Sebelius Short on Tax Payments

Come on already. WaPo:

Health and Human Services nominee Kathleen Sebelius recently corrected three years of tax returns and paid more than $7,000 in back taxes after finding "unintentional errors" _ the latest tax troubles for an Obama administration nominee.

The guys on CNBC said maybe a thousand unintentionally, but $7,000? One quipped, is it that Republicans have better tax advice?

Oh, and her husband's a judge. Yet they have trouble following the law. And paying the taxes they owe that they like to raise on us.

I think there's a pattern here, don't you?

Tax Day TEA PARTY time.

Your new bicycle

Auto repairman, soul-fixer in chief, yessiree Barack is your new bicycle.

(omg, you mean we have to pay for it ourselves?)

Change you could believe in

Obama forces GM chief out, puts Reid, Pelosi on leave!!!!!!!!

TOTUS vs. Rahmbo

After we get back from Europe, I'll be moving out of Rahm's place. I just can't take his passive-aggressive masked in outright aggressive behavior any more.

More thoughts here.

Tres Che AIG Chic

AIG's Financial Products Chairman. Gee, I wonder who he voted for?

Tres Che (AIG) Chic.

GOP: Get Debt Under Control

Republican Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Video:

A chicken on every pothole?

KFC may be the answer to Chicago and other cities' budget and pothole problems. Sun Times.

Dirty Old Boys

Chris Matthews must be looking to pump up his ratings, and perhaps he doesn't feel that same old leg tingle from The One these days. He and Howard Fineman trash Gov. Sarah Palin, comparing her to a mail-order bride:
Has any woman in public office ever been treated in such a disgusting manner by MSM? Back in 2007 it was a different story...

In 1998, voters in a focus group were asked to close their eyes and imagine what a governor should look like. "They automatically pictured a man," says Barbara Lee, whose foundation promoting women's political advancement sponsored the survey. "The kind you see in those portraits hanging in statehouse hallways." They most certainly didn't visualize Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former beauty-pageant winner, avid hunter, snowmobiler and mother of four who was elected to her state's highest office last November. Or Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a badge-wielding former federal prosecutor and onetime attorney for Anita Hill who has redefined the debate over illegal immigration in her state. [snip]

In Alaska, Palin is challenging the dominant, sometimes corrupting, role of oil companies in the state's political culture. "The public has put a lot of faith in us," says Palin during a meeting with lawmakers in her downtown Anchorage office, where—as if to drive the point home—the giant letters on the side of the ConocoPhillips skyscraper fill an entire wall of windows. "They're saying, 'Here's your shot, clean it up'." For Palin, that has meant tackling the cozy relationship between the state's political elite and the energy industry that provides 85 percent of Alaska's tax revenues—and distancing herself from fellow Republicans, including the state's senior U.S. senator, Ted Stevens, whose home was recently searched by FBI agents looking for evidence in an ongoing corruption investigation. (Stevens has denied any wrongdoing.) But even as she tackles Big Oil's power, Palin has transformed her own family's connections to the industry into a political advantage. Her husband, Todd, is a longtime employee of BP, but, as Palin points out, the "First Dude" is a blue-collar "sloper," a fieldworker on the North Slope, a cherished occupation in the state. "He's not in London making the decisions whether to build a gas line."

In an interview with NEWSWEEK, Palin said it's time for Alaska to "grow up" and end its reliance on pork-barrel spending. Shortly after taking office, Palin canceled funding for the "Bridge to Nowhere," a $330 million project that Stevens helped champion in Congress. The bridge, which would have linked the town of Ketchikan to an island airport, had come to symbolize Alaska's dependence on federal handouts. Rather than relying on such largesse, says Palin, she wants to prove Alaska can pay its own way, developing its huge energy wealth in ways that are "politically and environmentally clean."

It's no coincidence that two of the nation's most popular women governors come from frontier states (Arizona and Alaska were the 48th and 49th, respectively, to join the Union) without established social orders that tend to block women from power.

...but that's when they didn't look on her as a threat to their leftist orthodoxy and power establishment.

End the Drug Ban

It costs us $3.7 billion a year and it doesn't work. 46% of Americans oppose legalizing marijuana, but interestingly, 40% of Americans support a change in the law. 42% admit to having tried the weed ( I guess 2% didn't like it). 

Well, I've never tried it but I am in favor of legalizing the stuff. It's not worth it and illegal drug trafficking fosters horrendous crime, gangs and terrorism--ultimately more damaging to any society than its ban.

Related posts: Is Pot a Green Job?, He Won't Back Down, War on Drugs is a Failure

No Bad Countries

Does this make sense? WSJ:

Four countries designated by the U.S. as terrorism sponsors, including Iran and Syria, received $55 million from a U.S.-supported program promoting the peaceful use of nuclear energy, according to a report by Congress's investigative arm. [snip]

A top IAEA official at the Technical Cooperation program told the GAO that the program aims to engage as many countries as possible and "there are no good countries and there are no bad countries," the report said. The IAEA also said confidentiality agreements often prevent it from providing details about the projects for which countries are seeking aid.

Oh, well, that's all right then. It may just be going to fund tsetse fly eradication, much more important than stopping nuclear weapon development by terror-states.

If a nuke flattens NYC along with its headquarters the UN can congratulate itself for being non-judgmental.

ND's Dishonorable Decision

Notre Dame, this is not going away. Another Catholic leader affirms what it means to be Catholic:

 His Excellency John C. Nienstedt, Archbishop of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, has joined a growing list of US bishops in opposition to the University of Notre Dame’s decision to honor and host President Barack Obama at commencement in May. The petition organized by The Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) urging Notre Dame President Father Jenkins to rescind the invitation has grown to more than 220,000 signatures.

“The faithful owe a debt of prayerful thanks to Archbishop Nienstedt for his statement calling on Notre Dame to reconsider its planned honor for President Obama,” said Patrick Reilly, President of CNS.

In his letter dated last Thursday, March 26, and provided today to The Cardinal Newman Society, Archbishop Nienstedt wrote to Father Jenkins to “protest this egregious decision on your part,” calling the honor a “travesty.” Nienstedt wrote that President Obama is an “anti-Catholic politician” and whose “deliberate disregard of the unborn” does not deserve Notre Dame’s “public support.”

Full text here.

Who Loves Liberty?

The argument from supposedly liberty-loving liberals goes like this: We protect "extreme" and unpopular speech because if that is safe, they'll never get to our core liberties. If they can ban smut, argue the slippery-slopers, what's to stop them from banning criticism of the politicians? 

One problem: While Frank Rich et al are preening on their soapboxes for making smut as American as apple pie, the government, under Republican and Democratic presidents alike, has been banning criticism of politicians. 

Just last week, the Obama administration argued before the Supreme Court that it has no principled constitutional problem with banning books.

Jonah Goldberg.

Just Right

The Washington Post continues to run interference for First Lady Michelle Obama, who is described as evolving from off-putting to spot-on. Just right these days. Can we call her Goldilocks or perhaps Mama Bear? In any event, this is a pretty good quote:

Lynne Klaczak, a Florida Republican sees Obama as "a thoroughly modern woman. She's like, 'If you ask me my opinion I'm going to give it.' I don't have a problem with that," she said. "I do think all this focus on her fashion distracts from real issues about women and families where she could make an impact."

This celebrity presidency may wear thin, and eventually the First Lady will offer more than thin gruel photo-ops. It would be good if she could spearhead a more modern view of women, feminism and families. Cathy Young discusses the new White House Council on Women and Girls, headed by Michelle and Barack's friend Valerie Jarrett:

But are these inequalities rooted in discrimination and fixable by the government? Numerous studies show that when differences in training, work hours, and continuity of employment are taken into account, the pay gap all but disappears. Most economists, including liberal feminists such as Harvard's Claudia Goldin, agree that while sex discrimination exists, male-female disparities in earnings and achievement are due primarily to personal choices and priorities. Women are far more likely than men to avoid jobs with 60-hour workweeks and to scale down their careers while raising children. They are also more likely to choose less lucrative but more fulfilling jobs. [snip]

Nor is it clear why women's health care deserves special focus, given that in many areas of health men are doing worse than women. As a result of women's health activism, medical issues specific to women have already been receiving disproportionate attention and funding since the 1990s.

Indeed, one might ask why the only gender-specific issues that seem to deserve federal attention are ones that affect women. Why not look at the fact that men account for 80 percent of suicides and 90 percent of workplace fatalities (as well as 70 percent of nonfatal on-the-job injuries)? What about the troubling trend of boys and young men lagging substantially behind their female peers in education, with women earning nearly 60 percent of college degrees at a time when a college diploma is increasingly essential in the job market? Why not talk about the marginalization of fatherhood and the fact that many men who want to be involved in their children's lives are denied that chance?

It would be good to have a balanced approach on these issues, wouldn't it? So that we're not discriminating against certain groups? More importantly, so that we're not denying individuals a chance to shine and succeed in life. It would be the just right thing to do.

A Living Hell

Please, let's not lose sight of this--our initial objective was job creation, supposedly a few million just to replace those we've lost. Will we get what we're paying for? And will we run out of money before we get there? Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein, Forbes, "Government Gone Wild":

But all of this is just a pipe dream. Government spending does not cause a net increase in jobs over the long run; it costs jobs. Every dollar the government spends is either taxed or borrowed from the private sector, which means it "crowds out" private sector job creation. And because government spending is less efficient than private sector spending, the economy actually grows more slowly in the long run as the government gets bigger.

Wesbury and Stein take the press to task for little pushback, given their recent complaints about $200 billion deficits, and warn about the Obama administration's perilous path that makes those numbers look like chump change:

The new massive government spending plans are especially frightening with the U.S. now facing $1 trillion deficits. President Obama says that this is all OK, and that he is cutting the deficit in half (to $533 billion using administration math, or $672 billion according to the CBO) in just four years. What he doesn't say, and what no one seems willing to say, is that without his new budget the deficit would have been cut by 75% in four years to about $250 billion. The budget deficit and the size of the government are exploding and no one seems to care.

Emphasis mine. Call your Congressman, call your Senators--give them hell. Because that's what we and our kids and grandkids face if we don't tackle this disaster in the making now.

Government Motors?

With our President Barack Obama as car czar in chief will we end up with a useless Yugo that inspires endless jokes, or a green Zil so expensive only government bigshots can afford to drive one? And we're going to throw more precious taxpayer good money after bad so that an Italian car company FIAT Fix It Again Tony can take over Chrysler--having just taken over Yugo?!!!:

Two car workers, Radoslav Simovic and Zarko Niciforovic, grew sentimental as they helped assemble the very last Yugo to leave the production line.

"For us it's hard to part with the Yugo, but I hope that we will start producing some nicer and more comfortable cars. We all have our hopes, but we will have to see what emerges as reality," Simovic said. [snip]

...its faults were reputed to be many. Owners complained of premature engine failure, an unreliable gear box, and doors coming loose, among other things.

In my youthful folly, I bought a FIAT for my first car--big mistake. It huffed and puffed climbing Wisconsin's tame hills and the engine would overheat so that to relieve that you'd have to turn on the heat instead of the AC in the middle of summer--and yes, a door came open suddenly on Green Bay Road. Fortunately it was pre-kids and my friend was wearing a seat belt

Government Motors? A very bad idea, a throwback to an era where the cars they make are their choice, not yours, but you will still pay for it one way or another. 

Ramirez cartoon.

More: Larry Kudlow on the government's power grab and its apparent relish for its uber-regulator role whether it makes sense or not:

As for Detroit, the carmakers should have been in bankruptcy months ago. And it is a bankruptcy court that should have fired GM's Wagoner and his board. Along with some serious pain for bondholders, bankruptcy would have broken the high-cost labor contracts with the UAW as well as carmaker contracts with dealers across the country. That's what bankruptcy courts are for. They're part of the free-market capitalist system.

Former SEC chair Richard Breeden is arguing against a systemic uber-regulator for banks, and in favor of special financial bankruptcy courts. Once again, the story is court-ordered restructuring, not government control by political bureaucrats who like their power so much they want to keep running the various companies in question.

And why isn't Obama's special auto task force ordering a replacement for Ron Gettelfinger, the UAW's president? Weren't their oversized pay and benefit packages a big part of the problem? Well, that's never gonna happen. The election power of the union is too strong. But this does reveal the political nature of these government bailout operations.

Yes, and at our expense. Politico:

But Obama’s move, particularly his dramatic ultimatum to Detroit, puts government in a role better performed by the private sector.

Said David Boaz of the Cato Institute in The Arena: “Rick Wagoner may be a bad CEO, or he may be a victim of difficult conditions facing the legacy auto industry. In either case, board members and investors are the right people to make that decision. I don’t know who should run GM, and neither does President Obama.”

Behind the scenes, Obama seems increasingly comfortable with his assertive role, according to Democratic officials. This mentality pervades the entire White House team — and it was on full display at Friday’s meeting with big bank CEOs. A source familiar with the meeting said that when one of them questioned the price buyers would be able to get for the bad loans known as toxic assets, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel jumped in to say: “Let’s do the deal right here.

Obama, who entered the White House with notably little business experience, is trying to position himself as a common-sense centrist when it comes to bailouts, aides said.

Laughable, given his actions.

More: WSJ, "Barack Obama's Industrial Policy Is Now Too Big to Fail. And Bloomberg, Financial Rescue Approaches GDP as U.S. Pledges $12.8 Trillion. 

We can't afford any more big government spending. We have got to stop this next budget disaster now.

Chicago News

The Chicago Sun Times files for bankruptcy, joining the Chicago Tribune, which filed some months ago. I hope we don't become a one newspaper town, or a no newspaper town--we need as many watchdogs as we can, however imperfect, to clean up corruption in this city.

Notably today, confirmation that former Illinois First Lady Patti Blagojevich is the subject of grand jury deliberations, hearing testimony about her multiple real estate deals with convicted felon Tony Rezko, (our President Barack Obama's money man and personal real estate good fairy). Patti's spouse Gov. Blago is expected to be indicted as early as Thursday.

Debate the Science Policy

Some perspective on the stem cell and global warming issues. "Liberals, time to face the truth." Dennis Byrne:

The setting of government-funded research priorities and the relationship between the public good and science are very much legitimate grounds for reasonable debate. Liberals once fought government funding for nuclear power research and nuclear weapons testing. They evoked moral, ethical and political considerations in the debate. Did that make them anti-science?

Liberals historically have opposed expenditures on space science, including missions to the moon, based on the non-scientific argument that the money would better be spent on helping people "here on Earth." Did that make liberals anti-science?

If government funding is involved, citizens are entirely justified in raising questions about whether it should be a public policy priority.

And when the science itself is not settled, as is often the case, there is all the more reason to engage in debate. That is the intellectually and ethically honest approach--a sound basis for scientific progress.

Naperville North Cancels Ayers

Tribune. Naperville Sun:

Ayers is a Glen Ellyn native and University of Illinois-Chicago professor of education who admitted to participating in domestic bombings as a way of protesting the Vietnam War.

Opinions differ over whether or not Ayers has expressed remorse for the bombings. Most of the bombings were against military or police targets.

A New York Times review upon the publication of his memoir in 2001 quoted him as saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs ... I feel we didn’t do enough.” Ayers disputed the quote, saying it was a “deliberate distortion.”

Poor Bill Ayers, he thinks the NY Times distorted his quote. Yes, well, the story came out on Sept. 11th. Even Bill Ayers apparently felt some sensitivity to the day. He also said this in the article:

Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''

Ah, yes, just a joke. But one murder case has been reopened. Perhaps Professor Ayers should keep a low profile for a while.

Newsbusters. American Thinker.

Previous posts: BC Cancels Ayers, To Die For

ObamACORN Ties and Lies

This pix scrubbed from the ACORN website before the election. The NY Times quashes a story on Obama and ACORN before the election as well. Philadelphia Bulletin:

A lawyer involved with legal action against Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) told a House Judiciary subcommittee on March 19 The New York Times had killed a story in October that would have shown a close link between ACORN, Project Vote and the Obama campaign because it would have been a “a game changer.”

Heather Heidelbaugh, who represented the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee in the lawsuit against the group, recounted for the ommittee what she had been told by a former ACORN worker who had worked in the group’s Washington, D.C. office. The former worker, Anita Moncrief, told Ms. Heidelbaugh last October, during the state committee’s litigation against ACORN, she had been a “confidential informant for several months to The New York Times reporter, Stephanie Strom.”

Ms. Moncrief had been providing Ms. Strom with information about ACORN’s election activities. Ms. Strom had written several stories based on information Ms. Moncrief had given her.

During her testimony, Ms. Heidelbaugh said Ms. Moncrief had told her The New York Times articles stopped when she revealed that the Obama presidential campaign had sent its maxed-out donor list to ACORN’s Washington, D.C. office.

Ms. Moncrief told Ms. Heidelbaugh the campaign had asked her and her boss to “reach out to the maxed-out donors and solicit donations from them for Get Out the Vote efforts to be run by ACORN.”

From the last NY Times story before the election (my post here):

Republicans have tried to make an issue of Senator Barack Obama’s ties to the group, which he represented in a lawsuit in 1995. The Obama campaign has denied any connection with Acorn’s voter registration drives.

Ties and Lies.

P.S.

U.S. Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., the ranking Republican on the committee, said the interactions between the Obama campaign and ACORN, as described by Ms. Moncrief, and attested to before the committee by Ms. Heidelbaugh, could possibly violate federal election law, and “ACORN has a pattern of getting in trouble for violating federal election laws.”

Previous related posts: Comandante Obama, Ohio Sec. of State, ACORN Ties, Project Vote Fraud- ObamACORN, ACORN Cracks Open, ACORN Fells Obama Tree?

Shady Alexi Giannoulias

From the Illinois GOP:

CHICAGO- In an attempt to hide his record of questionable loans to crime figures and willingness to look the other way on Rod Blagojevich’s flagrant corruption, Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias announced today that his Senate campaign will refuse donations from corporate PACs and federal lobbyists.

“No amount of phony reform and renewal pledges from Alexi Giannoulias can hide his shameful history of bankrolling mobsters and convicted felons like Tony Rezko,” said ILGOP Spokesman Lance Trover.

The Giannoulias family bank, Broadway bank, made millions of dollars in loans to Tony Rezko as well as Michael Giorango and Boris Stratievsky, convicted felons and reputed mob figures. These loans were made while Alexi Giannoulias was the chief loan officer.

“If Mr. Giannoulias wants to kick off his campaign by talking about reform then he should begin by fully explaining why, throughout the last six years, he loaned millions of dollars to mob figures and endorsed Rod Blagojevich for re-election in 2006,” added Trover.

In addition, Mr. Giannoulias apparently has no problem with unions attempting to “buy a seat at the table”, as he neglected to ban the labor contributions that bankrolled his Illinois Treasurer campaign to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.

-To read more about Alexi Giannoulias' questionable record, go to his profile on www.friendsofblago.com

Debt Ridden and Defenseless

North Korea could lob a missile that reaches Hawaii, or Alaska. Hezbollah is infiltrating our southern border, using drug routes. Iran trades with one and supplies the other.

Yet the Obama administration presents a budget that drastically cuts our defense expenditures at a time when we need to replace aging equipment, resupply our troops, and develop new systems to defend ourselves.

In a Q & A with bloggers, Sen. Lindsey Graham agreed on the importance to streamline procurement, but stressed the need to put the dollars back into the next generation of equipment, and better pay and benefits for our armed forces-- "We're flying the wings off" our planes---stealth technology has saved a lot of lives, but we are stretching their useful life to the limit and need to reinvest.

The Obama budget over the next 10 years would triple our already staggering debt with massive social spending to the point where we won't be able to service it, courting hyperinflation, yet at the same time chop defense from 4% of GDP to 3%. Does this make sense in a world in which we are the number one target?

The current Obama budget projects that in 1o years just the interest payments on our debt will be greater than our defense spending, $805 billion vs. $720 billion, and that's under their rosy scenario.

Will we be both debt-ridden and defenseless? Chinese bankers and Iranian terrorists dictating to us?

You think it unlikely? Wanna bet?

TaxDayTeaParty

New Video: April 15th.

More: Sen. Bob Corker:

“Firing Rick Wagoner is a sideshow to distract us from the fact that the administration has no progress to announce today,” said Corker. “The administration is hoping the media and the public will stay focused on Wagoner and fail to notice that negotiations have not progressed since December.

“The administration is pursuing much of what we pushed for in December, but the delay of several months has increased the severity and sent billions of taxpayer dollars down the drain. Now any investment is likely unrecoverable and we are putting more and more jobs at the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and the supply chain at risk in a politically charged environment.

“With sweeping new power the White House will be deciding which plants will survive and which won't, so in essence, this administration has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies.

Free the Job Creators

New polling confirms Americans are in favor of empowering individuals to create jobs:

A recent survey conducted by co-author Schoen for the Kauffman Foundation showed that Americans, by a 63 to 23 percent margin, prefer polices that incentivize individuals to start their own businesses over direct government efforts to create new jobs. An even higher percentage of respondents - 79 percent - say that entrepreneurs are more important job creators than big business, scientists and government (dead last).

Barely one-fifth of Americans believe the stimulus package will do much to help entrepreneurs, and a scant 3 percent believe it will encourage innovation - something that 78 percent believe is important to the health of the economy.

As a case in point, how well did the government do as a developer--and after taking away a woman's home? Heritage on the Kelo debacle.

Grand government visions are often unworkable and sacrifice our freedom and our future.

Let's stop and take stock before we plunge ourselves and our children into debt we can't escape. The massive and radical Obama budget is wrong for America.

P.S. Big bedfellows, Jonah Goldberg:

The bigger the business, the more reliable the partner for big government.

That’s why any huge corporation that plays ball on health care, or “green jobs,” or countless other initiatives, is hailed as a “forward-thinking” or “progressive” company. Companies such as GE, which stands to make billions from Obama’s energy proposals, are vital sidekicks in the new era of public-private partnerships. Why is Obama working tirelessly to save Detroit automakers? Because GM is a wonderful poster boy for peddling nationalized health care, and UAW is an indispensable cog in the Democratic Party.

Green Jobs Overboard

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. President Obama's Energy Secretary spills the beans about using cap-and-trade as a "weapon", and stumbles into the true cost. WSJ comments, "Cap and Trade War":

So in addition to all the other economic harm, a cap-and-trade tax will make foreign companies more competitive while eroding market share for U.S. businesses. The most harm will accrue to the very U.S. manufacturing and heavy-industry jobs that Democrats and unions claim to want to keep inside the U.S. A cap-and-tax plan would be the greatest outsourcing boon in history. And it may even increase CO2 emissions overall, because the developing nations where businesses are likely to relocate -- if they don't simply close -- tend to use energy less efficiently than does the U.S.

Unintended consequences with a vengeance.

More: A global warming heretic. NY Times magazine:

FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Prince­ton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, perhaps inevitably, “a mad scientist.” Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred “carbon-eating trees,”whereupon the University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner looked through the thick grove of honorary degrees Dyson has been awarded — there are 21 from universities like Georgetown, Princeton and Oxford — and suggested that “perhaps trees can also be designed so that they can give directions to lost hikers.”

Well, let's see, who is more knowledgeable about science, a physicist or a lawyer? And if you're lost, maybe a compass, or a look at the stars at night. Something that might occur to a physicist.

Someone probably could make a killing designing some kind of global positioning system...gee it's been done, but foolproof enough for ivory tower lawyers? Now there's a challenge. As for cutting off debate, is this something a lawyer should espouse?

A Hidden Tax

The cost of corruption in Illinois. CBS2Chicago.

Blonde Ambition

Meghan McCain might do better to get a real job rather than trading on her name. And though Ann Coulter is provocative, she has shown more grace than McCain by ignoring her.

As for Kathleen Parker, she's another case of blonde ambition, expediently posing as a conservative while slamming them. As I recall, she endorsed The One, an empty choice if there ever was one. Kinda going with the flow, you know? 

Gird your loins

Ramirez. Comandante Obama fires the CEO, takes over GM. White House Easter Egg roll unbridled disaster. Gird your loins.

This White House, our country...SNAFU.

P.S.

Under the terms of a loan agreement reached during the last administration, GM and Chrysler are pushing the United Auto Workers to accept shares of stock in exchange for half of the payments into a union-run trust fund for retiree health care. They also want labor costs from the union to be competitive with Japanese automakers with U.S. operations.

Little progress has been made between the companies and the union.

The Limbaugh Challenge

I dare you. Andrew Klavan. Gird your loins.

:)

As for me, an El Rushbo, Maharushi, way things ought to be fan since the beginning of the Clinton administration.

Should he feel the need

The leftie Guardian describes the Obama 500 person entourage invading Europe, including this rather startling paragraph:

Should the president feel the need to retaliate offensively, Obama is able to launch a nuclear strike while flying. The aircraft, among the most photographed in the world, has 85 telephones, 19 televisions, computer suites and faxes to ensure Obama stays in touch with the outside world. At the rear of the aircraft is Obama's travelling press corps.

Along for the ride, how appropriate.

BC Cancels Ayers

Boston Globe:

Ayers emerged as a controversial figure during the 2008 presidential election, when he was linked to then-candidate Barack Obama. The group was responsible for bombings at the Capitol and Pentagon in the 1970s and considered by some to have been involved in the killing of Walter A. Schroeder, a Boston police officer who was shot in 1970 by political radical William Gilday during a bank robbery in Brighton.

Bill Ayers deserves only contempt, not a forum. Good for Boston College. Nothing is stopping him from speaking off campus.

Michelle's Role

The Independent approvingly profiles First Lady Michelle Obama, and looks forward to analyzing her body language with the Queen.

UPDATE: The Politico sets the stage for her Euro appearance. A curtsy to the Queen?

Portrait of a Thug

A scathing portrait of Rahmbo at The Moderate Voice:

This hardnosed political operative employs methods and tactics that would make Karl Rove blush.

Ah, yes, and why did The One choose him? Harshly partisan, totally cynical, thuggish and elitist. Both of them.

UPDATE: Related, Blago's $2.3 million hit list. Lest we forget, Blago was Rahm's predecessor in the 5th Congressional and Rahm was a big part of Blago's election victory as governor.

Spring Snow

Angela Arrives

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, last night led the assault on the prime minister’s “global new deal” for a $2 trillion-plus fiscal stimulus to end the recession.

“I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money,” she said.

P.S. She knows of what she speaks--it didn't work so great during German reunification.

Human Achievement Hour

Celebrate progress--keep the lights on! (The video)

Read My Teleprompter...

...A Tax Cut for 95% of working Americans...NOT. Budget support drops, despite his non-stop campaigning. Read my lips, uh, teleprompter-
HT HotAir.

Sen. Judd Gregg on the Obama Budget

Watch:

The Market is the Most Fair

At a time of crisis, Winston Churchill essentially said democracy is messy, but consider the alternative. The same can be said for market capitalism--which represents the freedom of millions of individual decisions. Mark Steyn, "Obama's False Choice". The president is making a grim judgment which has already cost us dearly. 

He is a zealot, and we've got to stop him in his tracks now.

Recycling Vacation Pix

Pretending I'm there...

A Nod to Wisconsin

Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, noted in the WSJ:

Then came the answer from Madison, Wisconsin. The state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen -- let's call him the un-Cuomo -- was "troubled" by the Senator's missive. "Rest assured," he wrote Mr. Grassley, "we will evaluate . . . on a case-by-case basis and make appropriate prosecutorial determinations."

The closing paragraph of his January 6 letter, a public document that hasn't been previously published, offers a useful civics lesson for our political Torquemadas:

"However, I will not be initiating investigations through press releases, nor will I treat all corporate executive expenditures as presumptively wrongful. Wisconsin law certainly does not. Financial institutions (and other businesses) on the verge of insolvency are ill-advised to make unnecessary expenditures, whether to executives or otherwise. At the same time, contractual obligations are generally to be fulfilled, work should earn compensation, and there is no law in Wisconsin making a contract illegal simply because someone is well compensated. Absent specific information indicating a transaction is fraudulent as opposed to foolish, I will not use my office to threaten litigation in an attempt to micromanage Wisconsin's businesses. Corporate governance is generally a matter for shareholders, not public officeholders."

Hear, hear.

Miles to go...

Phase 3: Corresponding to the collapse of the allied armies and the battle of Tannenberg. The market says: omigod, he really is as bad as we feared. Phase 4 — representing the battle of Paris in which the Axis is stopped: the adults, Buffett, Welch, the Economist, Red State Dems, etc. step in and stop the catastrophe — the marekt says so perhaps he won’t completely wreck the investor class after all.

Phase 5 will likely be a long one: a slow slog through Obama’s term with markets not moving — the equivalent of trench warfare for four long years.

Not like we didn't see this coming. And so I need to go to sleep now before morning and more miles to go...

Christianity the Counterculture Mainstream

One billion souls to save
Christianity in China is booming. With 100 million believers, far more than the 74 million-member communist party, Jesus is a force to be reckoned with in the People’s Republic. We talk to the new faithful who love China – but love God more

P.S.

It is also common knowledge that huge numbers of the volunteers who raced to help with the aftermath of last year’s devastating earthquake in southwest China were Christians. Many are still there, helping the survivors and, sometimes, preaching.

Yes.

SEIU Pickets SEIU

Thugs and liars:More here.

Obama-Matic

Content Free Euphemism Generator:

A B C
Multilateral Correction Mechanism
Interactive Development Procedure

More here. Face it liberals--we're more brilliant than you. We can recognize an empty suit anytime, anywhere. (But he's so elegant)

Fargo

We're thinking of you.

Gibbs & The Swampettes

There is much smirking and hilarity over at The Swamp, which often functions more like a cheerleading section for an unprofessional, uninformed, condescending and vicious press secretary Robert Gibbs and the Obama administration than as the journalists they purport to be--let's call them the Swampettes.

As far as the GOP alternative, go ahead and laugh, but the debt we're facing will sink this country and lots of institutions with it. Given the GOP doesn't have the votes to pass any kind of budget alternative on its own, why is the administration even engaging them at all? The answer is members of the Obama administration's own party have grave reservations about this crushing level of debt and spending. This is a dishonest budget, and it's not the first time--aside from the stimulus bill being mostly about pork and payback for corrupt unions, the dishonesty of its claims of job creation are so astonishing even the cheerleaders at AP are taken aback:

If space exploration were conducted like the job forecasts under the government’s new stimulus law, man surely would have missed the moon. But this isn’t rocket science.
No promise from President Barack Obama is more important to the wounded economy than his vow to save or create some 3.5 million jobs in two years. In support of that bottom line, the government even tells states how many jobs they can expect to see from the spending and tax cuts.
But precise trajectories are impossible to plot and even approximations can be wildly off, as the authors of these forecasts acknowledge, usually more readily than the policymakers who use them to promote the plan.

Flip through the stacks of economic analyses underpinning the stimulus plan and you find a lot of throat-clearing qualifications and angst:

_”Very uncertain.”

_”Difficult to distinguish among alternative estimates.”

_”We confess to considerable uncertainty.”

_”Subject to substantial margins of error.”

In other words, who really knows?

Economic modeling may prove to be a haywire navigational device in this crisis.
“Large fiscal stimulus is rarely attempted,” Douglas Elmendorf, director of the nonpartisan

Congressional Budget Office, told lawmakers. “For those reasons, some economists remain skeptical that there will be any significant effects, while others expect very large ones.” Zero to nirvana? Even for economists, who routinely differ among themselves, that’s a range beyond the norm.

The disconnect between theory and real life became evident when Obama pitched his plan at a Caterpillar factory before its passage and held out hope the federal stimulus money would let the heavy equipment maker rehire some of the thousands being let go. Although that might be the eventual result when money courses through the pipeline, Caterpillar last week announced 2,400 more layoffs.

The GOP is presenting a detailed budget next week. You can bet the math and the policy will be honest.

Shock After Shock

Michael Ramirez. Shock after shock. After ditzing around for months, Geithner goes deep. WaPo's The Ticker:

In testimony before the House Financial Services committee that just adjourned, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner just had to defend his institutional takeover plan against charges of radicalism.

"Do you realize how radical your proposal is?" Rep. Donald Manzullo (R-Ill.) asked.

"It's not radical. . ." Geither began, before Manzullo interrupted him.

"You're talking about seizing private businesses and you don't consider that radical?" Manzullo replied, his voice rising.

Manzullo is trying to get Geithner to give details of the plan -- that's where Geithner got stung before -- but Geithner doesn't have them yet.

If the plan were not radical, Manzullo said to Geithner, "you would have answers to some of my questions, such as, what size business would be subject to this?"

Look, the markets just sorta stabilized with his sorta plan on the toxic turned legacy assets, and now this stuff?! The feckless, reckless power-mad Obama administration--turning our moderates into statesmen. (But wasn't The One supposed to be a moderate? omg)

Meanwhile, somehow, without anyone really noticing, the Social Security "surplus" has slipped away into nonexistence. PBS reports. PBS suddenly starts reporting news. Shock after shock.

A Leftist Strongman

Last year, one of Barack Obama's advisors described the candidate's plans for pursuing carbon dioxide regulation when he took office.

[Jason] Grumet...said if Congress hasn't acted in 18 months, about the time it would take to draft [EPA] rules, the president should.... "The EPA is obligated to move forward in the absence of Congressional action," Grumet said.

This is what is now happening.

Under what system of government does the chief executive say to the legislature, in effect, "write the legislation I want, or else I will simply enact it by decree"? The answer: not under a system of representative government and the separation of powers. Barack Obama is proposing to govern, not in the manner of an American president, but in the manner traditionally sought by leftist strongmen like Hugo Chavez.

Robert Tracinski, RCP. Choking the life out of us.

To Die For

He was least in sight when Barack Obama was running for president, now unrepentant domestic terrorist Bill Ayers is everywhere. Obviously he feels vindicated by the election of his buddy, Barack. The Daily Herald:

Revered as a revolutionary or reviled as a radical, Bill Ayers is a polarizing figure.

And that's why he's speaking to Naperville North High School students April 8.

"I think the issue is when we have the opportunity to bring real-life people from various periods of history, we're causing kids to think and face controversial issues and take their own position on it, and provide students with an opportunity most school districts around the country would die for," Naperville Unit District 203 Superintendent Alan Leis said.

The school makes bizarre comparisons:

Wierenga said the school is treating Ayers' visit like any other kind of "living history" curriculum.

In the past, the school has hosted Holocaust survivors and war veterans to speak to students about experiences they would only otherwise simply read about.

But those speakers were admirable figures--it's clear those who invited him believe Ayers to be as well. But perhaps these "educators" should listen to another living radical relic, one who shared Ayers' views at the time, but after the deaths of his fellow Weathermen, including Ayers' girlfriend, when their bomb-building blew up in their faces, had a change of heart. Ronald Radosh reviews radical Mark Rudd's new memoir, Underground:

Their attempts at guerrilla warfare ended with the 1970 New York City town house bombing, which Rudd and Ayers and Dohrn all approved. Rudd is honest about its intent, emphasizing how the bomb they built was meant to kill hundreds of GIs and their dates at a Fort Dix dance. It was, he now knows, a "fantasy of revolutionary urban-guerrilla warfare," done on their own, without police agents provoking them. He and his associates, he ruefully reflects, killed a broad and powerful movement opposed to the Vietnam War, all in the name of a fanciful goal.

Being truthful about his own madness and the crazy path he and his comrades took, Rudd does not go along with what he calls the convenient cleansing of their history carried out by Ayers, who after the town house bomb exploded, still favored "the overall strategy of clandestine armed struggle."

Hundreds of GIs and their dates at a dance--you know, kind of like a high school prom. Perhaps Naperville North should invite Rudd to debate Ayers, or better yet, John Murtagh, whose family home was fire-bombed by Bill Ayers when he was nine years old because his father was a judge.

Is there anything at all admirable about this person? Would you "die for" Bill Ayers and what he represents? Answer me that Supt. Leis. And would Bill Ayers die for you? Unlike those he wanted to blow up at Ft. Dix. I think not.

HT Illinois Review.

New Gold Rush

As a miner or at a party to hock your jewelry, Californians are going for the gold.

It's rare and hard work to find, which is why a lot of it is still there after all these years since the last gold rush.

What's driving this rush, though, is more desperation, less optimism.

Is Pot a Green Job?

Or is it health care (your only drug of choice)? Decriminalizing pot high on the list of questions for our President Barack Obama.

As for me, I say let's go after Big Drugs.

P.S. John Stossel, The War on Drugs is Idiotic

Mortgage Fraudsters of Illinois

Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is spotlighted for his past cashing in to the tune of $320,000 while on the board of mortgage giant Freddie Mac, which the government has since had to bail out with billions:

The board met no more than six times a year. Unlike most fellow directors, Emanuel was not assigned to any of the board's working committees, according to company proxy statements. Immediately upon joining the board, Emanuel and other new directors qualified for $380,000 in stock and options plus a $20,000 annual fee, records indicate.

On Emanuel's watch, the board was told by executives of a plan to use accounting tricks to mislead shareholders about outsize profits the government-chartered firm was then reaping from risky investments. The goal was to push earnings onto the books in future years, ensuring that Freddie Mac would appear profitable on paper for years to come and helping maximize annual bonuses for company brass.

The accounting scandal wasn't the only one that brewed during Emanuel's tenure.

During his brief time on the board, the company hatched a plan to enhance its political muscle. That scheme, also reviewed by the board, led to a record $3.8 million fine from the Federal Election Commission for illegally using corporate resources to host fundraisers for politicians. Emanuel was the beneficiary of one of those parties after he left the board and ran in 2002 for a seat in Congress from the North Side of Chicago.

And US Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald announced mortgage fraud indictments last night.

The nine indictments announced today involved $1.4 million in loans. In a 10th case, the defendants secured about $4.2 million in loans.

The U.S. Attorney's office has filed mail and/or wire fraud charges against the following defendants:

• Mohammed Ali Moallem, 68, Bahidad Javid, 66, Donna Brooks, 41, Louis L. Javell, 36, Aysha M. Arroyo, 32, and Juan Gil, 45, Hakim A. Jaradat, 65, and Robert Goldberg, 88, Babajan Khoshabe, 68, and Sunil Kaushal, 48, all of Chicago;
  
• Abe Karn, 50, and Khalil Qandil, 45, of Oak Lawn;
  
• Hichem Julani, 40, of Palos Park;
  
• Daniel Lietz, 39, of Channahon;
  
• Marwan Atieh, 35, of Tinley Park;
  
• Ruwaida Dabbouseh, 58, of Glen Ellyn;
  
• Khaja Moinuddin, 64, of Bloomingdale;
  
• Mohammed Nasir, 52, of Glendale Heights;
  
• Michael Salem, 63, and Oscar Paredes, 28, of Park Ridge;
  
• Maryam Khan, 29, of Hickory Hills;
  
• James Kotz, 48, of Munster, Ind.;
  
• Siamak Safavi Fard, 50, of East Dundee;
  
• Sunil Kaushal and Noel Parmar, 39, of Skokie.

The sting was called Operation Madhouse. I'm sure we could come up with some more choice descriptions of this kind of behavior by these people.

Smart Meters Will Save Us!

Who knew?!! We only needed our President Barack Obama to tell us at his interactive town hall meeting a smart meter in our house is the answer to all our problems!!!

Actually, lots of people already have them in their houses--or they just turn down the heat or the air themselves, what a concept. Smart people preferred any time.

Supposedly green jobs can not be outsourced. Really?

If you fool with the economics, it will cost us more than it's worth. Will we have to bail out these green companies next, like we have the failing US auto companies? And our energy costs will still go up. How about drilling here, drilling now. Those jobs can't be outsourced, will lower energy costs, and reduce our debt and dependence on foreign oil--a win, win, win.

More green job myths dispelled here. One of the authors of the study is from the University of Illinois.

More: Illinois' Marathon Pundit on Obama's past connections to cap and trade proponents.

Still more, what a scam--unsustainable unless we pay for it with hidden taxes and subsidies. Michelle Malkin on the solar panels Obama looked at in Denver recently:

A 2008 article in the Denver Business Journal sheds further light on the subject. The article notes the total price of the solar array was $720,000. And Dave Noel, VP of operations and chief technology officer for the Museum, was quoted as saying, “We looked at first installing [the solar array] ourselves, and without any of the incentive programs, it was a 110-year payout.” Noel went on to say that the Museum did not purchase the solar array because it did not “make sense financially.”

Additionally, most solar panels have an expected life-span of 20 to 25 years.

GOP Challenges Dems

Sen. Judd Gregg says the EU wouldn't admit us because our debt level is so high. But actually, with the Obama porkulus and this budget, piling on and adding to initial bailouts, we're approaching third world status. Oh, yeah, they call them "emerging nations" now. Desmond Lachman, WaPo:

Negotiating with Argentina's top officials during their multiple financial crises in the 1990s was always an ordeal, and sparring with Domingo Cavallo, the country's Harvard-trained finance minister at the time, was particularly trying. One always had the sense that, despite their supreme arrogance, the country's leaders never had a coherent economic strategy and that major decisions were always made on the run. I never thought that was how policy was made in the United States -- until, that is, I saw how totally at sea Treasury Secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy F. Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have appeared so many times during our country's ongoing economic and financial storm.

The parallels between U.S. policymaking and what we see in emerging markets are clearest in how we've mishandled the banking crisis.

More discussion of that, and then there's the debt:

A singular characteristic of an emerging market heading for deep trouble is a seemingly suicidal tendency to become overly indebted to foreign creditors.

We need to tighten our belts, and take measures that actually grow the economy. The GOP alternative:

Cantor challenged the idea that Republicans are acting when the horse is out of the barn, with the administration already implementing Obama’s plans. “First of all, the president knows different when he says that we don’t have a plan,” Cantor said. “And I think he would tell you, if he was being accurate, that from the first days of his administration, Leader Boehner and I went in and personally handed him our plan on the stimulus.”

Cantor called the Republican budget “a responsible attempt to restrain the growth in government, to return us back to a period of economic growth through tax relief and fiscal prudence.” The budget will also address entitlements, he added, saying it’s “in stark contrast to the smoke and mirrors inherent in the House Democrat plan.”

After Obama releases his detailed budget later this spring, House Republicans will do the same — matching his graphs with their graphs, his charts with their charts.

Video:

Travels with Barry O

Chris Muir. Ralph Peters on The One's world tour--at what point does naivete become cowardice? Making Jimmy Carter look good. It's more travels with Barry.

Gitmo to Suburban Virginia?

Who could have predicted this? Who indeed. Clueless Democrats in newly Blue State Virginia are perturbed that Gitmo detainees may be sent to their backyard. I've said for a long time liberals view their conservative neighbors as more suspect than terrorists, alleged or actual. But now they may be mugged, or worse, into reality. The Patriot Room, "Gitmo Detainees Coming to Virginia, Local Dems Freak":

Rich, thick irony. Normal people think it's a good idea to keep terrorists on a faraway island, in a prison controlled by the United States military. Liberals disagree, for no readily apparent reason, and want Gitmo closed. So President Obama says he will close it next year.

But closing the base raises the question that any grade school child (but apparently no liberals) might ask; what do we do with the terrorists who want to kill us and destroy our cities? Barack Obama (in another manchurian president decision) thinks we should bring them to the United States to be nearer to our people and population centers. The administration has previously floated the idea of bringing them to South Carolina, but the left didn't care about that - after all, South Carolina is a red state.

But this morning, the liberal Democrats who run Alexandria, Virginia open their beloved Washington Post to find that their beloved president wants to bring terrorists to Northern Virginia. And the wailing from the NIMBY lefties began.

An outcry is growing in Alexandria over a prospect no one seems to like: terrorist suspects in the suburbs.

RedState with a pithy comment.

Terrorizing Main St. Next

This banker may be a jerk, but smashing up his home is wrong, and his children have been harassed and bullied at school. Meanwhile, in France, a 3M executive was taken hostage by workers. WSJ:

The attack reflects a virulent strain of social unrest that is appearing across Europe. Workers at a factory operated by the U.S. industrial conglomerate 3M Co. held their boss, Luc Rousselet, captive for more than 24 hours to protest planned layoffs. He was released on Thursday after a deal was reached, according to Reuters. Mr. Rousselet left his office early on Thursday morning to boos from about 20 workers.

Daniel Henninger:

Barack Obama meets with a flock of nervous bankers at the White House tomorrow to reassure them he understands their interests. Good luck. There has always been tension between the Democratic Party and the private sector. That tension is over. With its vote in the House of Representatives to punish corporate bonus payments, the national Democratic Party has disconnected itself entirely from the private sector.

The public bear-baiting of AIG's Ed Liddy, and then passage of the bonus bill, gave the nation a good look at the modern Democratic Party freed of constraints.

The current version of the party has largely broken free of any understanding whatsoever of the private sector -- how it works or what it needs to function.

True socialists at least think about markets so they can criticize them. The Democratic Party's leadership doesn't stir to even that level of engagement. In the House, Senate and some corners of the Obama White House, the party is acting as if the marketplace was the world of an alien tribe, which it has to control through intimidation or demands for protective tribute (read: campaign contributions).

This is not true of the entire 90% of self-identified Democrats who voted for Barack Obama. But Democrats who work in real jobs rather than work for the mothership in Washington must recognize that the party's obsessions are becoming ever less hospitable to a functioning economy, or Mr. Geithner's labors to that goal.[snip]

Wall Street's collapsed businesses and layoffs have devastated New York's tax revenues. So what? Attorney General Andrew Cuomo flogged Bank of America into giving up the names of Merrill Lynch bonus recipients. Imagine the coincidence this week when two of Merrill's most respected hands, analyst David Rosenberg and strategist Richard Bernstein, quit. Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and the legislature are also mau-mauing AIG over bonuses.

Nor can it be said that these Democrats are merely scapegoating the private sector to deflect blame for the politicians' share of the mortgage debacle. Using the private sector as the party's punching bag is also now routine. Al Gore and John Kerry ran at Big Oil, Big Pharma and Big Insurance. With mercurial suppleness, so did the current president. These "big" industries are proxies for the whole world of owners and managers, who somehow now always find themselves beyond acceptable politics as enemies of the people's interests. A Democratic Party that was always anti-Wall Street is becoming anti- Main Street.

Gangsters terrorizing and running the country into the ground.

In my home town in Wisconsin, the bank (along with the churches) is the pillar of the community, making car loans and farm loans, helping small businesses be successful, and employing more than one widow with small children, as I recall.

Where do jobs come from? They come from people who pursue their dreams, provide for their families, and create wealth from their human capital--their own hard work and ingenuity. It spills over into new jobs as their business grows, the business of supplying the market, made up of individual American consumers exercising choice every day. If you're not responsive, you don't succeed.

Government is often unresponsive and unaccountable, but we appreciate its necessity for ensuring the rule of law, for safeguarding our life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.

At its worst, it is a parasite, a bully and steals our liberty--at our expense. This is where we are headed now.

When the only new jobs are government jobs we will all be slaves to the state.

Democrats hold up Europe as a model--but these are aging, bankrupt states where they have "free" health care which means leaving their grannies to die alone in un-airconditioned rooms while they are on their state vacation.

Defend Liberty, Defend Sarah

Democrats, you are playing with fire. Video.

The Sickos Congress Incited

Threats to AIG: "We Will Get Your Children

If you didn't see this letter this morning, here you go. "Dear A.I.G., I Quit!"

You think you have a choice

Right now Notre Dame is choosing to invite our President Barack Obama to speak, to essentially repudiate their Catholicism when they wish--eventually they may not have a choice:

When the Soviets took over the schools, they said it was to increase literacy (a truly laudable goal). In fact, the objective was to eliminate religious education for any child in the Soviet Union. It’s the same idea here: the government promotes a Serve America Act, which seems like such an innocent concept – encouraging more Americans to volunteer. Americans, as Tocqueville observed, are very generous with their time and money.

So what is the problem with having government encourage more of this activity? The problem, of course, arises when government red tape limits churches’ ability to recruit volunteers for its activities, or when the government compels high school students to volunteer only for “approved” organizations; the government is thus able to significantly increase its influence over America’s youth and to dictate which organizations are worthy of community service.

A Russian writes to RedState. When I was there in the 70's they had turned their churches into warehouses and anti-religious museums.

Notre Dame means Our Lady. Perhaps they will need to find a new name--it might smack of too much devotion to the mother of Christ.