SPEECH POLICE
”Once you begin haggling over the details - it’s OK prior to 60 days before an election but not after, a 90-minute movie might be OK but not a 30-second commercial, this money is good but that money is corrupting - you have lost sight of the fact that the fundamental premise of the whole damn thing is a fraud perpetrated by charlatans against liberty and democracy,” Las Vegas Review-Journal editor Thomas Mitchell writes.
”Reading the 68-page transcript of this past week’s Supreme Court arguments over whether spending for promotion of ’Hillary: The Movie’ violated the McCain-Feingold Act was like watching 11 people debate whether the ship they are on should sink bow-first or stern-first. They kept arguing about whether the movie was covered by the scope of the law and only occasionally raised the question of whether the law itself violated the Constitution, specifically the First Amendment prohibition against government abridgement of free speech. …
“You see, McCain-Feingold was passed by Congress - and fundamentally twice upheld by the Supreme Court, though it chipped away at some aspects - under the rotten rubric that the people are just too gosh-darned gullible to be exposed to the corrupting influence of campaign messages financed by wealthy corporations and unions. (Wealthy political-action committees and individuals are another matter.)
”Persuasion is persuasion. Whether it is financed by a candidate, a party, a company, a union, a newspaper, a foreign power. In a democratic republic, anything short of vote buying or bribery should be not just permitted, but encouraged,” Mr. Mitchell said.
“Why do you think it is called a marketplace of ideas?”
DEBT SPENDING
”In his press conference last Tuesday, Barack Obama said that America must reject the ’borrow and spend’ policies of the past in favor of a strategy of ’save and invest.’ Sounds good. So why is Obama proposing to borrow and spend more than any president in the history of the republic?” Stephen Moore writes in the Weekly Standard.
”Already in the first 45 days of his administration, the federal government has authorized more debt spending thanRonald Reagandid in eight years in office,” Mr. Moore said.
“Then last week the Democrats’ own Congressional Budget Office found that the 10-year deficits of the Obama plan will be about $2.3 trillion higher than the $6.97 trillion the White House is projecting. This is the policy of the party that was swept back into power in 2006 and 2008 promising a return to an era of fiscal responsibility.
“Welcome to the Obama doctrine. It is built on the high-stakes economic gamble that the public and the bond markets will tolerate trillions of dollars of borrowing to pay for massive expansions in government spending on popular income-transfer programs. The corollary to this doctrine is that the left will create a political imperative to jack up tax rates to pay for higher spending commitments made today.
”But the news on the red-ink front is much worse than the president or even the CBO’s budget report suggests. If all of Obama’s ’transformational’ policy objectives - from global-warming taxes to universal health care to doubling the Department of Energy’s budget - are enacted, the debt is likely to increase from about 40 percent of GDP today to close to 100 percent of GDP by 2018. The 10-year debt is likely to be at least $6 trillion higher - or more than one-half trillion of higher deficits a year from now until forever - than the Obama budget projects.
“These are uncharted levels of debt for the United States - though not for such high-flying nations as Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico.”
NO POLITICS, PLEASE
”Democrats complained endlessly about the supposed ’politicization’ of the Bush Justice Department,” Hans A. von Spakovsky writes in a blog at National Review Online (www.nationalreview.com).
”When asked about this at his confirmation hearing, Eric Holder piously pledged that his Justice Department would ’serve justice’ and ’not the fleeting interests of any political party.’ America, he intoned, was ’in dire need of a less political and more independent Justice Department.’
”But an e-mail and [flier] recently circulated to Justice Department employees indicate Attorney General Holder has an interesting definition of what it means to be ’less political.’ The [flier] invites all employees to attend a speech in the main Justice building on Pennsylvania Avenue. In fact, it notes, all ’*upervisors are encouraged to grant official time to employees to attend this event.’
”And what pillar of the legal profession will be lecturing Justice employees to help them ’serve justice’ in a ’less political’ way? Why, none other than Donna Brazile, whose own Web-site biography describes her as a ’veteran Democratic political strategist’ and a vice chairman at the Democratic National Committee.’
“Brazile is marketed by more than one speaker´s bureau at a cost ranging from $10,000 to $20,000. The [flier] doesn’t say how many taxpayer dollars are going to pay a Democratic political consultant to speak to career employees at the Justice Department (sounds like a good FOIA request). Good thing the Department is no longer politicized,” Mr. von Spakovsky said.
A CHALLENGE
”If you are reading this newspaper, the likelihood is that you agree with the Obama administration’s recent attacks on conservative radio talker Rush Limbaugh. That’s the likelihood; here’s the certainty: You’ve never listened to Rush Limbaugh,” Andrew Klavan writes in the Los Angeles Times.
”Oh no, you haven’t. Whenever I interrupt a liberal’s anti-Limbaugh rant to point out that the ranter has never actually listened to the man, he always says the same thing: ’I’ve heard him!’
“On further questioning, it always turns out that by ’heard him,’ he means he’s heard the selected excerpts spoon-fed him by the distortion-mongers of the mainstream media. These excerpts are specifically designed to accomplish one thing: to make sure you never actually listen to Limbaugh’s show, never actually give him a fair chance to speak his piece to you directly. …
“Therefore, I am throwing down my gauntlet at your quivering liberal feet. I hereby issue my challenge - the Limbaugh Challenge: Listen to the show. Not for five minutes but for several hours: an hour a day for several days. Consider what he has to say - the real policy material under the jokes and teasing bluster. Do what your intellectual keepers do not want you to do and keep an open mind. Ask yourself: What’s he getting at? Why does he say the things he says? Why do so many people of goodwill - like that nice Mr. Klavan - agree with him?”
• Greg Pierce can be reached at 202/636-3285 or gpierce@washingtontimes.com.
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