“Obviously, it’s absurd to demand that in a democratic country,” a spokesman for the Czech foreign ministry said at the time.
The saddest thing about all this is that the one place where you should be freest to speak your mind is the one place where that is the most dangerous. The anonymous denunciation is a particularly nice touch. No confronting your accusers here, comrade.And until recently, he enjoyed writing for both of the campus’s newspapers: the institutional, liberal paper, The Michigan Daily, and the conservative alternative paper, The Michigan Review.After penning a satirical op-ed for The Review that mocked political correctness and trigger warnings, The Daily ordered him to apologize to an anonymous staffer who was offended and felt “threatened” by him. He refused and was fired."
Obama’s Big Miscalculation - The American Interest: "Latinos are the new blacks: a permanent racial minority or subgroup in the American political system that will always feel separate from the country’s white population and, like African-Americans, will vote Democratic. On this assumption, the Democratic approach to Hispanic Americans should be clear: the more the merrier. That is a particularly popular view on the more leftish side of the Democratic coalition, where there’s a deep and instinctive fear and loathing of Jacksonian America (those “bitterly clinging” to their guns, their Bibles, and their individualistic economic and social beliefs). The great shining hope of the American left is that a demographic transition through immigration and birthrates will finally make all those tiresome white people largely irrelevant in a new, post-American America.Of course, this is perfectly true. But if that is true aren't the members of the ethnic group scheduled from elimination from history in their own country right to be somewhat hostile to the new arrivals? Or, more precisely, to the elites that hope to use the new arrivals as a path to elimination of the bitter-clingers and their reactionary influence?
Obama’s Big Miscalculation - The American Interest: "Latinos are the new blacks: a permanent racial minority or subgroup in the American political system that will always feel separate from the country’s white population and, like African-Americans, will vote Democratic. On this assumption, the Democratic approach to Hispanic Americans should be clear: the more the merrier. That is a particularly popular view on the more leftish side of the Democratic coalition, where there’s a deep and instinctive fear and loathing of Jacksonian America (those “bitterly clinging” to their guns, their Bibles, and their individualistic economic and social beliefs). The great shining hope of the American left is that a demographic transition through immigration and birthrates will finally make all those tiresome white people largely irrelevant in a new, post-American America.Of course, this is perfectly true. But if that is true aren't the members of the ethnic group scheduled from elimination from history in their own country right to be somewhat hostile to the new arrivals? Or, more precisely, to the elites that hope to use the new arrivals as a path to elimination of the bitter-clingers and their reactionary influence?
America is a country with two electorates. One, a national electorate which appears once every four years when a president is on the ballot, leans slightly Democratic. The other, made up of those Americans who reliably turn out in mid-term and state elections, is markedly older, whiter and more conservative.Of course, President Obama has generously declared his intention to listen to the electorate, whether they voted or not!
A reporter pressed him to describe in a word the impact of Tuesday night’s results. In 2010, when Democrats lost the House, Obama called it a “shellacking.” This time he decline to offer an adjective, said he would leave it to others to go through the tea leaves of the election.
Nigel vs the Lunatic Mainstream :: SteynOnline: "Occasionally, the realities of electoral politics oblige the village's denizens to dissemble to the barbarians beyond, as in David Cameron's current pledge of a referendum on EU membership sometime after his reelection, which is intended to staunch defections to UKIP by seizing the nuanced ground of pretending that he's not entirely opposed to adopting the position of conceding the prospect of admitting the possibility of potentially considering the theoretical option of exploring the hypothetical scenario of discussing in a roundabout way Britain's leaving the EU. He doesn't mean it, of course, but he has to toss a bone out there from time to time. Lord Feldman, the Tories' co-chairman and Cameron's tennis partner, rather gave the game away when he was overheard dismissing the massed ranks of his party as "mad, swivel-eyed loons." Weary of being insulted by Cameron and his Oxford chums, Conservative voters began phoning the local UKIP office for membership applications. In nothing flat, "swivel-eyed loons" became a badge of honor, and the prime minister was giving speeches to the effect that, underneath the insincere unprincipled elitist veneer, he was a swivel-eyed loon himself.I like the 'swivel-eyed loons' bit. It seems to me to be a fine tradition in the politics of the English speaking world to take insults as a badge of honor. Indeed, the names of the two great parties in Great Britain are insults adopted as standards by their objects. This seems to me to be a much healthier kind of politics than the endless whining about being owed an apology that constitutes contemporary political discourse.
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Nigel vs the Lunatic Mainstream :: SteynOnline: "Occasionally, the realities of electoral politics oblige the village's denizens to dissemble to the barbarians beyond, as in David Cameron's current pledge of a referendum on EU membership sometime after his reelection, which is intended to staunch defections to UKIP by seizing the nuanced ground of pretending that he's not entirely opposed to adopting the position of conceding the prospect of admitting the possibility of potentially considering the theoretical option of exploring the hypothetical scenario of discussing in a roundabout way Britain's leaving the EU. He doesn't mean it, of course, but he has to toss a bone out there from time to time. Lord Feldman, the Tories' co-chairman and Cameron's tennis partner, rather gave the game away when he was overheard dismissing the massed ranks of his party as "mad, swivel-eyed loons." Weary of being insulted by Cameron and his Oxford chums, Conservative voters began phoning the local UKIP office for membership applications. In nothing flat, "swivel-eyed loons" became a badge of honor, and the prime minister was giving speeches to the effect that, underneath the insincere unprincipled elitist veneer, he was a swivel-eyed loon himself.I like the 'swivel-eyed loons' bit. It seems to me to be a fine tradition in the politics of the English speaking world to take insults as a badge of honor. Indeed, the names of the two great parties in Great Britain are insults adopted as standards by their objects. This seems to me to be a much healthier kind of politics than the endless whining about being owed an apology that constitutes contemporary political discourse.
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| Some Futile Filibusters are Approved by the Media |
As a chaser to such deceit, the campaign added a gaffe in the form of a Wendy Davis statement that Abbott never “walked a day in my shoes.” One doesn’t have to wonder how liberals would respond if George W. Bush had said that about a paraplegic opponent. And then, a surreptitious videotape began circulating in conservative circles purportedly showing Davis backers laughing about Abbott being in a wheelchair.That’s not as surprising as it first seems. Wendy Davis came to prominence when she filibustered legislation that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, require abortion mills to meet the health and safety standards of hospitals, and ensure that the physicians in charge of abortion clinics have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.The impetus for this legislation came about in the wake of the murder conviction of Kermit Gosnell, the Pennsylvania doctor who routinely performed late-term abortions, and killed babies who managed to survive the procedure. Many of his patients were grievously injured, too, and at least one died. All of them were women.
DOI undercover agents showed up at 63 polling places last fall and pretended to be voters who should have been turned away by election officials; the agents assumed the names of individuals who had died or moved out of town, or who were sitting in jail. In 61 instances, or 97 percent of the time, the testers were allowed to vote. Those who did vote cast only a write-in vote for a “John Test” so as to not affect the outcome of any contest. DOI published its findings two weeks ago in a searing 70-page report accusing the city’s Board of Elections of incompetence, waste, nepotism, and lax procedures.
So we can't tolerate homeschooling because it would prevent us from teaching them tolerance. That is the difference between a government that has a people and a people that have a government.Even though there are no suspicions of any parental care right abuses, besides the prevention of public school attendance, the further withdrawal of the part of parental care rights is considered necessary to help and support the education of the children, to ensure the children’s attendance of a regular school....The children would grow up in a parallel society without having learned to be integrated or to have a dialogue with those who think differently and facing them in the sense of practicing tolerance.
Laszewski ends with an analysis of the fundamental short coming that could have come from Adam Smith:It’s not positive. I don’t want to say people have given up on the notion they’ll get a good mix. They know the administration will make a big push. The insurance companies will spend big on advertising and outreach. So no one has given up. But it doesn’t look good right now.There’s a big misconception that this is about young people. That’s baloney. It’s about healthy people. A healthy 20-year-old might only pay a $100 premium. You want healthy 40 and 50-year-olds. The big problem right now is really total enrollment. We only have about 10 percent of the uninsured in here. Insurers think you need more like 70 percent of a pool of people to sign up.
If an entrepreneur had crafted Obamacare he would’ve gone to a middle class family. A family of four make $54,000 a year has to pay $400 in premiums net of subsidy and for that the standard silver plan has an average deductible around $2,500 and a narrow network. They’re going to pay almost $5,000 for that?
Too bad more of those greedy, evil businessmen who are only out for a profit had not been involved in putting this thing together.
So the entrepreneur would say I’ve got $5,000 in premium and all this deductible, what do they want for that? And they probably would’ve said we want office visits and lab tests because the kids need to go in occasionally and then we want catastrophic care. The problem with Obamacare is it’s product driven and not market driven. They didn’t ask the customer what they wanted. And I think that’s the fundamental problem with Obamacare. It meets the needs of very poor people because you’re giving them health insurance for free. But it doesn’t really meet the needs of healthy people and middle-class people.
Rampant Prosecutorial Misconduct - NYTimes.com: "The defendant, Kenneth Olsen, was convicted of producing ricin, a toxic poison, for use as a weapon. Federal prosecutors knew — but did not tell his lawyers or the court — that an investigation of the government’s forensic scientist, whose lab tests were critical to the case, had revealed multiple instances of sloppy work that had led to wrongful convictions in earlier cases. A state court found the scientist was “incompetent and committed gross misconduct.”
Yet the majority of the federal appeals court panel ruled that the overall evidence of Mr. Olsen’s guilt — including websites he visited and books he bought — was so overwhelming that the failure to disclose the scientist’s firing would not have changed the outcome."The first requirement of a legitimate authority is that it live under the same laws and meet the same standards that it applies to those under its authority. If a police officer made the same mistake there would be no mercy or no exceptions for him. The standard that lawyers apply to other lawyers is that whether they violated the rule or not is irrelevant as long as the outcome would have been the same. But when a police officer breaks a rule about gathering evidence it doesn't matter whether the evidence was true or even whether the mistake is made in good faith, the evidence and all evidence that was gathered subsequently that came to light in any degree because of the wrongly gathered evidence is thrown out as well. Regular citizens are expected to know an incomprehensible and ever changing mass of laws while prosecutors are allowed to plead innocent error.
China may face a revolution of rising expectations | WashingtonExaminer.com:
This is worth keeping in mind in the coming years as the Chinese become more aggressive and confrontational. In many quarters the first reaction to Chinese provocations will be to point out the crimes and failings of the West in the colonial era. But this ignores that the Chinese were every bit as much an imperial power as were the nations of the West, and that the immediate victims of contemporary Chinese revanchism are themselves non-Western countries.
