The American Spectator

The Battle of the Sexes (All Four of Them)

William Tucker — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:09:00 -0400

The first night I went to college in 1960 a gang of us who had just arrived for freshman orientation decided to cross the quad and challenge the incoming freshmen in another dorm. When we got there it turned out the only resident was an upper-class dorm proctor who also happened to be a huge football player. He came out in response to our taunts, some words were exchanged and before anyone knew it the mob of us had pinned the football player to the ground, somebody produced a scissors and we cut his hair down to the scalp.

I don't know whether you could call it "bullying." The huge football player could have taken any one of us. I cringed the next day when I saw the shaven warrior crossing the campus, fearing he might recognize me. It was the kind of outpouring of exuberance common on all-male campuses of that era.

Little did any of us realize that such an incident might one day disqualify any of us from running for President.

The Mitt-Romney-at-Cranbrook issue and President Obama's awkward embrace of gay marriage have quickly turned an election that was supposed to be about unemployment and the ailing economy into a debate over the fate of people who believe they were socially abused while young. It seems almost absurd that such a pivotal election is even discussing such an issue but as long as we're addressing the subject, let's face up to a few things.

First of all, let's admit it -- childhood is a jungle. We come into this world not entirely civilized and childhood and youth is the period when these things are thrashed out with a vengeance. I remember during my first three years of grade school the consuming issue not learning to read or fashioning clay ashtrays in art class but who had the "cooties" of a girl two years ahead of us. She was a big, raw-boned girl whose name "Elizabeth" had been shortened to "Lizard." The most terrifying thing that could happen was to be given "Lizard's cooties." The rumor was that she went to the bathroom like a boy.

Sexual ambiguity is something that has always frightened children and primitive societies. Tribal cultures usually have elaborate taboos about what men and women can do, which building they can enter, even what they are allowed to touch. Such societies have elaborate initiation ceremonies to make sure young people assume the proper sexual roles as they reach maturity. It was Margaret Mead who in a moment of weakness once said, "The most stable societies are those that make the clearest distinction between men and women."

Yet every society also produces a small number of people who feel uncomfortable with traditional roles and incline toward what early 20th century anthropologist Edward Carpenter called "the intermediate sex." Most societies have created a place for them, often one of considerable honor. Men who feel uncomfortable with the traditional male role often become witchdoctors or priests or scholars, shunning the traditional male role but revered for their differences and respected for their wisdom. Women have done the same thing. Athena, the patron goddess of Athens, was born directly out of the head of Zeus without a trace of motherhood in her and was always represented as armed with a helmet and a sword. The Delphic Oracle, who virtually ruled Classical Greece, was a farm girl who had heard voices telling her to shun the female role and live among vestal virgins (or temple prostitutes, no one has ever decided which) spouting prophecies. Joan of Arc was another young heroine whose inner voice told her to assume the male role and rescue France. She became the national symbol.

Altogether, the progressiveness of a society can probably be measured by its ability to tolerate sexual ambiguity and grant flexibility in sexual roles. We are probably as tolerant as any society has ever been in this regard. But putting homosexual marriage on a par with traditional marriage is an entirely different thing. Marriage is a ceremony designed to bind the two halves of humanity together. Homosexual marriage leaves them further apart and isolated. Few societies have ever granted it, yet alone celebrated it, as we appear to be on the verge of doing.

There is very good reason. Every society blesses the yoking of male and female together as the crucible for the propagation of the species. This is no small thing. The Theory of Evolution is based on the premise that all organisms are driven by an irrational imperative to reproduce themselves and "spread their genes." Parents and other relatives do not want to see their children or nephews or nieces becoming homosexuals because it means they are not likely to have grandchildren or other closely related kin. This will be the basic biological response no matter how many "Proud-Parents-of-Gay-Children" organizations are formed.

But of course we are a super-progressive society that can by-pass all this biology with the simple question, "Who says you have to be married to someone of the opposite sex to have children?" And this is why homosexual marriage, no matter how innocently intended, inevitably challenges the whole principle of marriage itself. If any two people can yoke themselves together in an institution created for the nurturing of children, then why not any three or four or even one? With male homosexuals this may involve some complicated ju-jitsu but for lesbians and even for women who just don't have much tolerance for men, it all becomes surpassingly easy. Why not just pick an attractive man, get pregnant, have a baby and forget about all this social convention about getting married?

You don't have to look very far to see the results. It's on the cover of Time magazine this week. The controversial picture shows a blond young supermom breast-feeding what appears to be four-year-old boy. The headline claims it all has something to do with "Are you Mom enough?" but the subliminal message is clear. This is the new American family. This woman is "Julia," the Obama-administration-conjured "new woman" who needs no parents or husband or supporting relatives but can marry the government instead.

And who is this young man? Why he's the New Woman's sexual counterpart, an infantilized, totally dependent male. (It's no accident that it's a boy in combat fatigues she's nursing. If it were a girl in a tutu, the whole message would be lost.) This is a feminist dream, a world without adult men. And is there the slightest chance this little boy is going to grow up to be a husband and a father? Forget it. We've already created this kind of matriarchy in the African-American subculture through the welfare system. Now let's do it in society at large.

And this gets to the heart of the sickness in the Obama Administration. It is why the President and his crew will go on embracing gay marriage and single motherhood and every other form of deviance from the traditional husband-and-wife family, showering them with government blessings. Together they form a constituency that can overthrow the basic adult male-female relationship that has been at the core of every society in human history.

Homosexuals and people of ambiguous sexuality can and do play successful, even leading roles in traditional heterosexual society. Rock Hudson played a leading man and heartthrob for millions of women even though he was personally gay. Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres entertain millions in largely heterosexual audiences. Elton John and Lady Gaga have made their fortunes singing about heterosexual love. The whole arts community has always been filled with people who played one role in public while living entirely different private lives. But the question is not whether any individual should be praised or condemned for their sexuality. The question is whether the homosexual norm should stand on a par with the heterosexual bond. When any society reaches this point of challenge, it's worth pushing back.

So yes, let's forget about the economy for a while and conduct an election campaign over whether tradition sex roles can be defended -- whether boys can be boys or whether candidates should be ostracized for exhibiting traditional male behavior in their youth. It's probably more important anyway.

Obama's Debacle

Peter Ferrara — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:09:00 -0400

Obama has already succeeded in fundamentally transforming America, from a prosperous nation that draws people the world over, voting with their feet, to a rapidly declining former superpower on the fast track to a third-world status similar to Argentina or Venezuela. That is effectively what is argued by the new book Debacle: Obama's War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain our Future, by leading taxpayer activist Grover Norquist and economist John Lott.

The Worst Economic Recovery Since the Great Depression
Central to the debacle Obama has created is that he has imposed on America the worst economic recovery since the Great Depression. Yes, the country was in recession when Obama was elected. But it was Obama's policies that turned it into the Great Recession and prevented the American economy from recovering -- just like his icon Franklin Roosevelt turned the 1929 stock market collapse into the Great Depression, and prevented America from recovering for more than a decade. As Norquist and Lott explain:

While this recession no doubt has been one of the worst since the Great Depression, the supposed recovery that followed it has clearly been the worst. Unemployment and job growth have been abysmal. As of October, 2011, the unemployment rate was stuck at least at 9.0 percent for 27 out of 29 months. Astoundingly, the unemployment rate during the 29 months of recovery averages three full percentage points higher than the average unemployment rate during the recession. There is no comparable recovery on record since the prolonged period of stagnation during the Great Depression in the 1930s. The Reagan recovery, starting in late 1982, hit a higher unemployment rate, but after the recovery started, it did not take more than nine months for the unemployment rate to dip below 9 percent.

This latest recession started in December, 2007. The National Bureau of Economic Research, the recognized timekeeper of when recessions start and end, declared this one over in June, 2009, which would make it the longest recession since the Great Depression 75 years ago. But the historical precedent in America is that the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery. Based on that precedent, we should be in the third year of a raging economic recovery boom by now. But instead we have experienced no real recovery at all.

As Norquist and Lott explain the Obama non-recovery:

The recession was painful enough. Between when the recession started in December 2007 and ended in June, 2009, 6.3 million jobs were lost. After the recession ended and this book was written in October, 2011, only 324,000 additional jobs were created—an average of just 11,000 a month over those 29 months. With the working age population growing by 160,000 a month, this meager job growth failed to make a dent in getting the jobs back, let alone find jobs for the ever-growing population.

Unemployment actually rose after the recession supposedly ended in June, 2009, and did not fall back down below that level until 18 months later in December, 2010. Norquist and Lott add, "In the first 29 months during the Reagan recovery, the number of jobs grew by 8 percent. In contrast, over the same time, the number of jobs under Obama has grown by just 0.25 percent."

"But things in America are a lot worse than the simple employment and unemployment numbers indicate," Norquist and Lott continue, "because many people have given up looking for work and have completely left the labor force, and the government no longer counts people as unemployed after they give up looking for a job. Obviously, lowering the unemployment rate through disillusioned job seekers giving up looking is not a good thing."

But that is exactly what the Obama administration is celebrating as the achievement of its economic policies -- working people giving up and dropping out of the labor force. That is the only way the unemployment rate has been falling at all. Norquist and Lott explain further, "People are supposed to start looking for work during recoveries. It is during recessions that Americans give up looking for work. Unfortunately, under the Obama Administration, the reverse has happened…. It was only during the Obama recovery that Americans started dropping out of the labor force in droves. In total, 4.7 million people quit looking for work." Today, it is 7.7 million who have dropped out of the work force under Obama.

Again, the Reagan recovery is the measure. "The contrast with the Reagan recovery is striking," Norquist and Lott write. "After the Reagan recovery started, millions more people wanted to work than even before the recession started. The sharp drop in the unemployment rate during the Reagan recovery is therefore even more impressive…. Despite all those new people looking for work, the unemployment rate fell from 10.8 percent at the end of 1982 to 7.2 percent by the presidential election in 1984."

The Obama non-recovery debacle continues to this day. Last month, while 115,000 new jobs were supposedly created, the labor force shrank by another 342,000 workers, which is the only reason the unemployment rate reportedly declined from 8.2 to 8.1 percent. Without the decline in the labor force, unemployment would have risen last month to 8.3 percent. The labor force is actually 365,000 workers smaller today than it was in June, 2009, when the recession supposedly ended.

As Investor's Business Daily reported on May 7, "That's in stark contrast to every other post-World War II expansion, which saw the labor force climb by the millions at this point in their recoveries, even as unemployment rates were driven down." Indeed, if the labor force participation had stayed the same as it was when the recession supposedly ended in June, 2009, without the millions fleeing Obama's economy since then, the unemployment rate would be 11 percent, Investor's Business Daily calculated.

Moreover, as the Wall Street Journal reported in its weekend edition of May 5-6, "Even as employers added jobs last month, full time employment actually fell by 812,000." The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that for last month the number of involuntary part-time workers totaled nearly 8 million. The BLS says, "These individuals were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job."

The BLS reported that in April, 52 months after the recession started, the total unemployment rate counting the unemployed and involuntarily underemployed was still 14.5 percent. That's already persistent depression level unemployment. But the Shadow Government Statistics website, which includes the long-term discouraged workers the government doesn't count at all anymore since 1994, reports the total unemployment rate at 22.3 percent. That's what the total unemployment rate would be today if it were calculated the same way it was before 1994. Happy days are here again, under Obamanomics.

Reaganomics v. Obamanomics
In a Wall Street Journal article in February, 2009, I noted that the emerging Obamanomics followed the exact opposite of every policy of Reaganomics in great detail. I predicted that it would consequently get the exact opposite results. That is what has happened.

The Reagan recovery blossomed into a 25-year economic boom, from 1982 to 2007, which Art Laffer and Stephen Moore called in their book The End of Prosperity, "the greatest period of wealth creation in the history of the planet." In the first 7 years alone, 20 million new jobs were created, which grew into 50 million new jobs over the entire boom.

In contrast, as the Wall Street Journal reported on May 5-6, "Nearly three years into the [Obama] recovery, the U.S. still employs five million fewer workers than before the recession."

When Reagan entered office, the first thing he did was lead Congress to enact the initially much-derided "Reagan budget cuts," which have now been dumped down the Left's memory hole. Federal spending was cut by nearly 5 percent. In sharp contrast, the first thing Obama did upon taking office was pass his nearly $1 trillion so-called stimulus bill.

At best, that stimulus did nothing to promote growth, because borrowing a trillion dollars out of the economy to increase government spending by a trillion dollars does nothing to enhance the economy on net. But Norquist and Lott argue that "The Stimulus made things worse." Indeed, Lott published an article at FoxNews.com on February 3, 2009, predicting, "President Obama and the Democrats' 'stimulus' package will increase the unemployment rate," contrary to the administration's prediction that unemployment would stop rising once the stimulus was passed. Lott proved more prescient than the entire administration's army of hired economists.

Norquist and Lott report, "Business economists and forecasters had consistently been expecting the economy to begin positive growth in the second half of 2009. But passing the Stimulus appeared to dampen the recovery economists were anticipating…. Paul Evans, the editor of the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and an economics professor at Ohio State University, agrees, and told us: 'Most likely the economic recovery would have been more rapid at this point without [the Stimulus package].'"

Norquist and Lott note that Wall Street Journal-surveyed forecasters cut their growth expectations in half by May, after the stimulus passed, from January, before the stimulus passed.

Norquist and Lott explain why the stimulus spending was counterproductive: "The resources the government spends have to come out of someone else's pocket. Spending almost a trillion dollars on various stimulus projects means moving a lot of resources from the private sector, eliminating the jobs many people currently have." This shift from market-directed employment to government-directed employment causes dislocation, as workers shift from one job to another, which is a net drag on the economy.

On top of that, the government-created jobs are likely to be temporary and fewer than the number of jobs destroyed elsewhere. The simple reason is that many of these new jobs are artificial and will only exist as long as the government continues heavy subsidies…. Obama's Council of Economic Advisors wrongly assumes that all of the Stimulus jobs are filled by the unemployed. But that is clearly wrong. Indeed, most of those getting the new [stimulus funded] jobs already had a job to begin with…. Whatever jobs might have been created, they did not come cheap….Accepting the Administration's most optimistic 3.6 million number, it cost $200,000 per job. And if the survey of recipients is right, the cost per job created soars to over a million dollars…. In many cases, the money was just wasted completely. For instance, at Solyndra, the scandal-plagued solar energy company that got $535 million from the federal government, what had originally been counted as long term jobs soon disappeared when the company went bankrupt and took the half billion government loan guarantee with it.

The bottom line is that what drives economic growth and recovery is not government spending, as the Obama administration's Keynesian throwbacks imagine. What drives economic growth and recovery is incentives for increased production. That is what Reagan proved, first by cutting taxes 25 percent across the board, and then by cutting the top tax rate from 70 percent, where it was when he entered office, to 28 percent, and slashing the rate for middle income earners to just 15 percent. Cuts in tax rates, not just tax cuts, enhance incentives, because producers can then keep more of what they create.

What most people do not know is that, just the opposite, Obama has already led the enactment in current law, for next year, of increases in the top tax rates of virtually every major federal tax. That is because the Obamacare tax increases go into effect, and the Bush tax cuts will expire, as Obama refuses to renew them for the nation's small businesses, job creators, and investors. This is on top of the U.S. corporate income tax burden, which under Obama is already the highest in the industrialized world at nearly 40 percent on average, counting state corporate taxes. Yet, under Obama there is no relief in sight. Instead, he has spent the past year and a half barnstorming the country calling for still more tax increases.

These pending tax rate increases help explain why so much money is sitting on the sidelines in a capital strike, or fleeing overseas in a capital flight, like in a third-world country. And that missing investment helps explain why there are no jobs.

Obama is also following the exact opposite of Reagan's policies by vastly expanding rather than reducing regulatory costs, supporting a record amount of easy money at the Fed, and restricting rather than maximizing American energy production. If Obama's policies are not quickly reversed, the result without a doubt will be another whopping recession next year.

But the decline and fall of America is not inevitable. The economy is poised to boom again, at all-time records of capitalist prosperity, if the American people will only free it this fall from the socialism of Obamanomics.

The Real Obama
John Lott speaks from direct personal experience with the real Obama during the days when they were both junior professors at the University of Chicago. Lott relates these personal interactions in the book, saying,

When I was first introduced to Obama, he said, "Oh, you're the gun guy." I responded, "Yes, I guess so." "I don't believe that people should be able to own guns," Obama replied. I then suggested that it might be fun to have lunch and talk about that statement sometime. He simply grimaced and turned away, ending the conversation. That was the way that numerous interactions with Obama went…. It was very clear that Obama disagreed on the gun issue and acted as if he believed that people who he disagreed with were not just wrong, but evil. Unlike other liberal academics who usually enjoyed discussing opposing ideas, Obama simply showed disdain."

This ideological rigidity and extremism are what people paying attention to Obama as President should have expected.

Romney Closing With Obama

G. Tracy Mehan, III — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:08:00 -0400

Mitt Romney's campaign is making great headway, closing with Barack Obama during this lovely month of May.

It is one thing when Rasmussen's tracking poll puts Romney up by 2 points for May 11-14. Rasmussen is every Republican's favorite pollster. But what does it say when even the establishmentarian CBS News/New York Times poll puts Governor Romney up by 3 points? Moreover, the average of all polls to date give President Obama only a 1.6 percentage lead, according to RealClearPolitics.

This is substantial progress since the beginning of the month when the Associated Press/GfK poll gave Obama an 8-point edge, 50-42, for the May 3-7 time frame. This rapid shift in polling may account for the Obama campaign's nasty swerve toward negativity with an emphasis on class envy, disparagement of free markets, and vilification of successful people generally, including donors opposing the President.

And it is only going to get worse this election cycle. The Washington Examiner ran a story this week on training provided to the House Democratic Caucus "on how to inject the issue of race into nearly any political argument that takes place during the 2012 election season."

Evidently, one Maya Wiley, a former adviser for George Soros's Open Society Institute and founder of the Center for Social Inclusion, spoke to the Caucus on "race and fiscal policy," and insists that all talk of cutting government spending is "racially coded." Even Rick Santorum is accused of playing the race card by calling for cuts in spending and the welfare state. Wiley urges Democrats to steer the public dialogue away from race-neutral language. "'Explain how each racial group is affected [by a government program], but start with people who are white,' she wrote in her presentation. 'Then raise racial disparities.'"

Back to the campaign, the experienced Republican politico, Ed Rogers, got it right in the Washington Post on May 9 when he asked why, despite a bruising primary and Romney supposedly "winning ugly," the GOP "war on women," and other negative spin about the Ryan budget, isn't Obama "cruising" right now with a big lead?

"Romney is stronger than he has been portrayed and Obama is weaker than most people think," wrote Rogers. "How else do you explain the current polls?"

The day before, on May 8, the Wall Street Journal's political reporter, Gerald Seib, wrote a column on the efforts by both campaigns to build up enthusiasm among targeted voters. Seib observed that an April poll by the WSJ and NBC showed Obama leading among all voters by 6 percentage points, 49-46. "But among those who express high interest in the election -- defined as those who rate their interest at a nine or 10 on a 10-point scale -- Mr. Romney leads by three points, 49% to 46%."

For Democrats, 64 percent are highly interested in the election, versus 80 percent four years ago. "By contrast, enthusiasm among Republicans actually is up a few percentage points, to 74% from 71% four years ago," wrote Seib.

An early May USA Today/Gallup Swing State Poll revealed the two candidates to be essentially even with Obama ahead of Romney, 47-45, in the dozen battleground states that will determine the outcome of the November election. Obama had a lead of 9 percentage points in late March. However, the President is generating an edge in enthusiasm among his voters there. "For the first time, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to say they are extremely or very enthusiastic about voting -- a shift from a 14-percentage point GOP advantage at the end of last year to an 11-point deficit now," wrote Susan Page in USA Today.

However, among those polled in the swing states, 60 percent say a President Romney would do a good or very good job handling the economy as opposed to 52 percent who say the same thing about President Obama.

Republican optimists would say that Romney just won a tough primary battle with wounds still healing and Obama has an early lead in organizing in the target states, both circumstances that are going to change, are changing, rapidly.

James Collins, the celebrated author of the best-selling business book, Good to Great, tells the story of Admiral Jim Stockdale, a prisoner of war who was tortured by the Viet Cong for eight years. In response to Collins's enquiry as to who did not make it out of the camps, Stockdale replied, "Oh, that's easy. It was the optimists. They were the ones who said we were going home by Christmas.… You know, I think they all died of broken hearts."

I am certain that Admiral Stockdale would not counsel pessimism in the face of challenges but realism certainly. This will be a long, grueling campaign that will make the Republican primary look like a pleasant round of croquet. It is certainly winnable, but no one who wishes Mitt Romney well can simply sit on their hands and watch this election from afar. It is time for all hands on deck.

Jobs for Graduates

Ben Stein — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:08:00 -0400

Sunday–Mother's Day
Alex and I are at our house in Rancho Mirage. The temperature as we left for the Mother's Day Brunch at Morningside Club was 112. That's hot.

The brunch was delicious but there were not many people there. Lots of men and women have gone home because The Season for parties and socials has ended. Plus, it's hot as blazes.

Still, Alex and I had a fine meal mostly of chicken, then came home, packed up, and got on the Freeway.

It was fantastically hot. Just sheets of wavy heat coming off the asphalt. It was terrifying to think what would happen if the a/c broke.

Luckily, it didn't, and soon we were in Calimesa, where the temperature was a mild 85 with a lovely breeze. I had a snack at the Burger King. I met a lovely couple from Phoenix who had been visiting in Marina del Rey. The girlfriend is a medical biller for a huge chain of hospitals. She argues with insurers to get the hospitals paid. She said she was hiring like mad and still could not keep up. The demand for capable men and women in this field is bottomless and growing.

She had learned about it, if I recall correctly, at a nonprofit partly on-line, partly campus-based school called National University in San Diego.

This is some amazing coincidence, because I am addressing their commencement tomorrow in San Diego.

We ran into maddening traffic in Rosemead, then got to near home. We pulled into a Taco Bell to get a Diet Coke. Two LAPD officers were questioning two young men. No one was in cuffs. When the young men saw me, they asked me to sign some bottle of Clear Eyes, then the police wanted autographs, too, and soon everyone was laughing and the cops let the young men go.

We got home, and I washed up, and then jumped into a Town Car to be driven down to San Diego. I slept the whole way except for a stop at a Sonic where the waiters were all on roller skates. The owner of the franchise came screaming up to the store in his truck to tell me how much he loves The American Spectator, so that was nice.

I slept the whole rest of the way, checked into my room with its life-or-death tea maker, then went to sleep next to a window overlooking the San Diego Marina. I had a long dream about my pal Wendy yelling at me because I eat too much fast food.

Then, more sleep, then dressed and out to the commencement preliminaries. The main one was visiting with Patricia Potter, a brilliant, lovely, friendly woman. Like my mother, she had spent some time at Goucher College in Maryland. My mother had transferred to Barnard but always had a fond spot for Goucher and for Maryland, where my sister and I "grew up." (I still know every word of "Maryland, My Maryland.")

Ms. Potter and I had a great talk, then off to get robed, meet super friendly officers, trustees, and faculty. I also met the long-time soul of the school, Dr. Jerry C. Lee. He's retiring after a spectacular career at National and elsewhere.

We went into an immense room at the San Diego Convention Center. I was told there were 7,800 people there -- students and families, primarily. The room was kept at a perfect temperature.

I spoke mostly about National. It is a great place in that it educates people for the world as it is. The students are taught engineering, nursing, teaching, medical billing, many other subjects that will get the grads jobs when they get out. They will get jobs and they will make a living and they will have the self-esteem that only making a living and being self-supporting through their own contributions can confer.

Yes, it's true that many schools teach discontent, whining, moaning, bitching, navel gazing, and disloyalty. Yes, it's true that some of them are famous schools.

But at National University, they teach what America needs its students to know: the skills we need to keep America running.

Again, these are not whiners and moaners at National University. These are the people who will keep us competitive and will keep themselves alive without a handout. Many of these students were single parents and worked at a job (maybe two jobs) while they studied. This is motivation indeed and motivation is everything.

I looked out at the men and women in the room -- white, black, Asian, Hispanic, men, women, old and young, all learning how to keep the engine of America and the engine of their personalities running. I kept thinking, "I have seen the future of education and it works."

Governor Brown should put the trustees of National University in charge of the University of California. Fewer courses in subversion. More classes in subjects that really matter and get graduates jobs.

Many of the people in room had a military background and cheered as I lauded our military. I just loved these people.

Then the speech was over and we pooh-bahs went back to the robing room. I was sad to say good-bye to President Potter and Chancellor-Emeritus Lee. I was sad to say good-bye to all of them. The salt of the earth.

This has been an encouraging day and I don't have a lot of them.

On the way home, I met my pal Joe for dinner in Del Mar. He is as hard-working a man as I know of. And he has the success to prove it. The absolutely best anti-poverty program there is: work. They know it at National University. If we are smart about it, the future will be what schools like National make it.

France’s Islamist Powder Keg

Joseph A. Harriss — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:07:00 -0400

From the first intelligence surveillance to the final shootout, France’s clumsy handling of its spate of Islamic terrorism in March was a case study in how not to deal with a jihadist. With the largest Muslim community in Europe—nearly 10 percent of the population—and thousands of young Frenchmen going to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, and Yemen on the pretext of studying the Koran, it does not bode well for the country’s domestic tranquility. Neither does the fact that officials have long been in denial, minimizing the threat for fear of alarming the public and antagonizing an increasingly restive ethnic-Arab minority. Thus tranquillized, the French public shrugs and says pas de problème: a recent poll shows only 53 percent think the terrorist threat is dangerous, the lowest level of concern since 2001.

Mohamed Merah, the 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent who shot three French soldiers point blank in the South of France, then slaughtered a teacher, his two young sons, and an 8-year-old girl at a Jewish school in Toulouse, said loud and clear that he was acting for al Qaeda. His coolly professional assassinations, intended to “bring France to its knees”—President Nicolas Sarkozy compared them to the 9/11 attacks in the U.S.—bore the jihadist imprint right down to filming them and ensuring he died a martyr’s death seen on the world’s television screens. He signed his social network account “Mohamed Merah-Forsane Alizza,” meaning “Knights of Pride,” an outlawed France-based jihadist outfit.

Yet the government energetically pooh-poohed the idea that France was seriously threatened by Islamic fundamentalists. “These crimes were the work of a fanatic and a monster,” Nicolas Sarkozy insisted. “To look for an explanation…would be a moral fault.” He instructed the French not to blame the attacks on “our Muslim compatriots [who] had nothing to do with the crazy motivation of a terrorist.” Most of the obedient French media went along with the politically correct whitewash.

Despite his claims to the contrary, Merah was officially described as a loner with no assistance from any al Qaeda affiliate. Indeed, the favorite theory of the chattering class was that he must be a right-wing neo-Nazi. Or failing that, just your typical underprivileged, disaffected guy who had had a miserable childhood in the slums. The left-leaning Le Monde reported that he had “an angelic face, a fascinating beauty.” His 15 arrests and doing time for everything from stoning buses to violent theft and fighting with rivals? Liberals outdid themselves to show he was the psychologically disturbed victim of an unjust society. “A pathetic young man…the victim of a social order that had already doomed him, and millions of others like him, to a marginal existence, and to the non-recognition of his status as a citizen equal in rights and opportunities,” explained the Muslim apologist Tariq Ramadan, who was denied a U.S. visa for providing material support to a terrorist organization before the ACLU persuaded Hillary Clinton to lift the ban.

The failure of the French domestic intelligence agency, the DCRI, to spot Merah as a serious threat, and its subsequent efforts at self-justification, would have been comic were we not dealing with tragedy. Its chief called him a self-radicalized young man with a split personality, a lone wolf who operated below the radar. Besides, he pleaded, Merah had not followed the usual path taken by Islamist extremists. He wasn’t visibly part of any network. He even went to nightclubs instead of mosques, for heaven’s sake, so how could we know he was a jihadist? “We had absolutely no reason to believe he was commissioned by al Qaeda to carry out these attacks.” No doubt it would have helped to have a copy of his marching orders on an al Qaeda letterhead.

The DCRI chief and other officials tried to make light of a 2010 trip Merah made to Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, spiritual home of the Taliban. But as information leaked out, it became clear that this poor kid, who lived on welfare payments of about $600 a month, had left tracks all over the Middle East, with somebody else obviously paying the bills. Besides Afghanistan, he later visited Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel in the space of two years. Strangely, he was reportedly arrested by Afghan police on his first trip and handed over to American forces there, who returned him to France. The FBI’s counterterrorism department put him on the no-fly list, barring entry to the U.S. The French ignored this, either through sheer sloppiness or to avoid any appearance of profiling.

They did, however, put him under loose surveillance. Nearly a year after his first trip to Afghanistan, a DCRI agent in Toulouse finally called his cell number to ask him to come in for a talk. He didn’t bat an eye when Mohamed answered and said sorry, he couldn’t—he was busy in Pakistan at the time. When he finally did drop in months later, these Keystone Kops approvingly looked over the photos he brought along as proof he was there as a tourist, said something like très bien, mon ami, and let him go. (This casual relationship and other aspects of the case led to speculation that Merah was perhaps a double agent, an informer for the DCRI who was turned by al Qaeda; a lawyer hired by his father claims to have video proof that he was “manipulated” and “liquidated” by the police.)

The official French version that Merah was a lone wolf inspired by his solitary reading of the Koran looked even more foolish when it became known that he had trained for two months in North Waziristan on the Af-Pak border, likely with the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), an umbrella group of Pakistani factions. He would have been anything but alone. Pakistani intelligence officials told the Associated Press that dozens of French Muslim militants, many with dual French-North African nationality, are training there:

The Frenchmen operate under the name Jihad-e-Islami and are being trained to use explosives and other weapons at camps near the town of Miran Shah and in the Datta Khel area, the officials said. They are led by a French commander who goes by the name Abu Tarek.

When they return to France, all it will take to waken these sleeping agents will be a call from Kandahar.

Merah certainly learned about firearms. Somehow, right under the noses of French surveillance and with financial assistance from guess who, he amassed a stash of guns, including several Colt .45 automatics with extra magazines, an automatic Sten pistol, a Colt Python revolver, a pump-action shotgun, and an Uzi submachine gun, along with ingredients for Molotov cocktails. With this arsenal he was able to intimidate and toy with a 15-man French SWAT team for all of 32 hours, wounding five and repeatedly forcing them to retreat when they tried to enter his small, three-room apartment in Toulouse.

Actually the effort to take Merah down was as amateurish as the earlier intelligence failures. When the SWAT team finally did succeed in blowing off the door and entering, they riddled him with bullets instead of taking him alive for interrogation as they were ordered to do. Much of France wondered along with Christian Prouteau, the retired chief of the gendarmerie’s elite GIGN commando unit (the SWAT team were police, not better-trained paramilitary gendarmes), who asked, “How can a top police unit botch the capture of a lone gunman? If they had pumped his apartment with tear gas, he wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.” Some Israeli security experts were even harsher. Alec Ron, a former head of the Israel police commando unit, told Israeli public radio the operation was marked by “utter confusion and unprofessionalism.… It was an absolute disgrace.”

One reason for this foul-up was that Sarkozy ordered the merger of two domestic intel agencies three years ago, a fusion that has yet to gel. Another might have been political interference, in an election year, with police work. But the main problem is that France is ill equipped, psychologically and politically, to deal with a huge, unassimilated Muslim population increasingly tempted by radicalism. France poses as a beacon of human rights and égalité, which to the Gallic mind rules out affirmative action (that would be unequal) or even accepting the reality of ethnic diversity. With impeccable logic, it officially has no minorities—everyone is by definition French and therefore equal; the law prohibits statistics based on race or religion. There’s no yardstick even to begin to measure the problem.

This in turn has meant that the government, ever so careful about treading on anybody’s toes, tries to avoid any appearance of cracking down on Muslim activism that could lead to radical Islamicism. If, as Mao wrote, the guerrilla must swim in the people as a fish swims in the sea, jihadist guerrillas must find good swimming in French Muslim waters. It might get even easier for them to disappear from police view if Socialist François Hollande becomes president. He has made the ultimate politically correct campaign promise: if elected he would ask parliament to remove the word “race” from the constitution.

Whatever the outcome of this month’s election, the slaughter of the innocents in Toulouse is a wake-up call that France ignores at its considerable peril. As an adviser to Sarkozy said, sotto voce, “This is going to raise questions about our system of integration, our approach to fundamentalism, and our tolerance of certain practices here.” For sure. Meanwhile, no one knows when or where the French Islamist powder keg will blow next.

Intelligent Design at the University Club

Tom Bethell — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:07:00 -0400

Stephen Meyer, the director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, spoke the other evening at a forum called “Socrates in the City.” Normally it’s in New York City, but tonight it was at the University Club in Washington, D.C. The founder, Eric Metaxas, gave a great introduction. He’s someone who doesn’t follow the intellectual herd.

The author of an influential book, Signature in the Cell, Meyer addressed the question, “Is there a scientific controversy about the theory of evolution?” He made a strong case that there is. A few days later, I also interviewed him about the prospects for intelligent design.

In his talk, inquiring how life first appeared from simpler pre-existing chemicals, Meyer emphasized the concept of biological information, which is embedded in DNA. Think of it as analogous to software code. Bill Gates said that “DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Software contains instructions that direct computers to accomplish various functions. Likewise, DNA contains instructions for the assembly of tiny machines called proteins, which perform vital functions within every cell.

In the 19th century the cell was thought to be simple. Darwin and his contemporaries had no way of knowing just how complex it is. Today it is compared to a high-tech factory. (Except it’s much more complex than that—factories can’t replicate themselves.)

So how did the information get into the DNA in the first place? Without it, the first cell wouldn’t have been constructed, and life would not have begun. In Expelled, when Ben Stein asked Richard Dawkins how life began, he said he had no idea. We still don’t.

Nucleotide bases along the spine of the DNA molecule—in effect the characters in the genetic text—direct the cell’s molecular machinery to link specific amino acids into proteins. If the sequence is incorrectly arranged the protein doesn’t get assembled. Watson and Crick described the double helical structure of DNA. But no one has yet explained the origin of the information it contains. “So that’s a huge stumbling block for evolutionary explanations of the origin of life,” Meyer said.

Just as computer code comes from programmers, so functional information comes from intelligence—from mind. Intelligence, or conscious activity, is the only known cause of the kind of sequence-specific, information-rich code that we see in biology. We infer that the ultimate origin of biological information is an intelligent agent, or agents. All other proposed explanations have failed.

Some think natural selection can get the job done. But as Meyer said, processes such as natural selection can’t take place until life is already up and running. Until we have a living and self-replicating cell, natural selection doesn’t enter the picture. Thus, it does nothing to explain how life first evolved from non-living chemicals.

Meyer also argued that biological evolutionary theory, which “attempts to explain how new forms of life evolved from simpler pre-existing forms,” faces formidable difficulties. In particular, the modern version of Darwin’s theory, neo-Darwinism, also has an information problem.

Mutations, or copying errors in the DNA, are analogous to copying errors in digital code, and they supposedly provide the grist for natural selection. But, Meyer said: “What we know from all codes and languages is that when specificity of sequence is a condition of function, random changes degrade function much faster than they come up with something new.”

He mentioned the Cambrian explosion—the geologically sudden appearance of most major animal forms. It’s a dramatic event in the history of life. Animals with new body plans—arthropods, brachiopods, chordates—appeared suddenly about 530 million years ago. Nothing resembling a precursor appears in the strata below the Cambrian.

So the same problem arises: What would it take to build one of those new body plans? You’d need a big instruction set, just for one body part. The trilobite had a compound, lens-focusing eye. “Each new cell for each new tissue had dedicated proteins,” Meyer said. “The proteins in turn need instructions to be built.”

The problem is comparable to opening a big combination lock. He asked the audience to imagine a bike lock with ten dials and ten digits per dial. Such a lock would have 10 billion possibilities with only one that works. But the protein alphabet has 20 possibilities at each site, and the average protein has about 300 amino acids in sequence.

A colleague of Meyer’s, Douglas Axe, formerly a researcher at Cambridge University and now with the Biologic Institute in Seattle, found that the ratio of functional to all possible sequences for a protein 150 amino acids in length is absurdly small (1 in 10 to the power of 74. “That search space is larger than the number of atoms in the Milky Way galaxy,” Meyer said. “It’s not remotely plausible that mutation and natural selection could produce one functional protein during the entire history of life on earth.”

Remember: Not just any old jumble of amino acids makes a protein. Chimps typing at keyboards will have to type for a very long time before they get an error-free, meaningful sentence of 150 characters. “We have a small needle in a huge haystack.” Neo-Darwinism has not solved this problem, Meyer said. “There’s a mathematical rigor to this which has not been a part of the so-called evolution-creation debate.”

IN AN INTERVIEW, Meyer told me that good things are happening beneath the media radar. If it’s not in a court or a legislature, the press pays little or no attention. Academic articles, especially if mathematical, are ignored. Mainstream journals have begun publishing peer-reviewed articles promoting intelligent design. In 2004 Rick Sternberg, as editor of the Proceedings for the Biological Society of Washington, got into trouble for publishing an article by Meyer. That was the first peer-reviewed ID article. Last fall the 50th was published.

“One reason they went after Sternberg was to make an example of him,” Meyer said. “Now the dam has broken.”

Internationally, ID is also growing. There’s a new Centre for Intelligent Design in London (C4ID). Affiliated with it is Norman Nevin, one of the leading geneticists in the UK. A number of full professors of science within the British system are also affiliated. The Centre has teamed up with Discovery Institute for various events.

In addition, “leading U.S. biologists, including evolutionary biologists, are saying we need a new theory of evolution,” Meyer said. Many increasingly criticize Darwinism, even if they don’t accept design. One is the cell biologist James Shapiro of the University of Chicago. His new book is Evolution: A View From the 21st Century. He’s “looking for a new evolutionary theory.” David Depew (Iowa) and Bruce Weber (Cal State) recently wrote in Biological Theory that Darwinism “can no longer serve as a general framework for evolutionary theory.” Such criticisms have mounted in the technical literature.

At the same time, most draw the line at accepting intelligent design. They insist it is “not science,” maybe a “science stopper.” Science, they believe, can operate only by invoking material causes. But as Meyer has written, scientists earlier felt no such constraint. Newton argued that the arrangements of the planets and the stability of their orbits could only have arisen as the result of “an intelligent and powerful Being.” Robert Boyle, the 17th century chemist, invoked the activity of a “most intelligent and designing agent.”

There are plenty of reasons for thinking that ID is scientific, among them its ability to make predictions that contrast sharply with those of Darwinism. One addresses the question of whether most DNA is “junk,” randomly accumulated throughout evolution’s history of trial and error. Because it seems to lack function, official science a few years ago proclaimed 98 percent of DNA to be junk. But if it is designed we would not expect that. Now more and more of the DNA is turning out to be functional—not junk at all.

Official science, it seems to me, wants to say that everything we see in the world can be explained without any reference to God. Darwinism is overwhelmingly an atheistic project, and has been from the beginning. That’s why any scientific opposition to that agenda stirs up such resentment.

No Profile in Courage

Lisa Fabrizio — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:05:00 -0400

We've been hearing a great deal lately about Barack Obama and his courage; or what passes for courage when a lapdog media is in control of its definition. Although I generally pass up most of what comes from the pens of liberal pundits, one couldn't hide this week from the deluge of presidential paeans.

First up were adoring tributes to the bravery of a man who merely gave the okay to a mission that was years in the making but was actually carried out by truly heroic men who are not usually beloved by the media. Men who, in just a few years, will return home to be treated as possible terror suspects by an Obama Administration who gleaned the benefits of their valor without any commensurate risks. In covering this story, a real show of courage would have been one in which the media expressed just a sliver of curiosity about the details of the bin Laden rubout and disposal at sea.

No sooner did we catch our breath from the giddy bin Laden death celebrations, when, thanks to Joe Biden's latest case of oral diarrhea, President Obama was able to summon his vast stores of courage to thrill leftists everywhere by coming out of the closet on gay marriage. Now, being a bitter, Christian clinger, I subscribe to the idea that a man will be known by his fruits; and if ever a man's actions demonstrated overt support for the homosexual agenda, that man is indeed Barack Obama.

His historic snubbing of Congress by refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, his demoralizing politicization of our military by ending "Don't Ask Don't Tell," and probably his most radical and underpublicized act of all, making homosexual "rights" a priority in determining American foreign policy, have spoken for him. And yet, bowing to the cravings of a truly slobbering media, he declared his outright affirmation of homosexual marriage.

Was this announcement historic and unexpected? Yes and maybe. But was it courageous? That would be a resounding no. It was, as are most election-year revelations, simply a case of pandering to his base; as the Washington Post reports, one in six of his campaign "bundlers" are openly homosexual. Even the New York Times admits that "Most Americans suspect that President Obama was motivated by politics."

Yet it is claimed that he is courageous because blacks, like most of America, are opposed to gay marriage. But in truth, where else would they go? Would Obama's "courage" on this issue drive them suddenly into the arms of the lily-white Mitt Romney? One would like to think so, but they, like most Americans who allow themselves to be bullied into groupthink, will probably stay with their enablers, just like unfaithful Catholics and Jews who ignore their faith teaching in favor of the allures of liberal popular culture.

And the pressure from our arbiters of culture is growing in desperation. Employing the liberal tactic of using polls to influence opinion rather than track it, they are fond of citing their findings in favor of gay marriage. But polling on the subject is far different from the polling that counts: in the ballot box. How many Americans would actually tell a pollster that they are repulsed by homosexual marriage and shudder to think of their children choosing that "lifestyle"? Yet, voters in 30 states have virtually decided that very thing by amending their constitutions to define marriage as solely between a man and a woman.

And so it might seem that a president's advocating such an electorally unpopular position would indeed be an act of courage, were it not for one thing: he said he believes that it is an issue to be decided by the states. Funny he doesn't feel that way about immigration, healthcare or abortion though, but it's only window-dressing after all. Because it has allowed him to continue to associate himself with the oppressed, and as we all know, those who speak out against Obama now will not only be branded as racists, but hateful homophobes as well.

So no, the president showed no courage here; only cold, political calculation. The only courage on this issue will be demonstrated by those who break free from politically correct thinking and vote on what's best for America; an America that is hopefully getting sick and tired of this browbeating on the subject of their intolerance of whichever victim of majority oppression is on the menu today. I think they've had quite enough of our first "black/woman/gay president," and simply desire another "American president."

Obama’s Contempt for the Voters

David Catron — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:10:00 -0400

Last week Obama's re-election team released a television ad in a variety of battleground states listing the president's "accomplishments." A shameless knockoff of Ronald Reagan's famous "morning in America" spot, this preposterous piece of propaganda begins with the administration's standard complaint about the economic crisis Obama "inherited" and goes on to claim that he somehow saved the country because, "He believed in us. Fought for us." What he really believes about us, however, is better illustrated by what is missing from the ad. It contains no mention whatsoever of Obamacare, the health care "reform" law that Obama and his supporters have, until the beginning of the current election cycle, referred to as a "historic" piece of legislation and his "most important domestic achievement."

Such a glaring omission suggests the president and his advisors believe the voters are too dumb to remember that he and his congressional accomplices wasted a year cobbling together their unconstitutional health care boondoggle while unemployment raged out of control. It isn't simply that Obama did nothing about the jobs problem while expending an enormous amount of time and no small amount of taxpayer money on backroom deals like the "Cornhusker kickback." He ignored the pleas of the voters to set health reform aside until he had done something about an unemployment rate that was skyrocketing. At the time, even progressive bastions like the Huffington Post lamented that Obama "forced a health care bill at the expense of vitally needed focus on job creation."

The absence of Obamacare from the president's new campaign ad does not mean, however, that the White House itself has forgotten about the ironically titled Affordable Care Act. Obama's reelection team is still trying to exploit it via low-profile initiatives intended to spread the good news without making the president or his surrogates actually talk about it. Thus, on Mother's Day, the White House web site featured special e-cards ostensibly designed to help people "show some appreciation for the mom in your life," including one that begins, "Happy Mother's Day from the Affordable Care Act," and proceeds to point out that, "Being a mom isn't a pre-existing condition. It's a joy." Can you imagine the "joy" your mother would have experienced had you sent something like this to her on Sunday?

I'm not sure that even the most glassy-eyed Obamazombie is stupid enough to give his mom an Obamacare e-card on Mother's Day, but it's clear that Obama and his minions believe such people exist. It's also obvious that the president's men think voters are clueless enough to believe the phony statistics listed on the e-card about how women have already benefited from "reform," and how these alleged goodies are somehow free of charge. And the contempt with which the Obama crew views the electorate naturally precludes any fear that some recipient of the Obamacare missive will know that the Supreme Court is about to strike down the guaranteed issue provision of the law and thus render the e-card's claims about pre-existing conditions as empty as the president's 2008 promises.

Ironically, the president's empty promises will be the undoing of the Obamacare provision that forbids discrimination pursuant to pre-existing conditions. In 2008, Obama promised not to support an individual mandate. The president's failure to keep his word, combined with the unconstitutionality of the mandate, is what landed Obamacare in the Supreme Court and forced his solicitor general to tell the justices that the guaranteed issue and community rating provisions of the law must be invalidated if the mandate is struck down. But the president's re-election team no doubt believes the voters have forgotten his brazen flip-flop on the individual mandate, just as they believe we have forgotten his various flip-flops on gay marriage.

Obama and his accomplices certainly believe the voters are too clueless to remember his promises that Obamacare would reduce health insurance premiums, or to notice that our health care costs are still increasing at twice the rate of inflation. Likewise, they believe the public is too dumb to remember the president's promise that his economic policies would prevent unemployment from reaching 8 percent, or to notice that average unemployment during his first term has exceeded 9 percent. And they obviously believe that the voters don't have enough sense to remember how badly they wanted Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress to give up their health care obsession and focus on the most serious issue facing the country then and now.

The president and his men are wrong. The voters want lower unemployment, lower gas prices, lower federal deficits, and genuine health reform. And public opinion surveys suggest that red herrings are not going to change these priorities. Nor will slick ads that claim Obama "fought for us." The reality is that he has fought against us on health reform and any number of other issues. And attempts to shove disasters like Obamacare down the memory hole aren't going to work. The voters are smarter than the president and his minions think.

The Obama Thugocracy

Jeffrey Lord — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:08:00 -0400

"Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country."
—George C. Scott as General George S. Patton in the Academy Award-winning film Patton

"We're playing with water guns, they're playing with Scuds…. These people are terrorists…. There is a war. If we treat it as less than a war we will lose it."
—MSCO CEO Mark Stevens to Heritage Foundation on fighting the Left

Mark Stevens and Frank VanderSloot.

Stevens is the Rush Limbaugh sponsor whose company and personal safety were threatened because he refused to buckle to the far-left haters in the Sandra Fluke affair. He is speaking out again. And he pulls no punches.

But before we get to Mark Stevens and the enthusiastically received, sensational talk he gave at the Heritage Foundation's 35th Annual Resource Bank conference in Colorado, let's talk about Frank VanderSloot.

Why?

Because what Mark Stevens is discussing -- the rise of "domestic terrorism" associated with the Obama left -- and the recent investigation of Romney contributor VanderSloot by a company called Fusion GPS are most assuredly part and parcel of the same issue.

Here is Mr. VanderSloot just last night on The O'Reilly Factor discussing what has been happening to him -- correction -- is happening to him.

Who paid Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS to investigate Romney contributor Frank VanderSloot?

Now there's a question for congressional investigators.

Or bloggers.

While the dirt sought on VanderSloot by Fusion investigator Michael Wolf was public -- as revealed in this superb reporting by the Wall Street Journal's Kim Strassel -- (divorce records, a case involving a dispute with an ex-employee) Strassel has it exactly right when she terms this "trolling for dirt."

Excepting the fact that divorce records are public, as was whatever paperwork was involved in the case with VanderSloot's ex-employee, this "trolling for dirt" business -- right down to the mystery of who paid the tab for Fusion to do this -- reminds of one very disturbing historical precedent.

That would be the Nixon White House authorizing the break-in to the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist by the so-called "Plumbers" -- the Nixon "White House Special Investigations Unit."

Ellsberg, recall, was the onetime Defense Department employee discovered in 1971 to be the leaker of the top secret Pentagon Papers, an act that understandably infuriated Nixon. With the obvious distinction that Fusion GPS went after public information, while the Plumbers were after private information on Ellsberg and committed burglary to try and achieve their objective, the driving motivation appears to be identical.

Frank VanderSloot is today's Daniel Ellsberg.

The intent in both instances was exactly the same: troll for dirt (to use Strassel's term) to discredit Ellsberg and VanderSloot with presumably embarrassing personal records. Thus intimidating the respective opponents of Richard Nixon and Barack Obama, while at the same time casting the opposition to the president involved as either a nutcase (Nixon's critic Ellsberg) or a slimy homophobe (Obama's critic, the Romney supporter VanderSloot). Making sure each critic was not only effectively silenced, but personally ruined in the bargain.

And, in fact, while the liberal media of the day made Ellsberg a hero, as VanderSloot tells Fox's Neil Cavuto, he has in fact lost a "couple hundred customers" as a result of being falsely labeled -- or is that libeled? -- by an official Obama web site (laughably titled "Keeping the GOP Honest") as "a bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

So the questions:

Follow the money: Who was the Obama supporter who supplied the bucks to pay Fusion GPS to burrow into files in the presumed bowels of an Idaho Falls county clerk's office? With the goal of wrecking the reputation and business of a Romney contributor named Frank VanderSloot?

And why isn't there a demand to the Obama campaign for an internal investigation and the necessary five minutes to supply this name? After all, this whole incident originated with that official Obama site "Keeping the GOP Honest," on which VanderSloot's name was published along with several other Romney SuperPAC donors.

What did Obama campaign officials David Axelrod and Jim Messina know -- and when did they know it? The Watergate scandal not only famously brought Nixon's resignation and the imprisonment of his senior White House staff, it also sent to jail or indicted officials of Nixon's 1972 re-election campaign, including his campaign manager -- Nixon's version of Axelrod and Messina -- former Attorney General John Mitchell. Mitchell was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. At one point, as memorably recorded by Watergate's reporter-heroes Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, Mitchell threatened the Washington Post's publisher by saying, "Katie Graham's gonna get her t** caught in a big fat wringer if that's published."

The left howled in fury at the idea of threatening the Washington Post. But liberals have no problem with threatening Rush Limbaugh.

Now.

Does any of this VanderSloot business sound familiar? Yes, it does.

Before Frank VanderSloot, the target was Rush Limbaugh advertiser Mark Stevens.

Before Mr. Stevens the target was Rush Limbaugh.

Before that it was Pat Buchanan.

Before that it was Glenn Beck.

Before that it was Lou Dobbs.

And let's not forget the just-successfully targeted Naomi Schaefer Riley, recently fired by the leftist-thugs running the laughably but accurately titled Chronicle of Higher Education.

What are we really seeing here? What to do?

Mark Stevens is blunt.

In an enthusiastically received talk he gave at the Heritage Foundation's 35th Annual Resource Bank conference in Colorado, the man who was bullied by leftists for refusing to withdraw his company's sponsorship of The Rush Limbaugh Show spoke plainly.

(Note to readers: Here's the video. Warning: That's a 450 megabyte file, so it might be best to save it to your desktop, instead of trying to view in a browser. Mark's talk -- following a great presentation by the ACORN-busting Hannah Giles -- begins at about 16:40 into the tape.)

Remember. This talk of Mark Stevens' was delivered before the discovery that some unknown Obama supporter had launched a Fusion GPS investigation of Frank VanderSloot. It was delivered before the firing of Naomi Schaefer Riley

Said Stevens:

We have to stop using euphemisms. Us. We have to stop saying that there's a national debate. We have to stop saying that there's a great divide. We have to stop saying that we're having a national conversation. None of that is happening. What there is, is a war. There is a war.

There is a war. If we treat it as less than a war we will not win…. This Rush issue and others like it that are happening right now are not boycotts. These are not boycotts. That's a very sweet term for what it really is: which is, internal American terrorism.

These people are terrorists. You do not have to put on a suicide bomber's belt to engage in terrorism. Terrorism is the act of invoking fear in people. And when you do that and you do that successfully, you get people to change their behavior and you cave to them and they win.

And as long as we keep playing by the rules of anything but war and not recognize that we are (being) engaged in a terrorist activity, we will lose our country. So we have to change the rules of the game.

Now, think of what Mark Stevens is saying here.

Remember that for the simple act of advertising on Rush's radio show in the New York area, Mark Stevens was deluged with phone calls and emails threatening his personal safety, threatening his staff, threatening to shut down his company, threatening his clients, telling him his new enemies knew where he lived.

Remember what has happened -- is happening -- to Mr. VanderSloot. And remember the others.

What we are witnessing here is the iron-fisted use of raw political power to suppress political dissent. To intimidate, to instill fear, to ruin -- and yes, to terrorize -- those who have the temerity and guts to speak truth to power.

This, as I pointed out in The Plot to Get Rush, is standard operating procedure for the Left.

The late Austrian free-market economist Ludwig von Mises described the leftist method of operation as "fanatical and intolerant." It works, he said, this way: "Socialism… works on the emotions…to stifle the voice of reason by awakening primitive instincts."

In other words, what is going on here with these savage attacks is an attempt to instill the primitive emotion of fear in American citizens like Mark Stevens and Frank VanderSloot. This, as we also mentioned in the above article on Rush, is nothing more than the 21st century version of the threat of the guillotine used by leftists during the French Revolution. Or the Soviet version of labeling citizens "enemies of the state" and dragging them away to the Gulag, or to be shot outright. Or the "Chinese Roulette" favored by Mao's Red Guards, herding dissidents to be executed…then selectively shooting a few, instilling a "bullet of fear" in their minds so they would be terrified of ever dissenting again.

The Stevens and VanderSloot episodes are nothing less than an Obama Thugocracy at work with an enemies list.

It isn't working.

But that doesn't mean that because the Obama Thugocracy has failed with gutsy Americans like Stevens or VanderSloot, or that because it failed to intimidate Rush Limbaugh, there should not be a direct response to the bullies behind all of this.

Such as?

• Let's pick up on a favorite point of our friend Mark Levin, the need to constantly "educate, educate, educate."

• Let's begin with a congressional investigation: A demand to House Republicans for a congressional investigation to educate about the First Amendment and explore the threats to free speech from the American Left.

• Let's call Mark Stevens and Frank VanderSloot to have them detail exactly what was done to them in their roles as private citizens exercising their respective rights to advertise on a radio show (Stevens) or donate to a candidate (VanderSloot).

• Let's have a congressional investigating committee do the drill the Left loves to pull with business executives. Let's see them call David Brock of Media Matters to discuss the group's tax status and MM's role in targeting Rush Limbaugh. Let's call MoveOn.org and the Color of Change and Van Jones and all the others who have tried to intimidate companies into "boycotting" -- the "sweet word" Stevens says has now become code for domestic terrorism. Let's get to the bottom of their intimidation tactics -- their attempts to bully talk show hosts, television hosts, and private citizens.

• Let's have Congress turn the tables and investigate Glenn Simpson and Michael Wolf, the men at Fusion GPS whom Kim Strassel has positively identified as the agents of investigation in the terror directed at Frank VanderSloot.

• Let's have this congressional investigation find out who exactly paid Fusion GPS to go after Frank VanderSloot, and exactly what that person's connection is to the Obama campaign.

• Let's call the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and see who specifically in the Obama camp was offering him $150,000 to forfeit his First Amendment rights to say what he wished to say in his own sermons. As per the blockbuster revelations by author Edward Klein in his new book on Obama called The Amateur. (Those allegations from Wright are discussed here.)

It's time to stand up to the bullies of the Obama Thugocracy. It's time to pay attention to Mark Stevens' message. To, as Stevens says, "boycott the boycotters." Or maybe, as we are suggesting here, turn Congressman Darrell Issa and his House Oversight and Government Reform Committee loose to see what's really going on here.

If you agree, you could even contact Congressman Issa, who has a "Blow the Whistle" section on his website at that link. It says:

Blow The Whistle
Please use the form below to alert the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to fraud and abuse in your agency or other organization. Any personal information you provide us will be kept in strict confidence.

The First Amendment, the Constitution's guaranteed freedom of speech -- the right to speak without fear of losing one's business, job, radio show, television show -- is now at stake. The issue could not be more important.

So, if you are of a mind, fill out Mr. Issa's form and let him know what you think. And ask him to investigate who paid to terrorize Frank VanderSloot and Mark Stevens and all the rest.

Ask Congressman Issa to investigate the Obama Thugocracy and its world of enemy-lists and secret investigations, just as the Senate Watergate Committee did some 48 summers ago

Let's ask Darryl Issa and his colleagues to turn the tables on the Obama Thugocracy.

But let's end on a more optimistic note. If you will, a Reaganesque note.

On his blog, Mark Stevens tells this remarkable story of flying back from that Heritage conference in Colorado. Sitting next to him on the plane was a young woman.

Here's part of what Stevens writes:

I sat next to a wonderful young woman, an Air Force Academy cadet, less than a month away from graduation and her status as a second lieutenant. She was bright, poised, attractive, driven, ambitious. She will have a degree in engineering, focused on astrophysics. She plays on the Academy's tennis team and is nationally ranked. She can land a job any place she chooses at an excellent starting salary, buy herself a hot car and settle into a cool apartment.

Instead, she chooses to protect her country, fly for the greatest Air Force in the world, hopefully taking command as a fighter pilot. She is from heartland America, was referred to the Academy by John McCain, has a loving and down to earth family. And is all about sacrifice in the name of red, white and blue.

When I asked her how much money she would earn as a young officer, she told me she had no idea. It doesn't matter to her one iota. She is all in for America.

I knew her only for minutes, but I will never forget her. I told her she made me proud and more confident about America's future. And I asked her for a favor that I had no right to ask:

..."Please don't let anyone in your personal life, anyone smaller than you in vision and spirit, hold you back. Please go for it with everything you have."

She said she had struggled with that but she promised me she would. And I believe her. I am counting on her. As we all should. She comes from a place in the soul of the U.S. where people still serve, where they are proud to defend, where they never apologize for the land of the free, where the hot car and the cool apartment don't compare to the star spangled banner.

Amen.

Reneau Almon's Vindication

Jack Park — Tue, 15 May 2012 06:06:00 -0400

Reneau Almon, who served as an Associate Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court for 24 years, died earlier this month. Justice Almon began his service on the Alabama appellate court in 1969 and was first elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in 1974. He retired from that court in 1999.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alabama had a reputation as a "tort hell."

As Michael DeBow, a professor at Cumberland Law School, has explained: "The Alabama Supreme Court of 1994 was identified in the minds of many with a litigation climate that was hostile to defendants -- particularly corporate defendants." Whoppingly disproportionate punitive damage awards helped contribute to that reputation. In one case, confronted with the buyer of a car who claimed that he was defrauded because he wasn't told that it had been partially repainted, which lowered the car's resale value by $4,000, the Alabama Supreme Court cut a jury's punitive damage award of $4 million to $2 million -- still, an award-to-injury ratio of 500-1. After the U.S. Supreme Court got hold of the case, and there was modest change in the Alabama Supreme Court's personnel, the punitive damage award was reduced to $50,000.

The road out of "tort hell" began with the 1994 elections, when Chief Justice Sonny Hornsby was unseated. But Justice Almon also contributed to the transformation.

One place that high punitive damages were being awarded was in cases of consumer fraud. In order to prove fraud, one must prove reliance on false or misleading information received or not conveyed. But, what kind of reliance is enough? Can a consumer simply rely on what he or she is told, or must the consumer read the documents he or she receives? The difference may not sound like much, but it means a great deal.

In 1991, over a dissent by Justice Almon, the Alabama Supreme Court allowed a consumer to rely on what she said she was told. The buyer claimed she was told that, if she were hospitalized, the insurance policy she was buying would pay 80 percent of her hospital and doctor bills, with no deductible; but the policy plainly stated that it was not a major medical policy. After receiving a copy of the policy, she put it into a desk drawer without reading it. As a result, after the buyer had surgery, the policy didn't cover what she said she thought it would. The court held that a jury could have found that she justifiably relied on what she was told, the policy's terms notwithstanding.

In his dissent, Justice Almon pointed out the difference between a "reasonable reliance" standard and a "justifiable reliance" standard. Almon explained that the "traditional" reasonable reliance standard was "flexible" and could take differences in relative "sophistication and bargaining power" into account. Under that standard, the consumer acted unreasonably. Almon wrote, "I do not think it is reasonable for a college-educated person to simply drop an insurance policy into a drawer without even a cursory look at it and later claim she has been defrauded." He added that the buyer could have understood she was not buying major medical coverage "if she had simply glanced at" the policy. In contrast, the justifiable reliance standard the court applied "gives to parties claiming fraud undue leeway to ignore written contract terms."

Justice Almon lost that battle. But, in 1997, the Alabama Supreme Court changed the standard back to reasonable reliance. Justice Gorman Houston wrote that, since the decision to apply justifiable reliance to consumer and commercial transactions, there had been "tension" on the court. As he put it, the justifiable reliance standard "basically eliminated a person's duty to attempt to understand the contents of a document or documents received in connection with a particular transaction (consumer or commercial)."

Pointing to Justice Almon's dissent, Houston concluded that the court would no longer apply the justifiable reliance standard to consumer fraud cases, but would instead apply reasonable reliance to all newly filed cases.

Justices Almon, Janie Shores, and Harold See all filed concurring opinions making important points. Almon pointed to his earlier opinion and noted that the justifiable reliance rule, which allowed for "continuous disputation," made commerce almost impossible. Justice Shores acknowledged that she had joined in making the change, but was willing to reconsider. She wrote that the court made a "mistake in departing from a standard in fraud cases that had served well."

Justice See, who joined the court in 1996, pointed to what happened when a buyer's right to rely on a representation was not tied to a duty to act reasonably. As he explained, changing the rule "discouraged buyers from reading their contracts" and reduced their risk in not doing so. Second, the number of potential plaintiffs in fraud lawsuits grew from those who might have reasonably relied to include those who might have justifiably relied. Third, because justifiable reliance rests on the plaintiff's testimony alone, cases which would have been thrown out of court because the plaintiff did not act reasonably went to a jury, which could award punitive damages.

Changing the reliance standard and getting punitive damages under control helped change the business climate in Alabama. In recent years, companies like Honda, Hyundai, and ThyssenKrupp have opened plants in the state, and it's unlikely they would have done so if it were still seen as a "tort hell." Justice Almon's vindication is in having helped to bring about that change in the state's business climate.