Of course they’re on his side, but this story makes me wonder how much. I noted a few of days ago that the Obama people were starting to lie about what Rick Perry said about secession. The story I linked above shows they’re continuing this tactic:
“The statements that Perry makes are remarkable in that just two years ago, the governor of Texas openly talked about leading Texas out of the United States of America, and now this campaign has caused him to profess his love to the United States,” Gibbs said during an appearance on MSNBC.
I presumed these lies would continue uncorrected until Perry had to make a statement or something. But there, in an AP story, appears the following:
Perry never advocated Texas actually would break away from the United States at a tea party rally in 2009, but he did suggest that Texans might get so fed up they’d want to secede at some point.
Holy smokes. Journalists correcting the open and scurrilous lies of the Obama reelection effort, and so early in the campaign. I do not believe Obama can count on the same level of media cheerleading he got last time, and I don’t think he will know how to handle that situation.
P.S. If you believe Robert Gibbs capable of sincerity, it would be ironic to see him making the flippant accusation, ““Any day now Rick Perry will probably ask to see the president’s birth certificate.” It would be ironic, because the Obama people said the birth certificate thing was a baseless, made-up smear, and here’s Robert Gibbs using it as a baseless, made-up smear against others; as far as I know, Perry’s never said peep about the matter.
Prediction: Before this is over we will hear Democrats openly stating that they regret that Obama caved to Trump on the birth certificate. The president sprang the trap too early – had he held on to it until, say, September, he could have gotten a lot more Republicans to say goofy things about it.
9/18 Update: The people at PolitiFact rate the White House’s secession meme as “False.” I’m not a fan of PolitiFact, and, judging by their past work, would have expected them to find some glint of truth in the allegation. Bully for them, and a bad omen for the president.
Apollo posted this at 6:53 AM CDT on Wednesday, August 17th, 2011 as Is It 2012 Yet?, Journalism, Running with the antelope, Scorched Earth
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I don’t want people to be accused of crimes they didn’t commit; I particularly don’t want people to be extorted to pay money to protect their names. But:
If someone were to tell me, “A would-be left-wing president of France is going to be framed in for a rape, who would you like to do the framing?” I would immediately say, “Someone connected to a union.”
I don’t like it when bad things happen; I particularly don’t like it when the force of the law comes down on people who haven’t broken the law. But, everything else being equal, if I would be asked as to who should be framed for a crime and who should be caught doing the framing, this might well be what I’d suggest.
Apollo posted this at 12:41 AM CDT on Sunday, July 3rd, 2011 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Running with the antelope
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So I’m a lawyer. I’ve taken the stupid lawyers’ ethics class, I taken the stupid lawyers’ ethics test, and supposedly I’m a lawyer with ethics. There. I said it.
It should be obvious to anyone with a pulse that King & Spalding is a horde of gutless wimps, but I think that should have been obvious to anyone familiar with BigLaw. Of course they would abandon a client if it became politically untenable to them. They’re a large law firm, and their objective is to make money. The lawyers’ ethics class, the lawyers’ ethics test, the lawyers’ ethics – it’s a bunch of claptrap.
Probably for the first time in his life, Eric Holder said something correct. Lawyers are at their best when they stick by their clients no matter what. Atticus Finch, John Adams, etc., etc. And I’ve known quite a few criminal defense lawyers who have zealously defended enormously unpopular clients who committed indescribably horrid crimes. That‘s what you expect a lawyer to do – you paid him, and he sticks by you til the end. And that’s what you’ll get when you hire a criminal defense lawyer.
But a civil suit? The bar leans strongly to the left, and if you want someone to defend your rightwingery in an civil suit, you’re going to have to get either a solo lawyer or a small law firm. Because civil lawyers are never “lawyers at their best.” They’re money-grubbing jerks. Don’t ever kid yourself about that, and don’t let lawyers (like Holder) preen about their dedication to their clients. Lawyers are people, and like all people they are dedicated first and foremost to themselves.
You want a friend? Buy a dog. You want someone to defend your unpopular cause in a civil suit? Buy a lawyer who’s not connected to a large firm. You want a money-grubbing SoS who will defend you until his gay friends start griping? Hire King & Spalding.
Apollo posted this at 6:11 PM CDT on Tuesday, April 26th, 2011 as Running with the antelope, The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot
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While I’m anxiously awaiting the day my state sends to Washington a senator I can be proud of * (well, as proud as one can be a of senator), one of our current emissaries to the federal capital simply can’t stop making an ass of himself. What part of founding a group called “No Labels” tells you that Joe Scarborough is interested in wearing your party label? Honestly, you can’t even call the guy a RINO. And what part of the fact that Scarborough makes his living attacking Sarahpalin on MSNBC tells you that this would be anything more than Charlie Crist redux? The only worse candidate would be if Cornyn asked Arlen Specter to retire to Florida and run for senate.
On the presumption that Cornyn will get Morning Joe to run, I’d like to apologize to the voters of Florida. I voted for Cornyn in 2008, because he seemed inoffensive. But this is now the second time he has interjected himself into your state’s politics. First, he got Charlie Crist to run, but you guys had the good sense to elect Marco Rubio instead. So thanks, Florida, for bailing out my senator’s idiocy once. I’m sorry that you may have to do it twice.
* As though I weren’t already torn enough regarding whom to support in that race, Cruz or Williams, an alumnus of our alma mater, Dallas mayor Tom Leppert, has also jumped into the race and is pitching himself as being pretty conservative. It’s like everybody got together and decided that I, personally, was the target demographic.
Apollo posted this at 8:54 AM CDT on Friday, March 11th, 2011 as Deep in the Heart of Texas, Running with the antelope
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I’m a wishy-washy supporter of concealed-carry on college campuses. I’m open to arguments against it, but where I don’t find either side of an argument persuasive, my default question is: “Which option increases freedom and individual responsibility?” Because I think the burden of proof, everywhere and always, should be on those who wish to restrict liberty.
With that being said, I’m really quite amazed at how weak the arguments against allow guns on campus are. I’m going to go through that story and look at what they’re saying. First, it starts off talking about how Utah’s policy of forcing all public universities to allow concealed carry is draining the U of U’s resources:
However, Utah’s website warns people on the campus that it is “very possible” that they will see someone with a weapon, and they are “encouraged” to call University Police and report the person, whom an officer would then locate to ensure that the gun was being carried legally.
That’s only one example of how concealed carry can drain colleges’ manpower and resources . .
Why would you encourage people to report such a thing? Driving a car requires a license, oodles of paperwork, and involves a deadly weapon, but we presume that people seen driving cars are doing so legally (a frighteningly large percentage are not – nationally 20% of people have no insurance). No one in their right mind would call the 5-0 to investigate whether a random guy seen driving a car was doing so legally. Utah could stop the drain on their resources by not responding to calls to investigate presumptively legal behavior. Guns aren’t draining their resources, their reflexive fear of guns is.
Among those problems: accounting for the presence of loaded weapons in an environment rife with alcohol, drugs and young people;
Yet we allow cars on campus. And as Instapundit points out, this argument “proves too much” about college campuses. Read the rest of this entry »
Apollo posted this at 11:38 AM CDT on Friday, March 4th, 2011 as Liberty and/or Security, Running with the antelope, Who's Your Nanny?
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Ray LaHood has got to be the LVP of this administration. Ann Althouse has a proper take down of this inanity. I’m embarassed that this man used to be (and may still claim to be) a Republican, and the sooner he’s bereft of all power and influence on American life, the better off every single person in this country will be.
Apollo posted this at 12:10 AM CDT on Sunday, February 13th, 2011 as Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, Running with the antelope
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This article, from some New York-based publication, is sheer enjoyment from start to finish.
Turns out, lots of Congresscritters who lost feel bad about it, and some are confused about why they lost. But if you’re concerned that the Democrats are going to learn any lessons from defeat, or even believe that they did something wrong, you can rest at ease.
Denial and bargaining are behind them, and some members who lost seem to have arrived at a shaky acceptance, shaped by their sense that the election was not about them.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I’m glad that they’ve stopped denying that “the election was not about them.” If there’s one thing that truly shows they’re moving along in the grief process, it’s the shifting of blame away from themselves.
“I don’t think the election had very much to do with me, and I don’t think it had much to do with my opponent,” said Representative Rick Boucher, a Democrat who had served Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District since 1983. “That frustration and anger and desire to send a message transcended the knowledge my constituents had of my work in the district.”
Yes, Democrats, your stupid constituents are to blame for this. Your ignorant, stupid constituents. I think lots of the remaining Democrats need to start pre-explaining their 2012 losses by calling their constituents ignorant before the election, rather than waiting until afterward when it just looks like rationalization.
Mr. Oberstar, who was tossed out with several state legislators from his area, said he was no match for the “upfeed” from the powerful Republican ground game that moved against him. “I expected to leave at some point, that I’d make that decision in due course,” he said. “I’m not angry; I’m disappointed.”
Is there any greater demonstration of our governing class’s sense of entitlement than for a Congresscritter, who faces an election every two years, to presume that he controls how long he’ll stay in Congress?
But my favorite comes from Mike Castle. Now if you’ll jump in the Wayback Machine with me, we’ll revisit 2006 and 2008. After (and even before) those elections, Republicans actually mouthed words that purported to show they had learned a lesson. Phrases like, “We’ve come unmoored from our principles,” or “We were elected to change Washington, but Washington changed us” were rampant, even from elected Republicans who stayed in office. There was a palpable sense from the party that understood they had done something wrong.
In hindsight, there are not many who better represents what Republicans did wrong than Mike Castle. His one saving grace (morally speaking) is that he never had any of the conservative principles that others in the party lost. But he was the sort of big-spending, bring-home-the-bacon Republican who we were blaming for our losses over the last two elections.
He ponders daily, he said, which is preferable: to falter in a tight race with a Democratic opponent, or to have lost in the primary, as he did, to the inexperienced Tea Party candidate who never had a shot in the general election.
“My wife argues it’s almost better to lose the way we did because it all seems so irrational,” he said. “But you lose, you lose. I wish I could say one way was fun. They’re both pretty bad.”
Can you think of a better example of someone just refusing to accept any personal responsibility? He lost to an “inexperienced . . . candidated who never had a shot in the general election,” and there’s absolutely no indication here that he thinks he had anything to do with the loss. O’Donnell’s inexperience and unelectability are here used to show how irrational the voters were, not to show how badly Castle failed.
It just up and happened. Had nothing to do with him not adequately representing Delaware Republicans, had nothing to do with him being a petty jackass (as proved by his refusal to campaign for O’Donnell), had nothing to do with him being part of our big spending problem.
Nope, it’s just “irrational.” Can’t understand it. Elections are as unpredictable as roulette wheels, and his number finally came up.
Good riddance. If I had to attribute our current problems to a single cause, it would be a lack of individual responsibility. Elected officials refuse to accept it, and voters refuse to force them to accept it. Show me a defeated Congressman who says “I lost because I failed to do my job properly,” and I’ll be sympathetic to that guy. As for the no talent ass-clowns quoted in this story, I hope they keep shedding those yummy, yummy tears.
P.S. Arlen Specter is going to be replaced by Pat Toomey. Not since Lincoln replaced Buchanan has a newly elected official been such a dramatic improvement over his predecessor.
Apollo posted this at 11:04 AM CDT on Saturday, November 20th, 2010 as Buffoon Watch, Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, Politics, Running with the antelope, The Democratic Congress
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I’m not quite sure what this paragraph in this NYT piece is supposed to mean:
The strategic decisions unfolded at a feverish pace on Monday over an unusually wide playing field of nearly 75 Congressional districts, including here in Ohio, a main battleground in the fight for the House and the Senate. The developments resembled pieces being moved on a giant chess board, with Republicans trying to keep Democrats on the defensive in as many places as possible, while outside groups provided substantial reinforcements for Republicans.
But plainly it is meant to convey that Republicans are cheating. Imagine you were playing chess with someone, and suddenly they got “substantial reinforcement” from “outside groups.” What does that look like? Do a dozen blue pawns and two blue bishops suddenly appear on the board? Or would the dozen pawns and two bishops be the same color as his pieces? Are they controlled by the “outside groups,” who suddenly turn the game into three-way chess? Or does your opponent get to control them?
Whatever the answer to those questions, the inept metaphor obviously goes along with the latest Democrat meme that Republicans are a bunch of shady cheaters because there are “outside groups” helping them.
Those of us who oppose limits on campaign spending by individuals or groups have always said that campaign regulation is mostly just an effort to protect incumbents by reducing the amount of criticism that others are allowed to air. I don’t think there could be a finer example of this principle in action than seeing Democrats, when the country has turned decidedly against them on policy grounds, attack “outside groups,” implying that there’s something illegitimate about groups of Americans running political ads.
Apollo posted this at 1:25 AM CDT on Tuesday, October 12th, 2010 as Journalism, Politics, Running with the antelope
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Ann Althouse’s takedown of the president’s offensive remarks about the Koran burners is worthwhile. I found this question from Stephanopoulos quite offensive as well:
STEPHANOPOULOS: I wonder what this must feel like from behind your desk. You’re President of the United States. You have to deal with the fallout. And he’s a pastor who’s got 30 followers in his church. Does it make you feel helpless or angry?
Why on earth would anyone feel helpless or angry because some people are doing things you don’t agree with? And why would the president, in particular, feel helpless or angry about it? I guess this question could be rephrased, “Does it make you feel helpless or angry that you’re not a dictator who gets to control every action of his subjects?”
The correct response to this question, which, of course, the president did not give, is: “Free people do the darnedest things, and I was elected to manage the government, not tell American citizens how to behave in their spare time. I won’t be burning any Korans, that’s for sure.” But Calvin Coolidge has been dead for some time now, and I’m not sure we’ve had a president since then who would have gotten the answer right.
Apollo posted this at 10:19 PM CDT on Thursday, September 9th, 2010 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, Conservatism, Running with the antelope
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This speech from Jeff Sessions puts Elena Kagan’s expulsion of military recruiters from Harvard in a context I had not thought of:
Around the same time Ms. Kagan was campaigning to exclude military recruiters—citing what she saw as the evils of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell—Harvard University accepted $20 million from a member of the Saudi Royal family to establish a center for Islamic Studies in his honor.
A recent Obama State Department report concerning Saudi Arabia and Islamic Shari’a law noted that:
“Under Shari’a as interpreted in [Saudi Arabia] sexual activity between two persons of the same gender is punishable by death or flogging.”
Ms. Kagan was perfectly willing to obstruct the U.S. military—which has liberated countless Muslims from the hate and tyranny of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban.
But it seems she sat on the sidelines as Harvard created an Islamic Studies Center funded by—and dedicated to—foreign leaders presiding over a legal system that violates what would appear to be her position.
Perhaps she would have let military recruiters on campus if they gave her $20 million?
Apollo posted this at 8:44 PM CDT on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, Kulturkampf, Running with the antelope, Veiled Threats
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Helen Thomas deserves everything she’s getting, but this bit from Lanny Davis is a neat reminder that there are some people who, even when right, can never manage to be correct:
However, her statement that Jews in Israel should leave Israel and go back to Poland or Germany is an ancient and well-known anti-Semitic stereotype of the Alien Jew not belonging in the “land of Israel” — one that began 2,600 years with the first tragic and violent diaspora of the Jews at the hands of the Romans.
Republican Romans heeped much unjustified scorn on the monarchs, but I’m not sure even Brutus himself ever accused the kings of kicking the Jews out of Israel.
Apollo posted this at 12:31 AM CDT on Monday, June 7th, 2010 as Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, Running with the antelope
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The lede paragraph of this story is the most disturbing thing I’ve read in months:
Leading voices in the Senate are considering a new tax on gasoline as part of an effort to win Republican and oil industry support for the energy and climate bill now idling in Congress.
In what surreal world does raising taxes help get Republican support? Oh, right, the senate, on a day when Goober has decided to be a baddie.
Obama and the Democrats are setting Republicans up for an epic win this November. The only way Republicans can avoid being swept into control of [at least] one house of Congress is if the party signs on to Obama’s bigger government, higher tax agenda. With the predictability of tomorrow’s sunrise, that is precisely what Goober wants to do.
Apollo posted this at 12:59 AM CDT on Thursday, April 15th, 2010 as Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!, Running with the antelope
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This column by David Rivkin and Lee Casey on the demise of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) is immensely wrong-headed as a matter of constitutional law – or, at least, it should be (one never knows what the Supreme Court will do until it does it).
Their argument is that because the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense have said that there is no need for DADT, therefore a court would have to find that there is no rational basis for the law and strike down the law as unconstitutional.
Let me rephrase that argument: Because two high-ranking presidential appointees don’t think there’s need for a duly-enacted law (i.e. an act of the legislature), the judicial branch should strike it down. This is a complete separation of powers clusterf**k.
Obviously the opinions of the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are pretty important here. Congress would be foolish not to ask them their opinion when it is performing its Constitutional duty of “regulat[ing] the land and naval forces.” But it is clear that, Constitutionally speaking, presidential appointees are irrelevant here. The Secretary of Defense’s view on DADT is no more binding than is his view on the Voting Rights Act, the national gas tax, or the existence of Martians, and Congress, seeing as it is independent from the executive, should be under no obligation to follow his suggestions.
Personally, I couldn’t care less about DADT – if I were to draw a picture of my opinions regarding DADT, I would draw a vast, featureless ocean of apathy extending to the horizon in all directions. What I do care about is judicial activism. It is, to my mind, preposterous to suggest that the judiciary should strike down an act of the legislature because of the opinion of some executive appointees. The executive and judicial branches should not try to use each other as sticks to beat down the legislative.
Of course, what would make this approach particularly galling is that there is absolutely no need for it. We have a president who won a large electoral victory campaigning, at least in part, on repealing DADT. The president’s party, even after Scott Brown’s win, has the largest Congressional majorities in 30 years. The Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Republican appointees both – have said there is no need for DADT. Don’t look to the courts to end DADT, just pass an effing law!
Apollo posted this at 3:16 AM CDT on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 as I, For One, Welcome Our Judicial Overlords!, Running with the antelope, We don't need no stinkin' Constitution
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Powerline has an interesting discussion of “racism” in modern America. Paul Mirengoff has this truism:
[T]here’s a scam being played out here, and at several levels. At the first level, conduct that isn’t really racist is sucked into that category. This increases the reach of political correctness and the ability of the likes of President Obama and Jesse Jackson to pass judgment on whites who aren’t sufficiently careful. At the second level, the useful liberal is absolved of “racism,” where the conservative would not be.
I’ve got a pretty low opinion of the Senate, and a pretty high threshold for people saying stupid crap. The comparison between Reid and Lott is useful, insofar as neither of them said anything racist, but at most said something insensitive or stupid. I liked seeing Lott lose his leadership position in 2002 mostly because I didn’t like Lott to begin with.* Reid’s comment is more directly racial than was Lott’s, but it’s main sin is using a word of questionable taste. Honestly, I think Reid’s comment that Obama has “no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” is hilarious, as it attempts to describe the way that Obama changes his manner of speech depending on whether he’s speaking to a largely black or a largely white audience.** “Negro dialect” isn’t the phrase I’d use, but we all know what he meant, and it’s true.
*Knowing what we know now of how terribly the Republicans would fumble their majority in 2003-06, particularly during and after 2005, “Would we be better off if Trent Lott had remained the Republicans’ senate leader”? is the most interesting hypothetical I’ve thought of in ages. I’d actually forgotten about Trent Lott’s existence until the past day or two. But I think it’s indisputable that Bill Frist was, at best, no better than Lott. I think Lott might have done more to beat back the judicial fillibusters in 2005-06. Having a Senate majority leader whose house was destroyed in Katrina would have been a small boon during a time when small, stupid stories held sway in politics. Mitch McConnell strikes me as, more or less, Trent Lott with ever so slightly more scruples but significantly worse hair. They’re about the same, though, in terms of leading people to believe that Senate Republicans are mostly white guys who sound like Foghorn Leghorn.
**Q: Who’s the racist here – the guy who literally speaks to people of different races in different tones of voice, or the guy who points it out using a word that some don’t like? A: Rush Limbaugh. I hear he favors slavery.
Apollo posted this at 2:24 AM CDT on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 as Race, Running with the antelope, Walking the Cat Backwards
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What an interesting poll result:
However, 53% of voters believe the president places higher importance on ending the war. Just 28% say Obama thinks winning the war is more important. Another 19% are not sure.
Certainly the speech the president gave last week was not meant to communicate his desire to win. I think most of that 28% is composed of people giving the president a presumption of good faith – that surely he would not escalate a war, sending tens of thousands more Americans into combat, simply to provide political cover for when he cuts and runs. Given the content of his speech, I’m not sure it’s fair to make that presumption. He had an opportunity to lay out the ingenious plan for victory that he’s spent months crafting, but instead he mostly just groused about how much it sucks that we’re having to spend money fighting one of those war thingies.
War is, everywhere and always, a competition of wills. The American people don’t think our commander-in-chief has the will to win this war. Let’s hope our enemies in Afghanistan come to a different conclusion.
Apollo posted this at 11:22 AM CDT on Sunday, December 6th, 2009 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, CHANGE!, Global War on Terror, Running with the antelope
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