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Time for Pickings to say goodbye to Tom Coburn. John Fund is the first to pay homage to a man who actually went into public service rather than public narcissism. In a just world someone like Coburn would lead our country instead of the existing example of excrement expletive.

Dozens of members of Congress will be retiring next month, and some should be missed. But there is only one Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma senator the Christian Science Monitor has dubbed “a rabble-rousing statesman.”

Those two qualities together are rare in politicians, but they found a happy union in the 66-year-old obstetrician who is leaving the Senate early next month to battle prostate cancer. On the one hand, Coburn never retreated on his core values: He is staunchly pro-life, for traditional marriage, and resistant to all manner of fads from climate-change regulation to mindless intervention overseas. As the Senate’s “Dr. No” from 2004 to today, he held up hundreds of special-interest boondoggles and end-runs around common sense. At the same time, he maintained a standard of honest dealing and integrity that many more in Congress should aspire to.

This month, he took to the Senate floor to make his farewell remarks. He reminded his colleagues that they take an oath to “protect the United States of America, its Constitution, and its liberties.” What’s not included in that oath, he warned, is any mention that senators have a duty to provide benefits to their state.

“It’s nice to be able to do things for your state, but that isn’t our charge,” he said. “Our charge is to protect the future of our country by upholding the Constitution and ensuring the liberty that’s guaranteed there is protected and preserved.” …

Coburn kudos from Andrew Ferguson at the Weekly Standard.

“In any election,” Tom Coburn often says, “you should vote for the candidate who will give up the most if they win.” All things being equal, we should prefer politicians who have accomplished something in their lives beyond government work—and who are willing to sacrifice it, at least temporarily, to serve the country at a cost to their convenience and comfort. During his 6 years in the House of Representatives and 10 more in the Senate, Coburn has embodied his own principle. He went to medical school after a successful career in business and became an obstetrician when he was 35. He built a lucrative practice in his hometown of Muskogee, Oklahoma. He waited until he was 46 to seek public office, after he’d delivered 4,000 babies. First things first. 

Coburn retires from the Senate at the end of this Congress, and we’ll miss him. His résumé makes him an increasingly rare bird in the Washington aviary. Among “antigovernment” Republicans no less than Leviathan-loving liberals, our political ranks brim over with men and women whose careers began in second grade with their first campaign for hall monitor and went on from there, with perhaps a brief detour to law school offering them their closest view of the push and pull of normal commercial life. Coburn calls himself a “citizen legislator,” and the archaic title fits. Single-handed, he restored the phrase “public service” to good repute in Washington, at least for his admirers. …

Kimberley Strassel has more. 

… The real key to Mr. Coburn’s success was a skill too little valued in Washington today: hard work. He was an accountant and then an obstetrician before coming to D.C., and never lost that belief that he needed to earn his paycheck. He was in the office every morning by 7:30. He’d read every word of every report his staff gave him—and send it back with typos circled. He read every bill and objected if he wasn’t given the time to do so before a vote. He’d dive into monstrous sections of the federal government—the budget, veteran affairs, disability payments, the tax code—and not re-emerge until he knew it front to back. He was a policy innovator, in particular on health care.

Many was the time this reporter would stumble across some government outrage, and call Mr. Coburn’s office for his take—only to discover he’d written a bill to fix the problem a year earlier. That knowledge was power; he was a formidable opponent because he knew more than the appropriators, the negotiators, the bills’ authors. An all-time favorite line came from one of his staffers who, in the middle of a Coburn budget fight with Congress, wryly commented: “I don’t know why they bother. Fighting with Coburn over the budget is like waging a land war in Asia. You can’t win.” …

KC Johnson and Stuart Taylor, who wrote the book on the Duke Lacrosse debacle, compare it to recent events at UVA.

Depressing similarities link the two highest-profile allegations of campus sexual assault in recent years — the fraudulent gang rape claims against Duke lacrosse players in 2006, and Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Erdely’s multiply discredited portrayal in November of a sadistically brutal gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity.

Even more depressing is another comparison between the two cases. While campus journalists and many other students at Duke were refreshingly open to evidence and critical thinking as the case there unfolded, the vast majority of U-Va. students have been sheep-like. They have emulated — or at least tolerated — the anti-male prejudices of U-Va. academics and administrators. Some have even called for secret criminal trials in rape prosecutions.

As to lacrosse case similarities, the most obvious was the initial mob-like rush to judgment at U-Va. by left-leaning faculty, administrators, and news media in embracing the now-infamous claim by “Jackie” of being gang-raped on a bed of shattered glass. By presuming the guilt of college men accused of implausibly barbaric crimes against women and minorities, these academics were oblivious to the lessons from Duke.

Not unlike the 88 Duke professors who signed a public statement in 2006, which included a thank-you to protesters who had urged the team captains’ castration, those U-Va. professors who individually spoke up immediately after the Rolling Stone article were eager to see it as exemplifying a campus “rape culture” of which there is little hard evidence.

Then there is the lamentable performance of school President Teresa Sullivan, who has rivaled the shameful indifference to due process shown by Richard Brodhead, who is, alas, still Duke’s president. Sullivan’s sins include using the Rolling Stone article as an excuse to accuse seven unnamed fraternity members of “evil acts” and to suspend all U-Va. fraternities both before and after the accuser’s story unraveled. …

 

… the nation’s most prestigious universities, including U-Va. and Duke, have pushed such ideologies of resentment — in their reeducation-camp-style “orientation” sessions for new students, in the extremist race/class/gender teachings that dominate many humanities courses, and in the kangaroo-court disciplinary systems that have censored expression of “offensive” political views as well as railroading dozens of students on rape charges that appear to be based on flimsy evidence.

In such an environment, it might be understandable that few students would risk being branded as “rape apologists” by defending due process. In this respect, the U-Va. student response may evidence a troubling trend over the last eight years. In any event, it surely illustrates a poisoned campus culture that has implications far beyond Charlottesville.

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The amazing thing about today’s Pickings is that all the written selections come from the Washington Post. It is heartening to see one of the former standard bearers of the liberal media turn out to have columns and blogs fit for our readers. Two blogs we followed before they associated with the Post are Jennifer Rubin’s and The Volokh Conspiracy. Rubin was part of Commentary’s Contentions and Volokh was on his own.  The cartoons are a hoot today, especially the last one.

The first item is by Charles Krauthammer in which he calls for a one dollar per gallon increase in federal gas taxes with a corresponding decrease in social security taxes. So, don’t worry he’s not proposing to give more to the jerks in DC. 

For 32 years I’ve been advocating a major tax on petroleum. I’ve got as much chance this time around as did Don Quixote with windmills. But I shall tilt my lance once more.

The only time you can even think of proposing a gas tax increase is when oil prices are at rock bottom. When I last suggested the idea six years ago, oil was selling at $40 a barrel. It eventually rose back to $110. It’s now around $48. Correspondingly, the price at the pump has fallen in the last three months by more than a dollar to about $2.20 per gallon.

As a result, some in Congress are talking about a 10- or 20-cent hike in the federal tax to use for infrastructure spending. Right idea, wrong policy. The hike should not be 10 cents but $1. And the proceeds should not be spent by, or even entrusted to, the government. They should be immediately and entirely returned to the consumer by means of a cut in the Social Security tax.

The average American buys about 12 gallons of gas a week. Washington would be soaking him for $12 in extra taxes. Washington should therefore simultaneously reduce everyone’s FICA tax by $12 a week. Thus the average driver is left harmless. He receives a $12-per-week FICA bonus that he can spend on gasoline if he wants — or anything else. If he chooses to drive less, it puts money in his pocket. (The unemployed would have the $12 added to their unemployment insurance; the elderly, to their Social Security check.) …

Jennifer Rubin says there’s more to De Blasio’s stupidity than his mistakes with the NYPD.    

In case you thought New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio’s worst misstep was his dealings with the police (starting with his opposition to stop and frisk), consider what he has done to welfare.

Robert Doar of the American Enterprise Institute and Fried Siegel of the Manhattan Institute explain:

“From 1994–2009, work rates for single mothers rose from 43 percent to 63 percent. Overall labor force participation rose from under 55 percent to more than 60 percent (during a period when labor force participation nationwide declined). In 2011, even after the Great Recession, child poverty in NYC was almost 10 percentage points lower than in 1993, the year before welfare reform started.

Now de Blasio is proposing to replace these successes. Reviving the hoary notion of entry-level work as representing “dead-end jobs,” de Blasio suggests that, from the get-go, welfare recipients are owed more than an opportunity to work.” …

Richard Cohen says violence is working quite well for the radical islamists.

As sometimes happens, Jon Stewart is wrong. He said the other night about the Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris, “There is no sense to be made of this.”

Ah, but there is. There is an inescapable logic to violence. Killing your enemies silences them. Killing your enemies intimidates others. Just look at how the New York Times went about deciding whether to publish Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that, among others things, outraged so many traditional Muslims. The Times polled some of its various foreign bureaus to see whether anyone felt threatened by the possible publication of the cartoons. None did, we are told. Yet the Times did not publish.

The Washington Post’s editorial pages — as opposed to the quite separate news staff — did publish. They did so out of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and because it was newsworthy. Journalistically, The Post did the right thing; the Times did not. The famed First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams called the Times’s decision “regrettable.” I call it appalling. …

Jennifer Rubin asks now that France’s nightmare is over, is there any chance the delusions of the West will end?

… Will the events of the past few days be sufficient to end the perverse refusal to comprehend this and to persistently dismiss conservatives’ warning that we are engaged in a battle for civilization itself? 

If Israel didn’t build homes in its Jewish neighborhoods . . . if the United States closed GuantanamoBay . . .  if we had not waterboarded terrorist leaders  . . . if we had not become involved in Middle East wars . . . if Europeans did not insult Islam . . . what, what would be different? The jihadists would still seek to slaughter Jews, Christians and Muslims who don’t subscribe to their brand of jihadism. Iran would still sponsor terrorists and seek a bomb. Boko Haram will still kill and murder innocents. There is no action on our part that provokes the sort of barbarism we have seen. There is no way we can cease giving “offense.” Our existence is sufficient to spur the Islamist terrorists. And the only solution is to defeat and destroy the jihadists, their networks and their ability to gain access to more and more deadly weapons. (What if, for example, the French suspects had chemical weapons and not simply guns?)

And yet I doubt we will see President Obama (or critics of U.S. antiterrorism efforts) agree on an enhanced national security budget, adopt a new approach to ending Iran’s hegemonic ambitions, throw away the timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, deploy without limitations on their scope and duration a contingent of U.S. troops sufficient to eradicate the Islamic State swiftly or cease releasing jihadists from Guantanamo Bay. …

Eugene Volokh points out muslims do not believe in the concept of freedom of expression. 

“Contrary to popular misconception, Islam does not mean peace but rather means submission to the commands of Allah alone.”

So writes “a radical Muslim cleric in London and a lecturer in sharia,” Anjem Choudary, in a USA Today op-ed. USA Today has performed a valuable public service here — I mean this entirely sincerely — in reminding people that there is a very dangerous religious denomination out there, which is willing to teach the propriety of murder of blasphemers, which supports the death penalty for apostasy, and which would more broadly suppress the liberty of both Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

To give one more example, a survey touted by CNN as showing that “Around the World, Muslims Heralded Religious Freedom” actually showed that, though “Ninety-seven percent of Muslims in South Asia, 95% in Eastern Europe, 94% in sub-Saharan Africa and 85% in the Middle East and North Africa responded positively to religious freedom, according to the poll,” in many countries huge percentages of Muslims favor “the death penalty for people who leave the Muslim religion.” For instance, in South Asia, death for apostates is favored by 79% of Afghan Muslims, 75% of Pakistani Muslims, and 43% of Bangladeshi Muslims. In the Middle East and North Africa, the numbers were 88% in Egypt, 83% in Jordan, 62% in the PalestinianTerritories, 41% in Iraq, 18% in Tunisia, and 17% in Lebanon. …

Also in Volokh, David Post calls attention to a David Brooks column which suggests many of the same people with crocodile tears for Charlie Hebdo would have shut it down if it showed up on a campus in the US.

David Brooks has a very thoughtful and important op-ed in today’s New York Times, linking our reactions to the horror at the Charlie Hebdo offices and the campus speech codes.

“The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down.”

Spot on, and pretty disturbing when you think about it – not to mention hypocritical on the part of many who are now so vociferous in their apparent support for untrammeled free expression. …

If we’re spending time at the Post, we won’t ignore George Will who writes on climate changes through the ages.

We know, because they often say so, that those who think catastrophic global warming is probable and perhaps imminent are exemplary empiricists. They say those who disagree with them are “climate change deniers” disrespectful of science.

Actually, however, something about which everyone can agree is that of course the climate is changing — it always is. And if climate Cassandras are as conscientious as they claim to be about weighing evidence, how do they accommodate historical evidence of enormously consequential episodes of climate change not produced by human activity? Before wagering vast wealth and curtailments of liberty on correcting the climate, two recent books should be considered.

In “The Third Horseman: Climate Change and the Great Famine of the 14th Century,” William Rosen explains how Europe’s “most widespread and destructive famine” was the result of “an almost incomprehensibly complicated mixture of climate, commerce, and conflict, four centuries in gestation.” Early in that century, 10 percent of the population from the Atlantic to the Urals died, partly because of the effect of climate change on “the incredible amalgam of molecules that comprises a few inches of soil that produces the world’s food.”  …

Turning our attention to the 2016 race, Jennifer Rubin has some advice for our hero - Scott Walker.

… The digs on Walker are well known — not charismatic enough (often compared to former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty), not a college graduate, no foreign policy experience and an insufficiently robust national fundraising network to compete with Bush or Christie. But none of that will matter if he can:

1. Become the pugnacious but reasonable Republican, tough enough for the base and sane enough for the establishment. His lack of a college degree, if not a selling point, can at least shape the image of a scrapper who had to educate himself and rise on sheer tenacity.

2. Put together a succinct and emotionally compelling stump speech. He should take to heart American Enterprise Institute’s Arthur Brooks’s admonition — state your mission in moral terms, be for people, not against things, and do it fast (people make snap judgments in less than a minute). Something like: “I’m going to fight for every American’s opportunity to rise, chance to earn success and security from enemies of liberty and tolerance who threaten Western civilization.”

3. Do some foreign travel, meet with top-flight advisers, develop a comfort-level with national security and present a tough-minded national security policy that contrasts with years of weakness, equivocation and shocking inability to support friends and confront enemies. …

Don’t forget, the cartoons are very good today.