In a spate of recent cases across the country, American citizens have been confined in local jails after federal immigration agents, acting on flawed information from Department of Homeland Security databases, instructed the police to hold them for investigation and possible deportation.

Americans said their vehement protests that they were citizens went unheard by local police and jailers for days, with no communication with federal immigration agents to clarify the situation.

Visit This Link →

This past election when Dina Galassini emailed some friends urging them to join her in opposing a ballot initiative proposing $30 million in bonds for the town of Fountain Hills, Ariz., she thought she was doing what Americans have done throughout our nation’s history—speaking out on matters of public concern. Instead, she received a letter from a town clerk strongly urging her to “cease any campaign related activities.” It turns out she failed to fill out the paperwork required by Arizona’s campaign finance laws and therefore didn’t have the government’s permission to speak.

Under Arizona law, as in most states, anytime two or more people work together to support or oppose a ballot issue, they become a “political committee.” Even before they speak, they must register with the state, and then they must track every penny they spend, and if spending more than a small amount, fill out complicated reports detailing every move.

Worse yet, these laws do nothing to help educate voters. They’re worthless, they’re unconstitutional, and they’re keeping citizens from becoming involved in politics.

I honestly don’t understand why “progressives” think that these laws are such a great idea. Why is it okay for me to be involved in politics by myself but not okay for me and 10 or 100 or 1,000 or even 10,000 people to pool our time, resources, energy, and money together, to promote or oppose an idea?

Visit This Link →

And that is exactly what I’ve been hearing from Newt supporters who do not listen to talk radio. They are older voters, they are not all Republicans, and when government last made progress he was part of it. They have a very practical sense of politics now. The heroic era of the presidency is dead. They are not looking to like their president or admire him, they just want someone to fix the crisis. The last time helpful things happened in Washington, he was a big part of it. So they may hire him again. Are they put off by his scandals? No. They think all politicians are scandalous.

The biggest fear of those who’ve known Mr. Gingrich? He has gone through his political life making huge strides, rising in influence and achievement, and then been destabilized by success, or just after it. Maybe he’s made dizzy by the thin air at the top, maybe he has an inner urge to be tragic, to always be unrealized and misunderstood. But he goes too far, his rhetoric becomes too slashing, the musings he shares—when he rose to the speakership, in 1995, it was that women shouldn’t serve in combat because they’re prone to infections—are too strange. And he starts to write in his notes what Kirsten Powers, in the Daily Beast, remembered: he described himself as “definer of civilization . . . leader (possibly) of the civilizing forces.”

Visit This Link →

Governor Romney has his weaknesses as a candidate, too. In the past only high-income voters have demonstrated a natural affinity for him. His flip-flops are well documented. He won’t be able to take full advantage of the unpopularity of Obamacare. A significant number of voters will hold his Mormonism against him, although Republican voters in recent surveys seem likely to look past this misgiving in the interest of retiring Obama and most Democrats who oppose Mormon candidates won’t be available to any Republican nominee. But he is also reasonable, articulate — phenomenally articulate, by the standards of recent Republican presidential candidates — and reassuring. Democrats will try to make him into a scary figure, but they will have less to work with than if Republicans nominated Bachmann, Cain, Gingrich, Perry, or Rick Santorum. He has improved as a campaigner, and now usually projects an air of command that eluded him in the last presidential race.

Honestly, given Governor Huntsman’s record, I think he’d be a good candidate. But he and the Republican base apparently feel nothing but antipathy for each other. So, Romney’s the one.

Visit This Link →

The bottom line:

In other words, to avoid a downgrade, it would have been key in S&P’s opinion to show signs of willingness to cut (contain) Medicare and other entitlement spending. That didn’t happen, since many lawmakers in Congress (Democrats mainly, though not exclusively) refuse to talk about how much we can really afford to spend on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs.

As a result, it is difficult to claim that the Republicans’ unwillingness to raise revenue is the only reason for this downgrade. It seems to me that there is enough blame to go around.

Visit This Link →

Iraq is another story. We’re pulling out. We have spent $Trillions, we have left chaos, we have removed a major threat to the stability of Iran, and I am not sure what we got out of it. And Iraq certainly does have stuff we want. Oil, to begin with. A fair amount of Yellowcake – uranium ore. Lots of other stuff. And we’re running out because the Iraqis insist on applying Iraqi “law and order” to the US forces in Iraq.

I’d be tempted give them a $3 Trillion bill on the way out, and leave an occupation force in one of their major oil fields where we’d be pumping oil and selling it until most of the bill was paid, but that option was apparently never considered. Incidentally, we could defend our occupied oil fields with Sudanese and for that matter Libyan mercenaries, which we pay for out of the oil proceeds.We wouldn’t need a large US force in Iraq; they could be in Kuwait . Pumping lots of Iraqi oil would drop the world price of crude, and be a great jobs program for the United States.

… I don’t much like Empire as a policy, but if we are going to play Empire, can’t we find someone who knows how to do it competently?

Visit This Link →

The usual liberal complaint against the conservative opposition to higher income taxes is greed and the better-offs’ self-serving reluctance to pay their “fair share.” But while perhaps true in some instances, I don’t think that is an accurate writ against most of those in that now demonized $200,000 and above categories who resent forking over more. Rather, here are a random 12 complaints that I hear from those who become furious about preposed higher income tax rates:

1. The Entire Bite
2. Inequality?
3. Wise Spending?
4. Always More Spending?
5. Less Efficiency?
6. Inequality by Income?
7. Psychological
8. Sic Transit Gloria
9. The Private HHS Department
10. The Technocratic Class
11. Politics
12. Technology

Worth reading. This certainly explains a lot of my own resistance to higher taxes: for me or for others.

Visit This Link →

In an extraordinary hearing in June 2010 ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, Davis’ attorneys were finally allowed to present evidence of his innocence to a federal judge. In statement after statement, witnesses from the original trial avowed that they had been coerced by police to implicate Davis in the shooting or had lied in order to secure lenience for their own troubles with the law.

…

Emanuel also noted the prosecutors’ reliance on two hearsay confessions at the original trial, including one allegedly given by Davis to a cellmate shortly after his arrest. Both confessions were later recanted by the witnesses in affidavits.

“At the original trial, you’ve got very dubious eyewitness identifications and a lot of hearsay,” Emanuel said. “It’s appalling for a death case.”

Visit This Link →

And he began to talk—and talk and talk for what must have been nearly three hours. I’ve never told anyone the specifics of what he said that night, not even my wife or closest friends. I did not make notes later and have only my memory. In the journalism world, off the record is off the record. But I have repeatedly described the hours as “amazing,” “remarkable,” “stunning.”

President Bush—and he was, no doubt, by then a real president—talked expansively about Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, China, Korea, Russia. He talked about his reelection strategies, Iran’s nuclear ambitions, WMD and how he still believed they would be found, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Vladimir Putin. He talked about his aides and how tough their lives were, the long hours and stress and time away from their families, about how difficult it was for his daughters. He said that compared with everyone around a president, the president had the easiest job. He was the same confident, brash man I had met years ago, but I no longer sensed any hint of the old anger or the need for self-aggrandizement.

As he talked, I even thought about an old Saturday Night Live skit in which an amiable, bumbling President Ronald Reagan, played by Phil Hartman, goes behind closed doors to suddenly become a masterful operator in total charge at the White House. The transformation in Bush was that stunning to me.

On the other hand, I still dislike President Bush’s assumption that everyone else should bow and scrape before powerful men.

As it turned out, I did see George W. soon again after the encounter on his father’s Cigarette boat. After my story ran in The Washington Post Magazine, the vice president invited my family over to lunch and horseshoes at his official residence, on the grounds of the U. S. Naval Observatory. The vice president had actually called twice to invite us over, but on both occasions, our schedules hadn’t meshed. After the second invite, George W. called my house.

“Walt, my dad is vice president of the United States,” I remember him saying with a touch of irritation. “When he calls and invites you to lunch, you come to lunch.”

Visit This Link →