The 'Fairness' Fraud

By Thomas Sowell

2/22/2012

During a recent Fox News Channel debate about the Obama administration's tax policies, Democrat Bob Beckel raised the issue of "fairness."

He pointed out that a child born to a poor woman in the Bronx enters the world with far worse prospects than a child born to an affluent couple in Connecticut.

No one can deny that. The relevant question, however, is: How does allowing politicians to take more money in taxes from successful people, to squander in ways that will improve their own reelection prospects, make anything more "fair" for others?

Even if additional tax revenue all went to poor single mothers -- which it will not -- the multiple problems of children raised by poor single mothers would not be cured by throwing money at them. Indeed, the skyrocketing of unwed motherhood began when government welfare programs began throwing money at teenage girls who got pregnant.

Children born and raised without fathers are a major problem to society and to themselves. There is nothing "fair" about increasing the number of such children.

A more fundamental problem with the "fairness" issue raised by Beckel and many others is the slippery vagueness of the word "fair."

To ask whether life is fair -- either here and now, or at any time or place around the world, over the past several thousand years -- is to ask a question whose answer is obvious. Life has seldom been within shouting distance of fair, in the sense of even approximately equal prospects of success.

Countries whose politicians have been able to squander ever larger amounts of a nation's resources have not only failed to make the world more fair, the concentration of more resources and power in these politicians' hands has led to results that were often counterproductive at best, and bloodily catastrophic at worst.

More fundamentally, the question whether life is fair is very different from the question whether a given society's rules are fair. Society's rules can be fair in the sense of using the same standards of rewards and punishments for everyone. But that barely scratches the surface of making prospects or outcomes the same.

People raised in different homes, neighborhoods and cultures are going to behave differently -- and those differences have consequences. The multiculturalist dogma may say that all cultures are equal, or equally deserving of respect, but treating cultures as sacrosanct freezes people into the circumstances into which they happened to be born, much like a caste system.

While talk about "fairness" may provide a fig leaf to cover politicians' naked attempts to grab more and more of the nation's resources to spend, there is no assurance that raising tax rates on "the rich" will result in any more tax revenue for the government. High tax rates have too often simply caused wealthy people to put their money into tax-free securities or to send it overseas.

Four years ago, TV interviewer Charles Gibson pointed out to candidate Barack Obama that raising capital gains tax rates had on a number of occasions led to less capital gains tax revenue being collected -- and, conversely, lowering the capital gains tax rates had on other occasions increased the amount of capital gains revenue collected by the government.

Obama readily admitted that. But he said that "fairness" justified a higher tax rate on "the rich." Yet how does a higher tax rate on paper, without a real increase in the amount of taxes actually collected, promote fairness?

However, raising tax rates on "the rich" pays off politically, even if the government loses revenues when the rich put their money into tax shelters.

High tax rates in the upper income brackets allow politicians to win votes with class warfare rhetoric, painting their opponents as defenders of the rich. Meanwhile, the same politicians can win donations from the rich by creating tax loopholes that can keep the rich from actually paying those higher tax rates -- or perhaps any taxes at all.

What is worse than class warfare is phony class warfare. Slippery talk about "fairness" is at the heart of this fraud by politicians seeking to squander more of the nation's resources.

Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of The Housing Boom and Bust.

Math Matters

By Walter E. Williams

2/22/2012

If one manages to graduate from high school without the rudiments of algebra, geometry and trigonometry, there are certain relatively high-paying careers probably off-limits for life -- such as careers in architecture, chemistry, computer programming, engineering, medicine and certain technical fields. For example, one might meet all of the physical requirements to be a fighter pilot, but he's grounded if he doesn't have enough math to understand physics, aerodynamics and navigation. Mathematical ability helps provide the disciplined structure that helps people to think, speak and write more clearly. In general, mathematics is an excellent foundation and prerequisite for study in all areas of science and engineering. So where do U.S. youngsters stand in math?

Drs. Eric Hanushek and Paul Peterson, senior fellows at the Hoover Institution, looked at the performance of our youngsters compared with their counterparts in other nations, in their Newsweek article, "Why Can't American Students Compete?" (Aug. 28, 2011), reprinted under the title "Math Matters" in the Hoover Digest (2012). In the latest international tests administered by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, only 32 percent of U.S. students ranked proficient in math -- coming in between Portugal and Italy but far behind South Korea, Finland, Canada and the Netherlands. U.S. students couldn't hold a finger to the 75 percent of Shanghai students who tested proficient.

What about our brightest? It turns out that only 7 percent of U.S. students perform at the advanced level in math. Forty-five percent of the students in Shanghai are advanced in math, compared with 20 percent in South Korea and Switzerland and 15 percent of students in Japan, Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Canada.

Hanushek and Peterson find one bright spot among our young people. That's Asian-American students, 52 percent of whom perform at the proficient level or higher. Among white students, only 42 percent perform math at a proficient level. The math performance of black and Hispanic students is a disaster, with only 11 and 15 percent, respectively, performing math at the proficient level or higher.

The National Center for Education Statistics revealed some of the results of American innumeracy. Among advanced degrees in engineering awarded at U.S. universities during the 2007-08 academic year, 28 percent went to whites; 2 percent went to blacks; 2 percent went to Hispanics; and 61 percent went to foreigners. Of the advanced degrees in mathematics, 40 percent went to whites; 2 percent went to blacks; 5 percent went to Hispanics; and 50 percent went to foreigners. For advanced degrees in education, 65 percent went to whites; 17 percent went to blacks; 5 percent went to Hispanics; and 8 percent went to foreigners. The pattern is apparent. The more rigorous a subject area the higher the percentage of foreigners -- and the lower the percentage of Americans -- earning advanced degrees. In subject areas such as education, which have little or no rigor, Americans are likelier -- and foreigners are less likely -- to earn advanced degrees.

In a New York Times article -- "Do We Need Foreign Technology Workers?" (April 8, 2009) -- Dr. Vivek Wadhwa of the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University said "that 47 percent of all U.S. science and engineering workers with doctorates are immigrants as were 67 percent of the additions to the U.S. science and engineering work force between 1995 to 2006. And roughly 60 percent of engineering Ph.D. students and 40 percent of master's students are foreign nationals."

American mathematic proficiency levels leave a lot to be desired if we're to maintain competitiveness. For blacks and Hispanics, it's a tragedy with little prospect for change, but the solution is not rocket science. During my tenure as a member of Temple University's faculty in the 1970s, I tutored black students in math. When they complained that math was too difficult, I told them that if they spent as much time practicing math as they did practicing jump shots, they'd be just as good at math as they were at basketball. The same message of hard work and discipline applies to all students, but someone must demand it.

Walter E. Williams

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of 'Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?' and 'Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.'

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ARTICLE TWO

Obama's War on Religious Liberty

By Phyllis Schlafly

2/20/2012

Welcome to the real ObamaCare, whereby a handful of leftists in Washington, D.C., impose the views of their big-money donors on more than 300 million Americans. If the Obama mandate for contraception remains intact, then liberals will next demand that Americans pay for other objectionable items that are not really medical care.

We can expect future mandates, under the guise of "health care," to include sex-change operations, late-term abortions, embryonic stem-cell use and a variety of other procedures that many Americans do not support and certainly do not want to be compelled to foot the bill for. Obama's directive for abortifacient drugs opens a slippery slope that would erode the moral authority of religious institutions in America.

Obama and the liberals have overplayed their hand. By baring their teeth, these lackeys for the Left have awakened Democratic voters to the real contempt that liberals hold for religious values.

All 181 U.S. Catholic bishops oppose Obama's mandate, and Rasmussen polling estimates that 65 percent of Catholic Americans also oppose it. There are about 75 million American Catholics, most of whom have traditionally been Democratic voters but wouldn't hesitate to cross party lines to defend their church leaders.

It will be fascinating to see how many Democratic politicians up for re-election this November side with Obama and against religious organizations. Liberals are just fine with throwing some Democratic incumbents overboard to advance far-left goals, just as the enactment of ObamaCare in 2010 cost many Democrats their congressional seats.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's congressional testimony made clear that the Obama administration is dug in permanently to enforce the regulation that religiously affiliated institutions must offer their employees health insurance that includes abortion drugs, sterilization and contraceptives. Of course, insurance companies price their products to make a profit, so clearly the cost will be concealed and distributed so many will pay for services that violate their religious beliefs.

Dick Morris exposed how George Stephanopoulos outed the Obama strategy behind this outrageous action. Knowing that abortion is no longer a winning issue for Democrats, Obama wanted to shift the debate to contraception.

However, his ploy has failed. He really shifted the debate to religious liberty and to how the Obama administration is planning to force Americans to pay for procedures that their religion teaches them is morally wrong.

The religious liberty issue is definitely not confined to Catholic hospitals, schools, colleges and charities. It opens up the whole attack on religion and on Christianity that is now going on in the Obama administration, the courts and even the military.

The U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains sent an email to senior chaplains telling them that Archbishop Timothy Broglio's letter criticizing the Obama insurance rule was not to be read from the pulpit. There is no evidence that Obama personally issued this order, but the Army Chief of Chaplains must have thought he was taking a politically correct action.

Has anti-religious bigotry become so pervasive that chaplains believe they must censor their sermons to conform to Obama's prejudices?

Just recently, the Obama administration forced the Air Force's Capabilities Office to strike the Latin word for "God" from its logo. Since schools seldom teach Latin any more, I wonder how many realized what this meant.

At the Veterans Affairs Department, Obama's agents banned Military Honor Details from reciting the significance of each fold of the American Flag during the burial services of our heroic men and women who gave their lives for our country. Obama says the ceremony promoted religion and therefore, the recitations had to stop.

Obama gave a speech at Georgetown University, a Catholic college. But he ordered his staff to cover up a crucifix with a giant black tarp because he didn't want anybody to see a religious symbol while he was talking.

Obama has joined in the war against religion being waged by the American Civil Liberties Union and the atheists in the courts. We've all heard about the lawsuits attempting to delete "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, remove Ten Commandments monuments and crosses from every public place.

Less well known, but important in the big picture, are the judges' decisions to ban the Westmoreland Middle School football coach in Tennesse from bowing his head during student-led prayer before a game and the decision to ban grace before supper at Virginia Military Institute.

The plan is even more far-reaching. It confirms that the ObamaCare law can impose any regulation the bureaucrats choose, such as death panels.

The firestorm over this most recent regulation is one more proof that social issues and fiscal issues are inescapably intertwined. Social-issue policy decisions determine fiscal ones.

The Heritage Foundation has just released its 2012 Index of Dependence on Government. It shows the shocking fact that 1 in 5 Americans is dependent on government, meaning reliance on government handouts for housing, health care, food stamps, college tuition and retirement assistance.

Phyllis Schlafly

Phyllis Schlafly is a national leader of the pro-family movement, a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Feminist Fantasies.

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The Left Fuels Santorum Surge

By Star Parker

2/20/2012

A succession of high profile left wing decisions and initiatives of recent weeks drive home the extent to which the left is changing the face of America.

Notable among these are the decision of a federal appeals court in California to uphold a prior court decision finding California’s Proposition 8, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, unconstitutional; the reversal of a decision, due to a tsunami of left wing pressure, of the Susan G. Komen Foundation to withdraw its funding to Planned Parenthood; and the Obama administration rulemaking refusing to grant a religious exemption from the new health care law employer mandate requiring provision of free contraception and sterilization services as part of health coverage.

These developments are, I think, helping to buoy the newly surging candidacy of former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.

Why?

Santorum stands out in the current Republican field in the clarity of his image and identity. There is little doubt about who the man is and there are no glaring inconsistencies between who he says he is today and his past behavior and positions.

Even Ron Paul, who is closest to Santorum in consistency and clarity of image, carries the baggage of the sickening racist and anti-Semitic newsletters that once carried his name.

So the issue with Santorum is whether you buy what he is selling. Not whether you have to worry that there are different Santorums hiding in the closet waiting to emerge when political calculations might seem to justify their appearance.

And candidate Rick Santorum is squeaky clean conservative.

There is no pretense that so-called social issues are a world apart from economic issues.

And there is no inclination to insert social issues as a footnote to please religious conservatives while just talking about the economy because this is the main thing on everyone’s mind.

While the Republican Party splits on whether “values” should stand front and center in its platform, Democrats and the left make no pretense about this.

The political left, led today by President Obama, is defined and energized by an ongoing sense of mission to wage a cultural war in America.

And the left is determined to win this war.

The front line of battle is obliteration of traditional values and to sever the connection between rights and responsibilities.

The three high profile left wing victories of recent weeks all touch these key areas. End the traditional institution of marriage as a bulwark of our society. Continue to promote sex as recreation and relegate the life this activity creates as a trivial byproduct which we allow to be destroyed with ease, and destroy the sanctity of private property so government can finance irresponsibility with other people’s money.

President Obama is unapologetic about this agenda and even has the audacity to call it Christian for government to borrow trillions on the good credit of the American people and then permit politicians to determine who it is fair to tax to pay for it all.

The Santorum surge, I think, is being fueled by a growing sense that our economic crisis is at its core a moral crisis. And there is a growing sense among Republicans and conservatives that we must recognize the cultural war being waged and engage it with clarity and aggressiveness that matches that of the left.

An America with broken families, with an aging population growing old alone, with no educational framework to pass traditional truths on to our children, and with no private property so that our wealth and our wages remain exposed to politicians, is an America without a future.

Santorum is offering the very clear, consistent conservative alternative to this disaster and I think it’s why he is becoming the biggest surprise so far of this campaign.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Brief · February 20, 2012

The Foundation

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness." --George Washington

Political Futures

"There are reports the Obama campaign, long focused on Mitt Romney, is beginning to prepare for a face-off with [Rick] Santorum, just in case the former Pennsylvania senator captures the Republican nomination. The conventional wisdom among both Democrats and Republicans is that Obama would seek to tear Santorum limb-from-limb with attacks on his positions on abortion, contraception, and, now, prenatal testing. ... In his first surge, in the last days of Iowa caucus campaigning, Santorum shot into the lead on the strength of a platform that featured appealing positions on jobs, on taxes, on national defense, as well as the social positions for which he is well known. Alone among Republicans, Santorum spoke at length about the decline of U.S. manufacturing and the problems of American workers who don't have college degrees. ... Those positions, along with his dogged determination on the stump, caused many Republicans to give him a serious look. Now, leading in the polls both nationally and in Michigan, which holds a key primary February 28, Santorum knows that his opponents, both in the Republican race and Democrats, will seek to provoke him into controversial statements on social issues. And yet in the last few days, he has been unable to steer the political conversation back to the topics that work best with voters. If he can't re-take control of that conversation, he could find himself in serious trouble." --columnist Byron York

Washington's Birthday

In some circles, today is observed as "Presidents' Day," jointly recognizing Presidents George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, but it is still officially recognized as the anniversary of "Washington's Birthday" -- and that is how we mark the date in our shop. Washington's actual birthday is Feb. 22.

Read more and comment here.

For the Record

"The [birth control mandate] 'accommodation' ... is a farce. If you're paying for health insurance -- or if you self-insure, as many institutions do -- shifting responsibilities to the insurance companies doesn't shift the costs, just the paperwork. A Catholic hospital would still pay for the services; there just wouldn't be a line item for it in the monthly insurance bill. That's not accommodation; that's laundering. ... Of course, if religious institutions don't want to violate their consciences, they can simply stop offering health insurance altogether (providing yet another example of how Obama misled voters when he promised that the Affordable Care Act wouldn't cause anyone to lose their current coverage). That would at least allow religious organizations to uphold their principles. The result, however, would be to force taxpayers to subsidize practices many find morally abhorrent. In other words, Obama's solution is to make paying taxes a moral dilemma for many pro-lifers. ... When we empower bureaucrats and politicians to make such huge personal decisions for us, it becomes impossible to avoid trampling on liberty. The Roman Catholic Church was simply the first in the leviathan's path." --columnist Jonah Goldberg

Re: The Left

"To be blunt, the president has it exactly backwards. It is not religious institutions that wish to be held to a different set of rules, but those who would kick the First Amendment to the curb -- the one that establishes the exact same religious standard for everyone -- in order to accommodate the abortion-on-demand constituency. Thus, when Democrats and the president speak about finding an 'accommodation' to address religious peoples' concerns, they are being both arrogant and disingenuous: no member of the government has the option of deciding whether or not accommodate clauses contained in the Constitution. They are bound by it --all of it. Despite all their high-minded pronouncements to the contrary, Democratic agenda has long been defined by different people playing by different sets of rules. ... Even more ironically, for Democrats, anything less than an equal outcome is de facto evidence that someone is playing by a different set of rules, and must be brought to heel by any means necessary -- even if it means bending the rules in the process." --columnist Arnold Alert

Culture

"Never mind that a vast government apparatus exists to provide poor women access to contraceptives, from Medicaid and community health centers to Title X. There are roughly 4,500 Title X-funded clinics around the country. They are required to provide free birth control to the poor and subsidized birth control to people with incomes between 100 percent and 250 percent of poverty. They serve about 5 million people a year. By any reasonable standard, we are one of the most lavishly contracepted societies in the history of the planet. ... A Centers for Disease Control report this year found that among teen mothers who had unintended pregnancies, only 13 percent said they had trouble getting access to birth control. ... Of all the causes of the explosion in illegitimate births, limited access to contraception can't be high on the list. At the same time that we have seen a profusion of contraceptives that are dazzling in their variety, impressive in their efficacy, and democratic in their widespread accessibility, out-of-wedlock births have gone from 10 percent in 1970 to 42 percent today (largely among poor women with access to government-provided contraceptives)." --National Review editor Rich Lowry

Government

"President Obama said in his State of the Union speech, 'We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings.' ... Cato Institute economist Dan Mitchell cut through the fog to get at the truth of the $2 trillion 'cut.' 'We have a budget of, what, almost $4 trillion? So if we're doing $2 trillion of cuts,' Mitchell said, 'we're cutting government in half. That sounds wonderful.' ... Calling that a 'cut' is nonsense. Mitchell gave an analogy: 'What if I came to you and said, "I've been on a diet for the last month, and I've gained 10 pounds. Isn't that great?" You would say: "Wait, what are you talking about? That's insane." And I said: "I was going to gain 15 pounds. I've only gained 10 pounds, therefore my diet is successful."' Democrats use this deceit when they want more social spending. ... Mitchell points out that the politicians don't even have to make actual cuts to save the future. If they just slowed the growth of government to about 2 percent per year, the U.S. economy could grow out of this mess. But the politicians won't do even that. ... Bottom line: Don't trust the politicians' numbers." --columnist John Stossel

Essential Liberty

"Americans pride themselves on being a self-reliant people. ... But with each passing year, that portrait flies more and more in the face of reality. The numbers plainly show that we are becoming a people dependent not on ourselves, but on government. We are evolving into a nation of takers, not givers. The numbers in question come in the form of a new Heritage Foundation report titled 'The 2012 Index of Dependence on Government.' You don't have to read far before you realize that the days of Horatio Alger stories are behind us. Start with the most basic facts: Today, more than 67.3 million Americans rely on assistance from Washington for everything from food, shelter and clothing to college tuition and health care. These benefits cost federal taxpayers roughly $2.5 trillion annually. Oh, about those taxpayers: Even as the number of Americans receiving federal aid rises, the number of federal taxpayers continues to drop: Nearly half of all Americans -- 49.5 percent -- don't pay any federal income taxes." --Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner

The Gipper

"The federal government has taken too much tax money from the people, too much authority from the states, and too much liberty with the Constitution." --Ronald Reagan

Reader Comments

"The best way to fight Marxism in America is to send Obama packing! What he knows about Jesus and His teaching you could put on the head of a pin and never find it, even with the strongest magnifying glass in the world. Just look at how he handled the abortion/contraceptive thing and you know just how out of touch with Christian religion and principles he really is." --Jiggs

"The best weapon to fight Marxism in America is political education. Especially for the young and the poor so they can know the truth about what the left is really all about. The Patriot Post is the best source for truth in politics and government." --Fred

"Historically, the best weapon to fight Marxism has been any weapon with a caliber greater than point four. Education (what a quaint idea!) seems to be ineffective." --GAMtns

"This temporary payroll tax cut, which makes no sense at all, is just another example of Congress 'leading' the country to ruin while placing at least one hand over their backside." --Brian

"The payroll tax 'holiday' is another Democrat scam to fool voters into thinking it means something to their lives. All it does is accelerate the demise of Social Security or increase the debt. And the Democrats don't care which because they've already positioned themselves to deflect blame completely back to the Republicans. And their constituents lap up their lies and hypocrisy like mother's milk." --Mike

"Please call 'crony' capitalism by its proper name -- Corporate Socialism. I have been corrected on this and I think you will agree too. Crony capitalism allows the socialists off the hook every time. They say, 'See, capitalism doesn't work, it's corrupt,' even when their ideology is largely responsible." --Freepeoples

"The caption under the picture of the Navy Seal has both his first and last names misspelled. How about issuing a correction?" --Robert the Bruce

Editor's Reply: That image did not originate with us, it was a last minute addition, and our editing team just read it the way it should have been instead of fixing it. For what it's worth, Houston's first name was also misspelled. We deeply regret the error, which has been corrected.

Opinion in Brief

"Understand, I don't expect liberals to turn on [Barack Obama] because he continues to promote the redistribution of wealth. ... But when, during his State of the Union address, he had the gall to say that it's not fair that Warren Buffet's secretary, Debbie Bosanek, pays more in income taxes than billionaire Buffet, I don't recall hearing any of the Party faithful call him on it. As we all know, tax rate is not the same thing as tax obligation. Even Ms. Bossiness ... knows she doesn't write a bigger check to the IRS than her boss. We also know ... that folks like Buffet and Romney already paid income taxes on the money they earned at a rate of 35% before getting to invest whatever was left and then pay an additional 15% on those capital gains. The IRS, a gang of ghouls who would cheerfully pry the gold from the teeth of the deceased, then gets a third crack at their money in the form of death taxes. The notion that rich people don't pay their fair share of taxes is such a blatant lie that only that half of the population that pays nothing, while in some cases collecting 'refunds,' would be hypocritical enough to turn it into their favorite mantra." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

The Last Word

Editor's Note: The following is satire. Obama didn't really say these things.

"President Obama ... announced that he is stepping down as president until after Election Day so he can focus all his time on campaigning. 'Let's just forget it,' Obama said in an interview with Barbara Walters. 'Nobody's buying this. I'm already mainly campaigning. This just formalizes the arrangement.' Obama's decision to temporarily cede the presidency to Vice President Joseph Biden comes amid criticism that the budget he released ... does more for Obama's political prospects than the country's economic future. ... 'The new budget I released ... was produced at our campaign headquarters in Chicago by David Axelrod,' Obama told Walters. 'He's is a wizard with numbers, though mostly it's been with polls. This is the first time he's tried writing a federal budget. I think he did just great.' ... Obama blamed Republicans for the deficit. 'They're making me do this. They upset me, and when I'm stressed, I spend. I'm working on it.' ... Meanwhile, Chinese President Hu Jintao expressed satisfaction with the new leverage his country would have over the United States as China increases its lending to fund America's spending. 'Bark like a dog, USA! Speak! Roll over.'" --columnist Keith Coffer

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A strong move is on to demonize and marginalize social conservatives, a move that originates from the political left but is being aided by some on the right, a move that is based on assumptions that better describe the leftist accusers than they do their targets.

Obama, by rewriting the Bush rules to protect health care providers who objected on moral grounds to abortion, has breached his repeated promise to preserve them and has dealt a significant blow to religious liberties, yet he is painting people of faith as the extremists.

In his University of Notre Dame speech, he said, "Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion and draft a sensible conscience clause and make sure that all our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women."

In his propaganda speeches for Obamacare, he said, "One more misunderstanding I want to clear up: Under our plan ... federal conscience laws will remain in place."

But what about his actions? Well, a few months before his Notre Dame speech, the administration disclosed that it had begun the process of overturning the Bush protections.

Also, when he signed Obamacare into law on March 22, 2010, the bill contained no conscience protections, and the administration was still working feverishly to overturn the Bush rules. This was made clear when the administration filed papers in a lawsuit brought to challenge the protections, in which it revealed that it was seeking to rescind the rules.

Recently, the administration formally repealed the rules and adopted new regulations that allowed the protections to remain in force on abortion and sterilization but eliminated protection for contraceptives and so-called abortion drugs.

Though the administration maintained it was protecting conscience rights, it was obvious -- to people of conscience, anyway -- that it had flagrantly breached its promise, just as it had with its pledge not to increase taxes of any kind on families making less than $250,000. Indeed, in testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations in November to determine whether the Obamacare mandates threaten conscience rights, many panelists affirmed they do.

When the faith community strongly objected to this betrayal, the administration at first defiantly refused to budge. Then it ordered a take-it-or-leave-it "compromise" that shifted the requirement to arrange and pay for contraceptives and abortifacients to insurance companies. Most understand this was a sham compromise that did little to protect conscience concerns. When people objected to his "compromise" edict, Obama responded with a dictatorial wave of the hand, signaling that he was through "compromising" and that there wouldn't be any further discussion.

But something potentially more disturbing is unfolding than Obama's duplicity and his attacks on religious liberty. The left has become so ruthlessly adept at deceptively framing arguments that it has succeeded, to some degree, in painting religious people as the aggressors in this dispute instead of the administration and the left, which started it and finished it. It simply recycled the same template developed by the militant homosexual lobby to depict those who object to the formal sanctification of same-sex marriage as bigoted against the homosexual community rather than as trying to preserve the traditional institution of marriage.

Conservatives -- if we'll wake up and fight back instead of underestimating the importance of holding this turf or, even worse, allowing ourselves to be divided and conquered on social issues -- can win these arguments.

Republicans can reasonably disagree about who is the best presidential candidate. Unfortunately, however, there's a lot of acrimonious infighting on the right, much of which is centered on the hysterical charge that Rick Santorum is some kind of theocrat who wants to outlaw contraception and surveil our bedrooms. It's a spurious claim and one that Santorum has specifically denied, saying he would not attempt to impose his personal views on contraception through policy. He would appoint strict constructionist judges, just as the other Republican nominees say they would, and his worldview would doubtlessly inform his policies -- a universal, inescapable phenomenon.

Just because we must focus our attention on reversing our national financial free fall doesn't mean we have to abandon our traditional commitment to social conservatism, long reflected in the Republican platform. It doesn't mean we have to fecklessly surrender to the noxious notion that authentic, outspoken Christians are now a threat to religious liberty when in fact no other group is more committed to preserving it. It doesn't mean we have to roll over to this progressive trend to coarsen our culture and denigrate traditional values.

The Republican tent is plenty big enough for conservatives of all stripes -- and Libertarians -- but Reagan's three-legged stool of economic, national defense and social conservatism will topple if any of its legs is severed.

Leftists have succeeded in redefining many issues. Will we allow them to redefine us, as well?

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ARTICLE THREE

Chronicle · February 15, 2012

The Foundation

"We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt." --Thomas Jefferson

Editorial Exegesis

"How credible is President Obama on taxes and spending? ... [O]bama's smug White House chief of staff, Jack Lew ... went on two different Sunday news shows to talk up the president's new budget. Twice he claimed Senate Democrats haven't passed a budget in more than 1,000 days because 'you can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can't get 60 votes without bipartisan support....' In fact, Senate rules only require a simple majority of 51 votes to approve a budget. But wait, there's more to the Obama record of double-talk and misrepresentation about federal taxes and spending. Take his claim that his budget cuts the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years. Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that most of Obama's deficit 'savings' come either from spending cuts already enshrined in law or money that was never requested for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bottom line: Over the next decade, Obama's budget raises taxes by $1.9 trillion, raises spending $2.7 trillion, and increases the debt $3.6 trillion. ... Less than a month after Obama was sworn into office, he hosted a 'fiscal responsibility' summit at the White House where he pledged 'to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office.' ... Obama's $757 billion economic stimulus program failed to get the economy growing again. His Obamacare is driving health care costs ever higher, even before it is fully implemented. And he just 'doubled down' on throwing more tax dollars at failed green energy efforts like the Solyndra bankruptcy. The result? Now Obama asks Americans to accept a $1.33 trillion deficit in 2012 and deficits every year for the next decade averaging $1.4 trillion. What this country needs is an honest leader who will tell the truth about our entitlement spending crisis and identify real reforms." --The Washington Examiner

Is there any hope for our fiscal future?

Upright

"Legend has it that prior to embarking on his mission to conquer the known world, Alexander the Great, who had not yet established his greatness, visited the oracle at Delphi seeking a good omen. ... When he finally found her, he forced her to accompany him to the temple. Upon arriving at the temple, in his eagerness to receive the oracle, he was literally shoving her down the ramp toward the crypt when she turned abruptly toward him and exclaimed, 'Boy, there's no resisting you.' With that, Alexander took his hands off her, stepped back and said, with great satisfaction, 'That's the only oracle I wanted to hear.' This is precisely the attitude that possesses President Obama." --columnist David Limbaugh

"The federal debt has increased by $4.47 trillion since President Barack Obama released his first federal budget on Feb. 26, 2009. That budget was entitled, 'A New Era of Responsibility.' On Feb. 26, 2009, as Obama released his budget for fiscal 2010, the national debt stood at $10.88 trillion.... At the close of business on Feb. 9, 2012, the national debt stood at $15.36 trillion.... The $4.47-trillion increase in the debt since Obama released his first budget is more than the national debt increased from President George Washington through President George H. W. Bush." --columnist Terence Jeffrey

"Over the weekend it was revealed that MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, the chief architect of ObamaCare, backtracked on the analysis he performed two years ago. He told officials in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado the price of insurance premiums will 'dramatically increase' under the reforms. ... How far we have come since that day in 2009 when the president also said that 'the Congressional Budget Office ... says that as a consequence of this act, the deficit is going to be over a trillion dollars lower over the course of the next two decades than it would be if this wasn't passed.' ... Yet it is quite understandable why so many progressives, whose ideology is based on the the triumph of hope over experience, cannot understand the growing unaffordability of the misnamed Affordable Care Act. Chances are, they never will." --columnist Arnold Ahlert

"The Obama administration's ham-fisted attempt to require that contraceptives and abortifacients be offered to employees of Catholic and other religious institutions is a serious threat to our civil liberties. ... This issue was always about more than contraceptives and who pays for them. It is about individual liberty and whether the government under 'Obamacare' has the constitutional right to dictate to private businesses and church-related entities when such orders violate conscience and religious beliefs. ... If the administration can get away with this, there will be no stopping it." --columnist Cal Thomas

"Obama did not make a mistake in this mandate. It's a deliberately calculated move on his part. The Democrats realize that abortion is no longer a winner for them. ... So what they're trying to do now is replace it with contraception. ... [I]t's no coincidence, that he came out with it after Minnesota and Colorado which [were] Santorum's victories. They want to create the impression that the Republicans will ban contraception, which is totally insane, but they're floating it out and they're bringing it out there." --columnist Dick Morris

Insight

"The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

"Well, it's fine for candidates to run their campaigns on a high plane, but it would be like me wanting to conduct this column on a strictly grammatical basis. I would like to, but I just ain't equipped for it, and that's the way they are. With politicians as the tools, you just ain't equipped to conduct anything on a high plane." --American humorist Will Rogers (1879-1935)

The Demo-gogues

Twisted logic: "Right now, we're scheduled to spend more than $1 trillion more on what was intended to be a temporary tax cut for the wealthiest two percent of Americans. We've already spent about that much. Now we're expected to spend another $1 trillion." --Barack Obama, who thinks that letting people keep their own money is a form of government spending

We don't need no budget: "The budget does one thing and really only one thing: It sets the parameters of spending and discretionary caps. Other than that, the Appropriations Committee [is] not bound by the Budget Committee's priorities.The fact is, you don't need a budget. We can adopt appropriations bills." --House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD)

Blame Bush: "[I]f you look back at what their estimates were in terms of how many jobs had been lost, how bad the economy had contracted when I took office, everybody underestimated it. People thought that the economy contracted 3 percent -- it turns out it contracted close to 9 percent. ... So, the die had been cast but a lot of us didn't understand at that point how bad it was gonna get. That increases the deficit because less tax revenues come in and it means that more people are getting unemployment insurance, we're helping states more so they don't lay off teachers, etc. The key though is we're setting ourselves on a path where we can get our debt under control." --Barack Obama

Blame Congress: "We've used the Internet more effectively to create more transparency so people know where their tax dollars are going. If they need a government service they don't have to navigate through 50 websites, they can go to one website. So on those fronts we've done a lot -- we've made a lot of progress. Where I have not been able to succeed so far -- but I haven't given up -- is changing the tone in Congress." --Barack Obama

Stamping out religious liberty: "The vast majority of Catholic women are on birth control, support birth control and think it should be part of their health care plan. So, it just seems striking to me that someone would say this is a risky decision because it's the right thing to do and it's mainstream." --Rep. Michael Quigley (D-IL)

Hyperbole: "In 2012, I stand here in complete amazement that in a country known for its medical breakthroughs and advancements, Republicans would have us go back to the medical dark ages." --Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

Dezinformatsia

Some question: "[I]n a sense you feel that some part of this Republican opposition to an additional stimulus is just cynical. They want the economy to stay weak in an election year." --CNN's Fareed Zakaria to billionaire leftist financier George Soros

Lost in translation: "If you listen carefully to Rick Santorum, he sounds more like [Soviet dictator Joseph] Stalin than Pope Innocent III." --MSNBC's Martin Bashir

Championing abortion: "The thinking inside the Beltway seems to be that religious voters will turn against Democrats unless the White House drops the basic idea that insurance should cover contraception. Time will tell on the political impact of this fight, but the relevant political context here is more than just a 2012 measure of Catholic bishops' influence on moral issues. It's also this year's mainstream Republican embrace of an antiabortion movement that no longer just marches on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade to criminalize abortion; it now marches on the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, holding signs that say 'The Pill Kills.'" --MSNBC's Rachel Maddow

Feminism challenged: "I very rarely take a political position because I work for ABC News. ... [T]here was a time when feminists made the woman who stayed home and had children feel inferior. I think we are finally changing so that we realize younger ones, you can make a choice." --Barbara Walters of "The View"

Newspulper Headlines:

Mrs. Biden Is 60. What's the Issue?: "Biden 'Determined' to Work Out Birth Control Issue" --Associated Press

Too Much Information: "Obama 'Firm' on Birth Control" --News & Observer (Raleigh, NC)

So Much for the War on Drugs: "President's Convoy Stoned on Campaign Trail" --Associated Press

Or Wherever -- Just Get Him Out of D.C.!: "53% Approve of Obama in Michigan" --RasmussenReports.com

Longest Books Ever Written: "Repulsive Progressive Hypocrisy" --Salon.com

Out on a Limb: "Election 2012: Republicans United on Goal -- Beat Obama -- Divided on How to Get There" --The Washington Post

Bottom Story of the Day: "Obama to Unveil Budget With Higher Taxes, More Deficits" --The Washington Times

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto)

Village Idiots

The BIG Lie: "You can't pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can't get 60 votes without bipartisan support. So ... unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed." --White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew

Shut up, he explained: "The American people should be pleased that we now have a recovery that's taking root. The job growth is across all the sectors of the economy -- it's not the result of people leaving the workforce, it's the result of private sector job creation. This is good." --Jack Lew

More redistribution: "[A]s we have the Buffett Rule and the individual tax reform, we need a global minimum tax so that people have the assurance that nobody is escaping doing their fair share as part of a race to the bottom or having our tax code actually subsidized and facilitate people moving their funds to tax havens." --White House economic adviser Gene Sperling

"The president's vision for fulfilling the moral obligation to tackle the debt is contained within the budget he presented [this week]. He certainly did not mean last summer that we should contract spending in a way that threw the very fragile recovery at that point into reverse and caused further job loss and inflicted further economic pain on the American people." --White House Press Secretary Jay Carney

Utilitarian argument: "Any morally acceptable pathway to prevent catastrophic global warming includes broad access to affordable birth control for the world's women. ... Researchers have found that empowering women to reduce unplanned pregnancies is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat greenhouse pollution.... The more world leaders focus on giving women and girls the tools of empowerment -- access to family planning, education, and the political and economic system -- the better future all of us will have." --ThinkProgress's Brad Johnson

Short Cuts

"The Obama administration will continue forcing Catholic institutions to provide contraceptive services which violate church doctrine. The next step? Requiring Kosher Meals on Wheels programs to deliver ham sandwiches." --NewsBusted's Jodi Miller

"It was a bad [week] for Newt Gingrich. In terms that Newt can understand, I think the voters told him they want to start seeing other candidates. ... Have you noticed [Mitt] Romney doesn't even blow dry his hair anymore? He dries naturally from Rick Santorum breathing down his neck." --comedian Jay Leno

"President Obama's former Chrysler was put up for auction on eBay Thursday by the Illinois woman who now owns the car. You can tell that the car once belonged to the president. It starts off fast and then it stalls and starts calling for rich people to help push it." --comedian Argus Hamilton

"I don't want a lot from politics. I just don't want people dumber than me telling me what to do. I guess that's asking a lot, actually." --humorist Frank J. Fleming

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Rising Black Social Pathology

By Walter E. Williams

2/15/2012

The Philadelphia Inquirer's big story Feb. 4 was about how a budget crunch at the Philadelphia School District had caused the district to lay off 91 school police officers. Over the years, there's been no discussion of what has happened to our youth that makes a school police force necessary in the first place. The Inquirer's series "Assault on Learning" (March 2011) reported that in the 2010 school year, "690 teachers were assaulted; in the last five years, 4,000 were." The newspaper reported that in Philadelphia's 268 schools, "on an average day 25 students, teachers, or other staff members were beaten, robbed, sexually assaulted, or victims of other violent crimes. That doesn't even include thousands more who are extorted, threatened, or bullied in a school year."

I graduated from Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin High School in 1954. Franklin's students were from the poorest North Philadelphia neighborhoods -- such as the Richard Allen housing project, where I lived -- but there were no policemen patrolling the hallways. There were occasional after-school fights -- rumbles, we called them -- but within the school, there was order. Students didn't use foul language to teachers, much less assault them.

How might one explain the greater civility of Philadelphia and other big-city, predominantly black schools during earlier periods compared with today? Would anyone argue that during the '40s and '50s, back when Williams attended Philadelphia schools, there was less racial discrimination and poverty and there were greater opportunities for blacks and that's why academic performance was higher and there was greater civility? Or how about "in earlier periods, there was more funding for predominantly black schools"? Or how about "in earlier periods, black students had more black role models in the forms of black principals, teachers and guidance counselors"? If such arguments were to be made, it would be sheer lunacy. If white and black liberals and civil rights leaders want to make such arguments, they'd best wait until those of us who lived during the '40s and '50s have departed the scene.

Over the past couple of decades, I've attended neighborhood reunions. I've asked whether any of us recall classmates who couldn't read, write or perform simple calculations, and none of us does. Back in those days, most Philadelphia school principals, teachers and counselors were white. At Stoddart-Fleisher junior high school, where I attended, I recall that only one teacher was black, and at Benjamin Franklin, there might have been two. What does that say about the role model theory? By the way, Asian-Americans are at the top of the academic ladder, and, at least historically, they rarely experience an Asian-American teacher during their K-through-12 schooling.

Many black students are alien and hostile to the education process. They are permitted to make education impossible for other students. Their misbehavior and violence require schools to divert resources away from education and spend them on security, such as hiring school police and purchasing metal detectors, all of which does little for school safety. The violent school climate discourages the highest-skilled teachers from teaching at schools where they risk assaults, intimidation and theft. At a bare minimum, part of the solution to school violence and poor academic performance should be the expulsion of students who engage in assaults and disrespectful behavior. You say, "What's to be done for these students?" Even if we don't know what to do with them, how compassionate and intelligent is it to permit them to make education impossible for other students?

The fact that black parents, teachers, politicians and civil rights organizations tolerate and make excuses for the despicable and destructive behavior of so many young blacks is a gross betrayal of the memory, struggle, sacrifice, sweat and blood of our ancestors. The sorry and tragic state of black education is not going to be turned around until there's a change in what's acceptable and unacceptable behavior by young people. That change has to come from within the black community.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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The Progressive Legacy: Part II

By Thomas Sowell

2/15/2012

"Often wrong but never in doubt" is a phrase that summarizes much of what was done by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, the two giants of the Progressive era, a century ago.

Their legacy is very much alive today, both in their mindset -- including government picking winners and losers in the economy and interventionism in foreign countries -- as well as specific institutions created during the Progressive era, such as the income tax and the Federal Reserve System.

Like so many Progressives today, Theodore Roosevelt felt no need to study economics before intervening in the economy. He said of "economic issues" that "I am not deeply interested in them, my problems are moral problems." For example, he found it "unfair" that railroads charged different rates to different shippers, reaching the moral conclusion that these rates were discriminatory and should be forbidden "in every shape and form."

It never seemed to occur to TR that there could be valid economic reasons for the railroads to charge the Standard Oil Company lower rates for shipping their oil. At a time when others shipped their oil in barrels, Standard Oil shipped theirs in tank cars -- which required a lot less work by the railroads than loading and unloading the same amount of oil in barrels.

Theodore Roosevelt was also morally offended by the fact that Standard Oil created "enormous fortunes" for its owners "at the expense of business rivals." How a business can offer consumers lower prices without taking customers away from businesses that charge higher prices is a mystery still unsolved to the present day, when the very same arguments are used against Wal-Mart.

The same preoccupation with being "fair" to high-cost producers who were losing customers to low-cost producers has turned anti-trust law on its head, for generations after the Progressive era. Although anti-trust laws and policies have been rationalized as ways of keeping monopolies from raising prices to consumers, the actual thrust of anti-trust activity has more often been against businesses that charged lower prices than their competitors.

Theodore Roosevelt's anti-trust attacks on low-price businesses in his time were echoed in later "fail trade" laws, and in attacks against "unfair" competition by the Federal Trade Commission, another agency spawned in the Progressive era.

Woodrow Wilson's Progressivism was very much in the same mindset. Government intervention in the economy was justified on grounds that "society is the senior partner in all business."

The rhetorical transformation of government into "society" is a verbal sleight-of-hand trick that endures to this day. So is the notion that money earned in the form of profits requires politicians' benediction to be legitimate, while money earned under other names apparently does not.

Thus Woodrow Wilson declared: "If private profits are to be legitimized, private fortunes made honorable, these great forces which play upon the modern field must, both individually and collectively, be accommodated to a common purpose."

And just who will decide what this common purpose is and how it is to be achieved? "Politics," according to Wilson, "has to deal with and harmonize" these various forces.

In other words, the government -- politicians, bureaucrats and judges -- are to intervene, second-guess and pick winners and losers, in a complex economic process of which they are often uninformed, if not misinformed, and a process in which they pay no price for being wrong, regardless of how high a price will be paid by the economy.

If this headstrong, busybody approach seems familiar because it is similar to what is happening today, that is because it is based on fundamentally the same vision, the same presumptions of superior wisdom, and the same kind of lofty rhetoric we hear today about "fairness." Wilson even used the phrase "social justice."

Woodrow Wilson also won a Nobel Prize for peace, like the current president -- and it was just as undeserved. Wilson's "war to end wars" in fact set the stage for an even bigger, bloodier and more devastating Second World War.

But, then as now, those with noble-sounding rhetoric are seldom judged by what consequences actually follow.

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Brief · February 13, 2012

The Foundation

"Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between church and State." --Thomas Jefferson, letter to a Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, 1802

For the Record

We're not buying what the president's selling

"[I]t would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were required by law to freely provide such 'health care services' ... as contraception, sterilization and pharmacological abortion -- to which Catholicism is doctrinally opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity of life. Ah. But there would be no such Free Exercise violation if the institutions so mandated are deemed, by regulatory fiat, not religious. And thus, the word came forth from [Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen] Sebelius decreeing the exact criteria required.... Criterion 1: A 'religious institution' must have 'the inculcation of religious values as its purpose.' But that's not the purpose of Catholic charities; it's to give succor to the poor. That's not the purpose of Catholic hospitals; it's to give succor to the sick. Therefore, they don't qualify as 'religious' -- and therefore can be required, among other things, to provide free morning-after abortifacients. Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that 'primarily employs' and 'primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets.' Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic charities and hospitals -- even Catholic schools -- do not turn away Hindu or Jew. Their vocation is universal, precisely the kind of universal love-thy-neighbor vocation that is the very definition of religiosity as celebrated by the Gospel of Obama. ... The contradiction is glaring, the hypocrisy breathtaking. But that's not why Obama offered a hasty compromise on Friday. It's because the firestorm of protest was becoming a threat to his re-election. Sure, health care, good works and religion are important. But re-election is divine." --columnist Charles Krauthammer

Editor's Note: Obama's "compromise" is nothing of the sort. The mandate still stands for religious institutions to provide health insurance that covers contraceptives (including abortifacients), but they don't have to pay for that part -- the insurance companies do. Either he's not smart or he thinks we're not, because that isn't how things work in the real world. That's why the Catholic Church and others have rightly rejected his attempt to pull a fast one.

What's your take on Obama's "compromise"?

Insight

"I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is 'needed' before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' 'interests,' I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can." --Sen. Barry Goldwater (1909-1998)

Opinion in Brief

"[Mitt Romney] comes across like a businessman who studied the data and came up with the formula that will make the deal. A particular problem is that he betrays little indignation at any of our problems and their causes. He's always sunny, pleasant, untouched by anger. ... Mitt Romney's aides are making the classic mistake of thinking the voters want maturity, serenity and a jolly spirit. What they want is a man who knows what time it is, who has a passion to reform our country, and who yet holds these qualities within a temperament that is mature, serene and jolly. Newt Gingrich has half the package: He has a passion to reform, but it exists inside a crazy suit. Mitt has no particular passion within an obviously sane suit. Which leads to Rick Santorum. Nobody in the conservative base hates Rick. Newt is hated by many and Mitt by some. Mr. Santorum is liked. He has real indignation about what's happened to America, and he brings passion to his ideas about reform. He's got little money, little organization -- there's no broad assumption he can pull it off. And by the time the Romney campaign is done dismantling him, he may have some people who hate him. But this will only underscore the Romney campaign's reputation for destroying, not creating. And nobody loves a Death Star." --columnist Peggy Noonan

Re: The Left

"Americans seem to have decided that Obama is at bottom a trustworthy, honest man, regardless of his skills, or lack thereof, as an executive. That is unfortunate, because the facts suggest otherwise. As a presidential candidate Obama misled the public as to his intentions should he ascend to the Oval Office; as president, he has participated in open cronyism and corruption, buying votes to assure passage of unpopular legislation and awarding special favors to campaign contributors. In short, Obama the president, people forget, is Obama 'the person.' ... How to explain such mendacity from the man who vowed to cure our capital from its endemic corruption and vice? Simple: Obama is a disciple of the far-left-wing radical political strategist and teacher Saul Alinsky. ... In his famous tome, 'Rules For Radicals,' Alinsky wrote, 'to me ethics is doing what is best for the most,' and 'ethics are determined by whether one is losing or winning.' In other words, the ends justify the means for Alinsky -- but he advised his students that they must always give their behavior the sheen of a morality to make it palatable to the masses.... Obama learned this lesson well. ... Alinsky would be proud." --columnist Matt Patterson

Political Futures

"Speaking of liberals, every time you hear one of them wail against photo IDs for voters, you know what they are really grousing about is that it would make it harder to cheat at election time. As usual, they, along with Eric Holder, try to pass off their criminal activities as compassion for young people and members of the black and Hispanic communities, pretending that photo IDs would disenfranchise millions of potential voters. On the face of it, it's such blatant hypocrisy that only born liars and cheaters like Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, would even pay it lip service. After all, as everyone knows, photo IDs are required if you want to drive a car, get on a plane or buy a six-pack of Bud. But the other day, the liberals in the Illinois legislature drove the point home when they passed a state law requiring that anyone who wanted to buy drain cleaner or any other caustic substance provide a photo ID. While it figures that in Illinois, the state where governors regularly wind up in jail and dead people get to continue voting for Democrats, honest elections would not be a priority. Still, even in Chicago, it requires a monumental dose of cynicism to suggest that maintaining eternal vigilance over the sanctity of the hardware store trumps that of the voting booth." --columnist Burt Prelutsky

The Gipper

"People ask me if in looking back at my college years I can remember any inkling that I would one day run for president. Well, actually, the thought first struck me on graduation day when the president handed me my diploma and asked, 'Are you better off today than you were four years ago?'" --Ronald Reagan

Government

"The CBO examined workers with otherwise similar characteristics and found that 'for workers at all education levels, the cost of total compensation averaged about $52 per hour worked for federal employees, compared with about $45 per hour worked for employees in the private sector.' ... [F]ederal workers enjoy gold-plated benefits worth 48 percent more than what they would receive outside of government. They also get nearly automatic seniority-based pay raises. ... Even better (or worse, if you're taxpayers footing the bill), federal workers enjoy a remarkable level of job security. ... That's not to say that all federal employees make more than their private-sector counterparts. ... Overall, though, there's no denying the obvious: Compensation for government workers is too high -- and it's completely unmoored from any kind of market-based reality." --Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner

Essential Liberty

"In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson called the pursuit of happiness an unalienable right. This was a radical idea. For most of history, most people didn't think much about pursuing happiness. They were too busy just trying to survive. Then came the liberal revolution based on the idea of individual freedom. Only then did they start thinking that happiness might be possible on earth. Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the right to pursue happiness has been perverted into a government-backed entitlement to happiness." --columnist John Stossel

Culture

"Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the bohemian elite at NBC. NBC could have prevented, but failed to stop, the broadcast of a female rapper 'flipping the bird' at 114 million viewers during Madonna's halftime show. It was another 'fleeting expletive' of the hand-gesture variety, and somehow, despite elaborate rehearsals, no one at NBC could seem to stop it. The same network skillfully edited God out of a clip of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance during last year's U.S. Open golf tournament. As usual, and just as CBS did with Janet Jackson, NBC tried to shift the blame in a statement, declaring that 'the NFL hired the talent and produced' the show. As usual, the NFL statement stressed a 'failure in NBC's delay system' and characterized the gesture as 'completely inappropriate' and 'very disappointing' and 'obscene.' ... [A]nd just as Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake declared, M.I.A.'s camp claimed the gesture was 'not premeditated' and did not occur in rehearsals. ... Although the NFL foots the bill to produce the halftime show, the league does not pay performers, since the massive exposure is enough reward. But artists do sign decency clauses, according to an NFL publicist, who added that the league is 'exploring all of our options.' That's publicist lingo for 'hoping it just goes away.' ... As usual, if NBC had made a serious attempt to employ its otherwise meaningless 7-second delay technology, none of this would have happened." --columnist L. Brent Bozell

Reader Comments

"Thank you for the great image The Patriot Post created combining our Founding Documents with images of those 'traitors' who risked everything for Liberty, and not just for themselves but for all people forever. I think I recognize all of them, but please publish the names of these heroic Patriots in order of appearance on the image."

"Some commenters have questioned whether their was such an FBI bulletin released. Well, for the record, I AM a career senior federal agent, and on Monday of the week Mark Alexander published, FBI Terrorist Alert: Beware of Those Who 'Reference the Constitution or Bible', I received the FBI bulletin about the dangers of 'sovereign citizens, as referenced in this column. As I read it, it was clear that much of the language used promoted an underlying political agenda, so in disgust, I deleted it. That is how I reacted to the bulletin, and I can assure you a great many of my colleagues did, likewise." --Kalifornia Kop

"I have been a Democrat all my life. I am ashamed of what the president has done on the contraception issue, which is patently un-American. This is an attack on a fundamental principle of our country which is religious liberty. I cannot in good conscience support his re-election, as he can no longer be trusted." --Kevin

"Barack Obama's contraception mandate is a total affront on the First Amendment. The man has been trampling the Constitution and Bill of Rights since he was sworn in." --Robert

"I was feeling very sick about the direction the Republican nomination process was headed. Now with Rick Santorum rising, there is a chance we will have a real choice between an establishment Republican and a real conservative." --Ron

The Last Word

"[T]here's still one or two Nonconformists out there, and they have to be forced into ideological compliance. 'Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee free exercise of religion in the First Amendment,' Melinda Henneberger of the Washington Post offered to Chris Matthews on MSNBC. At the National Press Club, young Catholics argued that the overwhelming majority of their coreligionists disregard the Church's teachings on contraception, so let's bring the vox Dei into alignment with the vox populi. Get with the program, get with the Act of Uniformity. The bigger the Big Government, the smaller everything else: First, other pillars of civil society are crowded out of the public space; then, the individual gets crowded out, even in his most private, tooth-level space. President Obama, Commissar Sebelius, and many others believe in one-size-fits-all national government -- uniformity, conformity, supremacy from Maine to Hawaii, for all but favored cronies. It is a doomed experiment -- and on the morning after it will take a lot more than a morning-after pill to make it all go away." --columnist Mark Steyn