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Alana Goodman in Contentions writes on the continuation of Gitmo trials.
This was predictable, considering the comments from Robert Gates and Eric Holder recently, but it still has to be a bit of an embarrassing moment for President Obama. Two years after Obama signed (with much fanfare) an order to shutter Guantanamo Bay detention center, he’s now approved an order to resume military tribunals at the prison: …
More on Guantanamo from Pejman Yousefzadeh.
One of the points made by Donald Rumsfeld in his book, and in the book talk that I attended, is that for all of the controversy surrounding the detention of terrorism suspects in Guantanamo Bay, no one, when pressed, has found a better, more workable option than to house detainees there. To be sure, no one feels warm and fuzzy about the fact that the United States is keeping these suspects in detention, and in his book, Rumsfeld points out that it was never his desire to have the Department of Defense involved in detention policy, and that he sought, whenever he could, to reduce the prison population in Guantanamo Bay by relocating the prisoners. From the outset, the Defense Department was uncomfortable with the prospect of having the United States serve as the jailer of hundreds of terrorism suspects.
But as imperfect as Guantanamo Bay was–and is–as a detention locale, it remains better than all of the alternative locations considered during Rumsfeld’s time, and those considered after George W. Bush left office. For these reasons, in his book, Rumsfeld calls Guantanamo Bay “the least worst place” to house detainees.
Barack Obama campaigned, and came to office on the promise that he would close Guantanamo Bay. But the third year of his Presidency has commenced, and we are no closer to closing the detention facility there. Quite the contrary; the Obama Administration has actually reaffirmed, and increased its reliance on Guantanamo Bay as a detention locale:
David Harsanyi picks up on the public broadcasting flap.
… Sen. Barbara Boxer recently claimed that House Republicans were intent on stripping funding for government-supported entertainment because they have a “vendetta against Elmo.” (They might. After two years of living with a Tickle Me Elmo doll, I certainly do.) Does anyone believe that the marketplace wouldn’t or couldn’t provide sufficiently irritating muppet programming for the millions of kids without the government’s help? As anyone who purchases basic cable television knows, the demand for newscasts, kids’ shows, documentaries, nature programs, etc., is amply met.
The function and purpose of government has been rather expansive over the past few decades. Do we really believe that providing tax subsidizes for entertainment and journalism is one of the charges of government? The argument may have held up in the past, but in today’s world it simply doesn’t.
Roger Simon posts on the protocols of the elders of NPR.
… Lost in a delusional world of political correctness, the elders of NPR have forfeited the ability to think critically. They simply can’t see the facts anymore — or don’t care to. It’s too threatening to their limited weltanschauung. Hence, you get idiotic projections such as Schiller’s statement of how dumb Republicans are and how what America needs is more educated elites.
That they all sat there through the worst kind of anti-Semitic bilge that would make even George Soros and Pat Buchanan blush is as predictable as it is sickening.
What is needed now is not just the defunding of NPR, but also its marginalization. And one of the best ways to marginalize is through well-deserved ridicule. The authors of this video at Project Veritas are thus greatly to be praised. Yes, what they have done is a form of entrapment, but the fools who were trapped deserve it as much as any knave in a Moliere play. NPR and its clones are the true reactionaries of our time. They are no more liberal than Boss Tweed. Taking off their masks is a public service.
Pickerhead worked in Michigan factories to pay for college and was a member, and a shop steward, of a UAW local so he knows the truth of what Thomas Sowell says about unions.
The biggest myth about labor unions is that unions are for the workers. Unions are for unions, just as corporations are for corporations and politicians are for politicians. …
… To unions, workers are just the raw material used to create union power, just as iron ore is the raw material used by U.S. Steel and bauxite is the raw material used by the Aluminum Company of America.
The most fundamental fact about labor unions is that they do not create any wealth. They are one of a growing number of institutions which specialize in siphoning off wealth created by others, whether those others are businesses or the taxpayers. …
Hugh Hewitt speculates on the 2012 senate race in Ohio.
Josh Mandel is a 33-year-old veteran of the Iraq War, where he served two tours while a U.S. Marine. Mandel is a graduate of the Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve Law School. He served two terms in the Ohio legislature.
Mandel is also the treasurer of the state of Ohio, having garnered more than 2 million votes last November. He is married to a beautiful wife whom he wed in Jerusalem in 2008. He is Jewish. He is a Republican.
Mandel has almost inexhaustible energy, a voracious appetite for news and history, and is a compelling stump speaker. His Web site is JoshMandel.com. Josh Mandel is Sen. Sherrod Brown’s worst nightmare.
Brown is a Democratic senator from Ohio who spent the past three days climbing out of the hole he dug on the Senate floor …
Shorts from National Review.
Bill Clinton violated every standard of civil discourse — red-faced with rage, finger wagging, viciously smearing his opponents, lying and suborning lies — and so naturally has been selected to co-chair a new national institute on civil discourse, along with George H. W. Bush. Bill Clinton famously tried to blame the Oklahoma City bombing on Rush Limbaugh, so it makes a sort of perverted sense that he would jump on a project rooted in Democrats’ cynical attempt to pin the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords by an addled psychopath on tea-party protesters and their colorful signs. Meanwhile Democrats, who obviously have not yet availed themselves of the benefits to be had from this new bipartisan national treasure, are parading around Wisconsin waving Hitler signs and calling openly for the murder of Gov. Scott Walker, without a peep of criticism from Clinton — or from President Obama, whose only comment on the situation so far has been to cheer them merrily on. Bill Clinton was a lucky president in mostly happy years, and has been a rash on the body politic ever since.
Here’s another profile in civility: Tom Luna, the Republican superintendent of Idaho public schools, recently introduced an education-reform bill to the state legislature. The legislation gradually eliminates tenure, erodes seniority privileges, and increases the number of charter schools — all of which teachers’ unions dread. In response, they’ve gone Wisconsin on Luna. One thousand people protested the bill outside the state capitol. Hundreds of students walked out of class. A teacher showed up at Luna’s mother’s home to register his dissatisfaction. And one particularly thuggish opponent vandalized Luna’s car, slashing its tires and painting graffiti on its side. “I think Luna’s probably getting the clue that . . . we’re all against it,” one student told the Idaho station KTVB. He is certainly getting an education about the nature of the unions.
Robert Samuelson wishes to make a point about Social Security.
… We don’t call Social Security “welfare” because it’s a pejorative term and politicians don’t want to offend. So they classify Social Security as something else, when it isn’t. Here’s how I define a welfare program: first, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it’s pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people’s own savings pay their later benefits; and second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions, and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts. …
Joel Kotkin mines more from the census.
The ongoing Census reveals the continuing evolution of America’s cities from small urban cores to dispersed, multi-polar regions that includes the city’s surrounding areas and suburbs. This is not exactly what most urban pundits, and journalists covering cities, would like to see, but the reality is there for anyone who reads the numbers.
To date the Census shows that growth in America’s large core cities has slowed, and in some cases even reversed. This has happened both in great urban centers such as Chicago and in the long-distressed inner cities of St. Louis, Baltimore, Wilmington, Del., and Birmingham, Ala.
This would surely come as a surprise to many reporters infatuated with growth in downtown districts, notably in Chicago, Los Angeles, Denver and elsewhere. For them, good restaurants, bars and clubs trump everything. A recent Newsweek article, for example, recently acknowledged Chicago’s demographic and fiscal decline but then lavishly praised the city, and its inner city for becoming “finally hip.”
Sure, being cool is nice, but the obsession with hipness often means missing a bigger story: the gradual diminution of the urban core as engines for job creation. …