My best friend, Bob Lee, and I had the privilege of spending a day down in my old stomping grounds in Louisiana.  We spent the afternoon and the better part of the evening visiting with my Mom, my Sister, her children, and my brother in law.  While the laughter was non-stop, I couldn't help but notice (and revel in the fact) that my Mom seemed so very happy.  Surrounded by her children and those grandchildren who were able to be with us, Mom was the perfect picture of contentment.  It makes my heart proud to see her basking in the love and warmth of our family.  She deserves every smile, every sparkle of the eye, and every heartfelt laugh (though to be sure, when she laughed till there were tears, prompting my nephew to observe, "Careful Grand Mom, or you'll wipe your eyebrows off," we thought she might fall off her chair).  

So with your kind indulgence, I'd like to reprint the stories I shared last year on Mother's Day,…for your enjoyment, and in tribute to a loving family and an amazing Mom whom I love dearly, from her grateful son:  

“Do you like my new jacket?” My Grandmother, my Mom, and my sister had all piled into Granny's Avalon for a road trip from Louisiana to the Florida panhandle. On their way to visit for a few days before my impending deployment to the Mideast, Granny was bragging on her new lightweight jacket. “And it's water resistant,” she continued, her eyes lighting up brightly as she added, “...and it breaks wind too!” Now, she didn't immediately understand why Mom and Sis were laughing hysterically, but soon enough it registered, whereupon she tried in vain to swear everyone to silence.

In fact, at the motel that night, my sister regaled me with the story of “Gran's Jacket That Breaks Wind.” The next day, everyone including my children met at a restaurant for lunch. But the hostess had trouble seating us because no one wanted to sit down wind of Gran's Jacket. “Why not?” asked the hostess. “Because,” I started to answer...when Granny very sternly called out, “David Ben!” That's code for “Dead Meat.” But the laughter continued unabated despite Granny's repeated admonitions of, “That'll do!” Then, just as everyone was regaining their composure, Granny tucked in that little chin of hers and muttered, “I'm getting tired of being the butt of this joke.” Well, that did it. As everyone roared with laughter, I saw a little mischievous twinkle in Granny's eye and the slight smile of satisfaction. She got us.

It's memories like these that flood back on Mother's Day. Good memories of my Mother, Grandmother, two Great Grandmothers and one Great Great Grandmother. Over the years there was much laughter, but the laughter never came cheap. There were hard times, like when my grandparents took us in and helped us resettle and get on our feet. But no matter the circumstance, the women in our family stood strong. We all knew that if one of them had a home, we all had a home. That's what families do, see?

When circumstances made my Mom a single parent, she devoted herself to two things. Her children, and her work in the church. She devoted over 30 years in every conceivable secretarial position in a large church. The skills she developed could easily have garnered her a sizable salary in any of the major industries and refineries in the area, but she knew she was doing the work she had been called to do. She brought her kids up in the church with,..well,..measurable success. One was very well behaved, while the other climbed the steeple (in addition to the dome of the local courthouse, it can now be disclosed). But never once in all those years, or the years that followed, have my sister and I had a single occasion to question or doubt our mother's love. She's always been in our corner, rooting for us, cheering us on, loving us unconditionally. Pity the person who would ever hurt either of us. But that's what families do. That's what moms do.

A few years ago, a drunk driver speeding down her street lost control of his truck and ran smack into Mom's house hitting it so hard, the building literally shifted. Fortunately, she wasn't there at the time, but the damage to the structural integrity was too much, and the house had to be replaced. Granny's house was open as always, so Mom moved there while, under the guidance and expertise of my brother in law, the entire family worked to construct Mom's new house. It was a painstaking and time consuming process, but it seemed that a close family grew even closer in the effort. No sooner did Mom get moved in, when Granny's health took a turn for the worse. A woman of stout dignity, a razor sharp mind and an indomitable spirit, Granny had cancer.

It's part of the cycle of life I suppose, that the people who cared for us as children become the recipients of our care later in life. I watched in awe as Mom ministered to her Mother's needs and comfort. Looking through the fog of medication and her own condition, Granny told Mom, “You've given up part of your life to help me live mine. Thank you.” When the emotions came too strong in the days after she passed, who did I lean on but Mom? Tending to one generation, she looked after another. Today, I see my own daughter tending to my little grandson and I am again in awe. Perhaps nothing in life is as precious, as selfless, and indeed as holy as a mother's love for her child. We could all learn from the example. To all moms, Happy Mother's Day. And to my Mom, from your adoring if slightly mischievous son, I love you. Happy Mother's Day, Mom.

Farhad Manjoo has written a piece headlined "What Eduardo Saverin owes America. (Hint: Nearly everything.)" It's about how the young Facebook entrepreneur immigrated to the United States from Brazil in order to avoid kidnapping and extortion from thugs.

The Saverins did well and he ended up at Harvard. Manjoo argues that he owes his success to the U.S. government. The background to this story is that the U.S. government has taken on the extortion and thuggery role, by trying to take hundreds of millions of dollars Saverin earned, and so the Singapore-based Saverin decided to renounce his U.S. citizenship.

Would Eduardo Saverin have been successful anywhere else? Maybe, but not as quickly, and not as spectacularly. It was only thanks to America—thanks to the American government’s direct and indirect investments in science and technology; thanks to the U.S. justice system; the relatively safe and fair investment climate made possible by that justice system; the education system that educated all of Facebook’s workers, and on and on—it was only thanks to all of this that you know anything at all about Eduardo Saverin today.

Manjoo says that this isn't fair. Worse, it's "ungrateful and it's indecent." So Manjoo comes up with a list of all the ways that the U.S. government is responsible for his entrepreneurial success and deserves to take a cut of hundreds of millions of dollars for it.

First and most obviously, he lived a life of relative safety in Miami, something that wasn’t guaranteed for him in Brazil. Second, also obvious: If Saverin hadn’t come to America, he wouldn’t have met Mark Zuckerberg, and—not to put too fine a point on it—if Saverin hadn’t met Zuckerberg, Saverin wouldn’t be Saverin.

Third: Harvard. Zuckerberg and his cofounders met in the dorms, and while Harvard is a nominally private institution, it enjoys significant funding and protections from the government. In 2011, Harvard received $686 million, about 18 percent of its operating revenue, from federal grants; that’s almost as much as it received from student tuition.

Fourth is the government's role in creating the Internet, Fifth is the judicial system.

Gee, it's almost like Saverin had nothing whatsoever to do with his own success.

This serfdom model is so deeply unattractive, isn't it? So un-American. Besides, now that other countries can compete more easily for talent and capital, it's a waste of time. Why waste time whining when you could work to create a more competitive or fair taxation policy?

As reported on RealClearPolitics:

Reporter at Nancy Pelosi's weekly news conference: "You're a Catholic that supports gay marriage....[H]ow do you grapple with the idea that you support gay marriage as a Catholic?"

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi: "My religion has, compels me, and I love it for it, to be against discrimination of any kind in our country, and I consider this [opposition to gay marriage] a form of discrimination."

Is anyone listening--anyone, say, in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops?  Pelosi misstates the teaching of the Church so badly, and so baldly, that I see no way the bishops can permit her comments to pass without rebuttal--without, that is, abdicating their pastoral duty.  Will we hear from Archbishop George Niederauer, the archbishop of San Francisco, Pelosi's home diocese, or from Donald Cardinal Wueril, the archbishop of Washington, D.C. (pictured here)?  And if not from them, then from Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York and president of the USCCB?

And if not, why not?

Watch this space.

Rob Long confesses one of his fantasies: What would it be like to spend a day with a studio or network executive, and give them notes and comments about their job?

So Time really wanted to sell some magazines. Can you imagine an image more provocative than a three-year-old child with his mouth around the nipple of his young, fit, attractive twenty-six-year old mother–or at least an image that’s that provocative without also being straight up pornographic? 

The picture captures a whole range of hotly controversial topics, from public breastfeeding, to attachment parenting, to incest, to the arrested development of kids these days. But what’s truly revealing about Time‘s cover, and the controversy surrounding it, is not the age of the child. It’s our culture’s growing anxieties about Mom and Motherhood. Showing off that you’re a mom or that you’re body is preparing to become one is taboo. It's similarly taboo to show child birth on television or in the movies--and for anything at all to be taboo in Hollywood is really saying something. 

Were these aspects of womanhood as taboo as they are today, or is it only a recent development in the history of our culture? That's a question I consider further over at Acculturated. The short answer, it seems, is that they weren't always taboo. The longer answer, which involves the rise of feminism and the decoupling of female sexuality from nature, is here.

I've spent the last week or so studiously avoiding my absentee ballot for California's June 5 primary election, which, like most political documents in the Golden State, is best consumed with a side of Vicodin.

When I broke down last night and finally cracked the thing, I immediately felt my aversion justified. Despite being home to one of every eight Americans, we Californians will once again have no meaningful say in choosing a presidential nominee; The GOP has failed to find a notable candidate to run against Dianne Feinstein for the U.S. Senate, despite the fact that she is 78 years old, has been in office for 20 years, and has some considerable ethical baggage; My congressional district -- previously represented by the laudable Dana Rohrabacher -- has now been redrawn to make Henry Waxman our new representative (I've already emigrated from Waxman's district once in the past); And our ballot initiatives are the usual pablum: a cosmetic alteration to legislative term limits and a punitive tax aimed at smokers (of which I am one of five remaining in the state).

Amidst this electoral carnage, however, there was one bright spot: Running for one of the judgeships on the Los Angeles County Superior Court is none other than Ricochet's own Joe Escalante.

Hopefully, Joe already assumes that he has earned my support. But he should also know that he's earned my thanks. Filling out this year's ballot just got a lot more tolerable.

Well, it was news to me.

In the midst of doing some research on federalism (thanks to all who replied to my related post), I picked up the 2008 book Enhancing Government by Erwin Chemerinsky, the hard-left Dean of the law school at U.C. Irvine (know thine enemy, or something like that).  In the book, Chemerinsky proposes a new understanding of federalism as a doctrine that "empowers" all levels of government without limiting any of them.  Neat trick, right?  He brushes aside "originalist" arguments with the following gem about the Founders and federalism:

The text of the Constitution says virtually nothing about the allocation of power between the allocation of power between the federal and state governments.  The framers were largely silent about this issue . . .

I doubled checked -- he is talking about the United States Constitution.  Anybody care to defend (or even explain) this bizarre assertion?

Contributor’s note:  Governor Chris Christie has two Supreme Court nominations to fill in New Jersey.  The state’s left-wing has shouted their usual demands for judicially irrelevant “diversity.”  So the Governor gave it to them:  He nominated a Black man, Bruce A. Harris, Esq., and a Korean immigrant, Phillip Kwon, Esq., to the Court.  Diversity accomplished. 

Here is the twist:  Both Harris and Kwon are under suspicion of being – conservative Republicans (Chris Christie is a genius). 

New Jersey liberals are in a state of zugzwang.  So much energy of theirs is being absorbed into their attempt to make no political noise, as opposed to choosing between supporting a conservative or opposing a minority, that some fear a black hole may develop in the fabric of space-time and swallow New Jersey.

The Senate Democrats let New Jersey’s leftist pundits off the hook by already doing the dirty work on Kwon – rejecting his nomination by a 7-6 vote in committee.   Harris’ nomination is still pending.

Today I came across a column written by Evans C. Anyanwu  (pictured) on this subject and on Black Republicans in general, which I found so compelling, I contacted him and secured his permission to reprint it on Ricochet.

Please welcome him and by all means, let him know what you think of his piece in the comments.  Enjoy!

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If abolitionist Frederick Douglas appeared today in New Jersey and asked for political support from the African American community, he might be surprised at the fact that his political affiliation would far eclipse his accomplishments. Douglas was a Republican.

In April of 1865, shortly after the Civil War ended, and President Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, Douglas gave a speech at the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston. At issue was the voting rights of Black men and to this subject Douglas remarked:

“I have had but one idea for the last three years to present to the American people, and the phraseology in which I clothe it is the old abolition phraseology. I am for the immediate, unconditional, and universal enfranchisement of the black man, in every State in the Union. Without this, his liberty is a mockery; without this, you might as well almost retain the old name of slavery for his condition; for in fact, if he is not the slave of the individual master, he is the slave of society, and holds his liberty as a privilege, not as a right. He is at the mercy of the mob, and has no means of protecting himself.”

Drawing loud applauses from the previous line, Douglas went right into the heart of his speech. He deviated from the conventional thought of most abolitionists, which at the time was that the right to vote should come last. The immediate need for African Americans, most thought, was to end slavery, organize and let voting naturally come at the end of the abolitionist movement. Douglas remarked: “It may be objected, however, that this pressing of the Negro’s right to suffrage is premature. Let us have slavery abolished, it may be said, let us have labor organized, and then, in the natural course of events, the right of suffrage will be extended to the Negro. I do not agree with this.”

Five years after his speech, the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the States and Federal government from denying African Americans the right to vote. Thereafter, Thomas Mundy Peterson, a Republican, on March 31, 1870 cast the first vote ever by a Black man, under the just-enacted Amendment, during the Perth Amboy, New Jersey, School Board Elections.

The right to vote, not only for African Americans, but for women, was very important to Douglas. So it is with this background that I write about a very important vote to ensue. There is likely to be a committee vote this month to advance the nomination of Bruce A. Harris, Esq. to the Supreme Court of the same State where Thomas Mundy Peterson cast his historic vote.

Harris, to the best of my knowledge, is not endorsed by any African American organizations, including those that I am a member of; and I have made fruitless inquiries as to the dearth of support.

The deafening silence by African American organizations as to the nomination of Harris underscores a serious problem in my community. For too many African Americans, Black equals Democrat and liberal. Accordingly, if one is Republican and Black, he or she is not “our kind of Black.” This monolithic approach to politics robs, and continues to deprive, African Americans of greater political clout. If the community desires the advancement of African Americans, need it be only for the advancement of African American Democrats? Working only one side of the aisle results in the absence of African American interests at the table where decisions are made that affect African American interests.

Of course, Harris is a Black, Republican Yale Law School graduate. The last time a Black Republican Yale Law School graduate was scheduled to appear before a legislative body for approval to advance to the position of Supreme Court Justice, it was Clarence Thomas; and the backlash from that moment in time—for African Americans— fails to fade from memory.

For better or for worse, Harris is not Clarence Thomas. He is an attorney, and for eight years served on the council of the borough of Chatham. Last fall he was elected as the borough’s Mayor. As any councilman or mayor will attest to, their job entails real world problem solving. He thus has the background, that of an elected official, that many credit for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s ability to apply the letter of the law in a pragmatic fashion.

Harris has no record of involvement in matters likely to be detrimental to Blacks, Whites Republicans or Democrats. All Harris has that appears to make African Americans uneasy, is the scarlet letter “R”, Republican.

I am in no way saying that Harris is akin to Frederick Douglas; or even Clarence Thomas. I just ask that my community remember to judge one by the contents of his character and not by the contents of his voter registration form. Only when we do this do we honor Douglas, Peterson and the power of the vote.

Snapped by Russia's Electro-L weather satellite, a single frame captured the entire globe. Most photographs come from images stitches together but this shows us all. Look at the massiveness of Africa. Reminds me how Mercator maps have distorted our perceptions of the world we live on.

How beautiful is this photograph? And do you believe we should reinvest in space exploration?

Now, we all all know “austerity” from deep spending cuts (not the tax hikes, of course) is killing Europe’s economy and would do the same here in America, right?

Well, here’s a story about austerity that critics such as President Obama, Paul Krugman, and Ezra Klein never seem to mention: From 1944 to 1948, Uncle Sam cut spending by a whopping 75% as World War II came to end. Spending as a share of GDP plunged to 9% in 1948 from 44% in 1944.

Superstar economist and devout Keynesian Paul Samuelson—later to become the first American to win the Nobel Prize in economics—predicted such shock austerity would cause “the greatest period of unemployment and industrial dislocation which any economy has ever faced.” That dire, disastrous prediction was widely held by his fellow Keynesians, with one even predicting an “epidemic of violence.”

Except the doomsayers were wrong, even though Washington obviously ignored Samuelson’s call for gradual spending reductions. Despite cuts which dwarfed those seen in the EU today—not to mention those Republicans are calling for here at home—the U.S. economy thrived. There was no mass unemployment despite rapid demobilization of the armed forces. As George Mason University economist David Henderson explains is his 2010 paper, “The U.S. Postwar Miracle” (which this entire post draws upon):

As demobilization proceeded rapidly, employers in the private sector, full of the optimism … scooped up millions of the soldiers, sailors, and others who had been displaced from the armed forces and from military industries. … The number of unemployed people did increase, rising from 0.8 million to 2.3 million, but with a civilian labor force of 60.1 million, the 2.3 million unemployed people implied an unemployment rate of only 3.8 percent. As President Truman said, “This is probably close to the minimum unavoidable in a free economy of great mobility such as ours.

Of course, liberals are quick to point out the U.S. economy suffered its worst one-year downturn in history in 1946, a drop of 12%. To many Americans, it surely must have seemed like Samuelson was right, that the Great Depression had returned. But no one thought that back then, especially with jobs plentiful unlike during the 1930s. The drop in output was a statistical quirk caused by the removal of price controls. As Henderson explains:

For example, imagine that the free-market price of a pound of filet mignon during the war would have been $1.40 a pound. But imagine further that the government had set the price at $1.00 a pound. Then, when the price control was removed, the price would have shot to $1.40 a pound. Inflation statistics would have recorded some amount of inflation due to this large price increase. But those statistics would have overstated the real price increase because getting beef at $1.40 a pound is better for many of the people who couldn’t, because of the shortage, get it at $1.00 a pound.

Second, those sky-high output figures during the war measured government spending on goods and services, lots of it military hardware, at their cost. But what was all that stuff really worth, in purely economic terms, vs. post-war consumer purchases of homes and cars and nylon stockings? While total output fell by 12% in 1946, private-sector GDP rose by nearly 30%.

Or look at it this this way: Real U.S. output in 1947 was 17% higher than in 1941 despite the decline in government spending. Why was the economy prospering in way it never did during the Great Depression? Taxes were cut a little, and government interference—including price and production controls and rationing—was reduced a lot. But perhaps just as important, Truman dumped many of FDR’s most radical New Dealers. That change boosted business confidence, and companies started to invest again in America.

The typical Keynesian response mostly centers around dismissing the immediate post-war boom as a one-off event complicated by many unique factors. But it happened again, as Henderson notes! After the Cold War ended, overall federal spending fell to 18% of GDP in 2000 from 22% in 1991. But again the economy boomed. Real U.S. GDP grew by 40% with an average annual growth rate of 3.8%. Henderson speculates that perhaps the decline in defense spending freed up knowledge workers to help make technological miracles happen in the private economy.

The lesson here: Spending cuts might well produce prosperity instead of austerity, especially if accompanied by less government interference in the economy and less fear in the private sector of anti-market government policies.

On Modern Family this week, the crew headed to Anaheim to spend a day at the "happiest place on earth"--Disneyland. In between the usual hilarious scenes and witty one-liners, the show focused on family patriarch Jay, who told the camera about an earlier visit to Disneyland that nearly tore his family apart:

Jay explains to the camera with a glass of scotch on his lap that when Mitchell and Claire were kids, he got into a terrible fight with [then-wife] Dede . . . and ended up taking the kids to Disneyland alone. There he had a string of Disney-related epiphanies: His marriage was beginning to resemble the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and he wanted to get off.

But then, he had an epiphany, as he explains:

So my plan was drive Claire and Mitchell home, put them to bed, pour myself a nice tumbler of scotch, and tell Dede [his ex-wife] it was over. Well on the way out we made one last stop.

The stop was in a theater at the park featuring a robot Abraham Lincoln discussing his presidential duty to keep the union together. Quoting from Lincoln's Lyceum Address and his Cooper Union Speech, the robot solemnly declares, "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. . .  And in that faith, let us to the end dare to do our duty as we understand."

The experience had a profound affect on Jay:

I don't know what happened. Maybe it's what robot Lincoln said about a man's duty or keeping the union together. Maybe I just chickened out. But I realized that staying with my kids was more important than leaving my wife. Now, that's not the right decision for everyone. But it was the right decision for me.

If you watch the show, then you know that Jay is a manly man. The epitome of masculinity, in fact. And a good, manly man, he knows, must do his duty: "So I stuck it out until they were grown," he continues--over Gloria's question, yelled from the other room, of whether he wants to join her in the jacuzzi--"and the universe rewarded me." He smiles.

Scenes like these are why I love the show. This segment reconciles an anti-family trend in contemporary America to perennial values, like duty, that today seem outdated. Divorce is a jarring and inescapable part of twenty-first-century American society--it happens too often, no doubt. And we can bemoan that fact all we like, but that probably won't change the reality--not anytime soon, at least--that half of all marriages end in a split. So if you must divorce your spouse, then you should do it after your kids are out of the house, so that the breakup of your marriage won't affect them as permanently or damagingly as it would if they were still children who need mom and dad. Call it Modern Family's modern take on divorce.

One of the great virtues of Ricochet is that, with some frequency, contributors actually learn something from reading the comments made by members on what they have written. Yesterday, for example, when I posted a piece entitled A Movie Script for Rob Long, suggesting the he take Robert Service’s poem “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and make a full-length movie feature script of it, I remarked that, to the best of my knowledge, this had never been done. Almost immediately, a member drew my attention to a silent film made in 1915 and to another film of a similar sort made in 1924. Here is the plot summary for the latter:

A dancer known as Lou Lorraine feels her life is going nowhere. She is married to Jim, who is working as a pianist at the same cabaret in a small village Lou is working at. One day, a man nicknamed "Dangerous Dan" McGrew promises to make a big star on Broadway out of her, after which she immediately leaves with him. She swears on staying faithful to her husband, promising to earn money to have Jim and her son sent to New York. Jim, however, does not trust Dan and follows them to New York, where everything goes out of hand.

Others chimed in to let me know that Service’s story was set in the Yukon in Canada and not in Alaska as I presumed (I was given The Best of Robert Service  by a friend on a visit I made to Alaska and took it for granted that Service had lived there).

Sometimes  also, after posting a piece, I learn something from another source. The last couple of years my wife and I have taken our family to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario (ca. four hours from Hillsdale). And last night my eight-year-old daughter (a fearsome creature who was recently awarded a black belt in Tae Kwan Do) stumbled into my office with the program for the 60th season at Stratford, and lo and behold the Tom Patterson Theatre there will be putting on a musical entitled Wanderlust inspired by the life and poems of Robert Service. Based on a book by Morris Panych with music by Marek Norman (both of whom are involved in directing the production), it tells the story of a bank clerk and aspiring poet named Robert Service who, “as he moils away at his ledgers, . .  dreams of romance and escape to a new life of adventure in the gold rush of the Great North.” Alas, we are told, “the object of his affection, his pretty co-worker Louise, is already engaged – and her fiancé has the makings of a dangerous man.”

This could be fun, but, like the plot of the 1924 film, it reads like a parody of the original. I still think that someone should produce a talkie and tell the story straight. And who better than Ricochet’s Rob Long?

That would be Kevin "Seamus" Hasson, who nearly two decades ago left a promising future at a well placed Washington, DC law firm to found the Becket Fund -- a sort of ACLU for religious liberty. Last night several hundred of his admirers came together at the Waldorf (yours truly sat with Ricochet's Mollie Hemingway) to cheer Seamus as he was honored with the Canterbury Medal. It was a wonderful evening, which included appearances by Eric Metaxas, author of a prize-winning biography of Bonhoeffer, and Larry Kudlow of CNBC. 

I've known Seamus since we were at Notre Dame together, when he was a year or so ahead of me and pursuing a degree in theology. The man has been suffering from Parkinson's for a few years, but it didn't stop him from delivering a bang-up speech on the virtue of prudence, which he distinguished from caution. Prudence to Seamus is knowing when to take a calculated risk, which his merry band of lawyers have done time and again. Thanks to them, we've had some huge Supreme Court victories, including the recent 9-0 decision in Hosannah Tabor. Seamus has been succeeded at Becket by Bill Mumma, an outstanding individual whose beautiful family was also there last night.

Mollie can fill you in on more about Becket and what it means; I urge anyone interested in religious liberty to check out the Becket Fund website. What I was reminded of last night is that, when you follow the trail back to the beginning, it turns out that almost all our victories for freedom start with a man with the guts and vision to claim it. 

So another toast to Seamus Hasson, his lovely wife and family, and all those happy warriors at the Becket Fund. 

The Wall Street Journal has a story about Democratic dirty tricks against donors to the Romney campaign. It helps explain how citizens are targeted once the President puts them on his public enemies list.

Three weeks ago, Obama's campaign web site publicly named and lambasted eight private citizens for backing Mitt Romney. It accused them of being wealthy and having less-than-reputable records.

One of the men was Frank VanderSloot, the CEO of Melaleuca, Inc. He was accused of being "litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement."

Shortly after that post went live, a Democratic operative named Michael Wolf began asking a local courthouse in Idaho for all documents related to VanderSloot's personal and professional dealings there. Wolf, the Journal reports, was until recently a clerk on the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Now he works for Glenn Simpson's Fusion GPS, a company that does opposition research.

The Journal asked Mr. Wolf about why he was digging into VanderSloot and what his relationship with Fusion was. He said he didn't want to talk about it.

When the Journal tried to find out who was paying this company to dig through VanderSloot's records, they wouldn't say. VanderSloot was first targeted earlier this year:

Liberal bloggers and media have since dug into his past, dredging up long-ago Idaho controversies that touched on gay issues. His detractors have spiraled these into accusations that Mr. VanderSloot is a "gay bashing thug." He's become a national political focus of attention, aided by the likes of partisan Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald and MSNBC host Rachel Maddow. Bloggers have harassed his children, visiting their social media accounts and asking for interviews and information.

Mr. VanderSloot has said his attackers have misconstrued facts and made false allegations. In February he wrote a long reply, publicly stating that he has "many gay friends whom I love and respect" who should "have the same freedoms and rights as any other individual." The Obama campaign's response, in April, was to single out Mr. VanderSloot and repeat the slurs.

Political donations don't come with a right to privacy, and Mr. VanderSloot might have expected a spotlight. Then again, President Obama, in the wake of the Gabby Giffords shooting, gave a national address calling for "civility" in politics. Yet rather than condemn those demeaning his opponent's donors, Mr. Obama—the nation's most powerful man—instead publicly named individuals, egging on the attacks. What has followed is the slimy trolling into a citizen's private life.

VanderSloot says that when Obama singled him out on the enemies list, he knew it would mean more pressure. But he says the false accusations and public beatings are no deterrent. He says he may even make another donation.

Nevertheless, this enemies list and the accompanying bullying aren't appropriate. I'd feel much better about this man having to endure what he's going through if it were just coming from well-funded advocates of changing the definition of marriage. Having the president participate in this is wrong.

For lots of reasons I oppose unions.  One is that they ruin industries and cause businesses to provide worse service.

But what if the business provides a service that is morally repugnant?  Such is the case, I believe, in Portland, Oregon, where the SEIU wants to unionize a Planned Parenthood office.   The SEIU has made plans to  picket the office.  Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber, in response, canceled his plans to attend the office's annual fundraising dinner.  As the Daily Caller reported

“The governor will not cross the picket line and has canceled his appearance,” Kitzhaber spokesman Tim Raphael told Willamette Weekly.

The pressure caused PPCW to cancel the entire $250-per-plate event on Wednesday.

“It is with great disappointment that I write to let you know that we have decided to cancel our upcoming Spring Gala next Saturday, May 12,” David Greenberg, president and CEO of PPCW wrote in an email to supporters, obtained by Willamette Weekly.

“The decision by SEIU to picket our event has put many of our supporters into the untenable position of having to choose between two organizations, and two progressive causes, both of which they support,” Greenberg wrote, explaining that the organization wishes to respect their supporters’ allegiances to both groups.

I'm with the SEIU on this one.  I'll enjoy watching this squabble among progressives.

I'm a day late in getting to it, but yesterday the New York Times published one of those articles that reminds me why I still subscribe to the grey lady.  Headlined "Among New York's Soviet Immigrants, Affinity for GOP," the article reported on Russian enclaves such as Brighton Beach.  Excerpts:

To many Russian and Ukrainian immigrants, the cornucopia in the shops along Brighton Beach Avenue — pyramids of oranges, heaps of Kirby cucumbers, bushels of tomatoes with their vines still attached and a variety of fish, sausages and pastries — seems like an exuberant rebuke of the meager produce that was available to them when they lived in the Soviet Union.

This contrast helps explain a striking political anomaly: immigrants from the former Soviet Union are far more apt to vote for Republicans than are most New Yorkers, who often drink in Democratic Party allegiance with their mothers’ milk and are four times as likely to register as Democrats than as Republicans....

One reason these voters tend to support Republicans is that they see them as more ardent warriors against the kind of big-government, business-stifling programs that soured their lives in the Soviet Union....

Tatiana Varzar came to the United States in 1979, at age 21, from the Ukrainian seaport of Odessa. She worked as a manicurist and then opened a small restaurant on the boardwalk that grew into Tatiana Restaurant, a spacious magnet for foodies who like a whiff of salt air and a sea view with their pirogen. Today it is a destination for high-powered Russians, like some of the executives who own the Brooklyn Nets.

“I am what I am because of capitalism,” Ms. Varzar said, “and Republicans are more capitalistic.”

A simple, honest job of reporting--and the result is a story that could hardly be more profound. 

But will the New York Times write an editorial suggesting that these immigrants may be onto something?  Will it occur to anyone in the newsroom that if Russian immigrants see parallels between the old Soviet apparat and the leadership of the Democratic Party, then those parallels might truly exist?  That outrageous posters such as the one to the right might not be all that outrageous after all?

"To see what is in front of one's nose," as George Orwell remarked, "needs a constant struggle."

Americans have been known to tolerate political family legacies. We have the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Clintons, the Romneys, the Daleys, and so on.

But one thing that Americans do not have the stomach for is blatant, bald-faced nepotism.  Of course it goes on, but where it does go on, the people involved in making the arrangements would prefer to keep the spotlight off their dealings.  Makes for bad PR and easy fodder for political rivals.  That's why, for instance, Bill Clinton never dared to make Hillary Secretary of HHS.

But in France?  President-elect Francois Hollande is on course to make his ex...er...domestic partner and mother of his four children, Segolene Royal, the most powerful woman in the country.

And this after Royal publicly trashed Hollande last year as being entirely unqualified to be President.

What strange bedfellows ex-bedfellows make.

I loved doing the Ricochet podcast this morning—the highlight of my week. 

That Firebird entrance—you'll know what I'm talking about if you listen to the podcast—is a killer.  In the video below, the horn entrance starts at 26:32.  Clearly, some sort of revenge against horn players. Stravinsky must have lost a girlfriend to one.  

In general, playing principal horn in an orchestra is an odd mix of boredom and terror. You sit there for 20 minutes, getting all cold and stiff. Then you have a scary entrance like that. Even worse than Firebird, listen to the opening of Bruckner 4. Total nightmare.

It’s good to start out playing horn for a living for 12 years and then do something else. For the rest of my life, I’ll always note that whatever I’m doing is easier because I’m not holding a French horn.

If you want more laughs, my team posted this set of old music photos. Ah, the ravages of time.

Why isn't that the headline from the president's big interview with Robin Roberts?  He repeatedly said that the marriage issue must be worked out at the state level.  When pressed by Roberts on this he said: "I think it is a mistake to -- try to make what has traditionally been a state issue into a national issue. " 

That means -- at least in theory -- Obama wants SCOTUS to overturn the Vaughn Walker/9th Circuit decisions declaring a federal constitutional right to gay marriage. 

And of course, he must feel the same way about abortion, right?  The Court should overturn Roe and return  "what has traditionally been a state issue" to the states.  I'll just wait for him to come out and say it.

Do atheists and agnostics have a stake in religious liberty? At first glance, it is hard to see why. But I think otherwise, and I addressed this question (among others) in a public lecture entitled “Obamacare’s Assault on Religious Liberty,” now available on YouTube, that I delivered a month ago today at the Allan P. Kirby Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship established not long ago by Hillsdale College in Washington, DC:

Here I propose to return to one of my lecture’s themes – the connection between religious freedom, limited government, and political liberty. To begin to come to grips with what I have in mind, you need only consult and ruminate on the First Amendment to the Constitution, which reads “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

I would submit that James Madison knew what he was doing when he linked in this document the three participial phrases that define its scope. I would submit that, while barring religious establishments and protecting the free exercise of religion are theoretically distinct, they tend in practice to be unsustainable where both are not in place. I would suggest that political liberty tends to be meaningless where freedom of speech and of the press and the right peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances is not guaranteed. And I would argue that only where there is disestablishment and a free exercise of religion can one hope in the long run to have these political rights safeguarded. In other words, it is not an accident that

John Locke, the Englishman who penned the Letter Concerning Toleration, was the man who, in his guise as a civil servant under William III, was responsible for England’s quiet abandonment of the licensing of the press. In modern times, intellectual freedom, political freedom, and religious liberty have always been inseparable.

There is another, perhaps a better, way to make the same point. Limited government is a modern phenomenon. It was crafted in the late-seventeenth century to solve an otherwise apparently insuperable problem: the catastrophic political consequences of the fact – as visible in late antiquity (especially in the Christian East) as it would be in the Christian West during and after the Reformation – that the Christian faith tends to give rise to doctrinal disputes and sectarian divisions. Only if these can somehow be quarantined, John Locke and others thought, only if doctrinal disputes can be kept out of the political arena, only if political authority can be made neutral with regard to sectarian divisions, can there be domestic tranquility within Christendom.

To this end, Locke proposed that government be reconceived, that it be re-founded on the basis of an imaginary social contract, that it be limited to the protection of the rights accorded human beings by nature, to the rights that no one in his right mind would even think of alienating – first and foremost, the right to life, liberty, and property – which is the formulation that you will find echoed in the declarations of rights that George Mason wrote for the Virginia Constitution and that John Adams penned for the Massachusetts Constitution, which is the formulation that Thomas Jefferson rephrased when he spoke of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in 1776 in the American Declaration of Independence.

It is not fortuitous that this same Thomas Jefferson asserted the existence of religious liberty as a natural right in his Virginia Statute of Religious Liberty. Nor should it seem odd that James Madison defended it in precisely those terms in his Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments. When he substituted pursuit of happiness for John Locke’s property, Jefferson did not mean to deny that we have a natural right to the fruits of our own labor. Nor did he mean to make property rights dependent on positive law (as some suppose). In the Revisal of the Laws of the State of Virginia that he penned in 1779, he restates John Locke’s trilogy – life, liberty, and property – verbatim. When he substituted pursuit of happiness for property Jefferson had in mind something more extensive than property – something for which the acquisition of property might be a means, something that included religious faith. For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, as Jefferson well knew, the free exercise of religion is part and parcel of the pursuit of happiness. It is how happiness is most effectually to be pursued.

I belabor this point for a reason. I belabor it because I believe that, when Barack Obama stated in 2008 that he wanted to “fundamentally change” the United States and when he called his administration The New Foundation, he meant precisely what he said. He meant to reverse what Locke and the American Founders had achieved. He intended to establish in this country a political regime unlimited in its scope and power. That is the meaning of the Hosanna-Tabor Case pursued by Attorney General Erich Holder, and it is the meaning of the individual mandate. It has rightly been said that Obamacare changes the relationship between the citizen and the government radically. The HHS Mandate has made that fact manifest, and I have made it clear in earlier posts, linked below, that I hope that its issuance serves as a warning to the American Catholic Church.

I say this because that Church has contributed mightily to placing in the hands of Barack Obama the power he is now wielding against the Catholic Church in the United States. For decades now the American Church has been allied with the Left in domestic affairs – pressing with vigor for ever-more extensive and ever-more expensive social programs. For decades the American Church has been pushing for one form or another of universal healthcare, demanding as its first priority that the federal government enact a health care policy that “ensures access to quality, affordable, life giving health care for all.” In the process, the American bishops asserted on 27 January 2010 that “health care is a basic human right” and claimed that “there are nearly 50 million Americans who do not have access to health care.”

Leave aside the fact that the numbers the bishops provided on this occasion were grotesquely inflated. Their propensity to descend into demagogy is by no means the worst of it. The real problem lies with their theoretical claim concerning the extent of “basic human rights” conceived of as legitimate claims on the political community and with the larger implications of such claims.

I would submit that one cannot make good on such claims without concentrating tyrannical power in the hands of the government. I would submit that the social teaching of the Catholic Church, as it has been applied in the United States by the American Catholic Bishops, is inconsistent with the principles of limited government and that in rejecting the principles of limited government the American Catholic Church has rejected the foundations of religious liberty. The bishops have been hoist with their own petard. They contributed mightily to fashioning the weapon now being wielded against them.

Let me be more precise. Consider the Declaration of Independence and the inalienable natural rights mentioned therein. Consider the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom and its defense of religious liberty as a natural right. The rights specified in these two documents – both drafted by the same man – have this in common: They are negative rights. In each case, it is the task of government to defend us against those who would interfere with our exercise of those rights – who would deprive us of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as we conceive of that happiness (which is where both the acquisition and preservation of property and religious liberty come into it). We are to be constrained by this government only to the extent that we deprive our fellow citizens of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and it is our duty to cooperate with this government in protecting those rights. That is what constitutes justice under a limited government.

There is another conception of rights. It asserts that it is the responsibility of government to guarantee to all Americans a set of positive rights – rights that it will exercise on their behalf. On 11 January 1944, in his State of the Union message, Franklin Delano Roosevelt delineated what he called an “economic bill of rights.” Here is what he said:

We cannot be content, no matter how high [our] general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness. . . .

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

Here is the problem. Accepting this “economic bill of rights” requires a massive shift of responsibility from the individual, the family, and the local community to the central government.  No government can “assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.” To do so it would have to systematically discriminate against those with natural talents. To do so, it would have to provide compensation to those whose parents have been irresponsible in their rearing. Any government that tries to assure for its citizens equality in the pursuit of happiness will quickly become unlimited in scope and power. In rewriting the Declaration of Independence -- merely by adding a single word -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt turned it upside down and inside out.

Under the old dispensation, it was the responsibility of the individual citizens to provide for themselves – to find jobs; to negotiate adequate salaries; to find markets for what they produce, to locate niches where their work will be rewarded; to find decent housing and pay for it; to arrange for medical care; to lay money aside for old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; and to seek an education suited to their abilities and their needs – and this they did with the help of their families, their friends, and their local communities.

Under the new dispensation, this was to be the job of the federal government – and to fulfill this responsibility that government was to take from those inclined to provide for themselves in order to provide for those not so inclined. It is no accident that, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt spoke favorably of “certain inalienable political rights,” he left property off the list. Nowhere does he assert that a man has a right to the fruits of his own labors. He wants to confer on others a right to the fruits of our labor.

Herein lies an insuperable problem. In the absence of secure property rights, none of the other natural rights mentioned in the Virginia and Massachusetts Declarations of Rights, in the Declaration of Independence, and in the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom and none of our "inalienable political rights" can be secure – for property is power. It is by means of the fruits of our labor that we exercise our right to life and liberty. It is by this means that we provide for our livelihood and secure our freedom from domination. It is, moreover, by means of the property we have earned that we are able to pursue happiness insofar as it can be pursued in this world. A government that provides jobs; specifies salaries; guarantees markets; provides niches wherein one can work; guarantees housing; arranges for medical care; provides for our old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; and pays for our education cannot but be a government in control of every aspect of our lives. Such a government will be sorely tempted to decide how long we shall live and when we shall die. Such a government will be sorely tempted to commandeer our lives and subject us to its regimen. Such a government will be sorely tempted to define for us how we are to pursue happiness – and woe be it unto any secular organization, synagogue, temple, or church that stands in its way!

When the bishops of the American Catholic Church embraced FDR’s “economic bill of rights,” as they did long ago, when they demanded that the government “ensure access to quality, affordable, life giving health care for all,” they put the Church’s welfare, its liberties, and ours in the hands of men who will be and are sorely tempted to do it and us harm.

In 1936, at the Democratic National Convention, as I have often pointed out, Franklin Delano Roosevelt charged that American liberty was in danger – that “a small group” of “economic royalists” was intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives.” What he said was a demagogic lie. No such concentration had taken place, and none was in prospect.

But today something of the sort is really true. As the American Catholic bishops are in the process of learning the hard way, “a small group” of technocratic royalists is now not only intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives.” Thanks in part to the concentration of power fostered by those same bishops, this small group of technocratic royalists has largely achieved this end.

If you find this post of interest, you may also wish to consult its predecessors: American Catholicism’s Pact With the Devil, American Catholicism: A Call to Arms,  More Than a Touch of Malice, and The Church Flatulent.

The largest retailer of gold jewelry in the United States is Walmart. Yes, you read that correctly. Walmart undertook a corporate responsibility initiative in 2008 that was met with skepticism. They persevered.

 Love, Earth® was born from a desire to balance consumer demand with environmental concerns and ethical sourcing. The typical 18 karat wedding ring creates approximately 20 tons of waste. In the United States, the EPA and state agencies regulate emissions. Safety of the workers is a preeminent concern, and most workers are unionized unlike their counterparts in places like Congo, where mining drives the economy.

Armed with research and a desire to provide consumers with ethically sourced products, Walmart remains the leader in offering conflict-free jewelry to US consumers. The US makes up only about ten percent of the global market but, as usual, it is an American company looking to balance the scale between what is ethical and optimizing profits.

Most importantly, Walmart did it without regulators breathing down their back. Unfortunately, other companies and manufacturers are not willing to do the right thing without regulations. The issue is traceability. Not only gold in jewelry but also tin, tantalum, and tungsten. Cobalt and copper also figure prominently. These minerals are in every electronic device. They hold the charge, light the screen, and make our cell phones vibrate.

Environmental activists push for green energy and electric or hybrid vehicles. The deforestation of the rainforest in Congo is devastating. The unregulated mines there have no environmental controls. The by-products are destroying the ground water. The environmental lobby in the US can tout higher standards all they want but until they support traceability for their Blood Hybrids, their commitment is based on domestic policies designed to help only Democrats and not really about improving the environment or getting Americans off foreign sources of energy.

The electronics and manufacturing industry has powerful interests as well. They have powerful Republican ties. The US Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, led by CEO Jay Timmons, a former Chief of Staff to Virginia's George Allen, are locked in a mutually beneficial foot-dragging scheme.

Though the 1502 Provision contained in the Dodd-Frank bill, passed in 2010, was authored by Republican then-Senator Sam Brownback, it is a casualty of time. Nearly two years hence, the bill's direction to the Securities and Exchange Commission languishes. The spectre of lawsuits and lack of will continues to prohibit progress.

The tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold mining in Congo is fueled in large part by violence. Some attribute militia violence as a root cause of the troubles in Congo. Others see it as the rampant corruption, instability, and a virtually nonexistent justice system.

What we do know is all of this is unacceptable. According to a study released by the American Journal of Public Health in May 2011, 1,152 women between the ages of 15-49 are brutually raped every day. Auto-cannibalism, child slavery and child soldiers are common.

Before the International Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee today, a hearing featured testimony from across the spectrum. Those who wish for responsible trade practices, traceability and increased manufacturing that reflects American values. Others blame the 1502 provision for further impoverishing the very people it was set to protect.

Ultimately, American ingenuity will win out. I listened to the hearing, wishing someone from Walmart had been asked to testify. Or that Tiffany & Company, the famed jeweler which also carries conflict-free jewelry, had testified. Success stories are an important component.

Yes, American manufacturers will have to invest in compliance. They have to reinvest in their businesses anyway. Intel is looking to create a conflict-free chip, leading the way in the tech industry. All around us, there are companies doing the right thing because they can balance their priorities. The cost is about one penny, per product, to the consumer.

Exporting a culture of life is about more than faith. High profit margins are about more than just revenue. There is no guarantee change will be easy. However, American consumers should not be forced to purchase blood hybrids or conflict mineral laden electronics when we know there is a better, safer way.

Instead of looking away as China colonizes Africa and viciously exploits their resources, American companies and consumers should unite, set aside partisanship, and develop a comprehensive strategy that puts the 21st Century into the history books as one where we embodied our values, rebuilt our economy, and allied ourselves with Africans who shared our thirst for freedom and independence.

Regarding our Uncommon Knowledge interview on the new edition of his book, Intellectuals and Society, this email from Dr. Sowell:

Dear Peter,
In our discussion of intellectuals, I mentioned ego as a factor in their unwillingness to seriously engage opposing visions.  However, this is not all purely personal ego.It can also be ego on behalf of the intellectual class as a  whole.  As Schumpeter said of John Stuart Mill: "Mill, however modest on his own behalf, was not at all modest on behalf of his time. 'This enlightened age' had solved all problems.  And if you knew what its 'best thinkers' thought, you were in a position to answer all questions.  

I do not mean to repeat what I have previously said on Mill's attitude of speaking from the vantage ground of definitively established truth.  But I mean to add that this attitude, besides being ridiculous, made for sterility and--yes-- superficiality.  There is too little attention to groundwork.  There is too little thinking things through and much too much confidence that most of the necessary thinking has been done already."

There is a chapter on John Stuart Mill in my book titled "On Classical Economics," which gives a couple of examples of this tendency, as well as a critique of "On Liberty."  I refrained from expressing an opinion about his relationship with Harriet Taylor, while she was married to her first husband, before marrying Mill after his death.  Hayek seems to have considered their relationship during her first marriage not to have included sex.  However, I recall one of her letters to Mill, while he was writing "Principles of Political Economy," I believe, when he used to visit her on weekends in her country retreat.  In that letter she said, "I yearn unspeakably for Saturday."  Now, I like economics as well as the next guy, but I cannot say that I ever yearned unspeakably for it.

Tom

I'm not sure what it says about the readership of Politico that this story was more read yesterday than coverage of President Obama's pivot on gay marriage (perhaps that the publication's readership is jaded enough to realize that the latter wasn't really 'news' to anyone), but it's interesting nonetheless

Rep. Michele Bachmann is now officially a Swiss miss.

Bachmann (R-Minn.) recently became a citizen of Switzerland, making her eligible to run for office in the tiny European nation, according to a Swiss TV report Tuesday.

Arthur Honegger, a reporter for public broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen, told POLITICO the Swiss consulate in Chicago has confirmed that the former Republican presidential candidate became a citizen March 19.

 ...

Marcus Bachmann, the congresswoman’s husband since 1978, reportedly was eligible for Swiss citizenship due to his parents’ nationality — but only registered it with the Swiss government Feb. 15. Once the process was finalized on March 19, Michele automatically became a citizen as well, according to Honegger.

This would bother me regardless of the individual in question. It wrankles a little more when it's a sitting member of Congress and a recent presidential candidate.

I know that the vast majority of people who acquire dual citizenship -- including some of my friends -- do so for logistical or cultural reasons, none of which are particularly threatening to anyone. But still, the concept itself has never sat well with me. On a principled level, citizenship just seems like one of those concepts that is, by its very definition, exclusionary. I can't help but regard the practice as something tantamount to civic bigamy.

You tell me. Am I overreacting to a harmless practice? Or is there something worthy of resistance in this blurring of national allegiances?

Just a feel-good video for Thursday, showing a boy with cerebal palsy greeting his dad -- a Marine come home. While the father of six, Staff Sgt. Jeremy Cooney, was deployed in Afghanistan, his young son learned to walk. Watch and weep:

This BBC report about the man who has blown the whistle on some of the most egregious practices under China's pro-abortion policies is sobering. Information is limited but it appears that his brother and sister-in-law have been placed under house arrest, his nephew is in police detention, and various other relatives aren't permitted free movement in their village in Shandong province:

The activist, who hopes to go to the US with his wife and children to study, told the BBC he fears that retribution against him has begun.

He is currently in hospital in Beijing awaiting the completion of paperwork to allow him to leave for America, but he has limited information about what is happening in his home province of Shandong.

If he goes, it would be the end of an affair that at one point threatened to become a major diplomatic incident between China and the United States, says the BBC's Michael Bristow in Beijing.

There's something wrong about his departure being the end of an affair, no? What more can, could, the international human rights community do to help this man who has braved such an oppressive regime?