Opinion
By: Mark Tapscott
National Journal's Jonathan Rauch has an interesting piece up today that serves as a prime illustration of how the mainstream media so often carries water for the liberal Democrat wing of the Washington political establishment. Rauch tries to portray new data from the Pew Center for the People and the Press on the pronounced and strengthening trend to the Right among independents as evidence that the Tea Party will benefit the GOP in the 2010 elections but will have an opposite effect thereafter. That's the "Tea Party Paradox," according to Rauch: "The very forces that are leading to the Republican surge in 2010 may also create a painful dilemma for the GOP thereafter," Rauch said. "The reason lies with an emerging phenomenon of which the tea party movement is just a leading...By: Mark Tapscott
Political interference from the Obama White House and Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department - not excessive secrecy and bureaucratic inefficiency, as alleged by The Washington Post - are the two biggest problems facing the U.S. intelligence community, according to former Human Events editor and senior Pentagon official Jed Babbin. In an important column posted earlier today on Real Clear Politics, Babbin, author of six books on military and defense issues - argues that excessive political controls since the Clinton era have encouraged a "CYA attitude" in the intelligence community that puts excessive emphasis on insuring proper procedure is followed rather than focusing on obtaining credible, actionable intelligence about the intentions and capabilities of America's enemies...By: Mark Tapscott
Here's some good news. Three-fourths of those surveyed prefer a free market over a government-run economy, according to Rasmussen Reports. Here's some bad news: The other one-fourth either prefer to have a federal bureaucrat running their lives or they aren't sure. In the same survey, Rasmussen found that most Americans think the country's political leaders don't care what the majority of people think: "Not surprisingly, America’s Political Class is far less enamored with the virtues of a free market. In fact, Political Class voters narrowly prefer a government managed economy over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin. However, among Mainstream voters, 90% prefer the free market," Rasmussen said. "Outside of the Political Class, free markets are preferred across all...By: Mark Tapscott
"We lived surrounded by rats, cockroaches, scorpions -- and I have to say it -- with human excrement, yes, with excrement ... dengue and tuberculosis ravaged the prisoners. Forty prisoners were crammed into cells measuring 32 square feet." - Julio Galvez. "I lived in total darkness with my hands tied; with rats and cockroaches and excrement everywhere. That was all I could smell." - Lester Gonzalez. "Many prisoners attempted suicide. I saw prisoners stick needles in the dark part of their eye. I saw prisoners roll themselves in foam mattresses and set themselves alight, prisoners who inject excrement and urine into their eyes, prisoners who inject petrol into their private parts and other places just so they will be attended to." - Normando Hernandez. "I spent 17 months of solitary...By: Mark Tapscott
Continuing revelations of blind prejudice, disregard for journalistic ethics, and just plain bile and bitterness among some liberal journalists participating in JournoList could have dire consequences for them. What could easily become the most costly consequence other than the loss of professional credibility is the prospect of expensive litigation. Consider Jonathon Strong's now-widely discussed account of Spencer Ackerman's tactical advice for dealing with critical coverage of President Obama's relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright during the 2008 presidential campaign: "In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s...By: Mark Tapscott
Only 11 percent of Americans have "a great deal" or "quite a lot of confidence" in Congress, the lowest rating ever reached by any of the 16 major institutions ranked in public esteem by Gallup's Confidence in Institutions survey since 1973. But the bad news for the Democratic Congress doesn't end there: "Underscoring Congress' image problem, half of Americans now say they have 'very little' or 'no' confidence in Congress, up from 38% in 2009 -- and the highest for any institution since Gallup first asked this question in 1973," Gallup said. "Previous near-50% readings include 48% found for the presidency in 2008, and 49% for the criminal justice system in 1994." The U.S. military remains the most respected public institution in the Gallup survey, followed by small business, local...By: Mark Tapscott
House Minority Leader John Boehner is touting a proposal introduced by Rep. John Culberson, R-TX, requiring a three-day internet posting prior to votes on final passage for all legislation in the lower chamber. The Boehner-Culberson initiative puts the House GOP officially on record in support of the Read the Bill movement that goes back at least to 2005 and probably even before that. The Sunlight Foundation established this web site seeking support for the proposal in 2008. And as I recall, The Heritage Foundation's Ed Feulner began writing columns advocating a similar measure at least as far back as 2004. When Nancy Pelosi was House Minority Leader, she criticized the then-GOP majority for not allowing members at least three days to read legislation before voting on it,...By: Mark Tapscott
A ground-based laser defense weapon was used successfully by the U.S. Nav to shoot down incoming aircraft in a test conducted off the California coast. The laser is being developed for the Navy by...By: Mark Tapscott
Remember how President Bush, presidential counselor Karl Rove, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales politicized the Department of Justice by dropping voter intimidation charges against two members of the New Black Pan .... sorry ... for firing nine district attorneys? Remember how this was the worst abuse of the justice system since the Nixon era? Remember how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers talked darkly about criminal charges? Remember how the New York Times and the rest of the liberal ranks of the Mainstream Media cheered when Gonzales resigned in disgrace? Well, guess what - the Obama-Holder Justice Department has, according to AP, decided not to file any charges against any Bush appointees in connection with the DA firings. Now...By: Mark Tapscott
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada reminds of Ray Milland in the sappy 1960s tear-jerker movie, "Love Story." Milland plays Oliver Barrett III, the WASP snob father who warns Oliver Barrett IV, his Harvard-student son played by Ryan O'Neal, that "I won't give you the time of day if you marry that girl." The girl in question, of course, was Jennifer Cavalleri, the Italian beauty from the wrong side of town, played by Ali McGraw, with whom the younger Barrett has fallen madly, desperately in love. Barrett IV's response to Barrett III's time threat was classic: "Father, you don't know the time." This is where Reid comes in. Earlier today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky observed on the Senate floor that "the president and his Democrat allies on Capitol Hill...By: Mark Tapscott
Columbia University president Lee Bollinger's support in a Wall Street Journal oped last week for radical proposals for government funding of favored media organizations in an effort to "save" traditional journalism from the Internet sparked more discussion of the controversy in the Blogosphere, including my own most recent critique of the idea. The main impetus behind the drive to have government become much more heavily involved in funding of journalism than it already is comes from the Free Press Coalition, headed by Prof. Robert McChesney. Besides pushing for government funding and other forms of official involvement in media, McChesney is among the most high-profile defenders of the policies of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, who has all but destroyed what was once a thriving...By: Mark Tapscott
Ralph Benko, author of the widely touted "The Webster's Dictionary: How to Use the Web to Transform the World" and a regular oped contributor on political strategy topics to The Washington Examiner, has been nominated for the Top 10 Who are Changing the World of Internet and Politics. Erick Erickson, founder of RedState.com, CNN political analyst, and friend of The Washington Examiner, is also among the nominees. The Top 10 is co-sponsored by PoliticsOnline and World eDemocracy Forum. Past winners have included President Obama's 2008 online presidential campaign, MyBarackObama.com, David Kralik of American Solutions for Winning the Future for the "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less" online petition drive, and Peter Greenberger, manager of political advertising for Google. For more...By: Mark Tapscott
A report by the Treasury Department's Special Inspector General for the Toxic Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) contends that President Obama's push for General Motors and Chrysler to close thousands of dealerships across the country as part of their government bailouts "may have substantially contributed to the shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls, all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions' broader economic impacts." The SIGTARP report further contends, according to Rep. Darrell Issa, the ranking minority member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, that it is questionable whether the closings were "either necessary for the sake...By: Mark Tapscott
Lobbyists for Detroit's Big Three automakers are pushing Michigan's two Democratic senators, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, hard on behalf of a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) to be included in the compromise version of President Obama's cap-and-trade energy bill that could be voted on in the Senate later this week or early next week....By: Mark Tapscott
Any possible shred of doubt remaining in anybody's mind about former Senate GOP leader Trent Lott's true allegiance have now been definitively removed: Lott is a paid tool of the Washington Establishment who hates the Tea Party and all other insurgents who have had it with politics-as-usual....By: Mark Tapscott
Sharron Angle is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's worst nightmare. He repeats over and over again his mantra about Angle being far out, but that's just standard whistling-in-the-dark campaign rhetoric we always hear from an out-of-touch liberal incumbent who fears facing the music come election day....By: Mark Tapscott
If you ever wanted to sit in on a meeting between Members of Congress and lobbyists trying to influence their voting, you can do it now, at least from a cyber perspective, courtesy of the House GOP and the Sunlight Foundation. Go here for the livestreaming, plus a Sunlight feed that shows who the lobbyists have contributed to in recent years. And for a detailed accounting of how all this came about, check out Greg Sargent's Plum Line post over on the Washington Post site. The presence of cameras no doubt puts a different face on everybody present, but the precedent being established of public access to such meetings is extraordinarily important, historic even, which is why those of us who encourage a transpartisan commitment to greater transparency in government are cheering House...By: Mark Tapscott
How does one get elected to Congress despite having such ignorance of recent history? Other than the obvious - that there hasn't been a South and North Vietnam since 1975 - how many other historical and factual errors can you spot in this recent address to the House of Representatives by Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-TX?...By: Mark Tapscott
A majority of Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee defeated a proposed amendment yesterday introduced by Rep. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) that would have negated President Obama's moratorium on oil and natural gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Cassidy's measure was supported by committee chairman Rep. Nick Rahal, D-WV, and Rep. Jim Costa, a California Democrat who chairs one of the committee's subcommittees, but still lost on a 22-26 vote. During the debate, Cassidy reminded members of the committee that President Obama and congressional Democrats had promised to put science ahead of politics in federal policymaking, and that the eight scientists selected by Obama who analyzed the proposed moratorium were unanimous in their opposition to it. So Cassidy asked a series of very...By: Mark Tapscott
If you aren't a Wall Street Journal subscriber, you should be so you can read Daniel Henniger's column on today's edition. Trust me, this column alone is worth the price of a subscription because it highlights two things - just how truly radical is President Obama's recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick and what the GOP must do in response if voters return them to the House majority in November. First, Berwick truly is the disciple of centralized planning. Read these quotes from the guy, which Henninger included in his column today, and the conclusion is inescapable - Berwick loves centralized planning and believes leaders know more about societal good than anybody else: "I cannot believe that the individual health care consumer can enforce through choice the proper configurations...By: Mark Tapscott
American voters by a nearly three-to-one margin are more embarrassed by the antics of the country's "political class" than they are by laws like Arizona's recently enacted immigration statute, according to the latest Rasmussen Reports survey. "A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 26% of voters are embarrassed by Arizona and its behavior. Sixty-two percent (62%) are not," Rasmussen said. "However, 59% are embarrassed by the nation’s Political Class and its behavior. Twenty-three percent (23%) are not." The telephone survey of 1.000 likely voters was conducted July 12-13 and has a margin of error of plus or minus three percent, with a 95 percent confidence level. "Overall, by a three-to-one margin, voters see the Political Class as a greater...By: Mark Tapscott
California's Rep. Darrell Issa is the ranking GOPer on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and he is rapidly becoming one of President Obama's toughest critics. So when the Obama White House releases a claim that the president's $862 billion economic stimulus program last year has "saved or created" between 2.7 million and 3.6 million jobs, Issa could be expected to pounce. And he did, releasing this statement: “The Administration’s new stimulus jobs ‘saved and created’ claim lacks a basis in reality. Less than a year ago, the Recovery Board abandoned efforts to count jobs saved or created by the stimulus and decided to instead count jobs paid for with stimulus funds regardless of whether or not they were ever in jeopardy of being lost. "The...By: Mark Tapscott
While Nanny State jurisdictions like Maryland can't get enough speed cameras in place fast enough, other jurisdictions are having second thoughts about the devices that make a mockery of the presumption of innocence. Jalopnik reports that Arizona officials, who were among the first to use speed cameras, are now beginning to turn them off for fear of crossing privacy lines and, almost certainly the vastly more important reason, because they just aren't producing as much revenue as expected. That tells us two things: First, speed cameras are inherently flawed as tools for reducing average speeds because over time drivers become familiar with locations and adjust their pace accordingly. The result is the speed cameras cut speed for a small distance, but then drivers resume their normal...By: Mark Tapscott
Here's an amazing fact that somehow escaped me during the long months of the Obamacare debate - the Dutch tried a government-run health care reform program quite similar to the Obama plan starting in 2006. The result have been quite dismal. But don't take my word for it. Here's Eline vanden Brock of the Netherlands' Independent Institute explaining why the Obamacare approach failed in her country and why it is all but guaranteed to fail in this country, too: HT: Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit....By: Mark Tapscott
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer is being blasted in liberal precincts for some less-than-precise formulations about the increasingly dangerous crime situation on the border between her state and Mexico....By: Mark Tapscott
New Jersey could save $210 million annually by privatizing a wide array of functions now peformed by state employees, including turnpike toll collectors, psychiatric hospital workers and state park administrators, according to a panel of experts appointed by Gov. Chris Christie to recommend ways to reduce the financial burden on Garden State taxpayers. The Jersey Star-Ledger obtained an advance copy of the report. "Preschool classrooms would no longer be built at public expense, state employees would pay for parking and private vendors would dish out food, deliver health care and run education programs behind prison walls," according to the newspaper. Christie is battling old-school establishment politicians from both the Democratic and Republican parties in New Jersey in an...By: Mark Tapscott
Millions of working Americans are depending at least in part on pension funds provided by their trade unions. But at least 108 of those funds are in danger due to being inadequately funded by the union officials responsible for insuring their financial integrity, according to the federal government. If you are depending on one of the following at-risk union pension funds, here are two questions you should ask your union's leaders: * Why aren't you funding our pension properly? * What have you funded with our dues instead of our pension fund? The following union pension funds were cited by a Moody's report last year, based upon the federal government's definition of endangered funds. The percentage following each name represents the percentage of funding available to pay current and...By: Mark Tapscott
Millions of Americans remain unable to find a job, business investment in new plant and equipment is scarce, credit remains hard to get for companies and consumers, and uncertainty about the future course of government regulation hangs over it all. So is President Obama "anti-business," as many of his critics on the Right have been saying for lo these many months? Or, as Mike Brownfield at Morning Bell puts it today, "the economy has lost 2.3 million jobs since President Obama signed his stimulus bill, leaving him 7.4 million jobs short of what he promised the American economy would support by 2010. Is it any wonder corporate America is shaking in its boots?" Facts like those are what stand in the way of the latest White House PR push to portray the president as pro-business,...By: Mark Tapscott
One: Is the Obama administration lawless? In "The Reparations administration," Doug Ross points to four factors that qualify the Obama crowd as operating outside the law: Racial and gender quotes in Obamacare and the Obama-Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, the New Black Panther case dismissal, and the refusal to secure the U.S. border with Mexico against the drug cartels. Two: Are you ready for the stoning of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani in Iran? Ed Morrissey at Hot Air looks at the latest example of Iran's continued use of one of the Muslim world's most barbaric methods of execution, in this case against a 43-year mother accused of adultery. Three: Christopher Chantrill at The American Thinker wonders if conservatives will be up to their biggest task after Obama, Reed and Pelosi are...
One respectable answer is that they don't. Many an op-ed has been written to elaborate the point, but this won't be one of them. Such answer is neither useful nor reassuring...
Outside of the Arabian Peninsula, where in the world do you think absolute monarchies still exist? A strong clue is given in this Daily Telegraph story about the fate of the...
“The republic has no need of science or of chemistry.”
With these words, a French tribunal confirmed its 1794 sentence of death on Antoine Lavoisier, the great...
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