Daily Digest for Thursday
February 13, 2014
THE FOUNDATION
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to William S. Smith, 1787TOP 5 RIGHT HOOKS
Debt Could Cause 'Fiscal Crisis'
On the same day the House agreed to raise the debt ceiling yet again, and just days after warning of the detrimental effects of ObamaCare, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf gave Congress another warning. This time, it's the debt. "The large budget deficits recorded in recent years have substantially increased federal debt, and the amount of debt relative to the size of the economy is now very high by historical standards," he said. "Such large and growing federal debt could have serious negative consequences, including ... eventually increasing the risk of a fiscal crisis." Ironic, isn't it, that a large part of the current debt was accumulated as a way to supposedly fix the last fiscal crisis? It's sort of like pouring gasoline on a fire.Comment | Share
Senate Raises Debt Ceiling
The Senate followed the House Wednesday and passed a "clean" debt ceiling hike by a vote of 55-43. Every Republican opposed the hike. Yet the cloture vote to actually bring the bill to the floor was 67-31, with 12 Republicans voting to end debate. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) insisted on the 60-vote threshold because no spending cuts were attached to the deal. Raising the debt ceiling has become little more than a formality because spending only ever goes in one direction -- up. Even the "cuts" the GOP is fighting to win are reductions in the growth rate. And it's because precious few in Washington actually care about anything beyond the next election.Comment | Share
Joking About Socialism
At Tuesday's joint press conference with Barack Obama and French President François Hollande, a reporter asked about how Hollande's socialist policies, including the 75% top tax rate, would affect business and investment in that nation. The question led Obama to quip, "It's good to know that reporters have something in common in both France and United States." Unfortunately, so do their presidents, though of course Hollande is a member of France's Socialist party, which at least features truth in advertising.Comment | Share
Enrollment Day Repairs
National Youth Enrollment Day is Feb. 15, and the Obama administration is aiming to use the day to get young people to sign up for ObamaCare. After all, the young and healthy have to sign up in large numbers to subsidize the old and sick. Unfortunately, however, Feb. 15 is also the day on which Healthcare.gov will be in the shop for repairs and won't be fully functional. On top of that, Feb. 15 also happens to be the last day to sign up for coverage that begins on March 1. Talk about bad timing. As National Review's Yuval Levin quipped, "Do you get the sense that the left hand doesn't know what the far-left hand is doing these days?"Comment | Share
Democrats Against ObamaCare
Nancy Pelosi's House Majority Super PAC has a new ad out in Florida for Rep. Joe Garcia. In the ad, the narrator explains that Garcia "voted to let you keep your existing insurance plan," despite ObamaCare being designed to take it away. And it says Garcia "took the White House to task for the disastrous rollout" of Healthcare.gov, though exactly what that means is unclear. Garcia's ad is likely to be part of a wave of Democrat campaign spots claiming to oppose the terrible aspects of ObamaCare. But just last fall, Pelosi said, "I don't think you can tell what will happen next year, but I will tell you this: Democrats stand tall in support of the Affordable Care Act." We guess we had to start the campaign for Nancy to find out what's in it.Comment | Share
For more, visit Right Hooks.
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RIGHT ANALYSIS
Should 'Ruthless' Clinton Be President?
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The papers reveal quite a bit about Clinton's psyche and her ruthlessly ambitious personality, but more importantly they resurrect a number of issues worthy of debate. Clinton has spent most of her political career as a shoo-in for the presidency, so long that it seems that few people have actually done a hard examination of just what exactly makes her fit for the office. It's not HillaryCare, which was an epic failure in 1993, made more plain by the fact that we're living with the wreckage that ObamaCare has created. It's not her time as senator from New York, an unremarkable term that was nothing more than a transparent attempt to position her for a 2008 presidential run. And it's certainly not her role as secretary of state, which figures largely in America's severely diminished role as a world leader and will ultimately be remembered for the still-unfolding Benghazi scandal.
But in the end, to borrow a phrase, what difference does all this make?
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus noted that if Hillary Clinton runs in 2016, "everything's on the table." As it should be. Clinton inserted herself into the public debate from the very launch of her husband's 1992 presidential campaign. Neither she nor her acolytes should expect her to get a pass on anything, though they will attempt to dismiss it all as part of an "anti-Clinton" agenda -- or a "vast right-wing conspiracy," if you will. But maybe, just maybe, people will be able to look at Hillary Clinton's long political journey and realize that there is nothing there that makes the case for her being president of the United States.
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Holder Wants Felons Voting
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We should point out that conservatives such as Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT) and Rand Paul (R-KY) also favor reforming these laws. As Paul said in September, "[T]he punishment and stigma continues for the rest of their life, harming their families and hampering their ability to re-enter society." There is merit to reform of our criminal justice system on this and other matters such as mandatory minimum sentencing. Perhaps on a case-by-case basis, voting rights could be restored after some benchmark is met.
Yet Holder's reasons for pushing reform are entirely political. He insisted on automatic restoration of voting rights upon completing a sentence. But The New York Times, editorializing in defense of Holder, gave away the game. According to the Times, "The brunt of today's laws that prohibit felons from voting still falls disproportionately on minorities, who make up more than one-third of those affected." To paraphrase, "That's racist." Of course, the reason minorities are so affected is because minorities commit a disproportionate number of felonies.
It also so happens that minorities vote disproportionately for Democrats. Again, the Times tacitly acknowledges the politics: "While George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes in 2000, more than 800,000 Floridians with criminal records were barred from voting." In other words, the only reason Bush won was because all those Democrats couldn't vote. And today, more than 20% of blacks in several swing states can't vote. But then the Times argues, "Regardless of which party might benefit most at the polls, repealing felon disenfranchisement laws is in the interest of upholding American ideals." Aside from the laughable idea that they don't care which party benefits, which American ideals, exactly, would this idea uphold?
As an aside, we're sure Holder supports restoring other rights to felons, such as owning a firearm.
If someone has proven they can't follow the law -- in some cases violently so -- can they be trusted to vote for those who will make the law? Sadly, in an America where the president rewrites the law on a whim, the answer may not really matter ... but it's still worth fighting for.
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For more, visit Right Analysis.
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TOP 5 RIGHT OPINION COLUMNS
- Ann Coulter: Did I Move?
- Arnold Ahlert: Income Inequality at the White House
- Larry Elder: Wake Me When Someone 'Comes Out' as a Black Republican
- Victor Davis Hanson: An Orwellian Nation of Obamathink
- George Will: Lessons From the Abbey
OPINION IN BRIEF
Historian Victor Davis Hanson: "The nightmare societies portrayed in the George Orwell novels '1984' and 'Animal Farm' gave us the word 'Orwellian.' That adjective reflects a vast government's efforts not just to deceive and control the people, but also to do so by reinventing the meaning of ordinary words while rewriting the past itself. ... Orwell, who also blasted the rise of European fascism, focused more on the mind games of the statist Left. Why? He apparently feared that the Left suffered an additional wage of hypocrisy in more openly proclaiming the noble interests of 'the people.' Because of those supposedly exalted ends of equality and fairness, statists were more likely to get a pass from the media and public for the scary means they employed to achieve them. Right now in America, the words and deeds of both past and present become reality only when the leaders put them in the correct service of the people."Comment | Share
Columnist George Will: "It is fitting that PBS offers 'Downton Abbey' to its disproportionately progressive audience. This series is a languid appreciation of a class structure supposedly tempered by the paternalism of the privileged. And if progressivism prevails, America will be Downton Abbey: Upstairs, the administrators of the regulatory state will, with a feudal sense of noblesse oblige, assume responsibility for the lower orders downstairs, gently protecting them from 'substandard' health insurance policies, school choice, gun ownership, large sodas and other decisions that experts consider naughty or calamitous."
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Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998): "Censorship always defeats its own purpose, for it creates, in the end, the kind of society that is incapable of exercising real discretion. ... In the long run it will create a generation incapable of appreciating the difference between independence of thought and subservience."
Ann Coulter: "With all the smirking on the left about their electoral victories, it's important to remember that Democrats haven't won the hearts and minds of the American people. They changed the people. If you pour vinegar into a bottle of wine, the wine didn't turn, you poured vinegar into it."
Comedian Argus Hamilton: "President Obama was asked by a French reporter Tuesday if the U.S. is as close to France as to Britain. He's evacuated Iraq, avoided Libya, ducked Syria, appeased Iran and he's pulling out of Afghanistan. If we were any closer to France they could sue us for trademark infringement."
Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team
Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform -- Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen -- standing in harm's way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.
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