Internet Scofflaw

With over three months to go before the election, Marc Ambinder reports that Barack Obama has begun work on his presidential transition.  (Via Instapundit.)

(Related item.)

Lanny Davis, former White House Counsel, writes:

. . . And then in early 2007 came the surge, which so many of us in the anti-war left of the Democratic Party predicted would be a failure, throwing good men and women and billions of dollars after futility. We were wrong.

The surge did, in fact, lead to a reduction of violence, confirmed by media on the ground as well as our military leaders.

It did allow the Shi’ite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in the last several months to show leadership by joining, if not leading, the military effort to clean out of Basra the masked Mahdi Army controlled by the anti-U.S. Shiite extremist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and in the Sadr City section of Baghdad he claimed to control.

This willingness by the Shi’ite–dominated Maliki government to move against the Sadr Shi’ite extremists won crucial credibility for the government among many Sunni leaders and Sunnis on the streets, who joined together with Shi’ites to turn against the Al Qaeda in Iraq and other Taliban–like extremists.

These are facts, not arguments.

I think there are a lot of anti-war Democrats who, like me, are impressed by these facts and who now see a moral obligation, after all the carnage and destruction wrought by our military intervention, not just to pick up and leave without looking over our shoulders.

Surely we owe the Iraqis who helped us, whose lives are in danger, immediate immigration rights to the U.S. Yet the shameful fact is that most are still not even close to having such rights.

Surely we owe the Maliki government and the Shiiite and Sunni soldiers who put their lives on the line against Shiite and Sunni extremists and terrorists at our behest some continuing presence and support and patience as they strive to find peace, political reconciliation — and maybe even the beginnings of a stable democracy.

(Via Instapundit.)

On the anniversary of Obama’s meet-without-preconditions statement at the Democratic debate, Byron York notices that Obama is still rewriting his statement.

A good catch by Power Line:

Now, in terms of knowing my commitments, you don’t have to just look at my words, you can look at my deeds. Just this past week, we passed out of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, which is my committee, a bill to call for divestment from Iran, as a way of ratcheting up the pressure to ensure that they don’t obtain a nuclear weapon.

(Emphasis mine.)  Obama is not a member of the Banking Committee.

What’s the deal with this?  Is Obama confused about what committees he serves on?  (After all, he doesn’t attend many committee meetings.)  If not, why tell such an obvious lie?  Is it because he knows the media won’t call him on it?  So far, he’s right.

UPDATE: A related item: media contributions favor Democrats by at least 10:1.  Depending on how you count, as much as 100:1.  (Via Instapundit.)

Because to do otherwise would mean admitting he was wrong:

Q: If you had to do it over again, knowing what you know now, would you support the surge?

A: No, because, keep in mind that…

Q: You wouldn’t?

A: Keep in mind… These kinds of hypotheticals are very difficult. Hindsight is 20/20. But I think that, what I’m absolutely convinced of, is that at that time we had to change the political debate because the view of the Bush administration at that time was one that I just disagreed with.

Commentary has his theory on what was going on with the Der Spiegel interview. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: Boot follows up.  (Via the Corner.)

The Wall Street Journal reports:

For the Pritzker family of Chicago, the 2001 collapse of subprime-mortgage lender Superior Bank was an embarrassing failure in a corner of their giant business empire.

Billionaire Penny Pritzker helped run Hinsdale, Ill.-based Superior, overseeing her family’s 50% ownership stake. She now serves as Barack Obama’s national campaign-finance chairwoman, which means her banking past could prove to be an embarrassment to her — and perhaps to the campaign.

Superior was seized in 2001 and later closed by federal regulators. Government investigators and consumer advocates have contended that Superior engaged in unsound financial activities and predatory lending practices. Ms. Pritzker, a longtime friend and supporter of Sen. Obama, served for a time as Superior’s chairman, and later sat on the board of its holding company.

Sen. Obama has long criticized predatory subprime mortgage lenders and urged strong actions against them. . .

The Obama campaign recently faced a controversy related to mortgage lending. A member of Sen. Obama’s vice-presidential selection committee resigned after a Wall Street Journal story said he received favorable treatment on personal loans from Countrywide Financial Corp., a major subprime lender. . .

Superior’s failure could still cost the federal deposit insurance fund tens of millions of dollars or more. And hundreds of people whose deposits exceeded federal insurance limits, such as Ms. Sweet, are still out millions of dollars, which will be reduced some by future Pritzker settlement payments.

(Emphasis mine.)  (Via Instapundit.)

It’s starting to get hard to keep track of all of Obama’s corrupt friends.

That’s how long Obama says he’ll be in office.  (Via Instapundit.)

My take on Obama’s civilian national security force was it sounded like the American Protective League, part of Woodrow Wilson’s experiment in American fascism. But Classical Values has a more positive interpretation. (Via Instapundit.)

President Bush’s domestic program: a picture is worth a thousand words.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has written a response to the NYT’s ombudsman’s column arguing that they were right to reveal the identity of a CIA interrogator.

Charles Krauthammer is not a believer in our new messiah:

Americans are beginning to notice Obama’s elevated opinion of himself. There’s nothing new about narcissism in politics. Every senator looks in the mirror and sees a president. Nonetheless, has there ever been a presidential nominee with a wider gap between his estimation of himself and the sum total of his lifetime achievements?

Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted “present” nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself.

It is a subject upon which he can dilate effortlessly. In his victory speech upon winning the nomination, Obama declared it a great turning point in history — “generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment” — when, among other wonders, “the rise of the oceans began to slow.” As economist Irwin Stelzer noted in his London Daily Telegraph column, “Moses made the waters recede, but he had help.” Obama apparently works alone. . .

For the first few months of the campaign, the question about Obama was: Who is he? The question now is: Who does he think he is?

We are getting to know. Redeemer of our uninvolved, uninformed lives. Lord of the seas. And more. As he said on victory night, his rise marks the moment when “our planet began to heal.” As I recall — I’m no expert on this — Jesus practiced his healing just on the sick. Obama operates on a larger canvas.

Dean Barnett and Ed Morrissey are crowing over the latest Obama gaffe:

Throughout our history, America’s confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

(Emphasis mine.)

Come on, let’s be fair.  This would make perfect sense (or at least be fully defensible) if he had said “bombs” rather than “bomb”.  That makes this most likely a verbal flub, not evidence of Obama’s appalling ignorance.  It’s hardly worth our attention, particular with such more compelling material available.

That said, it should go without saying that if George W Bush had made the same remark, the left would be crowing about the latest proof of his stupidity.

The Onion reports:

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments yesterday in the case of Wright v. Dreckman, which calls into question professional baseball player David Wright’s 2005 check swing against the San Diego Padres and whether or not the resulting strike call should be upheld. . .

The road to the Supreme Court for Wright v. Dreckman has been lengthy, convoluted, and filled with more than its share of tumult. After the 2005 Shea ruling, the case was appealed to the U.S. District Court of the state of New York, where the decision was reversed in favor of Wright. However, when it was revealed that the presiding judge was a lifelong Mets fan, the decision was thrown out and the case was again argued in front of the New York State Court of Appeals. That court, citing the 1994 case Bonds v. Davidson, sided with Dreckman.

According to attorney Reiss, however, the decision in Bonds v. Davidson was inapplicable. Though the court upheld the original ruling on the field, Reiss was quick to note that Bonds was left-handed, and thus the case set legal precedent with third-base umpires, not first-base umpires. Reiss believed Wright being right-handed constituted a legitimate enough reason to file a writ of certiorari, or “cert petition,” an order for the case to be heard by the Supreme Court. . .

This is far from the first instance in which the Supreme Court has been called upon to decide matters of the national pastime. In the 1903 case of Wagner v. The Chicago White Sox, the court ruled 5-4 in favor of the defendant that “a base-ball hit far and high, only to bounce fairly onto the field-of-play, and then spring forth into the seats of the ‘bleachers’ should earn the bats-man no more and no fewer than two bases, and not an out.” A landmark 1976 ruling established the infield fly rule. And more recently, a 2006 decision in the case of Rodriguez v. The Fans of New York cemented the legal precedent established in the 1940 case of Williams v. The Fans of Boston, which made it clear that baseball fans are free to boo, no matter how nonsensical it may seem, players on their home team.

Ha ha. As if the judicial system would ever inject itself in a rule-making capacity into private affairs. How silly.

(UPDATE: I’m reminded of this non-Onion article.)

Also at the Onion: ‘Time’ Publishes Definitive Obama Puff Piece. (Via the Corner.)

Under DC’s new gun law, people who already had guns despite the now-overturned gun ban, can register them (maybe). But, law-abiding citizens who previously abided by the ban still cannot get a gun. Why? There are no gun shops in DC, and there won’t be, because zoning regulations prohibit them. You can, however, buy a gun outside DC and ship it to a federally licensed firearms dealer. That’s where things get interesting:

As WTOP first reported, there are only six federally licensed firearm dealers in the District, and only one of them is willing to handle the transfer of handguns. Until gun shops open in the District, residents will have to buy their handguns out of state and have them shipped to a licensed dealer in the District. Charles Sykes is that licensed dealer, and he’s told WTOP he’s willing to handle the transfer of handguns for residents, just has he has for security companies since 1994. “On a low key basis,” Sykes says. “By appointment.”

But Sykes has a problem. He lost his lease and has had to relocate, and the District has refused to issue him the necessary permit to open his new office. Sykes told the Washington CityPaper he thinks the city is withholding his Certificate of Occupancy for “political” reasons. He may be right.

A spokesperson for the D.C. Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, which issues the permit, could not say what the status of his application is, or why it was being withheld in time for this report.

DC does not appear to be acting in good faith.

Here’s what I find amazing, though. Violators of the old law can now have legal weapons (under the amnesty), but those who obeyed the law cannot. DC has actually managed to arrange matters so that a classic problem with gun bans (law-violators are armed, but law-abiders are not) is preserved even when the gun ban is lifted. Way to go, DC!

(Via Outside the Beltway, via Instapundit.)

The no-oil-development caucus in Congress, led by Nancy Pelosi, has settled on a strategy to defuse calls for more oil drilling.  It’s a political strategy, in that it doesn’t do anything about the underlying problem of insufficient supplies of energy, but they hope it will deal with the increasingly popular calls to open up ANWR or the continental shelf to oil exploration.  The strategy is to shift blame to oil companies that have signed leases for oil exploration in other areas but have not yet exploited them.

Oil companies are in the business of developing oil, so if they are not developing areas in which they have the right to do so, it’s obvious that those areas must be unattractive for some reason.  It makes no sense to suppose, as Pelosi would have us, that the oil companies are spitefully refusing to develop profitable oil reserves.

So why are those existing leases unattractive?  Power Line has a post explaining why.  The area currently open for development is called NPR-A (National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska).  The other area in question is ANWR-1002, a tiny piece of the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.  Both areas were set aside for future production of oil, but ANWR-1002 requires Congressional authorization to begin, which as we all well know has not been granted.

Two main obstacles have impeded the development of NPR-A:  First, the ubiquitous environmental litgation.  Second, the lack of any infrastructure to move oil out of the area.  NPR-A is enormous, and even at its closest point is far from the Alaskan pipeline.  Furthermore, no permit has been granted even to begin extending the pipeline to NPR-A.  (If Pelosi were serious about NPR-A, her legislation would authorize immediate commencement of an extension.  Even then it would take years to build.)

ANWR-1002, on the other hand, is small and not far from the existing pipeline.  Moreover, it has the same reserves as NPR-A, despite being one-tenth the size.  Thus, the density of oil reserves is an order of magnitude greater.  So it’s not hard to see why ANWR-1002 is so much more attractive: much denser (and therefore cost-effective) oil deposits and a practical means to move that oil to market.

The irony of Pelosi’s plan is that if we focused on NPR-A, as she feigns to wish, the environmental damage would be much greater than if we developed the much smaller and readily reachable area of ANWR-1002.  Since increased environmental damage is clearly not Pelosi’s aim, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that she supports NPR-A development precisely because she knows it won’t happen.

They write:

BARACK OBAMA yesterday accused President Bush and Sen. John McCain of rigidity on Iraq: “They said we couldn’t leave when violence was up, they say we can’t leave when violence is down.” Mr. Obama then confirmed his own foolish consistency. . . After hinting earlier this month that he might “refine” his Iraq strategy after visiting the country and listening to commanders, Mr. Obama appears to have decided that sticking to his arbitrary, 16-month timetable is more important than adjusting to the dramatic changes in Iraq. . .

“What’s missing in our debate,” Mr. Obama said yesterday, “is a discussion of the strategic consequences of Iraq.” Indeed: The message that the Democrat sends is that he is ultimately indifferent to the war’s outcome — that Iraq “distracts us from every threat we face” and thus must be speedily evacuated regardless of the consequences. That’s an irrational and ahistorical way to view a country at the strategic center of the Middle East, with some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Whether or not the war was a mistake, Iraq’s future is a vital U.S. security interest.

(Emphasis mine.)  They also note than Obama was dead wrong on the surge.

(Via the Corner.)

In the war between residents and commuters, Megan McArdle sides with her own:

People who commute into DC have put the city into their mental “Work” basket. Wherever they are in the city, they tend to act as if they are in some commercially zoned suburban office park, where children and pedestrians basically don’t belong. . . Bicycles and pedestrians slowing down their commute seem like unreasonable intrusions.

For residents of DC, the city is the mental equivalent of your suburban cul–de-sac. . . When we see commuters behaving as if they were on a highway, rather than in a residential area, we get, well, a tad miffed. And as you’ve probably guessed, I think we have the right of it.

I’ll be the first to agree that people should drive safely in residential areas (or anywhere else). But I have noticed that people’s claims of high principle in battles of us versus them never last very long after they switch categories. I’ve watched people curse pedestrians and then, without a hint of irony, turn around and curse motorists moments after getting out of their car. Heck, I’ve even caught myself doing it. Dividing the world into residents and commuters sounds like a good innovation to avoid cognitive dissonance, since you don’t change categories nearly as often.

Then McArdle goes on to say something very interesting:

Commuters into DC do not even have the excuse for their sense of entitlement that commuters into New York or San Francisco have: that without them, the businesses wouldn’t be there, and the economy of the city would drastically suffer. The business of DC is mostly various non-profit, or very thinly profitable, entities that do not pay significant taxes–only a quarter of DC’s revenue comes from sales and business taxes, and of course a lot of those are paid by the residents. The business that does bring substantial revenue into DC, tourism, is not going anywhere, because they’re not going to move the Washington Monument to Silver Spring.

Nor, as some of the commuters have alleged, do their gas taxes pay for the roads. Federal highway funds provide about 20% of the capital budget for DC streets; the rest comes from those of us who live and pay taxes in the city.

As a former Pittsburgher, now living in the suburbs, this is a very familiar argument. The City of Pittsburgh is bankrupt. This is mainly due to years and years of appallingly bad financial choices that show no sign of ending. But to those who approved those budgets and to their supporters, another culprit is needed. That culprit, of course, is the commuters.

The commuters are responsible, we are told, because most of the major employers in Pittsburgh are non-profit, and therefore do not pay taxes. (ASIDE: This isn’t actually true; the non-profits do pay taxes, but they’re called “voluntary contributions”. “Shakedowns” would be more appropriate.) Consequently, all those commuters working at non-profits aren’t paying for the services they consume.

This leads to an obvious solution: annex the suburbs, or at least get the county or the state to permit them to levy taxes on them. It’s the time-honored solution for polities with financial difficulties: conquer your neighbor and plunder them. The only problem is we don’t want to be conquered.

The District of Columbia is a bit different, because the plundering is already under way. McArdle helpfully linked the DC budget (pdf), wherein I was able to find the following statistic: of the $254 million in DC revenues, $146 million is “subsidy from primary government.” That, I assume, is us.

Moreover, looking at everything in terms of taxes misses the point. The lifeblood of a city is not tax revenues, the lifeblood is the commerce and other activity of the people there, residents and commuters alike. Without the hospitals and universities, Pittsburgh would cease to exist. And without the Federal government, DC would still be a swamp.

So perhaps us versus them isn’t the right way to look at it after all. Maybe we should just say that people should drive safely in residential areas.

Some people are upset that the Colombian hostage rescue operation may have employed a red cross emblem as part of its ruse:

Colombian military intelligence used the Red Cross emblem in a rescue operation in which leftist guerrillas were duped into handing over 15 hostages, according to unpublished photographs and video viewed by CNN.

Photographs of the Colombian military intelligence-led team that spearheaded the rescue, shown to CNN by a confidential military source, show one man wearing a bib with the Red Cross symbol. The military source said the three photos were taken moments before the mission took off to persuade the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia rebels to release the hostages to a supposed international aid group for transport to another rebel area.

Such a use of the Red Cross emblem could constitute a “war crime” under the Geneva Conventions and international humanitarian law and could endanger humanitarian workers in the future, according to international legal expert Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association. . .

The unpublished video and photos of the mission, hailed internationally as a daring success, were shown to CNN by a military source looking to sell the material. CNN declined to buy the material at the price being asked; it was therefore unable to verify the authenticity of the images.

(Via LGF.)

Geez. If we suppose this even happened at all, the Colombians weren’t using the emblem to launch attacks or transport weapons, they were rescuing hostages held by terrorists for years. If you think this was wrong, much less a war crime, that says more about you than it does about Colombia. Indeed, it strikes me that one’s opinion about this could be an excellent shibboleth to determine one’s general stance regarding terrorism.

Also, before one sheds any tears for the now-terribly-endangered humanitarian workers, it might be worthwhile to read Mary Anastasia O’Grady’s WSJ piece on the NGO-FARC axis.

The McCain campaign has a response piece out rebutting Obama’s brazen attempt to rewrite the history of his statements on Iraq, and the Surge in particular.  (Via the Tank.)

For what it’s worth, the response leaves out one important point.  Obama says that Iraq has “not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.”  This was stupid last September, when Democrats seized on the “benchmarks” to deny the achievements of the Surge.  After all, for our purposes, those political goals were merely means to an end (i.e., to bring stability to Iraq) that was being met without them.  Now, however, it’s doubly stupid, since now nearly all the (largely forgotten) benchmarks have seen satisfactory progress.

The NYT reports. (Via No Silence Here, via Instapundit.)

The Economist looks at a few cautionary tales of abuse of asset forfeiture.  It’s always struck me that creating financial incentives for law enforcement would cause dangerous conflicts of interest.

Citizen stops youths from vandalizing a WW2 memorial.  Citizen is convicted of assault.  (Via Instapundit.)

Obama’s old Iraq plan, which attacked the Surge and proved to be wrong in every regard, has disappeared from his web site.  I think this is as close as Obama is capable to admitting he was wrong.

These people must be stopped.  (Via Instapundit.)

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.)