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David Harsanyi writes about the Dems attempts to blame Republicans for the threats that Democratic politicians are receiving. Because the Dems certainly didn’t do anything to anger anyone; like force Obamacare down our throats.
…Democrats insist Republicans must condemn — over and over — this imaginary rise of widespread radicalism. In doing so, they are implicitly accusing Republicans of controlling the aforementioned radicals.
Other Democrats, like Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, went as far as to claim that Republicans were “aiding and abetting terrorism” against Democrats. …
…”I’ve received threats since I assumed elected office, not only because of my position, but also because I’m Jewish,” said Republican Whip Eric Cantor, who had a bullet shot through his office Monday. “I’ve never blamed anyone in this body for that. Period.” …
Jonah Goldberg posts on some incidents of vandalism.
Disturbing! Troubling! I demand the Democratic Party disavow their hate-filled rhetoric! This is America:
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Police are investigating vandalism at the Albemarle County Republican headquarters.
The Daily Progress of Charlottesville reports that someone threw bricks through the headquarter’s windows, breaking three of them. The vandalism was discovered Friday morning. …
…In November, someone glued the county GOP headquarters’ doors shut on Election Day.
In the Weekly Standard, Yuval Levin looks at the various problems with Obamacare, and why it must be repealed.
…But in order to gain 60 votes in the Senate last winter, the Democrats were forced to give up on that public insurer, while leaving the other components of their scheme in place. The result is not even a liberal approach to escalating costs but a ticking time bomb: a scheme that will build up pressure in our private insurance system while offering no escape. Rather than reform a system that everyone agrees is unsustainable, it will subsidize that system and compel participation in it—requiring all Americans to pay ever-growing premiums to insurance companies while doing essentially nothing about the underlying causes of those rising costs. …
…In other words, Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster—for our health care system, for our fiscal future, and for any notion of limited government. But it is a disaster that will not truly get underway for four years, and therefore a disaster we can avert.
This is the core of the case the program’s opponents must make to voters this year and beyond. If opponents succeed in gaining a firmer foothold in Congress in the fall, they should work to begin dismantling and delaying the program where they can: denying funding to key provisions and pushing back implementation at every opportunity. But a true repeal will almost certainly require yet another election cycle, and another president.
The American public is clearly open to the kind of case Obamacare’s opponents will need to make. But keeping voters focused on the problems with the program, and with the reckless growth of government beyond it, will require a concerted, informed, impassioned, and empirical case. This is the kind of case opponents of Obamacare have made over the past year, of course, and it persuaded much of the public—but the Democrats acted before the public could have its say at the polls. The case must therefore be sustained until that happens. The health care debate is far from over. …
David Warren has more thoughts on free speech in Canada.
…The Coulter crew were met in Calgary, Thursday night, by a sampling of exactly the same sort of thugs they encountered at Ottawa U. But there, the police did not hesitate. It wasn’t even necessary to make arrests: at the first provocation, the young thugs were simply confronted and told to leave.
Several black holes have developed in the enforcement of law in Canada — stare hard, for instance, at Caledonia, Ont. — and there have been numerous campus events involving physical intimidation about which nothing was done. Each capitulation makes the next more likely.
Free speech is very nice “in theory.” But to exist in practice, it must be enforced.
In the WSJ, David Propson reviews a number of books on Mark Twain, published this year, the centennial of his death.
Mark Twain died at age 74 on April 21, 1910. The centennial of that sad event is being observed with yearlong festivities in the cities he called home—Hannibal, Mo., and Hartford, Conn.—as well as with a raft of Twain-related books. …
…Twain won his readers’ affection, in that book, by traveling the world and bringing it back to his fellow countrymen—bringing it down to size, too, by exposing Old World ways to New World wit. In later books he revealed to Americans the less familiar parts of their own nation—its trackless Western frontier and its endless mother-river. Not for nothing did William Dean Howells call Twain “The Lincoln of Our Literature.”
By the end of his life, Mark Twain’s opinion on countless topics was sought and treasured. For readers around the world, he was America. …