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Fascism from Me, but Not from Thee!
Last week, RealClearPolitics posted an editorial written by a renowned authority ensconced at a prominent Washington think tank. Without question, this organization should be proud to host a thinker whose credentials burst from his resume like tiny explosions of profundity, blinding innocent readers with his brilliance, and numbing them into unquestioned acceptance of whatever words spill from his mouth. Indeed, the breadth, insight, passion, and, above all, balance of this little gem merit citing a few dollops of its wisdom to whet our appetites for more. Consider these measured phrases:
His incoherent and contradictory utterances have one thing in common: They provoke and play on feelings of resentment and disdain, intermingled with bits of fear, hatred and anger…
Shortly before the Indiana primary, The Wall Street Journal’s “Notable and Quotable” published a brief
When a Republican has been in the presidency for eight years, as George W. Bush was, Democrats run against the Republicans. When a Democrat has been in office for eight years, as Barack Obama will soon have been, Republicans run against Republicans.
Does the US government want to help American business or not? Does the administration want to help middle-income wage earners or not? Does Team Obama want to grow the American economy at its historic 3.5 percent long-term trend or not? Apparently, President Obama’s answer to all three questions is “no.”
Every once in a while we end up with what should be called a perfect storm in politics, which is precisely what has happened today. As authorities in Brussels race to assess the damage and catch terrorists, back here in the US, it is politics mostly as usual on the road to the November election. Because our President was in Cuba, the stage was already set for vitriol on foreign matters, so there was just a slight shift in gears.
The headline from a new IHS Global report on US-Cuba relations sums things up pretty well: “Deeper US engagement with Cuba to increase trade and investment, especially in the tourism sector, but democratic political reform unlikely.” And from the
The single most important phrase that changed the politics of Supreme Court nominations was Senator Edward Kennedy’s famous and shameful denunciation of “Robert Bork’s America,” with its back alley abortions, segregated lunch counters, and rogue police. From that point on, Supreme Court nominees of either party, and even potential nominees, have risked being attacked in a similar manner. The nomination process of Clarence Thomas was, of course, quite ugly—and there were major tussles during the deliberations over John Roberts and Samuel Alito (who then Senator Obama wanted to filibuster). Now, the Republican opposition is coalescing against Judge Merrick Garland, the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, who at age 63 is Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court.

Were Justice Scalia to have died earlier, our case for having the next president select the his replacement would have been much more difficult; the longer the seat remains vacant, the more time the Left has to use its influence and muscle to pressure the Senate to do its bidding. But were he to have died later, our case would have been strengthened; the shorter the length of the vacancy, the more plausible our arguments in favor of waiting would appear to the general public.
The U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) did
Recently I wrote a post about