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Democrat Hypocrisy on Abortion, Privacy Rights
Tweet Share on Facebook April 30, 2010 Comment (16)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
No one can ever accuse the government of being consistent. In fact, as two recent developments in different states suggest, it seems these days that the focus is far much more on the ends rather than on the means.
In one case, New York Assemblyman Richard Brodsky--who wants to be attorney general--wants to force every resident of the state to become an organ donor. In another, the Oklahoma Legislature has enacted, over Gov. Brad Henry’s veto, a new law that requires women seeking abortions to first undergo an ultra-sound.
Democrats are, as might be expected, up in arms over the Oklahoma measure, arguing that it violates a woman’s right to privacy. They are, however, strangely silent over what Brodsky--who is also a Democrat--wants to do, as though somehow the harvesting of a person’s organs, without their explicit pre-mortem consent and possibly over the objection of family members, is not.
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Obama, Democrats Using Arizona Law to Demagogue Immigration
Tweet Share on Facebook April 27, 2010 Comment (35)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Washington is continuing to play ping-pong with the immigration issue. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who needs at least the lion’s share of the votes to be cast by Nevada’s Hispanic community if he hopes to be re-elected this November, is trying to push a bill. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t commit to doing anything about immigration unless and until the Senate acts first. And President Barack Obama stands there, wagging a disapproving finger at anyone who tries to address the problem.
The president and Congress’s Democratic leaders have ignored the issue up to now. Suddenly, they have a renewed interest in it--because a new Arizona law gives them the chance to demagogue on it.
The law says “For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state ... where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person.”They think, because this law--as I wrote yesterday--gives local law enforcement officials the power to detain suspected illegal immigrants they can drive a wedge between Hispanic voters and the GOP by conjuring up the idea it is some kind of near-fascism. But, as my friend Rich Lowry explains at National Review Online, there’s a lot of hyperbole going on.
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Federal Incompetence Forced Arizona Immigration Law
Tweet Share on Facebook April 26, 2010 Comment (50)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There is no easy solution to the problems posed by illegal immigration. First off, there are the economic costs, like the way illegals currently residing in the United States draw benefits from the welfare state while failing to contribute to its upkeep. Some suggest that they be cut off from these benefits–like free public education and hospital emergency care–preparing themselves for howls of outrage, claims of unfairness and significant legal challenges.
There is a perception, illegitimate though it may be, that a conflict exists between the rights of those born in the United States or who are in the country legally and those here illegally–and that stakeholders on each side of the debate have an equally meritorious position. Unfortunately this has produced a political crisis where the safest position is to support the status quo. Never mind that continuing to acquiesce to the presence of illegals makes a mockery of the idea that the United States is a nation of laws that must be respected and, yes, obeyed.
By putting her signature on a bill that addresses the problem directly, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer has been propelled as though shot out of a cannon from the depths of obscurity into the middle of the three-ring circus that is the U.S. immigration debate.
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SEC Inspector General to Investigate Timing of Goldman Sachs Case
Tweet Share on Facebook April 23, 2010 Comment (7)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
David Kotz, the inspector general of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said late Friday that he would conduct an investigation into the timing of the SEC’s decision to move forward with a civil suit against Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs.
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White House Must Answer Questions About SEC's Goldman Sachs Suit
Tweet Share on Facebook April 22, 2010 Comment (18)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The Obama White House has spent considerable time over the last two days pushing back against the impression it may have colluded with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over the timing of a civil fraud lawsuit against Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs.
The suit, which according to press reports has been in the works for more than a year, accuses the investment bank of deliberately misleading investors who participated in a mortgage securities trade that was designed to fail.
To the more cynical minded, the fact that the suit became public at the same time the White House is trying to push a financial regulations bill through Congress is somewhat suspicious. Likewise, as Greg Gordon of McClatchy Newspapers reported Thursday, eyebrows are up over the revelations that Goldman Sachs’ CEO Lloyd Blankfein had at least four meetings inside the White House at the same time lawyers for his firm and the SEC were in negotiations over the suit. Writes Gordon:
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Teacher Pension Plans Could Trigger Next Big Bailout Crisis
Tweet Share on Facebook April 21, 2010 Comment (9)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The effort to rein in Wall Street and its excesses is, for the moment, stalled. With all 41 members of the Senate Republican Conference committed to opposing the Democratic leadership’s bill because it creates a permanent structure to bail out failed companies, the charges and counter charges are flying around fast and furious.
The GOP, the Democrats say, is in the pocket of the big banks. At the same time some Republicans suggest that Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid went to New York to collect campaign contributions from high-rolling financiers at the same time he is trying to shepherd legislation through Congress to regulate their activities and more.
All of this, though, is akin to locking the barn door after the cow has been stolen, slaughtered and sold for hamburger. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans wants to be seen as having contributed to the creation of the environment that produced the last crisis, so they are putting a lot of rhetorical energy into making any delay look like the other side's fault. At the same time, however, the congressional leadership and the White House are ignoring a potential problem that could dwarf the big bank bailout.
A study just released by the Foundation for Educational Choice and The Manhattan Institute identifies as an “emerging crisis” the underfunding of public teacher pension plans across all 50 states. In “Underfunded Teacher Pension Plans: Its Worse than You Think,” co-authors Josh Barro and Stuart Buck examine the discrepancy between what states report and the true value of underfunded liabilities for state teacher pensions.
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Goldman Sachs May Be Obama's Enron
Tweet Share on Facebook April 20, 2010 Comment (17)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As the Democrats attempt to push a new financial regulation bill through Congress the emerging Goldman Sachs scandal threatens to engulf the Obama administration.
As most everyone now knows, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has brought suit against the giant Wall Street firm, charging it deliberately misled investors who participated in a mortgage securities trade that was designed to fail. The firm, which posted a profit of more than $3 billion for the first quarter of 2010, denies the allegation, has come to symbolize in the minds of many the kind of bloated, malefactor of great wealth the Democrats used to suggest pulled the strings in the Republican Party.
The problem now is that the shoe is on the other foot.
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Judge Wrongly Declares 'National Day of Prayer' Unconstitutional
Tweet Share on Facebook April 16, 2010 Comment (61)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The men and women who first settled the North American continent were religious pilgrims looking for a promised land. Upon their arrival they established compacts and agreements that recognized the power and author of a Creator whom they worshiped and to whom they gave thanks for their safe arrival and survival.
American is, as the founder’s intended, a place where religious pluralism flourishes. Nevertheless, the fact that they believed there was a linkage between faith and freedom is inescapable. The Declaration of Independence, for example, makes reference to the importance “the protection of Divine Providence” played in the struggle for liberty against the tyrannical British King.
The men who founded this country--those who wrote the documents that set forth our independence and those who established the framework for the national government--were not anti-religion nor were they irreligious. Even Thomas Jefferson, frequently depicted by historians as an unspiritual man, once wrote, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man,” a phrase inscribed on the frieze that circles the interior of his memorial in Washington, D.C.
All this is being turned on its head once again, this time by a part time federal judge in Wisconsin--she is on “senior status”--who issued a ruling Friday that the presidential proclamation declaring a “National Day of Prayer” is unconstitutional as is the congressional statute that calls upon the president to issue it.
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Newt Gingrich: Obama's Fantasy Foreign Policy is Dangerous
Tweet Share on Facebook April 15, 2010 Comment (15)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
In the heady, hopeful years following the end of “The Great War,” the leaders of the industrialized and democratic nations believed they could end war. Throughout the 1920s they produced a series of disarmament treaties, arms limitation treaties, even an agreement--the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact--to outlaw war as an instrument of state policy.
The responsible leaders of the time, still in shock over the carnage that the last European continental war had produced, pinned their hopes for the future on a fantasy transcribed onto paper.
It was a dangerous idea and, ultimately, a foolish one. Three years after the pact was signed the Japanese invaded Manchuria. In 1935 Mussolini’s Italy invaded Abyssinia. In 1936 Hitler ordered German troops into the Rhineland. In 1938 Austria was annexed and Czechoslovakia dismembered. The democratic powers, seeking to preserve the peace at all costs, responded impotently. By 1939, just a decade later, the world was again at war.
The world may again be headed down this path. Not toward war, but toward what former House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls “a fantasy foreign policy” that will leave democratic nations at the mercy of madmen.
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Why Democrats Fear the Tea Party Movement
Tweet Share on Facebook April 13, 2010 Comment (46)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Outside certain broad parameters, the Tea Party Movement remains something of a mystery, at least to the media.
It has its positive aspects--for example the incredible level of self-education it is producing about the U.S. Constitution, the Federalist Papers, other founding documents and the political process itself. It also, admittedly, has less flattering components, like those who seem to find their way in front of the television cameras who are relentlessly negative, focused on ephemera or are just plain angry.
Either way it is clear it is a force to be reckoned with, at least for this political cycle. It is also clear that the established order, the dominant liberal, Democratic establishment currently in power is afraid of it, but not so much because they do not understand it as because they do.
