Obamanation
The daily roll-out of the “stimulus” spending is beginning to feel like a joke. One day, we’re hearing about a “sweepstakes”: For nearly a year, city officials have been planning the 66th police training academy, intent on keeping up the size of the police force as the crime rate increased. But the city’s fiscal crisis…
Responding to my reference to Peter Schwartz’s “Mob rule comes to Washington,” RIC Professor Thomas Schmeling seems to think that I’ve written myself into a corner: I’m confused. In this post you object to rule by the “mob” (which appears to be the democratically elected representatives of the people) and you object to “government unconstrained…
Peter Schwartz tallies some recent indicators of political mood: The essence of mob rule is arbitrary and unchecked force, in disregard of all rights. If so, then when the government spends our money with virtually no limits — then trillions of dollars are gleefully disbursed through unrestrained horse-trading and arm-twisting among members of Congress —…
During my drive home, Dan Yorke was talking about rumors that Caroline Kennedy might be poised for appointment as President Obama’s ambassador to the Vatican: Former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Raymond L. Flynn is giving a thumbs down to Caroline Kennedy as a potential pick for his former diplomatic post, saying the pro-choice values…
Rick Santorum introduces his fellow Pennsylvanians (and us) to a man whom he says is on President Obama’s short list for Supreme Court: Watching President Obama apologize last week for America’s arrogance – before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans – helped convince me that he has a deep-seated…
It’s the pitchfork line that’s attracting attention, but this strikes me as the more astonishing exchange to emerge from President Obama’s meeting with banking bigwigs: JPMorgan’s Dimon spoke first. He began by complimenting the president on the economic team he’d assembled. And he said his industry needs to explain more directly to the American people…
As with the strained morality of modernism, what galls about rationalizations for the invitation of President Obama to be commencement speaker for and to receive an honorary degree from the Catholic Notre Dame University is the dishonesty of the rationalizations: The Obama invitation, [Notre Dame President Rev. John] Jenkins emphasized, does not condone or endorse…
Yeah, we could discuss the rights of a governing entity that is spending billions of dollars to prop up a specific company, but that would slide past the real question of political philosophy that makes this such a frightening proposition, no matter which step we highlight as the one in the wrong direction: The Obama…
So Rhode Island — indeed, Tiverton — may be providing the first instance of the federal stimulus at work: It will surely be the first in Rhode Island and there’s a chance that a Main Road, Tiverton, rebuilding job could be the first federal stimulus job in the nation. “We’ve already had some inquiries from…
Inasmuch as people have a tendency to express approval or disapproval for subjective reasons and the popularity of policies isn’t necessarily reliable evidence of their necessity, watching approval polls is a bit like watching traffic patterns in reaction to a fog. That said, perhaps these results will begin to move us past the silly declaration…
