Constitution Prof's War Against It

"As a general rule, politicians tend to whipsaw between two poles," writes libertarian Bart Hinkle. "Conservatives try to increase economic liberty but show less regard for civil liberties. Liberals care deeply about civil liberties while trying to restrict the economic kind. But the Obama administration is remarkable for its degree of disdain for both."

Hinkle's excellent short piece is well worth reading in its entirety for its succinct cataloguing of the ways in which this Administration is undermining and/or subverting the First, Second and Fourth Amendments. Concludes Hinkle, with a bit of humor,

From a civil-liberties perspective, Obama has carried forward nearly every one of the war-on-terror powers that led liberals to denounce George W. Bush as a goose-stepping fascist, and in fact has made many of them worse. When he retires from public life, perhaps he will return to teaching the Constitution. That should be much easier work — given how little of it there will be left.

Penalize Politicians for a Change

"As scandals explode across Washington — from the IRS scandals, to the Benghazi scandal, to the HHS donations scandal, to Pigford and more — one thing that I've noticed is that the people involved don't seem to suffer much," writes Glenn Reynolds. "There are consequences, but not for them."

The problem, says Reynolds, is that politicians don't have skin in the game. They will take 'responsibility', but not 'blame'.

What's the difference? People who are to blame lose their jobs. People who are "responsible," do not. The blame, such as it is, winds up deflected on to The System, or something else suitably abstract.

But when you cut the linkage between outcomes and experience, you make learning much more difficult. When you were a toddler learning to walk, you fell down a lot. This was unpleasant: shocking, at least, and often painful. Thus, you learned to fall down a lot less often.

But imagine if falling down didn't hurt. You wouldn't have learned not to fall, or at least, you would have accumulated a lot more bruises along the way.

Given the low penalties for failure it faces, our political class is one for whom falling down is usually painless and even — given the surprisingly common tendency of people who have presided over debacles to be given promotions rather than the boot — actually pleasurable. The leaders move society's arms and legs, but we're the ones who collect the bruises.

Reynolds, a law professor, offers a few recommendations to remedy the situation:

I'd favor some changes that put accountability back in. First, I'd get rid of judicially created immunities. The Constitution itself creates only one kind of immunity, for members of Congress in speech and debate. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, courts have interpreted this grant of immunity, explicitly in the Constitution, more narrowly than the judicially created ones).

I'd also cut all payments to members of Congress whenever they haven't passed a budget. If they can't take care of that basic responsibility, why should they get paid? Likewise, I'd ban presidential travel when there's not a budget. He can do his job from the White House.

I'm willing to consider other changes: Term limits that kick in whenever there's a deficit for more than two years in a row. Limitations on civil-service protections to allow wronged citizens to get offending bureaucrats fired. Pay cuts for elected officials whenever inflation or unemployment are above a threshold.

But the real lesson is this: We entrust an inordinate amount of power to people who don't feel any pain when we fall down. The best solution of all is to take a lot of that power back. When the power is in your hands, it's in the hands of someone who feels it when you fall down. When it's in their hands, it's your pain, their gain. That's no way to run a country.

Let Liberals Stew in the Juices of Scandal

"Our focus must be on getting out the truth, gathering evidence and accumulating a clear picture of who did what, with subpoenaed documents and sworn testimony.  There is every sign there is plenty more to come when it comes to evidence of political abuse, some of it crossing the lines of legality.  In the process of discovery, it is easy for process crimes to occur (ask Scooter Libby) and for the squeeze to be put on people implicated in conspiracy to obstruct justice or other process crimes. They reveal who told them what to do. You follow the evidence upward. It takes time. And that's a good thing," writes Thomas Lifson at American Thinker.

He argues that liberals should stew in the juices of scandal, be put on the spot and forced to either "tie their future to Obama, a sinking ship, or declare themselves on the side of truth and the American People."

Noonan: Stonewalling IRS Corruption and Abuse

"'I don't know'. 'I don't remember'. 'I'm not familiar with that detail'. 'It's not my precise area'. 'I'm not familiar with that letter'.  These are quotes from the Internal Revenue Service officials who testified this week before the House and Senate," writes Peggy Noonan in the WSJ, who argues that "if what happened at the IRS is not stopped now—if the internal corruption within it is not broken—it will never stop, and never be broken."

That is the authentic sound of stonewalling, and from the kind of people who run Washington in the modern age—smooth, highly credentialed and unaccountable. They're surrounded by legal and employment protections, they know how to parse a careful response, they know how to blur the essential point of a question in a blizzard of unconnected factoids. They came across as people arrogant enough to target Americans for abuse and harassment and think they'd get away with it.

So what did we learn the past week, and what are the essentials to keep in mind?

Noonan recounts the story of Catherine Engelbrecht—a nice woman, a citizen, an American.

Whelton: Death by Media

Was President Obama led astray by his friends in the media? Yes, writes Clark Whelton in City Journal:

They intended no harm to the president, needless to say. But by withholding the criticism that prods public officials into doing a better job, by choosing not to print negative stories and commentaries about the Obama administration, the press corps tempted the president and his staff with visions of invincibility. The pro-Obama news crew—with a boost from the Nobel Peace Prize committee—confirmed the president’s exalted view of himself. They are in part responsible for encouraging Obama to think that he could tamper with the truth about Benghazi and get away with it. ...

And with each alibi they provided, with each news story they slanted to assist Obama at the polls, they deprived the president of the honest feedback that public officials may not want but desperately need. A biased press corps steadily pushed the president closer to the precipice where he now precariously stands.

In the morning, those who have engaged in whorish behavior—or in this case, those rewarded with invitations to insider Washington parties and access to private e-mail lists—are somehow astonished by a lack of respect. Members of the media, including Associated Press reporters, after favoring and flattering Obama for years, were stunned to discover that Obama’s Department of Justice was treating them like tarts and had targeted the AP with secret subpoenas.

The end of the affair is always painful and poignant. Unaccustomed to sunlight, fleeing suspicions of malfeasance and outright criminality, the Obama administration is pleading guilty to incompetence and ignorance. Benghazi? Hey, who knew the Libyans to whom we had been secretly running guns would turn them on us? We didn’t want to make things worse by calling the cops. Besides, we knew the media would let the story die. The IRS? Shock. Outrage. Never heard of the place.

An independent press is a compass, a vital part of the American system of checks and balances. It can provide the ship of state with mid-course corrections. But a compass that swings any way the helmsman wants is worse than useless. It points the way to disaster.

Jennifer Rubin (WPost): Benghazi Big Deal After All

"The spin that the American people aren’t interested in Benghazi or that it’s only Republicans who think something is fishy isn’t faring too well in a plethora of other polls," writes Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post.

The newest Post/ABC poll finds: “Last year’s deadly attack on a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, is shaping up as a real political problem for President Obama, with concern extending well beyond the conservative base. More than half of Americans say his administration is trying to cover up the facts of the attack.” Asked if the White House is engaged in a cover-up, 56 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of independents say yes.

From the latest Fox News poll (figures for independents are in parenthesis):

"Tricky Dick" to "Slippery ba'Rock"?

As the Watergate scandal unfolded, many true believers on the political right remained in denial that President Richard Nixon — 'Tricky Dick' as he would be remembered — had any knowledge of the illegal activities of his underlings. True believers on the political left are having the same problem today with the multiple scandals swirling around President Barack Obama. Will this president discredit his followers and perhaps be remembered as '"Slippery ba'Rock"?

In "A Crisis of Authority," WSJ's James Taranto writes:

Democracy is in peril: That is an emerging theme of the liberal left’s response to the Obama scandals. The argument misses the point, no doubt deliberately. What we are witnessing now is not a crisis of democracy but a crisis of authority. The administrative state, in thrall to a decadent cultural elite, has lost the consent of the governed.

Cataloguing several examples of denial and deflection by the political left's true believers, Taranto ponders the deeper meaning behind the Obama scandals:

Kiss Trust in Government Goodbye

Quote of the day from John Woo:

Add up all the recent scandals and the message is clear: the Obama administration is showing that it cannot be trusted with the basic functions of government: law enforcement (surveillance of reporters), taxation (IRS scandals), and national security (Benghazi).

Yet Americans are being told to trust this and future administrations to manage their health care (Obamacare) and immigration reform (Gang of Eight proposal).

Malkin: The Obama Crony in Charge of Your Medical Records

"Who is Judy Faulkner?" asks Michelle Malkin.

Chances are, you don't know her -- but her politically connected, taxpayer-subsidized electronic medical records company may very well know you. Top Obama donor and billionaire Faulkner is founder and CEO of Epic Systems, which will soon store almost half of all Americans' health information.

If the crony odor and the potential for abuse that this 'epic' arrangement poses don't chill your bones, you ain't paying attention...

[snip]

Brandon Glenn of Medical Economics observes "it's not a coincidence" that Epic's sales "have been skyrocketing in recent years, up to $1.2 billion in 2011, double what they were four years prior."

It's also no coincidence, as a famous Democratic presidential candidate once railed, that the deepest-pocketed donors "are often granted the greatest access, and access is power in Washington." That same candidate, Barack Obama, named billionaire Democratic donor Faulkner as the only industry representative on the federal panel overseeing the $19 billion EMR "incentives" program from which her company benefits grandly.

The foxes are guarding the Obamacare henhouse. The IRS vultures are circling overhead. The shadow of tyranny and the stench of corruption are unmistakable. If you see something, say something. BOLO is our watchword."

Strassel: IRS Scandal Started at the Top

"Was the White House involved in the IRS's targeting of conservatives? No investigation needed to answer that one. Of course it was," writes WSJ's Kimberly Strassel.

President Obama and Co. are in full deniability mode, noting that the IRS is an "independent" agency and that they knew nothing about its abuse. The media and Congress are sleuthing for some hint that Mr. Obama picked up the phone and sicced the tax dogs on his enemies.

But that's not how things work in post-Watergate Washington. Mr. Obama didn't need to pick up the phone. All he needed to do was exactly what he did do, in full view, for three years: Publicly suggest that conservative political groups were engaged in nefarious deeds; publicly call out by name political opponents whom he'd like to see harassed; and publicly have his party pressure the IRS to take action.

[snip]

The IRS is easy to demonize, but it doesn't exist in a vacuum. It got its heading from a president, and his party, who did in fact send it orders—openly, for the world to see. In his Tuesday press grilling, no question agitated White House Press Secretary Jay Carney more than the one that got to the heart of the matter: Given the president's "animosity" toward Citizens United, might he have "appreciated or wanted the IRS to be looking and scrutinizing those . . ." Mr. Carney cut off the reporter with "That's a preposterous assertion."

Preposterous because, according to Mr. Obama, he is "outraged" and "angry" that the IRS looked into the very groups and individuals that he spent years claiming were shady, undemocratic, even lawbreaking. After all, he expects the IRS to "operate with absolute integrity." Even when he does not.

Cancer and IRS

"Cancer" and "IRS" are fear-inducing words to most people. We want nothing to do with either because both are powerful, often uncontrollable forces with the capacity to destroy. Now comes the revelation that the IRS has been used as a malicious weapon to traumatize and destroy political enemies.

Yet unless Obamacare is repealed, IRS's destructive potential will grow exponentially. Writes Byron York:

A look at the text of the health care law reveals that much of it consists of amending the Internal Revenue Code to give the IRS more power. When Obamacare goes fully into effect in January, every American will have to prove to the IRS that he or she has "qualifying" health coverage...

The IRS will also decide who is, and who is not, eligible for Obamacare's subsidies. The law authorizes the IRS to share confidential taxpayer information with the Department of Health and Human Services for the purpose of determining those subsidies. And since subsidies don't just apply to a relatively small number of the nation's poorest citizens — under the law, they can go to a family of four with a household income of nearly $90,000 — they will affect a huge segment of the population.

In addition, the IRS will keep track of even the smallest changes in Americans' financial condition. Did you get a raise recently? You'll need to notify the IRS; it might affect your subsidy status. Have your hours been reduced at work? Notify the IRS. Change jobs? Same . ... If Americans don't keep the IRS up to date on their financial status, they might incur penalties, which the IRS will collect by withholding income tax refunds.

In the next few weeks, the details of the IRS' apparent misconduct will be spelled out in a series of hastily arranged congressional hearings. Most of the discussion will focus on political nonprofits and the selective treatment they received from the IRS. For millions of Americans, the hearings will do what [Senator] Charles Grassley noticed at those town meetings in Iowa: reduce their faith that the federal government will treat them fairly.

And that will mean even more anxieties about the coming of Obamacare. "Now every American understands there are elements of the IRS that go off on their own," former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told MSNBC Monday morning. "Why would you trust the bureaucracy with your health if you can't trust the bureaucracy with your politics?"

At least with cancer, we have the assurance that our health professionals are working in our best interests. Not so with the IRS.

Luce Institute Summer Events for Students

Quote of the Day

White House press secretary "Jay Carney ... calls the IRS's behavior 'inappropriate.' No, using the salad fork for the entree is inappropriate. Using the Internal Revenue Service for political purposes is a criminal offense."  —George Will, In IRS Scandal, Echoes of Watergate.

Scandal and Distrust Trifecta

"Let's take a breath and take stock, shall we?" writes Dave Carter @ ricochet.com.

We have the IRS acting more like the KGB, singling out groups and people for harassment on the basis of political philosophy.  We have efforts to learn about the deaths of four Americans under attack overseas, and the subsequent lies that our government told us about that attack, labeled as a sideshow and a political circus by the Commander in Chief.  We have the federal government secretly gathering months of phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters in what AP's management has termed a, "massive and unprecedented intrusion." ... As David Burge observed on Twitter, "MSNBC must be having a hard time deciding which story to ignore first."

As if that weren't enough for Obama, abortionist Kermit Gosnell has been found guilty of first-degree murder for brutally killing newborn babies (a practice Obama refused to vote against as a legislator), Obamacare is going off the rails in a slow-motion train wreck, and immigration reform—Obama's latest play to a political constituency—appears less persuasive after learning the Boston marathon terrorists were recent immigrant-citizens who raked in at least $100,000 in welfare dollars.

The IRS scandal offers valuable lessons, particularly for Obamacare and immigration reform proponents, argues Paul Mirengoff at powerlineblog.com:

Students Don't Want Active Govt in Their Lives

"In a survey launched by Young America's Foundation and conducted by the polling company, Kellyanne Conway, Inc.,  more than 60 percent of college-age students feel that government should not take an active role in their day-to-day-lives," reports Adam Tragone, "and half of respondents believe that the federal government is mostly hurting economic recovery."

YAF Poll of College-Age Students

May 8, 2013

How Government Regulations Hurt You

"Soap doesn't work. Toilets don't flush. Clothes washers don't clean. Light bulbs don't illuminate. Refrigerators break too soon. Paint discolors. Lawnmowers have to be hacked," writes Jeff Tucker. "It’s all caused by idiotic government regulations that are wrecking our lives one consumer product at a time, all in ways we hardly notice. It’s like the barbarian invasions that wrecked Rome, taking away the gains we’ve made in bettering our lives."

When his car ran out of gas, Tucker discovered one more government screw-up: newly regulated gas cans have no vent.

The whole trend began in (wait for it) California. Regulations began in 2000, with the idea of preventing spillage. The notion spread and was picked up by the EPA, which is always looking for new and innovative ways to spread as much human misery as possible.

An ominous regulatory announcement from the EPA came in 2007: “Starting with containers manufactured in 2009… it is expected that the new cans will be built with a simple and inexpensive permeation barrier and new spouts that close automatically.”

The government never said “no vents.” It abolished them de facto with new standards that every state had to adopt by 2009. So for the last three years, you have not been able to buy gas cans that work properly. They are not permitted to have a separate vent. The top has to close automatically. There are other silly things now, too, but the biggest problem is that they do not do well what cans are supposed to do.

[snip]

Ask yourself this: If they can wreck such a normal and traditional item like this, and do it largely under the radar screen, what else have they mandatorily malfunctioned? How many other things in our daily lives have been distorted, deformed and destroyed by government regulations?

If some product annoys you in surprising ways, there’s a good chance that it is not the invisible hand at work, but rather the regulatory grip that is squeezing the life out of civilization itself.

To The Women Who Make a House a Home: Happy Mother's Day

In a poignant tribute entitled Something Wonderful, Donald Todd writes of a mother, whom he lost at a young age in life, and a wife who rekindled the sense of home in him.

In our household, my father was the head and my mother the heart — or, if you will, the glue. She held things together because each of us was an extension of her heart.  She was the connection for each and every one of us. Everything ran through mom. She made the home and we got to live in it.

[snip]

So for several decades I did not have a home. I had a place in a house, or in a barracks. I stayed in a monastery, I lived in a dormitory, and shared an apartment with other men. But I did not have a home. In all of my experience, men do not create homes.

Then I married, and my wife, a homemaker, made a home for me. I finally got to come home. ... A woman inhabited my heart, and I became an extension of her heart.

Each time I find myself using the term 'wonderful' I remind myself that it means "full of wonder." 'Homemaker' and 'homemaking' are words that are full of wonder for me in an age that commonly seems to disparage wonderful things.

I think — actually I hope — we are near the end of this era. It is a particularly difficult era for women. Their own kind condemn them by denigrating marriage as a form of slavery or being a housewife as some kind of evil servitude. There's the discourtesy of being called a “domestic engineer,” and of discounting titles such as ‘wife’ and ‘mother,’ while actively discouraging mutual self-donation (married life) and motherhood. Many reasons are given to avoid that particular wonder.

I might be accused of looking for Ozzie and Harriet, but I don’t believe we can go backward to that time. We might, however, go forward to a new time when good family lives are found around the heart of the family: the woman who makes a home.  Now that would be wonderful.

To all the women who make a house a home, Happy Mother's Day.

Benghazi Hearings: What We Learned

We learned 7 things from the Benghazi whistleblowers, argues Bryan Preston, despite Republicans' mishandling of the whistleblowers' hearing.

1. There were multiple stand-down orders, not just one — ready-to-go special military operations forces in Tripoli were told twice NOT to go to Benghazi to rescue Americans under assault, even though a diplomat's team was able to arrive in Benghazi from Tripoli to offer aid before the assault ended. "This is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more balls than someone in the military," said one military officer.
2. Ambassador Stevens' reason for going to Benghazi has been cleared up — he was there at the bidding of Hillary Clinton who wished to have a permanent post in Benghazi.
3. Hillary Clinton was briefed at 2 am on the night of the attack, was never told that a movie had anything to do with the attack by those on the ground in Libya, yet blamed the movie anyway -- US deputy diplomat Greg Hicks spoke with Clinton personally via phone at 2 a.m. telling her it was a terrorist attack.
4. Whistleblowers were intimidated into silence — when one whistleblower (a career diplomat) questioned Susan Rice's claim that Benghazi was a video-induced protest, his career was sidelined and he was subsequently demoted.
5. "The YouTube movie was a non-event in Libya" — the video was pure political invention, and blaming the movie did "immeasurable damage " to our relations with Libya and delayed the FBI investigation.
6. Democrats were uninterested in getting at most of the facts, but were very interested in destroy Mark Thompson — Thompson was a member of the Foreign Emergency Support Team, which was cut out of the decision making during the attack.
7. House hearings are a poor way to determine who did what and why during and after the attack — given the extensive misinformation and cover up, Benghazi deserves a probe by a special prosecutor.

Preston argues that the Republicans mishandled the hearing by compressing too much information in one day's testimony. Read the full article for greater insight.

UPDATE:  Jonah Goldberg also has a great article, Bad Faith and Benghazi.

If you see a child struggling in the ocean, you have no idea how long she will flail and paddle before she goes under for the last time. The moral response is to swim for her in the hope that you get there in time. If you fail and she dies, you can console yourself that you did your best to rescue her.

But if you just stand on the beach and do nothing as the child struggles for life, saying, "Well, there's just no way I can get to her in time," it doesn't really matter whether you guessed right or not. You didn't try.

But we know the administration ordered others who were willing, able and obliged to come to the consulate's rescue to "stand down." They in effect told the lifeguards, "Don't get out of your chairs."

Rout of the Environmentalists

"If you want to understand how the United States is suddenly eating everyone's lunch when it comes to energy," writes Steven Hayward, "see the chart below from the Financial Times."

No wonder Europe is getting off its duff and trying to move forward with plans to expand its own shale natural gas potential.  Not coincidentally, cheap natural gas is starting to prompt several states to back off of their renewable portfolio standards that mandate the purchase of uncompetitive and grid-destabilizing wind and solar power. The rout of the environmentalists continues.

"

Taranto: Back-Alley Abortion Never Ended

"...the claim that Roe v. Wade made America safe from back-alley abortion stands exposed as a cruel hoax, and a deadly one for women and children alike,"  writes James Taranto, drawing this little known bloody history about abortionist Kermit Gosnell from the pages of the Philadelphia murder indictment report:

It was called the Mother's Day Massacre—the brainchild of Harvey Karman, an eccentric California man without medical training who had served 2½ years in prison for performing illegal abortions in the 1950s. Karman teamed with a young Philadelphia doctor who offered to perform abortions on 15 impoverished women, each between four and six months pregnant, who were bused to the Philadelphia clinic from Chicago on Mother's Day 1972.

Gang of Eight Reform: Too Much Too Fast

From the Heritage Foundation, "the Gang of Eight Immigration Bill, explained in one infographic."

Despite Sen. Marco Rubio's sincere belief in the need to fix immigration—and let's face it, who doesn't believe immigration needs fixing—the 844-page Gang of Eight's "comprehensive immigration reform" may simply be too much for Americans to endure after Obamacare, another comprehensive piece of legislation that has already thrown our economy and our health care system into a dangerous tailspin.

"In my view," writes John Hinderaker, "the bill is flawed at its core ... and efforts to improve it are misguided. Here is why..." 

Hinderaker lists 5 sound reasons, chief among them that this legislation will not stop what he argues is the "insane policy" of "chain immigration," which allows newly legalized residents to "bring over their family members, ad infinitum." 

He estimates when all is said and done, this bill covering 11 million initially will quickly result in 30 million newly-legalized U.S. residents — each eligible, as the Heritage infographic notes, "for government benefits such as welfare and entitlements." (Is now a good time to point out that the newly arrived Boston terrorist family received more than $100,000 in welfare payments?)

"Conservatives," he argues, "should propose one, and only one, reform: an end to chain immigration, as part of a recalibration of our immigration law that would seek to serve the interests of existing American citizens, and no one else."

 Americans are still on the floor from the economic body blow of Obamacare. Is it too much to ask from Washington that it give the country a chance to get back on its feet before knocking it down with immigration reform?

Out-Spent, Out-Numbered, Out-Researched

"We've read plenty about women voters who supported President Obama 55-44, creating an 11-point gender gap," writes Sabrina Schaeffer. "But we have paid scant attention to the wealth of Progressive women’s organizations that helped drive this victory, their vast funding capability, or the fact that they’re armed with a new science of politics."

Schaeffer lists several of the many liberal "research, grassroots, and fundraising machines" that pour resources into wooing women: Emily's List—$51 million; Catalyst—$12 million; League of Women Voters—$9 million; Women's Voices Women Vote/WVWV Action—$8 million.

Against this tapestry of Progressive organizations pouring millions into research and programs, what do we have on the Right? The reality is when it comes to securing women voters conservatives are out-numbered, out-researched, and outspent.

AEI’s Christina Hoff Sommers said it best at a recent IWF policy forum, “Conservative leaders and funders don’t take women’s issues seriously. They tend to treat women’s groups like the Ladies Auxiliary and women’s issues as a distracting side show.”

Sommers is right... The Right can count among their ranks exceptional individuals like Hoff Sommers, Diana Furchgott-Roth, June O’Neill, Carrie Lukas, and Kay Hymowitz, writing independently at different think tanks. There are a handful of women’s groups like the Independent Women’s Forum, where I’m the executive director, and our sister organization the Independent Women’s Voice, as well as Concerned Women for America, Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, Smart Girl Politics, and VIEW Pac, which raised a mere $346,000 during the 2012 election to help elect Republican women candidates.

What the Right lacks is serious interest and investment in finding out how to move more women to our side. If conservatives truly want to shrink the gender gap and win elections, women can no longer be an after-thought. Conservatives need to invest meaningful resources into the groups that are speaking to women. And conservatives must embrace social science research, digital communications, and boots on the ground to find out what works and with whom.

Read her full article in Forbes.