Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

John Fund explains how the dishonesty of President Pick-and-Choose will probably cause the collapse of immigration reform.

Chuck Todd, the political director of NBC News, startled much of Washington on Sunday morning when he announced on Meet the Press that White House aides he’s spoken to have lost confidence that immigration reform will pass. He reported that “suddenly the White House doesn’t see a path” to passing a bill through the House this year.

There are many reasons why immigration reform is in trouble, ranging from the fact that immigration is not currently a burning political issue to the inherent complexity and internal contradictions of a 1,200-page bill.

But there is another less-discussed reason. The Obama administration’s instinctive dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law are finally catching up with it. Few Republicans in the House — even those who devoutly want immigration reform — trust the Obama administration to enforce with consistency and integrity anything that passes Congress.

Take the 900-page monstrosity of a law that’s been dubbed “Obamacare.” When it passed back in 2010, the law was clear on many points. It decreed that beginning in 2014, any company with more than 50 full-time employees would be required to offer them health-care insurance or pay stiff fines. But it’s been impossible, in the three years since the law’s passage, to work out the Byzantine requirements of that mandate. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) said in a congressional hearing he feared that Obamacare’s implementation would result in a “train wreck,” and many other Democrats have come to share his anxiety. White House aides fretted that enforcing the mandate’s timetable would hurt job creation in the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections and put Democratic control of the Senate in jeopardy.

The White House could have handled the problem as the Constitution envisioned and opened up negotiations with Congress to change the law. But it quickly concluded that the Republican House would demand too much in exchange for any adjustment to the law. …

Charles Krauthammer has fun with globalony.

… For the sake of argument, nonetheless, let’s concede that global warming is precisely what Obama thinks it is. Then answer this: What in God’s name is his massive new regulatory and spending program — which begins with a war on coal and ends with billions in more subsidies for new Solyndras — going to do about it?

The United States has already radically cut carbon dioxide emissions — more than any country on earth since 2006, according to the International Energy Agency. Emissions today are back down to 1992 levels.

And yet, at the same time, global emissions have gone up. That’s because — surprise! — we don’t control the energy use of the other 96 percent of humankind.

At the heart of Obama’s program are EPA regulations that will make it impossible to open any new coal plant and will systematically shut down existing plants. “Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal,” explained one of Obama’s climate advisers. “On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”

Net effect: tens of thousands of jobs killed, entire states impoverished. This at a time of chronically and crushingly high unemployment, slow growth, jittery markets and deep economic uncertainty.

But that’s not the worst of it. This massive self-sacrifice might be worthwhile if it did actually stop global warming and save the planet. What makes the whole idea nuts is that it won’t. This massive self-inflicted economic wound will have no effect on climate change. …

Craig Pirrong reminds us of the folly of ethanol mandates. Mandates, by the way, signed into law by George W. Bush who proved he could be as stupid as the idiot incumbent.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  A couple of examples from environmentalist attempts to mitigate climate change.

The first relates to ethanol.  In its infinite wisdom, in 2010 Congress mandated the use of renewable fuels with lower CO2 content than corn ethanol to meet the renewable fuel standard it created in 2005.  Sugar ethanol from Brazil fits the bill.  But given the blend wall and other limits on ethanol usage, this created an excess of corn ethanol in the US, and created an incentive to export excess corn ethanol from the US to Brazil, and import sugar ethanol from Brazil.

The problem being, of course that all the fuel burned to ship ethanol from the US to Brazil, and from Brazil to the US, pours CO2 into the atmosphere.  And the net result: more CO2 emissions than would have occurred absent the mandate to meet the renewable fuel standards with low CO2 producing fuels:

Left hypocrisy exposed by Victor Davis Hanson.

One of the strangest things about the modern progression in liberal thought is its increasing comfort with elitism and high style. Over the last 30 years, the enjoyment of refined tastes, both material and psychological, has become a hallmark of liberalism — hand in glove with the art of professional altruism, so necessary to the guilt-free enjoyment of the good life. Take most any contemporary issue, and the theme of elite progressivism predominates.

Higher education? A visitor from Mars would note that the current system of universities and colleges is designed to promote the interests of an elite at the expense of the middle and lower-middle classes. UCLA, Yale, and even CSU Stanislaus run on premises far more reactionary and class-based than does Wal-Mart. The teaching loads and course responsibilities of tenured full professors have declined over the last half-century, while the percentage of units taught by graduate students and part-time faculty, with few benefits and low pay, has soared.

The number of administrators has likewise climbed — even as student indebtedness has skyrocketed, along with the unemployment rate among recent college graduates. A typical scenario embodying these bizarre trends would run something like the following: The UC assistant provost for diversity affairs, or the full professor of Italian literature, focusing on gender and the self, depend on lots of graduate and undergraduate students in the social sciences and humanities piling up debt without any guarantee of jobs, while part-time faculty subsidize the formers’ lifestyles by teaching, without grading assistants, the large introductory undergraduate courses, getting paid a third to half what those with tenure receive.

The conference and the academic book, with little if any readership, promote the career interest and income of the trendy administrator and the full professor, and are subsidized by either the taxpayers or the students or both. All of the above assumes that a nine-month teaching schedule, with tenure, grants, sabbaticals, and release time, are above reproach and justify yearly tuition hikes exceeding the rate of inflation. The beneficiaries of the system win exemption from criticism through loud support of the current progressive agenda, as if they were officers with swagger sticks in the culture wars who must have their own perks if they are to properly lead the less-well-informed troops out of the trenches. …

Today we opened with an example of the extra-legal actions of the administration and Kim Strassel provides more at the close. 

For a true expression of the imperious and extralegal tendencies of the Obama administration, there is little that compares with the Wisdom of Solomon. Lafe Solomon, that is, the acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board.

Mr. Solomon’s wisdom was on revealing display this week, in the form of a newly disclosed letter that the Obama appointee sent to Cablevision in May. The letter was tucked into Cablevison’s petition asking the Supreme Court this week to grant an emergency stay of NLRB proceedings against it. The Supremes unfortunately denied that request, though the exercise may prove valuable for shining new light on the labor board’s conceit.

A half-year has passed since the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Noel Canning that President Obama’s appointments to the NLRB were unconstitutional, and thus that the board lacks a legal quorum. In May, the Third Circuit affirmed this ruling. Yet the NLRB—determined to keep churning out a union agenda—has openly defied both appeals courts by continuing to issue rulings and complaints.

Regional directors in April filed two such unfair-labor-practice complaints against Cablevision. The company requested that Mr. Solomon halt the proceedings, given the NLRB’s invalid status. It is Mr. Solomon’s refusal, dated May 28, that provides the fullest expression of the NLRB’s insolence.

The acting general counsel begins his letter by explaining that the legitimacy of the board is really neither here nor there. Why? Because Mr. Solomon was himself “appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate”—and therefore, apparently, is now sole and unchecked arbiter of all national labor policy.

This is astonishing on many levels, the least of which is that it is untrue. Mr. Solomon is the acting general counsel precisely because the Senate has refused to confirm him since he was first nominated in June 2011. Nor will it, ever, given his Boeing escapades. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Egyptian history lesson from Mark Steyn.

After midday prayers on Wednesday, just about the time the army were heading over to the presidential palace to evict Mohammed Morsi, the last king of Egypt was laying to rest his aunt, Princess Fawzia, who died in Alexandria on Tuesday at the grand old age of 91. She was born in 1921, a few months before the imperial civil servants of London and Paris invented the modern Middle East and the British protectorate of Egypt was upgraded to a kingdom, and seven years before Hassan al-Banna founded the Muslim Brotherhood.

A long life reminds us of how short history is: Princess Fawzia outlived the Egyptian monarchy, and the Nasserist fascism and pan-Arabism that succeeded it, and the doomed “United Arab Republic” of Egypt and Syria, and the fetid third-of-a-century “stability” of the Mubarak kleptocracy. And she came within 24 hours of outliving the Muslim Brotherhood’s brief, disastrous grip on power. …

… Washington has spent six decades getting Egypt wrong, ever since the CIA insouciantly joined the coup against Farouk under the contemptuous name “Operation Fat F***er.” We sank billions into Mubarak’s Swiss bank accounts, and got nothing in return other than Mohammed Atta flying through the office window. Even in a multicultural age, liberal Americans casually assume that “developing countries” want to develop into something like a Western democracy. But Egypt only goes backwards. Princess Fawzia is best remembered in the Middle East as, briefly, the first consort of the late shah of Iran, whom she left in 1946 because she found Tehran hopelessly dull and provincial after bustling, modern, cosmopolitan Cairo. In our time, the notion of Egypt as “modern” is difficult to comprehend: According to the U.N., 91 percent of its women have undergone female genital mutilation — not because the state mandates it, but because the menfolk insist on it. Over half its citizenry subsists on less than two dollars a day. A rural population so inept it has to import its food, Egyptians live on the land, but can’t live off it. …

… This week, the Brotherhood was checked — but not by anything recognizable as the forces of freedom. Is it only a temporary respite? Certainly, in the age of what Caroline Glick calls “America’s self-induced smallness,” Western ideas of real liberty have little purchase in Cairo. Egypt will get worse, and, self-induced or not, America is getting smaller.

The news from and about Egypt led to rather droll posts from Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff. Here’s the first suggesting this is the end of amateur hour.

David Goldman shows, among other things, that the Egyptian coup signals that Saudi Arabia, not the U.S., will have the leading foreign role in Egypt’s affairs going forward. At the risk of sounding unpatriotic, that’s probably a good thing for Egypt under the present circumstances.

I have suggested, and Goldman goes a long way toward demonstrating, that the Egyptian turmoil is more about economics than politics. The Saudis might just be able to keep Egypt financially afloat and better fed.

Moreover, even from a political point of view, Egypt is probably better off taking its cues from the Saudis than from President Obama. As Goldman says: “The notion that [the Muslim Brotherhood's] band of Jew-hating jihadi thugs might become the vehicle for a transition to a functioning Muslim democracy was perhaps the stupidest notion to circulate in Washington in living memory.” …

John Kerry is next to feel Mirengoff’s lash with an assist from John Hinderaker.

… JOHN adds: As several readers have pointed out, the State Department has now walked back its denial that Kerry was on his yacht while the crisis in Egypt took place:

“As regime change was unfolding in Egypt, Secretary of State John Kerry spent time on his boat Wednesday afternoon in Nantucket Sound, the State Department acknowledged to CBS News on Friday, after repeatedly denying that Kerry was aboard any boat.

“While he was briefly on his boat on Wednesday, Secretary Kerry worked around the clock all day including participating in the President’s meeting with his national security council,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, naming a series of Egyptian and international officials Kerry had spoken with on Wednesday.

Psaki’s acknowledgment marked a stark reversal from previous denials that Kerry was on any boat whatsoever.”

Two observations here: First, the administration’s “lie first and figure out the facts later” approach is typical. Have we ever seen such instinctive dishonesty from any administration? Second, I share Paul’s view that the less John Kerry has to do with events in the Middle East, the better. And the same goes for Barack Obama. Yesterday my tweet on that subject was, I am proud to say, Glenn Reynolds’ “Tweet of the Day”:

“On Egypt, Obama should strive for irrelevance. It’s the best he is going to do. …”

Not fans of Lurch, The Boston Herald has some fun.

… Kerry’s vacation kerfuffle is being seen as the latest stumble in what has already been a rocky five months for the nation’s top diplomat.

“Kerry is having a pretty tumultuous tenure at the State Department,” Tom Whalen of Boston University said. “It seems everything he touches is not turning out well.”

Said Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution: “I’m not sure he’s really fully established himself as the go-to guy on foreign policy in the public’s eye here in the United States. I would think he’d want to define his leadership on some of the big crises of the day. Let him have his Fourth of July weekend, but recognize that this is an issue — Egypt — where he’s probably got to step up his game.” …

Turning to President Bystander’s economic mess, CNS News tells us we have passed a record 54 months of 7.5% unemployment.

Since January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.

Today, BLS reported that the seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate for June was 7.6 percent, the same it was in May.

In December 2008, the month after Obama was first elected and the month before he was inaugurated, unemployment was 7.3 percent. In January 2009, it climbed to 7.8 percent. …

Breitbart drills down into the numbers and figures only 47% of American adults have full time work. Way to go President Part-Time!

The release of the June Jobs’ Report Friday was something of a relief for the markets. The Labor Department reported that the economy gained 195,000 jobs in June, which beat economists’ expectations. The Department also reported that the economy gained 70,000 more jobs in April and May than it originally estimated. The report, however, also provides clear evidence that the nation is splitting into two; only 47% of Americans have a full-time job and those who don’t are finding it increasingly out of reach.

Of the 144 million Americans employed last month, only 116 million were working full-time. Friday’s report showed that 58.7% of the civilian adult population of 245 million was working last month. Only 47% of Americans, however, had a full-time job. …

More on this from the NY Post. 

The fireworks had barely fizzled in the Hudson River Friday morning when a new round of celebrations took hold during a wildly gyrating day on Wall Street.

The jobs report had a “robust” 195,000 new positions created last month as the unemployment rate held steady at 7.6 percent. Hallelujah!

Unfortunately, the problem that has stunted any green shoots in jobs recovery persisted in June and shows no signs of abating.

The problem continues to be that a huge swath of the jobs being created are part-time or temporary.

Is a job really a job if it’s only for a few weeks, or if workers have to show up every morning to see if there is temporary work that day? Should one part-time job be counted the same as a full-time position? …

The Atlantic lets us know what liberals think of the job numbers.

Another month, another jobs report that’s good, but not quite good enough. 

Employers beat expectations in June by adding 195,000 new workers to their payrolls. Thanks to the government’s data revisions, we know they added 195,000 in May as well, and 199,000 in April (as shown in the Washington Post graph below). Over the past year, we’ve averaged 191,000 per month. Over the past 6 months, we’ve averaged 202,000. We’re nothing if not consistent. 

Which means we’ve still got a long slog ahead

Unemployment is still hovering at 7.6 percent, unchanged this month thanks to an influx of new workers into the labor force. Brookings projects that we’ll still be above 7 percent by the end of the year. Meanwhile, there are still 2 million fewer workers on U.S. payrolls than at our pre-crash peak. If you assume we’ll keep adding jobs at our 6-month average pace, we’re looking at 10 to 11 months before we get back to where things were before the market fell apart.   

When you account for new workers entering the labor market, the Hamilton Project projects it will still take us more than 7 years to get back to full employment at our current pace — assuming we miraculously avoid hitting another recession during that time. …

Jennifer Rubin thinks the part time employment and the climate push are related.

The addition of 195,000 non-farm payroll jobs (plus upward revisions in past months) is nothing to sneeze at. It is some confirmation that sequester has not sent the economy careening, as the White House warned. But the biggest story here is the part-time unemployment numbers.

The U-6 number (unemployed, part-time employed and underemployed) took a statistically alarming jump from 13.8 to 14.3 percent. Coupled with 322,000 part-time jobs and 1 million workers who abandoned the job market.

Why all this part-time employment? It is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is related to Obamacare, which places burdens on employers for each full-time worker. Had the Obama administration not attempted triage by delaying the employer mandate, the numbers could well have been expected to worsen (and still could).

If we want to arrest the flight from the job market and give a boost to full-time jobs, we should at the very least do no more harm. Freezing Obamacare and foregoing anti-growth climate change legislation would be helpful. Instead of raising energy costs, domestic energy development is the no-brainer move, but one the president appears incapable of adopting. …

The ABC agents’ bust and jailing of the UVA coed is back in the news according to Instapundit.

… These agents should be fired, and probably prosecuted. And if Virginia wants to move into the 21st late 20th century, it could abolish its Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

UPDATE: Reader Karl Bock writes: “Besides getting us pretty riled up here in Charlottesville, this is another example of the continued nationwide trend towards the militarization of bureaucracies at the federal, state and local level. Armed ABC agents running a parking lot sting operation aimed at underaged drinkers is just calling down a potential tragedy. There is simply no reason for those guys to be armed under those circumstances. It’s not like they were raiding stills up in the hollers of Nelson County.” Indeed.

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

There’s a new “insiders” book in DC. Since it might figure in this morning’s talk show fest we have a review from the Washington Post.

Mark Leibovich toyed with several titles for his new book on self-interest, self-importance and self-perpetuation in the nation’s capital. “Suck-Up City” was one. “The Club” was another. Finally, he settled on “This Town,” a nod, he explains, to the “faux disgust” with which people here refer to their natural habitat.

It’s not bad, but the longer I roamed around “This Town,” the more I thought Leibovich should have borrowed Newsweek’s memorable post-Sept. 11, 2001, cover line: “Why They Hate Us.” His tour through Washington only feeds the worst suspicions anyone can have about the place — a land driven by insecurity, hypocrisy and cable hits, where friendships are transactional, blind-copying is rampant and acts of public service appear largely accidental.

Only two things keep you turning pages between gulps of Pepto: First, in Leibovich’s hands, this state of affairs is not just depressing, it’s also kind of funny. Second, you want to know whether the author thinks anyone in Washington — anyone at all? — is worthy of redemption.

Leibovich, chief national correspondent for the New York Times Magazine and a former reporter at The Washington Post (where we overlapped briefly but never met), is a master of the political profile, with his subjects revealing themselves in the most unflattering light. That talent becomes something of a crutch in “This Town,” which offers more a collection of profiles and scenes than a rich narrative. Still, his characters reveal essential archetypes of Washington power.

First, there is longtime NBC news reporter Andrea Mitchell — a conflict of interest in human form. …

… Here’s how some Leading Thinkers came out: In “This Town,” we’re told that Chris Matthews and Matt Lauer have joked that David Gregory would rub out a few colleagues to advance his career. That Bill and Hillary Clinton are convinced that Tim Russert disliked them, and that they’re not wrong.That Harry Reid has “observed privately to colleagues” that John Kerry has no friends.That West Wing types suspected Valerie Jarrett had “earpiece envy” after David Axelrod got Secret Service protection, and so arranged the same for herself. And that when a national security official suggested that Obama shouldn’t skip the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner on the weekend of the Osama bin Laden raid because the media might get suspicious, Hillary Clinton looked up and issued her verdict: “[Expletive] the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.” …

… But it’s not trying to be a book for the ages — it’s a book for the moment, and it captures it well.

That moment begins with stories of frantic networking at Russert’s memorial service at the KennedyCenter in June 2008, and ends with Leibovich’s musings on Inauguration Day 2013. Other than the calendar, there is no clear arc to the tale, and by the 2012 campaign, “This Town” has lost some steam. If there is an underlying theme, one that Leibovich returns to between parties, it is Team Obama’s transformation from an above-it-all, apolitical wonkfest, at least in self-perception, into just another administration, where conflicts of interest are rife, lobbyists proliferate and outgoing staffers quickly sell out (although no one in Washington sells out anymore; they monetize their government service).

Leibovich recalls Obama’s attacks on lobbyists during the 2008 campaign, including the promise to keep them out of the White House. “It’s not who we are,” top aides intoned.

But it is who they became. In a near-parody of Washington’s revolving door, administration honchos joined up with some of the biggest corporate villains of recent years. Leibovich highlights the “unholy triplet”: Pentagon spokesman (and George W. Bush holdover) Geoff Morrell became BP’s head of U.S. communications , Treasury counselor Jake Siewert started spinning for Goldman Sachs, and OMB director Peter Orszag cashed in at Citigroup. (Morrell’s deal was negotiated by Barnett. Obviously.) And whenever lobbyists joined the administration, the White House would just “acknowledge the exception, wait out the indignant blog posts and press releases, and move on,” Leibovich writes. “That lobbying ban was so four years ago anyway.”

John Fund deals some Valerie Jarrett dish from the book. This is important, because Valerie is running the country for President Bystander.

Valerie Jarrett, the White House senior adviser who mentored both the president and first lady at the start of their careers in Chicago, usually stays out of the news. In Washington, that is taken as a sign she is far more influential than she or the White House lets on.

So when Jarrett does briefly become the news it’s significant, because it may provide a window into how the Obama White House really works.

This week there were several sightings of Jarrett in the media. She popped up as the chief defender of the White House’s sudden decision to delay enforcement of a key Obamacare mandate requiring employers to offer health insurance or face stiff fines. “As we implement this law, we have and will continue to make changes as needed,” Jarrett wrote in a post on the White House blog.  In other words, continue to keep in touch with my office as we figure out how to manage this train wreck.

Another pair of Jarrett sightings came from Mark Leibovich’s new book This Town, a takedown of insular, status-conscious Washington. The New York Times writer reports that Jarrett was resented by several top Obama aides for getting her own full-time Secret Service detail of six agents. She apparently felt threatened by the fact that fellow Obama adviser David Axelrod had been given protection after a gunman who opened fire at people at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum was found to be carrying personal data on Axelrod. “While a high-profile White House official — especially an African-American woman, such as Jarrett — could legitimately be considered a more likely target than most, several West Wing officials I spoke to were dubious there had been any special threats against her,” Leibovich writes. “They suspected, rather, that Jarrett asked the president to authorize a detail out of ‘earpiece envy.’ ‘The person Valerie felt threatened by was Axe,’ quipped one top aide.”

Jarrett goes to extraordinary lengths to manage her image in the few articles that do mention her. Liebovich writes that “a top Obama aide forwarded me a set of confidential talking points that were circulated through the West Wing when Becker was reporting her story. The memo, written by deputy press secretary Jamie Smith, was titled ‘The Magic of Valerie.’ It included an unrelenting 33 talking points” that praised her intelligence, empathy, life experience, and work ethic.  “My personal favorite ‘Magic of Valerie’ bullet point is the one where we learn that ‘Valerie is someone who other people inside the building know they can trust (need examples.)’”

Truth be told, Valerie Jarrett is indeed trusted by President Obama and Michelle Obama, who have complete confidence in her loyalty and ability to get things done. As for the rest of the White House, the seething tension about her behind-the-scenes power and self-aggrandizement continues to build. Witness the number of leaks that are starting to flow out of the White House challenging the myth of her “magic.”

And more from WaPo’s Reliable Source.

… But the most scathing assessments from Leibovich (a New York Times reporter and former Washington Post colleague of ours) are of people who are famous only within the intimate confines of D.C.’s media-political complex — folks whose names probably won’t ring a bell for even the most devoted “Morning Joe” groupies outside the Beltway. (**See also: “This Town,” review of Mark Leibovich book)

Ken Duberstein: Ronald Reagan’s last White House chief of staff and “a vintage Washington character in his own right. . . riding the D.C. carousel for years, his Rolodex flipping with billable connections,” though it’s often said of him “it isn’t clear what he does,” Leibovich asserts — not an unusual condition among Washington “formers.” Leibovich writes that Duberstein “talks constantly on the phone to his close friend Colin Powell, and even more constantly to everyone else about what ‘Colin was just telling me,’ and loves to read his name in print. Finally: “The standard line on Duberstein is that he spent six and a half months as Reagan’s chief of staff and twenty-four years (and counting) dining out on it.” …

… But the cruelest part of all? The 386 pages of “This Town” features no index. For Beltway players horrified by the idea they might be mocked — or even worse, left out — the only way to find out is to read it.

There actually is some serious news, what with Egypt, obamacare delay, and the like. Rich Lowry writes in Politico about the administration’s decision to delay the employer mandate of the “affordable” care act until after next year’s election. So, now the white house decides what parts of the law should be followed as President Bystander becomes President Pick-and-Choose.

… Explaining the decision, Obama apparatchik Valerie Jarret issued a stalwart communiqué from Central Command that should take an honored place in the annals of blatant, unembarrassed hackery.

Her message: All is well. Nothing to see here. Yes, maybe we’ve delayed implementation of the (hilariously euphemistic) “employer responsibility payments” (aka fines), but don’t worry: it’s “full steam ahead” with the health-care exchanges this October. Never mind that determining eligibility for the exchanges depends on employers reporting their insurance offerings — reporting that now won’t happen.

Jarrett portrayed the decision as about “cutting red tape.” But if you pass a horrendously complicated law placing new burdens on employers, you aren’t cutting red tape, you are adding to it. And a delay doesn’t cut red tape — it only delays it.

“As we implement this law,” Jarrett explained, “we have and will continue to make changes as needed.” But the law is supposed to be the law, not optional suggestions from Congress. In Jarrett’s view, Obamacare is little more than warrant for the Obama administration to decide how it wants to run the American health care system, one executive decision at a time.

It has become a trope among defenders of the law that its flaws are the fault of Republicans because they don’t want to fix them. They must have seen their own peculiar version of “School House Rock”: The first step in making a law is jamming a 2,000-page bill down the opposition’s throat. The second is whining that the opposition won’t fix problems inherent in the bill jammed down their throats. …

More on this mess from Yuval Levin.

Until yesterday, the administration had basically put on a brave face about the difficulties arising in its implementation of Obamacare. With a few minor exceptions (now especially notable among them the one-year delay of key requirements for the new small-business exchanges), they have pretended everything was fine, and have enabled a chorus of defenders on the left to do the same. Last night’s announcement of a one-year delay in the implementation of the employer mandate is the first serious indication that the administration sees that the wheels are coming off the bus, and is very worried about it.

Attempts to downplay the significance of this decision fail, I think, to reckon with how very difficult and embarrassing it must have been for the administration. You don’t announce something like this just before the start of a long holiday weekend while Congress is out of town if you’ve got a good case to make for yourself. The administration presumably intended to announce the decision after business hours tonight (Wednesday), not last night, but the news leaked to two Bloomberg reporters and they had to scramble some. The formal announcement came through a “Treasury Note,” essentially a blog post by the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at Treasury, which had the hilariously Orwellian title of “Continuing to Implement the ACA in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner.” The post mostly discussed the administration’s decision to delay employer reporting requirements for a year (and more on that below), and toward the end noted in passing that this also meant the employer mandate would be delayed. That’s a very odd way to break news like this. It seems clearly to be a move the administration did not want to make.

This would have been a very tough decision to come to for several reasons. Not least of them is that, as I say, it is the first major acknowledgement of a serious problem implementing this law, and it is a problem with an element of the law that is by no means the most difficult to implement. If they’re actually telling the truth that they can’t handle getting employer reporting requirements into place, how are they doing getting the exchange system into place? But perhaps more troubling for the law’s defenders, this decision is even more likely an acknowledgement of some of the economic irrationality of the law. I doubt that just implementing reporting requirements is the issue here. More likely, the administration agrees with some of its critics who have argued that this element of the law would hurt the economy, and especially employment. And they probably also saw that the pressure from employers to avoid both the reporting requirements and the mandate was going to create huge problems for their PR effort in the fall. That would make this decision a little easier to understand, but there must be more to it to explain the enormous costs and risks they’re taking by doing this.

For one thing, they run the risk of badly dispiriting their supporters going into the fall. The administration’s brazen disregard for and denial of plainly evident problems with Obamacare has been absolutely central to sustaining the morale and dedication of the law’s defenders. If that mask is dropping, they could be in for serious trouble. …

Craig Pirrong sums this up well at Streetwise Professor

… there is the Constitutional issue.  Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution directs the President to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”  For worse or worst, Obamacare is law-at Obama’s insistence.  It is his Constitutional duty to execute the law.   He should not be able to walk away from this duty, just because it is politically expedient to do so.  That would be true if he hadn’t pushed the measure into law, but it is all the more necessary because he did, to hold him accountable for the consequences of his political choices.

Obama is the Chief Executive.  He needs to perform his Constitutional duty.  His black letter Constitutional duty.  His duty to execute the laws faithfully.  To fail to do so is to undermine the Constitutional order, in particular by respecting the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.  The blending of such responsibilities is a recipe for tyranny.

More tomorrow on the continuing excitement of a country run by law school faculty. What could go wrong? They’ve done such a great job with their own institutions.

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

David French in National Review posts on our Egypt policy.

… For those keeping score at home, the Obama Administration waives human rights requirements when the Muslim Brotherhood is in power but then threatens to impose those very same waived requirements when the military — our decades-long ally within Egypt — threatens to assert control.

I erred in the title of my post by calling the policy “chaos.” It’s not chaos. It makes perfect sense in context with Administration actions from the Green Revolution to the “Arab Spring.” Allies are thrown under the bus with alacrity, enemies are wooed with money and weapons — and through it all, radicals prosper and Christians die.

Good thing for Egypt, John Kerry is trying to solve the Palestinian crisis. And failing, of course. Jonathan Tobin has the story.

Egypt is coming apart at the seams. The Syrian civil war has taken the lives of over 100,000 people and the Assad regime—which President Obama has demanded give up power—appears to be winning with the help of Russian and Iranian arms and Hezbollah ground forces. Iran has vowed to continue enriching uranium, as it gets closer to amassing enough to build a nuclear weapon. And the Putin government in Russia continues to thumb its nose at the United States by refusing—as did China—to hand over NSA leaker/spy Edward Snowden.

With all that on its plate, you’d think America’s foreign policy chief would be up to his neck dealing with these crises. But in case you hadn’t heard, Secretary of State John Kerry wasn’t paying much attention to any of that in the last few days. Instead, Kerry was shuttling back and forth between Jerusalem and Ramallah like a low-level functionary attempting to craft an agreement that would finally bring the Palestinians back to the Middle East peace talks they’ve been boycotting for four and a half years. But at the end of his fifth such effort since taking office in February, Kerry left the region empty-handed again having failed to convince the Palestinians to talk while claiming that he is getting closer to success. He says just a little more effort will put him over the top, so expect him to be back again in the near future hoping to finally achieve his long-sought photo opportunity–though there is little reason to believe such an event would actually bring the conflict closer to resolution.

We’re supposed to think Kerry’s devotion to Middle East peace is admirable, but the more one looks at the situation, it’s clear the secretary is doing more harm than good. …

Josh Kraushaar posts on the incompetence. 

President Obama returned last night from a weeklong trip to Africa, seeking to position himself as part of ailing Nelson Mandela’s legacy and generating strategic photo-ops. On the other side of the continent, Egypt is awash in revolution, with hundreds of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square railing against the American-backed president, with some chanting slogans against the American passivity in the face of crisis. The Washington Post editorialized Tuesday: “For months, as the Morsi government has taken steps to consolidate power, quash critics and marginalize independent civil society groups, President Obama and his top aides have been largely silent in public. No effort was made to use the leverage of U.S. aid to compel a change of policy.”

While the president was in Africa, Secretary of State John Kerry spent time in Israel, using valuable political capital trying to jump-start peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, at a time when few serious foreign policy analysts believe it has any chance of success—beyond garnering favorable press for trying. (The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg calls Kerry’s a “delusion of the foreign policy elite” in his column today.) This, while the administration appears utterly feckless in neighboring Syria, where civil war worsens, chemical weapons-wielding dictator Bashar al-Assad strengthens his hold on power, and American influence dwindles. “The military situation in Syria is slipping away as the president ponders,” Washington Post columnist Jackson Diehl wrote last week.

And on the domestic front, Obama was comfortably traveling on Air Force One when a Treasury Department functionary announced late Tuesday it would be delaying the mandate that businesses provide health care for their employee—a crucial component in the health care law that is shaping up as the president’s main legacy. Rather than give a speech explaining the delay, and informing the public about how this could affect their health care options, the administration dropped the bombshell news right before the July Fourth holiday weekend.

The administration is facing a crisis of competence. …

Boston Herald on yet another unintended consequence of the nanny state – student debt is flunking many first time home buyers.

They’re not yet an endangered species, but their steadily diminishing presence has some real estate analysts worried: First-time buyers are missing in action in housing markets across the country.

Traditionally first-timers have accounted for around 40 percent of purchases in the resale market. But in May, according to the National Association of Realtors, they were just 28 percent, down from 29 percent in April and 34 percent a year ago.

Big deal? Yes. If predominantly young, first-time purchasers are not entering the home ownership pipeline at anywhere near their traditional rate, at some point the system begins to choke. Owners of modest-priced starter homes find it more difficult to sell and move up. They in turn can’t buy the larger homes they crave, reducing demand for houses in the more expensive categories. A shortage of first-time buyers at the intake level eventually triggers problems all the way up.

Where are these previously dependable first-time homebuyers in their late 20s and early 30s? A new national study released last week offers important clues: A lot of them are carrying such heavy debts from student loans that they’re postponing buying houses.

Researchers for the One Wisconsin Institute found that the rate of homeownership among individuals who are paying off student loans is 36 percent lower than their peers who have no student debt. The disparity can be seen at all income levels. Among individuals who earn $50,000 to $75,000 a year, those who are still paying down student loans have a 28 percent lower rate of home ownership compared with others in the same income group. …

Andy Malcolm has late night humor.

Leno: In the middle of all his scandals, President Obama got some good news. The IRS has ruled that he can write off the first half of his second term as a total loss.

Conan: From overseas Obama calls the two lesbians whose court case helped legalize California’s gay marriage. But it got awkward at first because the women had to put Bill Clinton on hold.

Live Science tells us how fireworks work. 

About halfway between the comparatively sedate Memorial Day and Labor Day holidays, you can’t miss the pyrotechnical gloriousness that is Fourth of July. Come nightfall, thousands of fireworks displays will boom brightly across the country, celebrating America’s birthday.

So how do these festive fireworks work? A firework, essentially, is a casing filled with explosives and combustible, colorful pellets called stars. These stars are the individual “dots” that glow in the sky. The most common type of firework, and the ones you’ll likely see this year wherever you watch a civic firework event, is called an aerial shell.  

“The aerial shell is the standard one people use … it’s the mainstay on everything for professional displays,” said Paul Nicholas Worsey, a professor of mining and nuclear engineering at the University of Missouri at Rolla and an expert in fireworks who teaches college courses on the subject. [Boom! 10 Fiery Facts About Fireworks] …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

In the Daily Beast, Lloyd Green says this president’s agenda will leave behind a strong government and a weak country.

In Barack Obama, America elected a chief executive whose Department of Justice has repeatedly targeted the press, whose Internal Revenue Service has gone gunning for conservatives, and whose government has elevated secrecy into a cardinal virtue. The Obama administration’s data grab is not just about national security, or Edward Snowden. It is also an epilogue befitting a candidate who delivered his 2008 convention acceptance speech in front of a temple façade dedicated to himself, and whose faith in government and the state is at the center of his presidency.

Under the Obama Rules, the unauthorized dissemination of non-classified government information is now “tantamount to aiding the enemies of the United States.” Think Nixonism without the sweaty five o’clock shadow; Cheneyism without the dyspepsia, armed with a jump shot instead of a shotgun.

Forget Obama’s paeans to civil liberties. The Age of Obama is a celebration of ever-growing and ever-more intrusive government, with mandated healthcare, crony capitalism, and First Family daytime and late-night television appearances as the modern iterations of bread and circuses.

On Tuesday, Obama environmental adviser Daniel Schrag announced to the world that “a war on coal is exactly what’s needed,” only hours before the president rolled out his environmental regulatory scheme that would have the EPA issue more regulations, while constraining development of the Keystone XL Pipeline — jobs be damned. Talk about timing! Just a day later, first quarter GDP growth was revised downward to 1.8 percent.

Having previously been rebuffed by Congress over a carbon tax, the President didn’t propose anything to Congress this time. He simply announced what his executive branch would do unilaterally. …

Jennifer Rubin says Putin has slapped down the prez once again.

… Obama has an uncanny knack of simultaneously demonstrating a lack of spine and a lack of tact. In this case, that knack has proved doubly embarrassing. It is in this light that we should evaluate his recent pledge to cut our nuclear arsenal in hopes that Russia will follow suit. It was daft when he said it and it’s more so now that we see vividly how Putin operates.

In the future, it may be good for a president to avoid going on bended knee to the Russian autocrats to bail the United States of a geopolitical loss (as Obama did on Syria), entering into arms agreements the Russians have no intention of abiding by, slashing our armed forces and promising to cut unilaterally our nuclear arsenal. Russian leaders tend to regard such behavior as unserious or downright foolish, which is precisely how Putin now sees Obama.

Peggy Noonan will not let go of the IRS scandal. 

‘Documents Show Liberals in I.R.S. Dragnet,” read the New York Times headline. “Dem: ‘Progressive’ Groups Were Also Targeted by IRS,” said U.S. News. The scandal has “evaporated into thin air,” bayed the excitable Andrew Sullivan. A breathlessly exonerative narrative swept the news media this week: that liberal groups had been singled out and, by implication, abused by the IRS, just as conservative groups had been. Therefore, the scandal wasn’t a scandal but a mere bungle—a nonpolitical series of unhelpful but innocent mistakes.

The problem with this story is that liberals were not caught in the IRS dragnet. Progressive groups were not targeted.

The claim that they had been rested mostly on an unclear, undated, highly redacted and not at all dispositive few pages from a “historical” BOLO (“be on the lookout”) list that apparently wasn’t even in use between May 2010 and May 2012, when most of the IRS harassment of conservative groups occurred.

The case isn’t closed, no matter how many people try to slam it shut.

On Wednesday Russell George, the Treasury inspector general whose original audit broke open the scandal, answered Rep. Sander Levin‘s charge that the audit had ignored the targeting of progressives. In a letter released Thursday, Mr. George couldn’t have been clearer: The evidence showed conservative groups were singled out for abuse by the IRS, not liberal groups. While some liberal groups might have wound up on a BOLO list, the IRS did not target them. “We did not find evidence that the criteria you identified, labeled ‘Progressives,’ were used by the IRS to select potential political cases during the 2010 to 2012 timeframe we audited.” One hundred percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “Patriot” or “9/12″ in their names were given extra scrutiny. “While we have multiple sources of information corroborating the use of Tea Party and other related criteria . . . including employee interviews, e-mails, and other documents, we found no indication in any of these other materials that ‘progressives’ was a term used to refer cases for scrutiny for political campaign intervention.” …

More from AllahPundit at Hot Air.

Righties on Twitter are citing this as proof that, contra desperate liberal claims, the scandal’s not over yet. Isn’t the real significance of this that it makes the scandal worse? Three days ago, the IRS’s new acting director hinted that the agency had been targeting progressives too, a claim supposedly confirmed by the IRS’s latest report to Congress. Lefties naturally took that to be a smoking gun that there was never any political bias. Now here comes IG Russell George to say that, according to his audit, it’s all basically a lie:

‘ “Our audit did not find evidence that the IRS used the ‘progressives’ identifier as selection criteria for potential political cases between May 2010 and May 2012,” George wrote in the letter obtained by The Hill.

The inspector general also stressed that 100 percent of the groups with “Tea Party,” “patriots” and “9/12” in their name were flagged for extra attention. ‘

Rick Manning at Politico posts that timelines of the IRS scandal point to White House culpability.

… This leads a reasonable person to conclude that either the orders from the White House demanding that the targeting be discontinued were never issued, or the orders were ignored by those in charge of the IRS operation in spite of the extensive public scrutiny.

Neither conclusion is good. 

One indicates that the White House’s concern was merely about political backlash and not about the activity itself.  This wink-and-nod approach to the IRS abuse scandal gives them ownership of it, something that would not be surprising given the public calls for this exact political targeting in 2010 by Sen. Max Baucus (Mont.) and other Democrats.

If no one at the White House demanded that the action stop, in spite of admitted knowledge about the scandal by the White House chief of staff, it shows either a stunning complicity or an equally stunning incompetence.   

The other possible, but much less likely scenario, paints a picture of an out-of-control bureaucracy immune from a White House demand that it stop illegal activity and unwilling to bend to public outrage over its actions. …

Tory Aardvark writes on another unintended consequence of the liberal push against oil. It is the story of the 14,000 abandoned wind turbines in the U. S.

There are many hidden truths about the world of wind turbines from the pollution and environmental damage caused in China by manufacturing bird choppers, the blight on people’s lives of noise and the flicker factor and the countless numbers of birds that are killed each year by these blots on the landscape.

The symbol of Green renewable energy, our saviour from the non existent problem of Global Warming, abandoned wind farms are starting to litter the planet as globally governments cut the  taxes that consumers pay for the privilege of having a very expensive power source that does not work every day for various reasons like it’s too cold or  the wind speed is too high.

The US experience with wind farms has left over 14,000 wind turbines abandoned and slowly decaying, in most instances the turbines are just left as symbols of a dying Climate Religion, nowhere have the Green Environmentalists appeared to clear up their mess or even complain about the abandoned wind farms. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Jeff Jacoby starts our look at the Supreme’s voting rights decision. 

Like everything else in our polarized age, reaction to the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in ShelbyCounty v. Holder divided sharply along political lines. The court held Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, effectively lifting the burden on certain states to get federal approval before making any change to their election procedures. Predictably, conservatives and liberals clashed over whether the majority opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts got the constitutional law right.

But I was struck less by the legal arguments than by the angry denial on the left, especially among minorities, that the ingrained racial disenfranchisement the Voting Rights Act was enacted to eradicate is dead and buried. The defeat of Jim Crow is one of the great progressive triumphs of American history. But to hear the outraged critics, you’d think the court had just thrown the door open to a revival of poll taxes and literacy tests. Worse, you’d think white Americans were eager to revive them.

It saddened me to hear an emotional John Lewis, who was on the front lines of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s and is now a congressman from Georgia, blast the court for plunging “a dagger” into black political emancipation. “Voting rights have been given in this country and they have been taken away,” he said. The gains made by freed slaves during Reconstruction “were erased in a few short years.” Lewis is sure it could happen again.

Other civil-rights advocates strike the same foreboding tone. Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree insists that black voting rights are “being threatened at a level we haven’t witnessed . . . since before the Voting Rights Act was passed.” A spokeswoman for MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, says the court’s ruling “tries to disenfranchise Latinos and minorities from voting.” The NAACP’s Sherrilyn Ifill expresses alarm at a decision that “leaves virtually unprotected minority voters in communities all over this country.”

I realize that part of this is posturing for effect by those with a vested interest in provoking racial anxieties. …

Jennifer Rubin has more.

… The decision is typical in some ways of the Roberts court. It is cautious, and in this case chose to leave open the possibility that Congress could craft some formula that would still allow for pre-clearance. But in practice this may be harder than it seems. If the baseline becomes, for example, 1980, how many jurisdictions would still be subject to pre-clearance? In sum, although the court’s ruling is technically limited in practice, conservatives who find the Voting Richts Act entirely out of date and an unfair burden on states that have long since departed from their past history of discrimination may find Voting Rights Act pre-clearance severely limited.

George Will says the Court paid a complement to the Voting rights act.

… Tuesday’s decision came eight months after a presidential election in which African Americans voted at a higher rate than whites. It came when in a majority of the nine states covered by the preclearance requirements, blacks are registered at a higher rate than whites. It came when Mississippi has more black elected officials — not more per capita; more — than any other state. …

… Section 5 is now a nullity because it lacks force absent a Section 4 formula for identifying covered jurisdictions, and today’s Congress will properly refuse to enact another stigmatizing formula. On Tuesday, however, the court paid the VRA the highest possible tribute by saying the act’s key provision is no longer constitutional because the act has changed pertinent facts that once made it so.

Jonathan Tobin tells us why the decision has the left in high dungeon.

… Why then are political liberals and the so-called civil rights community so riled up about the decision? Some are merely offended by the symbolism of any alteration in a sacred piece of legislation. But the reason why the left is howling about this isn’t so much about symbolism as it is about their ability to manipulate the law to their political advantage. Under the status quo, enforcement of the Voting Rights Act isn’t about reversing discrimination so much as it is in applying the political agenda of the left to hamper the ability of some states to enact commonsense laws, such as the requirement for photo ID when voting or to create districts that are not gerrymandered to the advantage of liberals. By ending pre-clearance until Congress puts forward a new scheme rooted in evidence of systematic discrimination going on today, it has placed all states on an equal footing and made it harder for the Obama Justice Department to play politics with the law. It has also given racial hucksters that continue to speak as if a nation that has just re-elected an African-American president of the United States was little different from the one where blacks couldn’t vote in much of the country. …

It must have pained them to say so, but WaPo had to admit the scary sequester stories were not true.

Before “sequestration” took effect, the Obama administration issued specific — and alarming — predictions about what it would bring. There would be one-hour waits at airport security. Four-hour waits at border crossings. Prison guards would be furloughed for 12 days. FBI agents, up to 14.

At the Pentagon, the military health program would be unable to pay its bills for service members. The mayhem would extend even into the pantries of the neediest Americans: Around the country, 600,000 low-income women and children would be denied federal food aid.

But none of those things happened.

Sequestration did hit, on March 1. And since then, the $85 billion budget cut has caused real reductions in many federal programs that people depend on. But it has not produced what the Obama administration predicted: widespread breakdowns in crucial government services. …

The Post also had to admit Bush has helped Africa more. Power Line has the story.

George W. Bush isn’t a man to gloat. If we were, his message to Africans, as he visits the continent at the same time as President Obama, would be: “Miss me yet?”

The answer, according to the Washington Post, is a resounding “yes.” Consider this passage from the Post’s story “Bush AIDS policies shadow Obama in Africa”:

[A]cross this continent, many Africans wish Obama was more like Bush in his social and health policies, particularly in the fight against HIV/AIDS — one of the former president’s signature foreign policy aid programs. Bush poured billions of dollars into the effort to combat the spread of the disease that once threatened to consume a generation of young Africans, and as Obama has spent two days touring South Africa, the shadow of his predecessor has trailed him.

For once, Obama even felt compelled to praise Bush. And, reportedly, he’s considering a joint appearance in Tanzania with his predecessor.

Obama’s words have carried him far in America. But on matters of life and death, actions speak much louder than even Obama’s words. In South Africa, Bush’s actions helped reduce the HIV infection rate by 30 percent and put nearly 2 million people are on antiretroviral drugs.

Obama, by contrast, produced a budget last year that reduces AIDS funding globally by roughly $214 million, the first time an American president has reduced the U.S. commitment to fighting the epidemic. He has proposed additional cuts for 2014. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Mark Steyn reviews a day in the life of the Republic.

Wednesday, June 26, 2013 — just another day in a constitutional republic of limited government by citizen representatives:

First thing in the morning, Gregory Roseman, Deputy Director of Acquisitions (whatever that means), became the second IRS official to take the Fifth Amendment, after he was questioned about awarding the largest contract in IRS history, totaling some half a billion dollars, to his close friend Braulio Castillo, who qualified under a federal “set aside” program favoring disadvantaged groups — in this case, disabled veterans. For the purposes of federal contracting, Mr. Castillo is a “disabled veteran” because he twisted his ankle during a football game at the U.S. Military Academy prep school 27 years ago. How he overcame this crippling disability to win a half-billion-dollar IRS contract is the heartwarming stuff of an inspiring Lifetime TV movie.

Later in the day, Senator John Hoeven, Republican of North Dakota and alleged author of the Corker-Hoeven amendment to the immigration bill, went on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show and, in a remarkable interview, revealed to the world that he had absolutely no idea what was in the legislation he “wrote.” Rachel Jeantel, the endearingly disastrous star witness at the George Zimmerman trial, excused her inability to comprehend the letter she’d supposedly written to Trayvon Martin’s parents on the grounds that “I don’t read cursive.” Senator Hoeven doesn’t read legislative. …

… Say what you like about George III, but the Tea Act was about tea. The so-called comprehensive immigration reform is so comprehensive it includes special deals for Nevada casinos and the recategorization of the Alaskan fish-processing industry as a “cultural exchange” program, because the more leaping salmon we have the harder it is for Mexicans to get across the Bering Strait. While we’re bringing millions of Undocumented-Americans “out of the shadows,” why don’t we try bringing Washington’s decadent and diseased law-making out of the shadows? …

… As I say, just another day in the life of the republic: a corrupt bureaucracy dispensing federal gravy to favored clients; a pseudo-legislature passing bills unread by the people’s representatives and uncomprehended by the men who claim to have written them; and a co-regency of jurists torturing an 18th-century document in order to justify what other countries are at least honest enough to recognize as an unprecedented novelty. Whether or not, per Scalia, we should “condemn” the United States Constitution, it might be time to put the poor wee thing out of its misery.

Speaking of corrupt, Jennifer Rubin says we have the worst of Washington in Holder and Comey.

If you think the federal government is populated by pols without principles and/or shame, then James Comey’s nomination for FBI will not surprise you. For those who harbor some faith in the morality of elected leaders, I hate to burst your bubble once again. Comey has made a career of feigning moral high-mindedness. But a brief reflection on his conduct over the years shows that, like an average pol, he operates in a world of back-scratching and disingenuous compliments.

In Dec. 2008, he authored a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Attorney General Eric Holder’s nomination to that post. On one hand, Comey advised the committee that he was the chief prosecutor in the Marc Rich and Pincus Green matter and the infamous pardons that were a key objection to Holder’s confirmation as attorney general. He wrote: “I have come to believe that Mr. Holder’s role in the Rich and Green pardons were a huge misjudgment, one for which he has, appropriately, paid dearly in reputation.” But wait. There is a back to be scratched: “Yet I very much hope he is confirmed.” Now mind you, he wasn’t “suggesting errors of judgment are qualifications for high office,” but he sure didn’t think they were disqualifying. He gilded the lily to be sure, arguing that Holder “is a smart, humble, decent man.”

Rather stomach-turning isn’t it? …

WSJ Editors agree.

President Obama on Friday nominated James Comey to run the FBI, and the former prosecutor and deputy attorney general is already garnering media effusions reserved for any Republican who fell out publicly with the Bush Administration. Forgive us if we don’t join this Beltway beatification.

Any potential FBI director deserves scrutiny, since the position has so much power and is susceptible to ruinous misjudgments and abuse. That goes double with Mr. Comey, a nominee who seems to think the job of the federal bureaucracy is to oversee elected officials, not the other way around, and who had his own hand in some of the worst prosecutorial excesses of the last decade.

The list includes his overzealous pursuit, as U.S. Attorney for New York’s Southern District, of banker Frank Quattrone amid the post-Enron political frenzy of 2003. Mr. Comey never did indict Mr. Quattrone on banking-related charges, but charged him instead with obstruction of justice and witness tampering based essentially on a single ambiguous email.

Mr. Comey’s first trial against Mr. Quattrone ended in a hung jury; he won a conviction on a retrial but that conviction was overturned on appeal in 2006. This May, the QuattroneCenter for the Fair Administration of Justice was launched at the University of Pennsylvania thanks to a $15 million gift from the banker, perhaps with Mr. Comey partly in mind.

There is also Mr. Comey’s 2004 role as deputy attorney general in the Aipac case, in which the FBI sought to use bogus “secret” information to entrap two lobbyists for the pro-Israel group and then prosecuted them under the 1917 Espionage Act. The Justice Department dropped that case in 2009 after it fell apart in court—but not before wrecking the lives of the two lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman.

Or the atrocious FBI investigation, harassment and trial-by-media of virologist Steven Jay Hatfill, falsely suspected of being behind the 2001 anthrax mail attacks. Mr. Comey continued to vouchsafe the strength of the case against Dr. Hatfill in internal Administration deliberations long after it had become clear that the FBI had fingered the wrong man. Dr. Hatfill ultimately won a $5.8 million settlement from the Justice Department. …

Power Line’s Scott Johnson gives context to the Danny Werfel appointment at the IRS.

When the Bush administration had to contend with enormous public distrust of the Department of Justice in its last year, President Bush sought out and appointed a man of impeccable integrity as Attorney General. In his short time in office, Michael Mukasey added luster to an already distinguished career.

Contrast the Obama administration’s approach to the crisis in which the IRS finds itself today. It is embroiled in genuine scandals. At the outset Obama acknowledged the gravity of the misdeeds revealed in the Inspector General report that kicked off the scandal, but his actions since then reflect nothing but spin and coverup. Consider, for example, the case of Elijah Cummings, a faithful servant of the Obama administration. Cummings has done his best falsely to disparage and to obstruct the investigation of the IRS by the House committee on which he serves as ranking member.

Obama pretended to address the scandal in some meaningful fashion by relieving Stephen Miller of his duties of acting commissioner, although Miller’s time was up. In place of Miller Obama appointed one Danny Werfel as acting commissioner.

Who is Danny Werfel. By all appearances, he is an Obama loyalist. Like Cummings, he has done his best to obstruct the investigation with deflecting falsehoods. The latest example is the report Werfel released this week finding no wrongdoing by the IRS. Werfel’s report, however, was “incomplete.” He is peddling rather obvious falsehoods, rather obviously designed to obscure the truth in the service of his political masters.

Werfel has a brief record of public service, all of it in the Obama administration. It may have been difficult to get a bead on him at the time of his entry onto the scene. In his short time at the IRS, however, Werfel has proved himself a weasel. That Obama has sent a factotum and fixer over to the agency is another sign of the gravity of the IRS scandals.

Remember when Pickerhead said public safety goobers are out of control? Charlottesville’s Daily Progress tells us about the UVA student who bought some water and spent a night in jail. 

When a half-dozen men and a woman in street clothes closed in on University of Virginia student Elizabeth Daly, 20, she and two roommates panicked.

That led to Daly spending a night and an afternoon in the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail. Her initial offense? Walking to her car with bottled water, cookie dough and ice cream just purchased from the Harris Teeter in the BarracksRoadShopping Center for a sorority benefit fundraiser.

A group of state Alcoholic Beverage Control agents clad in plainclothes approached her, suspecting the blue carton of LaCroix sparkling water to be a 12-pack of beer. Police say one of the agents jumped on the hood of her car. She says one drew a gun. Unsure of who they were, Daly tried to flee the darkened parking lot.

“They were showing unidentifiable badges after they approached us, but we became frightened, as they were not in anything close to a uniform,” she recalled Thursday in a written account of the April 11 incident.

“I couldn’t put my windows down unless I started my car, and when I started my car they began yelling to not move the car, not to start the car. They began trying to break the windows. My roommates and I were … terrified,” Daly stated.

Charlottesville Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman read Daly’s account and said it was factually consistent.

Prosecutors say she apologized profusely when she realized who the agents were. But that wasn’t good enough for ABC agents, who charged her with three felonies. Prosecutors withdrew those charges Thursday in Charlottesville General District Court, but Daly still can’t understand why she sat in jail. …

Andrew Malcolm with late night humor.

Letterman: Remember Iran’s Ahmadinejad, the ‘Death to America’ guy? His successor Hassan Rohani is supposed to be a moderate. So, he says ‘Lingering Illness to America.’

Leno: Obama’s approval rating dropped eight points in just one month. He vows to win those people back by tracking them down through their phone calls and emails.

Leno: The LA City Council has voted to ban plastic bags. You can have plastic boobs, plastic faces and plastic asses. You just can’t have plastic bags anymore. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Ross Douthat on the great disconnect between DC and the citizens. 

THIS January, as President Obama began his second term, the Pew Research Center asked Americans to list their policy priorities for 2013. Huge majorities cited jobs and the economy; sizable majorities cited health care costs and entitlement reform; more modest majorities cited fighting poverty and reforming the tax code. Down at the bottom of the list, with less than 40 percent support in each case, were gun control, immigration and climate change.

Yet six months later, the public’s non-priorities look like the entirety of the White House’s second-term agenda. The president’s failed push for background checks has given way to an ongoing push for immigration reform, and the administration is reportedly planning a sweeping regulatory push on carbon emissions this summer. Meanwhile, nobody expects much action on the issues that Americans actually wanted Washington to focus on: tax and entitlement reform have been back-burnered, and the plight of the unemployed seems to have dropped off the D.C. radar screen entirely.

In part, this disconnect between country and capital reflects the limits gridlock puts on governance. The ideological divides in Washington — between right and left, and between different factions within the House Republican caucus — make action on first-rank issues unusually difficult, so it’s natural that politicians would look for compromises on lower-priority debates instead.

That’s the generous way of looking at it, at least. The more cynical take is that D.C. gridlock has given the political class an excuse to ignore the country’s most pressing problem — a lack of decent jobs at decent wages, with a deeper social crisis at work underneath — and pursue its own pet causes instead.

Craig Pirrong has more on the foolishness from the administration this week.

Obama gave a big speech on the environment, and specifically climate change and CO2.  The left swooned. The right raged.

Me-meh.

Not that I like the content of the speech (if you can call what he said “content”)-more on this in a bit.  It’s just that presidential speeches tend to be long on promises and calls to action, and very short on follow through.  That’s doubly or triply true of Obama speeches.  Look at all his speeches on gun control, and how little that came from them.  Like nothing.  This is a little different, because he can actually direct the EPA to do some things, and nothing in the speech was dependent on legislative approval (which is revealing in itself). Moreover, even the EPA process will be long and drawn out, and its outcome uncertain.  Obama was equivocal on Keystone XL, basically setting out a set of criteria that he will use to evaluate it.  These criteria are so elastic that it is possible to use them to justify rejection or approval, and indeed, both sides said they were encouraged by Obama’s remarks.

Righties should actually like the speech.  The fact that Obama feels obliged to pander to his base should make them happy.  Hedge fund billionaire Thomas Steyer had made Keystone a litmus test for continued proggy support for Obama.  If he has to spend time, effort, and political capital to appease the Steyers of the world, righties should be pleased.

Insofar as the content, such as it is, goes, a couple of things jumped out.

The first is the condescending characterization of the state of the science on global warming.  The snide references to the “Flat Earth Society” and the like. …

Andrew Malcolm says of course he turns to globalony. Nothing else is working.

President Obama is running out of pivot points.

So many of his bright ideas have been busts. Or worse. Let’s see, the $1 trillion jobs stimulus package that was going to produce a gazillion jobs by today.

Now, Obama’s jobs plan is a laugh line for late-night comics. Jay Leno: “Obama told MorehouseCollege graduates they have bright futures ahead. Unless they want jobs. Then, they’re totally screwed.”

That policy reset with Russia? Obama gave up the Eastern European missile defense shield as a naive sign of good faith. Got no thanks. And now he can’t even convince the Russians to get the NSA leaker out of the transit lounge at Moscow’s airport. “Passenger Edward Snowden, please check at the KGB counter if you have a minute.”

ObamaCare? Collapsing under its own weight and fundraising scandal as Democrats run from any connection to it. When’s the last time you heard even its namesake tout its value?

Virtually everything the guy touches this year turns to Shinola. He went to OhioState, urged Americans to dismiss all this silly talk about evil government out to control lives. Days later, oops, here comes the infamous ongoing series of revelations about the Internal Revenue Service harassing Obama opponents, as other government agents coincidentally knock on doors.

But the nation’s chief executive didn’t know about it. …

… jobs aren’t really Obama’s thing. Never have been. If Obama can pit more Americans against more Americans — say, coal miners worried about disappearing jobs against indebted college students who can’t find any — that suits this Alinsky acolyte just fine.

The more social turbulence and distrust the better. The less faith Americans maintain in their once-revered institutions the better for someone who wants to transform them all into something else. And still has 1,304 long days to do the deed.

Bjørn Lomborg, author of Skeptical Environmentalist, thinks we need to worry about  economic growth.

… Obsession with doom-and-gloom scenarios distracts us from the real global threats. Poverty is one of the greatest killers of all, while easily curable diseases still claim 15 million lives every year–25 percent of all deaths.

The solution is economic growth. When lifted out of poverty, most people can afford to avoid infectious diseases. China has pulled more than 680 million people out of poverty in the last three decades, leading a worldwide poverty decline of almost 1 billion people. This has created massive improvements in health, longevity, and quality of life.

The four decades since The Limits of Growth have shown that we need more of it, not less. An expansion of trade, with estimated benefits exceeding $100 trillion annually toward the end of the century, would do thousands of times more good than timid feel-good policies that result from fear-mongering. But that requires abandoning an anti-growth mentality and using our enormous potential to create a brighter future. …

Jonathan Tobin asks if the Dems really want to wage a war on coal.

President Obama may think his speech today outlining an unprecedented package of measures aimed at stopping global warming will burnish his legacy. The set of executive orders announced today was exactly what his liberal base has been yearning for throughout his presidency, and the ideological tone of his speech must he highly satisfying for a president who enjoys dictating to what he considers his intellectual inferiors and despises working with a Congress that rejected these measures. But while liberals are cheering Obama’s far-reaching fiat, a lot of Democrats, especially in coal-producing states, must be far from happy.

The president’s orders that will impose new carbon emission levels on existing power plants will raise the price of energy for everyone and harm an already fragile economy that has struggled to maintain an anemic recovery. By itself that may prove to be a political liability for Democrats running in next year’s midterm elections even if by now most Americans have had their natural skepticism about global warming alarmism pounded out of them by an ideological media. But an all-too-candid Obama advisor may have made a crucial gaffe that could kill the president’s party in coal-producing states next year. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Last fall all the bien pensants made fun of Romney’s characterization of Russia as our number one enemy. Now Foreign Policy magazine has a piece titled “Romney Was Right.”

… Mitt Romney suffered much unfair criticism last fall when he called Russia “our number one geopolitical foe.” Russia remains a country of vast natural resources, much military capability — including parity with the United States in nuclear arms — and human capital of the very highest quality. These classic geopolitical indicators of inherent strength aside, Romney noted, the leaders of Russia have also made it clear that their interests often do not coincide with American policy preferences. Though the current furore over Moscow’s willingness to shelter the fugitive Edward Snowden is eye-catching, the resurgent rivalry is more evident, and more important, in the case of Syria, where Russia can derail any effort to obtain the blessing of the United Nations for military intervention and at the same time shore up the Assad regime with a wide range of weaponry.

A determined effort to understand Russian strategic thinking about the Syrian situation could pay real dividends in terms of pointing out Moscow’s true geopolitical strength on the world stage. In my view, Russian reasoning and aims regarding Syria are nested — in a manner somewhat like their many-in-one matryoshka dolls. The first layer of motivation must certainly be defined by a determination to avoid being snookered into giving even tacit permission — as happened in the case of Libya — for international military action against the Assad regime. Yet another concern must be about maintaining a naval toehold in the Mediterranean, as is provided for the Russians by the Syrian port of Tartous.

But in a larger strategic sense, Moscow may be looking at Syria as the western anchor of an anti-Sunni arc of friendly countries in what is — the American pivot to the Pacific notwithstanding — the most important region in the world. …

“The Age of American Impotence” according to Bret Stephens. 

At this writing, Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive National Security Agency contractor indicted on espionage charges, is in Moscow, where Vladimir Putin’s spokesman insists his government is powerless to detain him. “We have nothing to do with this story,” says Dmitri Peskov. “I don’t approve or disapprove plane tickets.”

Funny how Mr. Putin always seems to discover his inner civil libertarian when it’s an opportunity to humiliate the United States. When the Russian government wants someone off Russian soil, it either removes him from it or puts him under it. Just ask investor Bill Browder, who was declared persona non grata when he tried to land in Moscow in November 2005. Or think of Mr. Browder’s lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, murdered by Russian prison officials four years later.

Mr. Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong, where local officials refused a U.S. arrest request, supposedly on grounds it “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.” That’s funny, too, since Mr. Snowden had been staying in a Chinese government safe house before Beijing gave the order to ignore the U.S. request and let him go. …

… “America can’t do a damn thing against us” was a maxim of the Iranian revolution in its early days when America meant Jimmy Carter. Under President Obama, the new maxim could well be “America won’t do a damn thing.”

Which brings us back to the Snowden file. Speaking from India, Mr. Kerry offered a view on what it would mean for Russia to allow him to flee. “Disappointing,” said our 68th secretary of state. He added “there would be without any question some effect and impact on the relationship and consequences.”

Moscow must be trembling.

Peggy Noonan reminds us why the IRS scandal is not going away.

… Again, what is historic about this scandal, what makes it unique and uniquely dangerous, is that it is different in kind from previous IRS scandals. In the past it was always elite versus elite, power guys using the agency against other power guys. This scandal is different because it’s the elite versus the people. It is an entrenched and fearsome power versus regular citizens.

The scandal broke, of course, when Lois Lerner deviously planted a question at a Washington conference. She was trying to get out ahead of a forthcoming inspector general’s report that would reveal the targeting. She said that “our line people in Cincinnati who handled the applications” used “wrong” methods. Also “in some cases, cases sat around for a while.” The Cincinnati workers “sent some letters out that were far too broad,” in some cases even asking for contributors’ names. “That’s not appropriate.”

Since that day, the question has been: Was the targeting of conservative groups in fact the work of incompetent staffers in Cincinnati, or were higher-ups in the Washington office of the IRS involved? Ms. Lerner said it was all Cincinnati.

But then the information cascade began. The Washington Post interviewed Cincinnati IRS workers who said everything came from the top. The Wall Street Journal reported congressional investigators had been told by the workers that they had been directed from Washington. Word came that one applicant group, after receiving lengthy and intrusive requests for additional information, including donor names, received yet another letter asking for even more information—signed by Lois Lerner.

Catherine Engelbrecht of True the Vote, which sought tax-exempt status, recently came into possession of a copy of a 20-month-old letter from the IRS’s Taxpayer Advocate Service in Houston, acknowledging that her case had been assigned to an agent in Cincinnati. “He is waiting for a determination from their office in Washington,” the advocate said. The agent was “unable to give us a timeframe” on when determination would be made.

The evidence is overwhelming that the Washington office of the IRS was involved. But who in Washington? How high did it go, how many were involved, how exactly did they operate?

Those are the questions that remain to be answered. That’s what the investigations are about. …

Ron Fournier, mainstream liberal journalist, says a special prosecutor is needed.

… The White House and its allies declared the scandal over. Said David Axelrod, one of Obama’s longest-serving advisers, said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show: “I think the implication that this was some sort of scheme is falling apart.”

Don’t buy it. Like Issa and the GOP, Democrats are jumping to convenient conclusions based on incomplete evidence and no credible investigation.

There is a hard truth that partisans won’t admit: Until more is known, we can’t implicate or exonerate anybody.

If forced to guess, I would say that the IRS and its White House masters are guilty of gross incompetence, but not corruption. I based that only on my personal knowledge of – and respect for – Obama and his team. But I shouldn’t have to guess. More importantly, most Americans don’t have a professional relationship with Obama and his team. Many don’t respect or trust government. They deserve what Obama promised nearly six weeks ago – accountability. They need a thorough investigation conducted by somebody other than demagogic Republicans and White House allies.

Somebody like …. a special prosecutor. …

Eliana Johnson from National Review has more.

The IRS’s release on Monday of an 83-page report attempting to explain its targeting of tea-party groups, coupled with Ways and Means Committee ranking member Sander Levin’s release of 14 “lookout lists” issued by the agency at various points between August 2010 and April of this year, have created an enormous amount of confusion about whether tea-party groups were in fact targeted, and, if so, whether progressive and liberal groups were targeted too. 

The documents are revealing, but they have been misinterpreted by many reporters, who are using them to demonstrate that groups across the ideological spectrum were flagged by IRS screeners. That is not the case. Several outlets have reported that the terms “Occupy” and “Israel” appeared on lists. Having reviewed all the lists posted by Levin, I have yet to see those terms. (I welcome corrections.)

The treatment of progressive groups cannot be equated to that of tea-party groups. …

Click on WORD or PDF for full content

WORD

PDF

Max Boot starts our look at diplomatic humiliation.

Forget “Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?” The hottest real-time game in the world is: Where in the world is Edward Snowden? The rogue NSA techie—who, in the judgment of the NSA’s head, Gen. Keith Alexander, “has caused irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies”—has fled Hong Kong and wound up in Moscow. He was rumored to be heading to Ecuador via Havana but he didn’t make the Aeroflot flight he was expected to take, leaving a pack of journalists who bought tickets to photograph an empty seat. So presumably Snowden remains in Russia at least for the time being, with rumors swirling that Ecuador or possibly Venezuela remain his destination of choice. …

… It may well be that case that a Republican president—John McCain or Mitt Romney—would have had no more success in apprehending Snowden, but the equanimity with which other states rebuff our appeals for his apprehension makes clear that the U.S. is suffering a significant loss of respect. Quite simply, the U.S. is no more universally loved than it was prior to Obama’s ascension—and now we are less respected too. As anyone who consults Machiavelli will know, this is not a recipe for a prince’s success.

Peter Wehner notes the failure of “reset” diplomacy.

… The Syrian debacle comes in the aftermath of Obama scrapping in 2009 a missile-defense system the Poles and the Czech Republic had agreed to house despite Russian threats, as a way to pacify Putin. (“The U.S. reversal is likely to please Russia, which had fiercely opposed the plans,” CNN reported at the time.)

Add to that Putin’s support for Iran’s nuclear ambitions and his crackdown at home. (The Washington Post writes that in “an attempt to suppress swelling protests against his rigged reelection and the massively corrupt autocracy he presides over, Mr. Putin has launched what both Russian and Western human rights groups describe as the most intense and pervasive campaign of political repression since the downfall of the Soviet Union.”). Taken all together, you can see that the Obama “reset”–which at the dawn of the Obama administration was described as a “win-win” strategy for both nations–has been a rout for the Russians.

With the Snowden situation, Vladimir Putin seems intent not only defying America but embarrassing her. It turns out that an irresolute amateur like Barack Obama was the best thing that the brutal but determined Putin could have hoped for.

He’s cleaning Obama’s clock.

Power Line’s John Hinderaker sums up the last few weeks for the loser administration.

The goofy techie, of course, is Ed Snowden, and the question might seem hard to answer if the Obama administration’s incompetence were not on display for all to see. The international press, belatedly catching on to the fact that our president is a fool, is having fun with the U.S. Thus, Reuters headlines, with a snicker: “Questions turn to U.S. competence in Snowden saga.”

As well they might.

“The Obama administration has spent the past few weeks arguing it can wield power responsibly after Edward Snowden unveiled its sweeping spying programs. Now the administration must prove it can wield power effectively.”

Well, it certainly can domestically. Not only can it sic the IRS on its political opponents, it can buy whatever votes may be necessary with other people’s money. Dealing with foreign countries, where such powers come up short, is another story.

“As the 30-year-old leads the world’s lone superpower on a global game of hide and seek, U.S. government officials faced questions about whether they had botched the effort to extradite Snowden from Hong Kong to face charges related to his leak of classified information.”

Actually, they botched much more than that. How in the world could the NSA allow a random employee of a contractor, Booz Allen, who had been on the “job” for only a couple of months, such unfettered and apparently uncharted access to secret materials? The fact that the NSA did so is the best argument against that agency’s being a trustworthy custodian of Americans’ secrets.

“The latest wrinkle in the Snowden saga poses a different set of questions for an administration that has spent weeks fending off questions about whether it has abused its power to collect taxes, investigate criminal activity and fight terrorism.”

Abusive and incompetent! That’s Barack Obama. …

… Barack Obama has never been a real president. He has never led. He seems to view his job duties as an unfortunate distraction from golfing and partying with celebrities. How could anyone be surprised to learn that he is an inept, ineffective president? …

 

Jennifer Rubin sums it up.

President Obama’s foreign policy has taken on a pathetic quality. Russia ignores us on the return of Edward Snowden and on ending the rule of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. China ignores us on Snowden and on cyberterrorism. The Taliban ignores our demands as we flee Afghanistan (including not to allow terrorists to camp out there). Iran ignores us and proceeds with its nuclear weapons program. The Palestinian Authority ignores us in going to the United Nations for statehood and then firing Salam Fayyad.

To paraphrase Robert Kagan and Charles Krauthammer, decline is a choice and we have chosen it. It is remarkable that the president thought he could continue to remain relevant on the world stage after he “ended” (i.e. abandoned) wars, slashed defense, allowed Iran to run the negotiation schedule, kowtowed to the Chinese and cut the legs out from every ally from Poland and the Czech Republic (which lost anti-missile sites) to Israel (condemning its building and making Palestinian demands on bargaining the official policy of the United States).

As Kim Holmes puts it, “Overall, the defining characteristic of Obama’s foreign policy appears to be preventing overseas crises from distracting from his domestic agenda. He remains a committed liberal, at least in principle, but his foreign policy is highly influenced by political expediency, which causes him to want to avoid risking overseas interventions.” it is not so much “leading from behind” as it is hiding under the bed. …

For a change of pace, Barron’s test drives a Tesla, and then test drives the stock too. One didn’t fare well.

Google “Iron Man, Tony Stark” and within the first few results you’ll find Websites likening that superhero to Elon Musk, 41, the entrepreneur behind PayPal, the rocket maker SpaceX, and the electric-car sensation Tesla Motors. The comparison’s apt. Musk is smart and stylish, and he fights planetary threats like global warming by creating spacecraft and zero-emissions cars that shame NASA and the auto giants. He’s as rich as Iron Man’s armored billionaire, too. Tesla shares rocketed this year from $35 to $115 — lifting the Palo Alto auto start-up to a market value of $14 billion at May’s end — before easing back to a recent $102, where Musk’s quarter-interest in the company is still worth $3.4 billion.

It’s possible to admire Musk’s achievements, while still wondering if Tesla’s stock market fans are viewing its prospects through 3D glasses. The towering expectations now priced into the stock don’t account for the Grand Canyon leap that Tesla must make to reach its goal of cutting its car’s $90,000-plus sticker price in half. Electric-car batteries cost a heck of a lot, and today’s Tesla Model S owes its better-than-200-mile range to batteries costing tens of thousands of dollars. Industries and governments around the world have spent billions on battery research, but few expect to trim electric-car battery costs by more than 20%-30% by the planned 2016 launch of Tesla’s car for the Everyman. Perhaps Musk will confound the industry again, but if Tesla’s next-generation car can’t go the distance at half the price, its stock will head much lower.

One ingredient that fueled Tesla’s (ticker: TSLA) tripling this year was an epic squeeze of those comic-book villains who had doubted Musk and sold more than a third of free-trading Tesla shares short. That fuel seems spent, for the moment. Traders say that the recently unborrowable shares are available again and can be had for a single-digit interest rate, instead of last month’s 90% vig. With the shorts in retreat, Tesla should trade more in line with its fundamentals.

TESLA’S MODEL S SEDAN has won every car award in sight, and test drives by several Barron’s staffers convinced us the Model S deserves the accolades. …