American Politics Archives

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.).

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.

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.

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.

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.

Dr. Scott Gottlieb of the American Enterprise Institute is one of the shrewdest health care analysts around. He is predicting now what many have feared, the slow motion consolidation of the insurance industry as the big boys become government sanctioned monopolies and small providers disappear. Insurance policies for individuals and small organizations will become untenable.

The new order will start as soon as next January when new rates are announced--two months after the 2010 elections.

Your choices will be narrowed and narrowed again.

Says Gottlieb, the "rich" that the President has targeted will turn out to be any couples with incomes of $100,000 or more. To afford the level of care they enjoy now such families will be looking at expenditures reaching 20 to 25 percent of their income. In the end, nearly everyone will be in the public system, lucky if they can buy special private policies for extra benefits, as under Medicare now.

It will be very complicated, a bureaucrats' delight, a citizen's nightmare. This is crony socialism: the form of a "free market" will be preserved (along with the opportunity to extract massive campaign contributions from it), but it will be a government industry in all but name.

News stories after passage of the health care bill are focusing on proponents' outrage over the negative reactions to the bill. It is as if the left wants to hide the new law's contents and implications by anathematizing the act's opponents.

The most ridiculous example is histrionic partisan distress over a lawsuit that is being brought by 14 Republican state attorneys general, including Rob McKenna of Washington and Bill McCollum of Florida. The state officers contend that the new act's requirement that every adult purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. The federal government, they argue, has no authority to make such a requirement. Attempting one infringes upon both individual rights and powers the Constitution reserves to the states. The state attorneys general either will succeed or fail with their case and it is the federal court system that will decide the matter. (By the way, the McKenna, McCollum et al warned in advance that they would file this legal challenge if the offending provision was adopted by Congress. They didn't spring their suit on anyone.)

Meanwhile, contrary to fulminations from various Democratic sources, the attorneys general are entirely within their rights as state legal officers to take such a matter to federal court. All the arguments against them so far are political posturing and hand waving. Some simply misrepresent the legal case of the attorneys general, apparently hoping to confuse the public about what is at issue. Even sillier is the attempt in the Washington State Legislature to pretend that state funds are being misused by the state attorney general. That too is just projection.

Liberals who have been dissatisfied by the actions of conservative Congressional majorities and presidents in the past have never hesitated to take their complaints to court. What makes them think it is somehow wrong for conservatives to do likewise now when the shoe is on the other foot?

I don't care if Bill Gates believes in man-caused global warming, he is right about at least one creative and practical response to the energy problem: The former Microsoft head has teamed up with Toshiba and--putting his money behind his ideas--is figuring out how to make the small nuclear reactor, via "Traveling Wave Reactor" technology, a business reality.

Toshiba's model nuclear reactor

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal has noticed the opportunity, too, publishing an op-ed today by Steven Chu, U.S. Secretary of Energy. "Small modular reactors would be less than one-third the size of current plants. They (would) have compact designs and could be made in factories and transported to sites by truck or rail."

My own dream is something even smaller: a nice, safe nuke for a neighborhood or city district. Even your private basement. ("The Bloom Box.")

"Make my day!" is the reaction of White House political advisor David Axelrod to the prospect of critics making an issue of Obamacare this fall. His view (and hope) is that once enough people think they are getting free or reduced price health care--paid for by "the government"--they will never let it be taken away. He may be wrong, at least in the 2010 election, but he may be right long term.

Therefore, if conservatives want to deal with the looming takeover of medical care, they are going to have to come up with something more than a call for "Repeal." Sadly, the insurance industry, Big Pharma and the American Medical Association, as well as platoons of big foundations, have bought into the idea that the government should, indeed, run medical care. It is the public that the Administration and Democratic majority in Congress has defeated, and the public, as such, doesn't fund much research.

Therefore, it will take a lot of careful thought and planning in coming months to develop the ideas and methods to disentangle Obamacare--even if Republicans regain one or both houses of Congress--and to propose something else.

The question, therefore, is what is the "something else"? There is no need for an answer today, but there will be soon.

Pro-life groups are denouncing the supposed pro-life Democrats, led by Rep. Bart Stupak, who voted for Obamacare based on the transparent excuse of an unenforceable Executive Order.

Were the pro-life Democrats fooled?

No, they are all politically savvy. More likely, they were successfully undercut by their political base, especially the increasingly powerful public employee unions. In the case of Stupak, for example, the unions may include many people who support the Congressman's pro-life views, or are indifferent, but they undoubtedly made it clear to him that they regarded the bill as a priority and his pro-life principles as expendable.

Had the pro-life Democrats held out, they might have forced the original House anti-abortion funding language to be adopted by the Administration and (once again) Speaker Pelosi in the bill itself. Instead, it was Stupak & Co. whose bluff was called. As between their base and their principles, they chose their base.

As I wrote Friday (and earlier on March 9), all it took at the end was for the President and the Speaker to induce Congressman Stupak to accept a fig leaf pledge that funds under Obamacare will not fund abortion. He gratefully accepted such a fig leaf--an "Executive Order"--today.

How likely is it that the Executive Order will make any lasting difference? Yuval Levin, who served on the policy staff of President George W. Bush, tells his readers, not much.

Only a legislative fix would have mattered.

The supposedly anti-abortion Democrats, in the end, couldn't take the heat.

I pointed out on March 9 that if the White House and Congressional leaders cannot get the health care bill passed, all it will take to sway the final needed votes is a Leadership concession to the handful of Democratic anti-abortion forces. The pro-choice Democrats will make ritual complaints, but they still will vote for the resultant, supposedly "anti-abortion" product.

That is what is now in the works, perhaps, according to The Hill. Watch for developments in the coming hours.

Meanwhile, I repeat my prediction that any such supposed legal agreement will be betrayed. Indeed, it is so obvious to insiders that it will be betrayed (perhaps almost immediately, perhaps after a decent interval of a few months) that some of the anti-abortion Democrats may not go along. However, some will go along because the parliamentary fig-leaf they are being offered gives them a way to pretend that they have not caved in on the abortion issue. Actually, all the Leadership needs is about half the anti-abortion Democratic members. Once the bill's future is secured, Speaker Pelosi can give the other members a pass to vote "no".

As I say, the pro-choice Members of the House, meanwhile, will know full well that any abortion "compromise" is synthetic, a fig leaf. They will pretend otherwise while voting for the bill.

There are so many open deals like this that are tied to certain members and certain districts on the issue of health care "reform" that one can only imagine the behind the scenes deals--the ones based on promises of jobs after a likely election defeat, for example, and the ones based on threats of various kinds. A "no" vote Member can be threatened with everything from loss of a treasured committee assignment--where the real work the House supposedly takes place--to loss of good office space after the next election, not to mention election campaign cash meanwhile. A truly vengeful Leadership could even threaten a potential "no" vote Member with discreet disclosure of unsavory personal information to inquiring media. (Sorry if that sounds cynical.)

It is risky for the Leadership to act in a really vengeful way; there is always next month's votes, and the votes after that. But the stakes are really high now. If the bill passes, watch for more and more deals to come to light. It may be too late, but they will come to light.

Some folks are bothered a bit by a couple of trends in the taking of the Census; yes, the one being taken right now.

First is the letter householders are getting in the mail to alert them that they are about to get an official Census form to fill out. It's a bit expensive, but there is nothing wrong with sending out this little teaser. Response rates go up when people are advised that the real thing is on its way. That means fewer, more expensive personal Census worker visits later.

The more troubling problem, rather, is the admonition written in the letter (and in many of the radio ads for the Census) that "Results from the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds for highways, schools, health facilities, and many other programs you and your neighbors need. Without a complete and accurate census, your community may not receive its fair share."

Do you still contend that scientists are a breed apart, a superior species that should hold others, mere mortals, in awe? Then please digest the latest scandal about money, greed and "science", and this time keep in your mind's eye the thousands, maybe millions, of infants that are affected by autism. It is their welfare that must now come into focus.

Danish scientist Paul Thorsen has disappeared, apparently, along with a couple million dollars of U.S. public money and some of the data that formed the basis for studies in which he participated. Now those enormously influential studies--supposedly disproving any connection between mercury and autism--are coming into question, and deservedly so.

Maybe the studies were valid. By all means, let's find out. In fact, a thorough and independent public investigation is imperative. Since the Center for Disease Control's money was involved, surely the CDC should not be the only body looking into this matter.

A U.S. Court decided just now that the autism link to mercury is invalid. Maybe so, but given the timing it doesn't seem that the court was at all aware of the Thorsen scandal. The Court ruling and the Thorsen revelations seem to have overlapped.

by Anika Smith

Jonah Goldberg has a thought-provoking article up at NRO where he reminds us that "Feminists Get It Right" when it comes to the plight of women subject to abuse simply because of their sex. After giving a few examples of grisly practices where women are punished for men's inability to restrain themselves (particularly the opening scene, where he explains how young girls in Cameroon are disfigured by their mothers in order to discourage the randy local boys), Goldberg explains that this a familiar story on a global scale. "Around the world, women -- girls -- have to pay the price for the barbarity of boys."

It's a fact too often ignored in what Harvey Mansfield calls the gender neutral society, that purposefully obfuscates the differences between men and women, but it's still true: where men are most brutal, women, being the weaker and more vulnerable sex, suffer most.

In the course of this one day Rep. Bart Stupak, D-MI, who leads a Democratic pro-life group of about 12 House members, was quoted in support of a possible "sidebar" bill to prevent abortion funding, and then, later, minimizing the prospect. This underscores the problem that opponents of Obamacare face. It is only the abortion issue that stands in the way of a narrw majority House vote for the expensive, cumbersome Senate health care bill that President Obama favors.

But all it really will take to reach a successful compromise is a decision by the President and the Senate Democrats to concede this point in language acceptable to Rep. Stupak, either in a "sidebar" bill or in the health care bill itself. That would be painful, and a few House and Senate votes might shift against the bill, but only a very few. In return, Obamacare proponents would get the 12 pro-life Democratic votes for their bill, and with it the prospect of a much bigger government role in health care from now on.

They could and probably would betray Rep. Stupak later on.

Pro-life groups are urging Rep. Stupak to hang tough. The reality is that only when the present legislation is buried can a genuine bi-partisan effort develop that ends some of the bureaucratic sclerosis in the present system, and yet prevents the even worse bureaucratic sclerosis that Obamacare would entail.

My colleague Jay Richards, writing on the The American blog, was picked up today on Real Clear Politics for this excellent dissection of the logic of Al Gore's Saturday New York Times article on global warming (see my previous post).

I wonder how people who read the New York Times and don't read blogs will get at the hidden assumptions and assertions of the Gore rhetoric. Where on the Times pages will that case be made?

Al Gore wants you to know that global warming is still the consensus scientific truth, even if there have been a couple of trivial mistakes made in the thousands of pages of the IPCC report of 2007. Hey, we're all human!

But Christopher Booker of the London Telegraph tears the whole defense to shreds. There are not just a couple of mistakes and they are not incidental to the global warming case. They are legion and they are integral to the climate warming case, and they bespeak intellectual if not financial corruption.

Read the pieces for yourself.

There's no war like a civil war, and one seems to have broken out in the Obama White House. Now the public is learning about it. Every president has numerous assistants, of course, and, being human, they tend to compete. Sometimes it is over ideology (as under FDR, who encouraged it), sometimes it is over tactics (as under Reagan, who couldn't figure out how to stop it). In the Obama White House it seems to be worse--it seems to be personal revenge as well as rivalry.

When such differences make it into print, you usually can assume that a little bird gave the reporter a self-serving exclusive. In the Obama case, there have been a number of columns attacking Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

It is an idea that may seem like science fiction: every new home with a power plant of its own, maybe even a nuclear plant. Each house might or might not be connected to a grid. This may have been a fancy in old comic books or in Popular Mechanics, but could be the near future.

In that kind of future, there would be much less broad a danger from storms or earthquakes that knock out power for whole cities and where disrupted power lines ignite ruinous fires. If whole cities or even neighborhoods were powered by numerous individual energy plants, terrorist attacks on the power grid would become much less threatening. Even if only a fraction of homes and office buildings and schools were independently powered, those could serve as refuges for the rest of the community in natural or man made catastrophes.

by John Wohlstetter

On March 30, 1981, as President Ronald Reagan lay at death's door in Georgetown Hospital, and with Vice-President George H. W. Bush in a plane bound for DC but without air-to-ground communication with the White House, Deputy Press Secretary Larry Speakes stood at the podium in the press room of the White House. Asked about who had control of the "nuclear football" Speakes was unable to give a coherent answer. To the rescue came Secretary of State Alexander Haig.

Rushing from the situation room to the press room, Haig told reporters: "As of now, I am in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president." Haig added, re presidential succession that "Constitutionally you have the president, vice-president and then the secretary of state..." in a formulation that omitted the Speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate, as designated by a 1947 law. Haig went on to say that if anything happened he would "of course" check with the VP upon establishing communication.

Haig, deeply unpopular with many reporters for his suspected role during Watergate, was roasted alive by the press, practically accused of attempting a palace coup. Imagine, for a moment, if Haig had stayed down in the situation room and no one else stepped forward in place of Speakes. A stammering press flack unable to explain who had control of nuclear codes would have thrown the press into a tizzy, generating all sorts of headlines the next day (and on the nightly news) about a rudderless administration during time of potential nuclear crisis. Thus Haig deserved praise, not condemnation. His flub on the succession sequence was of no serious moment, versus his stepping forth to indicate someone was in charge.

Which brings to mind the antiquated 1947 Truman administration law.

A televised leadership meeting is the sort of cynical substitute that modern politics, abetted by the media, offers in place of real negotiations. It is about as honest and true as a marriage proposal made on reality TV. And about as propitious.

If the President really wanted to create a bi-partisan health care bill, all he had to do was invite the key participants to meet in private. True bi-partisan bills develop that way, not on television. Performances are what you get at shows like the one the President staged yesterday.

Peggy Noonan spoke for many in saying "the President has entered a boorish phase." He takes advantage of his position to monopolize time and to patronize rivals.

by George Gilder

The infamous "hockey stick"

Epitomizing the plot ofThe Hockey Stick Illusion by A.W. Montford and the special gratifications it affords the reader are any of the Colombo shows on television. In each case, we see the humble investigator initially ignored, brushed aside,stonewalled, disdained, doubletalked, waffled, red herringed, and evaded by lofty and complacent Establishment figures, citing their own authority, crowded schedules, sophisticated reasoning, advanced degrees, abstruse mathematics, and exalted ideals.

In this story, the Columbo figure is Steve McIntyre, a Canadian mining
consultant, and A.W. Montford's book tells the gripping and suspenseful
details of McIntyre's pursuit of the self-denominated "hockey team" led by
Michael Mann, who wrote the key chapters on his own work for the IPCC, and
Phil Jones, who maintains the temperature record used by the IPCC to
document the "Hockey Stick": limning allegedly unprecedented and anomalous anthropogenic global warming in the Twentieth Century while denying that any comparable or greater warming occurred in the Medieval period.

One of our favorite publishers and political thinkers, Steve Forbes, provides a four star review of writer/talk show host and Discovery Senior Fellow Michael Medved's new book, The Five Big Lies About American Business.

The timeliness of the Medved book could hardly be more striking. Business has not been under such federal government attack, literally, in our lifetimes. What the Administration doesn't own (and then dictate to, such as banks and GM) it tries to browbeat. What the White House cannot get Congress to enact, it attempts to achieve by regulation. In addition, there is a constant drum beat of criticism against the private sector--this from the most inefficient, wasteful and, in many ways, most unjust sector of society.

Writes Forbes (in the March 1 issue of Forbes magazine), "Medved has his most fun with the fairy tale that 'the pure-souled and disinterested idealists in government will serve people more reliably than the greedy go-getters in the private sector.' Whether it's the Post Office, public schools, Amtrak, Medicare, Medicaid, public parks or light rails, the government's record has been routinely abysmal when it comes to efficiency, effectiveness, service and careful use of financial resources."

We have had time to put the Supreme Court's recent ruling on the case of "Citizens United". Here is the opinion of Discovery Adjunct Fellow and attorney, Howard L. Chapman:

Last month the United States Supreme Court issued a decision that may result in profound changes in the conduct of future elections. During the political campaigns of 2008, a non-profit organization named Citizens United produced a ninety minute movie entitled "Hillary: The Movie," which is very critical of Hillary Clinton. Citizens United wanted to run the movie during the campaign, but the Federal Election Commission told them that it would be a violation of federal campaign finance laws if they ran it. Citizens United filed a lawsuit to challenge that ruling.

The law in question is The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (better known as the "McCain-Feingold Act"), and, in particular section 203 of that law. That section says that corporations and unions are prohibited from using their own money to run advertisements or publish anything else that is critical or supportive of a named candidate. The ban applies only in federal elections, and is only in effect within thirty days prior to a primary election, or sixty days prior to a general election.

The various courts that heard the Citizens United case found in favor or the FEC (agreeing that the movie could not be shown), and the case eventually arrived at the Supreme Court. It initially was contested on rather narrow statutory grounds, i.e., was a full length movie the kind of electioneering that the act prohibited. After hearing oral arguments the first time, the Court did something that is rather unusual; it directed the parties to submit additional briefs, and set the matter for additional oral arguments on the issue of whether or not the act itself was in violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

John R. Miller is a former member of Congress from Washington State, a one-time Chairman of the Board of Discovery Institute, and is now the co-director of our Center for Human Rights and Bioethics. The following article ran in today's New York Times:

CIVILIAN control of the military is a cherished principle in American government. It was President Obama who decided to increase our involvement in Afghanistan, and it is Congress that will decide whether to appropriate the money to carry out his decision. It is the president and Congress, not the military, that will decide whether our laws should be changed to allow gays and lesbians to serve in our armed forces. The military advises, but the civilian leadership decides.

In early 1783, with Revolutionary War victory in sight but peace uncertain, Washington and the Continental Army bivouacked at Newburgh, N.Y. Troops were enraged by Congress's failure to provide promised back pay and pensions. Rumors of mutiny abounded.

Continue reading it here.

Class action lawsuits from at least a dozen law firms are being filed against Toyota in exploitation of the recent accelerator recall; trial lawyers now only lack tragic stories to justify billion dollar settlements. The federal government, of course, is there to help.

When GM had recalls recently, there was little news attention. But the Toyota story is huge, not because the problem is so major, but because it is widespread. A lot of people are affected. They will lose a couple hours of time each. Big deal.

The story is also newsworthy, I suspect, because Toyota is foreign-owned.

You don't hear Toyota owners clamoring for revenge against the company, however. As a long time customer, I mostly am worried that people like me will wind up paying higher prices and dealing with overly-cautious dealers , not due to the recall, but to the legal threat and government intimidation. I dread talking to a dealer who feels he has some lawyer listening in.

Some of the media passion against Toyota probably abated, however, when the governors of American states like Kentucky and Indiana where Toyotas are made spoke up in defense of the company--and the employees/voters who will be hurt if Toyota is punished unduly.

Meanwhile, according to former Volkswagen executive Heinz Gundlach, speaking yesterday in Boca Raton, Florida, VW plans to open its own plant (finally) in the US next year. Chattanooga, TN will receive the blessing of the German investment and the hiring of 1200 new employees.

Gundlach also shared some sobering numbers about the state of the auto market. The total number of cars sold in the U.S. has declined during the recession, while sales (including VW and GM, as well as new local models) are going up in China. In 2007 China bought five million cars; last year (2009), China bought nine million. The U.S. bought 14 million in 2007, and only 10 million in 2009. In the U.S., 500 of every 1000 people already own a car, while only 30 in every 1000 in China own a car. It is not hard to anticipate China's overtaking the United States as the number one car market soon.

Meanwhile, within the U.S., what Gundlach calls the "Detroit Three" (they used to be "The Big Three") have seen their market share drop in ten years from 65 percent to 44 percent. (When I was a kid, it was 95 percent.) Remember, this decline in the share of the auto market pie is taking place while the market "pie" itself is growing smaller. The prospect: the customers Detroit is losing are probably not coming back.

Regardless of the absolute and relative decline of U.S. auto companies, some 75 percent of cars bought in America are built here (or in neighboring Canada and Mexico). Dealing with fluctuating exchange rates is simply too risky for foreign companies like VW; the price offered the buyer can jump up or down too much, based only on the changing value of the dollar versus, say, the Euro. That and the politics of national pride have caused foreign car makers to open plants here. VW is one of the last to do so. The Koreans will probably be next. Right now, if you order a part for a Hyundai, it has to come from Korea.

Yes, unions and health care costs are a problem for American manufacturers, Gundlach says, but not decisive ones. Labor constitutes only 20 percent of a car's full cost, which is why, he indicates, China is not much of a threat to automakers in the U.S., Japan and Europe. The material that goes into a car comes from all over. That is why you have Toyotas made in Kentucky today and Chrysler PT Cruisers made in Toluca, Mexico. China will not sell many cars in the U.S. for some time.

What does matter in competitive advantage is simply the quality of the product. "Product, product, product!" Gundlach stresses. For decades, Detroit let go of that concern in its pursuit of novelty, indulging in constant change. In contrast, Toyota understood the importance of consistent, reliable quality of the product and the service behind it--and has prospered.

With my gas-efficient, cheerful, easy-to-park 2010 Carrolla (I call it my "Red Crayola"), I am confident that Toyota will take care of me. I am hopeful that Detroit will give them increasing competition for my business in the future. But meanwhile, I wish the government and the trial lawyers would leave them all--and me--alone.

Someone sold farmers in Minnesota some swell, if slightly used wind turbines from California, but they froze up solid once the deep North winter set in. If you not one of the farmers, it's a funny story. (Hat tip to IT dystopian Matt Scholz.)

On a drive recently through the usually peaceful, verdant countryside of Northwestern Illinois my eyeballs were stretched uncomfortably to a vast horizon of giant wind turbines--with the tiny-seeming houses and barns of the old countryside below them mocked and trivialized.

Unfortunately, such scenes are not unusual. Wind turbines are "green energy," right up there with ethanol and other trendy causes that derive their profitability from huge public subsidies and the sad gullibility of the local gentry upon whom they are imposed.

Purely as a cold political calculation, the Republicans do not need a health bill of any kind and they do need to defeat the messy bills that respectively have passed the House and Senate with Democrat-only support.

The President and the Democrats (also speaking politically) meanwhile need a bill, any bill, that addresses health care, so they can take credit and stop looking so ineffectual. And, of course, it would be great politics if they could pull a rabbit out of the hat and get either the House or Senate bill passed.

As far as the public is concerned (as Massachusetts showed), no bill is better than a bad bill. But, also, even a modest good bill would be very cheering right now. It would be good for the country and for the tone of government in Washington. One might hope that sometimes the public interest might take precedence over the partisan interest.

Jay Richards, I am glad to report, is now back at Discovery Institute full-time, having left a few years ago to work at Acton Institute on issues of entrepreneurship and free markets (among other things, he helped produce the films The Call of the Entrepreneur and The Birth of Freedom, and the book, Money, Greed and God), to start a blog for AEI's The American and to edit several manuscripts for Heritage Foundation. It is a fine mix of talents Jay has assembled in his career. A Phd from Princeton, he has expertise in theology, science, economics and culture, all very helpful for the mission of Discovery Institute. (In his earlier Discovery stage, among other things, he co-authored the book and film, The Privileged Planet, with Guillermo Gonzalez.)

Now comes a very useful new book, Indivisible, that Jay edited for Heritage Foundation on the natural linkage of social issues and economic issues. We are hearing a lot lately about how the subjects should be separated, supposedly because social issues damage conservative candidates for office. But that, I would suggest, derives mainly from the success of the left in misrepresenting and then stigmatizing conservative positions on social issues. As Scott Brown showed in Massachusetts, however, conservative candidates can surmount the criticism.

In the battle over health care, similarly, there is no doubt that the opposition by Catholic bishops and other Christian groups to abortion provisions in the Senate bill helped kill the whole thing. The bishops weren't demanding that no one with government provided insurance coverage be allowed to have an abortion, but only that such procedures not be financed by taxpayers. Yet this principled and prudent distinction had the effect of providing tremendous assistance for economic conservatives' objections to the health care bill on myriad other grounds.

Suddenly, it is Paul Ryan season in Washington, D.C. The six-term Wisconsin congressmen is still young, but until now mainly has been a wonks' favorite rather than a media darling--one of the few folks on the Hill who knows big subjects in depth. He is, for example, the House's leading minority spokesman on the budget. That kind of subject usually makes people yawn.

But now, in a matter of days, Congressman Ryan is all over the news, even attracting the attention of the President. George Will is hailing him as a future national leader. Russ Douthat touts him. Ezra Klein, Washington Post wonk-on-the-left, admires his seriousness and originality. The Wall Street Journal editorial page has gone from curious to enthralled.

It is impossible to keep track of the new information showing that what one wag calls the "grantrepreneurs" of science have finally coming under mainstream scrutiny in the global warming scandals. A good summary piece by Margaret Wente is found in the Toronto Globe and Mail.

The cover-ups have been successful in some cases, but not entirely. What is stunning is the failure of the "consensus science" scolds to defend the situation. They are reduced, it seems, to repeating the old mantras that everyone knows, there is "overwhelming evidence," etc. What they do not do is debate

Meanwhile, public belief in the Al Gore scenarios has waned, too, and the whole issue is coming off the public agenda. A Yale/George Mason University survey on the topic of public concern is mostly significant for the trend it shows--which is downward.

Meanwhile, if you are on the East Coast today, buried under the second record-breaking snowstorm in six weeks, you probably are not taking global warming at all seriously. But if you are in British Columbia, where snow is being trucked to the Olympic Games, it is a very present disaster.

That is too bad, in a way, since pollution and energy dependence are still important and valid concerns.

Fox News thought the House Republicans triumphed by having the President speak to their weekend retreat in Baltimore and answer questions in front of TV cameras. In contrast, MSNBC thought the President showed up the Republicans as the contemptible pipsqueaks they are. For themselves, the President and the House GOP leaders all said that the spirited, yet civil exchange was the sort of thing that should happen more often in Washington.

So, who really won and lost?

First, the public won, because the televised Q & A demonstrated that politicians can debate seriously and with substance, and without constantly interrupting one another. Real questions were asked and real answers given. This is how representative democracy is supposed to work. Imagine if it happened routinely in Washington.

Second, President Obama won, because he presented himself without the teleprompter and with a sense of humor. He showed he knew about the proposals the Republicans have been trying to offer, thereby undercutting somewhat the claim that the White House is ignoring the GOP's views.

Third, the Republican House members won by displaying to the public their thoughtful, positive positions and ideas, almost none of which have been addressed in Congressional deliberations or in the media. They also were able to showcase an admirable array of political talent from within their ranks.

Fourth, however, there was a loser, and it was Nancy Pelosi. After the GOP program, a fair-minded person would tend to recognize the reality that the Speaker has made it very hard for Republicans to be heard in the House, and therefore has silenced not only them, but also the districts that elected them and the sizable point of view they represent in the country.

President Obama apparently was serious about nuclear power and is prepared to put lots of money behind it. His State of the Union nod to nuclear energy, if followed up, could result in a huge win for him and for the country. Republicans should get behind it creatively and forcefully. Do the White House and the GOP minority want to show that they can work together? Here's the perfect test.

The nuclear energy issue avoids the claims and counter claims about the causes and extent of global warming and goes straight to one of the solutions that all agree can prevent air pollution--however you define it--and lessen dependence on foreign oil.

Here is one spending priority, moreover, that can easily be justified in hard times as well as flush times. Nuclear power truly will "create jobs."

The State of the Union sported synthetic emotion and formulaic policy statements. Most (such as cap and trade) are what you might call place-holders--positions that say, "I am for this, but don't plan to do much about it."

But one of those placeholders excited Republicans as well as Democrats. President Obama pledged support for nuclear power as way to achieve energy independence and pollution-free energy. If he means it, it's really important.

Wrote technology reporter Declan McCullagh: "What drew the audience to its feet, cheering, was Obama's call for the construction of more nuclear power plants."

Now let's see whether Congress will follow through. The scares of the 70s are history and many environmentalists already have moved on.

The Republican response by Gov. Bob McDonnell of Virginia was cheerful and substantive, and it mentioned off-shore drilling and nuclear power, but didn't note the President's endorsement tonight. It would have been a great time to tie a ribbon on the idea(s) and say, okay, Mr. President, how about moving forward on this right away?

President Barack Obama has thrown his support to the New Orleans Saints in the upcoming Super Bowl. This undoubtedly will bring joy to the Big Easy and grumbling to a whole state of Hoosiers.

Obama, formerly a senator from neighboring Illinois, carried Indiana in 2008, but lost Louisiana. Unfortunately for him, it is human nature for folks to forget an endorsement of their team, but not to forget an endorsement of the opposition. Colts fans may be especially militant that way.

New Orleans fans, in turn, should hope that Mr. Obama does not go down to the Bowl game in Fort Lauderdale and speak out for the Saints. His last endorsement speech was for Martha Coakley in Massachusetts, and that didn't turn out too well.

Unionized government workers now constitute more than a majority of all union workers in the country, according to a report yesterday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Recession or not, the number of government workers--and, therefore, union members in government service--went up again last year, while non-government union membership went down.

Your taxes made possible the continued growth in government employees. How so?

In case you haven't noticed, the SEIU, AFSCME and other government unions are among the most active in political campaigns, nearly always on behalf of liberal Democratic candidates and issues. For them, the business of government is government, and the more the better. The special interest lobby that always agitates for more government is the government itself, and unions are at the leading edge of that agitation.

Able, dedicated civil servants who are required to join the public employees unions often are less than enthusiastic about "their" representatives and have little to do with them--other than paying union dues. Union meetings in government agencies are seldom well-attended. The leadership seldom is relatively undistinguished, other than by the narrowness of its concerns.

But just because government union members don't always vote the way the union suggests (as reportedly was the case in Tuesday's U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts) doesn't do much to shrink the clout of union leaders. Consider that when, as is the case even in the Obama Administration, you have an Education Department nominally supportive of charter schools, that endorsement is trumped by fervent opposition from the teachers unions. (Not the teachers, mind you; rather, the unions.)

Of all special interest lobbies, then, government itself, including unions, constitute the one that is most single-minded and devoted in its involvement in government legislation, regulation, taxation and personnel issues. That reality gets almost no public attention in the media, but it often is determinative as a political force.

I have said before that Lincoln's description of America as "government of the people, by the people and for the people," is being upended by the new mission statement: government of the government, by the government and for the government.

If you think I am exaggerating, ask yourself, who got the lion's share of last year's federal stimulus money? Was it not used to shore up state and local bureaucracies? Did those bureaucracies not shrink far less in the recession than the private sector?

How is it that government officials so often announce that they just have to increase taxes rather than cut the size of this government program or that? Where is such empathy and concern when private factories and shops are closing?

I am not an absolutist conservative. I see a number of government activities that should be increased, not reduced (besides defense and foreign policy). They would include, for example, transportation infrastructure, parks and recreation maintenance and mental health. But these days money for such purposes cannot be found, even in the big-spending states--maybe especially in the big spending states--because every spare dollar has to go to government employees.

The lobby of government itself demands it. Increasingly, elected officials work for the government, not the people, and soon the people will work for the government, too. At least, that is the clear and present danger.

Don't look now, Mr. President, but change is afoot...

In two days, the Massachusetts election has catalyzed an astonishing reversal of national politics. Suddenly Obamacare seems dead. Was it only Monday that it seemed inevitable? The New York Times was in denial about it this morning, which demonstrates anew that the Times is more out of touch than even, say, Martha Coakley.

If the Administration tries to jam through a bill by "reconciliation", preventing the need for 60 votes in the Senate, the already sour public mood will become even more irate.

Tuesday (see below) I wrote that the tide had changed. Did it ever!

Cap and Trade is dead. Meanwhile, many chances have been squandered to get bi-partisan backing for common sense energy conservation and development of alternatives to foreign oil.

Immigration liberalization is dead.

Now comes a Supreme Court ruling overturning McCain-Feingold's limits on corporate spending on political races. It's as if the Court took a Sanity Pill and suddenly realized that the First Amendment is meant to protect political speech as its number one priority. Without free, unfettered political speech you can't assure the liberty to hold the robust debates upon which democracy depends.

Call it "Post-Election Trauma Syndrome" (PETS). It confuses one's judgment, apparently.

The problem in Massachusetts was a failure to communicate. We were just so busy working for the people, say White House sources, that we failed to explain to them what we were doing on health care. Wait until they learn about all the great things we have hidden under the Christmas tree! Won't they be delighted!

Okay, we know that the public is angry, but it is part of the same anger they expressed when they elected me a year and three months ago (says the President). That indicates in turn that the anger--and the Massachusetts defeat of Martha Coakley, perversely--was George W. Bush's responsibility.

The Brown election, it seems, also was not about health care, but about anxiety over job losses.

And Coakley's incompetent campaigning. Etc., etc.

The Obama Administration has a hard time facing facts until there is no other option. Recall that the initial reaction to the Christmas Day airline assault by the Underwear Bomber was to proclaim it the work of "an isolated extremist." It took a couple of days for reality to dawn over the White House.

Very similar is the effort to obfuscate the Massachusetts election results. It all is in service of a determination, somehow, to push ahead with the current health care plans. If clever stunts haven't been sufficient so far, why, we should try some new clever stunts! Maybe they will work.

If the statesmanship alternative I advocated in the previous post is to prevail, it definitely has to overcome a great deal of self-delusion.

Former Clinton adviser Lanny Davis was in the Wall Street Journal today explaining the way the Obama Administration's leftward lurch has disaffected the public, as vividly shown in Massachusetts. Later, on the Michael Medved Show, Davis explained the opportunity before the President to acknowledge the recent setbacks and reach out to Republicans in both houses of Congress and invite them to write a health care bill. He then would invite moderate Democrats to join them. The result would be a lot less than he has in front of Congress now, but unlike the present monster, it actually would pass, overwhelmingly, and would give Obama a legislative accomplishment. Our conservative Discovery colleague Michael Medved, interviewing the liberal Davis, agreed with his advice.

The advice proposes the statesmanlike thing to do, not the political one. Insisting on some bill based on the present efforts will do more to keep the left wing base mollified (they are close to coming unglued right now). Collaboration with the Republicans, on the other hand, is also risky, but could lead to recapture of the the vital independent voters.

A mirror image calculation applies to the GOP: at this point; no bill would seem to be the best politics going into the fall. But, though the political temptation would be hard to overcome, many Republicans would be pleased to offer a sound bill for the good of the country if the President would cooperate.

However the election in Massachusetts comes out, it appears that a majority of voters nation-wide have been rooting for Scott Brown. That means that the issue of health care has become a liability for the Obama Administration, as have the special deals and taxes that go with it.

Only one year ago the nation was in the grips of Obamamania, an unrealistic mass excitement similar to the disproportionate grief that overcame Britain following the death of Princess Di. Now that the fever has broken, the passion is hard to recall.

Regardless, the chance for Hope and Change along bi-partisan lines, where government business is conducted with "transparency", spending is brought under control and taxes are not raised couples making under $250,000 is long gone. So is the enthusiasm of the nation's leading businessmen, bankers, insurance executives and other investors, a huge proportion switched their politics in 2008. Wall Street staged a big rally today on the mere prospect that Brown might win in Massachusetts. In that sense "hope and change" are back in the air.

The news on the secret House-Senate health care bill conference is destined to alarm tax payers, in time, if not at once. Far from becoming more palatable once it is adopted, Obamacare is bound to rankle the more its details become clear.

The provision in the bill that taxes high-cost private health insurance plans is bad enough, at 40 percent. It not only is a tax, but a huge one. People effectively are being forced to pay for health insurance as if it was a shameful luxury item. But making things much more irritating is the latest decision by the Conference Committee to exempt union members from the tax. A large share of those union members are public employees, so the principle could not be clearer: you poor private sector taxpayers should subsidize the insurance of you "public servants" who have the same kind of plan as yours. This isn't class warfare, it's political warfare, another example of government by the government, of the government and for the government.

(Of course, not all union members and not all government employees are going to be favorably impressed by the latest concession to their leadership.)

Then there is the looming extension of the Medicare tax to capital gains, another first. What this does is hit a few high earners, but also the nation's huge constituency of senior citizens and others who depend on stocks and bonds to provide their livelihood. Seniors already are antagonized by this health bill--and the process--that brought it about. How will they react when they find out that they are going to pay again for Medicare? Some may remember a candidate's pledge that no one making under $250,000 would have his taxes raised.

Others will recall with irony how this bill was advertised as a "reform".

Obamacare by now is a dog's breakfast of policies. It's obvious that the only coherent "health care" purpose in the mess is to get something done soon, rather than to get something done well.

While this travesty against good government is underway, note that the public is far ahead of American big business "leaders" in expressing opposition. Many of the latter, in practice, have been trying for the past year to find a way to ingratiate themselves with the Administration. Each special interest wants to be spared in the coming onslaught of federal taxation and regulation. These opportunists have been quite willing to put themselves in the most obsequious postures of assistance to the Administration--and, of course, have compromised their supposed free market principles without the equally compliant media taking much notice.

You should place high in the category of willing victims much of the insurance industry, "Big Pharma" (the most craven interest in this regard) and a large share of others of the biggest corporations in the land. Now comes the restaurant industry.

Ever since the Clinton Administration, big business has put its external dealings--lobbying, public relations and philanthropy--into the hands of liberal staff. It started doing this to buy off opponents. Now it has been captured by them. "Personnel is policy" is a description that applies as much to business as to government.

Even the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was slow to figure out which side of the present health care debate it should be on, and then, when it did decide, it had to contend with the defection of a number of its most significant members, especially the ones beholden to the federal government for contracts. But the Chamber, at least, did get to the right place: Obamacare, it is making clear, will be bad for the American economy.

It would be nice to say that the others in the business world--the willing victims--will deserve what they get, but, unfortunately, we will all in the boat with them if it sinks. Let no one confuse the short term Machiavellian devices of big business with the long term interests of America.

Most of the Northern Hemisphere is shocked and awed by Mother Nature. Records are being broken in places that were really cold to start with, such as Iowa. I don't know if Sen. Bernie Sanders, a cap 'n' trade enthusiast, is at home in Vermont or in his office in Washington, D.C., but either way he is buried in snow--in Vermont it's one for the history books.

Thank you, Barack Obama! Skeptics who derided the significance of the President's "historic breakthrough" statements in Copenhagen last month are forced to admit that since those important pronunciamentos, the climate has responded beyond anyone's hopes.

Even in South America, where it is supposed to be summer, they are feeling the wrath of "climate change".

Today's high is 58 degrees in "sunny South Florida," where I am heading tomorrow, and you can be sure there will be endless self-pitying comments by locals as well as tourists. When temperatures get down to an expected 35F tomorrow night, you will see news stories about frostbitten poodles in Palm Beach and otherwise politically correct matrons getting their fur coats out of mothballs for dinner parties.

Indeed, if this kind of chill continues, we soon will need to convene a U.N. Summit on Global Cooling.

The Weekly Standard does a good turn in its New Year's issue by highlighting the work of Spirit of America, the philanthropy that provides funds for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq to use as they sit fit in encouraging the local population.

One of the long standing frustrations of even top U.S. government officials who try to prosecute a war is the rigidity, red tape and second-guessing of bureaucracies when asked to supply funds quickly to troops on the ground who see first hand a need and want to fill it. You can rail against this sort of thing, but it has been the case for many years. No bureaucrat wants to make a mistake--by trying something new that isn't predictable and commonplace--the very expenditures, often small, that can make a big difference. The rule book is at hand to punish those who deviate.

That is why private groups are important. They can get things done--especially in building community support for U.S. objectives--in ways the government is not well organized to accomplish. Spirt of America is such a group. It warrants our financial support.

Fox News ends the year with a list of under-reported stories of 2009. It is notable how many are related to science or, generally, to the politicization of supposed "experts".

Nearly a half century ago, as he left eight years in office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of a "military-industrial complex" that promoted particular new weapons systems and concomitant budgetary and foreign commitments. Ike, the former five star general and Columbia University president, warned that selfish professional ambitions and interests can create a deceptive perception of national interest. The term "military-industrial complex" has become famous.

However, less noticed, Ike's farewell address also warned of development of a grants-corrupted "scientific-technological elite."

That is how far we have come from Lincoln's description of the United States' system as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people."

The federal Stimulus money largely has gone to shore up the budgets of city and county employees rather than encouraging new jobs creation in the private sector. That is no coincidence when you consider that the government employee unions are now the biggest share of the union movement and the most persuasive lobbyists in the Obama Administration.

Michael Barone has some useful details.

President Obama has tried to deal with Iran on the basis of reasoned diplomacy. Now we see a regime that has its vehicles run down demonstrators and blame "Zionists" and the Americans for the popular protests.

The President aims to empty Guantanamo prison and either prosecute the terrorists in U.S. courts--at enormous cost--or to send them back to their country of origin, such as Yemen. This approach is becoming an embarrassment as we learn that many returnees released by the Bush Administration (under pressure from Congress, please recall) have rejoined al Qaida.

Presumably the underpants bomber will be treated as a mere criminal, too, and given all the rights afforded to American citizens. He will be allowed to make grandiloquent propaganda statements along the way.

What makes President Obama think that the rest of the world understands and appreciates his policy of diplomatic niceness for dictators and criminal court cases for terrorists? After all, even most Americans don't understand--or agree--with it.

Discovery Sr. Fellow John Wohlstetter comments on passage of the Senate version of health care this morning (60-39, with no Republican votes):

"This exchange between Sen Jim DeMint (R-NC) and the Senate parliamentarian identifies an astonishing abuse of senatorial power, very possibly in conflict with the U.S. Constutition. This is the doing of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Mars ): dumping a sleigh load of presents for special friends of big government.  The specific provocation in the 2,000-plus-page list of boondoggles is a provision creating a Medicare panel and setting a 2/3 super-majority rule for rescinding it--effectively declaring it out of order--and, hence, not able to be considered--by senators or representatives in any future Congress.  The new review panel will decide, from Olympian hieghts, who gets insurance coverage and for what, as among Medicare mendicants.
 
"Reid's parliamentary gambit depends upon whether courts will hold as merely procedural--and thus solely a matter of Senate concern--the erecting of a super-voting barrier to future legislative rescission of the new rule. Courts may instead find that it is unconstitutional.

"I have not seen court rulings on this point.  But it seems hard to credit any legal argument that enables a current House of Congress to bar future Houses from reconsideration, via a super-majortiy vote.  Put simply, the current Congress cannot diminish the power of subsequent Congresses to rescind legislation.
 
"Perhaps judicial imperialists will ignore this.  But the effort must be made.  A precedent like this will permanently disempower future legislative powers in a fashion never contemplated by the Framers." 

Economist Richard Rahn is warning of a darkening economic future in America as spending under Barack Obama and Congressional Democrats reaches new extremes of recklessness. First comes the death of the dollar as the international currency, along with strangulation of U.S. government revenues from the private sector. When a supply-sider like Rahn says deficits now really do matter, and matter a lot, it shows that the tolerable spending limit truly has been reached. Eventually, even a robust economy cannot grow out of the hole dug by spendthrift politicians. "Eventually" has arrived.

Next come inevitably higher taxes, and not just on the rich. Small businesses already are saving any profits--knowing their taxes will be going up--rather than expanding and hiring new employees. The increasing resort to contract employees is a direct result of business wariness. When the reality of higher business and personal taxes arrives, things will get worse. Anemic growth is the best we can hope for in that case. A new recession, or worse, is just as likely.

Along with the growing tax burden comes increased government direction and a concomitant rise in the burden of paperwork--more forms, less human interaction and less customer service. This trend will leave us all on permanent "hold", as it were, and futilely "pushing '0' for more options." As Disraeli said, a crucial difference between left and right is that conservatives make you fill out less paper. In practice, that is not a small difference. It is the difference between freedom and petty tyranny.

Sen. John McCain could have been Barack Obama's most effective buddy in the Senate if the new president had bothered to solicit his involvement in any number of fields, including health care. Whatever else he is, John McCain is a patriot who would have responded to a president asking to meet him half-way. The result on health care would have been a compromise bill that would have sailed through Congress with at least a number of Republican votes. Afterwards, the GOP might well have wobbled into the next election disarmed and quarreling with itself.

Instead, the "Hope and Change" candidate who said he was going to end partisanship in Washington has been the most partisan president in living memory. Mr. Obama has done something George W. Bush did not do-- completely unify the GOP in Congress and the country. Yes, he has a likely legislative victory pending, but the victory is likely pyrrhic.

The media seem uninterested in McCain's views these days, but it is worth while for the rest of us to see how the Arizonan is characterizing the health care bill (from a press release):

Democrats have used Bernie Madoff-style accounting to assess the cost of health care reform. And when this bill becomes law, the reality of higher taxes and Medicare cuts for seniors will settle in on the American public.

The result is a health care bill supported by 60 Democratic Senators, but opposed by 60% of the American public.

Dr. Obama admires his health care bill.

In short, the Obama Administration seems to have been entirely motivated by politics and willing to take ownership of any legislative monster in order to boast success. But the monster will probably turn on its master.

Republicans might be expected to take perverse political satisfaction in this, except that most of them are, like McCain, patriots first and are anguished about what this kind of "Change" is going to do to the country.

By Jay Richards
(from The American)

In the biblical story of Babel, the tribes of the world conspire together to build a tower to reach to heaven. Before long, God decides to thwart their efforts, by dividing the languages of the mutinous tribes so that they can no longer communicate. Thereafter, the nations scatter across the face of the Earth, presumably limiting the collective damage they could do. The story is sort of a recapitulation of the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, who fell for the serpent's temptation to be "like gods."

As I watched the last three days of the Copenhagen Climate Fiasco, I kept thinking of the Tower of Babel. The Copenhagen Summit was the "largest gathering of world leaders in recent history." It was not, however, unprecedented, still less a "turning point in human nature," as Colin Blakemore in the Guardian opined. It was, rather, another instance of the human propensity for self-aggrandizement and hubris. Instead of building a tower to heaven, delegates from 193 nations gathered in Copenhagen for the purpose of controlling the future climate of the planet. Instead of unified agreement, however, they got chaos.

It is great fun to read the reactions of various parties to the Copenhagen climate conference that just ended. In reality, there was no signed international agreement, just some statements, vague promises of action and comparable dangles of money--results to come about somehow, sometime (2020, when none of the major players is likely to be on the scene)--and fulsome, self-serving congratulations. It was a classic attempt to cover up a classic diplomatic bust.

China "promised" to cut the rate of increase in its emissions, sorta, the U.S. "promised" billions of aid, but everything was highly conditional and deliverable only in the sweet by and by. No international treaty. The death throe was an unannounced address by Hugo Chavez (a figurative tin pot on his head) yelling about Obama, "the Nobel Prize of War," to a quickly emptying chamber.

No dictator's brother-in-law in the Developing World got a job out of this, after all, there are no fine new green boondoggles for salespeople in the "Rich Nations" to post in their order books, and nothing but pretended political glory to follow the jet contrails of CO2.

Rule one for international conferences: Don't send your leader there unless an agreement of consequence has been worked out in advance. Otherwise it is just another "meet and greet." Once Obama agreed to show, the other big shots felt they should, too. All were embarrassed.

Is Kyoto dead?

It turns out that someone's idea of saving electricity on no-heat traffic lights doesn't work so well in places like the Middle West where the climate hasn't got word yet about global warming. In fresh experience, snow accumulates on the swell new lights and then the colors disappear. There has been one fatality already.

But, "Fear not," says IT expert Matthew Scholz, " there is a solution: In St. Paul, Minn., for example, city crews now use air compressors to blow snow and ice off blocked lights. This allows the hiring of more government employees, stimulating the economy. I suggest that cities also could apply a device that turns on a light-heater once snow is detected... Or maybe someone can can up with a little windshield wiper for stop lights... Or perhaps there is potential for a federal earmark to support a 'small business' government contractor solution - a cute girl in a French maid costume with a feather duster."

The more public opposition to Obamacare grows, the more the mainstream media tries to block criticism from being heard. The editorial pages of major dailies ignore critics. So do many news broadcasts. George Stephanopolous, former Clinton aide supposedly performing now as an objective newsman on Good Morning America, features one defense after another of Obamacare and scolds Howard Dean for imperiling the Obama Presidency--as if GMA were an official mouthpiece for the Administration.

The same is happening on climate change. Instead of encouraging discussion (or even debate), the MSM reaction to Copenhagen is to try to shut down critics. When officials cut off the microphone of a questioner, only the Washington Times reports it. Where there could be agreement (e.g., hybrid cars, nuclear power), there is only grandstanding on crisis claims.

The public is not buying the propaganda approach. What to do? Get a new public?

For nearly a year we have been urging Mr. Obama to be the kind of president he promised to be: one who listens, who tries to find common ground, who is genuinely bi-partisan. Had he followed that path he could have had a health bill by now that enjoyed Republican as well as Democratic support and he could have had energy and environmental policies that were reasonable, forward looking and productive. The reason these paths have not been pursued has to be ideological. It is not smart politics or statesman-like policy.

Oddly, even the liberal base (e.g., Howard Dean) isn't happy now. The Administration is failing, and while that is good political news for Republicans, it probably is bad for American leadership in the world. Only on Afghanistan, where the President actually has listened (to Defense Secretary Bob Gates) is his approach working.

Why wait, as Bill Clinton did, for a mid-term defeat in the Congressional elections for a mid-term correction in policy, Mr. President?

A couple of tourists from Georgia were on what they thought was the White House tour, an even better tour, they surely must have thought, than they had expected. They were ushered right into breakfast and had a chance to meet the President.

The surprise visit happened several weeks ago, but just came to light--not long after the famous gate-crashers episode during the state dinner for the prime minister of India.

The folks from Hogansville, GA were there as bona fide tourists, albeit a day early. Can't call them "gate crashers", can you?

Al Gore says Arctic Ice will melt within five years, except that the expert he cites disputes the assertion. As usual these days, the Nobel Prize winner isn't taking questions from the media.

Some 1200 limos have been hired for the Copenhagen summit, so many that they had to be brought in from hundreds of kilometers around. Denmark didn't have enough.

Mayor Bloomberg flew in on a private jet to demonstrate firsthand his commitment to keeping a small carbon footprint--for other people. Prince Charles pleaded with the attendees to put their signatures on something or other, and, of course, we are all eager to comply with the instructions of the Prince of Wales. Arnold Schwartzenegger was there (fly in, fly out), to say that climate change is completely affordable, just asked the totally broke state of Cali-for-nia.

Poor countries represented at the conference are incensed, as they usually are at U.N. meetings of all kinds, that the "rich" countries, including Cali-for-nia, aren't handing out enough money to them. Actually, the "countries" aren't agitated at all, just the professional bureaucrats and action agents whose job prospects merge seamlessly with U.N. handouts.

And Tony Blair arrived with a big snowstorm. The best development yet.

Meanwhile, the most sober reflections on the issue of global warming come from people far from Copenhagen, including climate scientist Dr. Michael Hume those who see the folly of forcing science to carry the freight for politics.

Even some supposed conservatives at Little Green Footballs are trying to downplay Climategate, the "phony" and "unimaginatively titled" scandal.

George Gilder sees through it:

These guys want you to believe that their opponents are talk show hosts and other people seeming to rant. They carefully ignore Arthur Robinson, Fred Singer, Freeman Dyson, Antonio Zichici and the many other scientific "deniers."

Meanwhile they allow the debate to be governed by Al Gore's and James Hansen's Nobel laureate and Academy Award balderdash. They actually straight-face Holdren as a scientist. I'll take Rush any time.

Diane Medved's blog, Bright Light Search, expresses the generous and sensible views of an Orthodox Jew on many subjects, including Christmas. Last year she had a fabulous time at the Bush's Chanukah party in the White House, which employed most of the same decorations as the Christmas parties. This year she has noted the strange development that the Chanukah party has been downgraded by the Obamas, and so, too, have the Christmas celebrations.

Now even the media are a bit miffed, it seems, because lead reporters have cherished the special occasion when they get their picture taken with the President and First Lady. Their gift this year is not exactly coal and switches, but it's down to a last-minute party, a smaller list of invitees and no pictures.

I was invited to one of the G.W. Bush's Christmas parties a couple of years ago and took my oldest son. It was well worth the trip to D.C. In the 80s, when I was on the White House staff, my wife and I recall with fondness the Christmas party where we had a chance to mingle and chat with President Reagan and Nancy. Such moments are precious.

I can understand why the Obamas resent the strain of attending so many holiday events. But they are coming off as grumpy and mean (in the sense of smallness).

A nonsense tale worthy of Hans Christian Andersen is playing out live in his homeland of Denmark today. Developing countries at the Copenhagen climate conference reportedly are "furious" about a leaked climate agreement text that "rich countries" (including the U.S., the U.K. and host country, Denmark) hope to push through. It would "allow" the rich countries to pollute at twice the levels of poor countries and take the U.N. out of the climate control process. At least, that is what the developing countries contend.

This is going to be a classic international performance, full of fulsome speeches, ultimately signifying nothing but the folly of imagining that mere words and "commitments" will do anything about carbon dioxide or anything else.

The Danish text exposed

Agreements won't end pollution, new technologies will. Agreements won't force compliance, free markets with proper incentives will.

Meanwhile, the shade of the great storyteller is looking down and wondering, is this performance going to turn an ugly duckling into a swan? Not likely. The story is more along the lines of the Emperor's New Clothes.

A year ago the nation was in love with Barack Obama and blissful about Hope and Change. Today the latest CNN poll says that the President's popularity has fallen under 50 percent--48 percent, actually.

Meanwhile, a number of progressive causes seem to be flagging. For example, enactment of gay marriage laws failed in Maine (by public vote) and this week in the New York Senate. The legislative outlook has turned sour in New Jersey's Senate, as well, and activists in California have concluded--after conducting a study--that the political chances for same sex marriage have declined there, too. The President may or may not be prepared to do battle for repeal of the DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), but if the topic is toxic in New Jersey, how appetizing will it be on Capitol Hill?

Despite the endless media accounts of global warming and strong White House backing, Cap and Trade prospects seem to be colder than today's early winter snow in Houston. The ClimateGate scandal still has not been covered by the big three broadcast networks--and when it is covered it probably will be with a report on the "hacker" (aka, the leaker or whistleblower), rather than on the possibly shabby research methods behind the climate change "consensus". Nonetheless, the word seems to be getting out. Polls that already were negative on Cap and Trade are now decidedly so.

But instead of seeking common ground (nuclear energy, natural gas, conservation), the cultural and environmental left seems determined to push economic overehaul rather than energy reform.

Next we have the Afghanistan policy--and another split on the left. Conservatives seem more or less united in support of a troop surge (my Discovery Institute colleague John R. Miller is an able exception). And almost all conservatives are critical of the President for being unclear about our goal.

But on the left there is confusion and resentment on the whole topic. Isolationism in the 21st century has its home in the Democratic party. Effective pacifism is now the altar where the activist base worships. But the Democratic office-holders who have to get elected on the national level are realistic enough to see that the U.S. cannot abandon the war on terrorism, even if it no longer is P.C. to describe it as a "war on terrorism." Afghanistan will open the split wider.

Meanwhile, the biggest reason the air seems to be going out of the "progressive" balloon is the economy. Once again, the right seems substantially in agreement that the amount of government spending is wantonly irresponsible and also that taxes should be cut, not raised, to spur the investment to create jobs. (Remember, that was the Reagan formula.) They also hold that government regulatory failure--starting in Congress--was largely to blame for the recent real estate bubble. But on the left, Democrats cannot decide what to do about spending or taxes. The famously problematic health care issue is no political substitute for dealing with the economy as a whole, yet it has absorbed most of the Administration's attention and the House's, too. The left's divisions on all these topics are now in the open.

So, less than eleven months into the Obama Administration, man made change in the Earth's climate is a lot less certain than change in the political climate.

Nearly a half century ago, leaving office, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of a "military-industrial complex" that promoted particular new weapons systems and, hence, concomitant budgetary and foreign commitments. In other words, warned the former five star general, selfish professional ambitions and interests can create a false perception of national interest.

The term "military-industrial complex" has become famous. Neuroscientist Michael Egnor reminds us, however, that Ike's farewell address also warned of development of a grants-corrupted "scientific-technological elite."

"Today," President Eisenhower said, "the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded."

"Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should," he continued, "we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite."

Today, almost fifty years later, we are seeing the mature fruits of a Government-Foundation- Academia complex in science. It is beginning to appear almost as sinister and corrupt as the military-industrial complex ever was. It is wanton hubris to assert that "science" and the agenda of the Government-Foundation-Academia complex are the same and that to criticize the latter is to be "anti-science." In truth, that kind of smear is just the problem with the system now coming under investigation. Even if man-made global warming is just as bad as we have been told, the case for it is undermined by efforts to suppress data and stigmatize opponents.

It isn't just the emails about covered up information, it also is the huge store of bogus data--out of control studies--that the Climate Research Unit (CRU) pretended to rely upon. Lorrie Goldstein describes it in the Toronto Sun, relying, apparently, on a close reading of the voluminous documents by CBS News' columnist, Declan McCullagh. Note, however, that McCullagh's investigation is not getting a lot of support from CBS. Indeed, the MSM are in denial.

Humorous political writer Mark Steyn has it right about the corruptible peer review process that helped keep the Climate Research Unit in charge of global climate studies.

"'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' wondered Juvenal: Who watches the watchmen? But the beauty of the climate-change tree-ring circus is that you never need to ask "Who peer-reviews the peer-reviewers?" Mann peer-reviewed Jones, and Jones peer-reviewed Mann, and anyone who questioned their theories got exiled to the unwarmed wastes of Siberia. "

Meanwhile political humor writer Iowa Hawk has this delicious take on the way peer review operates as a grant seeking hive.

The perpetrators of the ClimateGate scandal are trying hard to minimize the significance of their email trail and what it reveals of efforts to prejudice climate change discussions. The obfuscation and hand-waving are working (of course, and as usual) with The New York Times and certain other major media. The BBC had the story and attempted to spike it. But the story is just too compelling to suppress in other outlets and on the Internet.

Scientists know that this is an honest tattle-tale moment. They know that the treatment of dissenters has been disgraceful. First you say they can't be heard because they haven't published in supposedly sacrosanct "peer-reviewed journals," then you keep them from appearing in those journals; then, when a journal does publish them, you denounce the journal as--by definition--"unscientific".

It's nice to see The Wall Street Journal and other leading organs take up this issue of authoritarianism. Lorrie Goldstein of the Toronto Sun further points out that money and power are central to the climate change debate and that Big Government provides money to push in a certain direction.

In the practical world of politics and public policy, the ClimaeGate scandal further diminishes prospects of an international agreement at the forthcoming climate change summit in Copenhagen.

But what will it take for the media to take up the exactly parallel case of scientists who question the ability of Darwinian natural selection to explain the origin of life and the development of species? In several instances (the Richard Sternberg case, the Guillermo Gonzalez case), email trails have shown a similar attitude of entitlement and coercion. And money in the form of federal grants also suggests a similar pattern of prejudice and cronyism in universities and research institutions, not to mention at supposedly scientific journals.

Or do the media really imagine that the case of climate change is unique?

Politico reports that the annual Chanukah celebration has been downgraded at the Obama White House.

One well remembers the reports of last year's ecstatic celebration, the last of George W. Bush's palpable expressions of admiration for Judaism and Israel. Dancing broke out in joy, Diane Medved reported. People were swept up in the excitement.

What changed?

Young people are conspicuous victims of "federal health care reform." They just don't know it, and opponents are really dim-witted about the subject, imagining that the young will figure it out for themselves. Robert Samuelson describes the truth.

So, when the Republican National Committee calls during the dinner hour, asking for a contribution, I intend to ask them what they are doing about the young--the sweet, ignorant, gullible young.

South Park's Al Gore explains the danger of Manbearpig

The news is filtering out, but growing, that someone "hacked" the U.K global climate science computers and put up emails that suggest a conspiracy to promote global warming against the evidence. Or was it a leak in disguise?

Regardless, there will be a major spin effort to make the story the crime of hacking, while climate skeptics will be pouring over the released data to show how the data on climate change may have been altered and how dissenting scientists have been sabotaged.

Apply Chapman's "Shoe on the Other Foot" rule and imagine the outpouring of journalistic indignation and investigation if the story was that evidence supporting climate warming had been suppressed.

Meanwhile, one can't read the emails and the personal animus they express without seeing the veil of scientific objectivity shredded before his eyes.

What do diplomats do when circumstances change before a scheduled international conference to take action? They put out a resounding statement and pledge to meet again. That is what you can expect from the coming global climate summit in Denmark.

The problem for the global warming hysterics is that the globe is not warming this decade. Activists like Chris Mooney who have tried to smear anyone who questioned the extent or causes of global warming now have to deal with growing dissent within the ranks of climatologists.

How much better it would be for them to try to find common practical ground with doubters. You don't have to buy the idea that human beings have caused global warming to agree that Americans should reduce pollution and reduce dependency on foreign oil--and on oil in general. The Obama Administration that has ditched cap and trade for now could achieve an alternative victory by encouraging conversion to nuclear power and abundant, cleaner burning natural gas. At that point, electricity becomes relatively cheaper and electric cars become viable. Meanwhile, agreement also could be reached on helping developing countries to effect a similar conversion.

Instead, we get endless Chicken Little statements that seem to have increasingly little point.

Pete Defazio is a popular and senior Democrat member of the U.S. House from Oregon and a leader in something called the "Populist Caucus" that was created earlier this year. His call for the resignation of the President's two top economic advisers, Larry Summers and Tim Geitner, should send shudders through the White House.

The misuse of TARP money now reverberates through the President's party on Capitol Hill. It means that the economic recovery is sputtering on Main Street, where it matters most.

Of course, the real scandal is not the salary bonuses at Wall Street, but the way the government has misused stimulus money on low impact, temporary projects that do nothing to create permanent jobs.

Talk to everyone you know and find out how many are investing in new businesses, new technologies, new equipment. Not many. Those who are investing are mostly in fields that are being revolutionized as part of sectoral technological change. Amazon.com does well, a start-up in traffic data, Inrix, does well.

Other people are making money bottom fishing in the old economy; for example, businesses buying up home foreclosures and distressed office buildings.

But try to find a new retail outlet. Drive down Main Street and notice the increasing number of boarded up shops and the office buildings at 4 p.m. whose lights are not burning.

You can blame the high spending, the penchant for demonizing businessmen, increasing regulations and plans for higher taxes. All that is true.

The assertion that Obamacare will lead to lower costs fortunately is not believed by most Americans.

Former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton, a Board Member of Discovery Institute, describes the true situation in the Seattle Times.

Conservatives are lining up some fine arguments against the strange health care beast being shepherded through Congress this season. Oddly, however, as the public as a whole turns against the Obama Administration on health care and other issues, the critics have neglected the young adult constituency that voted 66 percent for Mr. Obama last fall and are the least engaged now in the health care debate.

Move them and you will move the debate substantially. So far, the critics are not making the effort. They attack rationing, Medicate cuts that threaten seniors, lack of controls on tort excesses and much else. But they don't address the interest of the young.

Yet there is every reason that young voters should be anxious about the health care bill that recently passed the House, as well as the bills under consideration in the Senate. They stand to lose a bundle.

Among other things, as papers from CATO (libertarian) and the Urban Institute (liberal) make clear, the House bill provides for "community rating" that will prohibit insurance companies from offering young people--who are almost always "low risk" so far as health is concerned-- commensurately lower rates for health insurance. It doesn't matter whether their health now is good, whether they eat right and don't smoke and exercise regularly. Effectively, young people--unless they are poor and therefore subsidized--will see the price of health insurance skyrocket.

Moreover (here's the kicker), under the "individual mandate" they will find they must buy such insurance. The new law requires it. They can even go to jail if they don't.

In short, young people are going to be forced for the first time to have health insurance and, and unless they are the subsidized poor, they are going to pay through the nose for it. How popular can that be?

Popular enough, so long as the young people involved don't know about it until it is too late. As is, young adults tend to think health care "reform" is just apple pie and Mom, something all good people should support. They haven't bothered to learn about it. And no one is telling them. For example, if the Republican National Committee has any significant outreach to college students and other young adults on this topic, it is keeping the message secret.

Again: the highest level of support remaining for the Obama Administration and its health care bill(s) are young voters. If they desert, the bill's base will be greatly weakened. So, why are they not being educated about the bill by its critics?

Dr. Steven Hayward, historian and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, visited Discovery Institute this week to discuss his new book, The Age of Reagan (volume two, the presidential years). Here is how he handled my question asking him to compare President Obama's idea of bi-partisanship with Reagan's. "The large majorities Obama has are (also) his curse," says Hayward. See the video after the jump.

The Democrats are now in a fix. If they advance the House bill--with its anti-abortion language--they risk losing some 40 pro-choice members on a final vote, not to mention certain Senators meanwhile. If the Senate strips the anti-abortion language out (or the Conference Committee does), Speaker Pelosi faces a final vote defection of about 40 pro-life Democrats.

Discovery colleague Jay Richards discusses the conundrum at the "American" (AEI) site today.

Oct. 10, 2009: When Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies, turned into a hockey rink.

The hurricane season of 2005 (Katrina) supposedly showed the way global warming is increasing the frequency and intensity of hurricanes. You haven't heard much of that theory lately. This past season has been downright boring.

Now we find that the cooling trend of the past decade is continuing. Some areas of the U.S. had record cold temperatures last month.

Here is another useful NOAA map.

Ingratitude is part of human nature. So, too, is the convenient memory lapse. In Germany itself we see reports recently of East Germans who mourn the loss of the old DDR, though they quickly add that they surely wouldn't want the old system to return. West Germans, in turn, are quick to count the cost of rehabilitating the East after reunification, but they fail to mention the priceless gift of increased national unity and security.

Our friends at CEI have made a perfect short video to help us all remember and keep this anniversary of the Wall's fall in historic context.

Meanwhile, this afternoon at Discovery Institute we are hosting Steven Hayward, whose truth-telling chronological history of the Reagan Administration--The Age of Reagan--is a riveting reconstruction of a period too often represented now in a kind of gauzy glow. In fact, as Hayward shows, the Reagan years were tumultuous and sometimes even frightening for those who fought its battles. The judgement that they had been hugely successful was not clear until well after President Reagan left office. Unfortunately, human nature also can create a false nostalgia.

Hayward's book is like a splash of cold water in the face in the morning. It wakes you up. It is not agreeable at once, but then it refreshes and encourages. It helps you face the pessimism of now.

Amendment co-author Bart Stupak

Most coverage of the U.S. House vote late last night adopting the Pelosi health care bill ignored or downplayed the successful last minute amendment to prohibit use of federal health care funds to perform abortions. The consequences would seem to reach beyond the Hyde Amendment language of the past. The vote on the "Stupak-Pitts" pro-life amendment was 240 to 194.

Prof-life backers are trying to contain their enthusiasm. They point out that the bill, as adopted, has many other problems that will trouble pro-lifers. Dr. Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life emailed supporters that, "While we applaud the passage of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, serious concerns about H.R. 3962 remain. The Rules Committee did not permit amendments to address concerns about conscience protection, the use of comparative effectiveness research and end of life provisions."

Planned Parenthood's President, Cecile Richards, meanwhile, was stunned and indignant over the vote, seeing it as a rollback of women's health. "Simply put," she declared in a message to supporters, "the Stupak/Pitts amendment would restrict women's access to abortion coverage in the private health insurance market, undermining the ability of women to purchase private health plans that cover abortion, even if they pay for most of the premiums with their own money. This amendment reaches much further than the Hyde Amendment, which has prohibited public funding of abortion in most instances since 1977."

Feminist groups now say they may oppose the bill altogether if comes out of the Senate with similar pro-life language. On her blog this afternoon, Jane Fonda (after reporting on the cold she caught) issued a call to arms over the health bill.

On the other side of the issue, there suddenly is new interest in the bill by the Catholic Bishops, whose main objection has been abortion.

Regardless, the House amendment was still a signal accomplishment for pro-life forces that have have been struggling in the new Washington, D.C. environment. What happens next should be interesting. The battles won't stay behind the scenes and out of the mainstream news very long.

One reads over Jim Baker's article for the new Newsweek, looking for acknowledgement of President Ronald Reagan's crucial role in bringing down the Berlin Wall in 1989. It turns out that Reagan is mentioned by Baker, but only in passing. Others are credited more.

But it was Reagan who rebuilt America's military might, confronted the Soviets around the world, promoted Star Wars and revived the American economy while the Soviet's command economy was crumbling. In diplomacy, it was Reagan who pursued "peace through strength" when dealing--brilliantly--with Mikhail Gorbachev.

It was Ronald Reagan who stood before the Wall in 1987 and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The famous declaration was made in the teeth of advice from his own White House staff and top State Department officials that he not provoke the Russians and embarrass the Germans. The famous line, writes Steven Hayward in his fine new history of the time, The Age of Reagan, actually was extracted from early drafts of the speech text several times by would-be in-house censors. The President kept putting it back in. Hayward describes a conversation between the President and his aide, Kenneth Duberstein, in which Reagan actually has to remind his own staffer that he is the President and the staffer is not!

Ronald Reagan does not deserve all of the credit for the end of "The Evil Empire," as he called it (also famously, and to the howls of his domestic critics). But he deserves a lot of the credit, along with Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher, one should say, and, of course, countless Eastern European martyrs to freedom and such luminary intellects as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. So, yes, give credit to Mikhail Gorbachev, to George H. Bush, and, by the way, to Jim Baker, too. But without Ronald Reagan it probably would not have happened.

James Baker was Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush at the time the wall came down, ten months after Reagan left office. (He was Chief of Staff in the Reagan White House in the early years.) I well recall Mr. Baker's reaction the day in 1989 that the wall first was pried open by East German youth. I was watching TV, thrilled, tears coming to my eyes.

Secretary Baker was asked (by CNN, I think) for his reaction. He said he thought it was "a good first step." I couldn't get over that tepid reaction. I said to the television: "A good first step, Jim? The Berlin Wall is coming down!"

It is likely that the Mr. Baker was just being professionally cautious. After all, he must have thought it important not to celebrate too much in public while the Soviets could still use troops to quell the change.

Still, Jim Baker seemed as surprised as anyone.

In contrast was Ronald Reagan, who often had predicted the defeat of communism. He worked most of his adult life to that end. He also and a very few others also saw ahead to the fall of the Wall. Give him due credit.

PLEASE NOTE: I will have the pleasure of introducing Steve Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan, at Discovery Institute headquarters, 208 Columbia, Seattle at 4:30 p.m. Monday--the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Wall. Email Mollie Tschida at molliet@discovery.org if you'd like to join us.

King Country (Seattle), Washington is getting a reputation as home to the nation's longest delays in counting ballots. The problems now are chronic. Operating an all-mail system mean central office delays in checking signatures that used to be checked at hundreds of polling places. The state law that allows ballots to count if they are post-marked anytime before midnight on election day further compounds the wait. And, this year there is yet another innovation in causing delays, the bureaucratic decision at King County to hold up returns for a full day after each new batch of a few thousand is reported. On election night there was a report at 8:15 and then nothing--until the next afternoon at 4:30, when a few percent more trickled in. Same thing today. (The elections report schedule shows ballots being counted daily until November 24.) The County has budget problems but no one is saying how they are effectng the counting of ballots.

As of Thursday afternoon, the mayor's race in Seattle is still undecided and, apparently, only about 50 to 60 percent of the ballots cast have been received and counted. Delays in King County have been long enough in close races of recent years to keep the issue of victory in doubt for weeks and to start attracting lawyers like political vultures. If you want anxiety and contention, go with this system.

The old system usually worked fine. Most votes were tallied and reported election night. People who were ill or out of town cast absentee ballots, but these were not numerous enough to overwhelm the elections staff. Polls closed at 8 p.m.--period. Soon after the polls closed the "early returns" were reported, and then new reports continued being reported through much of the night. In Washington, as in many states now, a near-complete tally was often available by midnight.

Same day voting in Washington State's past--and in other states now--meant that the community aspect of voting was respected. Voters all got the same information about the candidates from the media and the candidates at the same time, as (to repeat) they still do in most of the country. People also received the election results together during the evening after the election. There often was a satisfying drama about it--the democratic process in relatively efficient and transparent operation.

Today in Washington, we face the prospect of election campaigns in the future where a truly important late-breaking event or development will not be reflected in a major way at the polls because a large part of the electorate already has voted. ("If only I had known!"," people will say.) Indeed, the old rhythm of campaigns has been disrupted has been disrupted and it can be said that some election results might be different if people voted en bloc on one given day. As to ending the vote gathering at a time-certain, this past Tuesday evening, after the first vote tally reports, it became clear that the race for mayor in Seattle was a near tie, so workers for one candidate actually went out looking for more voters who could be helped to vote, with the resulting ballots then taken to a late-night post office near the airport.

To be sure, there is certain pleasure in sitting around the kitchen table now, perhaps as a family, and deciding how to vote--and actually voting--and preparing the ballot for the mail. But in the recent past (and in most of America) you and your family could still go over a sample ballot and the information in the voters pamphlet together. On election day in the recent past you had the satisfaction of seeing your neighbors doing their civic duty at the polls. (See Steve Buri's article from Crosscut below.) And you did not have to worry, as now, about the potential for fraud when special interests corral the otherwise uninterested and effectively vote them.

What we have now is technological regress, not progress. In the computer era things have slowed down more than in the 19th century when ballots were cast on paper, or in Canada today, where national election results by riding (district) are available within about two hours.

Has all-absentee balloting increased participation? Not a lot, apparently. But it certainly has increased frustration and doubt.

Now imagine if the whole country adopted this system!

Postscript: Secretary of State Sam Reed has asked the Washington Legislature to require that the mail-in ballots be received by election night. The legislators have not acted on this reform for the obvious reason that people won't trust the Post Office to deliver the ballots to the elections officers on time. How do you know that the ballot mailed on Monday will arrive by the next day, for example? The proposed reform still would represent an improvement on the system we have now. But it is not the full answer. Thanks especially to King County, Washington State's election system has been painted into a corner.

My take on the voting process in King County (below), appeared in today's issue of Crosscut. The original article appears here.

On November 3, 1992, I strode into the United Methodist Church in Colfax, Washington to cast my first ballot in a U.S. presidential election. I remember the moment vividly -- not only because I was doing my part to help choose the next leader of the free world, but because of the excitement I felt at the people I saw there, working the polling site. Colfax is a small town farming community of 2,800 so, in a sense, the people were the same ones who helped raise me and instill within me many of the values that I hold today. Key among them was the responsibility to vote: both to exercise my constitutional right and to honor the sacrifice of those who had given their lives to preserve it.

Fast forward to the present, in King County, and to the convenience of Vote-by-Mail. Sadly, while the ballot represents the same sacrifice, it is relegated to the status of my cable bill -- both due on a date certain. But it gets tackier. In King County, ballots must be postmarked on or before Election Day. That means that many of the ballots cast won't arrive at the elections office until several days after the election is over. Most races by that point will have been decided, rendering those late ballots effectively meaningless. (Okay, not really, but are they really that meaningful if they have little to no impact on the outcome?)

Three years ago this month Discovery Institute reported on massive new North American explorations of oil and gas--especially gas--that offered to transform the energy scene and the economies of the United State, Canada and Mexico. My colleague, Charles Ganske, and I described how these developments could liberate North America from dependence on overseas energy, with very positive effects on international relations.

Interstate pipelines (in the blue) and intrastate pipelines (red) blanket the country. Graph courtesy of the Energy Information Administration.

Last week in this space, and on Russia Blog, I commented on the recent article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the London Telegraph about the World Conference on Gas that took place in Buenos Aires and the growing optimism that natural gas is becoming so abundant as to blow away the pessimism about energy--and even about global warming, since the carbon effects of gas are far less than for oil or coal.

Today The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by Daniel Yergin (author of the The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power) and Robert Ineson of IHS CERA--"America's Natural Gas Revolution"--detailing the way the new gas discoveries already are expanding America's ability to lean more on domestic natural gas.

Sometimes it takes a while for major news to break through into the mainstream media, especially, and perversely, if the developments reported are helpful to America's national interests. In this case, it also is a way to help meet concerns about climate change (regardless of one's opinions on the topic). It would help if our leaders would take note, and allow themselves to applaud. This is real "change we can believe in." It is happening now.

Usually it is productive for left and right to get together on a common reform; but, not always. Instead of getting the best of both perspectives, you can get the worst of both. That is what happened in the early 70s when liberals who wanted to free the occasional sane person from mental hospitals teamed up with conservatives who wanted to save the money they thought was being wasted on state hospitals for the mentally ill.

"De-institutionalization" may have offered freedom to the unusual person who had been confined unwisely, but it resulted in many more people with disabling mental conditions being set loose on the streets.

We wound up liberating people with serious disorders from those who could help them, and ending the relative minor costs of mental institutions and greatly adding to the costs of emergency health care, police protection and assorted housing and food expenses. Addled street people can be, and often are, dangerous to others. And the homeless can wind up dead. Read Mike Johnson of the Union Gospel's Mission's account and ask yourself why public officials are not addressing this problem in the ways he describes.

Can't liberals and conservatives come together again: this time to find a pathway--not backward to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--but forward to humane, common sense policies that provide long term mental care for some and part time care for others? There are many homeless people who aren't insane, of course, but it would be a huge improvement for those who are mentally ill--and for the homeless problem overall--if they were separated out and provided treatment.

You do not have to be a statistician (I'm not) to appreciate the work of someone like Carl Bialik who writes the Numbers Guy column for the Wall Street Journal. When I served at the Census Bureau during the Reagan Administration I privately urged the Journal editors to create such a post and find some who not only could crunch numbers, but write well. Belatedly (by a few decades), it has happened. Bialik is the man. Regardless, there is nothing else like this column in mainstream journalism.

Yesterday's Numbers Guy piece, "Ill-Conceived Ranking Makes for Unhealthy Debate", is a fine example expert reportage made pertinent to everyone. I especially like the article because it validates some of the assertions on health care I made a few days ago (October 19, below)!

Peter Huber is one of our best science writers, mainly because he sees through the hooey of official jargon. In Forbes this week he disassembles the Chinese position on carbon, which, itself is a response to disingenuous pleas from the West.

It is a remarkable, but largely unremarked history: the Pullman Porters of America's legendary passenger rail past. A short article in the AARP Bulletin's November/December issue connects to a longer site online and a five minute film by Seattlite Thomas H. Gray on one of the most significant chapters in the rise of the black middle class and the success of the civil rights movement. There is ambivalence in this story. On one hand, a segregated, servant class job. On the other, the dignity of upwardly mobile opportunity in the pre-civil rights era.

Fine men were engaged in this hard work. In all cases, the story is surrounded by the haunting call of the train whistle, leading on, moving ahead.

Ross Douthat's column in The New York Times today shows the benefit of a generalist's attacking a specialist's problem, in this case health care. The problem itself, as we have known for years, is a mare's nest of complex, often-hidden trade-offs. Douthat manages to clarify while simplifying. His solution of universal care for catastrophic illness is sensible and useful.

Universal coverage for catastrophic health care may not be as difficult, however, as Mr. Douthat believes. It's my personal view that we don't need vouchers for such policies (the conservative choice), or a federal insurance policy (a liberal alternative). We can provide the catastrophic health care covered in most insurance policies today, and then subsidize existing public health hospitals and clinics for all those not included in the private system.

Be careful what you sign!

The Ninth Circuit Court, in an extremely terse opinion, has reversed a lower court ruling that the Washington State Secretary of State could not release the names of people who signed Referendum 71, the proposal to roll back recognition of homosexual unions.

My own terse opinion is that the Ninth Circuit has set in motion actions that either will lead to a state legislative fix (disallowing the publication of initiative and referendum names in the future) or it permanently will chill the tradition of direct democracy in Washington and other supposedly progressive states in a fashion that many of those celebrating this decision have not bothered to consider.

As a former state Secretary of State and a former Director of the U. S. Census Bureau I cannot imagine anything more sure to deter participation in the initiative and referendum process than the threat that one's signature may be made public. No, it is not the same as voting, but neither is jury decision-making or filling out a Census form. Think what would happen to participation in the Census if one's information could be made public. (It can be, but only after 70 years!) And as in those other cases of civic participation, the government should be eager to assure participants that their actions will not lead to the danger of harassment or public notoriety.

Maybe the Initiative and Referendum petitions from now on should have a "Warning" label on them that "Signing this list is a political activity and can result in publication of your name." After all, ordinary people are now advised that their privacy is to be set aside in the same way that politicians' privacy was set aside years ago.

I personally think the initiative and referendum process is overused in Washington State and elsewhere. But this solution, unless reversed on appeal, is a perverse way to deal with such a defect.

The Joint Committee on Taxation was asked by Sen. Orrin Hatch to figure out who will bear the brunt of the cost of the Baucus bill just passed in committee. Here is an account of the resulting report: the middle class, mostly.

There are certain statements by presidential candidates that you know, when you hear them, are destined for the contradiction of experience. One was Jimmy Carter saying, "I will never lie to you." Another was George W. Bush saying that anyone on his staff even caught in an apparent unethical lapse would be fired at once. Another, for sure, was Barack Obama's promise never to raise the taxes of anyone making under $250,000 a year.

America's national interest and the safety of the world lies in successful prosecution of the war on terrorism--by whatever name you call it. Accordingly, a full year before the next Congressional election it ought to be possible to forge a bi-partisan consensus on a crucial element in that struggle: the war in Afghanistan. This is not just about tactics. It is about political will and a determination to sustain it.

If the two parties in Washington, DC can get their respective acts together, the public will agree. In to win--and there is no other reason to be there.

The fungible Mr. Cameron

The London Times tells us that a poll shows the Conservatives of Britain are more popular than the Labor Party, but only because the Laborites are so unpopular.

In other words, the U.K. public are prepared to throw out Labor and return the Tories, but only because they want to get rid of Gordon Brown and Co. They are not inspired by the Conservatives, just itching to show their displeasure.

That is not a sign of long term of hope for the Conservatives. To make matters worse, the Tory leader--the fungible Mr. Cameron--is more popular than his party.

Two thoughts: 1) Image is triumphing over substance in many countries these days. The British survey has no particular programmatic aspect to it, for example. 2) Polls, as Discovery senior fellow John Miller indicated in his New York Times piece Saturday, and as George Gilder has said repeatedly, are not reliable indicators of significant public viewpoints.

Partisanship and publicity distort rather than refine policy options today. It's not just in the U.K. The people who try to roll everything into a poll are damaging serious public deliberation. Parties that are poll-driven are making a glib mistake. Live by imagery, die by imagery.

Andrew Breitbart, who learned of the videos of Acorn staff making now-infamous suggestions to supposed seekers of federally supported home mortgages, is a conservative public relations man. He also is an internet entrepreneur who, ironically, was an organizer of the the liberal Huffington Post site.

This story, Breitbart saw, was huge. Here apparently were publicly backed non-profit Acorn staff--in one city after another--offering help to a man and woman who said they wanted to open a brothel; a brothel, no less, for young girls brought in from El Salvador.

Breitbart, who shrewdly suggested sending out the explosive videos ad seriatim, rather than all at once, made it possible for the story to break slowly and then build. The story marks another triumph for new media.

Regardless, what the young amateur investigators found, and Breitbart helped publicize, merits appointment of an independent counsel. An inquiry conducted within the Department of Justice will not suffice.

The videos may be just a glimpse inside Acorn. Lending credibility to suspicions of wider malfeasance are public lawsuits over alleged electioneering fraud by Acorn, including one attracting attention this past week in Nevada

The Census Bureau, stung by Judicial Watch FOIAs that inquired into Acorn activities with the coming 2010 Decennial Census and wisely worried about the perceived integrity of the census count, cut off relations with Acorn several weeks ago. Then other federal agencies did, as well. Congress fled for the exists--even many former friends of Acorn.

Now foundations are dropping Acorn, and some are saying (belatedly) that they have been suspicious of the organization for some time.

It also appears that Acorn benefitted from a number of possibly coerced deals with banks that were given to understand that their own good relations with the federal government, and such quasi-governmental bodies as Fannie Mae, depended on agreements to fund Acorn programs.

Special prosecutors have been over-used in recent decades. But a volatile scandal like this one needs to be put into conspicuously disinterested hands. If the problems aren't thoroughly and fairly investigated, they are likely to happen again in a new guise.

Our senior fellow John Miller appears in today's New York Times to tell why international popularity polls are so unreliable. This is timely, given the defeat yesterday of Chicago's bid for the 2016 Olympics bid. If President Obama's charisma was as overwhelming as some in the media imagine, one might have thought that after his personal arrival in Copenhagen to argue Chicago's case that Chicago would have come in first. Instead it came in fourth.

But, almost to console the President, Miller points out the way that international popularity is a poor guide to how well America is doing, or anything else.

Polls have very little use in domestic politics and almost none in foreign affairs. At least they shouldn't. Study human nature instead, Mr. President--and national interest.

One hopes the President bears this in mind as he develops his policies on Afghanistan and Iran.

Trade relations between the United States and Canada suffered an apparent rupture last year when candidate Barack Obama suggested that he would "re-open" the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada (especially) and Mexico. Then came a "Buy American" campaign once President Obama was in office.

The re-opening of NAFTA was quietly buried. Now we appear close to a settlement of the "Buy American" campaign, at least so far as Canada, our biggest trading partner, is concerned. The Canadians have kept their cool, as did America's professionals in trade diplomacy, and this issue, too, seems likely to fade. That's progress.

This was always about the politics of pleasing the unions in the U.S. But, one supposes, so much else has been done in that regard that the unions are willing to let this one slide.

Public support for passing what is called "health care reform" (any of the several bills before Congress) is lower than ever (41%), according to the new Rassmussen Poll; this, despite last week's furious presidential publicity campaign for "reform". Only 33% of senior citizens back the bill, and the great majority of seniors not only oppose it, but are "strongly" opposed.

On health care, I have invoked in the past the Machiavellian political precept that an angry minority opposition is more significant than a supportive majority that is only luke-warm. (The angry minority will take action, while the passive majority is less likely to do so.) Now, however, the Obama Administration appears to face a majority that is hostile and motivated.

(That was then.)

The mystery remains the young. Several analyses have pointed out that young, healthy people are going to be forced to buy expensive health insurance, or failing to do so, will be fined or even put into jail. Somehow, that reality has not yet sunk into the awareness of the great mass of young voters--still the strongest bastion of support for the Administration's health care ambitions. Maybe no one on university campuses or on The Daily Show has bothered to tell them.

(Update: Senate panel fails twice to adopt "public option".

The news is that Social Security will pay out more than it takes in for the next two years because job layoffs and early retirement decisions have increased the demand for payments. True enough.

But how many Americans (may we see a poll?) understand that there is no Social Security fund in the first place, that the money you pay each month in Social Security taxes goes into no such fund--but into the general coffers of the Federal Government--and that we really are at point (and past it for the next two years) when spending on Social Security finally exceeds income from Social Security taxes?

Can a tax hike and/or benefits reductions be long away?

Meanwhile, add this new item to the list of runaway Federal deficit spending.

The traditional conservative parties in Germany, the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian state counterparts, the Christian Social Union (CDU) managed to meet 33 percent at the polls today, and their desired free market allies, the Free Democrats (FDP) substantially increased their numbers from 9.8 percent in 2005 to just under 15 percent today, according to exit poll projections.

This means that Prime Minister Angela Merkel can dissolve the government links with the sagging Social Democrats (SPD), who achieved an historic low 23 percent, while also preserving a small parliamentary majority over the combined power of the parties of the left, including the Greens and the former East German communists, the Linke.

Immediately, this points to continued support for NATO in Afghanistan, where Germany has been solid, despite the unpopularity of the war, and it means belt-tightening for government spending and, possibly--given FDP policies--investor stimulation in the way of tax cuts.

All of this will give courage to conservatives elsewhere, not only in America and Canada, but in the U.K., where national elections are expected soon and the Labor government of Gordon Brown is in increasingly distress.

Whenever someone says that the terms of the proposed health care are not as onerous as critics allege, the response is to charge the critic with distortion, even deceit. Now Senator John Ensign (R-NV) has squeezed out of the Joint Committee on Taxation staff the fact that, yes, if you fail to have health insurance and refuse to buy it, you can face a fine of $1,900, and if you don't pay that you can go to jail.

The acknowledgement came after Sen. Ensign pursued tough questioning to get at the truth. This is how the committee process is Congress is supposed to operate and too seldom does.

In case you want to pick your own doctor, examine the linked chart. Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee are having a good time explaining to people how the health care bill drafted by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) actually will work in practice. It makes dealings with your private insurance company look like a snap in comparison.

Some news stories say that President Obama supports the Baucus bill, though, truly, it is next to impossible to pin the White House down on exactly what bill and its provisions the President does back. The President's "plan" is thus a constantly moving target. How does one chart that?

George Gilder considers Thomas Sowell to be America's leading intellectual. That embraces his economics, legal insights and philosophy, at the least. "He could have held all kinds of jobs in government," George says, "but he just wants to write!"

He also can write for the ordinary person, in a way reminiscent of Ronald Reagan. Here's an example you can share with your kids. (It's also a fit thought for the end of the baseball season.)

Machiavelli, the Dick Morris of medieval Florence, warned readers of The Prince that when opinion is divided between a minority that feels passionately and a majority whose passion is weak, the minority may prove more potent in the end. The passionate minority will act on their feelings, while the uninspired majority may not.

Right now, as polls show, opinion on health care reform (so called) is about evenly divided. But polls are only snapshots of opinion and the proponents are counting on a vague appeal--not specific elements in a bill--to win the day. But, opponents are confident of long term success on the politics because the members of the public who are suspicious of what is going on in Washington on this issue are almost sure to remember it and vote accordingly.

Russian authorities are happy, Czech and Polish officials feel as if they have been used and abused by the United States, and Republicans are outraged that President Obama has decided to scrap plans to build a missile defense in Eastern Europe. The stated purpose was to guard Europe against intimidation by a nuclear Iran, but Russia professed to feel threatened and encircled. Now, presumably, Russians don't feel threatened and Iranians feel liberated to move ahead with nuclear development.

But here is the real test of this decision: did the U.S. gain anything by it in terms of protection of Europe (and Israel) against Iranian nukes? The next few months will tell.

The USSR and the USA were strangely but truly united in working against nuclear proliferation for a couple of decades--the 70s and 80s. In my time as US ambassador to the UN Organizations in Vienna in the 1980s this was the one field of relations in which mutual cooperation was sincere and real. Indeed, the way in which the United States came closer to the USSR at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Ukraine in 1986 may be cited as a key turning point in the Cold War. The Soviets realized that we really didn't want to humiliate them, but only to help them deal with a real crisis. It led to a breakthrough that extended beyond the nuclear realm.

In those days the Soviets were clear that they did not want Iran to develop nuclear arms. Now, with the new Russian regime, oddly, the government's posture is not so sure. If the Russians really do think that Iran--snuggled right up against them--poses no nuclear danger, their leadership surely has lost its sense of long term strategy.

As is, it appears that the Obama Administration has managed to offend our Eastern European allies and to make a unilateral concession to Russian sensibilities. Other allies are sure to take note and become cautious. Maybe (as I believe) the missile system was over-rated and presented in a strangely maladroit manner. Still, it hardly makes sense to give it up for nothing in return.

But what if there is a background understanding between the White House and the Kremlin? If there is, and Russia comes around to joining Europe and the US in firmly opposing Iranian nuclear ambitions, it will be a major Obama accomplishment as well as a real "reset" of US-Russian relations.

If nothing is given in return, just more weapons sent from Russia to Iran, well, that will say something, too, won't it?

Think, meanwhile, of that recent, very quiet visit to Moscow by Israeli P.M., Benjamin Netanyahu. No comments were made by any of the participants.

(Cross-posted on RussiaBlog.)

Rhetoric has been a substitute for substance for some time in this Administration. It's great rhetoric, but it lacks a foundation. The health care speech--now remembered mainly by the controversy over a Congressional heckler--has been followed by an empty speech on the economy.

The President went to Wall Street yesterday to tell off the daytime residents. But it is doubtful if they were impressed. No matter, they weren't the true audience.

No, the President really was hoping to speak over the heads of the greedy Wall Streeters (many of whom voted for him) to the Little People of America. The trouble is, the predictable drone of vacuous generalities is not really getting the Little People's attention any more. Reality is.

Back in Washington, DC, the news is that the economy there, at least, is holding up. Another 140,000 jobs are expected next year. They are all in the government. We, the Little People, are paying for them.

Newly installed Director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Dr. Robert Groves, has made an important decision that bodes well for the conduct of the 2010 Census. By dropping any dealings with the community activist group Acorn he confirms the Bureau's absolute insistence on transparence and integrity in its operations.

Equality is the explicit, if unachieved, goal of communism, the promise of socialism and the sly aspiration of liberalism. When some people have much more than others, it is a cause for alarm, and we have so many alarmed studies to exhibit this worry that one only has to go back to--guess when?--August 21 to find an example.

But, today comes news in The Wall Street Journal that the trend has turned and income inequality is eroding in the new economic era of government ownership of the means of auto production, government squeezes on unjust executive compensation, government bailouts, runaway deficits and presidential jaw-boning of greedy businessmen and investors. What has not been achieved in ending inequality will soon be targeted by repeal of the Bush tax cuts and added taxes on top of that. This is the age of redistribution, even if it is only redistribution of poverty, not wealth.

Unemployment may be nearly 10 percent, but the Recession already has slashed the share of the economy that is enjoyed by the country's top one percent of income earners.

Companies may be cutting back or failing, but at least chief executive pay is down 15 percent. Huzzah for the White House Pay Czar! ("Long live the Czars!")

Investors in new products may be spooked, but at least the rich are not buying so many new cars and homes.

"In the brutal second half of last year, the number of charitable gifts of $1 million or more...fell by more than a third" (according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, as reported by the Wall Street Journal), and that is surely a happy result of the fat cats having to tighten their belts. All the good liberals in America's foundations and non-profits must be doing high-fives.

Many rich, like the family head and immigrant Anthony Carmenate who is interviewed by the Journal'sBob Davis and Robert Frank, may have dropped a few economic notches, and are looking for work, but that is a small sacrifice to make for real change, don't you agree?

After all, even though people with money say they no longer can finance new job-creating enterprises, the Administration has a way to make them cough up. The higher tax rates that are coming will give the Federal Government the money to "invest" for them.

Once the Recession ends, and then as it swoons again in a year or so, we finally will achieve the new achievement of "Social Justice." The motto is, "Share the Poverty".

You can't see it, but I'm doing hand-springs.

The destruction of language proceeds apace with the planned creation of yet another "czar" in the Obama Administration, this time a "manufacturing czar".

The idea is preposterous. What is meant is that someone will appear on the White House staff roster who effectively has the power to over-ride the mere cabinet secretaries responsible for Commerce and Labor, and maybe Trade, Treasury, Transportation and the Office of Management and Budget. As Oklahoma Senator Tim Coburn, among others, has noted, there is questionable constitutionality in a person who exercises such authority without the consent of the Senate. Why require Cabinet secretaries to be confirmed if mere White House staffers--elevated to Czardom--can control them?

But I suspect that all the many Obama "czars" are just gentrified presidential assistants, people who in practice seldom will over-ride anyone. Calling them a "czar" is just a public relations sop to some constituency and a paper mache crown for the deluded staffer.

Meanwhile, am I alone in not liking the idea of "czars" in America or in thinking it odd that a liberal president would want to boast of such a person? Czars were Russian, not American. They wielded absolute and arbitrary power. They made King George III, again whom we rebelled, look like Dr. Phil conducting a TV town hall. Real czars most often were tyrants and were regarded as such.

They also ruled alone. There was no stable of "czars", a "czar" for this and a "czar" for that. Who is President Obama kidding? And why is the media contributing to this misunderstanding?

The 35 or so Obama "czars" either are glorified presidential assistants (as I suspect) and should be called such, or they are tinpot despots, in which case someone--in the name of the American Founders--should sue!

Discovery Senior Fellow Wesley J. Smith has the cover story this week in National Review, "The Creeping Culture of Euthanasia." If you suppose that this is a side issue, think again. Despite all the keening denials, the health care legislation being discussed in Congress absolutely sets the nation on the path to rationing care at the end of life to save money. Where else, after all, are they going to save billions?

And, as Smith makes clear, this reality is not something he alone is asserting. "Compassion and Choices," the latest euphemism for the pro-assisted suicide organization previously known as The Hemlock Society, is taking credit for this development in the health care bill.

"Health care" has become yet another euphemism.

Smith's article deserves wide distribution and National Review great credit for running it.

Peter Singer speaks for rationing of health care, especially at the end of life, and it has become a quiet cause of many on the Left who support expanded government health care. There has to be control of costs at some point under that system, and the way to do it is to deny care to the terminally ill. Another name for this is euthanasia.

But some right wing libertarians apparently also think there is a case for rationing. This is described by Cato's Will Wilkinson in The Week.

It's an important point he makes, even if he gets it wrong. There already is cessation of care in many, if not most cases of terminally ill patients. Even the Catholic Church does not require care to continue if it is invasive and will cause more suffering than it will alleviate. We all die, after all. If people want to minimize medical care, other than pain relief, as life winds down, that is their business.

The thing is, decisions about cessation of care now are not really made very often by insurance companies, let alone by the government, nor should they be. They are made by the patients themselves, their families and their doctors, all of whom tend to err on the side of life. When they decide to call off further treatments, it is their choice, not some bureaucrat with another agenda.

With the government health care "reforms" under consideration, the decision is bound to be influenced by the government's own need to save money. That is an entirely separate and invidious issue and should not be inserted into the life and death process. In the Netherlands, many old people resist going to the hospital because they know that they might not be cared for in a way that elongates their lives, but shortens it instead.

There is a cold, callous rationality to the likes of Singer and also, apparently, to some variations of libertarianism on this subject.

A national identity card has been opposed by many civil libertarians, even though some sort of ID is needed to fly on a commercial airplane or buy goods at many kinds of stores. A national ID card, therefore, hardly seems like an intrusion and it could do some good. If you are stopped by a policeman, he'll ask for ID anyhow, so why not have a standard ID card?

On the other hand, real privacy is being violated routinely. The government apparently thinks nothing of it. Declan McCullagh, a libertarian who has followed technology issues for about two decades, reports on a little-noticed provision in the proposed House health care "reform" that will open people's IRS data to medical evaluators.

The next step is for the IRS to be provided data from your medical records. You can see where that heads: some people will avoid doctors to avoid the IRS.

I don't recall hearing from the ACLU about this, do you?

I don't know if the city government of Fort Wayne, Indiana received "shovel ready" money from the federal government that is causing them to spend $1 million dollars to "improve" a downtown street that really doesn't need improving. But I wouldn't be surprised.

Sometimes the mere availability of money (and some jobs) makes officials impulsive. They even spoil something good (in this case, a livable street that attracts visitors) simply because the alternative is to do nothing.

Or is it? Why can't local governments find other ways to spend their money? Are there no bad streets in Fort Wayne? (Answer: there are, I have seen some.)

Of course, it is possible that no federal funds are involved and that the City of Fort Wayne is just so flush in this recession that the $1 million of local money is burning a hole in the civic pocket. No, that can't be. Indiana has been harder hit than most other states by the Recession.

So, why do city fathers and mothers feel so compelled to waste money?

**

Footnote: Yes, the author, Howard Chapman, and the blogger are related. And he is an adjunct fellow of Discovery Institute.

More and more it seems like we are living in Orwell's 1984 where words have ceased to have their ordinary meaning. Yet another example of this occurred recently when President Obama, in conference call with religious leaders, called healthcare reform a "moral obligation" and accused those who question it of "bearing false witness." When did it become a "moral obligation" to provide government run healthcare?

One sees much in the Bible about the virtue of charity (e.g. the Good Samaritan paid for the man set upon by robbers out of his own means, Luke 10:25-37) but nothing about lobbying for government mandates. One sees how the early church members voluntarily provided out of their own means for widows & orphans (1 Timothy 5) and admonished believers to provide for their own destitute family members but nothing about them lobbying Rome for a tax to provide universal healthcare. Indeed, if anything, it would seem to be a moral obligation of the church to oppose government actions that would, of necessity, unjustly deprive people of property, robbing Peter to pay Paul to continue the religious idiom, foreclosing on the possibility of private charity in the future. It is a Fabian Socialist conceit to imagine the government is just a person writ large, with the same moral character.

But newspeak is nothing new for President Obama. In campaigning he labeled his redistributionist social engineering as "fairness." The President seems to fail to realize, or willfully overlook, that "giving" coerced by the government is not giving at all, nor is it virtue. For virtue to be true virtue, it must be voluntary.

Americans are charitable people; as author Arthur Brooks has noted we give more per capita than any other country even adjusted for income. If President Obama really wants to help the 15% of Americans that are without health insurance, a transitory pool, then he would remove the government impediments to charitable medical treatments. Let doctors & hospitals deduct 100% of pro bono work. Reduce the liability of opening free clinics by reforming tort law. Reward pharmaceutical companies that give away drugs to needy patients by letting them write-off those contributions. Our moral obligation to care for our neighbors is not something that can be assigned through payroll taxes but is, as it has always been, a personal responsibility.

Wesley J. Smith had the same reaction I did when the President identified the Netherlands as a country the United States should emulate in the provision of health care. That country has gone farther down the euthanasia path than any other.

Bob was a gloriously flawed, constantly seeking child of God who will be followed on his path by many prayers of those who knew him. In the history or our time he was a writer whose scrupulous honesty and rigorous fairness illuminated one "crisis" and "scandal" after another, and enobled the otherwise sad state of journalism.

I first met Bob in 1963 when George Gilder (old friend, Discovery co-founder) and I were undergraduates at Harvard, publishing a rebel Republican magazine, Advance. We interviewed Bob and his co-writer, Rowland Evans, about the condition of the Republicans in Congress. We all agreed, it turned out, that they were ill-serving their mission.

On occasion, George and I provided fodder for Evans and Novak and their column in the New York Herald Tribune. We enjoyed their company at the Republican Convention in 1964. I myself went to work for the Trib in '65 and when the paper folded in '66 (I had nothing to do with it--promise!) I happened to be in the office of Walter Thayer, Trib President and Everyone's Mentor, when Bob called to ask Walter if he thought Bob and Rollie should try to go with The Washington Post. Walter agreed that it was a good idea, and I think the Evans and Novak column must have lasted 35 years, until Evans' death, and then another decade while it was the Novak column.

At every turn Bob Novak was a no-nonsense newsman who scooped all kinds of other people, some virtuous, some not. In the early days he and Rollie were Kennedy liberals, then unpredictable, then both veered right. By the Carter years they were fed up with the Left and became one of the few column outlets for news items that conservatives wanted ventilated. Among other things, they defended Ed Meese in the Reagan years when he was being grilled by the Left in Congress. They managed all the while to keep their Washington Post slot, largely (I suspect) because they kept breaking and making news, as well as reporting it.

I don't think that is at all wrong for a columnist; in fact, there is a certain admirable sport to it. Novak was an opinion former, mainly because he was a true news breaker.

Crusty, acerbic, Bob was perversely beloved for his unlovable public persona on TV as well his column. In essence, everyone knew that his ultimate loyalty was to the truth as he saw it. And the truth as he saw it increasingly had a faith in America and our system of government and economics behind it. He also had a redeeming sense of humor.

I saw a bit of Bob in recent years, usually when he was traveling the country in support of conservative youth development. By conservative he meant the principles of the American founding and the principles of free enterprise. And the principle--forever--of no nonsense.

In his last big contretemps he was involved in exposing the political machinations of CIA analyst Valerie Plame. Oddly, he did not become an issue, only a platform in that pseudo-scandal. The victim, it turned out, was not Plame (what a joke), but Scooter Libby in the White House, sacrificed at the end, sadly, by President Bush, who should have pardoned him. (Bob would have agreed completely with that.) This is another story, of course.

The main thing is that hard-working Bob Novak gave far more to American journalism than almost any of his contemporaries.

In his private life he traveled the path of skeptical secularism to a surprising conversion to Catholicism and the moving account of same that he provided in his final book, The Prince of Darkness. For all of us, he remains a symbol of integrity.

Blessings and peace upon him.

Some commentators are indignant over the charge that "the public option", and, indeed, the bulk of the ideas loosely aggregated in the House and Senate as "health reform", would lead to rationing. It infuriates them also that the bill is criticized for end-of-life counseling for senior citizens. After all, the provision--still in the bill in several of its forms--would be "voluntary."

Our senior fellow, Wesley J. Smith, repeatedly has explained how "voluntary" in law can get translated into "mandatory" over time in the tender care of government bureaucrats writing implementing regulations. Anyone who has read C. S. Lewis' idea novel, That Hideous Strength, remembers the lovely-sounding government organization, "N.I.C.E.", the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments, that takes the therapeutic approach into the realms of compulsion and, finally, catastrophic evil.

What protestors to ObamaCare know at some level, whether they are articulate it or not, is that many older people already feel useless and unwanted. Some are clinically depressed. It doesn't take much to appeal to their self-sacrificing instincts and to elicit the sentiment, "I don't want to be a burden." Working with that concern, and also with the concurrent fear of pain, it isn't hard to get old people to sign documents that will shorten their lifespan when "the burden" becomes too great. In prospect, it seems the responsible thing to do.

We all face the end-of-life treatment choices, either because of someone we love, or, ourselves. Families, doctors, hospitals all do the best they can and situations vary. But when the government is involved and has built-in cost-cutting incentives, there is a tremendous incentive to warp the decision-making process and make it a financial triage issue. That is what President Obama was hinting at in several of the comments he has made in the past about end-of-life care. He thinks that the government cannot afford to take care of all the old and terminally ill and still give full care to the young and fit.

As I say, this subject is tough enough when it really is about voluntary decisions. But when one of the decision-makers--the one that writes the checks--is in the room and has another interest--a financial one--the whole story of life in all its gritty reality becomes a horror movie.

Smith is having a major influence on this topic. Civil liberties activist Nat Hentoff writes of it in the Jewish World Review. I myself encountered it in discussion with a Catholic priest last weekend at a christening. The word is getting out.

Congress and the White House should not imagine that the public outcry is manufactured by right wing groups, let alone the Republican Party. The blunt truth is that the Republican Party usually can't get 30 people out to attend its meetings. Right wing non-profit groups are great at riding a wave created by someone else. Likewise, talk radio.

No. The wave is being generated by ordinary people who are terrified that one of the most private parts of their lives, and one of the most important, is going to be invaded and controlled by the federal government. They don't think that the government, however benign it claims to be (and maybe especially when it claims to be benign), can be trusted. Not to really control costs without serious rationing. Not to keep new equipment and treatments coming. Not to handle patients with even the modest bedside manner provided under the current system. In fact, nothing has made the present system look better than the government's attempt to take it over.

It seems that the past weekend's hope that the Obama Administration was going to drop the public option (the nationalization option) was in vain. The struggle for public support goes on.

Will President Obama really start over on health care and try to work as the bi-partisan he promised to be? Or is his reported retreat from the public option only tactical? This will be an interested week, and to start it properly you should read the most recent incisive blog post of Wesley J. Smith.

The battle over privacy issues that has delayed creation of standard I.D. cards for Americans should be drawing to a close. After all, whatever privacy we enjoyed in the past, the safety requirements of the post 9/11 world have overridden them. As a plain fact, you cannot fly in a commercial airplane or transact other business without a driver's license or similar official identification. What a uniform I.D. card would do, of course, is help establish citizenship and the rights that go with it. A driver's license does not. And a passport is issued only to those who request it, mainly for foreign travel.

In this light, it is interesting to note that the Mexican government has few of the scruples that have held up an I.D. card for Norteamericanos. The government of Mexico is on the cusp of requiring the same for everyone. I don't think anyone on this side of the border has begun to think through the consequences of this development.

In National Review, our colleague Yuri Mamchur describes the Russian resort to bartering these days.

Could such a thing work in the USA? Probably not. On the other hand, here is a story idea for some reader who also happens to have a job as a journalist. Check out the "black market" that operates inside America already, the informal trades and exchanges that escape taxation either because they are too trivial (you give me a few jars or jam and I give you a home-made cake), or because they simply are hidden: for example, chop shops that repair cars for cash or professionals who trade services for products.

As taxes go up, of course, so does the popular resort to barter--on or off the books. It is, I have to emphasize, another argument against the growing nanny state and the high taxes that go with it. What Yuri Mamchur describes is legal, but under socialism in any country, there is a whole lot of exchanges that take place under the table and are nominally illegal. A healthy society operates above the table, of course.

The Wall Street Journal suggests bluntly what people in the pharmaceutical industry should have been asking for weeks: In the process of selling out on Health Care, has Big Pharma been sold out?

Or has Big Pharma just sold out the public that counts on its ever-burgeoning cornucopia of new wonder drugs? That the industry has tried to cut a deal with the White House to escape serious assaults on its income stream is not a matter of conjecture now. It's in the statements of its lobbyist, the White House and those in the liberal leadership of Congress who think the protection "price" was not high enough.

Billy Tauzin, former Democratic member of Congress from Louisiana, is typical of the folks brought in by business to broker a good relationship with the new Administration and Congress. But instead of serving as an ambassador to his party, Mr. Tauzin turns out to be an ambassador from his party to his new clients. He tells them what they have to pay to play. The price is high and it is not even settled when agreement supposedly is reached.

Left out of the picture is the consumer, the patients, the public. In a way, the eager-to-compromise pharmaceutical companies are behaving like the opportunists the Left has portrayed them.

Increasingly, that is the story of big business in America. Most of its leading members backed a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in 2008. Now they act astonished that the new Administration is not the irenic, moderate force they expected and backed. They just can't believe that the new crowd would want to take over one industry after another, balloon the deficit, dictate executive salaries, set prices, demonize free enterprise, attack venture capital and debase the currency in service of growing the government's share of what's left. They are beginning to feel like the Oysters in Alice in Wonderland who were so happy when the Walrus invited them to lunch.

But who said big business was smart? Too smart by half, as the British say, is more like it.

Maybe it's time some of them start to ask how they got that way.

Did hiring liberal lobbyists and charitable donations chiefs possibly have something to do with it? Have they possibly turned "external relations" over to a kind of person who only supports conservative principles to the limited extent they apply to the particular business that pays them, while using corporate money to fund people and causes that undermine those principles in general? It occurs to me that while each big business may have external relations people loyal to its respective agenda, the sum of all corporate "external relations" in the big business sector is to support more regulation, big government, more taxes and government dictation. And, in the end stage, many an individual business finds out that even its own "representatives" to government are subtly selling it out.

Apparently, some in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are on top of this problem, but many corporations have dropped out of the Chamber or pursue what they imagine is their own enlightened path.

I am a fan of entrepreneurs--the crucial risk takers of capitalism--and I am sympathetic to the small businesses that cannot compete with the big boys in the hiring of lawyers, lobbyists and environmental experts when they need to fend off a greedy government. And I have to admire those big businesses that try to hang tough in this political climate. But I find it hard to sympathize with those big business officers who are willing victims of the steady erosion of freedom and enterprise in this country.

I do sympathize, of course, with their ill-served stockholders.

Whenever anyone complains about a provision they think is in the proposed health care reform, they are told that the bill isn't even written yet (except in the House). But then why the furious rush to get something passed right away?

Even backers of President Obama are beginning to get queasy over certain innovations that may or may not be in the bill. They are not paranoid, they are noticing that some of the most radical social engineers in America are involved in this project.

The co-director of the Discovery Center for Human Rights and Bioethics, Wesley J. Smith, has been covering the topic especially well, undoubtedly because he has been on this very ground for a long time.

Thursday night, as I left a garage in downtown Seattle after dinner, I found I had a flat rear left tire on my car. I called Triple A. The truck arrived in 15 minutes and the driver changed my tire in another five. Friday morning on the way to work I stopped at a Goodyear store and left my flat tire to be repaired. It took one hour and the store called me to let me know that I could pick it up. Cost: $23.00. Everyone was friendly and responsive at Triple A and Goodyear.

Now, imagine if the government were in charge of such services. I probably would still be trying to get them on the phone and then I'd be filling out paperwork and finding that I needed to wait in line for a "repair opening" to come available.

We now have GM (Government Motors) and soon we may have Government Health Care. But thank goodness there is no plan yet for the government to take over something really important like the maintenance of existing automobiles.

They don't even know the difference between an organization that strategically seeks funds for aspiring, start up companies and an organization that invests in existing stocks or buys positions in existing companies. Apparently, also, the members of Congress writing the bills don't know the difference, either. It's a great way to encourage new economic growth, isn't it?

If there is no domestic constituency that is offended, a gaffe is not treated as a gaffe. But Vice President Joe Biden's snarky remarks about Russia fall into the gaffe category anyhow. What is the point?

Our Sr. Fellow Wesley J. Smith of the Discovery Institute Center for Human Rights and Bioethics is asking the question that Bill Donahue of the Catholic League and others also are raising: Is there language under consideration that could lead to "end of life care" that includes intentional termination of life? Outrageous? Well, then, the Obamacare bill should be clarified to make sure the meaning is not obscure or doubtful.

Sam Harris has a piece in The New York Times suggesting that Francis Collins' Christian views render him unsuited to serve as head of the National Institutes of Health. That is so, says Harris, even though Collins is a devoted Darwinist. Clearly Harris would like a sign that says "Only Atheists Need Apply" to hang over the NIH.

Only a couple of days ago Nicholas Wade wrote a blog for the The Times about Thomas Bouchard, Minnesota psychologist, who contends that science is damaged by conformism, just as economics and other fields are:

Researcher Condemns Conformity Among His Peers

By Nicholas Wade

What's wrong with consensuses is not the establishment of a majority view, which is necessary and legitimate, but the silencing of skeptics. "We still have whole domains we can't talk about," Dr. Bouchard said, referring to the psychology of differences between races and sexes.

The Obama idea ran something like this: People know there are problems with health care, they want the uninsured covered and they want relief from what they may regard as an unfair bureaucracy at many insurance companies. Therefore, the scheme went, this is the time to introduce the vehicle of "reform" that will be sold as limited, but end up in a couple of elections with nationalized (socialized) health care in the supposedly great European tradition.

With President Obama riding a wave of popularity and with media that literally would eat out of his hand if they could get that close, the Administration bet that a big push should be made this year. The Recession didn't bother them; they tried to turn it to their advantage, asserting that somehow increased spending on government medical care would save money for the economy.

What has happened politically is very different from what the Obama Administration hoped. Instead of the President's popularity carrying the medical care proposals to victory, the increasing public unease over a costly new entitlement has cut into Obama's job approval rates.

Meanwhile, the reporting of the major media finally is beginning to take cognizance of the problems with the assorted Democratic bills in Congress. Until the public's opposition started to firm up, Establishment organs were describing each development in language that the White House might have crafted itself. The failure of the public to see the proposed changes as mere "reforms", however, as Democratic leaders and the media have presented them, is testimony to the discernment of public opinion once a subject finally gets enough attention that people can see behind the headlines and the spin.

Hats off to The Wall Street Journal editorial pages on this one. The Journal's Peggy Noonan's insightful weekend piece quickly became the "most emailed" of the paper's work. But outstanding digging went on by other columnists, including John Fund and Kimberley Strassel.

The Journal's editorial writers on Friday ("A Better Health Reform") called, wisely, for Obama to respond to the current de facto reversal of momentum on the Administration-favored Congressional health care bills to develop a program that would have bi-partisan support. He could start by taking a fresh look at what Sen. McCain proposed last fall.

In truth, the President should step back and realize that his big scheme is not going to make it, even with much of the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies and apparently the bulk of the American Medical Association having thrown in with him in hopes of being spared government revenge. If, instead, he made a more limited proposal that ordinary people in both parties could understand and applaud, the political reality is that it is he who would be given credit in the end. He could just adopt John McCain's proposals and the public would still call it Obama Care. That would be bad for Republicans politically, but it would be good for the country and the economy.

Instead the President seems intent on pushing ahead. As a result, his public approval ratings are falling fast and, with them, his whole domestic program. Critics say that the Rassmussen Poll is often skewed toward Republicans, but there is no ignoring what it says about the trend.

Richard Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, reminds us about Walter Wriston's "law" on the correlation between the way a society treats talent and merit and the way that society's economy performs. People who grow to believe that they simply are entitled to leadership in business or any other field--like traditional welfare recipients at the other end of the spectrum who come to think that they entitled to benefits without working--are a huge drag on progress for the many. They drag down people of ability and that hurts us all.

George Gilder's new book, The Israel Test, was released yesterday and likewise describes a variation on Wriston's Law as it applies to the way Jews are treated in society, analogizing that question to the international treatment of Israel. (You can order The Israel Test at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other outlets as of now.)

by John R. Miller

President Obama and Secretary Clinton have both now visited Russia in an effort to "reset" relations. The latest such effort was followed by the kidnapping and murder last week of Natalya Estemirova, a human rights activist in the Chechnya region of Russia. Her organization, Memorial, condemned Premier Putin's appointee, Chechnya President Kadyrov. This killing followed a string of political murders of Putin critics, Soviet style, ranging from Chechnya, Moscow, and St. Petersburg to Strasbourg and London.

There was the brutal beating of Russian penal system critic Lev Ponomorov last April in Moscow. The murder of the President of the Russian rule of Law Institute Stanislov Markelov in January. The shooting near her home in St. Petersburg several years ago of Parliament member and human rights activist Galina Starovoytova and the assaults several years ago on a former state Duma member, Yulie Rybakova, a long time critic of both the Soviet and Putin regimes. The assassination of leading human rights journalist Anna Politskovskaya in Moscow last year. The poisoning of her friend Karinna Moskalenko, lawyer for Putin opponents Kasparov and Khodorkovsky, in Strasbourg, France. The poisoning of Russian secret service critic Alexander Litvinenko several years ago in London.

And these are just the most prominent cases. It is hard to put a number on the reporters, editors, lawyers and human rights activists that have paid dearly for their criticism of the regime.

Not since the days of Pinochet's Chile, another developed country that we sought to maintain good relations with, has there been such a string of political disappearances, murders, and beatings.

The Russian government and its apologists in the West have claimed that the victims have been associated with Chechyan terrorism--never mind that most of the killings were far from Chechnya. Or that the victims were just the victims of random hooliganism--never mind that none of the "hooligans" have been brought to justice. Or that it was just a plot by Putin's enemies at home and abroad to embarrass him--this last excuse brings to mind the explanations used by the former Soviet government when mysterious deaths occurred abroad. Sometimes we are told by Putin's defenders in Britain and the U.S. that at least under Putin, Russia does not have a totalitarian state as in Soviet days. True enough, but this defense only shows how far the hopes of democracy and the rule of law in Russia have receded.

One hopeful sign was that the recent killing, while greeted with silence by Putin and Russian law enforcement, was criticized by the new Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, albeit while defending the Chechen President. Whether the new Russian President may initiate reforms or whether Putin and his appointees remain in control, the question of what to do faces the West. Generally, this has meant an inquiry or, as in the case of the London killing of Litvinenko, calling in diplomats for consultations, but then matters have been dropped. So eager has been the West to avoid confrontation with Russia that under President Bush--who has been criticized for being too harsh with Russia--human rights reports were shaded so as to avoid giving offense to the Putin regime. Under the Obama administration, all signs are that such a policy will continue. There is no evidence that even one of these human rights cases was raised in Moscow by either President Obama or Secretary Clinton.

It doesn't have to be this way. Yes, we need to negotiate with the Russians on nuclear weapons and missile defense. But this was also the case in the 80's when the U.S. negotiated with Putin's Soviet predecessors. But then Secretary of State Shultz still managed to press the Soviets privately and publicly on human rights issues, winning release of dissidents, encouraging movement toward respect for human rights and at the same time still negotiating broad nuclear agreements. What Secretary Shultz and President Reagan realized and what their successors have been reluctant to realize, is that nations make agreements based on self interest, not on whether the U.S. submerges its human rights ideals in diplosqueak. Speaking out for the rule of law in Russia will not only help past and future victims, it will encourage a more democratic and peaceful Russia which will be even more likely to enter into and keep meaningful international agreements.

John R. Miller is a former Member of Congress who served on the Foreign Affairs Committee, a former U.S. Ambassador at Large on Modern Slavery, and currently a Visiting Scholar, University of California, Berkeley and a Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute (Human Rights and Bioethics Center).

Debra Saunders ably explains what the G-8 failed to deliver to the U.S. partisans of cap and trade legislation.

If President Obama wants to get legislation through Congress on "climate change" (the disorder formerly known as "global warming"), he could start by asking the Republicans what they would agree to. He could make common cause right now with Sen. McCain, for example, and get an exchange of tax cuts in income and other areas for an energy tax. But it appears that "cap and trade" is not going anywhere anytime soon.

Maybe an investigation by the Justice Department and the Congress of reputed illegal anti-terrorist activities of the Bush/Cheney Administration will lead to revelations of abuse of civil liberties and failures to report adequately to the appropriate members of Congress. Maybe not.

But what it certainly will do is persuade anyone who is not already part of the frothing Left that the Democrats care more about a punctilious regard to the rights of terrorists than they do for protecting the American people from terrorists. It is hard to see the advantage in that, except to try to reignite the anti-Bush indignation of last year and earlier among a rather small segment of the electorate; that is, the segment that will vote or take other action based on such concerns. Meanwhile, however, it opens the Administration and its Congressional allies to the charge that they are so worried about the rights of possible terrorists that they are leaving the country vulnerable to attack. That would seem to be a risky image to put out there. The danger of attack on our shores has not passed, has it?

A Wall Street regular of 35 years told me last night that he is "optimistic" about the economy because of the native inventiveness, grit and push of the American businessman--and in spite of the Obama Administration's devaluation of the dollar, expansion of government bureaucracy and regulation and the loming threats to the free market in energy and health care.

Maybe so. But the prospects surely would be a light brighter if a big government hand were not on the tiller of the ship of state.

Here's a less sanguine commentary from Discovery Sr. Fellow John Wohlstetter.

The badly flawed and increasingly unpopular energy bill that is now in Congress--and barely passed by the overwhelmingly Democratic House--does not have to be the only choice presented to the American people.

A constructive idea that accords well with the overall need to stimulate the economy as well as reduce pollution and dependence on foreign oil has been offered today in a Seattle Times article by Bruce Flory, economist, and Todd Myers, environmental director of the Washington Policy Center.

People on the outs imagine--wrongly, in most cases--that people on the inside are prejudiced and corrupt. This makes it more likely, sadly, that when the outs get in, they feel entitled to behave the same way they imagine is customary. Much of the wrong done in the world occurs when leaders project their own negative attitudes onto others and then punish their foes--class enemies, racial rivals, or what have you-- preemptively.

Brother Howard Chapman applies a similar analysis (why should you be surprised?) to the conduct of the judiciary. What the Sotomayor nomination exalts is the daunting post-modern principle that law is based on the interests of the powerful, and that therefore it is all right for the minority, upon acquiring power, to exercise discrimination in favor of their own perceived group interests.

Freedom and opportunity are the salient reasons America is a success in the world. That heritage is the birthright of American citizens. But the horizon of freedom and opportunity is receding for the current generation of the young. Unfortunately, most of them don't even know it.

The headlines are full of fake priorities. Instead of reports about the real economy--how people assess the chances for getting ahead in this recession and after it--you have stories from Washington excoriating private sector executives who make what someone considers too much salary. Even if that were a problem, what business is it of the government's? And if it somehow is a legitimate government concern (for example, because the government is busy nationalizing various previously private corporations), why is it more deemed more important than the opposite issue--the disincentives for people of skill and talent to save and invest? Why is there so little focus on what it takes to get people who still have money to create wealth, add jobs and provide a way to pay off the mountain range of debt President Obama has raised up?

The younger generation is being asked to endorse new government programs--including the take over of health care by stealth--and are not being told that they will have to pay for it. They will pay either through higher payroll and income taxes or through the hidden tax of inflation. The only other option is to grow the economy fast enough to provide new sources of government revenue, but that option is being closed by the Obama Administration's high-tax, high regulation policies and its unremitting demonizing of business people.

Mark Steyn asked a week or two ago (in National Review) how the generation now being born can handle all the new debt being piled up when the next generation, in plain fact, isn't big enough--the age cohort is too small--to do the job.

Ask yourself: how many children have you had? (Remember, the replacement rate is technically, 2.1 children per woman.) How many of those--and those of your friends--are getting married and having children themselves? Of those, how many are applying themselves to the study and hard work that will provide a living as high or higher than that which you have achieved?

Do the math. It doesn't pencil out when you are looking at the country as a whole. Even immigration doesn't solve the problem, since most immigrants are not educated for the jobs of the future.

So, you have a population too small to carry the burden being placed on them and unequipped to shoulder it anyhow. Then you adopt tax and regulatory policies that discourage rather than encourage enterprise and economic growth. And guess what? You get a rather more bleak future than people have faced in a very long time.

We can get over this, but it won't be easy or painless and it won't happen with the present media slant that misinforms the people about what is really going on. The beginning of constructive change is honesty about our problems.

Sadly, the generation whose hopes are being blighted is the generation that has been most successfully bamboozled about the present reality.

The nationalization of a large part of America's auto industry is such a shock that the full realization has yet to settle in one's brain. John Wohlstetter (Discovery senior fellow) puts it in context.

Will someone please find out how long this public ownership is supposed to last? Surely those who care about the functioning of a free market will want the beast put up for sale as soon as possible.

The issues in Britain are somewhat idiosyncratic, but there is no avoiding the reality that that nation's delegation to the European Parliament is moving right, as are local governments. It could be a signal of a new election and a Tory government (after 12 years of Labour). Conservatives and even the far right made gains in other European elections this week. And the pro-Western coalition in Lebanon seems set to continue in power, despite earlier predictions of advances for the Hezbollah/pro-Iranian parties.

Meanwhile, however, President Obama is moving U.S. policy leftward as he declares the recession an unwelcome, but long term guest. It is being touted almost as an excuse for further government takeover of the economy, though the takeover and big spending are actually contributing to the country's economic woes, not to their improvement. Creating new government jobs is not the solution to the loss of jobs in the private sector.

We now have in Barack Obama an American president who prides himself on criticizing his country's past, doing so while abroad and doing so in a way that gives undue satisfaction to our critics and undue pain to our friends. He omits points in our country's favor and exaggerates our failings.

The inconsistencies in the Cairo speech are astonishing. Here is Pete Wehner's account.

Here is another paradox to consider: we have a President of the United States who is eager to show his support for nuclear power development in Iran--a reliable foe of America--but cannot bring himself to support nuclear power in his own country, the United States of America.

What is going on?

A weighty commencement address is a rarity these days, mostly because the people who graduate and those who come to witness the event mainly are in a mood to celebrate, not to cogitate. Yet the grand tradition of commencement speeches is that they compel people to stand back and see where the civilization is heading. There was, for example, Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech at Westminster College, Fulton, Missouri in 1946 and Alexander Solzhenitzen's unexpected assault at Harvard in 1978 on America's callow, materialist culture ("A World Split Apart").

The widely admired career diplomat and recent Ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has called Whitman College graduates to confront the world as it is, not as they'd like it to be. Here is a good review in Crosscut.

Whitman has a public policy asset in alumnus Crocker, who has semi-retired to nearby Spokane, WA. He may challenge their assumptions, which could explain the relatively muted response to his address. One hopes they appreciate him. Challenging the assumptions of contemporary academia is the duty of all responsible citizens these days.

Big spenders will not like the decisions of California voters to nix all the tax referenda put before them today, save the one that holds back pay hikes for legislators when the budget is out of balance. Facing a 21.3 billion dollar deficit, California cannot avoid serious budget cuts now.

The question is whether the cuts will be conducted in ways to squeeze those who provide public services or those who receive them. The permanent lobby for more government is the government itself. When government must be reduced, the temptation is to hold on to public employees and to reduce public works and public services. But elected officials have to be fearful in this new environment. The California public is watching.

The rest of the country will be watching, too.

President Obama's commencement address at Notre Dame was used by the school to underscore its increasingly liberal reputation and by the President to showcase his moderate rhetoric on abortion. The media stressed the rhetoric and did little to contrast it to the unbending Administration support of abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

However, there was a surprising and little noticed line that seemed to signal a change in policy that will matter a lot to pro-life medical personnel. Under President Bush the government allowed doctors and nurses morally opposed to abortion to opt out of abortion operations. Candidate Obama campaigned to change the conscience provision and two months ago the Administration announced its intention to remove it from the HHS guidelines.

However, at Notre Dame, the President stated,"Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women."

The redoubtable Catholic League president, Bill Donohue, applauded the president:

"Thus far, no final decision has been made. But given what President Obama said yesterday, it seems clear that he is now prepared to rescind the decision that was made rescinding conscience rights. For this he should be commended. We look forward to reading the revised proposal."

Jack Kemp, kindly and forceful enthusiast, had many claims to our appreciation, but I think many of us who served in the Reagan Revolution will remember him most fondly for the prescient leadership he showed in the seminal years of policy debate in the late 70s that preceded the Gipper's election.

He (and Bill Steiger of Wisconsin) led the original supply side revolt in the House of Representatives and his influence on the emerging thinking of the Reagan team was immense. Our friend and former colleague Richard Rahn pays him apt tribute in today's Washington Times.

The Renowned John Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport

Oh, dear! Taxpayer advocates like Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform are being mean about the waste of federal money exemplified by the fabulous John Murtha Airport constructed in (where else?) Rep. John Murtha's district in Pennsylvania with your money. The complaint, as ABC reports, has something to do with the fact that only an average of 20 passengers use the airport daily, despite all the federal investment, upkeep and subsidies.

An ultra efficient baggage terminal

No line at the booking desk

Plenty of seating options for your wait

But that kind of criticism isn't fair, really. Having passengers only would degrade the efficiency of what obviously is a model airport. With passengers you get lines at the TSC checkpoints, bathrooms that need cleaning and waits for luggage arrival.

It reminds one of the classic situation that rendered in the classic Yes, Minister series on British Television in the 80s, only in that case, the issue centered on a splendid new hospital that set national standards for high performance,--not despite its lack of any actual patients, but because of that lack.

You will search hard in the media for an explanation that the "tea parties" held nationally relate to the Boston Tea Party, the anti-tax protest that helped spark the Revolutionary War. If one merely assumes that everyone--including the young--know the historical reference, I think one might be wrong. Unfortunately.

One also searches hard in news accounts for accurate total numbers of attendees at various "tea party" protests yesterday--IRS tax day. Newspaper reports covered the "few hundred" in front of the White House, as if the world inside the Beltway was all that mattered, and suggested that only "tens of thousands" protested nationwide. But Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax reform estimates--from press reports as well as on the site accounts--that over a quarter of a million participated.

Finally, no one really tells us how much taxes Americans really are paying. Claims that taxes are historically low right now reflect the leftover tax rates from the Bush years, not what is happening right now in municipal governments, county governments, and state governments, as well as what is coming the from federal government, where the plan is to raise taxes on the rich. By all means, soak the rich, but aren't those the very people we count on to invest in enterprises that might make new jobs?

As for the rest of us, pledges of "no new taxes" for people who make under $250,000 a household omit indirect tax hikes, fee increases and hidden taxes making their way in Congress now; for example, the energy price hikes expected for everyone in all brackets if Cap and Trade passes.

Then there is the potential hidden tax of inflation once the trillions being authorized now get spent. We are told that it won't be a problem because of the recession. Really?

I'll grant that a good strong recession will hold back inflation for a while. Oh, and it also will reduce the problem of traffic congestion, the wait for reservations at restaurants (those still open) and check out lines at supermarkets. Hooray!

But meanwhile, surely people are not crazed or selfish to worry about their tax burden during the same hard recession.

Conservatives who oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are a minority on the right, though certainly one that has been heard from. But the main opposition to the wars in the Middle East and Central Asia has come from the Left for years--the Bush years, that is. Now that we are expanding our numbers in Afghanistan and talking about intervention in Pakistan, where are the marches, the angry editorials, the furious letters to the editor? The American Conservative (home of anti-war rightists) pretty much nails it.

Rather than fight with the press (see April 10's post), Seattle's City Council apparently decided on Friday to avoid any gatherings in small informal groups with the mayor's staff to discuss the budget. This does not seem to be a policy, just a temporary settlement. The significance is that instead of several members talking, now the budget will be discussed by each member with the mayor's budget staff, ad seriatim and ad nauseam. A wonderful waste of time, but never mind. Exaggerated and mistaken application of the Open Meetings law has led to lots of that over the years.

All that has happened is that the press pressure has added, temporarily, another layer of subterfuge for the perfectly normal and even desirable practice of (shhhh!) politics. Human beings who serve as elected officials still need environments where they can ask off-hand questions without being held up to public examination and to try out thoughts without being held to account for them in a public record. Just like editorial writers in their staff meetings, one might suggest.

All that results from these little episodes of fulsome press indignation is to make governing a bit more cumbersome. I hope the media will remember this the next time they accuse City Hall--here and elsewhere--of being slow to respond to public issues.

Sometimes you have to feel sorry for mere politicians.

The media routinely assail elected officials for indecisiveness, not to mention bad decisions they make. But then the same media attack elected officials, in effect, for trying to do their jobs at all. The pretense that all politics must be conducted in a fish bowl is behind a category of charges that relate to the "process" of representative government.

This latter kind of attack is sometimes launched in the name of the "spirit, if not the letter" of the kinds of reforms enacted around the country in the early 1970s under the rubric of "open meetings laws."

I was part of that era's reform movement. I remember well the reasons for it. And I know well that it attempted to avoid limiting the legitimate private discussions of elected officials. Rather, the law was about preventing corruption and making sure that citizens could be heard on substantial public decisions. Specifically, such laws as were passed in Washington State in 1971 (The Open Public Meetings Act) to stop the practice in elected bodies of making tough decisions in "executive sessions" outside public scrutiny.

Such laws were prudent, not draconian. For example, personnel decisions were usually exempted to keep employee personalities out of invidious public consideration.

What we were after, instead, was preventing old fashioned corruption, favor-buying and self-dealing. We had seen cases, for example, where the Seattle City Council's entire membership was treated to trips out of town at lobbyists' expense to consider some pending piece of legislation. In one case, nearly the whole Council was flown down to San Francisco to see some public developments there and to lobby the Council against enacting a new historic district ordinance for Pioneer Square. Happily, in that case, word of the trip leaked out and the Council members were met in San Francisco by local historic preservationists--who deflected them to see successful historic districts in that town. The Council came home actually persuaded against the position of the group that had taken it down there.

But, more often, the special trips engineered by lobbyists--one Councilman dubbed them "super-freers"--and the executive sessions did the work of their agents. The public wasn't consulted.

That was the kind of thing the Act was designed to stop. And, along with the new public disclosure act limiting campaign donations and personal gifts, such acts did stop much mischief, not only in Washington State, but in similar circumstances nationally.

Unfortunately, open meetings laws sometimes are used now as a form of special pleading for news hungry media with nothing better to write about and a Pecksniffian concept of virtue.

It is happening just now in Seattle where The Seattle Times has made a front page and editorial page issue out of unofficial discussions that Seattle City Council members have had with one another and the Mayor's staff about the city budget. Getting into the act is the City Attorney and a representative of the Attorney General's office. The latter worthies reportedly are "disturbed."

The problem, at least as reported in The Times, is that four of the nine City Council members have met in private to talk about the budget. But, so what? The law specifies that "meetings" are to be conducted in public, but the rule only applies to meetings of a majority of a legislative body, not a minority. Four at a time is a minority.

Think about this. If four of nine members shouldn't talk together informally about city issues, how about three members? Can they talk together without a public notice and an invitation to media? How about two? Can one Council member talk with another without becoming a target for a media expose?

The claim that the "spirit" of the law is violated if four of nine members sit down together is not only wrong historically, but potentially damaging to true good government. My Discovery colleague (and fellow former fellow City Councilman) John Miller was one of the citizen leaders in the Coalition for Open Public Government that first helped draft the Act. John recalls the situation as I do: the purpose of the Act was not to prevent legislators from private discussions on policy.

Miller, who later served as a Congressman from Seattle and a U.S. Ambassador At-Large on Human Trafficking issues, was a stickler on the City Council for firm enforcement of the Open Meetings law.

I was, too. My own first action as a new member of the Seattle City Council in December, 1971--assigned at once to chair the notorious Licenses Committee-- was to end the practice of holding what you might call pre-committee committee meetings where the real decisions were made behind the scenes. The opportunities to do damage or benefit to an applicant for a night club or movie theater license, for example, were plentiful when the actual decisions were agreed to before the public meeting. There had been serious scandals related to this practice--understandably. Accordingly, the pre-committee committee meetings ended at once. (We later turned the whole licenses procedure over to an independent city official.)

But the object was reform, not grandstanding. In those days when the Act was brand new we certainly had private discussions and briefings for two, three and four Council members to talk about any number of issues--including the budget. Yes, members might come to personal decisions about subjects they discussed in private, but those decisions carried no weight and were not covered by the Act, for the plain reason that "reform" has to have some limits. Indeed, if Council members had not been free to discuss city business informally in small groups, the Council--like every legislative body since at least the Continental Congress--would have ground to a halt.

It's droll that Seattle City Council Member Jean Godden has been singled out for rebuke in the press, the idea being that as a former journalist she should know better. It has not occurred to Ms Godden's former colleagues, apparently, that she might have learned anything in office.

The problems in legislative leadership in all levels today have almost nothing to do with supposed violations of the Open Public Meetings Act. Memo to the press and the politicians alike, therefore: Don't let "reform" become an excuse for hobbling effective elected representation. It may not be as dangerous to the practice of republican democracy as old fashioned corruption, but it sometimes it can come close.

The present generation has no idea how killing inflation can be. Unless you were around for the Carter years (Obama's model, it increasingly seems) you don't know what high inflation can do to the possibility of home ownership. You don't know how it always seems to exceed one's ability to get a pay increase. You don't get how it destroys investments.

Ronald Reagan suffered a brief, tough recession in order to reduce government spending, cut inflation and restore growth. Obama's budget assumes that massive spending and debt not only will revive the economy but also lead to such huge growth that we can afford a new public health care system and a major expansion of other government functions as well--and avoid passing the bill to our kids. Inflation is not going to be a problem, apparently.

Only he no longer is quite saying the last part.

In a speech at Discovery Institute, where he is a Senior Fellow, Michael
Medved described the origin and startling trajectory of his latest book,
"The Ten Big Lies About America." Medved advised an enthusiastic crowd gathered at a book party that his book has been ignored by major reviewers, but (as happens these days), already has gone through nine editions since it first appeared four months ago.

The Medved book is winning an especially appreciative audience among conservatives and other tradition-minded Americans for its defense of the history and values of the United States, a history often misrepresented in the media and institutions of public education.

Introducing Medved, Discovery President Bruce Chapman, described the author and national talk show host, as "a pioneer, an explorer on a voyage of rediscovery" of America's true past and present. The new book, he said, is a treasure trove of useful information for anyone faced with the arguments commonly advanced by advocates of political correctness.

Watch the video here.

Federal prosecutors should be investigated themselves after the now-failed case against Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. Stevens, who served in Congress for 40 years, nearly won re-election despite the federal case successfully brought against him during the 2008 election season. There is no doubt that if the case has been postponed until after the election he would have prevailed.

This instance of prosecutorial abuse is itself the scandal now and should be subject to legal scrutiny. The influence on the conduct of Congressional business is extensive and irremediable. Stevens' ouster has provided something close to a filibuster-proof majority for Democrats. Alaskans, meanwhile, should be furious now that their election decision was prejudiced by rogue prosecutors in Washington, D.C. The state lost a senator with historic clout. The Stevens prosecution also was used to taint other officials with whom he was connected, including Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire--who lost his re-election race, too.

What ideological and political zeal lay behind the pursuit of Stevens? The public needs to know.

Please don't suggest that since the problem arose while G. W. Bush was president there couldn't have been a political motivation. The White House then was terrified about the possibility that it might be seen as second-guessing the "professional" prosecutors. This is only one case, of course, where the Mr. Bush would have been entirely correct to take an interest, and didn't.

The ability to attack your ideological opponents with ethics prosecutions is a terrible power in a democracy; and therefore, misuse of that power is worse than any supposed ethics violations that were under investigation.

If government makes you take money out of your paycheck and send it in, that is not a "contribution" on your part, it is a "tax," and if government tells you that you have to devote time to a government work project, you are not "volunteering", you are being "conscripted." In the name of George Orwell, Americans should get this straight.

The San Francisco Examiner seems to be the only media outlet to examine the actual bill. Where is the Republican leadership in the Senate on this bill? The cost--$5.7 billion--is preposterous, but the real problem is the language that would make voluntarism "mandatory", sliding us another distance down the slope to government control of everything.

My paper on this topic for The Brookings Institution a while back is here. In it, I point out--as I have been doing for literally forty years--that the agents of social engineering are never idle.

When the president said that science would be respected again in the Obama Administration he obviously invited people to test that pledge. This same president promised to develop renewable energy sources.

Well, what about nuclear energy, one of most carefully tested technologies available to us to fight pollution and the tyranny of foreign oil? Josh Gilder of the White House Writers Group writes about it thus in The New York Post. (This is one of those gravely consequential developments that will cost America plenty, but in the midst of the histrionics over matters like the AIG bailout are lost to most news followers.)

Nixing Nuke Power
by Joshua Gilder
"New York Post" (Published 03/13/2009

When it comes to nuclear energy, settled science appears to count for little with the new Obama administration. This week, ostensibly "pro-nuclear" Secretary of Energy Steven Chu announced the administration's decision to kill the nuclear-waste-storage site at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert.

Chu said we need to take a "fresh look" and that "we can do a better job." Good luck. The Yucca site had been studied for more than 20 years, undergoing $9.5 billion of tests by some 2,500 of the nation's leading scientists.

They gave the Yucca project a green light, for obvious reasons. Yucca Mountain is in an isolated desert region with ideal meteorological conditions for a nuclear-storage project. If we can't dispose of our nuclear waste there, we can't dispose of it anywhere, and we will never be able to build a new nuclear-power plant in America again.

So much hysteria has been generated on the subject of nuclear waste and radiation in general that it's worth taking a moment to put Yucca's supposed risks into perspective.

Those billions of dollars of studies determined that 10,000 years from now the greatest annual radiation dose near Yucca Mountain as a result of deteriorating storage canisters would be 0.24 millirem. In a million years, it might get up to .9 millirem. Yet normal cosmic radiation delivers a dose of 26 millirems a year at sea level. If you moved from Manhattan to Denver, you'd be about doubling that.

In other words, the residents of Denver (who, except when the Broncos win the Super Bowl, have never been known to sport two heads) are all getting more than 52 times the dosage of radiation that inhabitants of the Armagosa desert valley (which lies below Yucca) might get a million years from now.

Transportation isn't a problem, either. As Ted Rockwell (who helped build the first nuclear sub and commercial nuclear power plant) once said to me, you'd have to use a shaped charge to blow a hole in the canisters they ship the waste in, then stand next to it taking no precautions, for there to be any significant danger.

Energy Secretary Chu - a Nobel Prize winner and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab - must know that Yucca is safe. What he may not understand is that his success or failure as energy secretary will be largely determined by his ability to find adequate energy sources for our economy's future growth - and he just appears to have cut off his one viable option.

There is plenty of carbon-based energy lying around, of course. But these sources are anathema to the global-warming worriers, and the Obama administration intends to impose a massive tax on their production and use.

And, though we hear endlessly about "alternative" or "green" energy, its boosters never mention that, despite massive subsidies, solar and wind today provide about one half of 1 percent of our nation's energy consumption. You could cover the nation over with windmills and solar panels (and then listen to the enviros scream about the destruction of habitat that entails) and still barely make a dent in our energy needs. Meanwhile, we are dismantling our dams and lessening our hydroelectric capacity.

Where are we going to get the power, all from biofuels? Every plausible national energy policy includes building many more nuclear plants.

Recycling nuclear waste is part of the solution, but we'll still need Yucca to store the waste byproducts. In the meantime, all that nuclear waste is sitting around in shallow pools or in above-ground containers next to nuclear-power plants in some of the most populated locations in the United States.

Chu said in congressional testimony that this is perfectly safe for now, and he's probably right. But it does beg the question why a theoretical danger a million years in the future - way out in the desert near where we once tested nuclear bombs - should be allowed to imperil our nation's energy future.

Is ignoring nuclear science what President Obama really meant by his inaugural pledge, "We will restore science to its rightful place"?

When the president said he thought that the collapsing stock market now offers some potentially good buying opportunities, I could only think of that 1932, Depression Era song by Irving Berlin, inspired by the then-president's assurance that "Prosperity is just around the corner" --as he raised taxes on investors.
(Taken from International Lyrics Playground site.)

LET'S HAVE ANOTHER CUP OF COFFEE

Just around the corner,
There's a rainbow in the sky,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie.

Trouble's like a bubble,
And the clouds will soon roll by,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie.

Mr. Herbert Hoover
Says that now's the time to buy,
So let's have another cup of coffee,
And let's have another piece of pie!

=====

"How's Tricks?" For more Depression Chic to help you smile through the gloom, see my January 15 post, "Things are Tough all Over" (in Archives, see right hand column).

Ted Van Dyk, a commentator with deep roots in the Democratic Party, is the latest to start tapping his fingers on the table: When is the Obama Administration going to realize that its fiscal program is bad medicine?

The economy may recover despite these policies, but it is not going to get better because of them, and it may get a lot worse. It is getting worse.

The commentator and radio host Dennis Prager makes a fascinating case for the unique American philosophy that distinguishes our country from others. As it happens, he points out, the distinguishing values are engraved on our coins. To summarize:

"In God We Trust." This is the solid source we turn to for our ethics. It erases relatavism.

"Liberty". Not equality or even equality and liberty (France). Liberty is the fountain of our creativity as a nation. It gives genius a home and conscience a refuge.

"E Pluribus Unum," out of many, one. The new ideal of "diversity" seems to turn that phrase on its head: you start with unity, and create "many". Multi-culturalism celebrates the varieties of Americans and our loyalties, but all that does is make a positive out of the negative divisions that characterize many nations. It isn't hard to retreat to one's own kind. It's the norm in the world and in history. The Founders' vision, in contrast, was revolutionary; to provide opportunity to all once they signed onto the common American project.

It goes without saying that the Founders' vision is in danger today. So the next time you want to explain to someone what distinguishes our country from others, flip them a coin.

Chris Matthews 2008:

Chris Matthews 2009:

The market doesn't like the stimulus plan, the bank reorganization plan or the prospective tax plan.

It could be worse. Every month some large share of the 92 percent of Americans who still have jobs put money automatically into their 401(K) and IRA investment instruments. Unless they specify that their money will be held back and saved in Treasury notes or CDs (as many do specify), it is available for fund managers to invest. This is a huge hidden asset for upward momentum in the economy. Without thinking about it much, some people are still voting with their wallets to support growth. Brokers are in the business of assisting them.

Yet it is not enough to save the day, is it?

The reason is as plain as your own motivation, dear reader. Are you investing now? Or are you holding your money back?

If you really believe in the new economic team you should be in the market with all you've got, right? But are you?

Talk to relatives and friends. Are they "in cash" or are they investing? If not, what is the collective result? Is it not the market's seemingly bottomless downturn?

The Administration seems strangely oblivious. Congress has barely enacted a nearly unexamined stimulus plan of unprecedented size and now is talking about needing another. The Congress and the president talk about cutting the deficit by taxing the rich. That, of course, is what Herbert Hoover and FDR did and we had a whole decade of depression. Of course, there were other factors involved in the 30s. But demonizing the people who instead should be wooed--the people who have money to invest and who are too frightened to invest it now--is a very poor economic strategy.

Big government spending cannot turn the economy around, either. Having big business lining up for handouts and promising to accept whatever industrial policy and regulations are thrown at them by sage, experienced businesspeople like Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank and Chris Dodd will not turn things around. The private economy has to be induced to function, to lend and take reasonable risks (with commensurate rewards clearly possible), to invest in expansions, new ventures and jobs.

A few months ago, for the first time, a majority of rich people, along with (as usual) most media and academics, voted for the Democratic presidential ticket. When these people connect what is happening to their savings, their retirement nest eggs, their funds for children's education, and their charitable dollars, and then start talking turkey to the White House, maybe the message will get through.

But first they need to ponder the question, why am I not investing now?

The three legged stool of the Reagan coalition was fiscal conservatism, social conservatism and defense/foreign policy conservatism. Now the stool has two legs. The social conservatives are on the outs.

Looking ahead, the Obama Administration, given its economic policies, may be destined for calamity. Conservatives of the sort who take part in national politics can all rally around that awareness. But meanwhile, social issues embarrass the kind of folk who publish most national papers and magazines on the right, their homes and offices located in the metro regions of Washington, DC and New York, their hearts and minds functionally agnostic. They tend to regard social conservatives as poor relations.

The trouble is, even if the national leaders of the social conservatives agree for now to soft-pedal issues of primary concern to their constituents and join the conservative Common Front, they can't make their "followers" follow. Like liberals, social conservative voters are values-driven. They are not "Republicans" or even "conservatives" as a first commitment. Many are religious. Some are temperamentally closer to liberals than conservatives on economic perceptions. The difference is, they think the country is on the wrong moral track and cannot see how to save the next generation from materialism and relatavism. Reagan resonated with them. Hardly anyone on the national scene does today. They are oblivious to The New York Times, but they care little more for The Wall Street Journal or National Review.

Right now social conservatives supposedly have no where to go politically. Therefore, while they are upset about the new Administration, they are being patronized by Republican party leaders and even more by most so-called conservative media and columnists.

But it is false to imagine that they have no choice.

They can stay home.

If and when that happens, do the math. See how far conservatism gets without them.

This country is not interested in having scandals right now, not in the still-opening weeks of the new Obama Administration. But the scandals are coming, like Sandburg's fog, "on little cat's feet." They are not Republican inventions or campaign strutting, but genuine, old fashioned revelations that cannot be ignored. Newly minted Senator Roland Burris of Illinois (replacing Senator--now President--Obama), power House chairman Charles Rangel, Sen. Chris Dodd , Rep. John Murtha, and, not least, the stunning financial barons, Bernie Madoff and (fanfare, please) Allen Stanford.

At first Stanford's depredations seemed mere pallid reflections of the 50 billion Madoff scam. Now it seems they may be comparable.

From tomorrow's London Times:

The scale of his influence was becoming clear. He donated funds to President Obama's election campaign and sponsored the annual charity polo day at Sandhurst, hosted by the Prince of Wales....

The scam is the second major fraud to hit America in three months after Bernard Madoff confessed that his $50 billion investment firm was "just one big lie". It is a devastating blow to the Obama Administration, which is trying to persuade investors to trust their savings to American institutions.

There are best-sellers on these topics whose authors are only now waking up to the potential. There are movie scripts that are just beginning to invade the dreams of Hollywood writers, "60 Minutes" segments whose story teams have yet to meet. But it all still seems untimely.

"Yes, We Can!", meet "They Did What?!"

Some critics may be too excited in their alarums about the danger of the Obama Administration's prospective politicization of the conduct of the 2010 Census. It is a serious threat that needs to be faced head on, but it is not the end of democracy as we know it.

Moreover, members of the U.S. Senate are going to get a chance soon to ask questions of the next nominee to head the Department of Commerce (the president's third choice), and then to vote on whether to confirm that nominee. After that they will get a chance to do the same with a a prospective new Deputy Secretary and then a new Director of the Census Bureau. A conscientious senator and his staff can get all the information they need through normal committee processes.

Meanwhile, members of the House will have several opportunities to conduct reviews of Census 2010 planning and find out what the Administration intends. Crucially, will the White House let the Census Bureau stick with the present plan that has been years in the making on a non-partisan basis, or does it intend to impose (or inveigle) a last minute, politically-motivated "adjustment" based on sampling?

Liberal Democrats and their allies in the media and the sciences have been lamentably quiet about this subject since it surfaced two weeks ago. There hasn't been a peep out of the National Academy of Sciences that I have heard. (I'll be happy to be shown that there has been one if I have missed it.) Some of these folks have strong opinions--which they present as facts--on other matters bearing on science policy, but they apparently have trouble standing up for the scientific discipline of statistics when it is being given a political arm-twist.

It makes one wonder how far politics reaches.

Meanwhile, the danger for Republicans is that they merely will vent and gesture when the confirmation and oversight hearings come. If they don't prepare themselves they are likely to be rendered ineffectual in the end. To put it bluntly, the Senate and House staffs need to be doing their homework now.

To begin with, they need to read and digest the 2003 report of statisticians who dealt authoritatively with the adjustment/sampling issue. It is readily available through the ever-cooperative Census Bureau. Legislators would be wise to consult with statisticians personally who know this subject cold and also with project managers who have handled a Decennial Census in the past. These experts know all the difficulties in both theory and practice.

Legislators also need to study the 1999 Supreme Court case on adjustment (United States Department of Commerce v. House of Representatives), a road-block to sampling for adjustment. And talk to some law professors. Among other things, they need to be alert to Administration attempts to use cagey language to dodge the Court ruling.

They also need to acquaint themselves with the outreach programs the Census Bureau already has underway for 2010 so that they can blunt interest group claims that adjustment by sampling and computer models is the only or best response to an undercount. (Thanks to such efforts in past decades, by the way, the undercount has substantially diminished.)

They also have to respond to the proposed legislative alternative of making the Census Bureau an independent agency, or, as another option, increasing the prominence and relative independence of the Bureau within the Commerce Department.

The defenders of a Decennial Census that relies on an actual enumeration and eschews the mistake of adjustment by sampling can prevail on this issue. But they will do so only if they do adequate preparatory work. Otherwise, they may get rolled. And that would be a shame for the country as well as for them.

The announcement today by Sen. Judd Gregg that he is withdrawing as the president's nominee to be Secretary of Commerce--and citing the Census issue as one reason--is going to increase scrutiny of White House plans to try to change the way the 2010 Decennial Census is conducted. Clearly the president has done little to alleviate concerns of Gregg, a Republican, that the Census might be conducted in a politicized manner.

It is now unavoidable that the White House statements claiming oversight of the Census preparations were not flukes caused by ignorance or naivete. They must have been serious or Sen. Gregg would not have decided to withdraw. One previously could give the president the benefit of the doubt. He was too busy with other matters to make his position clear. Now he has lost another cabinet nominee--not because of faults in the nominee, but because the nominee didn't want to be part of the Administration that ignored the chain of command and tried to micro-manage a function traditionally left to career scientists.

It is also possible, however, that Gregg didn't quit, but was shoved. The West Wing officials by now may have figured out that there are legal as well as political risks if they try to change the plans for the Census from the White House instead of the Commerce Department. Lawsuits were threatened today by House Republicans.

It would be more expedient for the White House to have a pliable Secretary of Commerce in place if the aim is to "re-evaluate" the conduct of the 2010 Census in order to introduce adjustment of results through sampling and computer modeling. Gregg presumably would not have gone along--and would have been hard to run over.

But the legal issues will remain even if a willing partisan is nominated and confirmed as Commerce Secretary. There is a 1999 Supreme Court ruling that would make sampling-based adjustment difficult in the absence of compelling evidence that the customary hard count would be less credible. And that evidence not only is lacking, but a three year statistical study that was finished in 2003 to respond to this issue concluded just the opposite: adjusting the Census numbers through sampling and computer models could lead to a less credible Census result. A hard count has always been legally defensible. A fuzzy "adjusted" Census--where figures at the Census tract and block level would be demonstrably erroneous in many cases--could invite endless litigation and bad will.

Another problem for the Obama White House if it wants to change the Census approach: planning for the 2010 Census has been underway for years and now is in preparation for testing. The disruptions caused by an Administration decision to change those plans would cause great problems and probably agitate the resistance of career statisticians charged with responsibility for conducting the Census.

Finally, one wonders if the President understands that the Census is a function of government that requires not only integrity in fact but also the appearance of integrity. The reputation of the Census should not be compromised. It is hard enough to get people to cooperate in the conduct of the Census without creating a reputation for politicization.

Those on Capitol Hill that want White House direction--and an adjustment plan--for the Census say they worry about the Census Bureau's ability to reach out to minorities and urban dwellers and to "count everybody." In truth, the Census Bureau's record on reducing the "undercount" has improved with each new Census. Huge efforts are made to reach out to all groups.

However, what might well cause the undercount to grow would be efforts to politicize the Census, thereby generating doubt in large parts of the citizenry that normally are quite willing to take part. If that is the case, and the Administration refuses to back off, Sen. Gregg's withdrawal will prove to be only one in a series of likely developments that will trouble the 2010 Census.

Various kinds of individuals, myself included, have served as Directors of the U.S. Census Bureau. One thing I think we all have in common is a desire to have the statisticians' work respected, without politicization. As far a the general public, I felt a bit alone on this subject a week ago when I first blogged on this, but awareness has grown daily in a startling way. The Gregg withdrawal really makes the issue unavoidable.

The longer the White House lingers, the bigger the story gets.

The White House staff can defuse the controversy over its potential role in determining the course of the 2010 Decennial Census right now and very easily by announcing that the president has no intention of trying to determine the methodology for the Census or of trying to change the plans already underway for conducting what is truly a vast government exercise. Move fast, that's the usual public relations advice. The reason for reticence is that the West Wingers are preoccupied by the economy, I guess.

Either that, or they really think they can redevelop the statistical methodology for the Decennial Census from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and run the show out of Rahm Emanuel's office. If so, a credibility issue looms ahead. (Notice the tone of understatement.)

Meanwhile, the buzz grows. My earlier blogs on the topic have been picked up or referenced (I'm told) by a couple of hundred smaller blogs and a number of large ones. I was interviewed on Fox News this morning and asked back for a feature program. There have been about ten radio interviews yesterday and today and more are being requested. Here's a Fox News story that just came in.

Usually, our Discovery staffers have to reach out for interviews on topics we are following; but this one has its own momentum. John Fund's piece in the Wall Street Journal yesterday gave it a big push.

Now, since the oversight issue surely will be brought up in the confirmation hearings of Judd Gregg to head the Commerce Department, and since many Congressional hearings are normally slated to monitor Census preparations on such matters as minority and urban outreach, you can be sure that the subject of potential politicization by the White House is not going to go away on its own. If we are still talking about this in twelve months there will be panic in the street canvass.

So why not just ask the Press Secretary to issue a short, solid "clarification" and make the controversy disappear?

My blogs on the apparent White House intention to direct the 2010 Census from inside the West Wing attracted the attention of other blogs, while today's article by John Fund in the Wall Street Journal has led to a small flood of interest. I have been invited to appear on Fox News tomorrow morning and, apparently, some radio talk shows after that. Several additional commentators are picking up the theme.

This issue may have a long life unless the Obama Administration has enough sense to lay down some assurances soon. It is beginning to dawn on people that monkeying with the input assumptions of the Decennial Census could throw off all the other statistical indices of the country. That is what happens in countries that put their census to the service of politics.

The new, fallback position that West Wing officials merely would "work with" the Bureau in setting up the Decennial Census of 2010 (one that is already is set up and is in test phase), and that there is some "precedent" for White House involvement in directing the Census Bureau, as White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs has said, doesn't hold up to scrutiny. I have known most of the Census Directors since JFK's time and none had to go to the White House for directions on how to set up the census. Some did have to account to the White House for reports of unacceptable delays or cost overruns. (But that sort of thing is really an OMB concern more than a West Wing concern.) Most of the time, directors were going through two levels of Commerce Department bureaucracy just to try to get the President to even notice the Census Bureau. Usually they were in line to plead for more resources. Some, like Dick Scammon (under Kennedy, and I, under Reagan) provided briefings of the President and his staff about the results of the Census--to help interpret the data a year or so after the Census was conducted.

But if any White House staff had suggested that they would like a personal hand in shaping the statistical assumptions going into conduct of the Decennial Census, alarms would have sounded in Suitland, Maryland, the Bureau's suburban headquarters. Statisticians are fairly mild mannered people until they think someone is trying to jimmy the numbers.

When I left the Census I went to work for the White House as a Deputy Assistant to the President, heading the office on Planning and Evaluation. Among other things, I enjoyed telling new colleagues and media people how to make more extensive use of the cornucopia of information that is available from the Census Bureau. The Bureau staff really appreciate the chance to share their data--with anyone--and a wise president will make ample use of the solid facts they can provide. That is the way to "work with" the Bureau. But the statisticians know best how to get the data in the first place.

Is it possible that the Obama White House will insist on supervising the 2010 Census? Well, that largely depends on whether the media--watchdogs of integrity that they are--get interested in this issue.

The Wall Street Journal's John Fund has taken up the quetion in this article in tomorrow's paper:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123423384887066377.html

For a while it seemed that the Obama Administration really didn't mean last week's suggestion that it would take conduct of the 2010 Census out of the Commerce Department and have the Census Bureau report directly to the West Wing.

Perhaps, one was about to concede, the White House merely aims to create the kind of independent agency--with all the protections for integrity that implies--envisaged in a bill being promoted by a number of leaders in the statistical community and introduced by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY). Under that bill the statistical office at OMB would oversee the agency. Of course, also under that bill, the independent Census Bureau would not even become a reality until 2012--two years after the coming Decennial Census.

Unfortunately, it is now clear that a new agency is not what the White House officials have in mind and that, indeed, having the Census Director report to someone on the president's West Wing staff is exactly what that they have in mind. (Note what the White House press secretary says. For some reason, only Fox News seems to have picked it up.

If so, the Obama Administration is threatening a reckless politicization of the Census Bureau and that, in turn, threatens to pull into unnecessary dispute the fundamental data that sustain almost the entire statistical system of the United States. It has the image of a Chicago-style partisan power play.

Minority members of Congress have expressed concern that Sen. Judd Gregg (Republican, New Hampshire), incoming Commerce Secretary, has been hostile to the Census Bureau and has been skeptical of its processes in recent years. They note that he has not supported budget increases for the Bureau. More importantly, they worry that if the Bureau reports through the regular Commerce Department chain of command to Gregg the Census effort might not do enough to count minority citizens. (That supposedly is because Gregg is a Republican.) Therefore, they suggest that the Bureau should report to the White House senior staff. Let's see: Obama's pick for Commerce Secretary apparently cannot be trusted, but the Democratic politicos in the West Wing can be?

Mentioned only by inference in discussions so far is the plain hope that a Census Bureau under the thumb of White House staffers might be prevailed upon to adopt a policy to "adjust" the Census numbers in 20101, using sampling and computer modeling--with all the profound implications that would have for political reapportionment and redistricting that will follow the Census count.

Adjustment is a recurrent fantasy of Census critics on the Left who want population numbers more to their liking. It would turn the science of statistics into something where speculation and guesswork could introduce egregious and prejudicial errors.

The whole adjustment scheme is a mistake. Having the White House supervise it is even worse.

First of all, the White House and its Congressional allies are wrong in asserting that the Census in the past has reported directly to the president through his staff. Directors of the Bureau often brief presidents and their staffs, but, as a former director (under President Reagan), I don't know of any cases where the conduct of the Bureau was directly under White House supervision. That includes Clinton in 2000, Bush 41 in 1990 and Carter in 1980.

They also are dead wrong about the feasibility of using sampling and computer models to make adjustment a credible way to improve the accuracy of the population count for purposes of reapportionment and redistricting.

The adjustment idea has been discussed for many decades. It never has enjoyed a large following among statisticians. Following an exhaustive three year study concluded in 2003, an even stronger consensus has developed among professional statisticians that adjustment cannot provide as credible and accurate a Census result as a hard count assisted by such techniques as examinations of public records of various kinds (e.g., drivers' licenses).

In fact, for every decade since at least 1970 and especially starting in 1980 the Census Bureau has made ever-expanding outreach to minority communities, including undocumented foreign workers, trying to get as complete a count as is humanly possible. To suggest that there has been any resistance to getting such a complete count is invidious political grandstanding and an insult to the diverse and highly professional staff at the Census Bureau. When I was director I found the Census personnel to be among the most conscientious of any group I'd encountered in government service. Whatever their personal political views (i suspect that most voted for Obama), their allegiance is to the integrity of the positions of public trust they hold.

The question of a fair and full Census count is to be distinguished from questions about technical problems with new technologies that periodically plague the Bureau. In fact, the Bureau's eagerness to get an ever improved hard count of residents of the U.S. may have pushed it to costly inefficiencies--which, ironically, is one of the complaints from elected officials on the political right.

Instead, the real issue is who directs the Census, the pros or the pols. If it is the pols, you may well get an order to adjust the Census count with samples and modeling. That will take a presidential order to over-ride the scientific consensus of statisticians at the Bureau and elsewhere.

You would think that an Administration that is thumping its chest about respecting science and scientists on such matters as climate change and embryonic stem cell research would show a little respect for the scientists in the statistical field (a branch of the science of mathematics) and their careful work on this topic.

But even if the new politicos in the West Wing don't really care about the science involved, you'd think they would have a better sense of the political dangers--for themselves, if not for the country. The Census is one of our oldest, most treasured civic institutions and one of the few functions of government named in the Constitution. As in matters of officials' ethics (as we keep hearing), one not only needs to avoid the reality of impropriety, but also the appearance of impropriety. To be fair and accurate, the process has to be transparently fair and accurate .

With adjustment by sampling and modeling, however, you will get inaccuracies baked into the process. It might mean better macro-numbers, but once you start imputing abstract "missing people" into Census tracts, you not only introduce errors, but errors that are demonstrable. "Virtual persons" (as I call them) of varying demographic characteristics will be assigned right down to the block level where anyone could go door to door and find out that such people cannot be found.

When that happens, the Census ceases to conform to common sense. Its numbers begin to look fanciful. A hard count might have errors, but has always been defensible in court. An adjustment would have more errors and its process would be subject either to deceit or the appearance of deceit.

You can imagine the news stories as small town mayors show the palpable folly of specific adjusted Census figures. The late night comics would be inviting you to "meet your neighbor who doesn't exist." If you think there is paranoia in the political field now, just wait until you have an "adjusted Census"--"adjusted" at the direction of politicians in the White House!

Has President Obama thought this through? "Fixing" the Census in a way that politicizes it is not what the new president's image needs.

But beyond the issue of image, does he have time for this? Letting the White House assume responsibility for the management of the Census is like turning the management of the war in Afghanistan over to some little group in the White House. It will become a political quagmire. Deciding on bombing targets in the Vietnam War didn't do a lot for LBJ, did it? The Census is controversial by nature, and often in fairly petty ways--people are always demanding more attention and resources for their states and cities. Why bring all that into the West Wing?

The Census Bureau arguably suffered from White House neglect in the Bush Administration. It has real problems to confront now as it readies a Decennial Census that is already well into the testing stage for a final push in a year and two months (April, 2010). It needs to get a new Director in place--and, at this point, someone qualified by past experience. Let that new director and his or her staff get on with the job and let the White House limit itself to assuring that politics is kept out of the picture. That will work.

In contrast, it is hard to conceive a more damaging way to complicate the Census process now than to try to put its direct oversight into the hands of a political and novice White House staff that has a whole world of other vital concerns to contend with.

Say you don't mean it, Mister President!

When an elected official publicly admits his bill may be wasteful, but wants it passed anyhow, you really know he is going to lose politically, whether right away or over time.

Either the present stimulus bill dies in the Senate or the Democrats provide their opponents an issue that won't go away for years. From board rooms to living rooms, Americans can see that the stimulus is an excuse for political backscratching--passing huge sums of money, without hearings, for proposals that mainly expand government.

Billions for higher education grants, for example? That will take months, if not years, to administer and do nothing to build the workforce in the meantime. It will be popular with university presidents, of course, because they can raise tuition accordingly. That will help shore up their budgets, and the effects eventually will trickle down....to somebody.

This is "Change"?

Why not back down gracefully, Mr. President, and develop a pro-growth package?

Everyone knows that it is possible to organize a Decennial Census in a way that benefits one party or another politically. One way to effectuate this otherwise unpalatable departure from the Census Bureau's two hundred year history of non-partisanship is to put the Bureau administratively under direction of the politicos in the White House. In reality that would be a sure invitation to cook the books on the highly consequential count of Americans.

Advocates argue that putting the 2010 Census under direct White House control somehow assures a higher priority to its mission. This is cynical. It puts a priority on manipulation of carefully derived Census criteria. The only reason the White House would want to be involved is in figuring out how to add more voting power to certain states and groups within states.

Simply put, there is no excuse for this idea. it is not true that the Census Bureau has ever been under the direct management of the White House, and for good reason. Even if angels were in charge of the Executive Mansion, if the nation's premier statistical agency were placed under White House direction the danger to public trust would be enormous. The Decennial count is one of the few federal functions specifically described in the Constitution itself and must be operate above suspicion of politics.

I was Director of the Census from 1981 to '83 in the Reagan Administration. I always was made to feel conscious of the sound public servants who had preceded me and, regardless of who appointed them, defended the decennial count. . I have known directors from the Kennedy era (the estimable Richard Scaammon) to the G. W. Bush Administration (the very professional Louis Kincannon). I don't know anyone who cares for the integrity of the Bureau and its products who would desire to see the Census Bureau report directly to the White House.

Power flows from an accurate Census Count. Everyone involved for years has seen the count therefore a sacred trust. It must not be polluted with even a semblance of Presidential meddling.

Anyone who thinks that conservatives or Republicans in general are merely enjoying the present floundering of the Obama Administration underestimates the patriotism of the Right and Center Right. Yes, there is a certain amount of schadenfreude, an inevitable feeling of "I told you so.". But if one is at all sensitive to what is at stake for our country in this moment he wants the president to succeed because he wants the country as a whole to avoid a worse predicament than we already are in.

However, that does not dictate support for the folly of the House "stimulus bill" that Speaker Pelosi facilitated. On the contrary, rueful though they may be, Congressional Republicans of all stripes could be President Obama's best allies in this crisis. Moderate Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine, for example, came out of a White House meeting today saying that the president recognizes that the stimulus bill must be "scrubbed". One hopes this means that Sen. Snowe herself, a pivotal vote, recognizes that "stimuli" that chiefly debauch the currency and add to the the national debt--and expand the long term commitments of government--constitute bad medicine for the economy. This in truth is a testing time. If moderates are supposed to stand on principle for anything, it is "fiscal responsibility."

If President Obama--backed by advisors Volker, et al--also can accept that understanding, a new, if temporary, alliance could be formed to make the stimulus bill what it needs to be, a union of public works, broad tax relief for individuals and businesses, economic incentives and restraint on unproductive spending--and not a political shopping list.

Frankly, bi-partisanship is the only way to revive public support for this act. Ordinary Americans are discovering that the House bill is mainly a scheme to pad the wallets of interest groups. That realization is yielding to dismay that is sinking support for the new president as well as his economic plan. Obama should move fast to change this perception by changing the reality behind it.

Republicans would have to rally behind a fiscally sound program, assuring that the Democratic majorities in both Houses would have to go along, too. And, President Obama would benefit from such an alliance because good policy for the country in the end is good political strategy. Results are what matter.

So, Mr. President, ignore the sniping from the media and the Internet. Republicans in Congress--for their own reasons, granted--are offering you a lifeline. Take it. Work with them to craft a pro-growth agenda, and watch the mood of the country and the market lift and the economy begin to heal.

It is hard to think of a new Administration that has slipped up so fast. Instead of taking a realistic position on ethics, the Obama team continued the pious breast-beating of the campaign and established draconian standards for service in the Administration. The enacted vetting process was so cumbersome it apparently had to be slighted in practice, which meant that standards started eroding altogether, along with the new crowd's credibility. The problem arose first with the recruitment of former lobbyists to serve in the Administration--after pledging, unwisely, that there would be none. To get around an unsound policy the acceptance of lobbyists was achieved through case-by-case-waivers. Quickly it became clear that the standard doesn't really exist.

Now we have the really prickly issue of taxes. After their announcements, three Obama nominees have turned out to have tax liability problems. The most recent two, Nancy Killefer and Tom Daschle, have just dropped out of contention. (Tim Geithner was given a pass and confirmed. Killefer arguably did nothing wrong at all and should not have been asked to quit.) I tend to sympathize with busy people set upon in largely exaggerated scandals, except I can't get over the hypocrisy of Administration officials who claim special moral status and yet promote members who conspicuously fail their own tests.

Are they being cynical or just clumsy?

Evidence is accumulating that the stimulus bill not only is a stinker, but also that more and more people know it.

We need 1) to clear out the bad debt. 2) We need a classic, short-term stimulus bill of relatively modest girth (350 billion) that emphasizes immediate public works. And 3) we need to induce people with money on the sidelines to invest it voluntarily to create new jobs.

We don't need to reward people who already have jobs, to pay off the education lobby, the government unions and the community organizers. That kind of thing soaks up available capital and damages the economy long term.

We also don't need legislation that is seen as punitive and rewards the trial bar; e.g., the new Lilly Ledbetter Act that the President made his first bill to sign and that will lead to more discrimination lawsuits, hardly the medicine the business world needs right now.

Money isn't infinite. You can confiscate everything people who have jobs make beyond basic living expenses and you still will not have enough government funds to cover all the dependent people in America (the poor elderly, the physically handicapped, the mentally ill, the prison population, the homeless and the children), let alone provide work for people now unemployed. Look at the mess California's over-generous politicos have gotten that state into.

People need to feel confident that if they take risks with their investment capital they won't be punished or attacked. They need to know (as in any capitalist economy) that the rules won't be changed suddenly. Right now they lack incentives to take risks again. Our economy needs to grow out of the current slump and the President needs to show that he understands this.

There are supposedly smart people on the new president's team, such as Volker, Summers and Geithner. Can they get through to him while there is time?

Imagine that that a nominee of President George W. Bush to head the Department of Health and Human Services had failed--in several ways--to pay scores of thousands of dollars due in taxes, and had so failed over three years. How would then-Senator Tom Daschle have reacted?

Democrats are using the stimulus bill to go on a wild spending spree that otherwise would have been hard to sustain, even with large Congressional majorities. Funding proposals that ordinarily would take months to review were just waved through in the House of Representatives and now are in the Senate, where the President wants prompt action. It would be hard to spend nearly a trillion dollars without some of it doing good, but that should not be the standard of good fiscal stewardship.

The country's and world's problems are the result of a credit bubble, in turn the product of banking speculation and government demands for granting high risk mortgages. Therefore, you'd think that the biggest topic in Washington right now would be the creation of a "bad bank" to absorb the bad loans and free up the credit market.

You'd think that the second hottest topic would be a stimulus bill that would induce investors to put their capital at risk to create new enterprises and, therefore, new jobs. There may be several trillion private dollars sitting on the sidelines waiting for the right time to get back into the market and invest. Right now, the federal government is undermining investors' confidence, not building it up.

The stimulus bill has many well-informed opponents and it is not popular with the public. Let's be clear, the Bush/Congressional compromise stimulus bill last fall also was largely misguided, especially the short-term "refunds" (including unearned refunds). Those checks dropped into the economy like rocks thrown in a pond; there were no ripples and nothing changed after they dropped. All that resulted was an increase in the federal deficit. So there is lots of blame to go around. But the refund checks having failed, now we face a far larger variation of the same mistake.

Some programs are worthy and will have real results in the economy, but the best examples of that are in the rather modest transportation programs. Others--I've heard 80 percent--won't even be felt for a year and a half or more. Much is just political teen agers joy-riding for Big Government, the Democrats ("I won.") having fun doing favors for such political constituencies as teachers unions and other government employees. Government workers may be worried, but they have suffered least so far.

The economic thinking for the new programs being "stimulated" is vapid. Why are we proposing in this economy to provide help with college loans to families whose bread-earners are still employed? When the need to revive the job machine, why the big effort to lower the cost of living for those already employed?

Of course, the people already employed are also the class of people who are going to pay for all the hoopla, the ordinary, hard-pressed taxpayers. The highest cost will be a debauched currency.

Even the specific recipients of the stimulus handouts should be skeptical. The help for college tuition, for example, is not really going to help parents much. It is going to help college and university administrations that are having a hard time meeting their budgets (as who isn't?) and who, once the bill is law, will promptly raise tuition to meet the availability of the new funding capacity of parents.

It is hard not to be entirely cynical about this bill. But let us acknowledge also a sincere impulse to take care of people through government. In a future blog I will address the motive force of a lot of big spending schemes; namely, the liberal desire to have the government take over the seemingly over-whelming problem of providing care for all the dependents in our population. With an aging baby boom, a big population of indigents (the homeless numbers grew even in boom times), the large numbers of physically handicapped, the mentally ill, the growing prison population, not to mention the children, how can all these people be cared for? The free market isn't up to it. Surely getting money out to people who are unable to care for themselves will help spur the economy, right?

But how is government going to be up to it, either, when the government is supported by the free market? How does Mr. Obama solve anything by redistributing the wealth when there is less and less wealth to redistribute? Before he gives it away, he might try to figure out how wealth is created in the first place.

Almost every new president announces on his first day that the is tightening the ethics requirements of public service, especially for people serving in the White House staff and the upper reaches of the federal departments. All this ever does is cause pain for honest, hard working people--all for a one day news story that the public promptly forgets. But Carter did it, Reagan did it, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43--they all struck the heroic pose.

President Obama, true to form, froze White House staff salaries on his first day. If he froze the salaries of everyone in government, that would matter because it actually would save some money. Putting a restriction on service for people inside the White House saves almost nothing and handicaps some of the most dedicated people one will encounter in any Administration. It amounts to mere political breast-beating, at best.

Then there are the new Obama strictures on employment of lobbyists (you are supposed to boo and hiss when the word lobbyist appears). "No lobbyists need apply," sounds great to a certain kind of ethics absolutist. But it is bogus. Lobbyists are no better worse than anyone else (including people who get paid to lobby for harsh ethics legislation) and sometimes they are uncommonly well-educated and knowledgeable about public policy.

Fortunately, the new Obama rules probably are temporary and will be nullified by repeated waivers. Even folks on the Left are onto the game.

The moral, I suppose, is that there should be a new federal regulation against fake posturing on ethics. Pecksniffian virtue is practically unethical itself.

If someone is sincere about ethics he will watch like a hawk the way these federal bailout and stimulus funds are being handed out by the billions.

The multi-billion dollar bank bailout last fall supposedly would allow recapitalization by getting rid of toxic debt that was sinking banks forced by law to "mark to market" their non-performing loans--that is, show them on their books at their currently distressed valuations. Unfortunately, the mark-to-market rule still applies and is still causing havoc.

There have been proposals lately for a giant "bad" bank to assign all the bad loans, with government support, freeing the currently burdened institutions to go about their business. The "bad bank" idea apparently worked in Scandanavia.

Brian Westbury and Robert Stein have another idea, and it's interesting and hopeful. It would a huge feather in the new Administration's cap if Mr. Obama were to follow their advice.