Archive | Sanctimony


“Obama stands with tyrants,” “Sides with Chavez, Castro against Honduran Democracy,” Newspapers Say

“Obama stands with tyrants,” writes the Washington Times. “When thousands of Iranians flooded the streets of Tehran protesting a rigged election and were beaten and shot down by pro-regime thugs, the president bided his time before making a series of noncommittal statements. He seemed to hope it would all just go away. However, when a socialist demagogue was ejected unceremoniously from Honduras on Sunday by his own government for trying to establish a presidency for life, Mr. Obama instantly sprang to…

Read the full story

Posted in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (4)

Washington Post Sells White House Access to Lobbyists, and Misreports Obama Health-Care Facts

Until it was publicly-exposed, the Washington Post was selling its access to the White House to lobbyists. As Politico reported, “For $25,000 to $250,000, the Washington Post is offering lobbyists and association executives off-the-record, nonconfrontational access to ‘those powerful few’ — Obama administration officials, members of Congress, and the paper’s own reporters and editors. The astonishing offer is detailed in a flier circulated Wednesday to a health care lobbyist, who provided it to a reporter because the lobbyist said he feels…

Read the full story

Posted in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to NowhereComments (1)

Progressive Intolerance

Progressive Intolerance

It is truly amazing to me that some people who call themselves “liberal,” “progressive,” and “tolerant,” are so irrationally afraid and intolerant of anyone who holds a differing viewpoint to the degree that they feel the need to lash out, discredit and attempt to purge them from the intellectual discussion of ideas. Recently, I was shocked to discover that such people were trying to accomplish this by employing methods I thought hadn’t survived beyond the Nuremberg trials.

I saw this spectacle…

Read the full story

Posted in Culture, Economy, Odds & Ends, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (0)

More Risky, Low-Income Loans: Obama Asks Congress to Create a Harmful Consumer Financial Protection Agency

Banks will now be pressured to make even more risky, low-income loans. Obama has sent to Congress his proposal to create a politically-correct Consumer Financial Protection Agency. “The agency would be in charge of enforcing the Community Reinvestment Act, a law that prods banks to make loans in low-income communities.”

Government pressure on banks to make low-income loans was a key reason for the mortgage meltdown and the financial crisis. Yet Obama’s disturbing proposal would empower the new agency to enforce the Community Reinvestment…

Read the full story

Posted in Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, SanctimonyComments (0)

Obama Backs Dictatorship in Honduras

Obama Backs Dictatorship in Honduras

Honduras removed its bullying, autocratic President after he began behaving as a dictator, and its Congress replaced him with a less power-hungry member of his own political party. Now Obama is joining the Cuban dictator Castro and Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez in demanding the Honduran ruler’s return. This is simply outrageous.

As Investors Business Daily notes, Honduras had ample reason to remove its dangerous, out-of-control President, who had repeatedly violated his country’s constitution and laws:

“Honduras’ now ex-president, Mel Zelaya, last Thursday defied…

Read the full story

Posted in Economy, International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (1)

Obama Blunders in Honduras and Afghanistan

Obama Blunders in Honduras and Afghanistan

The U.S. is meddling in Honduras to prop up an anti-American ruler backed by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. After Honduran president Manuel Zelaya attempted to expand and perpetuate his rule by holding a referendum declared illegal by his country’s supreme court, and ignored objections by his country’s Congress (and even members of his own party), he was removed by his country’s military and replaced by the Congress. Now, Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are seeking his reinstatement.

This makes no sense at…

Read the full story

Posted in International, Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (0)

Obama’s Job-Killing Stimulus Package Replaced Investments With Welfare, Out of Political Correctness

Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package was purged of most investments in roads and bridges, and filled instead with welfare and social spending, out of political correctness, after feminist leaders complained that building and repairing roads and bridges would put unemployed blue-collar men to work, rather than women.

Christina Hoff Sommers points out that “of the 5.7 million jobs Americans lost between December 2007 and May 2009, nearly 80 percent had been held by men. . . .Men are bearing the brunt of the current…

Read the full story

Posted in Economy, Employment, Labor, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to NowhereComments (1)

Obama Backs Corrupt Status Quo in Financial Rules Overhaul

The mortgage crisis was caused largely by the reckless government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and by federal affordable-housing mandates. But Obama’s proposed financial rules overhaul does absolutely nothing about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, admits Obama’s Treasury Secretary, tax cheat Timothy Geithner, even though he admits that “Fannie and Freddie were a core part of what went wrong in our system.” Worse, Obama’s plan is “largely the product of extensive conversations” with two lawmakers responsible for the corrupt status quo, Chris Dodd and Barney…

Read the full story

Posted in Bailout Watch, Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual, Regulation, SanctimonyComments (1)

FDA Tobacco Regulation May Harm Public Health By Blocking Healthy Alternatives

FDA Tobacco Regulation May Harm Public Health By Blocking Healthy Alternatives

Yesterday, Obama signed into law a deceptive FDA “tobacco regulation” bill that will undermine public health in the long run by protecting cigarette manufacturers against competition from less deadly tobacco products (which is why the nation’s largest cigarette maker supported the bill). As Bill Godshall of Smoke Free Pennsylvania notes, the bill “protects the most hazardous tobacco product (cigarettes) from market competition by the least hazardous (smokefree) tobacco products, as it:

* bans all new and recently introduced smokefree products, while keeping…

Read the full story

Posted in Features, Healthcare, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, Sanctimony, ZeitgeistComments (0)

Supreme Court Limits Voting Rights Act, But Declines to Strike Down Key Section of the Act

The Supreme Court expanded the ability of local governments to “bail out” of a draconian provision of the Voting Rights Act, which requires them to get “preclearance” from the Justice Department, or a special court in Washington, D.C., for even trivial decisions like whether to move voting booths across the street. A three-judge district court said even local governments with an undisputed history of non-discrimination could “bail out” of Section 5 of the Act only if they themselves register voters, which…

Read the full story

Posted in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (2)

U.S. Civil Rights Commission Opposes Federal Hate Crimes Bill on Double Jeopardy and Civil Liberties Grounds

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has decided to oppose the federal hate-crimes bill. The Commission calls the bill a “menace to civil liberties” because “its most important effect will be to allow federal authorities to re-prosecute a broad category of defendants who have already been acquitted by state juries.” Thus, it will erode protections against double jeopardy.

In deciding to oppose the bill, the full Commission agreed with the position earlier taken by four individual Civil Rights Commissioners, who…

Read the full story

Posted in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (1)

Tourism Bill to Be Combined With Anti-Civil-Liberties Hate Crimes Bill

If you were a tourist, would you like to come to a country where you could be tried twice for the same crime — even if you were found innocent the first time around? Not me. But the Senate will likely attach a bill that promotes such reprosecutions to the Travel Promotion Act, reports the Christian Science Monitor. Liberal Senators plan to amend the Travel Promotion Act, a bill to attract international tourists to the U.S., by combining it with a…

Read the full story

Posted in International, Legal, Nanny State, Odds & Ends, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (0)

FDA Poised to Regulate Tobacco, Which May Backfire

Congress is about to enact a bill to subject tobacco to FDA regulation. Mark Berlind notes one anomalous feature of the bill: it would deny companies’ protection against “tort liability — even if they rigorously follow every FDA rule.” We wrote earlier about how FDA regulation might actually undermine public health by making it harder to market to smokers other tobacco products, like snus, that are not as lethal as cigarettes.

As Jacob Sullum notes, the law will require snus “to carry a…

Read the full story

Posted in Economy, Healthcare, Legal, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Precaution & Risk, Regulation, SanctimonyComments (1)

Going on 20: The Big Dig Disaster Continues

Going on 20: The Big Dig Disaster Continues

Remember Boston’s “Big Dig?” If not, here’s a brief recap: It’s the highway project/death trap originally budgeted for $2.6 billion that ended up costing taxpayers nearly $15 billion–giving it the honor of “Most Expensive Public Works Project in U.S. History” (and let’s hope it stays that way). It took more than a decade-and-a-half to complete, and apparently it doesn’t do anything to help reduce traffic congestion.

On top of all this, a former Massachusetts attorney general has joined a class action lawsuit filed in response to the…

Read the full story

Posted in Economy, Legal, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (1)

Stimulus Package Kills Jobs, Drives Up Unemployment

Unemployment is now even higher than the Obama Administration said it would be if there were no stimulus package. At least 1.5 million jobs have been lost since Obama signed the $800 billion stimulus package into law.

The stimulus package is harming the economy, both by triggering trade wars that have cost at least 40,000 jobs, and by driving up interest rates for businesses that need to borrow money to expand or create jobs. (The government is keeping down interest rates on its own…

Read the full story

Posted in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, International, Labor, Legal, Mobility, Politics as Usual, Regulation, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, TradeComments (1)

Greider: Democrats Not Stalinist Enough

Greider: Democrats Not Stalinist Enough

If you’re searching for a good piece of bizarre, whacked-out political “analysis,” look no further than William Greider’s latest column in the Nation. Greider, a veteran journalist, is known for coining the term “Nader’s Raiders” in the late ’60s, and for authoring a book on globalization, One World, Ready or Not, which even the progressive economist Paul Krugman described as “a thoroughly silly book.” Greider’s column is really just another bad sales pitch for his latest train-wreck tome, Come Home, America, but it should…

Read the full story

Posted in Culture, Odds & Ends, Sanctimony, ZeitgeistComments (0)

Obama Justice Department Protects Racist, Anti-Semitic Hate Group and Anti-White Voting Rights Violators

Members of the New Black Panther Party, one of whom was an Obama campaign poll watcher and local democratic official, used nightsticks and racial epithets captured on videotape to drive voters away from the polls in a Philadelphia precinct. But the Obama Administration killed a successful lawsuit against these criminals, dismissing it after career Justice Department lawyers had already obtained victory in the case, as a former Justice Department lawyer, the Philadelphia Bulletin, and a newspaper editorial note. (The New Black Panther Party, which…

Read the full story

Posted in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (0)

Obama Justice Department Winks at Racist Voter Intimidation

Black Panthers in Philadelphia used nightsticks and racial epithets to drive white voters away from a polling place. “Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as ‘the most blatant form of voter intimidation’ that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.” But Obama’s political appointees at the Justice Department overruled them, dropping the case after victory…

Read the full story

Posted in Legal, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, SanctimonyComments (0)

Divorce Courts Harass Our Troops and Small Businesses

Memorial Day is an opportunity to thank our troops, and open our eyes to the disgraceful way they are treated by divorce courts. The bias that divorce courts in my home state of Virginia exhibit against males, people who start small businesses, and breadwinner spouses in general has been ably chronicled by Richard Crouch, a prominent family lawyer, in the Virginia state bar publication Family Law News.

But what ashames me most as a lawyer is how divorce courts routinely flout…

Read the full story

Posted in Deregulate to Stimulate, Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Mobility, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Politics as Usual, Regulation, SanctimonyComments (1)

Retirees, Taxpayers Ripped Off to Subsidize UAW

Obama accused critics of his decision to give control of Chrysler to the United Auto Workers Union of being “speculators.” But it turns out that many of them are pension funds representing the interests of retirees, who are being fleeced to enrich the politically better-connected UAW.

“Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock revealed this week that his state’s police and teacher pension funds have lost millions of dollars in the Chrysler ‘restructuring.’ Indiana’s State Police Fund and Major Moves Construction Fund, which finances roads…

Read the full story

Posted in Bailout Watch, Economy, Employment, Labor, Legal, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere, TradeComments (17)

  • Popular
  • Most Comments
  • Most Emails