Category Archives: Republicans

UPDATE III: Demonizing Due Process (O’REILLY & O’BAMA SITTING IN A TREE…)

Barack Obama, Business, Justice, Law, Private Property, Republicans, The State

Rep. Joe Barton is being raked him over the coals by the Media-Congressional complex, his Republican colleagues included, for telling the truth: Big “O” muscled PB into handing over private property without due process—in contravention of “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” and all that stuff.

Not only is this unconstitutional; it is also immoral. It further entrenches the shakedown ethos, and the perception that private property works and breathes at the pleasure of the politicos. This is a slush fund, a piece of which everyone along the Gulf will be clamoring for, presumably without the hassles of proving they have been harmed by the spill.

None of what I’ve said will strike those of you who respect private property and due process, including the neglected, necessary, legal imperative of mens rea, as particularly original.

The real newsworthy point to take away from this is how uncommitted Republicans are to these bedrock principles.

This is a replay of the Jim Bunning brouhaha and what the Wall Street Journal called his finest hour. For attempting to abide by the quaint principle of pay-as-you-go—a position not even the crooked Chris Matthews could condemn in its entirety—Bunning was treated like a leper (or an Afrikaner farmer) by the entire spectrum of idiots.

UPDATE I (June 19): ET TU, BACHMANN? Where is this Michele Bachmann? “Neutered” is the right word, via The Right Scoop.

UPDATE II: O’REILLY & O’BAMA SITTING IN A TREE… Bill O’Reilly is consistent here. Never before has he deferred to the limits the constitutional scheme imposes on central power, and he does not now break with that commitment to an overweening central government. (Obama should cut O’Reilly some slack and give him that prestigious interview he craves. O’Reilly is his friend.)

But Bachmann backpedals and disappoints. O’Reilly declares he is okay with Obama bringing down on BP the full force of the federal government; MB, who rightly objected, now meekly agrees. Sort of. She ought to have stuck to her guns in noting the usurpation of power and the violation of due process of which she previously warned.

From “PATRICIDE AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT”:

“Prosecutorial power to bring charges against a person is an awesome power, stress Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Backing him, the prosecutor has the might of the state, and must never ‘override the rights of the defendant in order to gain a conviction.’
Prosecutorial duties are dual. While acting as the plaintiff, the prosecutor must also take pains to protect the defendant’s rights.”

O’Reilly is like a Benthamite bureaucrat; he’s no truth seeker.

Since the GOP went out of business, Mark Levin has begun to speak truth to power (and phony populism). VIA The Right Scoop:

UPDATE III (June 20): So you still think the “GOP, RIP” can be reformed?

CNN:

Rep. Jo Bonner called on fellow Republican Rep. Joe Barton to step down as ranking member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on Friday following the Texas Republican’s controversial statements to BP chairman Tony Hayward on Thursday.
“Earlier this morning, Rep. Barton called me to offer his personal apologies for any harm that his comments might have caused,” said Bonner, whose district covers much of Alabama’s coastline.
“It takes a big person to admit they were wrong and I appreciated Joe’s call,” Bonner continued. “However, as I told him, I believe the damage of his comments are beyond repair and, as such, I am today calling on Joe to do the right thing for our conference and immediately step aside as Ranking Member of the Energy and Commerce Committee.”
“Joe’s comments were stupid and extremely insensitive to the hundreds of thousands of people who live along the Gulf Coast,” Bonner added.

When Palin Agrees With Olbermann

Barack Obama, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Political Philosophy, Pop-Culture, Private Property, Regulation, Republicans, Sarah Palin, The State

The following is from my new, WND.Com column, “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann”:

“Republican reaction to the president’s reaction to the crude gushing in the Gulf of Mexico is a measure of how serious the GOP is about checking the spread of big government.

Every time I turn around, there’s a Republican insisting that Big “O” take over where Big Oil has (allegedly) left off. This, Sarah Palin has been demanding as loudly as James Carville; Congresswoman Michele Bachmann as urgently as clown Keith Olbermann. The consensus on both sides of the political aisle seems to be that where British Petroleum has failed to stop the spread of the oil slick, the president will prevail.

If I didn’t know Republicans better, I’d think they were making political hay out of the Deepwater Horizon leak, now in its fifty second day. …

So what does the idolatrous Idiocracy want from its Golden Calf?

The Oprah faction confuses righteous indignation with righteousness; it wants Obama to come unhinged. The Disneyland division is hoping that off-shore oil explorer, acclaimed scientist and inventor James Cameron, who “has worked extensively with robot submarines,” will help the film directors of BP to plug the oil plume. Cameron’s plan includes that liquid metal robot from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.” Obama must realize that there is no way such a plan could fail.”…

What do I recommend? For the root of the environmental despoliation of the ocean and other state-controlled expanses of water—and the ultimate solution to it—read on. The column is “When Palin Agrees With Olbermann.”

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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The Unbearable Lightness Of Being Republican

Barack Obama, Ethics, Government, Law, Morality, Politics, Republicans

The Joe Sestak “scandal” is nothing but garden-variety politics routinely practiced by both parties. Yet as Rome burns, such quid pro quo is what is consuming the Republican Party’s bobbleheads. The signal dishonor of which Obama operatives stand accused, via Sam Stein, is offering a job to “Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn) in exchange for him not entering the Pennsylvania Senate primary.” The act has “seasoned political observers, historians, and lawyers responding with veritable yawns”:

American presidential history is littered with quid pro quos, implicit and explicit secret job offers, and backroom deals, so much so that the Sestak offer may be more the norm than the exception to it.
“It is completely unexceptional,” said Dr. Russell Riley, associate professor and chair of the Miller Center’s Presidential Oral History Program at the University of Virginia. “I read some place today that this is evidently illegal, which was shocking news to me. I don’t know what the statutes are that would bear on this… it just doesn’t seem to me to particularly rise to the level of being newsworthy in the first place and the fact that it’s spun out into a scandal has been surprising.”
George Edwards, a Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Jordan Chair in Presidential Studies at Texas A&M University, says: “There is no question whatsoever that presidents have often offered people positions to encourage them not to do something or make it awkward for them to do it. Presidents have also offered people back-ups if they ran for an office and lost. All this is old news historically.”

The complete column is HERE.

Note, this is not to say the shenanigans of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and President Bill Clinton were legal. They could very well be illegal. They are certainly morally dubious. But politicians are by definition immoral. By blowing the scandal du jour out of proportion, an unspeakably crooked class is made to sweat the small stuff only.

I guess Republicans have a stake in perpetuating this state-of-affairs.

Update II: The Palin Premise

Ann Coulter, Crime, GUNS, Hollywood, Political Philosophy, Reason, Republicans, Sarah Palin

WHAT STRIKES ME again and again about what goes for conservatism these days is the feeble arguments used to make a case—they’re so, well, liberal in their illogic.

Via the Charlotte Observer: “Sarah Palin headlined the NRA convention in uptown Charlotte Friday afternoon, speaking to a crowd of 9,000 gun rights supports at Time Warner Cable Arena.”

MSNBC TV has just reported (falsely, I hope) that Palin went on to call on Hollywood to clean up its violence-glorifying, crime-impacting ways before demanding that law-abiding citizens give up their guns.

First, implicit in this stupid exhortation is the unfounded notion that graphic visuals cause violence. How like Tipper! In their censuring attempts, conservatives like Palin remind me of Democrat Tipper Gore and her comical attempt in the 1980s to censor rock lyrics.

Also following from the Palin premise is that, should Hollywood clean up its act, so to speak, we gun owners will indeed consider giving up the right to protect sacred life and property.

Can’t this woman ask my girl, Michelle Bachmann, to help her formulate a logical thought!

Update I (May 15): Thanks to Jack Slater (Letter of the Week) for putting things into perspective as to Palin. I ask Myron to repeat some of his classic observations about the woman. No one is listening; you have to repeat ad nauseam.

(Incidentally, the only individual on the NRA Invited Speakers list who deserves accolades for his efforts on behalf of liberty is … the Democrat (once Reagan appointee), Jim Webb.)

With few exceptions, no amount of analysis I’ve provided on this blog has moved the Republicans who read it (and yes, that was a pejorative) any closer to the truth. Coulter, Palin; Limbaugh, Hannity—they can rest assured. Their futures and fortunes are guaranteed by a blind following as ignorant as it is loyal. All you puppies want is to wag your tails for your masters or mistresses, and forget their hypocrisy and intellectual corruption over the years. I won’t even advise that you read my Palin archives (avoid it) on the main site and on the blog; I know you are more comfortable with feeling warm and fuzzy than following the facts and the principles.

Palin is wrong on almost everything except on energy. On energy and environmental issues she is indeed an ace. That’s all.

Coulter recently appeared on CNN together with some actress, Aisha Tyler, an avowed Obamaite (Tavis Smiley was excellent compared to… Anderson Cooper). The lefty was better than the conservative Queen Bee who could muster only a few silly, spiteful quips in support of freedom.

If you believe these characters are the republic’s last hope, then you deserve their brand of freedom (although Iraqis don’t). They and the wars they’ve whored for are, by and large, what got us into this financial morass.

Update II (April 16): McCain supports Gov. Brewer. Palin is worse than useless on immigration. Anyone who cares about what Peter Brimelow calls the “National Question” will apprise himself of Palin’s hollow, “we-are-a-nation-of-immigrants” positions. She motivates her support for protecting the border with reference, mainly, to national security—not crime, sovereignty, the transformation of the country’s character.

The other characters for whom everyone goes to bat aim to bring the country back to Bush and Laura’s party (Laura approves of BHO’s Kagan appointment). It’s curious that readers would see this as serving to awaken Boobus Americanus.

“The Democratic and Republican parties each operates as a necessary counterweight in a partnership designed to keep the pendulum of power swinging in perpetuity from the one set of colluding quislings to the other, and back.”

And their supporters play musical chairs along with them.