Washington Post head and sub-head, at least as the wire version has it:

Security Council formally frees Iraq from Saddam-era sanctions

Vice President Biden reflected on how far the Iraqis have come in two decades.

Yes, ever since that Gulf War in 1990 he voted against. The piece continues:

 The 15-nation council voted to end restrictions on Iraqi's rights to develop a civilian nuclear program, agreed to restore Iraqi control of its oil revenue within six months and brought an end to the vestiges of the controversial $64 billion oil-for-food program . .  Vice President Joe Biden presided over the session, which provided the Obama administration with an opportunity to highlight progress in the long, hard political transition in Iraq.

Speaking on behalf of the council, Biden said Wednesday's action marked a recognition of how much Iraq has improved its relations with the rest of the world.

The passage of the resolutions "brings an end to the burdensome remnants of the dark era of Saddam Hussein," he said.

The article gives no specifics about how the dark era of Saddam ended, or when this happened, or why, or who was involved. Can anyone fill me in? Thnx!

I certainly agree with John Yoo’s post arguing that the decision in Virginia v Sibelius demonstrates that Obamacare’s weak spot is the Commerce Clause. But I hasten to add that the battle will probably not center on the word “commerce” which is now nearly meaningless in Constitutional law, but rather “Necessary and Proper.”  There's a debate going on -- which Orin Kerr has stoked over at Volokh, and which has the Washington Post jumping for joy -- that Judge Hudson made a huge mistake by failing to address the "Necessary and Proper" clause of the Article I.  According to Kerr:

The point of the Necessary and Proper clause is that it grants Congress the power to use means outside the enumerated list of Article I powers to achieve the ends listed in Article I.

This is one of those fundamental errors that has become embedded in post-New Deal jurisprudence: the idea that the Necessary and Proper Clause transforms the Commerce Clause into the Whatever-Congress-Wants Clause.  Constitutional scholar Robert Natelson has done exhaustive research on this clause and has (IMHO) demolished the conventional wisdom.  In fact, “necessary and proper” was eighteenth century legal boilerplate used in powers of attorney – and its purpose was to restrict the scope of activities that the agent could perform on behalf of the principal.  

The Founders often referred to government as “agents” (or servants) of the People, and they borrowed from agency law to reinforce the concept that Congress must stick faithfully to the enumerated powers.  And then they stuck in the Tenth Amendment to make it absolutely beyond-all-doubt clear that the powers not delegated to the federal government remain with the States and the People. Or so they thought.   

I am just now reading -- excuse my dilatory behavior -- that in his meeting with top CEOs (I'm hurt I wasn't invited), Obama urged them to do more hiring.

Now this is the guy who the elites told us was sophisticated, elegant, brilliant and the rest. It was bad enough that he campaigned and governed on failed Keynesian, demand-side, pump-priming theories. But this, I'm afraid, is a step further down the ladder. 

He urged them to do more hiring to bring down unemployment. I wonder why they never thought of that. I guess, though, that it's a step up from, say, a Stalin 5 Year Plan. And we can be grateful he didn't order the executives to hire more people. 

In his command-controlish nudge to the fat cat executives, though, Obama once again paid lip service to his fealty to capitalism, affirming his belief that government is not "the primary engine of America's economic success. ... It is the ingenuity of America's entrepreneurs." You go Barack.

As to that ingenuity thing, though, I guess he wanted to give the execs a little jump start on it by sharing his profound idea about their hiring. Obviously they've been preoccupied with other things and increasing their work rolls just hadn't yet occurred to them.

This is happening 10 miles south of the U.S. border in Juárez:

Now as Christmas approaches, mobsters have chosen a new target, turning their sights on humble schoolteachers.

Painted threats scrawled outside numerous public schools demand that teachers hand over their Christmas bonuses or face the possibility of an armed attack on the teachers—and even the children.

To make the point clear, assailants set fire to a federal preschool in the San Antonio district a week ago, leaving the director's office in smoldering ruins.

Scribbled on the wall in gold paint was the reason: "For not paying."

The targeting of teachers in Juarez's 1,270 preschool, primary and secondary schools is a sign of the depravity that rules in a city whose name has become synonymous with homicide.

Gangs already have shaken down other parts of the municipal social fabric—doctors, dentists and even ambulance drivers.

Now with the targets being teachers, parents have pulled thousands of children from schools where heightened security already had turned them into seeming prisons, enclosed with coils of barbed wire atop concrete walls.

Three schools have closed for fear they might come under armed attack. "We are scared," admitted Maria de Jesus Casio, principal of the Ramon Lopez Velarde Elementary School. But she also said teachers don't want to pay. "Teachers don't have much money. The salaries are just enough for survival."

Teachers in this city earn an average of $650 a month. Christmas bonuses vary but the average is about a month's pay.

Casio, 53, a veteran teacher with close-cropped reddish hair, said teachers arrived at school one day in late November to find this graffito painted on the outside wall:
"For the well-being of everyone, and the children, pay 50,000 pesos."

That same day, assistant principal Jorge Alberto Palacios said that he found a notice on his pick-up truck that "talked about a massacre of children" and indicated where to drop the money.

A third message came in a school telephone bill. The threats arrived at a dozen schools, perhaps more, according to news reports, though a senior school official would speak only in general terms.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon maintains that the federal government has control over the entire country -- a laughable assertion indeed, if the situation were not so darned serious. 

Anyone care to venture a prediction as to what will happen with Mexico in 2011?  Does the situation simply continue to get worse?  Or does the mayhem become so intolerable that the United States government intervenes?

With a hot line up of guests, we're burning rubber this week. Strategist Mike Murphy returns to the podcast for a fascinating discussion of what happened in California, the future of the party, and yes, a certain candidate from Delaware. Then we're joined by John Yoo and Richard Epstein who labor against a spotty Skype connection to explain what the recent court decision on health care and where the battle for repeal goes from here. Also, Rob discusses why his script is late and Peter boasts about his hot new wheels. Or his hot wheels. 

A hail of bullets:

• Peter Robinson's poodle Crusoe carefully guards the family's new ride. 
• We don't know why James Lileks couldn't make it today, but perhaps it had something to do with this.
• As noted last week, the script Rob is trying to finish is for Indian/Canadian comedian Russell Peters. If the pilot is picked up, it will be on NBC in the fall.
• Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker piece accuses the Roberts court of "willingness, even its eagerness, to overturn the work of legislatures." 
• The "No Labels" convention is currently being held at Columbia University. Featured speakers include Charlie Christ, Michael Bloomberg, and Joe Scarborough. Sounds like a party. 
• Here's the clip of Justice Alito mouthing "not true" during last year's State of The Union speech. Dramatic stuff. 
• The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 was signed by President Clinton on August 22nd, 1996, a little less than 21 months after the 1994 mid-term elections. 
• Ricochet member Scott Reusser's post about the gaming of unemployment benefits maybe found here.
• Professor Randy Barnett has his very own website.
• Richard used the example if government required auto insurance to help explain why government mandated health insurance may be unconstitutional. There was a similar debate recently in the member feed on Ricochet.
• Don't miss Richard and John's various Ricochet posts on Obamacare and the recent court decision. They also duke it out in the comments.
• Once again, apologies for the Skype issues. Skype is kind of like democracy -- it's the worst solution except for all the others.

Music from this week's episode:

• Let Yourself Go by James Brown
• Camaro by Kings of Leon

The direct link to this week's episode is here, but we'd really love it if you'd subscribe. Don't use iTunes? Visit our Feedburner page for a number of other subscription options.

The Ricochet Podcast is sponsored by Encounter Books. Our featured title this week is How the Obama Administration Has Politicized Justice by Andrew C. McCarthy. Available for $5.99 at EncounterBooks.com.

In his “unemployment benefits primer,” Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein makes the following assertion with which I completely agree:

North Dakota…has a very low unemployment rate. It doesn't make sense to have 99 weeks of unemployment benefits in a state where unemployment is 2.8 percent. That's when unemployment benefits really do discourage work.

That point is consistent with the anecdotal evidence member Scott Reusser wrote about recently:

Of the two dozen or so of my acquaintances who have collected unemployment, every single one--not most, every single one--has gamed the system. They disgust me, but it's the system that corrupts. Most often the con involves working for cash while running out the string on benefits--the longer the string, the longer the run--then going "on the books" only after the government checks stop.

It’s Klein’s next assertion that seems rather flimsy:

But it does make sense to have 99 weeks in Nevada, where the unemployment rate is 13.7 percent....We should probably be further shortening the unemployment benefits in low-unemployment states like North Dakota, while further lengthening them in places like Nevada, for instance.

So according to Klein it doesn’t make sense to offer unemployed North Dakotans 99 weeks of unemployed benefits because that would incentivize them to remain unemployed, but it does make sense to offer Nevadans 99 weeks of benefits because…they’re unaffected by the same incentives as North Dakotans?

The more holes in the system, the more ways to exploit the system for personal gain.  It doesn’t matter whether you live in Nevada, where the unemployment rate is 13.7%, well above the 9.8% national unemployment rate, or if you live in North Dakota, where the unemployment rate is far below the national average at 2.8%.  If you’re unemployed -- especially from a job that wasn't paying much to begin with -- you’re incentivized to stay that way until your benefits expire (or to work for supplemental cash under the table until your benefits expire).  

As the chart illustrates, states with the highest unemployment rates in the nation – take for example California (12% unemployment), Nevada (13.7%), Michigan (12%), and Florida (11.6%) -- offer 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, whereas states with low unemployment rates – North Dakota (2.8%), South Dakota (4.1%), and Nebraska (4.2%) – offer only 60 weeks of unemployment benefits.

If we accept the premise that an increase in the duration of unemployment benefits would exacerbate unemployment in a place like North Dakota, does it not follow that an increase in duration of unemployment benefits in Nevada will exacerbate the situation there as well?  And if this is indeed the case, would it be better to do away with taxpayer funded unemployment insurance altogether, or to set a uniform duration of unemployment insurance across the country? 

In a piece posted yesterday on the website of the National Association of Scholars, Ashley Thorne and Steve Balch drew attention to a series of revisions to the Pennsylvania State University’s statement on Academic Freedom that the Faculty Senate at that institution has submitted to its President for final approval and implementation.

“These changes,” as they point out, “include the deletion of key passages that described the responsibility of the professor not to introduce unrelated controversial material into the classroom.” The 1987 version of the document, which followed in most respects the version adopted in 1950, stipulated that

It is not the function of a faculty member in a democracy to indoctrinate his/her students with ready-made conclusions on controversial subjects. The faculty member is expected to train students to think for themselves, and to provide them access to those materials which they need if they are to think intelligently. Hence, in giving instruction upon controversial matters the faculty member is expected be of a fair and judicial mind, and to set forth justly, without supersession or innuendo, the divergent opinions of other investigators.

No faculty member may claim as a right the privilege of discussing in the classroom controversial topics outside his/her own field of study. The faculty member is normally bound not to take advantage of his/her position by introducing into the classroom provocative discussions of irrelevant subjects not within the field of his/her study.

David Horowitz praised these provisions both in testimony he gave in 2005 to the Pennsylvania legislature and in his book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America, arguing that by specifying limits to proper professorial conduct it connected freedom with responsibility and protected students against professorial abuse. Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), denounced these provisions earlier this year in his book No University is an Island: Saving Academic Freedom, and he welcomed the new statement proposed, which reads as follows:

Faculty members are expected to educate students to think for themselves, and to facilitate access to relevant materials which they need to form their own opinions. Faculty members are expected to present information fairly, and to set forth justly divergent opinions that arise out of scholarly methodology and professionalism.

In an e-mail to Inside Higher Education, Nelson wrote, “Penn State had one of the most restrictive and troubling policies limiting intellectual freedom in the classroom that I know of. It undermined the normal human capacity to make comparisons and contrasts between different fields and between different cultures and historical periods. The revised policy is a vast improvement.”

There is more to these changes than meets the eye. As Thorne and Balch point out, the language in the 1987 Penn State statement derives from the AAUP’s original Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure, which was promulgated in 1915. That in the revised statement reflects revisions introduced by the AAUP in 1940 and, more to the point, in 1994 and 1997. The two do not say in so many words that in recent years the AAUP has substituted license for liberty, but that is what they mean.

Are Thorne and Balch right? For my part, I think that they have a point. All too often what goes on in the classroom in our colleges and universities amounts to indoctrination and even hectoring. The old language served as a check on the vanity and self-righteousness to which we professors are prone. The new language may be unobjectionable in itself, but it lacks the clarity and specificity essential to constraint. It is far easier for a dean or department chair to determine whether a professor is pontificating outside his sphere of expertise than for someone not as expert as he is within that sphere to judge whether he has presented “information fairly” and “set forth justly divergent opinions that arise out of scholarly methodology and professionalism.”

What say you? Am I making a mountain out of a molehill?

It's not nearly as fun a name to say as Julian Assange, but who are the editors of TIME magazine to care about that? Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook mastermind, is 2010's Human of the Year. Well, technically, the title is Person of the Year -- but it ought to be, in this case, Therapist of the Year. Here's Zuck's apparently formulaic reaction to receiving the Great Title (posted, yes, on his Facebook page):

Being named as TIME Person of the Year is a real honor and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected. I'm happy to be a part of that.

Boring, right? But consider this, via Alan Jacobs:

It’s easy to dismiss words as airy nothings and talk therapy as mere talk. Sitting on a couch can seem like such an antiquated form of treatment. But the right kind of talk can fix our broken mind, helping us escape from the recursive loop of stress and negative emotion that’s making us depressed. Changing our thoughts is never easy and, in severe cases, might seem virtually impossible. We live busy lives and therapy requires hours of work and constant practice; our cortex can be so damn stubborn. But the data is clear: If we are seeking a long-lasting cure for depression, then it’s typically our most effective treatment.

Relative to the ubiquitous scientific cope-all known as prescription drugs, talk therapy is very 'aristocratic' -- labor-intensive, time-consuming, attention-demanding, investment-based, costly. But Freud wanted therapists able to practice without a license. As reality television has spun into fantasy escapism, reality internet has risen to replace it as our go-to destination for public group therapy. Facebook isn't exactly dominated by what we're used to thinking of as therapeutic communication, but it's the perfect platform, and, already, we can begin to think of the endless networking and photo-posting and venting and status updating and friending and unfriending as a kind of collective coping mechanism for precisely the rise of real-life social awkwardness that online living seems to deepen.

So says Justice Stephen Breyer in an interview with Fox News.  How does he know?  According to Breyer, historians say that James Madison (the primary author of the the Second Amendment) wrote the provision “to appease the states” who were concerned about maintaining control over local militia.   Madison’s “motive,” says Breyer was not to create an individual right to carry guns.

Who cares what Madison’s “motive” was?  Originalism – properly understood – is not about trying to “channel” the hopes and dreams of the Founders.  It’s about understanding what the text of the constitution and amendments would have meant to the public at the time of ratification.  It doesn’t matter if James Madison thought the Second Amendment was a recipe for fruitcake.  All that matters is the text. 

Admittedly, the Second Amendment presents a difficult text: one clause granting a “right to keep and bear arms” preceded by an introductory clause talking about militias. If Breyer wants to debate the meaning of the text, fair enough.  But this attempt to guess at what James Madison’s secret intention was is worse than useless.

And no wonder Gibbs got laughed at.  Who can forget this pathetic moment in Congressional history?

Oh! I nearly forgot! We have five copies of Andy's broadside to give to you. They go to the authors of the best five comments, as measured by the "like" button, and you're on the honor system--one vote, one member, and not for yourself.

In response to my posts about the Muslim Brotherhood, his new broadside, and the Ricochet Book Club, Andy McCarthy has kindly offered to join us for a discussion. You have all done the reading, I presume? I warned you the test was coming.

Let me start by saying that in response to my post--in which I agreed broadly with much of what Andy said in the broadside, but faulted him for not drawing a sufficiently clear distinction between Islam and Islamism--Andy asked Encounter Books to send me a copy of The Grand Jihad, for which I thank him and thank Encounter Books. 

Whether or not you agree with his arguments, it's a surprisingly great book--great, in the sense that Andy's a natural writer: It's gripping, it's dramatic, and in places very funny (where it is not absolutely horrifying). It was a bestseller and now I see why. It deserved to be. 

I must say that Andy in fact takes pains in his book to draw at quite some length exactly the distinction I faulted him for not drawing clearly enough in his broadside. He devotes an entire chapter to it. I'll leave it to him to explain why this important distinction--the case for which he makes extremely well--was elided in the broadside.  

By the way, the reception to The Grand Jihad is an object lesson in the importance of reading a book before criticizing it. Conor Friedersdorf, you know I like you, but you got suckered on this one. You should have read it before writing this; you'd see that you're missing his point. 

Also by the way, Andy, while I was all too aware of much of what you discuss, the chapter on Kenya was new to me, and very disturbing. That should be better known. 

Anyway, to the broadside. The first meeting of the Ricochet Book Club is convened.  Questions for Andy? He's right here. I have quite some number, but I'll let you all start first. 

Diane Ellis made the great mistake of asking me which book or movie or play that came out this year did I like. That is always a mistake with our family, because Mrs. McGurn and I almost never read a book or see a movie that isn't years old. Not that we're opposed to it: everything is new some time. But we liked the tried and true.

Friends and relations, however, keep asking me for book suggestions. And if I had to name two on my all favorites list, both would be biographies. The first is Peter Ackroyd's The Life of Thomas More. It does more than bring the one-time Lord Chancellor to life: it paints a canvas of the medieval England in which he lived -- and which was dying even as he was sent to the block. Just wonderful reading.

The other is Allen Guelzo's Redeemer President, a biography of Abraham Lincoln. For similar reasons. Guelzo does a good job of depicting not only Lincoln but the time in which he lived -- and the forces and factions, very similar to today, that led to the creation of the Republican Party. It's highly readable and relatively concise. In addition, I think he does a good job handling Lincoln's religious beliefs: neither painting the 16th President as a complete agnostic nor going to the other extreme of claiming him for Christianity (at least any orthodox Christianity).

Both wonderful reads, even if they came out years ago.

Here you go: An introduction to Deirdre McClosky's thought, rather than her gender: 

I am claiming that the economy exploded because the forms of speech about enterprise and invention suddenly changed, for various good and interesting reasons.  Speech, not material changes in foreign trade or domestic investment, caused the non-linearities. We know this in part because trade or investment were ancient routines, but the new dignity and liberty for ordinary people were unique to the age. ...  

The change was of greater importance for explaining the modern world than the clerical Reformation in Germany after 1517, or even the aristocratic Renaissance during and after the Tuscan Trecento, though both of these influenced it, as did a third great R-shift of late medieval and early modern times, the political Revolts and Revolutions which shook Holland and Britain and America and finally France. But the point here is that in a fourth great and uniquely European R-shift—the “Bourgeois Revaluation” in Holland and Britain—an old class began to acquire a new and higher standing in the way people talked about it, in their rhetoric. 

There are a lot of fascinating ideas in that paper. What do you make of her thesis? 

Michael Steele sent this letter to the RNC Membership launching his re-election bid.  His apparent plan for an RNC comeback?  Baffle 'em with a blizzard of typos and lousy grammar.  The war against the "shift" key is a canny move too.

So the OECD's annual education testing scores of the world's 15 year olds are out and the news is bleak for the U.S.  The new wrinkle this year is that for the first time students from two Chinese cities -- Hong Kong and Shanghai -- are included in the results.  And yes, the Chinese students rank at the top, with Shanghai number 1 in all three areas: Math, Reading and Science.  America results are proudly, in the middle at 25th overall.  We did manage to narrowly edge out Latvia.  This is the data I talked about on the podcast today, when I wasn't shamelessly gloating over my notorious earlier post predicting a complete Christine O'Donnell fiasco in Delaware.  Anyway you can read the data -- in English, at least for now -- at the OECD website or inside this CSM story.

Jon Bon Jovi: just a pretty, made-up face? The White House doesn't think so.

Politics Daily reports on Obama's latest political appointee:  

The "Livin' on a Prayer" singer has been appointed to the 25-member White House Council for Community Solutions.

In its announcement Tuesday, the White House said the new panel will "provide advice to the President on the best ways to mobilize citizens, nonprofits, businesses and government to work more effectively together to solve specific community needs."

Is this the consolation prize for not making the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

My wife - who's, like, really sweet - but I mean, really sweet - as in: how-on-earth-did-Klavan-end-up-with-her level sweet - keeps asking me, "Are you sure you don't want an IPad for Christmas."  Now, I consider the IPhone the greatest machine ever made, the pinnacle of technology, possibly the point and purpose of technology, possibly the point and purpose of human evolution, if it comes to that.  To me, the IPad looks like an IPhone that's too big to put in your pocket.  And with a worse keyboard to boot.  In other words, after taking a cursory look at it in the store, I thought it seemed like a step backward.  A few more "advances" like this and we'll all be swimming around in the primordial soup.

Okay, I exaggerate.  But my question is this: am I missing something? Are these things really great? Do they do anything my phone won't do? Or, as my wife might put it, am I sure I don't want one for Christmas?  If anyone has the answer, lay it on me.

There's a beautiful and thoughtful meditation by David Hazony on CNN's Belief Blog about the role the ten commandments play in our culture today. According to Hazony, author of the book "The Ten Commandments: How Our Most Ancient Text Can Renew Modern Life," the commandments carry more symbolic meaning in our lives than actual meaning.

Most churches, synagogues, and many public buildings, for example, display some sort of representation of the commandments--tablets or friezes for instance--but rarely are the commandments actually listed on those tablets. See above. And only 40% of Americans can list more than four of the commandments.

Hazony explains:

That’s because in our world, it’s been a long time since the Ten Commandments, as a text, had any real meaning. We’ve put them into a black box, glorified that box and attached all sorts of sacred connotations to it, rendered it symbolically and, having commissioned our artists to depict it visually, have convinced ourselves that we no longer need to know what’s inside.

Resucitating the commandments, giving them life in our day to day lives, requires reading them with fresh and sympathetic eyes. Read them "as you would a treasure map." For instance, what if, 

The call to honor our parents were also a call to a certain kind of moral wisdom that they alone give us—an instinctive, human wisdom very different from the kind promoted by the Greeks or the wise people of the Far East?

If the bans on murder, adultery, and theft were also gateways to stirring affirmations of life, love, and freedom?

If the ban on bearing false witness against our neighbor were really about the foundations of community, and the mutual trust on which it depends?

In other words, while we should value the commandments at face value, we should also search for the deeper wisdom that they can reveal.

If we did, maybe then our culture could rediscover the universal truths that the commandments still hold. Maybe then those commandments would become more meaningful, even to a society as secular as ours.

Well, this is weird. National Review is running an interview with economist Deirdre McCloskey, who has just released volume two of a six-volume account of the birth and flourishing of the bourgeoisie and its transformation of the modern world. The interview is worth reading for its own sake, but there's something particularly strange about it.

I hadn't heard of her before. I probably should have, but I simply had no idea who she was. Now, those of you who do know who she is will think I'm making this up, but I swear I'm not--I went into that completely unaware. But as I was reading, I was thinking, "This woman does not think like a woman. Who is she?" 

I Googled her and discovered that in fact, she used to be Donald McCloskey.

I had absolutely no way of knowing that, and yet--I swear to you--it was my first, unprompted reaction, not on seeing her photo, but on reading about six paragraphs of her writing. 

I don't know what tipped me off. Is it that only men, in their superb creativity and vanity--God bless them!--would ever conceive of writing a six-volume magnum opus explaining the birth and flourishing of the bourgeoisie and its subsequent transformation of the modern world? Or is it something else? Can you figure out from that interview how I knew that? 

Anyway, once you're over the weirdness of that, here's a lovely essay she wrote about Milton Friedman. And there's lots of other interesting stuff on her website. 

Dear Nancy,

I surely do appreciate how difficult it can be to navigate in a culture you don't understand. Boy howdy, have I learned the hard way that things that sound like a joke in Turkey are actually deadly serious. You better believe I won't be laughing the next time the subject of Turkish oil wrestling comes up. 

So let me help you out, because I'm actually pretty good with American culture, despite not visiting all that much anymore.

In America, when you're a politician and someone asks you, "Does the Constitution give you the power to do that?"--well, that's really never a joke. Americans are incredibly touchy about that "Constitution" business, especially when it comes to politicians and what they're allowed to do.

I guess you've probably figured that out by now. But if you need any more advice, just give me a call. Always happy to help. 

All best,

Claire

PS: Nancy, where exactly are you from? 

Had you been searching for the perfect and simultaneous crystallization of competing visions for America, you would have found the last 24 hours to have been virtually without equal. With all the dependability of Monday morning's sunrise, the Obamas spied a fresh field of American life insufficiently plowed by federal dictates and went to work. Pulling a fresh $4.5 billion from the same printing press that is exhausting itself while printing our way to fiscal oblivion, the First Couple unveiled the, "Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act." The new law regulates what children will eat before, during, and after school. After all, noted the First Lady, "We can't just leave it up to the parents." No, of course not.

In this vision Americans must be led by the nose and forced to engage in one activity or another, for their own good of course. They are expected to work hard and then yield increasing portions of their earnings and liberty to their wise and benevolent superiors in Washington, who will dispense the largesse according to their own enlightened, judicious assessments without regard to favors, bribes, or any of the other mechanisms by which they achieved office in the first place. Limited only by their fertile imagination, these superior beings will tell the masses what kind of food to eat, what kind of vehicles to drive, what kind of lightbulb to use, ad infinitum. The lineal descendant of dictators and crackpots from Mao to Chavez, from Stalin to the little gargoyle in North Korea, this vision robs people of their property, their dignity, and their freedom in pursuit of the half-baked notion that one human can perfect another. Desolation and ruin are its offspring.

While the Obama's were putting smiley faces on this vision, Judge Henry Hudson offered another vision for America, where the Constitution and the rule of law still matter. Addressing Obamacare's requirement that citizens must purchase health insurance, Hudson saw the obvious. Noting that, "...the legislative process must still act within constitutional bounds," the judge added that, "Salutatory goals and creative drafting have never been sufficient to offset an absence of enumerated powers." Speaking to the government's attempt to tether the mandate to the Commerce Clause, Judge Hudson wrote that, "This broad definition of the economic activity subject to congressional regulation lacks logical limitation and is unsupported by Commerce Clause jurisprudence." In short, the individual mandate is inconsistent with the concept of individual liberty that is enshrined and codified in the Constitution.

Then, as if to underscore the point, Senate democrats today dropped another whopper of an omnibus spending bill that freezes this year's $3.5 trillion budget through next year without allowing any spending cuts. Anyone still wondering if the left learned anything from the last election? This colossal monument to assinine stubbornness is nothing more nor less than democrats extending their middle finger to the American people. Unimpressed by the Constitution, unmolested by conscience or reason, they're now unhinged from any sense of accountability. The new congress will also be grappling with similarly audacious administrative maneuvers, as an alphabet soup of executive agencies attempt to pick up where the current congress leaves off.

Two visions, two diametrically opposed philosophies of governance. Nothing less than the future of the country is at stake, and it is not preordained that the Founders' vision will prevail. When the inevitable talk of searching for common ground and compromising with these power hungry zealots begins, our side must be reminded of the events of the last 24 hours.

Friends over at the Claremont Institute's Claremont Review of Books, required reading for conservative intellectuals, have posted their suggestions for Christmas books.  They surveyed various conservative thinkers for their recommendations of books.  There were some great ideas, coming from well-known writers (among others) such as Hadley Arkes and James Q. Wilson.

Here were my suggestions.

Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell

Having made it through all of the Sharpe series, I decided to take on another British saga, but this time one at the opposite end of British life. Dance to the Music of Time is made up of 12 separate novels. They follow the lives of Britain's upper class from the 1920s to the 1970s, roughly tracing the profound effects of the fall of the British Empire on its upper crust. While pessimistic by the end, the series reminds me of how different Americans are from the British and how fashionable comparisons today between the decline of Britain and the position of the United States miss the mark completely.

Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, by Robert Kagan

Kagan's book is part of a growing trend that upends the grade-school version of American history—one put forward by John Kerry during his ill-fated try for the Presidency—that sees the U.S. as historically isolationist, all of its wars as ones of self-defense, and its expansion across the continent as a peaceful inevitability. Along with excellent works by John Lewis Gaddis and Walter McDougall, Kagan argues that the United States, the "Dangerous Nation," has launched wars of its own to achieve its foreign policy goals of expanding across the continent and removing any powerful competitors along the way. A second forthcoming volume takes the story of America's expansionist foreign policy into the 20th Century.

The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire, by Edward N. Luttwak

Luttwak's Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire (1979) is a classic account of the way the Romans defended their empire from centuries of external threats. The Romans provide centuries of information that allow for the testing of various ideas about military strategy. Luttwak now turns to an equally important, but less well known, question: how did the Byzantines preserve their empire for so long? It's a fascinating read for those not just interested in military strategy, but those who want to learn more about the successor to the Roman Empire.

Does the GOP have an anthem?  If it does, I've certainly never heard it.  Which means that the "No Labels" Party is one step ahead in preparedness.  As Hot Air's Allahpundit suggested,

the “No Labels Anthem,” [is] presumably to be played whenever Mike Bloomberg walks into a room or “Morning Joe” goes to commercial or, I guess, as mood-setting music whenever RINO[s]...have a lady friend over.

Here's the anthem, sung by rapper Akon at the No Labels conference:

I especially love the attempt at lip-syncing by people who very obviously don't know the words and the cool, swaying dance moves. 

He can order up a political assassination; he can sing "Blueberry Hill."

Well, he can sort of sing "Blueberry Hill."  Personally, I'd prefer it if he sang a little better and ordered up assassinations a little worse.  But as a piece of pure gangster theater, this clip has it all: a terrified audience applauding, atonal singing, and somehow -- despite the badness and the off-key warbling -- it's still a little menacing.  It's the kind of thing a gang leader does, right before he whacks his rivals.  It's the kind of thing Putin might do, right before he shuts off Europe's oil pipeline and demands Hungary back.

BY JON WARD

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Tuesday came out against the tax deal reached between President Obama and congressional Republicans, saying the temporary nature of the tax rate extension would limit the positive economic impact and correspondingly make the deficit worse.

Romney’s move has the potential to spur broader opposition to the deal among Republican lawmakers than has previously been seen, and is clearly intended by the former Massachusetts governor as a play for support from Tea Party and grassroots conservatives.

“What some are calling a grand compromise is not grand at all, except in its price tag,” Romney wrote in an op-ed published by USA Today. “The total package will cost nearly $1 trillion, resulting in substantial new borrowing at a time when we are already drowning in red ink.”

Romney argued that while “in many cases, lowering taxes can actually increase government revenues,” because the extension of current tax rates is only for two years, the economic growth that would have been created by a permanent extension would fall far short of producing the kind of tax revenues needed to reduce the deficit and debt.

“While the tax deal will succeed in temporarily putting more money in the hands of consumers, it will fail to deliver its full potential for creating lasting growth,” Romney wrote.

Romney also staked out an unmistakably hard line conservative position on unemployment benefits, which the tax deal would extend for 13 months. While he acknowledged that joblessness can produce “heartbreak,” he said that longer term government benefits “actually serve to discourage some individuals from taking jobs, especially when the benefits extend across years.”

He proposed to establish “employment savings accounts” to replace government-provided benefits. And he took clear aim at the component of the deal that is most egregious to many conservatives: the unpaid for unemployment insurance spending.

“In spending $56.5 billion to extend benefits, the deal is sacrificing the bedrock Republican principle that new expenditures be paid for with offsetting budget cuts,” he said.

Prior to Romney’s bombshell on Monday, House leaders from both parties told The Daily Caller that the tax deal would clear the House as soon as the end of this week by a relatively slim margin, with a margin for error of roughly 20 votes or so.

The Senate voted overwhelmingly, 83 to 15, to end debate on the measure and move toward a final vote on passage, which will take place either late Tuesday or Wednesday morning.

In the House, the measure needs 218 votes to pass. Key Democrats and Republicans estimated that combined they will have about 240 votes.

House Democrats told TheDC they expect to have about 100 votes in favor of the measure, which is far less than half of the 255-member caucus. House Republicans are expected to support the measure in far greater numbers, with only between 20 and 40 of their 179 members voting against it, a knowledgeable Capitol Hill Republican said.

But if 40 House Republicans do turn against the bill, and support for the deal erodes with House Democrats under the 100-vote mark, the bill could potentially land in some hot water.

That scenario is now far more likely thanks to Romney’s break with the agreement.

>>Continue reading at the Daily Caller.

My kingdom for a plumber. Ever since my flood, I have been waiting for this plumber to come by and fix/replace my sump pump. In the absence of it, I have put in a pump with a garden hose that takes the water to the other sump. The only problem is that this second pump cannot run continuously, so I have to go down every hour to turn it on to drain the well (which has pipes feeding into it). This means getting up every hour at night.

Yesterday the plumber said he now could not get there until Thursday. So I took matters into my own hands and replaced my pump with a 1/2 horsepower model (Zoeller), and so far so good.

There is a pleasure in knowing how these things work, or don't work. The bad news is that before I was happy in my complacency. Now I know I need several backups, and that these things can fail any time.

I still don't understand why we don't have national chains of plumbers, electricians, etc. -- where you called an 800 number and someone did come. We have some local places that will do it for a small fortune, but no national brands. Wonder why.

I revere the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, but, as the saying goes, even Homer nods.  This morning the Journal produces a howler.

In an editorial entitled "Islam's Christians," the Journal writes that the persecution of the Christian minority in Iraq "raises questions about contemporary Islam's ability to coexist with non-Islamic peoples," as indeed it does.  But then:

Some of these Christian minorities have coexisted with Islam in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East since the time of Jesus.

Well, uh, no.  Since Islam didn't exist until the seventh century, the Christian minorities predate Islam by more than half a millenium.  When it emerged, in other words, Islam set about subjugating a religion and culture that had dominated the Middle East for centuries.

And then this:

With the rise of radical Islam, this tradition of peaceful and productive coexistence has been displaced by a practice of religious cleansing.

Right enough--radical Islam is something new and nasty.  But "peaceful and productive coexistence?"  Not exactly.  Arrangements varied from time to time and place to place, but Islam for centuries placed Christians--and, for that matter Jews--under special penalties and obligations, forcing them to pay special taxes, limiting their participation in public life, restricting them, in the great cities, to certain neighborhoods, and so on.

In a word, the ability of Islam to co-exist with non-Islamic peoples is a much, much older question than even the sainted editors of the Wall Street Journal seem to grasp.