Sixth Circuit orders Ohio to implement new system to verify voter registrations

Obama: I don’t need ACORN’s help

Obama, a Harvard-trained lawyer who for a decade taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School, has said "my judges" should have "the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it's like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it's like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old." He has characterized such people as being in "the minority" and "on the outside" and not having "a lot of clout." His judges should help them by importing to their deliberations their own "perspectives," "ethics," and "moral bearings." Thus his judges would carry out the judiciary's "historic role" of protecting those who "may be vulnerable in the political process," who have seen "the system not work for them," who don't "have access to political power," and who "can't protect themselves from being dealt with sometimes unfairly."

The Manhattan Project required billions of dollars, much of America's top scientific talent, and a quarter of American electrical production. These resources were entrusted to the sole direction of General Leslie Groves, the project's director. Groves was subject to virtually no political oversight. His office issued no environmental impact statements. He decided, without any room for legal or other challenge, which technical risks to run, and which health risks to impose on the American public. Radiation was known at the time to be dangerous, and yet the Manhattan Project dispersed nuclear fallout across large areas of the West at the sole decree of General Groves.

Those demanding a new Manhattan Project seldom mean draft scientists into secret duty, spend a lot of money without public oversight, and damn the radiation leaks and other safety consequences. What they usually have in mind is an open spigot of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to be spent on science and engineering and on subsidies for preferred technologies.

If this scenario unfolds, Washington would become a solidly liberal town again for the first time in decades. And the prospects of passing the liberal agenda--nearly all of it--would be bright. Enacting major parts of it would be even brighter. You can forget about bipartisanship.

Start with "card check." It would permit organized labor to unionize the private sector without winning a certification election by secret ballot. It's easy to get workers to sign cards saying they want a union, but it's hard to get them to vote that way when labor organizers aren't hounding them. Card check is labor's last hope for more dues-paying union members.

Then Democrats might go after a longstanding target of big labor, section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act. It allows states to enact right-to-work laws, which bar workers from being forced to join a union. Twenty-two states have right-to-work laws.

The liberal scheme for killing conservative talk radio--the so-called fairness doctrine--would stand an excellent chance of becoming law. It would require radio stations to offer equal time, for free, to anyone seeking to reply to broadcasts featuring political opinion. To remain profitable, many stations would have to drop conservative talk shows, a major medium for communicating conservative ideas, rather than give up hours of free time. Obama has said he opposes the fairness doctrine. But would he veto it? Not likely.

Obama would nominate liberals to fill Supreme Court vacancies--no doubt about that--with the strong likelihood they'd be confirmed. As a senator, he voted against John Roberts and Sam Alito. And free trade agreements would become a thing of the past, given liberal and labor opposition.

What about Obama's health care plan? He's described it as step or two away from a single payer, government-run health system like Canada's. While expensive, its chances of passage would be quite good.

As for foreign and national security policy, there'd be nothing stopping President Obama from doing what he wanted in a liberal-dominated Washington, including a quick troop exit from Iraq and presidential-level talks with anti-American dictators. Congress would go along. The media would cheer.

Obama’s campaign manager: Palin’s comments are “beyond the pale”

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe released a video this morning accusing Governor Palin of making comments that were “beyond the pale.” The comments in question: “our opponent is someone who sees America as imperfect enough to pal around with terrorists who targeted their own country.”

The “terrorists” in question would be William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the husband and wife team behind the Weather Underground, a group responsible for attacks against the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. In 1995, Barack Obama launched his political career in the house of William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. From 1996 through 2002, Barack Obama served on two charitable boards with William Ayers. And, per the New York Times, Barack Obama and William Ayers regularly traded emails and phone calls through 2005. Barack Obama recently explained that he had “assumed [Ayers] had been rehabilitated.” His campaign subsequently explained that Obama no longer considers Ayers to be rehabilitated. But before Barack Obama had what Joe Biden might call an epiphany about the true nature of William Ayers, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley explained the relationship this way: “They’re friends. So what?” And Obama’s own chief strategist, David Axelrod, described Ayers and Obama as “certainly friendly.”

This much is clear: Barack Obama and William Ayers were friends before that relationship became a political embarrassment for the Illinois Senator–Obama did pal around with a terrorist. According to his campaign, Barack Obama no longer believes Ayers has been rehabilitated. And William Ayers did target his own country. So what part of Governor’s Palin’s remarks are “beyond the pale.” Perhaps Mr. Plouffe does not like Governor Palin’s inference that Barack Obama palled around with Ayers because Barack Obama has a different view of America than most of us. Yet the Obama campaign has offered no alternate explanation–they have not conceded that the relationship was simply the result of a serious error in judgment.

The only thing “beyond the pale” here is the Obama campaign’s failure to explain how it is that Barack Obama carried on a decade long friendship with a man who sought to topple the U.S. government through violence. — Michael Goldfarb, McCain-Palin Spokesman

Is Obama getting off easy?

On the experience issue, I’m not so certain Jonah’s right.  Had John Edwards never made two significant runs for the Presidency and got nominated for VP with less experience than Obama or Sarah Palin, I might be inclined to agree.  Obama and Edwards seem to epitomize a desire for outsiders that has turned almost into a fetish — but outsiders with national name recognition in politics.  It’s hard to imagine anyone more outside than Sarah Palin, and she has actual executive experience (as opposed to Obama and Edwards), but gets treated like a hick because she’s from Alaska instead of the eastern seaboard.

Jonah is more correct when it comes to a media double standard on race and politics.  Ironically, the Clintons felt no such need to pull punches.  Hillary’s campaign made an issue of Jeremiah Wright, for instance, after Hillary spent February mostly eating Obama’s dust.  Her campaign also circulated the photo of Obama wearing traditional African garb on a trip to Kenya.  The result?  She won most of the rest of the Democratic primaries and forced Obama to limp to the finish line.

Hillary, though, did not have one obstacle that John McCain faces in this election: the national media.  The punditocracy has excoriated McCain for his supposedly racially-divisive campaign even without making Hillary’s arguments again.  Somehow, as Jonah notes, they have made William Ayers into a racial issue, even though Ayers is as Caucasian as McCain.  They have passed along without any criticism the rantings of John Lewis, who compared McCain and Palin to George Wallace (the Wall Street Journal being a rare mainstream-media exception).

Meanwhile, Obama has explicitly played the race card a number of times this summer.  He personally accused the McCain campaign of racism twice, only stopping when his surrogates managed to do it more effectively, like Kathleen Sebelius and John Lewis.  With the exception of one time each by the Washington Post and ABC News (on their blogs), the media did nothing to expose this tactic by Obama and his campaign on these occasions:

• June 21
• July 17
• July 30
• August 1
• August 1 (again)
• August 18
• September 5
• September 16

So yes, I agree with Jonah that Obama has had an easy ride on the basis of identity politics — but that’s not really the fault of the McCain campaign.  Unfortunately, the media has a glaringly obvious double standard on how it treats the two candidates.  McCain could ignore this, of course, but he risks the damage that the media can do with the vast majority of voters who don’t bother to work around the media to discover the truth on their own.  As Rick Moran notes, the McCarthyite tactic of accusing opponents of latent racism has no rebuttal that works well in mass-media applications.  With three weeks to go to the election, McCain has to work within that reality if he expects to win a national election.

NHS provides private medical care for its staff

The Telegraph reports yet another great moment in government-run health care today.  The National Health Service, Britain’s government-run health care system, finds itself so unresponsive that it doesn’t trust itself to provide care for its employees.  Instead, they paid private physiotherapists to treat its staff rather than wait for NHS providers to become available (via Q&O)

Gee — you think? Only in an Orwellian system like the NHS would their explanation make sense.  In order to get the staff back to work in order to serve the public that is forced to use the NHS that they fund, they have to go outside their system to get them the medical care they need more quickly.  Given the constraints of the status quo, they actually saved British taxpayers money and longer wait times.  Actually, Wallace’s suggestion would have cost everyone more money.

Obviously, Wallace misses the point.  The real problem with responsiveness isn’t the NHS staff, but with the lack of competition and the lack of resources in a shortage-management monopoly system.  The UK decides how many resources to provide the British populace, and the staff is just another rationed resource.  If the UK let Brits keep their money and relied on a free-market health care industry, the resources would grow to meet the demand, and wait times for treatment would no longer be an issue.

The NHS apparently agrees with this assessment.  They used the private market to get resources that the NHS itself had rationed into near oblivion to make sure they didn’t lose productivity.  Why not eliminate the NHS and let everyone have that option?  As long as the UK sucks income from its citizens to fund the NHS, most Brits won’t realistically have that option.

Self-determination dead in New Jersey?

That’s simply not true.  In places like the old Soviet Union, Zimbabwe, and the DPRK, people have to vote with their feet because they don’t have a meaningful vote otherwise.  In America, people can vote with their ballots.

If New Jersey government has gotten so out of control that a majority of adults no longer want to live there, the less costly alternative would be to vote out the current government and try a new direction.  Organize for different candidates.  Try a couple of recall petitions to get the attention of the political class.  Start pushing back on tax hikes and bond issues.

I’m actually sympathetic to the impulse.  I left California for a better job opportunity eleven years ago and managed to avoid the debacle of the current budget deficit, which is three times greater than Minnesota’s entire annual state budget.  However, I also know people who leave here for less-costly states, and at least some of them are the people who sported “Happy to Pay for a Better Minnesota” bumper stickers on their cars.  If people want less-costly living, then they need to recognize that government isn’t a charity organization and push for smaller, less costly government instead of demanding government solutions to every problem and then getting itchy feet when the costs hit home.  Pretty soon, there won’t be any place to run.