Jumping the Sequester

ICYMI, Kim Strassel's awesome op-ed from yesterday's WSJ, "When the president canceled White House tours, he revealed his claims as ludicrous":

The phrase "jumping the shark" describes that gimmicky moment when something once considered significant is exposed as ludicrous. This is the week the White House jumped the sequester.

The precise moment came Tuesday, when the administration announced that it was canceling public tours of the White House, blaming budget cuts. The Sequesterer in Chief has insisted that cutting even $44 billion from this fiscal year will cause agonizing pain—airport security snarls, uninspected meat, uneducated children. Since none of those things has come to pass, the White House decided it needed an immediate and high-profile way of making its point. Ergo, it would deny the nation's school kids a chance to view a symbol of America.

The act was designed to spark outrage against Republicans, yet the sheer pettiness of it instead provided a moment of clarity. Americans might not understand the technicalities of sequester, but this was something else entirely. Was the president actually claiming there was not a single other government item—not one—that could be cut instead of the White House tours? Really?

The cancellations were an open invitation for the nation to dive into the gory depths of the federal budget—and re-emerge with a debate over waste and priorities. Over the past week, an entire cottage industry has sprung up of journalists, watchdog groups and average citizens reporting on the absurdities of federal spending. Republicans have lit up Twitter with examples of indefensible projects (#SequesterThis).

We've learned that the White House employs three calligraphers, who cumulatively earn $277,000 a year. The Environmental Protection Agency gave $141,000 to fund a Chinese study on swine manure. Part of a $325,000 National Science Foundation outlay went to building a robotic squirrel.

The government gave a $3,700 grant to build a miniature street in West Virginia—out of Legos. It shelled out $500,000 to support specialty shampoo products for cats and dogs. A San Diego outfit got $10,000 for trolley dancing. The feds last year held 894 conferences that each cost more than $100,000—$340 million altogether. But Mr. Obama is too broke to let American kids look around the White House.

Continue reading.

VIDEO CREDIT: iIOWNTHEWORLD, "Even NBC Sees Sequestration Bias."

Added: Sen. Tom Coburn also wrote on the sequester yesterday at WSJ, "The Drama Over, Time For Smart Budget Cuts."

Low- and Middle-income Residents Are Fleeing California

From Allysia Finley, at WSJ, "The Reverse-Joads of California":

During the Great Depression, some 1.3 million Americans—epitomized by the Joad family in John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"—flocked to California from the heartland. To keep out the so-called Okies, the state enacted a law barring indigent migrants (the law was later declared unconstitutional). Los Angeles even set up a border patrol on the city limits. Soon the state may need to build a fence to keep latter-day Joads from leaving.

Over the past two decades, a net 3.4 million people have moved out of California for other states. But contrary to conservative lore, there has been no millionaires' march to Texas or other states with no income tax. In fact, since 2005 California has experienced a net in-migration of households earning more than $200,000, according to the U.S. Census's American Community Survey.

As it happens, most of California's outward-bound migrants are low- to middle-income, with relatively little education: those typically employed in agriculture, construction, manufacturing, hospitality and to some extent natural-resource extraction. Their median household income is about $40,000—two-thirds of the statewide median—and about 95% earn less than $80,000. Only one in 10 has a college degree, compared with 30% of California's population. Roughly 40% of the people leaving are Hispanic.

Even while California's Hispanic population has grown by more than 1.5 million since 2005, thanks to high birth rates and foreign immigration, two Hispanics have moved out for every one that has moved in from another state. By contrast, four Hispanics from other states have settled in Texas and Arizona for every three that have left.

It's not unusual for immigrants or their descendants to move in pursuit of a better life. That's the history of America. But it is ironic that many of the intended beneficiaries of California's liberal government are running for the state line—and that progressive policies appear to be what's driving them away.

Ironic, yes. Surprising, no.

But continue reading, at the link.

Yawn: 'Bracing' for the Sequester

At National Journal, "The Overhyped, Overblown, & Overly Politicized Sequester Fears":

OMG MY CAPSLOCK BUTTON IS STUCK #SEQUESTER
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) March 1, 2013

Let’s be clear about one thing: The across-the-board spending cuts known as the "sequester” aren’t a doomsday scenario, or a meteorite that will blow up the economy.

Teachers, FBI agents, and Border Patrol officers will not get fired tomorrow, when the sequester kicks in. The Internal Revenue Service will still be able to process your tax return in April. Preschool programs won't kick out 70,000 little kids until the fall, according to Education Secretary Arne Duncan—and that’s if the spending cuts stick.

Unemployed people, arguably some of the worst-off of the lot, will not see their federal benefits reduced by 11 percent until April at the earliest, says the National Employment Law Project. This is roughly four weeks away, giving Congress and the White House time to act beyond the March 1 deadline that has been touted in headlines and press conferences for the past week.

The immediate impact of sequester is “absolutely overhyped,” says Steve Bell, senior director for economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and a former Republican staff director for the Senate Budget Committee. “A sequester will occur and, the next day, the likelihood is that almost no one will know that it started.”

The only guaranteed effect over the next few days, Bell and his colleagues say, is that federal employees across agencies will likely start receiving 30-day furlough-warning notices. The 150,000 federal employees, represented by the National Treasury Employees Union, still have little guidance on the timing or structure of those furloughs, says Colleen Kelley, the union’s national president.

So why all the shouting about these disastrous spending cuts? Well, in the long run (i.e., the next six months), they will put a drag on the economy, cost us jobs, and cut money from the federal budget in a blunt -- rather than careful -- manner. But for now, much of the doomsday talk is old-fashioned politics.

Sequestration is not an economic or policy fight. It’s an ongoing, roiling political argument about the amount of money the federal government spends and the manner in which it does it. This long-time spending argument between the political parties has been distilled in this round of fiscal warfare to a wonky-sounding word and given an ominous deadline. Yet, its greatest immediate legacy may be the fodder it has provided for the 24/7 news cycle and the ammunition it has given the White House as it tries to beat down the Republicans in the court of public opinion.

To cut through the hysteria surrounding sequestration, here are some facts to counter the myths.

Continue reading.

Also, "Obama's Political Gamble on Sequestration Is Backfiring."

BONUS: At Twitchy, "Maxine Waters: Sequestration could result in loss of ‘over 170 million jobs’."

Maxine Waters said 170 million jobs will be lost due to the sequester...there's not even that many people employed in America.
— Justin Magness (@JUSTINMAGNESS) February 28, 2013

No lie is too big for the Democrats. Utterly shameless.

Don't Miss This Surprisingly Good Piece on 'Gleeful Provocateur' Michael GoldFarb at the New York Times

This piece had me laughing a couple of times, which is unusual for the reporting at the Old Gray Lady.

See, "Michael Goldfarb Gleeful Provocateur at Intersection of Many Worlds":

At 11:42 a.m. on Feb. 14, a conservative online magazine called The Washington Free Beacon posted a dispatch about a speech Chuck Hagel gave in 2007 in which it said he called the State Department “an adjunct to the Israeli foreign minister’s office.”

The report was based on “contemporaneous” notes an attendee posted online. An hour later on the floor of the United States Senate, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina urgently cited that statement as another reason to delay Mr. Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary.

Mr. Hagel denied saying it, and no recording has surfaced. But after a successful filibuster against the nominee, a group called the Emergency Committee for Israel effectively declared partial victory and vowed to “redouble its efforts to bring to light Mr. Hagel’s complete record.”

All in all, it was a very bad day for Mr. Hagel, and a smashingly good one for the conservative political operative of the moment — Michael Goldfarb.

At 32, Mr. Goldfarb is a founder of The Free Beacon, which is gaining prominence as a conservative clarion; a onetime presidential campaign aide to Senator John McCain, who provided critical support for the filibuster; and the strategist for the Emergency Committee for Israel, an anonymously financed group that advertises against President Obama and Congressional Democrats as insufficiently supportive of Israel. On top of that, he is a partner at Orion Strategies, a consulting firm whose clients have included the national governments of Taiwan and Georgia.

An all-around anti-liberal provocateur, Mr. Goldfarb has blazed a trail in the new era of campaign finance, in which loosened restrictions have flooded the political world with cash for a whole new array of organizations that operate outside the traditional bounds of the parties.

Often working with money from major Republican donors, most of whom have preferred anonymity, Mr. Goldfarb has been in the middle of nearly every major partisan dispute of Mr. Obama’s presidency — over Iran, Israel, terrorism policy and now Mr. Hagel and guns. For a time, Mr. Goldfarb worked as a communications strategist to the leading bêtes noires of liberals, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch.

Mr. Goldfarb did not come up via state politics, Capitol Hill or the Republican National Committee, proving grounds that made the careers of top party operatives like Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and Matt Rhoades, the campaign manager for Mitt Romney.

His career was spawned, rather, in the conservative confines of The Weekly Standard and allied organizations, namely the Project for the New American Century, which is well known for promoting the war in Iraq. He has since gone on to thrive in the influential world of outside ideological groups. Mr. Goldfarb, known as a flamethrower on both sides of the aisle, has achieved unparalleled hybrid status in the process.

In his work at The Free Beacon, for groups like the Emergency Committee for Israel and at Orion, he has combined a relatively new form of weaponized journalism, politicking and public policy into a potent mix.

“He’s at the intersection of a lot of different worlds,” said William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, who has been a boss, mentor and colleague to Mr. Goldfarb. He said Mr. Goldfarb was representative of a new generation of conservatives whose emergence at a low ebb of their party’s power has made them “a little more entrepreneurial, more outspoken and risk-taking — not so worried about moving up a corporate ladder.”

A wisecracking native of suburban Philadelphia, Mr. Goldfarb has described himself as a cudgel. His signature political attack can best be described as gleeful evisceration, which at times has exposed him to charges of going too far and of getting too personal.

The liberal writer Lee Fang got a taste when he wrote an article for The Nation linking work that Orion has done for Taiwan to articles in The Free Beacon voicing criticism of the Obama administration for blocking a sale to Taiwan of F-16 jets.

Mr. Goldfarb denied any connection between his work at Orion and the articles, saying he did not personally handle Taiwan’s account or write the articles.

But The Free Beacon responded viscerally, with a report featuring pictures of Mr. Fang — who formerly wrote for the anonymously financed liberal blog ThinkProgress that frequently attacks the Kochs — shirtless and blowing a thick cloud of smoke. The headline read: “High Times at The Nation.”

In an interview, Mr. Fang, 26, said the photographs were from college and could have been found only in his password-protected account with Photobucket. He said he had filed a police report to get to the bottom of it. He said he felt doubly violated because the photograph was in a file that included revealing shots of his girlfriend.

“I think he’s just out to hurt people,” said Mr. Fang, who first tangled with Mr. Goldfarb when he was writing for ThinkProgress about the Kochs. “I don’t understand what his greater goal is; what would be the perfect solution to fix the most serious problems in America?”

Though Mr. Goldfarb would not share how The Free Beacon obtained the photographs, he said in a telephone interview that they were publicly available and were secured by legal means.

As he tells it, he is simply trying to have fun while practicing his admittedly combative brand of politics — the humor of which, he said, his liberal critics are too self-serious to get.

Here's that piece, "High Times at the Nation." That alone is worth the price of this report. Man, that photo of Fang is hilarious --- perfectly encapsulating the stupidity of today's radical left-wing Democrats.

More seriously, check out the home page for the Emergency Committee on Israel, which features its YouTube ads right on the main page.

And don't miss the rest at NYT. A surprisingly pleasant read first thing Sunday morning.

Added: A Memeorandum thread.

Sequester

At the clip, the idiot freshman Congressman Joaquín Castro blames the pending budget cuts on GOP "hostage taking." What a little progressive parrot.

And see the fear-mongering at the New York Times, "The Real Cost of Shrinking Government" (via Memeorandum):

These cuts, which will cost the economy more than one million jobs over the next two years, are the direct result of the Republican demand in 2011 to shrink the government at any cost, under threat of a default on the nation’s debt. Many Republicans say they would still prefer the sequester to replacing half the cuts with tax revenue increases. But the government spending they disdain is not an abstract concept. In a few days, the cuts will begin affecting American life and security in significant ways.

The left refuses to look in the mirror. The clip begins with a moment from the 2012 debates where Mitt Romney firmly places the politics of sequestration at the administration's doorstep. The president then denies that these cuts will happen. The world will not end, in any case, but it's not like this had to happen in the first place. The administration played hard on the fiscal cliff talks. The Dems got tax increases but said that wasn't going to be enough. They still want more spending. We're pushing toward a national debt of $17 trillion. When the left starts taking the enormous bloat of the federal government seriously perhaps we'll finally get a handle on things. But I'm not holding my breath.

Also from Pejman Yousefzadeh, at Richochet, "Some Facts about Sequestration that the New York Times Fails to Understand."

Obama's Recess Appointments Struck Down by U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit

It's a Beltway wonkish kind of buzz surrounding this decision today, out of the Federal Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit. The Fox News All-Stars, at the clip, are largely deconstructing what in fact happened rather than providing a larger analytical interpretation (although Bret Baier points out repeatedly how significant a decision this was). And then see the New York Times' report, "Court Rejects Recess Appointments to Labor Board":

WASHINGTON — In a ruling that called into question nearly two centuries of presidential “recess” appointments that bypass the Senate confirmation process, a federal appeals court ruled on Friday that President Obama violated the Constitution when he installed three officials on the National Labor Relations Board a year ago.

The ruling was a blow to the administration and a victory for Mr. Obama’s Republican critics – and a handful of liberal ones – who had accused Mr. Obama of improperly claiming that he could make the appointments under his executive powers. The administration had argued that the president could decide that senators were really on a lengthy recess even though the Senate considered itself to be meeting in “pro forma” sessions.

But the court went beyond the narrow dispute over pro forma sessions and issued a far more sweeping ruling than expected. Legal specialists said its reasoning would virtually eliminate the recess appointment power for all future presidents when it has become increasingly difficult for presidents to win Senate confirmation for their nominees. In recent years, senators have more frequently balked at consenting to executive appointments. President George W. Bush made about 170 such appointments, including John R. Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations and two appeals court judges, William H. Pryor Jr. and Charles W. Pickering Sr.

“If this opinion stands, I think it will fundamentally alter the balance between the Senate and the president by limiting the president’s ability to keep offices filled,” said John P. Elwood, who handled recess appointment issues for the Justice Department during the Bush administration. “This is certainly a red-letter day in presidential appointment power.

And more from John P. Elwood, at Volokh, "DC Circuit Strikes Down President Obama’s Recess Appointments."

Democrats Used to Love the Filibuster

Behold yet more epic hypocrisy from the Douchebag Party.

At Washington Examiner, "‘Those who would attack and destroy the institution of the filibuster…’."

More at Memeorandum, especially the idiots at Talking Points Memo, "Dems Defend Filibuster Reform Effort: ‘McConnell Has Broken The Social Contract’."

Anything to justify power for these people, the scummy disgusting Democrat douchebags.

Broadwell and Benghazi

Read it all at the link, from James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal.

And from the editors, "The Petraeus Probe":

Senate Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein said Sunday she intends to investigate who knew what and when about l'affaire David Petraeus, and rightly so. The facts that are dribbling out suggest that all sorts of people knew about the CIA director's personal predicament—except the President for whom he worked.

If the leaks are correct, the FBI was investigating Mr. Petraeus for months. The unidentified sources claim that the bureau stumbled across the affair when his paramour, Paula Broadwell, sent a threatening email to another woman. The G-men then pursued the matter out of concern for a national security breach, which they say they never found.

Let's hope so, although it's hardly reassuring that the CIA chief was communicating with Ms. Broadwell via a Gmail account. Our operating assumption is that every Gmail account can be ransacked by hackers from China and elsewhere, no matter Google's GOOG +0.43% best efforts at security. For America's chief spook to leave himself vulnerable in this way is an astonishing lack of judgment for such a disciplined and experienced man.

It's also passing strange, not to say politically convenient, that these sources say the FBI alerted the White House for the first time at 5 p.m. on Election Day. The leakers say the bureau told Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who then advised Mr. Petraeus he would have to resign.

But why wait weeks to tell the White House if a CIA chief is compromised in a way that might force his resignation? A report of this kind had to have gone up the chain of command to FBI Director Robert Mueller, and probably to Attorney General Eric Holder. Did they not tell anybody at the White House, not even the general counsel? This is odd, if not a dereliction, and the information chain needs to be understood.

All the more so because House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has confirmed a news report that he was told by a whistleblower in late October about the Petraeus affair, and he then had his staff alert the office of FBI Director Mueller. Mr. Cantor deserves credit for showing discretion and good judgment in the middle of an election campaign.

But the same credit should not go to Administration officials if they kept this problem bottled up until President Obama was safely re-elected. No one wants to see Mr. Petraeus or his family further humiliated, but there are security implications that need to be explained.

Still more, "FBI Agent in Petraeus Case Under Scrutiny."

Chief of General Services Administration Resigns

This is the GSA, which is a federal government procurement and contracting agency. The agency also develops cost-management for the federal government, and job it's obviously under-performing.

At the New York Times, "Agency Administrator Fires Deputies, Then Resigns, Amid Spending Inquiry":

WASHINGTON — The administrator of the General Services Administration fired her two top deputies, then resigned Monday ahead of an investigation into a conference the agency held in Las Vegas that included commemorative coins, lavish meals, a mind reader and a $75,000 team-building exercise assembling bicycles.

The agency’s inspector general was set to release a yearlong investigation of the four-day conference, whose costs included more than $822,000 spent to fly 300 people to the M Resort Spa Casino outside Las Vegas and entertain them in style, when Martha Johnson, the administrator, abruptly resigned and announced the firings, citing “a significant misstep.” The report was posted on the inspector general’s Web site hours later.

The General Services Administration is an independent agency that supplies federal offices and manages buildings and office space. The event under investigation was the western regional conference of the Public Building Service, in October 2010.

White House officials described the conference as “a complete violation of administration rules,” and moved swiftly to prevent the episode from becoming a larger symbol of administration spending. Robert Peck, the Public Buildings Service chief, and Ms. Johnson’s top adviser, Stephen Leeds, were dismissed. Four General Services Administration employees who organized the conference were placed on administrative leave, according to a White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss confidential personnel matters.

“On his first day in office, President Obama made clear that the people who serve in his administration are keepers of the public trust and that public service is a privilege,” said Jacob J. Lew, the White House chief of staff, in a statement. “When the White House was informed of the inspector general’s findings, we acted quickly to determine who was responsible for such a gross misuse of taxpayer dollars.”

Continue reading.

And at Twitchy, "Rep. Issa outraged over USGSA corruption."

Obama's Recess Appointments

Michelle has the big story on the Richard Cordray appointment, "He’s baaaaack: Obama recess-appoints Dodd-Frank czar." And see John Yoo, "Richard Cordray & the Use and Abuse of Executive Power."

And here's Investor's Business Daily, "Acting Like a King Isn't Among the President's Duties":

Leadership: A spokesman says the president "can't wait for Congress to act" and promised that he's "going to take action." This is the president who was "ready to rule" in 2008. Is he an elected chief executive or an emperor?

In November 2008, shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, Valerie Jarrett, co-chair of his transition team, appeared on "Meet the Press." She told host Tom Brokaw that "Obama is prepared to really take power and begin to rule day one."

Shouldn't someone who had reached the political heights that Jarrett had reached know that kings rule but presidents are elected to serve and are accountable to Congress, the courts and the voters?

One would think that she and the rest of the administration are aware of a president's legal limitations, but simply aren't interested in respecting them.

A little more than three years after Jarrett declared Obama's majesty, his spokesman Jay Carney warned on the day of the Iowa caucuses that "if Republicans choose the path of obstruction rather than cooperation, then the president is not going to sit here . .. he's going to take the actions that he can take using his executive authority."

Within a day, Obama made good on the threat. On Wednesday, he bypassed the congressional approval process and named Richard Cordray as head of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The appointment, made while the Senate is in a pro forma session and not in recess, came after that chamber blocked Cordray's confirmation last month.

Not only is Obama trampling precedent that says recess appointments are to be done only after the Senate has been out of session for 10 days or more, he's also trying to circumvent legislation.

Continue reading.

And see Edwin Meese III and Todd Gaziano, "Obama’s recess appointments are unconstitutional."

And this Cordray guy doesn't seem fazed by the unconstitutionality of his appointment. See New York Times, "New Chief at Consumer Bureau Promises Vigorous Agenda."

Obama Weekly Address: Shared Sacrifice, Blah, Blah...

The words have changed but the game's the same.

Class warfare tax the rich baloney. See Gateway Pundit: "Obama Weekly Address: Tax the Rich."

RELATED: At The Hill, "GOP leaders ignore Obama’s 36-hour deadline for a debt plan" (via Memeorandum).

Nancy Pelosi: 'Elections Shouldn't Matter as Much as They Do'

She's a strange woman, in many respects. I don't see someone like Pelosi as possessing anything approaching critical thinking facilities. It's all just emotion and stream of consciousness. And that really explains the talk she gave at Tufts, where she says that Republicans should just take back their party because we "share values about the education of our children." Never mind that we don't really have shared values, especially when people like Kevin Jennings, Assistant Deputy Secretary in the Obama Department of Education, is a prototypical exponent of those values. Nancy Pelosi is out to lunch when she claims that "elections shouldn’t matter as much as they do." In fact, I might have passed up on this, but Steven Hayward has an essay worth sharing, at Power Line, "THE MASK SLIPS, FALLS TO GROUND, EXPLODES." I still think she's out to lunch, but this is good:

It is a mistake to dismiss Pelosi as the complete nitwit she often appears. The most clarifying single moment of the last generation may well have been Pelosi's famous remark that we'd need to pass the healthcare bill to find out what was in it. Rather than being a matter of ridicule, I thought Pelosi expressed perfectly the innermost character of congressional legislation in the modern administrative state. What she said was quite true and accurate: even at more than 2,000 pages, the enormous discretion and policy responsibility delegated to executive branch agencies meant that in effect the actual operating law would be formulated by administrators rather than Congress. And the huge number of waivers being granted under ObamaCare reveals the essentially arbitrary (some might say lawless) nature of administrative government.

RTWT.

WikiLeaks' Dishonesty and Hypocrisy

The latest WikiLeaks dump could be breaking a record for provoking debate. I've said a lot already. But I'm thinking back to how badly the MFM and progressive manchild bloggers got beat on the Apache video last April. Jawa Report was doing yeoman's work, for example, "For The Idiots Who Still Say There Was no RPG -- UPDATED: Wiki Leak as Left Wing Propaganda."

Liars and hypocrites. And lots more in the news. For example, at The Guardian's reader-response interview, Julian Assange refused to answer this question:

Julian.

I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and theprotection of sources. This applies to the UK and the UN as much as the US.

In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.

My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.

Julian ASS-ange

More later ...

PREVIOUSLY: "Progressive Manchildren and WikiLeaks."

Progressive Manchildren and WikiLeaks

That's John Hawkins:

And here's Progressive Manchild #1: Glenn Greenwald, "WikiLeaks Debate With Steven Aftergood." And seriously. Is Julian Assange a hero? Hardly. The dude should be dead.

RELATED: Just now seeing another manchild, "Doctor Science" at Obsidian Wings (hmm, could be a womanchild), "The culture of conspiracy, the conspiracy of culture" (via Memeorandum). This isn't all that complicated, as I discussed yesterday: "Misunderstanding WikiLeaks." Indeed, it's pretty much broken down to a debate between serious folks on national security and antiwar nihilists. And yes, idiotic manchildren, or in the case of Charli Carpenter ... well, I won't go there: "What is Wikileaks?"

Misunderstanding WikiLeaks

There's some debate on the degree of international cooperation in apprehending WikiLeaks' Julian Assange. At Telegraph UK, "WikiLeaks: British Police Asked to Join Hunt for Julian Assange." Also at Memeorandum. And there's some breaking stuff at NYT that I haven't gotten to yet, for example, "Diplomats Noted Canadian Mistrust Toward U.S."

For now what's sparking my interest, and some frustration, is the easy accolades so many commenters are offering to WikiLeaks, with attention especially on claims that increasing transparency is a means to a greater libertarian end. And in this I'm finding, as a side note, through Ross Douthat, that Will Wilkinson is now blogging at The Economist. I was a subscriber for three years while in graduate school. I read that magazine religiously. But like just about every other mainstream periodical in recent years, its quality has deteriorated badly. Outside the pages of Wall Street Journal, The Economist used to be the place to read the most rigorous analysis of free market economics. Yet now the previously classically-inclined editors at The Economist have jumped ship. (Alan Caruba captured this unfortunate descent just the other day, "Climate Change Idiocy and The Economist.") So I guess it makes sense that Will Wilkinson's blogging there now. The countercultural left has increasingly joined with ideological libertarianism to escalate the contemporary attack on the modern moral regime and the foundations of social order. To take that attack to its logical conclusion is to launch an extreme repudiation on state power, since it's the state that controls the monopoly of force and the means to prohibit certain activities, such as drug use and prostitution. But with the recent WikiLeaks dump, the left-libertarian alliance has metastasized into a romantic nihilism, which sees a heroic purpose to WikiLeaks when the exact opposite is true. My old infantile antagonist E.D. Kain gleefully provides a synopsis, which perfectly illustrates the verbose left-libertarianism's replacement of firm realism with fluffy fawning:

The government has a monopoly on violence; the media has only words. We should encourage underdogs like WikiLeaks who continue to fight an uphill battle, not against the United States – this country is more than its government, after all – but against the over-reach of the state. We have ceded so much of our own privacy to our government, perhaps now we would like to return the favor.

WikiLeaks may be a small player, really, in the bigger scheme of things. But to some degree it is also a bellwether, a forecast of things to come as information and technology continue to nip at the heels of the state. Perhaps we really are approaching a time when government becomes less relevant, less necessary, where other institutions both real and virtual can begin to supplant the role of the state in our lives, subversively at first but then more openly as time passes. I don’t know. I’m not even sure what that would look like in practice. Predicting the future is not among my talents; I cannot see where frying pans leave off and fires begin. But if I am at all correct then we should also realize that when an institution is threatened it reacts accordingly. Things will get worse before they get better.

If this were just a philosophical excursion vis-à-vis theories of federalism and government devolution, that'd be one thing. But it's not. We're talking about a 21st century non-state actor conducting information warfare against the United States. It's not a big surprise that WikiLeaks' most enthusiast backers are found among the world's anarcho-communist contingents. What's pathetic --- although not new, just even more pronounced --- is how willingly the libertarians jump on board this lame new vehicle toward alleged greater government accountability.

So to be clear: Julian Assange despises America with all he's got. There's nothing good about his agenda. And libertarianism is deathly nihilism if folks can't get their heads around the idea that there's little functional alternative to the nation-state in today's post-modern advanced democratic societies. That's not to say we can't limit the expansion of the state nor improve government performance and accountability. But we'll destroy ourselves by radical attempts to tear it down. And back over at The Economist is a deep clue to the ideological confusion. Folks apparently never got the memo from earlier this year on the bogus WikiLeaks Apache video "Collateral Damage." There's wasn't anything "objective" about it. But tell that to The Economist:

WikiLeaks's release of the "Collateral Murder" video last April was a pretty scrupulous affair: an objective record of combat activity which American armed forces had refused to release, with careful backing research on what the video showed. What we got was a window into combat reality, through the sights of a helicopter gunship. You could develop different interpretations of that video depending on your understanding of its context, but it was something important that had actually taken place.

A lot of commentators apparently act as though they're offering profound insights of democratic theory when expounding on WikiLeaks. I note E.D. Kain as one exhibit, although Glenn Greenwald comes to mind as well. But it's really not such a super sophisticated or intellectually glamorous issue. WikiLeaks wants to destroy authority. People are going to get killed, and not in the name of any state interest that could be otherwise checked by the processes of democratic governance. IBD had a great editorial on Julian Assange the other day, and I'll close with this, "An Infoterrorist?":

Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., the soon-to-be chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, is absolutely correct in calling for Assange's outfit to be classified a terrorist organization under U.S. law. King has called on Attorney General Eric Holder to charge Assange with a crime under the Espionage Act. While Holder's office has announced an investigation, don't hold your breath.

But what of Assange's accomplices in the U.S. and foreign media?

The New York Times, where Assange gets to dump "all the secrets fit to leak," boasts that its collaborations with WikiLeaks give "the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions" — hardly a rationale for endangering our liberty.

This is a continuing, slow-motion disaster for the U.S., and our government has done little beyond having a State Department lawyer send a huffy letter to Assange's lawyer in Sweden.

These leaks must be plugged — by force if necessary — before it is American blood we find flowing.

At the video, more radical left-wing Wiki-boosting from communist Amy Goodman's Democracy Now!

RELATED: From Peter Feaver, "WikiLeaks Only Interested in Damaging U.S. Foreign Policy."

Comeback

The new ad from General Motors:

Looks like it's going over pretty well. Then again, in other news: "After GM Stock Sale, Taxpayers Lose, Unions Win." Actually, not everyone agrees on that: "Capitalists ‘Recover’ On Backs of Workers."

Explosive Powder, PETN, Target of Airport Screenings

Yeah, could be deadly, but sheesh.

At LAT:

Full-body scans and aggressive pat-downs now under scrutiny are designed to seek out the explosive powder that was used in several failed terrorist bombings recently, officials say.

New airport security procedures that have stirred the emotions of air travelers — full-body scans and aggressive pat-downs — were largely designed to detect an explosive powder called PETN, which has been a staple of Al Qaeda bomb makers for nearly a decade.

It was PETN that was molded into the sole of Richard Reid's black high-top sneaker when he walked onto American Airlines Flight 63 bound for Miami in December 2001.

It was PETN that was sewn into the underwear of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, authorities say, when he boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 for Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

And it was PETN that suspected Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen packed inside computer printer cartridges that were shipped Oct. 28, intending to blow up planes en route to Chicago.

None of the plots succeeded in taking down an aircraft, but top U.S. officials are concerned about fresh indications that Al Qaeda remains determined to get PETN on airplanes by trying to exploit vulnerabilities in passenger and cargo screening.

Not only has the terrorist network acknowledged its role in bomb plots, it is also sharing what it knows about building bombs on the Web and elsewhere.

PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, presents some vexing problems for security experts. A powder about the consistency of fine popcorn salt, it will not trigger an alarm on a metal detector. Because of its more stable molecules, PETN gives off less vapor, making it more difficult to detect by bomb-sniffing dogs and the trace swabs used by the Transportation Security Administration.

PETN's stability makes it easy to hide and easily transformed. When mixed with rubber cement or putty, it becomes a rudimentary plastic explosive — a baseball-sized amount can blow a hole in an airplane fuselage.

"PETN is hard to detect and lends itself to being concealed," said an intelligence official who was not authorized to speak on the record. "It packs a punch."

RELATED: At The Hill, "Next step for body scanners could be trains, boats, metro" (via Memeorandum).

Professor Caroline Heldman Clueless on Politics of Town Halls

I first saw Professor Caroline Heldman last year, on the O'Reilly Factor, in the weeks before the November election. According to her information page, she is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Occidental College. Professor Heldman co-edited a book on feminist electoral politics (Rethinking Madam President: Are We Ready for a Woman in the White House?). She also published an article at Ms. Magazine last year, "Out-of-Body Image: Women See Themselves Through Eyes of Others." Her 2005 curriculum vitae lists two other books, but they don't turn up on a Google search. Heldman holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University. She took a Bachelor's in Business Administration from Washington State University in 1993.

I mention all of this to provide some background to Heldman's latest appearance on the O'Reilly Factor last night. At the video, O'Reilly talks to both Scott Rasmussen (of Rasmussen Reports) and Professor Heldman. The discussion follows the Talking Points segment. Rasmussen gives an accurate background analysis of what's happening with President Obama's public support on key issues, and particularly the recent surge in public opposition to ObamaCare.

Both O'Reilly and Rasmussen argue that the tea parties/town halls are having an effect on the Obama administration. Basically, as public support for the grassroots demonstrators has gone up, pubic backing for the ObamaCare fiasco has gone down. Heldman first shakes her head in agreement with Rasmussen, but when O'Reilly asks her, "as a political scientist," what she thinks is happening, Heldman argues that the protests are related to a "broader concern" with "the loss of healthcare." But actually, polls have showed that roughly 8 out of 10 Americans are satisfied with the quality of their healthcare and their insurance coverage.

Then, when O'Reilly continues, saying Americans are very clear on ObamaCare ("they don't want it"), Heldman comes back with, "I disagree with you ... we need a piece of legislation first. And what's needed prior to producing legislation is democratic debate. And what's happening at these healthcare forums is folks are coming and shutting down debate. So I don't think people know much about healthcare ..."

Professor Heldman concludes with some spurious comparison to "healthcare lobbies" in 1993, which purportedly distorted the Clinton adminstration's reform program away from "the best interest" of the public. (I gather that would be single-payer nationalization.)

Watch the video. Heldman shows all kinds of exasperated body language to indicate her frustration with the way the discussion's going. But she's clearly wrong on facts, and most importantly, she's badly misinformed with what's happening today on the conservative street with regards to the town halls.

From my perspective, as a blogger and a teaching political scientist, this year's been one of the most incredible learning experiences on democratic participation in American life. Americans aren't buying the left-wing smears of tea-partyers as astroturfed mobs. USA Today's poll this week was particulary telling. The survey indicated, by 2-to-1 margin, a shift in public sympathy toward the town hall demonstrators. Fifty-one percent said the town halls are an example of "democracy in action." Certainly Professor Heldman's entitled to her opinion, but as she's a political scientist, I'd expect her to have a more rigorous grasp of survey trends if she's going to be speaking on the topic as an expert.

Also, in a related development, Michelle Malkin reports that John L. Jackson, Jr., who holds the majesterial title of Richard Perry University Associate Professor of Communication and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania, has attacked Malkin's book, Culture of Corruption, as a "hate crime: "That's the implicit message of this screed from the Chronicle of Higher Education."

Jackson's piece is titled, "The Rising Stakes of Obamaphobia." And once again, we see the same lefist canards and ignorant characterizations of the protests. Jackson at one point argues that:

A relatively small group of like-minded people can have a disproportionate impact on our collective public stage, especially if they make effective use of new media technologies ....

Americans' current "run on guns" isn't just about a potential change in national policy around gun control and the right to bear arms. Some of it also seems to be predicated on an uptick in right-wing militias and their renewed calls for a "race war." Part of it is about a kind of "racial paranoia" linked to economic insecurities, a racial paranoia that pivots on a growing social movement around reactionary racial politicking.

It turns out that Professor Jackson has apparently made his academic mark with this kind of bull-hockey analysis. He's the author of Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness, yet another argument for the "hidden," "unseen" racism that's allegedly destroying our country.

It can't be said enough - and I attest to this as both an activist and an analyst - that the right's grassroots movement is really unprecedented in recent years. Folks in the left-wing media and the radical academy are doing themselves tremendous harm in misunderstanding what's really happening, and in disrespecting that which they don't understand.

It's bothersome, frankly. I wish I'd known back in 1992 what I know now about politics and ideology. I might have done some things differently in life. On the bright side, recent experiences in blogging and political activism are making me a better professor.