This has been a tough week for the hopeful ones who believed President Obama's vow to break with the old politics. Every day, it seems, the president caved in to another Democratic interest group working against the public weal.
The big winner of the Obama financial-regulation plan appears to be the Federal Reserve, which becomes the consolidated supervisor of large, systemically important banks.
To quote the esteemed Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the chickens that were hatched in the stimulus package are coming home to roost in the healthcare proposal.
Matt Drudge is obviously not happy: "ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA; NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE," his headline screams, in even bigger type than that.
To borrow Niall Ferguson's metaphor, if finance is an evolutionary process, then regulation is its intelligent design -- which, I would add, is a cognate of faith, not science.
Never mind firmer retail sales, rising stock prices and moderating job losses. The greenest shoot is Americans' changing economic fixation. There's less panic over collapsing banks, home foreclosures and the prospect of another Great Depression. Attention has moved to budget deficits and the resulting federal debt. These are worries of a more stable time, when people had the luxury of looking at the long-term.
It shouldn't come as a complete surprise that, as Stephen Hayes reported in The Weekly Standard, detainees in Afghanistan are now being advised of their Miranda rights by American interrogators -- that they have a right to be silent, a right to a lawyer, a right to have that lawyer paid for, etc.
As limited government advocates fight to preserve individual liberties amid the onrush of President Barack Obama’s “Era of Obscenely Big Government,” one fundamental American freedom that we must be increasingly vigilant in protecting is the freedom of speech.
After the shooting deaths of abortion provider Dr. George Tiller last month and security guard Stephen T. Johns at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum last week, I knew it was only a matter of time before I would receive an e-mail like one sent from Ann Pinkerton of Oakland:
Am I concerned, friends ask me quietly, after we all publicly praise President Obama's monumental Cairo speech. The friends are usually, but not always, Jewish. They are all, like me, strong supporters of the state of Israel. The answer is that of course I'm concerned. I'm very concerned. But since when has a supporter of the state of Israel not been concerned?
While walking recently on a crowded Manhattan sidewalk, I suddenly saw a wall of water crash down from somewhere over our heads. The source was a truck from which a fat hose was pouring water on the flower baskets hanging from posts. The baskets were intended to add some charm to the urban streetscape. Nice try.
Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election represented one of the most dramatic shifts in political power in American history. In terms of both style and substance, the contrast between Obama and George W. Bush is perhaps as great as that between any incoming and outgoing presidents in the modern era. Yet the historic nature of this election should not blind us to the high degree of consistency between the results of the 2008 election and previous elections. New evidence on the results of the 2008 presidential election at the congressional district level reinforces this point.
It's increasingly looking like President Obama may be sunk by his own deficit.
Last week, White House chief economist Christina Romer told reporters that there are "billion-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk" in America's health care system -- apparently there for the taking if only Washington would show the will to pick them up.
Barack Obama has said he wants to pass a national health care bill this year, with a government insurance policy option. Democratic congressional leaders have called for passage of such a bill before the beginning of the August congressional recess.
Within the coming weeks, Americans will begin to consider critical issues concerning the future of health care for themselves and their children, including universal coverage, taxation of benefits, computerized records and the controlling of costs. But before the debate commences in Congress and the media, big insurance and pharmaceutical companies are lobbying frantically (and spending millions of dollars) to foreclose the possibility of the most promising aspect of health care reform: a public insurance option.
At last there is convincing evidence that Obama’s poll numbers may be descending to earth. While his approval remains high – and his personal favorability is even higher – the underlying numbers suggest that a decline may be in the offing.
Last weekend's European Parliament and British local county council elections were not only a victory for the center-right over the center-left but also, more significantly, an indication of the growing rejection of the past 60 years of denationalized and consolidating European history.
McAllen, Texas, spends more per person on health care than any other metropolitan area in America, except for Miami. Why would this poor border town spend $15,000 a year per Medicare enrollee?
