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David Harsanyi believes in separation of sports and state. Or, to paraphrase Laura Ingraham, “Shut up and play.”
…Take the recent immigration flap in Arizona. Leftist intellectual and El Sol all-star point guard Steve Nash — slumming it in Arizona at $13 million per year — is certainly free to lecture the proletariat. But like Jack Kemp, Jim Bunning, Heath Shuler or Bill Bradley, it would probably be better if he saved it for the post-game.
Those boycotting the Arizona Diamondbacks are equally grating. Obviously, I oppose any sort of discrimination by my childhood teams — unless the Yanks are exclusively signing Dominican stars; then they can call themselves Los Gringos for all I care. But I don’t take out my exasperations over New Yorkers consistently voting for Chuck Schumer on the New York Knicks.
Sports happens to be one of the most meritocratic institutions in this nation. It divides us into regional and traditional clusters. To inject corrosive political grandstanding into this thing that so many of us love can only undermine the camaraderie of fans, who are able to put aside their ideological differences, financial situations and often their worries to partake in a communal gratification that politicians and “activists” only pretend to understand and foster.
And, after all, is nothing sacred?
Charles Krauthammer discusses his proposed public safety exception to Miranda warnings.
…The fact that the Times Square bomber did talk after he was Mirandized is blind luck. Holder is undoubtedly aware of just how much information about the Pakistani Taliban, which he now tells us funded and directed Shahzad’s attack, would have been lost to us had Shahzad stopped talking — and therefore how important it is to make sure the next guy we nab trying to blow something up is not Mirandized until a full interrogation regarding that plot and others is completed. …
…Nonetheless, this administration seems intent upon using the civilian legal system rather than designating caught-in-the-act terrorists as enemy combatants. I think it’s a mistake, but they will be in power for almost three more years, possibly seven. In the interim, therefore, we have to think about how to adapt this administration’s preferred domestic-judicial model to the real world.
The way to do it, as Holder has come to understand, is by modifying Miranda. …
In Euro Pacific Capital, John Browne writes that European leaders have merely delayed solving the current fiscal problems.
As the health of much of the global economy weakens on a daily basis, political leadership increasingly ignores the source of the malady and instead focuses on short term “band-aid” remedies. These measures which may buy a few months, or years, of relative well being, will convince the public that problems have been solved and will thereby take pressure off governments to make the needed structural changes.
The recently announced $1 trillion EU bailout is a perfect example of this “band-aid” approach. The just concluded general election in the United Kingdom is another. The inconclusive UK result, which creates a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition, will be an unhappy, unquestionably temporary arrangement. Similarly, the EU bailout will continue to infuriate Northern Europeans, who may ultimately push for a breakup of the Union. …
Tunku Varadarajan offers bullet points on the new British government. Here are two:
2. A governors’ coalition is a very un-British thing. The Brits have historically been much better at constructing coalitions of the governed: Witness colonial India, or Nigeria, or Ireland. India, for instance, was administered by parceling out privileges to different groups, never to one alone, and this division of spoils—or of access to power—rendered the subjects governable. But the British government, whether at home or abroad, was always deeply, satisfyingly monolithic. Not anymore, and we shall watch this new political experiment with a sense of wonderment.
10. The Labour Party should ready itself for introspective opposition. Brown has resigned as leader, so the party has rid itself of its greatest electoral liability. But if Cameron governs decently and flexibly (and why should he not, given his need to take into account the views of his coalition partners?), and if the return to a more paternalistic conservatism can be achieved without sacrificing overly on fiscal rigor, Labour could well find itself shut out of power for more than one full parliamentary term. Deputy Prime Minister Clegg, now committed to a historic coalition, will not be able to pull out of government for anything other than irrefutable reasons. And Cameron hardly seems like the sort of chap to furnish those at the risk of bringing down his own, hard-earned government.
George Will exposes some of the lies and hypocrisy surrounding the bailouts of GM and Greece. He starts out by giving the real story on the latest GM ad suggesting it as a metaphor for Greece.
To understand the pertinence to America of events in Greece, notice General Motors’ most recent misbehavior. A television commercial featuring CEO Ed Whitacre demonstrates the institutional murkiness and intellectual dishonesty that result when the line between public and private sectors disappears.
In the commercial, Whitacre says GM has “repaid our government loan in full.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) noted that GM used government funds to pay back the government: It “simply transferred $6.7 billion from one taxpayer-funded TARP account to another.” The government still owns 60.8 percent of GM’s common equity, and the Congressional Budget Office projects that the government will lose about $34 billion of the $82 billion of TARP funds disbursed to the automotive industry.
When Ryan and two colleagues asked the Treasury Department for clarification, they got this careful reply: “Treasury has never suggested that the loan repayment represented a full return of all government assistance.” A Treasury news release did say “GM Repays Treasury Loan in Full.” The loan is, however, a small part of taxpayer exposure. Under crony capitalism, when government and corporate America merge, both dissemble. …
Michael Barone looks at the Kagan nomination and sees government by faculty lounge.
… As dean at Harvard Law, Kagan signed a brief that sought to overturn the law denying federal funds to universities that barred military recruiters. Yet that brief, written by one of the ablest Supreme Court advocates, Walter Dellinger, was nonetheless rejected by the justices by a vote of 8-0.
In nominating Kagan, Obama said he wanted a justice who understood “the real world.” But it seems that he nominated someone who, on one important occasion, utterly misjudged the real world beyond the campus.
Of course one might say the same of Obama himself, who has pushed big government policies that seem like no-brainers to most professors but have aroused passionate and principled opposition from the public at large. We are seeing what government by the faculty lounge looks like.
Roger Simon was surprised to find out who supports same-sex marriage.
…So it is with some gratification that I found tonight that the person in public life I have admired tremendously for some time is also a supporter of same-sex marriage – Laura Bush. She proclaimed that support in her characteristic well-mannered, low-keyed fashion on the Larry King Show. (Okay, nobody’s perfect.) I even had the suspicion that her husband agreed with her, but for political considerations didn’t say so.
What does this mean? Traditionally a woman like Bush would oppose gay marriage, but she has stepped outside that “tradition,” seen the situation objectively and come to a different conclusion. I think it’s interesting that the supposedly liberal Barack Obama has not been able to reach this conclusion or to perform any action that would indicate that he had. Meanwhile, the supposedly antediluvian Dick Cheney has expressed his support for same-sex marriage.
So what are we to think? Who is the “progressive” and who is the “conservative”? And what do these words mean? Well, not much to me, as I have said. …
Tony Blankley thinks it was good thing the Utah GOP threw Bennett out of the primary.
…We need determined men and women who share the view of us shocked and appalled Americans that we are in crisis – and that we cannot wait until 2013 to stop the madness and start the rollback. Winning a majority of Republicans in November without electing a majority for radical, immediate rollback will be essentially as good as losing. As a Republican Party man for 46 years, I have, until now, always thought it was better to win a majority any way we can.
But not this year. This year it really doesn’t matter that good men such as Mr. Bennett get thrown out on their ear. I became radicalized on the matter of the national deficit and debt upon the administration’s release of its 10-year budget – the most irresponsible federal document ever released – which plans for unsustainable debt and does not even propose a path out. …
…In the face of financial ruin of the nation, it was unconscionable to pass a new health entitlement that almost all Americans know will add trillions to the debt. Next year, as Mr. Obama almost certainly will call for a new value-added tax to do the “responsible thing” to reduce the deficits he and Congress have created, it will be equally unconscionable to support such a tax. The only solution to the debt and deficit that will not kill economic growth is to cut spending, not raise taxes. We cannot afford to elect Republicans or Democrats who would be “responsible,” and raise taxes. …
The Economist reports on new technology in dirigibles.
…Although helium-filled weather balloons regularly launch instruments high into the stratosphere, at altitudes of 20km (65,000 feet) the air is 15 times less dense, causing the balloons to expand and ultimately burst.
This problem has long vexed the American military, which would like to use lighter-than-air dirigibles as atmospheric satellites, or stratellites. From 20km a blimp would be able to continuously survey an area the size of Texas for months at a time, but in greater detail and at much lower cost than geostationary satellites or those moving in low Earth orbit. …