Supporting Dinesh D'Souza

In "First They Came for Indian Immigrant Documentary Filmmakers," John Hinderraker writes:

The Obama administration has unleashed a series of attacks on conservatives that at present has no end in sight. One of those attacks was the indictment of Dinesh D’Souza, whose anti-Obama film 2016 is the second biggest-grossing political documentary of all time. D’Souza is accused of contributing $20,000, more than the legal limit, to the Senate candidacy of his friend Wendy Long. The U.S. Attorney in New York announced a “zero tolerance” policy with regard to campaign finance, and D’Souza was arraigned in New York, handcuffed briefly, and released on $500,000 bond.

Consider that for a moment: the magnitude of his offense was $20,000 (less, actually, since his donation was legal up to the maximum), while bail was set at $500,000...

Hinderraker reminds readers that no charges were ever filed against the campaign finance violations of the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and that incidents of ballot fraud have been largely ignored.

He also suggests D'Souza deserves conservatives' support:

Dinesh D’Souza has had a tough year, both personally and professionally. He has also clashed, on occasion, with fellow conservatives, including some of us. But now more than ever, conservatives need to heed Benjamin Franklin’s injunction to hang together. Not all conservatives like the Tea Party, or D’Souza, or Chris Christie, or the Koch brothers, or whoever the next target may prove to be. But the Democrats have launched a broad attack against conservatives of all stripes, and they are willing to misuse all of the powers of the federal government to squash dissent. Conservatives can only counter this aggression by sticking together.

So we should support Dinesh however we can, beginning by questioning whether his indictment is a case of selective enforcement. We conservatives are in favor of enforcing election laws: let’s put all the pressure we can on Democrats to enforce them all, uniformly. And let’s go see Dinesh’s new movie, America, which will debut on the 4th of July.

Donatelli: The Administration's Sorry Record on Poverty

"President Obama’s State of the Union address will focus on “income inequality,” writes Frank Donatelli, a Luce Institute board member.

One can understand why he wants to change the subject from the very real problems America faces. His policies have made those problems worse. Obamacare has caused tens of thousands of Americans to lose their health plans and forced them into insurance exchanges that cost more and provide fewer doctor choices. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are still out of work and even more have stopped looking. ...

The president wants you to forget all that and now consider the plight of the poor. Sadly, he hasn’t done a very good job there either. That’s because his own actions as president have made the poor worse off. Reducing poverty has never been a major priority of this administration. It’s hard to point to a single major legislative achievement of his that has improved the lot of the poorest Americans. If anything, he has spent his first five years appeasing the key groups that make up the Democratic Party and his governing coalition.

Donatelli recounts this Administration's initiatives — the economic stimulus spending bill, Cash for Clunkers, the Obamacare nightmare, green energy "investments" to favored corporations, and his disdain for real economic growth initiatives such as the Keystone Pipeline — and concludes:

Economic growth offers a far better correlation to the poverty rate than temporary band-aids like minimum wage increases or unemployment benefits. Low growth for the five years of this administration has corresponded with an official poverty rate rise to 15 percent. It is even higher according to another calculation by the Census Bureau. As Timothy Smeeding, director of the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty, notes, “The best policy is obvious. It’s a job that pays decent wages. The answer to poverty is never an income support program.”

This administration represents the triumph of ideology over common sense. Poverty does not exist because some people are successful at the expense of others, which is the most pernicious claim of a president who began his presidency grandly promising to bring people together. It exists because of government policies that ignore job creation and economic growth. The president would have been wise to make that the centerpiece of his speech.

Obama's Crackdown on Journalists

Citing an article by former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie, Michael Barone writes: "Journalists are being surveilled to a greater extent than before and are meeting sources secretly — a la Bob Woodward in the parking garage — rather than communicate by phone or e-mail."

The legal basis for this is the Espionage Act of 1917 ... passed during Woodrow Wilson's administration after the United States entered World War I. It is widely considered overbroad. Wilson used this statute and others to infringe more on civil liberties than any subsequent administration. Socialist party leader Eugene Debs was jailed for writings opposing the war; Wilson's Republican successor, former journalist Warren G. Harding, pardoned Debs and invited him to the White House. Now the Obama administration is using Wilson's legislation to crack down more on journalists than any other president since his Democratic predecessor of 100 years ago.

One would think a man purportedly as brilliant as Obama would avoid biting the hands that feed his fragile ego.

Obama's Legacy - Debt

Since President Obama entered office on January 20, 2009, U. S. government debt held by the public has risen 89.879% — or approximately 90% — according to the last Daily Treasury Statement for Fiscal 2013 released October 1. Terry Jeffrey at CNSNews.com writes:

At the close of business on Sept. 30, 2013—the last day of fiscal 2013—the Daily Treasury Statement said the U.S. government debt held by the public was $11,976,279,000,000.

The $11,976,279,000,000 in U.S. government debt held by the public on September 30, 2013 was $5,668,968,000,000 more than the $6,307,311,000,000 in debt held by the public on Obama's first inauguration day.

That's an increase of 89.879 percent—or approximately 90 percent.

The U.S. Treasury divides the U.S. government's debt into two general categories: debt held by the public and intragovernmental debt.

Debt held by the public consists primarily of U.S. Treasury securities—including bills, notes and bonds—that the Treasury sells on the open market to everybody from individual families and investors to government entities in the People's Republic of China.

Intragovernmental debt is money the Treasury has borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund and other government sources to pay for current government expenses.

Under Obama, intragovernmental debt has increased only about 10 percent, starting at $4,319,566,000,000 on January 20, 2009 and increasing to $4,761,904,000,000 by the close of business on Sept. 30, 2013.

Federal government debt, it appears, will be the Obama Administration's most notable legacy.

Barone: Obama Admin's Astonishing Incompetence

From Michael Barone:

Evidence of the astonishing incompetence of the Obama administration continues to roll in.

It started with the stimulus package. One-third of the money went to public employee union members — a political payoff not very stimulating to anyone else. Billions went to green energy loans, like the $500 million that the government lost in backing the obviously hapless Solyndra.

Infrastructure projects, which the president continues to tout, never seem to get built. He's been talking about dredging the port of Charleston, for example, to accommodate the big container ships coming in when the Panama Canal is widened. The canal widening is proceeding on schedule to be completed in 2014. The target date for dredging the port of Charleston: 2024.

Then there's ObamaCare. Barack Obama has already said the administration will not enforce the employer mandate, will not verify eligibility for insurance subsidies and will not require employer-provided policies to cap employees' out-of-pocket costs. The Constitution's requirement that the president take care to faithfully execute the laws apparently does not apply.

ObamaCare administrators continue to miss deadlines set by the health care law — 41 of 82 of them, according to Forbes' Avik Roy's reading of the Congressional Research Service report.

Then there's the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. According to the law firm Davis Polk, the administration as of July had missed 62% of the deadlines in that law.

All of which indicates incompetence in drafting or in implementing the legislation — likely both. We have a president who delights in delivering partisan speeches to adoring audiences but doesn't seem interested in whether his administration gets results.

Read the rest at Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/082613-668794-evidence-of-obama-administration-incompetence-piles-up.htm#ixzz2dBHUPVtT

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.