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If you’re wondering where Mark Steyn has been lately, Robert Tracinski has an update on the lawsuit filed against Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
The global warming hysteria is disastrous enough in its intended goal, which is to ban the use of our cheapest and most abundant fuels and force us to limp along on “alternative energy” sources that are insufficient to support an industrial civilization. But along the way, the global warming campaign is already wrecking our science and politics by seeking to establish a dogma that cannot legally be questioned.
The critical point in this campaign is a defamation lawsuit by global warming promoter Michael Mann against Mark Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
When the “Climategate” e-mails were leaked five years ago, a lot of us speculated that it could all end up in the courts, given the evidence that climate scientists were pocketing large sums of government money on the basis of a scientific consensus they were manipulating behind the scenes. But it’s typical of our upside-down political and cultural environment that when this issue does reach the courts, it will be in the form of a lawsuit against the climate skeptics.
Steyn and the others are being sued for criticizing Mann’s scientific arguments. In the case of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, they’re being sued for Rand Simberg’s complaint that Mann “has molested and tortured data.” (See a summary of the case here.) Frankly, I’m not sure how I escaped this lawsuit myself. I shall have to review what I have written and see if my language was not sufficiently inflammatory. Perhaps I don’t have pockets deep enough to be worth looting. Or perhaps I’m not a big enough target to be worth intimidating and bankrupting. Note the glee with which the left slavers at the prospect of taking out a prominent voice on the right, with one leftist gloating that “it’s doubtful that National Review could survive” losing the case.
(Steyn points out that National Review is insured against such lawsuits and will survive. …
Victor Davis Hanson posts on Icarus In Chief. .
In the last two weeks, we learned that Bashar Assad has dismantled only 5 percent of his WMD arsenal, despite President Obama’s soaring rhetoric to the contrary. Russia violated a long-observed agreement with the U.S. about testing missiles. Iran’s take on the negotiations over its bomb program bears no resemblance to our interpretation. Chinese officials now happily leak fantastic stories about using their military to punish Japan. All that is trumped by veiled threats from the SunniGulf monarchies, terrified of Iran, to buy a bomb or two from Pakistan. We hear other rumors that even China thinks the new leadership in North Korea is unhinged and is not worried about friendly warnings from Beijing.
Whether all these incidents are minor or serious, and whether they are random or interconnected and perceived as proof of the loss of U.S. deterrence, depends on which particular bad actor is studying them to try to guess whether the Obama administration will do anything should a provocateur start a war or attempt to redraw a regional map.
In short, our Icarus-in-Chief, without much foreign-policy experience but with youthful zeal and good intentions, soared far too high for his flimsy waxen wings. Now they are melting, and as the American commander-in-chief careens back to earth, lots of those below are wondering what will come next. Still, there is a lot of irony as Obama freefalls to earth.
Everyone assumed the Europeans were conveniently pacifist and had eroded their defenses because they could — given the fact that the United States had guaranteed the safety of Europe throughout the Cold War and for another quarter-century after it ended. Americans accepted that Europeans could afford to ankle-bite the interventionist United States because the latter’s pledge to the alliance was unquestionable, and such were the natural psychological gymnastics of patron and client.
Then came the waxen Obama soaring on hope and change …
David Harsanyi says “obamacare is just another word for laws we ignore together.”
… Normally, when policy is as burdensome and ungainly as the Affordable Care Act has been, an honest person might admit that perhaps something isn’t exactly right with the law itself. Not today. A never-ending fount of partisan defensiveness makes it impossible to rethink — much less repeal — any part of Obamacare.
So, question: when was the last time policy was executed as chaotically and with such little regard for the law? I don’t want to sound like a troglodyte, but the president, as head of the executive branch of the federal government is constitutionally obligated to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” not implement laws in an expedient manner, or a more prudent manner, or even in a way that he believes is more moral or a helpful for people struggling to find affordable health care. This is why we write bills down and debate them prior to passage. Or, at least, it used to be.
Jonathan Tobin says delays in the healthcare act won’t save Dems in November.
From its inception, the strategy behind the Obama administration’s implementation of ObamaCare has been simple: to frontload the benefits and postpone the pain and costs of this massive government intrusion into the private sector for as long as possible. This deceitful approach enabled President Obama run for reelection in 2012 on the spurious promise of extending insurance coverage to the poor and those with pre-existing conditions without being held accountable for the problems with the law that would only become apparent in his second term. Over the course of the last year, as the president’s signature accomplishment debuted with a disastrous rollout, the administration has retreated bit by bit from its insistence on implementing the entire unwieldy and gargantuan edifice on the American people immediately after Obama was safely ensconced in his second term. A dysfunctional website and the president’s broken promises about patients being able to keep their coverage and their doctors has led to the law being dismantled piece by piece as various elements were delayed. Today, yet another element of the law was similarly postponed, by executive order. As the New York Times reports:
The Obama administration announced Monday that it would again delay enforcement of a federal requirement for certain employers to provide health insurance to employees, giving medium-size companies extra time to comply. The “employer mandate,” which had already been delayed to Jan. 1, 2015, will now be phased-in beyond that date for some businesses with more than 50 employees.
The motivation for this latest delay is transparently political. By delaying yet one more element of the law until after the midterm elections, the administration hopes to save some faltering Democratic red-state incumbents who, unlike the president, are faced with the difficult task of running for reelection in the wake of the ObamaCare rollout. …
WaPo blogger says lots of Dems running for re-election have no interest in being near the president.
… Several of the Democrats facing reelection in 2014 hail from dark red districts in states such as Alaska, Arkansas and Louisiana — the regions of the country where Obama is the most unpopular. Conventional wisdom would dictate that those candidates would attempt to keep their heads down — distancing themselves from the Affordable Care Act and avoiding joint appearances with Obama during his official visits to their states. Several of the most vulnerable Democratics Senators are already publicly distanced themselves from Obama following last month’s State of the Union.
“Overall, I’m disappointed with the President’s State of the Union address because he was heavy on rhetoric, but light on specifics about how we can move our country forward,” said Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor. “I’ll work with the President when I think he’s right, but oppose him when I think he’s wrong… I’ll continue to oppose his agenda when it’s bad for Arkansas and our country.”
Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu used her first campaign ad of the cycle to criticize the implementation of the federal health-care law, while North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan was a no-show when Obama appeared in her state to speak at N.C.State last month. And here’s Sen. Mark Begich on Obama: “If he wants to come up [to Alaska], I’m not really interested in campaigning [with President Obama].” …
Debra Saunders posts on the Clintons who are AWOL in the war on women.
Do Americans want another Clinton in the White House? As former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton flirts with running in 2016, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., also a potential White House candidate, has put an interesting spin on Bill Clinton’s White House years. Democrats shouldn’t accuse the GOP of waging a “war on women,” he recently told “Meet the Press,” because President Clinton was a “sexual predator” with former intern Monica Lewinsky.
The next skirmish in the war on the war on women came from the Washington Free Beacon, which reported on papers archived at the University of Arkansas Libraries by Diane Blair, a deceased political science professor and close friend of Hillary’s. According to Blair’s notes, in 1998, the then first lady told her friend that her husband’s relations with Lewinsky — a “narcissistic loony toon” — represented “gross inappropriate behavior,” but it was “consensual,” as in “not a power relationship.”
One of the uglier archived documents is a 1992 campaign memo written by attorneys Nancy McFadden, now chief of staff to California Gov. Jerry Brown, and Loretta Lynch, president of the California Public Utilities Commission from 2000 to 2002. Under the heading “Defensive Research: Tying up ends and seeing ahead,” the memo’s first item no doubt referred to Gennifer Flowers, who said she had an affair with Bill Clinton:
“Exposing GF: completely as a fraud, liar and possible criminal to stop this story and related stories, prevent future non-related stories and expose press inaction and manipulation.”
Six years later, President Clinton admitted under oath to having had sex with Flowers, so it turns out Flowers wasn’t the “liar” in this little tale. Didn’t matter. With both Flowers and Lewinsky, Clinton operatives’ first impulse was to smear the women as liars. …