One can understand why "progressive" commentators would try to pin the "extremist" label on Tea Party activists; it's a way to deflect attention from the public protest against the increasing size and encroachment of government. But the mostly bogus theme of extremism also has been picked up in mainstream media that purport to operate on fact-checking standards.

It now turns out that Hutaree, the one actual extremist group that has had its members arrested--in Ohio and Michigan this week, operated out of run down trailer and sported at least one loyal Democrat in its tiny leadership. The party affiliation of other members, though voters, could not be ascertained. Any "Christian" connection, as headlines alleged, was strictly incidental, if not just false.

Meanwhile, the attempt of Nevada Democrats to accuse Tea Partiers of egging their own bus backfired, when it turned out that the main accuser may have done the egging himself. (Stories here and here.) This is in the spirit of age-old scapegoating.

Some right wing crowds undoubtedly do attract anti-social persons or just folks with an adolescent sense of humor (a picture of President Obama with a Hitler mustache, for example). Some fringies threw bricks at Democratic party headquarters in a couple of cities after the health care vote and left contemptible voice messages on the phones of Congressmen. But the one credible threat was to a Republican, Eric Cantor of Virginian, whose office was hit by a bullet and his life and his children threatened.

We read that the Obama Administration is proud that America finally has "professionals" in charge of foreign policy. Such an improvement over G.W Bush, they tell the Financial Times, in a much-noticed recent article. ("U.S. Foreign Policy: Waiting for a Sun King," by Edward Luce and Daniel Dombey, available online only for registered subscribers.)

So where does all the vaunted Obama Administration "professionalism" come from? Why, from the very top.

"For better or for worse," say the authors, "Washington has grown used to the fact that Barack Obama runs the most centralised -- or 'White House-centric' -- administration since Richard Nixon. When Nixon wanted foreign policy advice, everyone knew where he got it from: Henry Kissinger, variously his national security adviser and secretary of state.

Discovery colleague John R. Miller is co-director (with Wesley Smith) of our Center on Human Rights and Bioethics. Often the former Congressman and former U.S. Ambassador writes about human trafficking (his field while in the State Department). He also was carried on the oped page of the New York Times not long ago on the topic of international public opinion polls (Mr. Miller is not impressed by their significance). In fact, the Wall Street Journal did something highly unusual after the Times ran Mr. Miller on the public polling subject: they excerpted it. In February John wrote for the Times on the subject of George Washington and the establishment of the principle of civilian rule after the Revolutionary War.

This time it's another unusual topic for our long time friend and Senior Fellow: baseball. It's in the Tuesday Wall Street Journal. The article probably will spoil a few corporate baseball owners' breakfasts.

Few Americans know the Vatican better than George Weigel, whose many books include the authoritative biography of Pope John Paul II, Witness to Hope. Like many Catholics--and non-Catholics--Weigel is upset about the revelations of cases of sexual depredation of priests.

More than other commentators, however, Weigel was alert to this topic eight or nine years ago when scandals were first revealed in the U.S. Back then he nudged the Vatican hard to get involved and promote stringent reform. The effort seems to have succeeded here, but is now needed in Europe. Pope Benedict XVI is directly engaged on the topic, but the relevant office at the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is still overburdened.

Meanwhile, there is a strange drive to blame the pope personally for the failings of a small minority of priests. The pope--formerly Cardinal Karl Ratzinger--actually has been a force for reform all along and deserves credit, not brickbats. Oddly, the liberal forces that advocate license in nearly all fields, and whose predecessors promoted the therapeutic rehabilitation theories that got the Church and other institutions into trouble in the 60s and 70s, are the ones most vehemently pursuing the Vatican now. Oddly, too, they are exaggerating the incidence of Church scandals while ignoring more common cases elsewhere in society.

It's impossible not to conclude that the object for many is not only punishment of sexual predation, but discrediting the Church's powerful worldwide voice for morality. Is it the Church that is hypocritical, then, or certain of its antagonists?

Weigel's recent guest article in the Philadelphia Inquirer is more insightful on all this than what we are seeing elsewhere.

The Government of Gordon Brown and his Labour Party is frazzled and care-worn as the Prime Minister, at the end of his mandate, finally calls an election for May. But if you are expecting inspiration from the nominally Conservative opposition of David Cameron, you will be relegated instead to retread Obamaisms, such as "Hope, Optimism and Change", as if the original "Hope and Change" didn't connote false optimism enough. Then there is the Tory leader's wobbly spin on JFK, "It's no good asking what can government do for me but what can we all do together to make our society stronger."

What next from the sloganeers? "A Chicken in Every Wok"?

Labour is bureaucratic, sclerotic and divided. But Cameron's Conservatives seem to offer mere marginal improvements to an economy that is grotesquely over-regulated and nearly strangled with taxes. In recent weeks Mr. Cameron has lost a big lead in polls, thanks perhaps to his failure to offer any relief, or even sympathy, to taxpayers. Neither party seems much interested, either, in defending Britain from the greedy reach of Brussels' EU pests. The election choice therefore will be fought out on familiar, flatter ground: the Ins versus the Outs.

Conservative leader David Cameron

One could not avoid the news that someone was arrested for threatening Speaker Nancy Pelosi. A friend complained, this is getting to be serious; there are real extremists moving into the opposition to Obama.

Well, there are always extremists, and publicity--especially heated public arguments--probably will set them off. So does a full moon.

When George W. Bush was president the vitriol was noxious. Of course, it came from the left, mostly, so commentators--who also come from the left, mostly--thought it merely a sign of how GWB had divided the country. Now vitriolic opposition in manifesting itself under Mr. Obama, only now it's coming from the right (and from independents). So the commentators--who still come from the left, mostly--think that incidents of bad taste, not to mention physical threats, are signs not of mere division, but of growing right wing extremism.

by George Gilder (from the Telecosm Forum today):

(Note: Bloomberg reports that "U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner embarked on a previously unscheduled trip to China as the world's third-largest economy weighs letting its currency appreciate.

"Geithner is facing demands from Congress to label China a currency manipulator for keeping the value of the yuan at about 6.8 to the dollar, which some U.S. lawmakers say gives unfair advantage to Chinese exporters.")

Gilder comments:

One of the most successful campaign posters in history was that for Fidesz, the party of youthful, free market and pro-Western Hungarians in 1990. In an election that year to establish a new constitution that would mark the end of Communist rule, Fidesz' message was that voters should make a choice between the stolid old Communist ideology and the freedom policies promoted most strongly by the Fidesz Party. "Choose!", the poster insists, with a hilarious picture of two Communist leaders (the Soviets' Leonid Brezhnev and East Germany's Erich Honecker) giving each other an airport greeting smootch. The "choice" in the lower panel was an attractive young Hungarian couple wearing Fidesz buttons.

Fidesz originally was libertarian and limited to members under age 35. Over the years it eliminated its age restriction and moved toward overall center-right policies, emphasizing a pro-growth, lower-tax. After the primary elections just completed, the party seems to be set for a majority victory, not just a plurality, in the final round. The Socialist opposition that united most of the left is fighting for second place with a far right, populist party, Jobbik. The Socialist collapse and the rise of Jobbik is what seems to have captured most press interest, but the real story is Fidesz and its program.

David Cameron has just revealed a manifesto that finally adds spark to the election campaign underway in the U.K. The spark is the Tory pledge to reduce taxes.

Without the tax cut issue, the Conservatives would appear as little more than the familiar budget slashers, and while slashing does need happen, the take home pay of the electorate probably matters more to the economy and to the fate of the Tories.

The rest of the campaign will revolve around the sad stories of (mostly) Labour MPs who abused their expense accounts--a juicy, but old scandal--and the sheer weight of growing government control of ordinary people's lives.

William Donahue of the Catholic League brings to our attention a news story out of Jerusalem, where former New York Mayor Ed Koch deplores the biased reporting on the Vatican's handling of the sexual abuse cases. Koch is lucid and direct.

The former president of the Seychelles Islands is in New York to warn of increased piracy in the Indian Ocean along the Horn of Africa. James R. Mancham will speak at Columbia University and later at the Discovery Institute-sponsored World Russia Forum April 25-27 in Washington, D.C.

Piracy also was also discussed in Seattle last night at an appearance by Koshin Mohamed, a Somali-American who recently returned from combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mohamed, 31, a community leader in Seattle whose childhood was spent in Somalia, said that international military aid is needed to stop the pirates and drive out the Al Shabaab (al Qaeda linked) terrorists that control 80 percent of southern Somalia. The country also needs development of economic options for youth if the opportunist crime-wave of piracy is to be stopped. As is, Mohamed said, impoverished and uneducated young men are easy prey to ideological Islamist encouragement to defy international law and raid innocent trading ships far out to sea.

Koshin Mohamed spoke at Seattle Pacific University

In recent years supporters of sound public works--infrastructure and the like-- became used to cost overruns, so it is something of a happy shock these days when bids for major projects come in under budget. In the case of a portion of the replacement for the Alaska Way Viaduct in Seattle, for example, the difference was huge--$114 million versus the state's estimate of $153 million.

So many public costs are squeezing taxpayers at all levels of government that we ought to pause to savor the occasional break. Of course, the recessionary economy is responsible for such good outcomes. But so, too, is a little thing often ignored in other areas of government: the benefits of competition.

The federal government, states and localities are overspending. Elites who think that the Tea Party people are out of touch are themselves out of touch. If there was steam behind the idea of more "Stimulus" bills a year or so ago, it is venting fast.

In this environment, advocates for public improvements in infrastructure such as transportation should be thinking along two lines. First, how do we involve the private sector and not just leave public works to the government? Competition, as the previous post shows, tends to save money.

Second, how do we combine public projects to share costs, thereby also saving money?

A good example is the proposal of Discovery's Cascadia Center to reuse a "dinner train" rail line in East King County (Seattle metro area) for passenger rail (a great savings over creating a new right of way), plus freight (private sector), plus hiking and biking recreation? There are funds for all these purposes separately, but not enough. There is also new interest among environmentalists in combatting water pollution of water by trapping pollutants in natural settings that will allow bio-decay to take place.

The first of three TV debates in the British national campaign brought Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg to the considered attention of many voters for the first time. He made a strong impression as the reasonable man in beteween two parties that, for various reasons, fail to inspire. By most accounts he "won" the debate.

The last time the Liberal Party constituted a majority in Parliament was in the 1920s when it was eclipsed on the Center/Left by Labour. Since then the Liberal ticket has been a kind of retirement home for protest voters and those too fastidious to back a party with a real chance of governing.

Could that change in 2010? Clegg'ssupport grew by three percent after the debate, according to one poll, while Labour P.M. Brown's vote dropped a point. The Conservative leader David Cameron did well enough in the debate to sustain the overall plurality the Tories enjoy in current surveys, but not well enough yet to secure a solid Parliamentary majority and avoid a hung Parliament.

If Cameron merely emerges with a plurality it would be very hard to form a Government. It might be even worse for them long term if they do form a government and have to compromise their principles even more than they do now.

It pays to watch the Europeans if you want to know where America will be going in years to come. Now it turns out that the European Union is trying to establish a vacation as a human right (presumably, a paid vacation). It will go up there with other human rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, free housing, free health care and free higher education.

It is a terrific development in European thinking, what with all the spare money lying around the Old World and the need to boost airplane ticket sales once the unpronounceable Iceland volcano stops burping.

In the near future free movies and popcorn and free meals at good restaurants should be added to list of human rights in the EU.

How about, also, freedom from work?

Remember those great bumper strips that Iraq war critics wore on their cars, right next to their "Obama '08" stickers?

If dissent was patriotic then, why is it not now?

Bill Clinton warns against violence in the Tea Party movement, though there hasn't been any. Yes, you will find cranks in at least the fringe of any movement and there is no doubt that incendiary rhetoric can unhinge some already unstable minds--left or right. It is worth while being on guard about that.

But as for actual violence, the most outrageous example so far is the little noticed protest that took place outside a Southern Republican Leadership Conference fundraiser in New Orleans. It sent two GOP attendees to the hospital with serious injuries (broken leg, broken jaw, etc.).

The British Parliament has overspent, over-regulated and over-taxed. That is what needs changing in the U.K. It's that simple, and yet none of the candidates for prime minister seems able to say so clearly.

The current election matters, of course, to to British, but also to the West, generally. The U.S. needs a European partner and NATO needs a leader. Unfortunately, British party leaders still can't find their way. Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats has shot up in the polls, entirely because of a good showing in the first TV debate. But underneath his attractive appearance is a lack of substance. Moreover, the built-in national weakness of his party in various ridings (districts) means it would be hard for it to win a majority of seats even with a majority of votes. The Conservatives--who seem to have raised the taxation issue only to let it slip away--still lead in polls but are offering one plastic phrase after another. So is Labour. The Liberals are retreading Obama's posters and offering "Hope."

They all want "Change", of course. But no one seems serious about it.

The leader who takes on spending, taxes and regulations in a convincing way may not get an instant response. The British public may be too divided into special pleading factions to appreciate the message at once. But leadership is about looking ahead and seeing the truth that others avoid. At some point in the campaign the voters will respond positively.

Most disappointing is David Cameron of the Tories. As Theodore Roosevelt said of William Howard Taft, "He means well feebly." His abstract chatter about "The Big Society" is numbing.

The great English Conservatives of the past--Disraeli, Churchill, Thatcher--were brave as well as prescient. They trusted their principles. They took chances, not surveys.

Who won the second British election debate depends on which poll results one reads. The point, in summary, is either that people's views are volatile, or that you can't trust polls.

Fidesz, led by the mediagenic Viktor Orban, has won a sensational 67.9 percent of the vote in the final round national election. The party that started as a libertarian protest twenty years ago (see post, April 12) is now fully in control, with 263 out of 386 seats in Parliament. It crushed the incumbent Socialists (15.3 percent) and destroyed the dreams of the far right Jobbik (12.2 percent), not to mention the Greens (4.2 percent).

Fidesz promised tax cuts and ends to little tyrannies--such as the prohibition of home distilleries that make the beloved plum brandies of Central Europe--and, more ominously, an end to the confinements of fiscal discipline imposed--responsibly-- by the Socialists.

All of Europe needs tax reductions and encouragement of investment. (So does the U.S). But it cannot avoid simultaneously a reduction in spending. To the extent that Americans notice, Fidesz will warm conservatives' hearts. But what about the spending? That's what could chill those same hearts in the years ahead. Even a Government with a mandate cannot flout the problems of a massive debt.

If you fully understand the problems of the American finance, please feel free to opine on the bill before Congress. But following the political horse-race coverage of the bill by the Washington Post, you can see that not everyone is really interested in the content. Instead, politics rules.

The one thing certain is that is that Democrats, having lost this vote, finally may be ready to deal. Indeed, maybe the point of the vote was to show their base the necessity of so doing.

Strangely, multi-billionaire businessman Warren Buffeted added at the end a note of sobriety to the proceedings by arguing frankly for his own interests. Buffet is much admired. He supported Obama. But he does not see this bill as advancing real reform. His Nebraska senator, Democrat Ben Nelson, voted with the Republicans.

Republicans, however, also are ready to deal after this vote, and have been ready to deal all along. They are not, in fact, any more in bed with Wall Street than are the Democrats.

Republicans must disenthrall themselves publicly yet again from the image of the "Party of the Rich." In fact, they deserve a reprieve, especially since the "rich" voted for Democrats in 2006 an again in 2010.

The problem for Democrats is that they have not disenthralled themselves from the new and entirely valid image as "the party of big government" that gets into every aspect of life as an uninvited and self-proclaimed "expert."

Efforts to tag Pope Benedict XVI with failings of the Catholic Church to deal with the scandal of sexual violation of young men by priests is sputtering. Try as it will, The New York Times cannot find a record that contradicts the reality that Cardinal Karl Ratzinger, now the pope, has been a force promoting reform.

Maybe he could have moved faster. Easy for an outsider to say. But the charge that he actually was part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, is growing less and less credible the more the Times carries on.

In the end, the Catholic Church will be stronger for the present challenge, forced to strengthen its resolve in Europe as it did in the U.S. this past decade. Then, the Church may (one hopes) be bolder in addressing the root causes of its own weakness in the past and the towering limpness of secularism in the West today, dealing more frankly with the true issues of materialism and human life. When people are treated as things, and things as people, no wonder the world is inverted.

If you got the impression recently that the Russian government was ending adoptions of Russian orphans by US citizens, you should know that that is not the case. There was understandable--if over-stated--annoyance in Russia when a young boy whose adoption had failed in Tennessee was sent back to Russia alone on a commercial plane. "Outrage" would be a better description than "annoyance", however.

At the time, there was media speculation that the Russian authorities would cancel further adoptions to Americans. Then, unfortunately, the story dropped out of the news.

However, the National Council for Adoption, a coalition of well-established adoption organizations in the United States and an able public policy advocate for adoption, pointed out a few days ago that the Russians have not stopped adoptions to the US.

Today, the New York Times describes some Western R & R for Russian orphans.

It helps to remind us that sensational news, especially about Russia, is often incomplete and, for that reason, misleading.

Gordon Brown was caught on a live mic describing a Labour supporter he encountered as a "bigot". He later apologized, but it was the kind of gaffe that can sink a campaign. Already in trouble for all the reasons the supporter, Mrs. Gillian Duffy, a widow and pensioner, mentioned on camera while Brown chatted with her, Brown now also comes off as a hack (which he is not): insincere, haughty (he is that) and quick to blame his staff instead of himself.

The negative images are especially damaging because they re-enforce tropes about him that have been established loosely heretofore.

The campaign encounter with a polite, but relentlessly critical voter, is the kind of nightmare that would cause any politician to cringe. But it would not even have been a memorable news item except for Brown's mistaken belief his mic was turned off while he maligned 66 year old Mrs. Duffy. Now, however, the whole interview will be read, and seen on video, endlessly, including not only Mrs. Duffy's remark that politicians are afraid to talk about immigration, but also her comments that the Labour Government has run up such a huge deficit that it will be "tax, tax, tax for 20 years" to pay it down.

The tax issue, as I have written here before, is the achilles heel of Labour, and even a weakness for the LIberal Democrats. The only question is how adroit the Tories are in pursuing it. Happily for the Conservatives' David Cameron, a sensationally covered Labour voter has helped make the case for him.

The story is damaging when covered by the London Times, of course, but it also is nearly as damaging as carried by The Guardian. Rupert Murdoch owns the Times, and he also happens to own Sky Channel TV, and it was a Sky Channel mic that caught the P.M. jabbering unawares to aides as they drove from the scene, and it was a Sky Channel scoop the launched the story.

Questions by Supreme Court justices indicated at a hearing Wednesday that the Court probably will not support the right of initiative or referendum petition signers to remain anonymous. The Washington State case, Doe v. Reed, expresses the fear of opponents of same sex unions that referendum signers would find their names published on the Internet and, thereafter, subjected to harassment.

In fact, some same sex union proponents expressly announced intentions to put referendum signers' names on the Internet and to encourage "uncomfortable conversations" with them. Justice Antonin Scalia, hearing about this possibility, expressed skepticism and pointed out that democracy requires "civic courage".

Allow me to express my skepticism about placing such expectations on ordinary citizens. Maybe ballot votes should be made public, too? Also, votes within juries? Show a little "civic courage," people!

When I served as Secretary of State of Washington in the late 70s I opposed publication of petition signers' names because of the potential to intimidate citizens and to chill public participation. The current case confirms my fears. It was not brought idly, but out of genuine fear of retaliation.

British voters go to the polls next Thursday with more potential for a true three way split among the leading contenders than has been witnessed in decades. Moreover, the three way split could change the very nature of British politics if it means that in order to form a Government the "winner" has to compromise with one of the "losers" on fundamental rules of political governance. That prospect is the hidden issue of the current campaign.

Simply put, if David Cameron's Conservatives come in first in the number of seats won, but lack a majority, the only way they can govern in a stable fashion is in coalition with, presumably, the Liberal Democrats. (Barring the unforeseen, no one will want much to be associated with discredited Labour, whose leader probably will resign about eight days from now.) But the price the Lib Dems, led by Nick Clegg, may try to extract from the Conservatives is a "reform" (treacherous word) to institute proportional voting in future elections.

But other than surrendering still more sovereignty to the European Union, nothing would so weaken the British Parliament as proportional voting. The centrifugal forces of factionalism and regionalism would grow, spelling the end of purposeful government. The winner-take-all rule is rough on minority parties, but it does make strong governing possible.

Here is one of the most recent polls.