that the economy seems to be clouding up a little. Could, but probably won’t: Republicans plan to introduce a budget that comes in within current revenue without touching the rainy-day fund. Get your head around that: There’s a multibillion-dollar pot of cash sitting there in front of politicians who must be just slavering inside at the thought of it, and they aren’t going to touch it — even though they have a pretty good excuse. Imagine a Congress that could do that. …

In Forbes, Daniel Oliver believes inflation is coming.

…The inflation rate has fallen for the past three years, as it did between 1969 and 1972, but monetary policy has caused commodity prices to surge back to 2008 bubble highs despite rising unemployment. Anecdotal evidence of pricing turmoil for foreign producers of intermediate goods suggests that inflation is already lurking just offshore, preparing to crash into the economy. The higher costs will cause commerce to freeze, as it did in 2008, or else the inflation spiral will again begin in earnest. Either way, European-style protests will soon come to these shores as well.

…From 1969 to 1980 the dollar lost 96% of its value in terms of gold and 92% in terms of oil. The stock market was no safe haven: The Dow’s nominal value in 1980 was the same as in 1969, meaning it lost similar value against gold and oil.

In the current cycle, the dollar and the Dow began deflating in 1999. With gold at $1,400 and oil at $90, the dollar and the Dow have declined by nearly 80% against both. To match the 1970s, they would have to lose another 80% against gold and another 60% against oil, implying gold at $7,000 and oil over $200. Given that the current monetary abuse is far worse than in the 1960s and 1970s, these figures are conservative.

Bretton Woods II is collapsing. The seductive Keynesian policies that fiscal and monetary authorities have followed for decades will soon cause the end of dollar hegemony. The United States is entering its third consecutive year of deficits greater than $1 trillion coupled with continuing dramatic increases in the stock of money. Devaluation and economic chaos are guaranteed, just as they were in 1969. Fortunately, unlike in 1969, gold ownership is legal. Those who understand free markets can still preserve the capital that will be needed to restore American prosperity after the deluge.

David Goldman posts on the latest unemployment numbers.

…Half of the drop in the unemployment rate to 9.4% from 9.8% is due to a fall in the labor force participation rate, from 64.5% to 64.3%. Clearly the labor market has stabilized and some of the sectors (notably hospitality) which fired people most aggressively are rehiring a bit. But the establishment survey shows a continued decline in manufacturing employment and an insignificant upward blip in retail employment. The biggest contribution to employment growth (35,000 jobs) was, again, in health care, not surprising given the fact that the federal government is committed to spending more in the sector.

As I suspected, the huge ADP number probably reflected statistical catchup between the BLS and ADP series. What we have is not a reinvigorated economy but a mediocre, low-growth environment. …

Robin Harding looks at the unemployment numbers in greater depth, in the Financial Times.

…Yet the household survey, from which the unemployment rate is calculated, sent a completely different message. It showed an extra 297,000 people in jobs and 260,000 fewer people in the labour force. The combination of the two was enough to cause a drop in the unemployment rate from 9.8 to 9.4 per cent.

…Most analysts attribute the fall in labour force participation and therefore the fall in the unemployment rate, to the expiry of long-term unemployment benefits in December.

If you no longer receive unemployment benefits, the theory goes, then you no longer have any reason to tell a survey you are ac-tively looking for work. The number of “discouraged workers”, who say that they are no longer looking for a job because they do not think they can find one, was 1.3m in December.

Congress has since renewed long-term unemployment benefits. A likely consequence is that the size of the labour force will bounce back in January, reversing the fall in the unemployment rate. …

Douglas Holtz-Eakin also tackles the jobs report, in the Corner.

The December jobs report disappointed on payroll employment, but slashed the unemployment rate. What’s up?

The most important fact is that two different surveys are used, and often they give conflicting signals.

The jobs number is calculated by asking employers (“payroll survey”) how many workers they have.

The unemployment rate is calculated by asking households (“household survey”) if they are out of work.

…The bottom line: Taken as a whole, the December report looked like a continuation of trend — not surprising. However, the confusing and anomalous drop in the unemployment rate is likely to reverse in the near term.

In Discovery News, Emily Sohn talks with some scientists who report that bird die-offs are usually not witnessed by humans.

…”This is really not the unusual thing that people are trying to make it into,” said Robert Meese, an avian ecologist at the University of California, Davis. “A lot of this stuff happens without anyone documenting it.”

…Records kept by the United States Geological Survey list at least 16 die-offs of more than 1,000 blackbirds or starlings over the past 30 years, said Marisa Lubeck, a spokesperson for the USGS in Denver. But group deaths among animals have been going on for a lot longer than that.

…In Beebe…thousands of blackbirds had settled for the night in trees near people’s homes. After a series of fireworks blasts went off on New Year’s Eve, the birds were startled off their roosts. Because blackbirds can’t see at night, they ended up flying all over the place, mostly downward.

One bird made it into a house, when the homeowner opened the door to see what was causing the racket. Most landed on roofs and the ground, making loud clunking noises as they shattered themselves to death. Necropsies revealed internal hemorrhaging, with no sign of pesticides. …

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Out of Egypt comes a story about Muslims showing up at a Coptic Christian Mass to provide protection. We have only one source for this, a blog from Cairo, but we want it to be true.

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole. …

Charles Krauthammer thinks there is good reason to read the Constitution in Congress.

…Americans are in the midst of a great national debate over the power, scope and reach of the government established by that document. The debate was sparked by the current administration’s bold push for government expansion – a massive fiscal stimulus, Obamacare, financial regulation and various attempts at controlling the energy economy. This engendered a popular reaction, identified with the Tea Party but in reality far more widespread, calling for a more restrictive vision of government more consistent with the Founders’ intent.

Call it constitutionalism. In essence, constitutionalism is the intellectual counterpart and spiritual progeny of the “originalism” movement in jurisprudence. Judicial “originalists” (led by Antonin Scalia and other notable conservative jurists) insist that legal interpretation be bound by the text of the Constitution as understood by those who wrote it and their contemporaries. Originalism has grown to become the major challenger to the liberal “living Constitution” school, under which high courts are channelers of the spirit of the age, free to create new constitutional principles accordingly.

What originalism is to jurisprudence, constitutionalism is to governance: a call for restraint rooted in constitutional text. Constitutionalism as a political philosophy represents a reformed, self-regulating conservatism that bases its call for minimalist government – for reining in the willfulness of presidents and legislatures – in the words and meaning of the Constitution.

Hence that highly symbolic moment on Thursday when the 112th House of Representatives opened with a reading of the Constitution. Remarkably, this had never been done before – perhaps because it had never been so needed. The reading reflected the feeling, expressed powerfully in the last election, that we had moved far, especially the past two years, from a government constitutionally limited by its enumerated powers to a government constrained only by its perception of social need. …

Jonah Goldberg exposes embarrassing liberal criticisms of the House reading of the Constitution.

…Last week, Ezra Klein, a famously liberal Washington Post blogger, explained to MSNBC host Norah O’Donnell that the “gimmick” of reading the Constitution on the floor was ultimately silly because the Constitution was written “more than 100 years ago” and is, therefore, too confusing for everyone to understand. By that standard, Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, Shakespeare and the Bible are long past their expiration dates…One might also point out that the recently minted phonebook-thick Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) is a good deal harder to decipher than the U.S. Constitution.

Meanwhile, the GOP’s promise to require that every legislation contain a clause citing the constitutional authority for it has sparked a riot of incredulity. A writer for U.S. News & World Report says the idea is “just plain wacky.” …Dahlia Lithwick, Slate magazine’s legal editor, responded, “How weird is that, I thought. Isn’t it a court’s job to determine whether or not something is, in fact, constitutional? And isn’t that sort of provided for in, well, the Constitution?”

…You do have to wonder why senators and representatives bother swearing to “support and defend” the Constitution if that’s not part of their job description. Surely, it would strike most citizens as bizarre to suggest that legislators shouldn’t worry about whether their proposed legislation is constitutional. …

David Harsanyi ponders the Constitution.

…because the Constitution has become too complex for many of us to decipher, and thus irrelevant, its time to boil the whole thing down to its troglodytic and/or graceful basics and engage P.J. O’Rourke’s rules of governance in a free society:

1. “Mind your own business.”

2. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

If the public believes in the spirit of the founding and politicians are committed to the resurrection of the constitution those rules are a good guide when looking at new legislation. …

In the Corner, Mario Loyola notes that politicians on both sides of the aisle have aided in the federal government overreach.

The opening of the new Congress with a reading of the Constitution on the floor of the House of Representatives has triggered some angry reactions on the left, but it wasn’t intended just as a criticism of them. The GOP leadership was also implicitly criticizing those Republicans who have strayed from the ideals of limited government, individual liberty, and constitutional originalism.

…People can sense that in Washington, a relentless concentration of government power has been well underway for decades. They sense that it is a danger to our democracy — and they don’t know the half of it. While Obamacare’s assault on constitutional rights is well understood, the EPA’s audacious power grab and the increasingly corrosive use of conditional federal funds in state budgets are only just becoming apparent.

Liberals laugh at such talk. But there aren’t many thoughtful law students of any political persuasion who can read the classic “con law” case of Wickard v. Filburn (1942) without feeling that somewhere along the line the Supreme Court lost its way and stopped guarding against the unconstitutional expansion of federal power. …

Karl Rove explains some of the unethical consequences of the federal government gaining power through Obamacare. 

…By early December, HHS had granted 222 such waivers to provide mini-med policies for companies including AMF Bowling and Universal Forest Product, as well as 43 union organizations. According to the department’s website, the waivers cover 1,507,418 employees, of which more than a third (525,898) are union members. Yet unionized workers make up only 7% of the private work force. Whatever is going on here, a disproportionately high number of waivers are being granted to administration allies.

…The AARP provided a big chunk of the $121 million spent on ads supporting the bill’s passage, as well as $21 million on lobbying in 2009, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. HHS’s proposed regulations on Dec. 21 exempted the AARP’s lucrative “Medigap” plans from the rate review and other mandates and requirements.

…The AARP is also exempt from the new law’s $500,000 cap on executive compensation for insurance executives. (The nonprofit’s last CEO received over $1.5 million in compensation in his last full year, 2009.) It won’t pay any of the estimated $14 billion in new taxes on insurance companies, though according to its 2008 consolidated financial statement, it gets more money from its insurance offerings than it does from dues, grants and private contributions combined. Nor will it have to spend at least 85% of its Medigap premium dollars on medical claims, as Medicare Advantage plans must do; the AARP will be held to a far less restrictive 65%.

It’s not hard to connect the dots. The Obama administration is using waivers to reward friends. On the flip side, business executives will be discouraged from contributing to the president’s opponents or from taking any other steps that might upset the White House or its political appointees at HHS. …

In Spiked, Brendan O’Neill hedges his bets against global warming. Still, the cold, white proof against global warming is hard to ignore.

You couldn’t have asked for a better snapshot of the chasm that divides today’s so-called expert classes from the mass of humanity than the snow crisis of Christmas 2010. They warn us endlessly about the warming of our planet; we struggle through knee-deep snow to visit loved ones. They host million-dollar conferences on how we’ll cope with our Mediterranean future; we sleep for days in airport lounges waiting for runways to be de-iced. They pester the authorities for more funding for global-warming research; we keep an eye on our elderly neighbours who don’t have enough cash to heat their homes.

…Anyone with a shred of self-respect who had predicted The End Of Snow would surely now admit that he was wrong. But no. Perhaps the most revealing thing about the snow crisis is that it was held up as evidence, not that the experts were mistaken, but that the public is stupid. Apparently it’s those who ask ‘Whatever happened to global warming?’, rather than those who predicted ‘no more traditional British winters’, who need to have their heads checked. Because what they don’t understand – ignoramuses that they are – is that heavy snow is also proof that our planet is getting hotter, and that industrialised society is to blame, just as surely as the absence of snow was proof of the same thing 10 years ago.

‘The snow outside is what global warming looks like’, said one headline, in a newspaper which 10 years ago said that the lack of snow outside is what global warming looks like. A commentator said that anyone who says ‘what happened to global warming?’ is an ‘idiot’ because nobody ever claimed that global warming would ‘make Britain hotter in the long run’. (Er, yes they did.) …

… In 2011, we should take everything that is said by this new doom-mongering expert caste with a large pinch of salt – and then spread that salt on the snow which they claimed had disappeared from our lives.

Christopher Hitchens is “tea”ed off and wishes to make us more refined.

…Just after World War II, during a period of acute food rationing in England, George Orwell wrote an article on the making of a decent cup of tea that insisted on the observing of 11 different “golden” rules. Some of these (always use Indian or Ceylonese—i.e., Sri Lankan—tea; make tea only in small quantities; avoid silverware pots) may be considered optional or outmoded. But the essential ones are easily committed to memory, and they are simple to put into practice.

If you use a pot at all, make sure it is pre-warmed. (I would add that you should do the same thing even if you are only using a cup or a mug.) Stir the tea before letting it steep. But this above all: “[O]ne should take the teapot to the kettle, and not the other way about. The water should be actually boiling at the moment of impact, which means that one should keep it on the flame while one pours.” This isn’t hard to do, even if you are using electricity rather than gas, once you have brought all the makings to the same scene of operations right next to the kettle. …

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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.