Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah Dead at 90

At the Los Angeles Times, "Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah dies at 90."

And from Yochi Dreazen, at Foreign Policy, "King Abdullah Dies, Disrupting Saudi Arabia at a Sensitive Time":

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al Saud died Thursday, roiling a key U.S. ally just as Washington increases its reliance on Riyadh on issues ranging from the faltering fight against the Islamic State to the on-again, off-again push to oust Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad.

Abdullah, 90, technically ruled the kingdom since August 2005, but had largely been overseeing its domestic agenda, internal security efforts, and foreign policy since his half-brother King Fahd suffered a stroke in 1996. Saudi Arabian state television reported that Abdullah would be succeeded by his brother, Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz, 79.

The king’s death comes at a delicate time for the oil-rich kingdom, which is struggling with the impact of plunging oil prices domestically, the rise of the Islamic State, and an Iran’s whose influence is growing across the Mideast as its proxies take on increasingly powerful roles in Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria. Abdullah’s successor will also face an intensifying crisis in Yemen, whose Saudi-backed government has been effectively overthrown by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels. A Saudi official said in a recent interview that Riyadh sees the future of Yemen as “an existential threat.”

Saudi-U.S. relations have been strained in recent years because of Riyadh’s anger at the Obama administration over the ongoing nuclear talks with Tehran. Saudi Arabia and Iran have been waging a shadow war for years, and Abdullah and his aides believe that the President Barack Obama has been willing to concede too much to Tehran as part of his quest for a nuclear deal.

In a strange-bedfellows alliance, Abdullah’s fears are shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will be coming to Washington soon to address a joint session of Congress to effectively lobby against a legislative effort to impose new sanctions on Iran if the talks fail. Obama has threatened to veto the bill, which has the quiet support of many Saudi and Gulf diplomats, and issued a public rebuke to Netanyahu by announcing that he wouldn’t meet with the visiting Israeli leader.

In the near term, no issue may prove more complicated for the next Saudi ruler, however, than the sustained and significant drop in world oil prices. Crude has plunged to roughly $50 a barrel, dealing a massive blow to the Saudi government, which is almost entirely dependent on oil revenues. The decine will push Saudi Arabia into a budget deficit in 2015 for the first time in years.

Falling oil prices will present a pair of challenges to Salman. First, the kingdom has for decades effectively bought itself internal stability by putting in place a highly generous social welfare system that offers citizens free health care, education, and other perks. That will be more difficult to maintain with oil trading at its lowest price in decades.

Second, Saudi Arabia has used its oil to build one of the Middle East’s most powerful militaries by buying reams of advanced American weaponry and hiring thousands of American and Western troops to train its own forces. The kingdom has in recent years also massively ramped up its financial commitments to the rebels working to unseat Assad and to the new Egyptian government, which it sees as a bulwark against a return of the Islamists who controlled the country during the short reign of former President Mohamed Morsi.

For the moment, many Saudi Arabians will wonder about the future about the reform efforts Abdullah launched but was unable to fully see through...

More.

Yemen President, Cabinet Resign Amid Rebel Standoff

The Middle East is practically going up in smoke.

At WSJ, "Government Disbands to Protest Militants’ Occupation of the Capital":

SAN’A, Yemen—Yemen’s president and his cabinet resigned Thursday night to protest the occupation of the capital by militants seeking to leverage their demands for greater political power.

The resignation of the cabinet comes a day after the Houthi militants—which represent the country’s Zaidi minority sect—occupied the residence of former President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi. Since September, the militants have exerted pressure on Mr. Hadi and forced the resignation of his cabinet that month after occupying the capital and clashing with government forces, protesting Yemen’s slow pace of overhauls, including the drafting of a new constitution.

The move dismantles a tenuous deal, signed between Mr. Hadi and the Houthis on Wednesday, that would give the militants a greater representation in government and say over the constitution in exchange for their withdrawal from government installations, including the former president’s residence. But, on Thursday morning, the militants still encircled Mr. Hadi’s home.

Prime Minister Khaled Bahah said, in a resignation letter submitted to Mr. Hadi, the decision comes because the country is moving in the wrong direction. “We resign as a refusal to be dragged into political differences that are outside the law.”

Government spokesperson Rajeh Badi said “the Prime Minister and cabinet’s resignation is a final decision and will not change.”

The resignation of Mr. Hadi and his cabinet leaves the U.S. counterterrorism program in the country—a cornerstone of its regional antiterror strategy—in a tenuous situation. Whether the U.S. can continue its program in Yemen without the government is unclear...

Iran, Obama, Boehner and Netanyahu

From Caroline Glick:

Iran has apparently produced an intercontinental ballistic missile whose range far exceeds the distance between Iran and Israel, and between Iran and Europe.

On Wednesday night, Channel 2 showed satellite imagery taken by Israel’s Eros-B satellite that was launched last April. The imagery showed new missile-related sites that Iran recently constructed just outside Tehran. One facility is a missile launch site, capable of sending a rocket into space or of firing an ICBM.

On the launch pad was a new 27-meter long missile, never seen before.

The missile and the launch pad indicate that Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is an integral part of its nuclear weapons program, is moving forward at full throttle. The expanded range of Iran’s ballistic missile program as indicated by the satellite imagery makes clear that its nuclear weapons program is not merely a threat to Israel, or to Israel and Europe. It is a direct threat to the United States as well.

Also on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was invited to address a joint session of Congress by House Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner has asked Netanyahu to address US lawmakers on February 11 regarding Iran’s nuclear program and the threat to international security posed by radical Islam.

Opposition leaders were quick to accuse Boehner and the Republican Party of interfering in Israel’s upcoming election by providing Netanyahu with such a prestigious stage just five weeks before Israelis go to the polls.

Labor MK Nachman Shai told The Jerusalem Post that for the sake of fairness, Boehner should extend the same invitation to opposition leader Isaac Herzog.

But in protesting as they have, opposition members have missed the point. Boehner didn’t invite Netanyahu because he cares about Israel’s election. He invited Netanyahu because he cares about US national security. He believes that by having Netanyahu speak on the issues of Iran’s nuclear program and radical Islam, he will advance America’s national security.

Boehner’s chief concern, and that of the majority of his colleagues from the Democratic and Republican parties alike, is that President Barack Obama’s policy in regard to Iran’s nuclear weapons program imperils the US. Just as the invitation to Netanyahu was a bipartisan invitation, so concerns about Obama’s policy toward Iran’s nuclear program are bipartisan concerns.

Over the past week in particular, Obama has adopted a position on Iran that puts him far beyond the mainstream of US politics. This radical position has placed the president on a collision course with Congress best expressed on Wednesday by Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez. During a hearing at the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee where Menendez serves as ranking Democratic member, he said, “The more I hear from the administration and its quotes, the more it sounds like talking points that come straight out of Tehran.”

Menendez was referring to threats that Obama has made three times over the past week, most prominently at his State of the Union address on Tuesday, to veto any sanctions legislation against Iran brought to his desk for signature.

He has cast proponents of sanctions – and Menendez is the co-sponsor of a pending sanctions bill – as enemies of a diplomatic strategy of dealing with Iran, and by implication, as warmongers.

Indeed, in remarks to the Democratic members of the Senate last week, Obama impugned the motivations of lawmakers who support further sanctions legislation. He indirectly alleged that they were being forced to take their positions due to pressure from their donors and others.

The problem for American lawmakers is that the diplomatic course that Obama has chosen makes it impossible for the US to use the tools of diplomacy to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That course of diplomatic action is anchored in the Joint Plan of Action that the US and its partners Germany, France, Britain, China and Russia (the P5+1) signed with Tehran in November 2013...

Keep reading.

Instagram Controversy as Photo-Sharing Site Censors Image Showing Models' Pubic Hair

Oh brother.

I guess shaving down that way isn't the rage these days after all?

In any case, at Instapundit, "IT’S COME TO THIS: Models’ Pubic Hair Triggers Instagram Brouhaha."

'I like my balls a certain way...'

Heh.

At London's Daily Mail, "Tom Brady breaks his silence on Deflategate - but DENIES tampering with footballs and downplays the scandal by saying 'this isn't ISIS'."

Video: "I don't want anyone rubbing my balls."

And at PuffHo, "Tom Brady's 'Deflategate' Press Conference Was Pretty Hilarious."

Return of 'Page 3' Exposes Sad Day for Feminism

A video commentary from Claire Cohen, at the Telegraph UK: "Page 3 is back: a 'patronising stunt' by The Sun":

The Sun newspaper has seemingly done a U-turn and decided to continue publishing picture of topless women in its page 3. Claire Cohen explains that its stunt has exposed a sad day for feminism.

 PREVIOUSLY: ICYMI, at Instapundit, "HEH: Sun News Trolls Feminist Campaigners, Brings Back ‘Page 3’."

Olivia Munn

At the Superficial, "Olivia Munn at 'Mortdecai' Premiere."

BONUS: "Gwyneth Paltrow Wins the ‘Mortdecai’ Premiere."

The March for Life Reminds Us That We're Not Doomed

From Robert Stacy McCain, "The #MarchForLife2015 Thread":

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The lobby and corridors of this hotel were crowded with Catholic school kids when we checked in yesterday. St. Vincent de Paul of Perryville, Missouri, was the most visible contingent — dozens of kids wearing blue-and-gold letterman’s jackets — but the annual March for Life brings groups from all around the country, not all of them Catholic. On my way down to the lobby to go out for a smoke this morning, I noticed one of the kids was wearing a nametag with the familiar Episcopalian (or Anglican) symbol: Red cross on a white field with the St. Andrew’s cross in blue. “Episcoplian?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

“Wow, I didn’t realize there were still pro-life Episcopalians.”

Out on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, the boy joined a group of about a dozen kids, and I spoke to one of the adult leaders, who told me they are from St. Michael’s Christian Academy of San Clemente, California.

Seeing so many fine young Christians who support the cause of life is very encouraging to me. I’ve spent the past several months of researching radical feminism and being immersed in such evil can be psychologically disorienting. “Has the whole world gone crazy?” I find myself asking, knowing how many millions of taxpayer dollars are spent to propagate this weird ideology in colleges and universities. “Is our civilization utterly doomed?”

The March for Life reminds me that there is still hope. There are still people who have not been deceived and corrupted. Unfortunately, however, there is the problem of Congress.

Pro-life conservatives were livid this morning after the House GOP leadership demonstrated its incompetence yesterday...

More.

And yes, talk about a Republican own-goal. See the outstanding Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist, "Why Everyone Should Be Terrified By The GOP’s Abortion Bill Debacle" (via Memeorandum).

Orange County Officials Remove Dozens of Unvaccinated Students from Schools; Adults Urged to Get Shots

This is getting to be a major outbreak.

Over two dozen kids were sent home from Huntington Beach High School this week, and officials warn of more student removals. Also, adults are being urged to get shots.

From yesterday's Los Angeles Times, "O.C. students may have been exposed to measles, kept out of school."

And at today's O.C. Register, "Adults urged to get measles shot as outbreak spreads."

BONUS: At the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Measles Cases Linked to Disneyland Rise, and Debate Over Vaccinations Intensifies."

Left-Wing Racists Endorse Deranged White Loser Assaulting Law-Abiding Black Armed Shopper (with Concealed-Carry Permit)

Talk about the first law of holes.

The racism in this is just utterly mind-boggling. An armed black man, minding his own business and legally carrying, is attacked by a white loser looking to be some kind of anti-gun hero.

At Say Uncle, "Why are anti-gun activists so violent?":

Did you see that? A law-abiding black man minding his own business when suddenly an obviously racist white guy batters him. I wonder when Al Sharpton will organize a march to protest this injustice!

And the racist left-wing response, right on cue: At Balloon Juice, "What Could Possibly Go Wrong," and the idiot Mahablog, "Please Be Careful Out There."

(Note for the racist left the "bad guy" is not the one assaulting the law-abiding citizen minding his own business. With leftists evil is good and good is evil, but you knew that.)

BONUS: At Twitchy, "Gun-grabber Shannon Watts fires off what may be her dumbest tweet ever."

Obama's SOTU in Denial

From Byron York, at the Washington Examiner, "Obama's disconnected, out of touch, in denial State of the Union":

Perhaps the most striking thing about the 2015 State of the Union address was not the president at the podium but the audience in the seats. The joint session of Congress listening to President Obama Tuesday night included 83 fewer Democrats than the group that heard Obama's first address in 2009 — 69 fewer Democrats in the House and 14 fewer in the Senate. The scene in the House Chamber was a graphic reminder of the terrible toll the Obama years have taken on Capitol Hill Democrats.

Not that the president would ever acknowledge that. Indeed, in more than an hour of speaking, Obama never once acknowledged that there was a big election in November and that the leadership of the Senate has changed. Obama's silence on that political reality stood in stark contrast to George W. Bush's 2007 State of the Union address, in which he graciously and at some length acknowledged the Democrats' victory in the 2006 midterms. Bush said it was an honor to address Nancy Pelosi as "Madam Speaker." He spoke of the pride Pelosi's late father would have felt to see his daughter lead the House. "I congratulate the new Democrat majority," Bush said. "Congress has changed, but not our responsibilities."

If one cannot imagine Obama saying such a thing — well, he didn't.

Just as remarkable, against the backdrop of the Democratic electoral carnage of his years in office, was that the president's most memorable line of the night was a bit of ad-lib bragging about his own election victories. When Obama said, "I have no more campaigns to run," some Republicans snarkily began to applaud, whereupon the president shot back, "I know, because I won both of them." Some Democrats dutifully cheered Obama's comeback line, even though his victories ended up costing them a lot.

Beyond failing to acknowledge the new reality on Capitol Hill, Obama at times seemed equally out of touch with reality both in the nation and the world.

"In Iraq and Syria, American leadership — including our military power — is stopping ISIL's advance," Obama said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. The claim left some foreign policy observers aghast, since there is a general consensus that the Islamic State is making progress in the face of limited American air attacks. "That just isn't the case, according to military officials I've been speaking to," NBC foreign correspondent Richard Engel said of Obama's statement. "[The Islamic State] are taking new territory." Of Obama's description of a world in which the Islamic State is retreating, Afghanistan is on the road to peace, and terrorists are on the run from South Asia to North Africa, Engel concluded, "It sounded like the president was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in."

Obama sounded equally disconnected from reality on some domestic issues. For example, when discussing the nation's veterans, he said, "Already, we've made strides towards ensuring that every veteran has access to the highest quality care." A listener wouldn't know it from Obama's speech, but there has been a huge VA scandal since Obama's last State of the Union; his secretary of Veterans Affairs had to resign because of it. Veterans died waiting for treatment. All Obama said Wednesday night was, "We're slashing the backlog that had too many veterans waiting years to get the benefits they need." By "benefits," the president apparently meant "life-saving medical care."

At another point, Obama claimed credit for a "re-energized space program." The remark surely led to some jaws dropping among laid-off National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineers who believe Obama has nearly killed the place.

The president's final disconnect was perhaps the biggest. After a "vicious recession … tonight, we turn the page," Obama said. "With a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry, booming energy production, we have risen from recession." For some Americans, that is the case, although even for them, "bustling" might be a bit much. For other Americans, the news is still pretty bad. When a recent Fox News poll asked, "For you and your family, does it feel like the recession is over, or does it feel like the country is still in a recession?" 64 percent of respondents said it feels like there is still a recession. Indeed, it's widely conceded that part of the reason the unemployment rate has fallen is because a core of discouraged workers dropped out of the job search altogether. So for many listeners, Obama's "turn the page" declaration will seem as out of touch as his claim that Islamic State's advance has been stopped...

Two more years of nihilist partisanship and narcissistic mendacity. It's a countdown mode for American politics, two more years to go. Then we can start fresh.

More.

'Britain First' Launches 'Christian Patrols'

Looks like some kind of EDL group, and they're taking the cultural war to the no-go zones in Britain.

Here's the groups Facebook page, "Britain First: Fighting Islamization."

And at CBS Evening News, "U.K. civilian patrols monitor neighborhoods for Muslim extremists."

More at Newsweek, "Far-Right Group Distributes Anti-Muslim Leaflets in East London."

Obama's 'Not American, not African-American, not any-American, he embodies nothing that places him in the historic stream of people who have defined this country...'

From Roger Cohen, in the comments at Daniel Henninger's commentary at WSJ, "Obama's American Sniper":

There is no American impulse of any kind in this person. Not American, not African-American, not any-American, he embodies nothing that places him in the historic stream of people who have defined this country. An utter alien, he has wasted opportunities at home and abroad, confused our friends, encouraged our potential adversaries, and squandered the investment that many had made in his vacuous slogans and promises.

And that's precisely why he's worshiped by the America-hating left.

Lots more excellent comments at the thread.

Oh, and don't miss Henninger's outstanding column.

Victoria's Secret Angels Take on the Superbowl

At Fashionista, "Now you have a legitimate excuse to just watch for the commercials."

The Global War on Modernity

From Garry Kasparov, at WSJ:

The recent terror attacks in Paris at the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, and at a kosher supermarket, leaving 17 people dead, represented the latest offensive in a struggle that most people, even many of its casualties, are unaware is even taking place.

Globalization has effectively compressed the world in size, increasing the mobility of goods, capital and labor. Simultaneously this has led to globalization across time, as the 21st century collides with cultures and regimes intent on existing as in centuries past. It is less the famous clash of civilizations than an attempt by these “time travelers” to hold on to their waning authority by stopping the advance of the ideas essential to an open society.

Radical Islamists, from the Taliban and al Qaeda to Boko Haram and Islamic State, set the time machine to the Dark Ages and encourage the murder of all who oppose them, often supported by fatwas and funds from terror sponsors like Iran. The religious monarchies in the Middle East are guilty by association, creating favorable conditions for extremism by clamping down on any stirring of freedom.

Vladimir Putin wants Russia to exist in the Great Power era of czars and monarchs, dominating its neighbors by force and undisturbed by elections and rights complaints. The post-Communist autocracies, led by Mr. Putin’s closest dictator allies in Belarus and Kazakhstan, exploit ideology only as a means of hanging on to power at any cost.

In the East, Kim Jong Un ’s North Korea attempts to freeze time in a Stalinist prison-camp bubble. In the West, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and the Castros in Cuba use anachronistic socialist propaganda to resist increasing pressure for human rights.

What unites the time travelers is their rejection of modernity—or what we should instead call modern values, to replace the obsolete and condescending term “Western values.” With violence and with violent rhetoric, the time travelers’ natural target is often the traditional champion of the rights that threaten them: the United States. The guaranteed freedoms represented by the First Amendment frighten the radical mullahs and dictators more than any drone strike or economic sanction.

In addition to bringing these relics into contact and competition with the modern world that threatens their power, globalization provides the time travelers with markets for their natural resources and with the technology they use for murder and repression. Thus they cannot disengage from the modern world entirely. Since the time travelers cannot fight head-to-head with the ideas and prosperity of the Free World, they fall back on their arsenal of ideology, violence and disregard for human life. They combat the lure of free speech and free markets with irrationality: radical religion and nationalism, cults of personality and dogma, hatred and fear.

Many politicians and pundits in the Free World seem to think that refusing to acknowledge you are in a fight means you can avoid losing it. But ignoring the reality of the conflict puts more innocents like the Paris victims—instead of trained soldiers and law enforcement—on the front lines. There are no easy ways to deter homegrown terrorists or nuclear-armed dictators, but this culture of denial must end before true progress can be made...

More.

Sun News Trolls Feminist Campaigners, Brings Back 'Page 3'

Hey, this is great!

On Twitter.

And at Telegraph UK, "The Sun brings back page 3":

The tabloid prints a picture of a topless model on page three under the headline 'clarifications and corrections'.

The Sun has printed a topless model on Page 3, ending days of speculation that the feature was dead.

The newspaper has tweeted out a picture of Thursday’s Page 3 which features a topless woman, with a notice underneath saying: “Further to recent reports in all other media outlets, we would like to clarify that this is Page 3 and this is a picture of Nicole, 22, from Bournemouth.

“We would like to apologise on behalf of the print and broadcast journalists who have spent the last two days talking and writing about us.”

The campaign group No More Page 3, which began in 2012 and attracted 217,000 signatures to a petition calling for a ban, acknowledged that "the fight might be back on".

Topless women have been a fixture on Page 3 of the Sun for more than four decades.

However it was understood that executives at the tabloid had decided to quietly shelve the tradition after a growing army of critics branded it sexist.

Rather than bare breasts, it was thought that the pictures would now show scantily-clad women wearing bras and pants.

Over the past three days, there have been no topless models on Page 3, fuelling speculation the feature was on its way out. This appeared to be confirmed by a report in The Times, a fellow News UK paper, on Tusday.

In Monday's issue of The Sun, the model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley was shown wearing Marks & Spencer underwear.

Tuesday’s first edition had a photograph of two bikini-wearing actresses running on a beach, which was later replaced by four pages on Anne Kirkbride, the Coronation Street actress who had died the previous evening.

Pages 2 and 3 of Wednesday's paper were taken up by a Sainsbury’s advert, but Page 5 ran a comparison of cosmetic surgery undertaken by two Celebrity Big Brother contestants, featuring Katie Price and Alicia Douvall wearing garments which left little to the imagination.

Topless models were first introduced by the Sun in 1970, less than a year after Rupert Murdoch bought the title.

In recent years, the paper has faced growing criticism from campaigners who said the feature was out of date in the modern world.

Note that it's not just topless women.

The "no on page 3" campaign wants to ban all women from appearing in the paper. They're freakin' totalitarians!

UPDATE: Linked at Instapundit! Thanks!

VIDEO: Palestinian Man Stabs Israelis in Tel Aviv Attack (GRAPHIC)

Elise Labott has the report at CNN below. At the clip, the attacker sinks his knife into a woman quite deep. He has to yank on it to get it to pull back out. Sickening.

And see the New York Times, via Memeorandum, "Palestinian Man Stabs Israelis on Bus in Tel Aviv, Police Say."

And see the Times of Israel, "Hamas leaders praise Tel Aviv stabbing as ‘heroic’":

Cartoon depicting bloodied knife colored as the Palestinian flag zooms around the Internet.

Hamas leaders on Wednesday took to social media to praise a stabbing attack in Tel Aviv that morning, expressing hopes that similar attacks will follow.

Three weeks after an instructional video on stabbing attributed to Hamas emerged online, movement members gleefully extolled the bus assault, heralding it as a sign of things to come.

“A morning of resistance, a morning for the nation,” wrote Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum on his Facebook page, above a photo of a black-handled combat knife lying on the pavement encircled by police tape.

Gaza-based Hamas official Husam Badran praised the act on Facebook as “extraordinary” and called for more “acts of resistance” either by individuals or groups.

Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau based in Qatar, called the attack “heroic and brave,” adding that it is “the natural response to the crimes of the occupation and its terror against our people.”

Spoken like true "peace partners."

Also, "Tel Aviv stabber wanted to ‘reach paradise’." Of course. It's was a jihad martyrdom attack.

Plus, bloody video of the jihadist, "Tel Aviv Terrorist After his Arrest."

We Don't Need to Pay More Gas Taxes

From the editors, at the O.C. Register:

Some members of Congress – apparently intent on ensuring that no positive development in American life goes unpunished – have had a surprising reaction to the steep decline in gas prices that has taken place in recent months: It’s time to make fueling your car more expensive.

That’s the message coming from many Democrats and a handful of Senate Republicans – foremost amongst them Tennessee’s Bob Corker, who joined with Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy to propose increasing the levy by 12 cents over two years and indexing it to inflation. Other members of the GOP – Sen. John Thune of South Dakota and Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, for instance – have refused to rule out such a proposal.

We’re not unsympathetic to the underlying concern in this case. The federal gas tax – currently 18.4 cents per gallon – hasn’t been raised since 1993. That’s salient because the revenue from the tax goes to finance the Highway Trust Fund, the mechanism by which the feds fund transportation infrastructure projects. Without a doubt, these kinds of expenditures represent a legitimate use of public money.

Equally unquestionable is that there are serious problems besetting the fund. Current estimates have it facing a shortfall of $160 billion over the next decade. Moreover, much of the country’s infrastructure is in dire need of a facelift.

However, this is more than a question of simple economics. It’s a question as to how best to organize public finance. We believe that federal money ought only to be spent for truly federal purposes. On that front, the Highway Trust Fund falls short.

Originally organized to finance the Interstate Highway System – a genuinely federal project if ever there was one – the fund now suffers from severe mission creep. About a quarter of its revenues aren’t even spent on highway projects, going, instead, to decidedly local concerns like mass transit or bicycle paths. According to congressional testimony from the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards, that spending adds up to about $9 billion a year.

As John Marshall observed, “the power to tax is the power to destroy.” That’s why we regard any proposal for higher levies with caution. We believe that tax increases are only ever justified when the federal government can prove three things: 1) That it is only spending public money on legitimate public purposes; 2) that it is not spending public money on tasks better left to state and local governments; and 3) that it is spending public money efficiently. The Highway Trust Fund fails on all three counts...

Raising gas taxes precisely as Americans get a break is particularly sleazy as well.

Still more.

Santa Barbara News-Press Won't Back Down on 'Illegals'

Good.

At LAT, "Amid outcry, News-Press is adamant on provocative term for immigrants":

A few decades ago, it wasn't unusual for American newspapers to refer to people living in the United States without legal permission as "illegal aliens," or even "illegals."

Those terms were criticized as offensive and eventually gave way to "illegal immigrant," a label that itself was jettisoned by most outlets two years ago, when the Associated Press banned the term from its stylebook in favor of language that more precisely describes a person's immigration status.

That approach — adopted by The Times in 2013 — seemed to have taken root and defused the criticism in most places. But the local newspaper's decision to call such immigrants "illegals" has turned idyllic Santa Barbara into an unlikely flashpoint in the nation's immigration battles.

The News-Press ran the headline "Illegals Line Up for Driver's Licenses" on Jan. 3, prompting protests and a message painted in red on the wall of the newspaper's offices. The paper used the term again last Friday in another front page story: "Driving Legal Opens Door to Illegals' Past."

News-Press officials have stuck by their choice of language, saying that describing someone living in the country illegally as an "illegal" is accurate, and compared the vandalism on their offices to the deadly attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris.

"We will not give in to the thugs who are attempting to use political correctness as a tool of censorship and a weapon to shut down this newspaper," News-Press co-publisher Arthur von Wiesenberger wrote on the website of the Minuteman Project, which opposes illegal immigration.

But community groups have denounced the newspaper, calling for an advertising boycott.

"They have a racist perspective and they don't seem very apologetic about it," said Savanah Maya, a Santa Barbara City College student and member of People Organizing for the Defense and Equal Rights of Santa Barbara Youth.

The dispute erupted anew Monday, when protesters for and against the newspaper staged dueling rallies in a downtown plaza.

Using the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday as a backdrop for their positions framed as human rights and freedom of speech issues, one side argued that the headline was racist and the other argued that it was an accurate description of immigrants applying for driver's licenses without having to prove citizenship. The licenses became available under a state law that took effect Jan. 1.

The two sides had limited interaction during the peaceful rallies, which attracted several hundred people. Police put up a temporary fence to separate the groups.

"I respect their right to free speech," said City Councilwoman Cathy Murillo, who attended the pro-immigrant rally, "but they don't have to be hateful. It's like the 'N-word' for blacks."

The rally in support of the News-Press was staged by We the People Rising, a Claremont-based group that favors tough enforcement of laws against illegal immigration.

"They should be allowed to decide the type of language they want to use," said Robin Hvidston, executive director of We the People Rising. "They have a right to use that word. Where do you stop?"

The News-Press, which began in 1855, has experienced diminished goodwill in the community since 2006, when reporters and editors began departing en masse, citing editorial meddling from billionaire owner and publisher Wendy McCaw.

Don Katich, director of news operations for the News-Press, said Monday that the newspaper has used the word "illegals" for a decade to describe immigrants in the United States without permission, and does not plan on changing its policy despite criticism or financial pressure.

He said that the federal government uses the word online and on official documents, and that a vast majority of people agree that it's an appropriate term.

"It accurately describes the 800-pound gorilla in this whole story," Katich said. "People are in this country illegally.… I think that's why this has tapped a national nerve."...

More.

Video here: "Santa Barbara News-Press Protested by Open Border Extremists."

BONUS: At Michelle Malkin's, "Attack of the Open-Borders Mau-Mau-ers":

News-Press publisher Wendy McCaw told me this week that the free speech-stifling thugs “have threatened to return on January 19 to deliver a petition and stage another protest against us if we do not offer a retraction by 3 p.m. that day.” McCaw vows she will not bend to the ultimatum or any other — and she has a track record to prove her toughness.

McCaw has defied the progressive forces of political correctness for years in previous First Amendment battles over whom she should hire and how she should run her newspaper. Radical elements in her community and industry have long held a grudge against her and her paper for resisting union pressure and refusing to conform to left-wing orthodoxy.
And boy, do these people know how to hold grudges.

In addition to the paint bombs, unhinged mau-mau-ers spray-painted a radical Reconquista slogan on the News-Press building: “The border is illegal, not the people who cross it.”

Yes, they’re still trying to re-fight the Mexican-American War of 1848 and re-litigate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. No surprise. Santa Barbara has been a longstanding hotbed of tribal grievance politics. In the late 1960s, liberal Latinos at the University of California at Santa Barbara unveiled El Plan de Aztlan, which states:

“We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent. Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner ‘gabacho’ who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture.”

The Aztlan plan birthed Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) — an identity politics indoctrination machine on publicly subsidized college and high school campuses nationwide whose members have rioted in Los Angeles and editorialized that federal immigration “pigs should be killed, every single one” in San Diego.

As I’ve reported previously, the MEChA Constitution calls on members to “promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza (race) with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlan.” “Aztlan” is the group’s term for the vast southwestern U.S. expanse, from parts of Washington and Oregon down to California and Arizona and over to Texas, which MEChA claims to be a mythical homeland and seeks to reconquer for Mexico.

MEChA’s symbol is an eagle clutching a dynamite stick and a machete-like weapon in its claws; its motto is “Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.” Translation: For the Race, everything. For those outside the Race, nothing.”

Tell me who the racists are again.

PREVIOUSLY: "Leftist Open-Borders Vigilantes Attack Santa-Barbara News-Press for Accurately Identifying Illegal Aliens."

Joni Ernst's Camouflage Pumps

From Jennifer Jacobs, on Twitter: "Check out the shoes Iowa U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst is wearing tonight for her State of the Union rebuttal."

Plus, "Reaction on Joni Ernst's camo heels is mixed."