Internet Scofflaw

Political work at taxpayer expense.

That’s economic genius (and potential VP candidate) Christopher Dodd (D-CT), speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac:

With share prices of Fannie and Freddie plummeting daily, are the government-sponsored entities really in a position to help rescue people whose homes are headed for foreclosure?

“They’ll be fine,” Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., told reporters Friday. Dodd, who helped shepherd the bill [increasing regulation of Fannie and Freddie] through the Senate, says the companies are “fundamentally sound and strong,” noting that they hold excess capital and that their portfolios are primarily made up of healthy, 30-year fixed-rate loans.

“There’s no reason for the kind of reaction we’re getting,” Dodd added, referring to what he described as “panic” on Wall Street. Fannie and Freddie shares have experienced multiple sell-offs after an analyst report Monday indicated that they needed to raise a combined $75 billion.

It’s always charming to hear a legislator tell us that the market is wrong.

Two days later, the Federal Reserve and the White House announced that Fannie and Freddie need a government bailout.

In Obama’s speech on public service, he said this:

“We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set,” he said. “We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”

A “civilian national security force” that is as powerful and well-funded as the military. What’s this you say? What exactly does a civilian national security force do? (We’ve had one before, you know, and it didn’t work out so well.)

Also, in Obama’s America, public service would not be optional:

Obama called for greater integration with schools, so that young Americans are better prepared to be active citizens. He said he would make federal assistance conditional on school districts establishing service programs and set the goal of 50 hours of service a year for middle and high school students.

“Just as we teach math and writing, arts and athletics, we need to teach young Americans to take citizenship seriously,” he said.

Presumably, high-school students would need to get their public service projects approved with the school (i.e., with the government).  Any project that couldn’t get approval would actually lose volunteers, since not many kids are going to do their official 50 hours, and then do more for an unapproved project.  And certainly no church-related project would be able to get official sanction. So really, this isn’t just a proposal to draft kids into government-approved projects, but also a proposal to starve the lifeblood from church projects and other insufficiently progressive endeavors.

(Via Protein Wisdom, via Instapundit.)

Not to be watched by those with blood-pressure issues.  (Via Instapundit.)

Having lost their Supreme Court case on banning handguns entirely, it appears as though DC will try to keep their ban on magazine-fed guns (which, no joke, they call “semiautomatic machine guns”).  Bob Owens observes that forcing people to adopt revolvers will actually encourage the purchase of more dangerous weapons, not less.

In Canada, you can now lose your children over unpopular political speech:

A Canadian woman who describes herself as a white nationalist lost custody of her children after sending her daughter to school twice with a swastika drawn on her arm, the CBC reported.

The Winnipeg mother told the CBC she regrets redrawing the Nazi symbol after a teacher scrubbed it off. She is fighting the child welfare system to regain custody of her daughter, 7, and son, 2, who were removed from her home four months ago.

“It was one of the stupidest things I’ve done in my life but it’s no reason to take my kids,” the unidentified woman told CBC News. She is currently allowed to see her kids for two hours a week.

In a free country you’re allowed to hold unpopular views, even white supremacy.  The worst excesses of McCarthyism paled in comparison to what’s going on in Canada today.

Despite indications that the Democrats may relent and allow more domestic oil exploration, Nancy Pelosi is bound and determined to stop it:

Ms. Pelosi, who considers energy legislation a personal priority, does not appear ready to shift her view, based on discussions in a private meeting with members of the leadership on Thursday. According to accounts from those present, Ms. Pelosi said that if Democrats relented on drilling, “then we might as well pack it up and go home.”

Ms. Pelosi instead forged ahead with the effort to encourage the White House to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, even listing the White House telephone number and e-mail address on a poster at a news conference to encourage consumers to join the appeal. She said the release of less than 10 percent of the 700 million barrels of oil in the reserve would influence the price at the pump “now, within 10 days, not within 10 years.”

Sure, dump one-tenth of our nation’s strategic reserve into the market and you can push down the price of oil, for a while. Then, when you stop, everything goes right back where it was (except we have a smaller reserve for national emergencies). What an idiot. (Via Power Line.)

(ASIDE: By the same token, we could balance the budget — for a while — by selling off Federal property. Why not sell ANWR?)

But that’s not all. Democrats worry that when an energy bill comes up, Republicans will offer amendments to permit more drilling and force Democrats to vote on them. Instead, they decided offer no energy bill at all.

Exactly when Democrats will change their present course and bring an energy bill to the floor remains uncertain.

“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’ ” said a Democratic aide.

(Via Power Line.)

Sean Oxendine thinks so. I’d wondered if Obama’s new donors would eventually get squeezed dry, but I hadn’t had the courage seriously to hope so.

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE (7/17): Never mind.

When faced with a conflict between environmentalists and gays, what’s a poor liberal to do?

(Previous post.)

Megan McArdle has a discussion of the effect of capital gains tax rates on revenue collected. Her overall point is good, that a examination of capital gains revenue collection (at the very least) fails to disprove the idea that cutting the rate might have increased revenues.

Then, alas, it seems that she must establish her credibility by attacking “supply-siderism”:

Now, I’d be the last person to suggest that correlation is causation–I’m only pointing out that if they didn’t raise revenues, you couldn’t prove it by this graph. Moreover, there is a not-ridiculous argument that over the long term–five, ten years–they do raise revenues, by spurring capital formation and economic growth. This is very different from the supply sider argument that you could jam personal income tax rates to 1% and enjoy higher tax revenues therefrom.

The idea that cutting capital gains rates spurs capital formation and economic growth isn’t far from the supply-side argument, it’s exactly the supply-side argument, although most supply-siders would suggest that it would take less than five to ten years. The idea that you could increase revenues by cutting income tax rates almost to zero is ridiculous. I don’t know of anyone who believes that.

Moreover, we should remember Hauser’s Law, which observes that overall tax revenues (as a fraction of GDP) are remarkably insensitive to tax rates. Consequently, nearly any policy that improves the economy increases revenue. Whether Hauser’s Law would remain true at rates as low as 1% seems very unlikely, but it’s certainly the case that we haven’t found its bottom yet. We ought to be looking.

The ACLU has a post-Heller position statement up. It’s disappointing, if not surprising:

The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

ACLU POSITION
Given the reference to “a well regulated Militia” and “the security of a free State,” the ACLU has long taken the position that the Second Amendment protects a collective right rather than an individual right. For seven decades, the Supreme Court’s 1939 decision in United States v. Miller was widely understood to have endorsed that view.

The Supreme Court has now ruled otherwise. In striking down Washington D.C.’s handgun ban by a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision in D.C. v. Heller held for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to keep and bear arms, whether or not associated with a state militia.

The ACLU disagrees with the Supreme Court’s conclusion about the nature of the right protected by the Second Amendment. We do not, however, take a position on gun control itself. In our view, neither the possession of guns nor the regulation of guns raises a civil liberties issue.

ANALYSIS
Although ACLU policy cites the Supreme Court’s decision in U.S. v. Miller as support for our position on the Second Amendment, our policy was never dependent on Miller. Rather, like all ACLU policies, it reflects the ACLU’s own understanding of the Constitution and civil liberties.

Heller takes a different approach than the ACLU has advocated. At the same time, it leaves many unresolved questions, including what firearms are protected by the Second Amendment, what regulations (short of an outright ban) may be upheld, and how that determination will be made.

Those questions will, presumably, be answered over time.

The ACLU is standing by a “collective right” (i.e., no right at all) interpretation of the Second Amendment, that has been refuted by all nine Justices and nearly all recent scholarship, as well as the vast majority of public opinion. I wonder if they feel any dissonance claiming to be a civil rights organization while opposing some civil rights.

Democrats are waking up to the reality that they cannot continue their opposition to domestic oil development with $4 gasoline prices. (Via Instapundit.) We needn’t however, imagine that they suddenly understand economics:

Although Senate Democrats are slowly easing away from opposition to offshore drilling, it’s clear that the majority party is not giving it away for nothing.

One idea floated by Reid would require that whatever oil is drilled in newly opened areas would need to be sold in the United States.

Democrats also want any compromise plan to include investments in clean and renewable energies, a crackdown on oil speculators and proof that the oil and gas companies are fully utilizing land that is already leased for exploration.

“If they were showing in good faith that they were drilling on some of the 68 million acres they have now, it might change some of our attitudes,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.).

Investment in renewable energy might be a reasonable idea. Cracking down on “speculators” is idiocy (for one, how do you distinguish between speculation and hedging?). The other two are simply funny.

You want to require that the oil be sold in the U.S.? You go right ahead; it won’t make any difference. Since oil is a fungible (i.e., interchangeable) commodity, if oil companies want they can sell those particular oil molecules in the U.S. and sell other oil molecules abroad. (True, there are different grades of crude oil, but we already use them all in America.) The only way this would make a difference is if we actually obtained more oil in the new drilling than America’s total usage, or if there were significant cost to ship oil from the Gulf of Mexico to the U.S.

You think that oil companies are declining to drill in promising areas for oil exploration that are already open? That makes no sense. What possible reason could they have? Spite? Concern over making too much money? Geez.

POSTSCRIPT: To give credit where credit is due, Jim Webb (D-VA) is pushing nuclear power. Good for him.

(Via Instapundit.)

Fake Maureen Dowd.  I have to say, no one is more deserving of being misquoted.  (Via Instapundit.)

Massachusetts voters will have the opportunity to repeal their state’s income tax.

Radley Balko wonders:

Out of San Jose, California comes a story about a well-connected former police officer who, apparently flat-out knockered, rear-ended an Escalade, which then flipped the median and struck an oncoming Jetta.

The ex-cop’s name is Sandra Woodall. We only know that thanks to the San Jose Mercury News. The police department wouldn’t release her name. Woodall now works as an investigator for the Santa Clara district attorney’s office. Her husband is a sergeant with the local police department. And her father-in-law was formerly a lieutenant at the same department. He’s also now an investigator for the district attorney’s office. . .

The police didn’t give Woodall a field sobriety test. They didn’t ask her to take a breath test. And they didn’t take her blood.

Woodall has now finally been charged with felony drunk driving, though no thanks to the investigating officers. It took an outraged phone call to senior police officials from one of the people Woodall hit to get a proper investigation.

I’m sure Woodall will lose her job with the DA’s office. The real question is whether the officers who covered up for her will lose their jobs, too.

Will cops lose their job for extending “professional courtesy” to another cop?  That’s no question at all.

(Via Instapundit.)

Jesse Jackson apologizes for vulgar Obama remarks:

The Rev. Jesse Jackson apologized Wednesday for saying Barack Obama is “talking down to black people” during what he thought was a private conversation with a FOX News reporter Sunday.

Jackson was speaking at the time about Obama’s speeches in black churches and his support for faith-based charities. Jackson added, “I want to cut his nuts off.”

I’m not going to say that this was orchestrated; first, because I don’t go in for conspiracy theories, and second, because I don’t think Jackson is the sort to be willing to look like an ass for someone else’s benefit. However, I’m sure the Obama campaign is delighted by the incident. Being attacked by Jesse Jackson can only help him with white moderates, and it won’t hurt him with black voters. There’s no downside that I see.

UPDATE: Stephen Green goes with the conspiracy theory.

One area that I might have thought I could agree with Obama is on bilingual vs English-only education. I am not a person who is concerned about Spanish-speaking immigrants ruining our country. Courtesy of Tom Maguire, here are his remarks on the subject:

You know, I don’t understand when people are going around worrying about, “We need to have English- only.” They want to pass a law, “We want English-only.”

Now, I agree that immigrants should learn English. I agree with that. But understand this. Instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English — they’ll learn English — you need to make sure your child can speak Spanish. You should be thinking about, how can your child become bilingual? We should have every child speaking more than one language.

You know, it’s embarrassing when Europeans come over here, they all speak English, they speak French, they speak German. And then we go over to Europe, and all we can say [is], “Merci beaucoup.” Right?

You know, no, I’m serious about this. We should understand that our young people, if you have a foreign language, that is a powerful tool to get ajob. You are so much more employable. You can be part of international business. So we should be emphasizing foreign languages in our schools from an early age, because children will actually learn a foreign language easier when they’re 5, or 6, or 7 than when they’re 46, like me.

There are several different questions to ask here:

1. Should children learn English? Of course. No reasonable person could contest the proposition that your future is much brighter in America (and nearly anywhere else, for that matter) if you can speak English.
2. Should children be required by the government to receive English-only education? The principle of personal liberty says no. I think the evidence is that bilingual education hurts English skills, but if your family disagrees, that’s your business.
3. Should some children be required by the government to receive bilingual education? Absolutely not.
4. Do parents actually want bilingual education? Real data on this question would be useful. Anecdotally, in the few districts with school choice, I’ve read that they have trouble filling bilingual schools but have long waiting lines at English-only schools. Also, one rarely if ever hears of bilingual private schools. (Note, I’m not talking about schools that emphasize teaching foreign languages, but schools where primary education (eg, math) is conducted in a foreign language.) Therefore, it’s at least plausible that the problem is #3, not #2.
5. Does the issue of bilingual vs. English-only education have anything whatsoever to do with the Federal government? No.
6. Should American children master a foreign language? I guess so. It’s hardly essential, though. I studied Latin in high school, which in practical terms is rarely different from learning no foreign language at all, and I’ve never found it a handicap. In academia, everyone speaks English, and I suspect the same is true in business. If children had a choice between a foreign language or computer science, they’d be much better off with the latter.
7. Should American children be required by the Federal government to master a foreign language? I don’t really have to answer this one, do I?
8. If you are going to learn a foreign language; should it be, as Obama suggests, Spanish, French, or German? There might be a case to be made for Spanish, due to its prevalence in Latin America, but if you’re looking to the future, you don’t want to learn a European language at all. Europeans after all, tend to speak English already, and the real growth markets are in Asia. Chinese, Japanese, or Hindi would be much more useful.

So how does Obama score? It appears that we agree on #1 and perhaps #2 (although there’s no hint of a libertarian principle in Obama’s position). We also agree on #6 (grudgingly on my part). Obama does not address #3 or #4. (However, I suspect there’s good reason to worry about #3, and he probably would prefer #4 weren’t even asked.) #5 he gets wrong, and by strong implication #7 as well.

#8 is telling. How many people in the world are there with whom you can communicate well in French or German and not in English? Now, how many people are there in China, Japan, and India? (A great many Indians speak very good English, but even more don’t.)

Of course, I’m sure Obama knows this. Despite that, western Europe is where he first goes for examples, not Asia where his case would be much stronger. There is a sort of educated elite in America that thinks in European terms, and feels privately (or not-so-privately) that we Americans really ought to be more like (educated, elite) Europeans. These remarks place him in that camp (if his remarks about bitter Americans clinging to religion hadn’t done so already).

UPDATE: Obama doesn’t speak Spanish himself.

UPDATE (7/18): Actually, Obama doesn’t speak any foreign language at all.

British police side with brick-throwing thugs and arrest their victim. Rachel Lucas is not happy. (And no one does unhappy better than Rachel Lucas.) I always used to think that Margaret Thatcher saved Britain, but the Thatcher years are starting to look like just an aberration.

(Via Instapundit, who wonders if Britain is ripe for a revolution. I fear it might be, but not the one he wants.)

Public approval of Congress is into single digits at 9%, according to Rasmussen.  Democrats and Republicans both give Congress better ratings than unaffiliated voters, 3% of whom approve.

(Via Don Surber, via Instapundit.)

The New York Times has finally found the ombudsman “public editor” it needs, one who will stand by the paper no matter what.  Clark Hoyt’s latest column defends the paper’s decision to identify a CIA interrogator (who is not accused of any wrongdoing) by name:

I understand how readers can think that if there is any risk at all, a person like Martinez should never be identified. But going in that direction, especially in this age of increasing government secrecy, would leave news organizations hobbled when trying to tell the public about some of the government’s most important and controversial actions.

Left answered (and indeed unasked) is the question of why then it was so bad for Robert Novak to identify Valerie Plame by name.  Plame, after all, was a central character in a huge story about another of the government’s controversial actions.

As I’ve said before, it’s a good thing the Plame-Novak-Armitage affair has largely run its course.  After this, any more crocodile tears from the NYT on Plame’s behalf would be awfully hard to take.

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England’s National Children’s Bureau wants to brand my toddler a racist:

The National Children’s Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says “yuk” in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age. . .

Nurseries are encouraged to report as many incidents as possible to their local council. The guide added: “Some people think that if a large number of racist incidents are reported, this will reflect badly on the institution. In fact, the opposite is the case.”

These people are beyond parody.  I couldn’t even make this stuff up.

(Via the Corner.)

In my last post, I mentioned the National Journal rating of Obama as most liberal Senator of 2007. Naturally, Obama supporters find this rating inconvenient, and have challenged its accuracy. For example, Crooks and Liars claims that Obama is actually among the least liberal Democratic senators. (Their claim is based entirely on a stale link, so there’s nothing to rebut.) They also point out that in 2004 National Journal rated Kerry and Edward the most liberal senators. (National Journal’s old ratings are subscription only, so I’m taking their word for it, but in any case, it’s not hard to imagine that Democrats move left when running for president.)

Anyway, this made me wonder what the Americans for Democratic Action scorecard said. ADA is indisputably liberal, and is well-known for its scorecards. Indeed it has the distinction of being the first organization to compile them.

(ASIDE: Economists Groseclose, Levitt (famous for his book Freakonomics), and Snyder have shown how to normalize ADA ratings so they can be compared between years and chambers. The long-existence of ADA scorecards allows them to track the politics of the US Congress over fifty years. Also, Groseclose and Milyo showed how to use the normalized ADA ratings to infer a quantitative measure of media bias (pdf), in an article that made a big stir in the blogosphere a few years ago.)

So what does ADA say about Obama’s voting record? Good question. I was unable to find information on any ADA scorecard more recent than 2005, when they gave Obama a perfect score. Today, it seems that not only has ADA discontinued their venerable scorecard, but they have erased all mention of it from their web site. Every external link I found (for example) to ADA scorecards is now 404, and a search on their web site returns zero (!) hits on the term “scorecard”.

When did this happen? (At least one chapter hasn’t gotten the word yet, with a stale link to ADA’s web site.) Judging from the Internet Archive, it happened some time in early 2007. (I realize this makes me pretty slow on the uptake.)

More importantly, why? If they had simply stopped doing them, they wouldn’t have taken steps to erase their old scorecards so thoroughly. (Even some external sites that purportedly once held copies are 404 (linked here).) It strikes me that they must have decided that the existence of their scorecards was counter-productive to their aims, despite the attention their particular organization received for them.

Returning to my original point, it’s not hard to see how they might have decided that. Any centrist, conservative, libertarian, or non-partisan ratings can be dismissed as right-wing propaganda, but the ADA’s scorecard (being indisputably liberal, as well as the oldest) cannot. Liberals, unlike most political stripes, don’t like to be labeled liberals, because it makes it harder for them to be elected, and ADA was doing them no favor.

I find it a pity, and not just because of the slight political advantage the ADA’s scorecards gave my side. ADA’s scorecards are a venerable institution, and it’s a shame to see them go. Moreover, the economic work using the ADA ratings is really cool, but it’s less useful now. The methods could presumably be applied to another organization’s scorecards, but we lose the fifty years of perspective.

UPDATE: I’m embarrassed to admit that it did not occur to me to look in the Internet Archive, but a reader suggested it to me. The Archive last saw the main scorecard page on April 9, 2007. Obama did indeed get a perfect score for 2005, as did many Democrats. It appears the ADA compiled a scorecard for 2006, but it wasn’t archived. Every link on that page (that I checked before getting bored) has since gone stale, but most of them are in the Archive.

I’ve edited the post to incorporate this.

Mara Liasson points out why, everything else aside, Obama cannot today be trusted with the Presidency:

HUME: All this does raise a question, Mara, whether he is making sort of the normal changes in emphasis to position himself as more of a centrist or whether what we’re seeing here is a real flight from previously held positions into something completely new.

LIASSON: Well, that’s the big question. And what I think is so interesting is how few people seem to know which one it is.

I mean, Paul Krugman, who’s a liberal columnist, wrote this week, “Gee, is he a centrist just masquerading as someone who’s a transformational progressive figure or is he really the opposite?” You know, people just don’t know. He’s a blank slate. Because he’s so new, he is a kind of Rorschach test.

With an ordinary candidate you have a record to examine, and that gives you some idea where that candidate stands. With Obama, you have no record to speak of, which leaves you with only what he says. Trusting a politician’s current rhetoric is always a risky proposition, but it’s particularly so with Obama, who specializes in lofty and inspiring (to some), but substance-free rhetoric. (Moreover, on the occasions he does make a clear statement — such as promising withdrawal from Iraq in 16 months, or stating the D.C. handgun ban is constitutional — he won’t stand by them for long.)

(ASIDE: Obama’s voting record is even thinner than you would expect from his brief tenure in government.  In the Illinois legislature he made a specialty of voting “present”, and in the 110th Congress he has missed 43% of the votes.  (On the occasions he did vote, he voted with his party 97% of the time; earning the National Journal’s title of most liberal Senator.))

Obama makes the point himself in his book, The Audacity of Hope:

I am new enough on the national political scene that I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.

The upshot is we haven’t the slightest idea what kind of president Barack Obama would be.  This strikes me as profoundly dangerous.

This is an outrage:

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and ‘pray to Allah’ during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent – which included wearing Muslim headgear – was a breach of their human rights.

(Via Instapundit.)

I’m starting to think that 9/11 and 7/7 were actually a masterstroke for the Islamists.  Sure, the war itself has been disaster for them; they lost Afghanistan and Al Qaeda has been eviscerated.  But now we’re bending over backward to be “sensitive” to Muslims, and they’re getting accommodations (like sharia courts in western countries) they could never get before.

The Guardian reports:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% – far more than previously estimated – according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government’s claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

I don’t see why this would be an embarrassment to President Bush. The 2008 farm bill was passed over his veto:

The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve a five-year, $307 billion farm bill, sending it to President Bush for what is expected to be his futile veto.

The 81-to-15 Senate vote, like the 318-to-106 House vote on Wednesday, attracted broad bipartisan support and received far more than the two-thirds that would be needed to override Mr. Bush’s veto, should he keep his pledge to wield his pen.

Mr. Bush has said he wants to sharply limit government subsidies to farmers at a time of near-record commodity prices and soaring global demand for grain. Most legislators were not swayed by Mr. Bush’s description of the bill as bloated, expensive and packed with “a variety of gimmicks.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, defended the measure as “one of compromise.” . . .

[The bill] extends many existing federal subsidies that the president and other critics say are difficult to justify in such flush times for agricultural producers. . .

In the House chamber on Wednesday, longtime critics of farm subsidies in both parties echoed Mr. Bush’s complaints about the current bill.

“Where’s the beef?” asked Representative Ron Kind, Democrat of Wisconsin, standing in the House floor next to a poster showing sharp increases in commodity prices — 126 percent for wheat, 57 percent for soybeans, 45 percent for corn. “Where’s the real reform?” he said.

For the record, neither presidential candidate voted on the bill.

(Via Instapundit.)

Good story, here.  (Via the Corner.)

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Sharia is on its way to Britain, courtesy of Britain’s highest judge:

The most senior judge in England yesterday gave his blessing to the use of sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips said that Islamic legal principles could be employed to deal with family and marital arguments and to regulate finance. He declared: ‘Those entering into a contractual agreement can agree that the agreement shall be governed by a law other than English law.’

In his speech at an East London mosque, Lord Phillips signalled approval of sharia principles as long as punishments – and divorce rulings – complied with the law of the land.

We are supposed to be reassured that the law will hold the line on stoning:

Lord Phillips said that any sanctions must be ‘drawn from the laws of England and Wales’. Severe physical punishment – he mentioned stoning, flogging or amputating hands – is ‘out of the question’ in Britain, he added.

(ASIDE: This is crap, of course, since the government has done little to stop the “honor killings” that are already going on in Britain.) Of course, the problem isn’t just the barbaric punishments, but the idea that women will “voluntarily” sign away their rights:

Lord Phillips’ speech brought protests from lawyers who fear women could be disadvantaged in supposedly voluntary sharia deals.

Barrister and human rights specialist John Cooper said: ‘There should be one law by which everyone is held to account. ‘Well-crafted laws in this country, drawn up to protect both parties including the weak and vulnerable party in matrimonial break-ups, could be compromised.’ . . .

Robert Whelan, of the Civitas think tank, said: ‘Everybody is governed by English law and it is not possible to sign away your legal rights. That is why guarantees on consumer products always have to tell customers their statutory rights are not affected.

‘There is not much doubt that in traditional Islamic communities women do not enjoy the freedoms that they have had for 100 years or more in Britain.
‘It is very easy to put pressure on young women in a male-dominated household. The English law stands to protect people from intimidation in such circumstances.’

Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: ‘Mediation verdicts which are incompatible with our own legal principles should never be enforceable. One of the key aspects of our free society is equality. This should be understood and respected by all.’

Or if not by all, at least by Britain’s top judge.

(Via the Corner.)

Forget the war, jurisprudence, and taxes.  Here’s an issue that really matters: Sen. John Warner (R-VA) wants to reinstate the 55-mph speed limit.

This needs to get quashed right away.

Despite backing off the central promise of his campaign, to remove all troops from Iraq in 16 months, Barack Obama denies that his position has changed:

Democrat Barack Obama denied Thursday any suggestion he’s shying away from his proposed 16-month phased withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq, calling it “pure speculation” and adding that his “position has not changed” — shortly before telling reporters questioning his stance that he will “continue to refine” his policies as warranted.

The one thing we’ve learned to expect from Obama is he will never admit that he’s changing his position. His one consistent position is that his position is consistent. But, in a break with precedent, the press is not buying it.  Of course, it may be good politics to bury this shift (along with others) on the July 4 weekend.

Anyway, the problem with a flip-flop is that we don’t know what his real position is.  Even if he were genuine about his new position, which seems unlikely, does anyone think he would stand up to Pelosi and company’s demands for immediate withdrawal?

BONUS: This is funny:

But on April 10 he told an Indiana crowd it may take “16 months to two years” to remove combat troops. In recent speeches, he’s left out the phrase “16 months” entirely.

Pressed as to why that’s been the case, the White House hopeful first laughed, then told reporters it’s because he’s been “focused on the economy.”

Good one.

Between Obama and his staff, that is.  (Via Instapundit.)

(Previous post.)

Their lobbyists inserted a loophole that would make them exempt from a new Florida law:

Walt Disney World believes it is exempt from a new state law that allows Florida residents to keep firearms in their vehicles while at work, according to an internal memo obtained by a newspaper.

Under the bill, which took effect Tuesday, businesses cannot prohibit employees or customers from keeping a legally owned gun locked inside their cars, as long as the owner has a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

However, the bill states that property owned or leased by an employer who has a permit required by federal law to manufacture, use, store or move explosives would still be off limits. Disney has a permit for its fireworks shows.

The loophole was lobbied for by a group of lawyers that represented groups and businesses that included Disney, The Orlando Sentinel reports.

Someone should fight this. I can’t imagine Disney wanting the bad press they would get.

(Via Instapundit.)

San Francisco would rather set drug dealers free than deport illegal immigrants.

Scottish Muslims are “outraged” by a puppy postcard.

This Politico story will be no surprise to most Internet Scofflaw readers.  (Via the Corner.)

POSTSCRIPT: Let’s not forget that Evan Thomas has a bit of history of his own.  In 2004 he famously asserted that the media wanted John Kerry to win, and their favorable reporting would be worth 15 points in the polls.  That was before claiming in last May’s Newsweek story that the media had no ideological bias.

The Boston Globe has a devastating article on the abject failure of Obama’s housing policy:

The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can’t afford to live anywhere else.

But it’s not safe to live here.

About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale – a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.

Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing – an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.

But if the program failed to produce inhabitable housing, it did not fail to enrich Obama’s friends:

As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. . . Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama’s close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama’s constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.

The campaign did not respond to questions about whether Obama was aware of the problems with buildings in his district during his time as a state senator, nor did it comment on the roles played by people connected to the senator.

Among those tied to Obama politically, personally, or professionally are:

• Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign and a member of his finance committee. Jarrett is the chief executive of Habitat Co., which managed Grove Parc Plaza from 2001 until this winter and co-managed an even larger subsidized complex in Chicago that was seized by the federal government in 2006, after city inspectors found widespread problems.
• Allison Davis, a major fund-raiser for Obama’s US Senate campaign and a former lead partner at Obama’s former law firm. Davis, a developer, was involved in the creation of Grove Parc and has used government subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,500 units in Chicago, including a North Side building cited by city inspectors last year after chronic plumbing failures resulted in raw sewage spilling into several apartments.
• Antoin “Tony” Rezko, perhaps the most important fund-raiser for Obama’s early political campaigns and a friend who helped the Obamas buy a home in 2005. Rezko’s company used subsidies to rehabilitate more than 1,000 apartments, mostly in and around Obama’s district, then refused to manage the units, leaving the buildings to decay to the point where many no longer were habitable.
• Campaign finance records show that six prominent developers – including Jarrett, Davis, and Rezko – collectively contributed more than $175,000 to Obama’s campaigns over the last decade and raised hundreds of thousands more from other donors. Rezko alone raised at least $200,000, by Obama’s own accounting.
• One of those contributors, Cecil Butler, controlled Lawndale Restoration, the largest subsidized complex in Chicago, which was seized by the government in 2006 after city inspectors found more than 1,800 code violations.

Butler and Davis did not respond to messages. Rezko is in prison; his lawyer did not respond to inquiries.  Jarrett, a powerful figure in the Chicago development community, agreed to be interviewed but declined to answer questions about Grove Parc, citing what she called a continuing duty to Habitat’s former business partners.

Mickey Kaus calls the story Obama’s Katrina. I’m not sure that’s fair. Katrina, after all, was a mismanaged natural disaster. Grove Parc, on the other hand, is a case of human corruption that enriched Obama’s friends, who in turn enriched him personally. Also, FEMA seems to have learned from Katrina (as its performance in the recent midwestern floods indicates), but Obama has campaigned on expanding the program that created Grove Parc to a nationwide scale.

Kaus also notes that while Obama has distanced himself from Rezko since his conviction, Jarrett remains a top Obama advisor. For now.

(Via Althouse, via Instapundit.)

Politicians often measure the impact of tax-rate changes on the number of dollars they “generate” or “cost”. This is useful for generating large, impressive numbers, but it’s not actually a useful measure, for two reasons. First, tax changes never generate or cost the predicted amount. (In fact, Hauser’s Law indicates that tax-rate changes have essentially no impact on revenues.) Second, it’s the tax rates themselves — not the overall amount collected — that is relevant to taxpayers’ lives and (particularly the marginal rates) to the health of the economy.

Hank Adler, a professor at Chapman University, has looked at Barack Obama’s proposed tax increases, and notes that they are almost unprecedented in US history. (Via TaxProf, via Instapundit.)  One frightening figure is an tax increase of as high as 39% on self-employment income.

In fact, since the First World War, there has only been one tax increase greater than the one Obama proposes: Herbert Hoover’s tax increase of 1932.  Hoover’s economic policy (which Obama promises to follow in other ways as well) is now generally seen as regrettable.

The Economist reports that school choice has been successful in the most unlikely of places, Sweden:

BIG-STATE, social-democratic Sweden seems an odd place to look for a free-market revolution. Yet that is what is under way in the country’s schools. Reforms that came into force in 1994 allow pretty much anyone who satisfies basic standards to open a new school and take in children at the state’s expense. The local municipality must pay the school what it would have spent educating each child itself—a sum of SKr48,000-70,000 ($8,000-12,000) a year, depending on the child’s age and the school’s location. Children must be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis—there must be no religious requirements or entrance exams. Nothing extra can be charged for, but making a profit is fine.

The reforms were controversial, especially within the Social Democratic Party, then in one of its rare spells in opposition. They would have been even more controversial had it been realised just how popular they would prove. In just 14 years the share of Swedish children educated privately has risen from a fraction of a percent to more than 10%.

At the time, it was assumed that most “free” schools would be foreign-language (English, Finnish or Estonian) or religious, or perhaps run by groups of parents in rural areas clubbing together to keep a local school alive.  What no one predicted was the emergence of chains of schools. Yet that is where much of the growth in independent education has come from. Sweden’s Independent Schools Association has ten members that run more than six schools, and five that run ten or more.

The biggest, Kunskapsskolan (“Knowledge Schools”) opened its first six schools in 2000. Four more opened last autumn, bringing the total to 30. It now has 700 employees and teaches nearly 10,000 pupils, with an operating profit of SKr62m last year on a turnover of SKr655m.

This is the sort of success that US teachers’ unions have been working hard to prevent.