Internet Scofflaw

The bad business environment in Washington State has pushed Boeing to put its second 787 assembly line in Charleston, South Carolina, rather than Everett, Washington.

Hoffman may be running away with the race.

Mark Steyn on Valerie Jarrett’s risible sloganeering:

You would think the most powerful man in the most powerful nation would find a hard job finding anyone on the planet to “speak truth to power” to. But I suppose if you’re as eager to do so as his Senior Advisor, there’s always somebody out there: The Supreme Leader of Iran. The Prime Minister of Belgium. The Deputy Tourism Minister of the Solomon Islands. But no. The Senior Advisor has selected targets closer to home: “I think that what the administration has said very clearly is that we’re going to speak truth to power. When we saw all of the distortions in the course of the summer, when people were coming down to town-hall meetings and putting up signs that were scaring seniors to death. . . . ”

Ah, right. People “putting up signs.” Can’t have that, can we?

(Previous post.)

In light of the Obama administration’s sponsorship of a UN “human rights” resolution that exempts criticism of religion from free speech protection, Eugene Volokh wonders what the Obama administration will say when foreign officials start citing the resolution to press for action against Americans who criticize Islam. I don’t know what the answer will be, but I’m sure it will be revealing.

(Previous post.)

The House Democratic health care plan would essentially make it illegal for health insurers to charge more for higher risk customers. So if you are young, healthy, and/or avoid risk behaviors, you get to subsidize those who do not. Plus, moral hazard will encourage risk behaviors, making coverage more expensive for everyone.

Frank Luntz, the famous Republican pollster/strategist, recommended last May that Republicans confine their attacks to Congressional Democrats. Attacking President Obama was politically dangerous. Five months later, matters have changed. Although Luntz says Congress is still a riper target than Obama, attacking Obama no longer carries any risk.

(Via Instapundit.)

The House Democrats’ health plan would withhold some federal funds from states that have enacted tort reform.

The latest administration to promise to be the most transparent ever:

The White House on Friday released a small list of visitors to the White House since President Barack Obama took office in January, including lobbyists, business executives, activists and celebrities.

No previous administration has released such a list, though the information out so far is incomplete. Only about 110 names —and 481 visits —out of the tens of thousands who have visited the Obama White House were made public. Like the Bush administration before it, Obama is arguing that any release is voluntary, not required by law, despite two federal court rulings to the contrary.

Under the Obama White House’s policy, most names of visitors from Inauguration Day in January through the end of September will never be released. The White House says it plans to release most of the names of visitors from October on, and that release is due near the end of the year.

(Emphasis mine.)

Transparency to begin soon! I believe we’ve heard that one before.

(Via Instapundit.)

Newly revealed emails prove that the White House was directly involved in the NEA conference call in which artists were asked to create propaganda for the Obama administration.

(Via Instapundit.)

Again, the CBO points out that its analysis of the House Democrats’ health care plan is required to assume that the law remains exactly as written in the bill. As everyone ought to know, this is not even intended to be true. In order to get the desired mark from the CBO, various parts of health care reform (notably the Medicare fix) have been broken off into other bills that will be concerned separately.

(Via Instapundit.)

(Via Instapundit.)

If you’ve lost Katie Couric . . . well, maybe it doesn’t really matter.

(Via Instapundit.)

That’s the cost of the House Democrats’ health care bill according to the CBO’s numbers. And that doesn’t even include a Medicare reimbursement fix, which would have to be added later.

(Via the Corner.)

The White House attacks Edmunds.com, a car web site. I guess these these guys just can’t stop themselves.

(Via Instapundit.)

The AP reports:

The Medicare end-of-life planning provision that 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said was tantamount to “death panels” for seniors is staying in the latest Democratic health care bill unveiled Thursday.

The end-of-life planning provision is a bit sinister, and it’s appallingly tone-deaf for House Democrats to include it, but it is not the provision that gives rise to concerns about “death panels”.

The provision that relates to “death panels” is the Independent Medicare Advisory Council (IMAC), which would have the power to enact cuts to Medicare. People are rightly concerned that the IMAC would either create or itself become a care-rationing board similar to the UK’s NICE. One reason people are concerned is that President Obama has said that an “independent group” will be giving “guidance” about cutting care for the elderly.

I wrote here about the reasons that concerns over “death panels” are not overblown.

USA Today reports:

More than 40% of President Obama’s top-level fundraisers have secured posts in his administration, from key executive branch jobs to diplomatic postings in countries such as France, Spain and the Bahamas, a USA TODAY analysis finds.

Twenty of the 47 fundraisers that Obama’s campaign identified as collecting more than $500,000 have been named to government positions, the analysis found. . .

Nearly a year after he was elected on a pledge to change business-as-usual in Washington, Obama also has taken a cue from his predecessors and appointed fundraisers to coveted ambassadorships, drawing protests from groups representing career diplomats.

A separate analysis by the American Foreign Service Association, the diplomats’ union, found that more than half of the ambassadors named by Obama so far are political appointees. . . That’s a rate higher than any president in more than four decades, the group’s data show, although that could change as the White House fills more openings. Traditionally about 30% of top diplomatic jobs go to political appointees, and roughly 70% to veteran State Department employees.

More political payoffs than any president in 40 years. That goes back to Lyndon Johnson.

(Via Instapundit.)

Attorney General Holder tried to kill an ad critical of the president:

President Obama isn’t taking kindly to a television ad that criticizes his opposition to a popular scholarship program for poor children, and his administration wants the ad pulled.

Former D.C. Councilmember Kevin Chavous of D.C. Children First said October 16 that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder had recently approached him and told him to kill the ad.

(Via Instapundit.)

Does anyone still think that these guys are defenders of civil rights? To them, civil rights are for liberals, and possibly terrorists, but not conservatives and libertarians. We’re supposed to keep our mouths shut.

New Jersey Democrats are asking that absentee ballots be sent out to the 2,300 applicants who were rejected because their signature didn’t match the voter registration.

News flash! Becoming president disrupts your personal life:

President Barack Obama says only once since Jan. 20 has White House life annoyed him.

It was the Saturday in May when, trying to be a good husband, he kept a campaign promise to take his wife, Michelle, to New York after the election for one of their “date nights” – dinner and a Broadway play. . .

“If I weren’t president, I would be happy to catch the shuttle with my wife to take her to a Broadway show, as I had promised her during the campaign, and there would be no fuss and no muss and no photographers,” [Obama] said. “That would please me greatly.”

Presidents, however, don’t travel by any means other than secure government aircraft or vehicles.

Obama added: “The notion that I just couldn’t take my wife out on a date without it being a political issue was not something I was happy with.”

(Via Instapundit.)

Rasmussen comments on that wierdo Washington Post poll that has the public option gaining while everyone else has it falling:

Polling on the health care topic by many firms has created some confusion. In particular, polls on the “public option” show a wide variety of results. A recent poll in The Washington Post found that 57% support a government-run health insurance company to compete with private insurers, but our polling shows that support is very soft. In fact, people are strongly opposed to a public option if they think it could lead employers to drop the existing coverage they provide employees. The fact that results are so subject to change based upon minor differences in question wording suggests that voters do not have firm opinions on the public option.

In fact, 63% say that we should not have a public option if people are forced to change their insurance, and 53% say it’s likely that would happen. (They’re right.)

The public option is a loser in public opinion, so it’s being renamed. It’s now the “consumer option“.

The Washington Times reports:

During his first nine months in office, President Obama has quietly rewarded scores of top Democratic donors with VIP access to the White House, private briefings with administration advisers and invitations to important speeches and town-hall meetings.

High-dollar fundraisers have been promised access to senior White House officials in exchange for pledges to donate $30,400 personally or to bundle $300,000 in contributions ahead of the 2010 midterm elections, according to internal Democratic National Committee documents obtained by The Washington Times.

One top donor described in an interview with The Times being given a birthday visit to the Oval Office. Another was allowed use of a White House-complex bowling alley for his family. Bundlers closest to the president were invited to watch a movie in the red-walled theater in the basement of the presidential mansion.

Fox News has the White House’s rebuttal. (As far as I can tell, no one else has picked up the story.)

James Taranto is harsh but fair:

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN last week:

[The mess in Afghanistan is all Bush’s fault. Blah blah blah.]

Hang on a second. It has now been 51 weeks since Obama was elected president, and more than nine months since he took office, and he’s just now getting around to asking the “questions . . . that have never been asked”?

But that’s not really fair to Obama. After all, he has a busy schedule, what with golf games and pitching the International Olympic Committee and date nights and Democratic fund-raisers and health care and the U.N. Security Council and Sunday morning talk shows and saving the planet from global warming and celebrating the dog’s birthday and defending himself against Fox News and all.

“I will never rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm’s way,” FoxNews.com quotes the president as telling servicemen. As for the servicemen who are already in harm’s way: Jeez, guys, be patient! He’ll figure out what to do about Afghanistan as soon as he gets around to it.

President Obama has priorities. Fighting the Taliban has to take a back seat to fighting Fox News. And golf:

President Obama has already caught up with predecessor George W. Bush in one area: Rounds of golf.

The Oval’s good friend Mark Knoller of CBS News reports that Obama on Sunday played his 24th round of golf since his inauguration Jan. 20 — matching Bush’s presidential total, which he racked up in two years and 10 months. Obama’s latest round also got attention because it included a woman, domestic policy adviser Melody Barnes.

President Bush played his last round in 2003, telling reporters he didn’t think it was appropriate to play the game with the U.S. at war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

(Via Instapundit.)

Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to the President of the United States of America, says that the White House — the most powerful office on face of the earth — is going “to speak truth to power” in its war with Fox News. I believe that the phrase is now officially meaningless.

POSTSCRIPT: As long as I’m picking apart Jarrett’s senseless sloganeering, here’s another: She says the American people are too smart for nonsense and distortions. What? That makes no sense. Smart people, after all, can identify nonsense and distortions. What she clearly means to say is the American people aren’t smart enough to distrust Fox News like they are supposed to.

UPDATE: John Hinderaker writes:

I agree that Jarrett’s claim is ridiculous, but I think it has a history. Isn’t it a time-honored tradition for socialist governments, both national and Marxist, to continue to campaign against the “powerful” on behalf of the dispossessed, long after they have assumed control and have shot, imprisoned or cowed the supposedly “powerful?” It seems to me that Jarrett, knowingly or not, was placing the administration in a Peronist or Castroite tradition.

Politico reports:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Tuesday that he’d back a GOP filibuster of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s health care reform bill.

Lieberman, who caucuses with Democrats and is positioning himself as a fiscal hawk on the issue, said he opposes any health care bill that includes a government-run insurance program — even if it includes a provision allowing states to opt out of the program, as Reid has said the Senate bill will. . .

His comments confirmed that Reid is short of the 60 votes needed to advance the bill out of the Senate, even after Reid included the opt-out provision.

(Via the Corner.)

All this talk of an “opt-out” is a fraud. In any particular state, either legislative chamber or the governor could impose the public option by blocking the resolution to opt-out. Only in nine states are Republicans fully in control (Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Utah), and some of those are decidedly iffy. So at least 41 states, and probably more, would get stuck with the public option. Moreover, states couldn’t decide later to opt-out; the opportunity expires in 2014.

An opt-in would be much more serious, but still unacceptable. The federal government has powerful tools of coercion at its disposal. (There never was a national speed limit; the federal government coerced individual states into imposing it.) Beyond that, states that opt-out would still be paying the taxes, and would get the whole rest of the deal (mandates, Medicare cuts, etc.).

The whole point to the “opt-out” is as a political fig leaf. Joe Lieberman just blew the whistle on it.

POSTSCRIPT: The Intrade contract on a public option passing this year is trading at 8 (that is, an 8% likelihood), down from 20 yesterday. By the middle of 2010, the likelihood is between 12 and 15, down from 25 or so yesterday.

In today’s UK, if you express an unpopular opinion, you can expect a visit from the police:

After witnessing a gay pride march, committed Christian Pauline Howe wrote to the council to complain that the event had been allowed to go ahead.

But instead of a simple acknowledgement, she received a letter warning her she might be guilty of a hate crime and that the matter had been passed to police.

Two officers later turned up at the frightened grandmother’s home and lectured her about her choice of words before telling her she would not be prosecuted.

There’s no need to prosecute. I’m sure she learned her lesson.

(Via the Corner.)

The UN Human Rights Council is investigating whether the high cost of housing in New York City violates human rights. Good grief.

The “unapproved by Barack Obama” label is paying off big time for Fox News, with ratings up 9% (and 15% among the 25-54 demographic). That’s just from September 28 to October 11.

Also, CNN’s has tumbled over the last year, with ratings down a disastrous 52% (and 62% among 25-54 year olds). (Via Instapundit.) Anderson Cooper, the journalist who invented the “teabagger” insult for tea-party participants, is down an astounding 72% (79%).

The Washington Times reports:

The White House has told Congress it will reject calls for many of President Obama’s policy czars to testify before Congress – a decision senators said goes against the president’s promises of transparency and openness and treads on Congress’ constitutional mandate to investigate the administration’s actions.

Sen. Susan Collins, Maine Republican, said White House counsel Greg Craig told her in a meeting Wednesday that they will not make available any of the czars who work in the White House and don’t have to go through Senate confirmation. She said he was “murky” on whether other czars outside of the White House would be allowed to come before Congress. . .

In a letter last week to Miss Collins, though, Mr. Craig explained that the White House is not trying to circumvent Congress.

“We recognize that it is theoretically possible that a president could create new positions that inhibit transparency or undermine congressional oversight. That is simply not the case, however, in the current administration,” Mr. Craig wrote.

Mr. Craig said the new positions Mr. Obama has created within the White House “are solely advisory in nature” and have no independent authority.

That is a complete lie, at least in regards to some of the czars. Ken Feinberg, the pay czar, was recently all over the news for ordering cuts in executive pay, which he did without any higher approval. Senators also pointed to Carol Browner, the climate czar, and Nancy-Ann DeParle, the health czar, who they said seemed to be operating independently.

(Via Hot Air.)

A new Gallup poll confirms an earlier result (that I didn’t notice at the time) that conservatives are now the most numerous group in American politics. Conservatives outnumber moderates 40% to 36%. Liberals lag far behind at 20%. The poll also shows the public moving right on a variety of issues. Moreover, a week ago a Rasmussen poll showed that Americans trust Republicans more than Democrats on every issue on which Rasmussen polls.

Nevertheless, Republicans continue to trail Democrats on party identification (33.4% to 39%). So despite that fact that most Americans “should” be Republicans, most are not.

Why is this? My guess is that it’s a combination of two factors. The first factor is a severe problem with the GOP brand. I think many voters have noticed that over the last decade the GOP did not govern according to a set of principles. Accordingly, they associate the Republican party with a group of people, rather than a set of principles. Since those people are a bunch of politicians, this reflects poorly on the brand.

The second factor is the strong individualist streak among conservatives, reinforced by the fact that Gallup’s poll doesn’t distinguish between conservatives and libertarians. Individualists often tend not to be joiners, so they might not identify as Republicans even while they tend to vote that way.

It’s voting patterns, rather than party identification, that determines the direction our government takes, so it’s the first factor that is important. The GOP needs to repair its brand, and that means they need to start governing by principle. The NY-23 debacle suggests that they aren’t serious yet.

(Via Hot Air.)

The White House is continuing to push back against the allegation, leveled by Fox News and CBS, that the Obama administration tried to exclude Fox News from interviews with pay czar Ken Feinberg. The White House is pushing two stories, and I’m not sure which one (or both) is their current explanation.

One story says that the decision was made by a low-level Treasury staffer. Robert Gibbs reportedly admitted that doing so was a mistake. The White House now insists that Gibbs did not apologize, but that seems to be mere hair-splitting, since Gibbs does not deny the exchange but merely says that they have no reason to apologize.

The other story says that Fox wasn’t granted the interview because they never requested one. That’s not very plausible (why on earth wouldn’t they) and it’s flatly contradicted by Fox.

The second story sounds like a lie, but the first could be true. It’s also consistent with the Treasury Department’s statement that “there was no plot to exclude Fox News,” in which the word “plot” leaves open that this was one person acting on his own. The White House seems to feel that this excuses them, but the fact is, that staffer was doubtless doing what he thought he was supposed to do, given the White House’s official position on Fox News.

The other thing that is interesting is that I’ve seen in a few places (here and here, for example) that some of the other pool networks are privately saying that they stood up for Fox for their own reasons, and not out of journalistic integrity. Ooo-kay. Duly noted.

Here’s Major Garrett’s report on the controversy:

(Previous post.)

UPDATE (8/2/2011): Emails show that the White House did make a specific effort to exclude Fox News, and their denials were lies.

Free golf carts, courtesy of the Democratic stimulus package:

Thanks to the federal tax credit to buy high-mileage cars that was part of President Obama’s stimulus plan, Uncle Sam is now paying Americans to buy that great necessity of modern life, the golf cart.

The federal credit provides from $4,200 to $5,500 for the purchase of an electric vehicle, and when it is combined with similar incentive plans in many states the tax credits can pay for nearly the entire cost of a golf cart. Even in states that don’t have their own tax rebate plans, the federal credit is generous enough to pay for half or even two-thirds of the average sticker price of a cart, which is typically in the range of $8,000 to $10,000. “The purchase of some models could be absolutely free,” Roger Gaddis of Ada Electric Cars in Oklahoma said earlier this year. “Is that about the coolest thing you’ve ever heard?” . . .

The IRS has also ruled that there’s no limit to how many electric cars an individual can buy, so some enterprising profiteers are stocking up on multiple carts while the federal credit lasts, in order to resell them at a profit later.

They say there’s no such thing as a free lunch, but with the Democrats in power, sometimes there is.

Top employees bail out of financial firms ahead of pay cuts. Who could have predicted such a thing?

Now that the government owns these companies, one might have thought it would want them to succeed. Good thing our leaders are more sophisticated than that.

The Democratic National Committee and others on the left say that those who are critical of President Obama’s Nobel prize hate America, and in fact support terrorism. A new Gallup poll shows that our country is chock full of these America-hating wingnuts.

By a two-to-one margin (61-34), Americans say that the Obama did not deserve the prize. That’s not just Republicans and independents, but 36% of Democrats as well. Further, a slight plurality (47-46) are not happy that he won the award.  That includes strong majorities of Republicans and independents, and even one-out-of-five Democrats.

If the DNC is to be believed, America hatred is surprisingly mainstream.

(Via Hot Air.)

The Washington Post reports:

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt favors net neutrality, but only to a point: While the tech player wants to make sure that telecommunications giants don’t steer Internet traffic in a way that would favor some devices or services over others, he also believes that it would be a terrible idea for the government to involve itself as a regulator of the broader Internet.

“It is possible for the government to screw the Internet up, big-time,” he said. Google is strong enough as a company to weather any possible outcome on the issue, he said. But what he worries about “is the next start-up.”

In other words, Google is concerned about regulation (and rightly so, of course), but they do support regulation when it favors them.

(Via Hot Air.) (Previous post.)

The New York Times explains why the White House decided to declare war on Fox News:

By the following weekend, officials at the White House had decided that if anything, it was time to take the relationship to an even more confrontational level. The spur: Executives at other news organizations, including The New York Times, had publicly said that their newsrooms had not been fast enough in following stories that Fox News, to the administration’s chagrin, had been heavily covering through the summer and early fall — namely, past statements and affiliations of the White House adviser Van Jones that ultimately led to his resignation and questions surrounding the community activist group Acorn. . .

“It was an amalgam of stories covered, and our assessment of how others were dealing with those stories, that caused us to comment,” Mr. Axelrod said in describing the administration’s thinking.

(Emphasis mine.)

Axelrod says explicitly what Brit Hume conjectured a few days ago: the White House’s problem is that Fox is breaking stories and the rest of the press is taking them up.

So, as noted at the Corner, their problem is not that Fox isn’t a real news organization. On the contrary, their problem is that it is.

Today the White House announced that pay czar Ken Feinberg would be available for interviews with every member of the White House pool (that is, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox) except Fox News. This was an overreach even for the Obama-friendly networks, who showed some integrity and refused to participate unless Fox was invited as well. The White House relented, but in a final show of pettiness, cut back the length of the interviews from 5 minutes to only 2 minutes.

UPDATE: An anonymous Treasury Department spokeperson is denying that this happened. Well, if you won’t take Fox’s word for it, how about CBS (cue to 1:00):

JEFF GREENFIELD: And on Thursday the Treasury Department tried to exclude Fox News from pool coverage of interviews with one of its key officials. It backed down after strong protests from the press.

CHIP REID: All the networks said, that’s it. You’ve crossed the line.

UPDATE: You can read the story in text here. (Via Newsbusters.)

UPDATE: Some are suggesting that this wasn’t a show of integrity after all. Well, even if they did the right thing for the wrong reason, it’s good enough for me.

Mark Steyn writes:

Newt really needs to re-think his support for Dede Scozzafava. This isn’t RINO but DIABLO – Democrat In All But Label Only. It’s not one of those “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” bi-swinger deals — not when you’re pro-“stimulus”, pro-cash-for-clunkers. And the reductive argument that her sole redeeming value – a willingness to vote for John Boehner as Speaker — is reason enough to support her is silly in a special election. If he’s ever Speaker, Boehner won’t be till January 2011, and it’s 12 months premature for Newt to be telling voters they need to suck it up and accept that a handful of Jim-Jeffords-in-embryo-form are necessary for the Republican tide.

But beyond all that there’s now a competence issue: Since the cop-calling and its aftermath, the candidate has demonstrated that there is no case for her whatsoever. At this stage in the nation’s affairs, Washington doesn’t need another incoherent buffoon insulated by a phalanx of thin-skinned twerps already guarding her like a 30-year incumbent for whom routine questions are an outrageous form of lèse-majesté. By any reasonable measure, this candidate is unworthy of a seat in the national legislature.

The tea parties and town halls were a response not just to Obama but to the 2006/2008 GOP.

Hear, hear. The Scozzafava nomination is worrying sign that the GOP has not yet learned its lesson. With so little at stake, the special election is a perfect opportunity to educate them.

Fox News reports:

White House pay czar Kenneth Feinberg was the driving force behind the move to order steep pay cuts from bailed-out executives, and did not even seek the president’s approval before making his decision.

The Treasury Department is expected to formally announce in the next few days a plan to slash annual salaries by about 90 percent from last year for the 25 highest-paid executives at the seven companies that received the most from the Wall Street bailout. Total compensation for the top executives at the firms would decline, on average, by about 50 percent.

The sweeping decision, though, came from Feinberg and not from President Obama.

One official told Fox News that Feinberg from the start had the independent authority to work with companies and make such a call. Obama was never required to sign off before final decisions were made.

I’m not one to get exercised over President Obama’s umpteen czars. If the president wants to hire someone to help coordinate policy in a certain area, that’s his business.

But that’s assuming that the czar is merely coordinating policy. It’s another matter entirely if the czar has independent executive authority (particularly for something as outrageous as dictating salaries). In that case, he needs to face Senate confirmation, and the “pay czar” does not. That is unacceptable, and I would have thought it unconstitutional as well.

According to Gallup, the slide in President Obama’s approval rating (-9 points) between the second and third quarter of his administration is one of the largest first-year slides since polling began, and the largest ever between the second and third quarters. In absolute terms, Obama’s third-quarter approval rating of 53% is the second-lowest in history (only Clinton’s was lower, at 48%).

(Via Hot Air.)

Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, castigates the organization he founded for its attacks on Israel.

Ron Bloom, White House manufacturing czar and car czar:

Generally speaking we get the joke: We know that the free market is nonsense. We know that the whole point is to game the system; to beat the market, or at least find someone to pay a lot of money because they’re convinced that there is a free lunch. We know this is largely about power, that it’s an adults-only, no-limit game. We kind of agree with Mao that political power comes largely from the barrel of a gun. And we get it, that if you want a friend you should get a dog.

(Transcript and emphasis mine.)

The context for these remarks are not clear from the clip, but unless the whole piece is a quote of someone else, it’s hard to see how the context could make these remarks any less damnable.

This commercial run by the Virginia GOP is really clever, taking Creigh Deeds’s endorsement from the Washington Post and making it a negative:

(Via Hot Air.)

Roll Call reports:

Senate Finance ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is raising concerns that a Department of Health and Human Services Web site that urges visitors to send an e-mail to President Barack Obama praising his health care reform plan may violate rules against government-funded propaganda.

The Web page is accessed through a “state your support” button featured prominently on the HHS Web site and carries a disclaimer that the Web site is maintained by HHS.

In a letter sent to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Tuesday, Grassley warned that “any possible misuse of appropriated funds by the executive branch to engage in publicity or propaganda in support of an Administration priority is a matter that must be investigated and taken seriously,” noting that in 2005 Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) argued that “the use of official funds for similar activities were ‘underhanded tactics’ and that these tactics ‘are not worthy of our great democracy.’”

(Via the Corner.)

A troubling question from Shannon Love:

Watching so many serious journalists and leftist political figures fall for the fake Rush Limbaugh quotes tells us something very frightening about what leftists believe true about non-leftist America. I say, “frightening,” because we evaluate the level of threat that others pose based on our understanding of the amorality of their beliefs. Then we rationalize the harshness of the methods we are willing to employ against them based on our threat assessment. . .

Given this, what does it portend for American non-leftists that a wide and powerful swath of the American left apparently believes it quite credible that a major media figure with an audience in the tens of millions looks back fondly on slavery and approves of political assassination? What draconian methods could those leftists rationalize using if they really believe they are fighting people with such values?

Indeed, but we needn’t merely speculate. For example, I know leftists personally that admit Michael Moore is a fabulist, but support him anyway because he attacks the right people. Mind you, I’m not talking about those who make a business of lying, like politicians and journalists, but ordinary people.

(Via Instapundit.)

USA Today reports:

You floss regularly, yield to oncoming traffic and use your credit cards judiciously, dutifully paying off your balance every month. You may believe that your exemplary behavior shields you from unexpected credit card fees. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

[Various credit cards are raising feeson those who use credit responsibly.]

These fees are the credit card industry’s response to credit card legislation that will, among other things, restrict credit card issuers’ ability to raise interest rates on existing balances. Credit card issuers are looking for ways to raise income before the new rules take effect in February. During the first quarter, 27% of credit card offers included annual fees, up from 18% a year earlier, according to Synovate Mail Monitor, a credit card direct-mail tracking service.

This is exactly what any economist would have predicted would happen in response to the credit card bill. But some people are actually surprised:

Curtis Arnold, founder of CardRatings.com, says he expected credit card issuers to raise annual fees after the legislation was enacted. What he didn’t expect, he says, “was that good customers were going to be hit.”

Didn’t expect it? Why on earth not? The credit card bill limited the ability of card issuers to assign greater costs to greater credit risks. Where did he think the costs were going to go?

(Via Instapundit.)

A bizarre story from Capitol Hill:

Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-N.Y.) locked Republicans out of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee room to keep them from meeting when Democrats aren’t present.

Towns’ action came after repeated public ridicule from the leading Republican on the committee, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), over Towns’s failure to launch an investigation into Countrywide Mortgage’s reported sweetheart deals to VIPs.

For months Towns has refused Republican requests to subpoena records in the case. Last Thursday Committee Republicans, led by Issa, were poised to force an open vote on the subpoenas at a Committee mark-up meeting. The mark-up was abruptly canceled. Only Republicans showed up while Democrats chairs remained empty.

Republicans charged that Towns cancelled the meeting to avoid the subpoena vote. Democrats first claimed the mark-up was canceled due to a conflict with the Financial Services Committee. Later they said it was abandoned after a disagreement among Democratic members on whether to subpoena records on the mortgage industry’s political contributions to Republicans.

A GOP committee staffer captured video of Democrats leaving their separate meeting in private chambers after the mark-up was supposed to have begun. He spliced the video to other footage of the Democrats’ empty chairs at the hearing room, set it to the tune of “Hit the Road, Jack” and posted it on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s minority webpage, where it remained as of press time.

Towns’s staffers told Republicans they were not happy about the presence of the video camera in the hearing room when they were not present. Issa’s spokesman said the Democrats readily acknowledged to Republicans that they changed the locks in retaliation to the videotape of the Democrats’ absence from the business meeting even though committee rules allow meetings to be taped.

To summarize: Towns locked the room after Republicans used the room’s cameras to embarrass Democrats for abruptly cancelling a meeting and lying about the reason why. The underlying controversy was the Democrats’ refusal to investigate the Countrywide scandal, in which key Democrats are implicated.

Power Line has Issa’s video. (It’s actually not all that good.)

(Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: No word on whether Towns will unlock the door, but he is reportedly giving in on subpoenas for Countrywide.

If you thought that the United States would never support blasphemy laws, you would be disappointed:

While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians. Though the resolution was passed unanimously, European and developing countries made it clear that they remain at odds on the issue of protecting religions from criticism. It is viewed as a transparent bid to appeal to the “Muslim street” and our Arab allies, with the administration seeking greater coexistence through the curtailment of objectionable speech. . . In the resolution, the administration aligned itself with Egypt, which has long been criticized for prosecuting artists, activists and journalists for insulting Islam.

A free-speech resolution with a blasphemy exception is worse than no resolution at all. This doesn’t advance free speech; it sets it back.

What the administration seems not to be recognizing is that resolutions like this are meaningless except as rhetoric. If UN Human Rights resolutions were somehow enforceable, there might be some wisdom in compromising to pass one. But they aren’t. They are nothing more than position statements, and we are officially taking the position that blasphemy laws are okay. Americans may not be paying much attention, but I guarantee that repressive nations like Egypt will make the most of it.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

Clearly, Fox is really enjoying its label as the one network the White House doesn’t want you to watch. I wonder if they’ll be splashing it on the screen soon.

There are a lot of versions of the wrestle-with-a-pig adage, but my favorite is this one: Never wrestle with a pig; it gets you dirty, and the pig likes it.

First, attack Fox News as being not a real news station, primarily (according to Robert Gibbs) because of its opinion programs starring Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Then, invite Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow to an off-the-record briefing with the president.

UPDATE: Also at the briefing: Eugene Robinson and Maureen Dowd.

Moe Lane notes the latest Rasmussen polling on the issues. When asked which party people trust more, the GOP now leads on every issue. In the last month, the GOP extended their lead or erased the Democrats’ lead in nine out of ten categories: health care (+6), education (+10), social security (+10), abortion (+5), economy (+6), taxes (+7), Iraq (+9), national security (+11), and government ethics (+3). The GOP only lost ground on immigration (-5), where it now leads by only seven points.

Wow. The GOP also leads on the generic ballot, despite trailing (as they always do) in partisan identification.

The numbers don’t say whether this is an endorsement of the GOP or a repudiation of the Democrats, but I think it’s much more the latter than the former.

(Via Instapundit.)

Jake Tapper, ABC’s White House correspondent, is standing up for Fox News. Tapper may soon be branded not a real reporter.

(Via Instapundit.)

Anita Dunn, the White House communication director, in her CNN interview declaring war against Fox News:

DUNN: Howie, I think if we went back a year go to the fall of 2008, to the campaign, that it was a time when this country was in two wars, that we had a financial collapse probably more significant than any financial collapse since the Great Depression.

If you were a FOX News viewer in the fall election, what you would have seen would have been that the biggest stories and biggest threats facing America were a guy named Bill Ayers and something called ACORN.

What is Dunn saying here? Is she claiming that Fox never covered the financial collapse? That’s obviously ridiculous. No, it seems that she is complaining about the news that Fox did cover. She would rather than Fox had ignored Ayers and ACORN as most everyone else did.

KURTZ: Is that the reason the president did not go on FOX News Sunday when he did all the other Sunday shows, and will President Obama appear again on FOX this year?

DUNN: Well, you know, Howie, President Obama, he did “The Factor.” He did “O’Reilly.”

KURTZ: Yes. That was during the campaign.

DUNN: That was last year. As president earlier this year when he met with news anchors, met with Chris Wallace…

KURTZ: My question is will he appear on FOX in the next couple of months?

DUNN: You had a two-part question. The first was, is this why he did not appear? And the answer is yes, obviously he’ll go on Fox because he engages with ideological opponents. And he has done that before. He will do it again. I can’t give you a date because, frankly, I can’t give you dates for anybody else right now.

(Emphasis mine.)

Let’s be charitable and assume that Dunn is answering a different question (“will he go on Fox ever?”) than she was asked. Because if she was answering the question she was asked, her answer was a lie:

But last week, Fox News was informed by the White House that Obama would grant no interviews to the channel until at least 2010. The edict was relayed to Fox News by a White House official after Dunn discussed the channel at a meeting with presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs and other Obama advisers.

Going on:

DUNN: For instance, Howie, “The New York Times” had a front page story about Nevada Senator John Ensign and the fact that he had gotten his former chief of staff a job as a lobbyist and his former chief of staff’s wife was someone Ensign had had an affair with.

KURTZ: We reported the story.

DUNN: Did you see coverage of that on FOX News? I’m not talking Glenn Beck, and I’m not talking Sean or “The Factor.” I’m talking about FOX News.

KURTZ: I will have to check on that. I assume you know the answer.

She never comes out and says it, but she is clearly implying that Fox didn’t cover the story. That’s a lie:

Dunn also strongly implied that Fox had failed to follow up on a New York Times story about a scandal swirling around GOP Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, although Fox News broadcast the stories on numerous shows, including Special Report with Bret Baier.

If you don’t want to take Fox News’s word for it, here’s just one of many stories Fox ran on the Ensign scandal.

More developments in the election fraud scandal in Troy, New York:

Thirty-eight forged or fraudulent ballots have been thrown out — enough votes, an election official admits, to likely have tipped the city council and county elections in November to the Democrats. . .

A special prosecutor is investigating the case and criminal charges are possible. New York State Supreme Court Judge Michael Lynch ruled that there were “significant election law violations that have compromised the rights of numerous voters and the integrity of the election process.”

Note that the Working Families Party, the organization responsible for the fraud, is linked to ACORN.

That the message that the left-wing magazine The Nation wants to send to the White House:

The Obama administration really needs to get over itself.

First, the president and his aides go to war with Fox News because the network maintains a generally anti-Obama slant.

Then, an anonymous administration aide attacks bloggers for failing to maintain a sufficiently pro-Obama slant.

These are not disconnected developments.

An administration that won the White House with an almost always on-message campaign and generally friendly coverage from old and new media is now frustrated by its inability to control the debate and get the coverage it wants.

The New York Times and even Helen Thomas are also piling on over the folly of the White House’s war on Fox News. There’s no way this ends well for the administration, so why are they doing it?

I think they can’t help themselves. Throughout his short political career, Barack Obama has never faced much adversity, and the little he has faced he certainly never learned to take with grace. (Remember when he became the Democratic front-runner and started getting a few tough questions in debates? That was the end of the debates.) He was inaugurated to near-universal adulation and it seems that he really believed his hope and change mythology.

Now he is facing real adversity. A majority disapproves of his job performance, and 40% strongly disapprove. His signature domestic initiative is unpopular and faces an uncertain future in Congress. Afghanistan requires strong and politically risky action. Iran is laughing at him. The IOC snubbed him. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. So they are lashing out.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. The weak blame Fox News.

(Via Instapundit.)

Another reminder of which side actually does it.

(Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

This is an outrage:

Voters in this small city decided overwhelmingly last year to do away with the party affiliation of candidates in local elections, but the Obama administration recently overruled the electorate and decided that equal rights for black voters cannot be achieved without the Democratic Party.

The Justice Department’s ruling, which affects races for City Council and mayor, went so far as to say partisan elections are needed so that black voters can elect their “candidates of choice” – identified by the department as those who are Democrats and almost exclusively black.

The department ruled that white voters in Kinston will vote for blacks only if they are Democrats and that therefore the city cannot get rid of party affiliations for local elections because that would violate black voters’ right to elect the candidates they want.

Take a close look at this. The Justice Department rejected a change to elections because it might change the candidates for whom white voters vote. I thought that the Voting Rights Act was about ensuring, you know, the right to vote, but it seems that I was wrong. In the eyes of our current Justice Department, voting rights are about making sure the right candidate is elected.

Kinston is two-thirds black, but the decision was necessary to compensate for low turnout among blacks:

Ms. King’s letter in the Kinston case states that because of the low turnout black voters must be “viewed as a minority for analytical purposes,” and that “minority turnout is relevant” to determining whether the Justice Department should be allowed a change to election protocol.

Black voters account for 9,702 of the city’s 15,402 registered voters but typically don’t vote at the rates whites do.

As a result of the low turnout, Ms. King wrote, “black voters have had limited success in electing candidates of choice during recent municipal elections.”

“It is the partisan makeup of the general electorate that results in enough white cross-over to allow the black community to elect a candidate of choice,” she wrote.

So now the Voting Rights Act isn’t about the right to vote, but about ensuring a particular outcome even when people choose not to vote!

If there’s any question about how political this decision was, note two things: First, the Justice Department is rejecting a neutral change specifically and explicitly because it lessens the importance of the Democratic Party. Second, look who made the decision:

The decision [was] made by the same Justice official who ordered the dismissal of a voting rights case against members of the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia.

One final observation: Kinston is two-thirds black, and the measure passed in seven of nine black precincts. So, in order supposedly to ensure the voting rights of blacks, the Justice Department is rejecting a decision made by the black voters of Kinston.

I wonder if this decision will usher in the end of Section 5 of the Voting Right Act. Section 5 was always dubious, but now that it is being used in such an indefensible manner, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the courts show it the door.

(Via Instapundit.)

After moderating for a couple of weeks, public disapproval to Democratic health care reform is again near its high. A double-digit majority (54-42) oppose the plan that just passed the Senate Finance Committee.

Detroit politicians pay for endorsements:

A long-secret cost of Detroit elections — paying for endorsements — is generating controversy in the City Council election, even though most candidates defend the expense. . . Candidates who want three or four endorsements from prominent groups in the Nov. 3 election may have to shell out about $5,000.

It’s a system virtually unheard of in U.S. politics — where groups traditionally give money to candidates they like, not vice versa . . .

“There is a certain way things get done in Detroit,” said Dearing, a businessman making his third run for the council. “And this is part of that political process. It is part of our culture.”

How did such a system evolve?

Political consultant Eric Foster said the process thrives in Detroit because it’s a one-party city.

The last Republican mayor was Louis Miriani in 1957, so Foster said candidates are desperate to distinguish themselves by aligning themselves with powerful groups. Foster said he knows of no other city with the practice.

“In other places, you’d have a candidate trying to appeal to a certain group or certain agenda, but here everyone is a Democrat,” said Foster, of Urban Consulting of Detroit, which manages political campaigns.

What? One-party rule leads to corruption? Who knew?

(Via the Corner.)

The London Times reports:

Hillary Clinton has been caught out “mis-speaking” again in a manner that suggests that she hasn’t learnt from past experiences of her globe-trotting, “lily-gilding” speeches. . .

According to the Sunday Life newspaper, during a speech she made to the Stormont parliament she said that Belfast’s landmark Europa Hotel was devastated by an explosion when she first stayed there in 1995. . .

However, the last Provisional IRA bomb to damage the Europa was detonated in 1993, two years before President Clinton and his wife checked in for the night.

The last time the Europa underwent renovations because of bomb blast damage was in January 1994, 22 months before the presidential entourage booked 110 rooms at the hotel.

Mrs Clinton told assembled politicians at Stormont: “When Bill and I first came to Belfast we stayed at the Europa Hotel … even though then there were sections boarded up because of damage from bombs.”

(Via Instapundit.)

The Economist reflects on what happened in Portugal after they decriminalized drug use in 2001. The results were decidedly non-disastrous.

President Obama’s Nobel prize illustrates the folly of one of the president’s proposed tax “reforms”. It seems Obama wants to limit charitable deductions so that they apply only at the 28% tax rate even if you’re in the 35% tax rate. If Obama’s policy were already in effect, he would stand to lose 7% in taxes by giving the prize money to charity. That’s $98,000.

Why does the president want to discourage charitable giving anyway? What public policy justification could possibly be cited? Is it because private charities lessen the need for government largesse?

(Via Instapundit.)