Yes, it’s that time again

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP—last time for this go-round.]

passhat

Time passes so quickly when we’re enjoying ourselves, doesn’t it?

But it’s been a while since I asked you to donate to a semi-worthy cause: this blog. And so I’m going to ask you again to use the “donate” button on the right sidebar beside the photo of the hat, and give whatever you see fit.

Every single donation— large or small—adds up, and helps me a great deal in continuing the blog. If each and every reader gave even a few dollars, it would be a glorious thing. But whether you decide to donate or not, please keep visiting and keep commenting. I appreciate all of you. Comments and readers are a very big part of what makes this blog work.

I thank you all in advance. I’ll probably repeat this notice every now and then for the next week, the equivalent of jiggling that cup/hat.

Flood the border. Crisis. Opportunity.

The New Neo Posted on by

Taking advantage of the crisis:

House Democrats and other immigration reformers are calling on President Obama to go big when it comes to administrative changes in deportation policy.

For months, liberal reform advocates on and off Capitol Hill have urged Obama to tap his executive powers to stop deporting certain qualified groups of undocumented immigrants while waiting to see if House Republicans would take up reform legislation this year.

But in the wake of Obama’s Monday Rose Garden speech vowing unilateral action, some reformers want the president to go far beyond a limited expansion of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, to essentially legalize the millions of undocumented immigrants who would be eligible for work permits under the bill passed by the Senate last summer.

Their solution—and Obama’s preferred one, whether he will go that far right away or not—is to relax the rules still further to accommodate all these illegal arrivals and more. It’s a version of “the hair of the dog that bit you,” and it won’t cure this hangover, it will just keep you drunk. In other words, it’s fairly certain that the effect would be to encourage more and more and more to come on in, the water’s fine.

A number of House Democrats are also urging Obama to aim high. While the lawmakers are emphasizing that legislation is the preferred solution to the nation’s broken immigration system, they’re also encouraging the president to use “every administrative tool at his disposal to address our immigration challenge,” in the words of Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the minority whip…

Those recommendations include not only a broad expansion of DACA to include older immigrants, but also efforts to allow illegal immigrants enrolled in DACA to enlist in the military; to bar local governments from enforcing immigration law; and to permit more undocumented relatives of U.S. military members and veterans to remain in the country while they seek green cards.

It’s interesting that historically, Congress has jealously guarded its own power from presidential overreach. Democrats are only too happy to cede that power in this case, because they believe that once Obama does this their ability to be elected can only increase as the electorate becomes more and more liberal because of the influx of immigrants. They are trying to change the demographics and therefore the politics of the country.

Obama keeps railing against Republicans for not passing “comprehensive” immigration reform. That’s code for “the reform I want them to pass.” He would like low information voters to believe that Republicans have done nothing. But bills beefing up border security have been passed by House committee and the Senate has insisted on linking any such bill with what is often called “amnesty,” although it’s actually more complex than that:

If the House bill passes, aides said, Senate Democrats will be willing to negotiate on border security so long as it is part of a package of bills that includes a “pathway to citizenship” or permanent legal status for the nation’s undocumented immigrants.

Obama wants to use the crisis for one of two things (or maybe both, come to think of it): (1) coercing Republicans into passing a “comprehensive” bill and giving him what he wants, on pain of being called obstructionist do-nothings (2) doing it himself and getting exactly what he wants.

In this case, though, I wonder if Obama will not draw a backlash from the American public. A lot of people seem up in arms about this latest influx, and not all of those who are angry are Republicans. Will the Democrats who are angry about it now buy Obama’s solution? Probably; they’ve bought most of the rest of his propaganda.

Ladies, think with your uteri!

The New Neo Posted on by

Ruth Marcus thinks the female SCOTUS justices do. And she thinks that’s a good thing:

How did the Supreme Court manage to agree unanimously that police must obtain a warrant before searching cellphones, yet split on whether employers must offer contraception as part of their health care plans?

My explanation, slightly crude but perhaps compelling: All the justices, presumably, have cellphones. Only three have uteruses, and you know which way they voted.

This is hardly an isolated thought. It was inherent in Sotomayor’s statements about the superior judgment of a “wise Latina“:

And [Sotomayor] often said that she hoped those experiences would help her reach better judicial conclusions than someone without such a varied background might reach.

The line was almost identical every time:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would, more often than not, reach a better conclusion.”

That sentence, or a similar one, has appeared in speeches Sotomayor delivered in 1994, 1999, 2002, 2004 and 2001. In that speech, she included the phrase “than a white male who hasn’t lived that life” at the end, which sparked cries of racism from some Republicans.

A similar idea about the superiority and importance of membership in a minority or other group officially designated as oppressed was strongly suggested in an execrable comment by Harry Reid (is there any other kind?) in connection with Hobby Lobby, about which I wrote:

More reaction from the left…My favorite (and I mean that in a sarcastic sense) is from none other than Harry Reid, our illustrious Majority Leader: “It’s time that five men on the Supreme Court stop deciding what happens to women.”

I’ve got a idea! Let’s pack the Court, and have an equal number of men and women on it, and then have the men decide cases that affect men and the women decide cases that affect women. What could go wrong?

I am almost sure that the left would applaud—except they’d probably add that although an all-woman judiciary for cases involving women made sense, cases involving men need the participation of women to make them fair.

And although this case doesn’t seem to be so closely related, nevertheless there is a connection. The young woman involved is, after all, only following the example of her elders, and if she goes them one better in how overt she makes it—well, that’s what young people do. They build on the work of those who have gone before them. If Peterson saw her task as student-body president as representing her own special interest groups to the detriment of others—well, why wouldn’t she see it that way at this point?:

The most expensive prep school in the country, the Lawrenceville School, spent much of its spring semester mired in racial tensions as its first black student-body president was forced to step down for “mocking” white male students on Instagram…

“I understand why I hurt people’s feelings, but I didn’t become president to make sure rich white guys had more representation on campus,” [Maya] Peterson told BuzzFeed, which reported the story on Monday. “Let’s be honest. They’re not the ones that feel uncomfortable here.” Peterson graduated from Lawrenceville, a private school near Princeton, N.J., in June…

…[T]he Lawrenceville School ”” where annual tuition is around $53,000 and the student body is 55 percent white, 21 percent Asian, and 16 percent black/Hispanic ”” would not comment directly…

Peterson…told BuzzFeed that the controversy over her leadership started long before the Instagram photo, with cries from some students suggesting that the election she’d won had been fixed. She also notes that some of her initiatives as president ”” to institute a “diversity representative” on the student council board, and to create gender-neutral bathrooms, for example ”” were not well-received. She caught flak later in the year, she explains, for raising her fist in a “black power” salute along with several other students for a yearbook photo. But Peterson, a lesbian, says it was always her aim to reach out to minorities who often felt overlooked on campus. “The younger kids told me they felt comfortable opening up to me in a way they didn’t with other people,” she tells Buzzfeed…

“I’m not saying what I did was right,” Peterson told BuzzFeed. “But it wasn’t racist. I was just calling those guys exactly what they are. And Lawrenceville is the type of place where those kids are idolized.”

Kudos to Lawrenceville for recognizing this as racism, whether Maya Peterson knows it is or not. And she may not know it, even now, because so many of her elders have modeled this sort of behavior and told her it’s not only acceptable, it’s desirable.

[NOTE: I must say I’d never even been aware of the existence of Lawrenceville before reading that article. But in an odd coincidence, I ran across the name of the school again today. I was looking at a biographical sketch of Thornton Wilder, and found that he was a young French teacher there when he wrote his classic The Bridge of San Luis Rey.]

Hostage-for-terrorist trades make no sense

The New Neo Posted on by

When the news of the killing of the three Israeli teenagers came out, I was very puzzled as to why their abductors would have killed them right away. It made no sense at all.

I had figured they would be used for negotiations to free more terrorists, and perhaps even tortured in some way to obtain extra leverage by making their plight especially horrific—not that it wasn’t already horrific enough. And if this report is right, the plan was indeed to hold them hostage and then negotiate with the aim of getting the Israeli government to release more terrorists.

One of the teenagers even managed to call the police, but tragically and negligently the dispatcher thought it was a prank call and did not notify authorities. I find that failure astounding and disturbing, although it might not have ended up mattering because the three were apparently murdered almost immediately afterward by the panicked kidnappers, who realized a call had been made and thought Israeli security had a bead on them and could find them. So even had the dispatcher been more on the ball, it would probably have been too late.

The only comfort is that perhaps this saved the boys even greater suffering. But that comfort is scant.

I continue to think what I’ve thought for as far back as I can remember, which is that governments should never exchange terrorists for hostages. To refuse to make such deals would mean a government would need to be extremely tough and allow its kidnapped citizens (even children or teenagers) to be murdered. But that hard choice appears to be the only way to discourage further kidnappings. As it is, a government such as Israel’s, which follows a policy of such exchanges, only sets itself up for a different sort of “cycle of violence” than the usual way the term is used—that is, its citizens become the victims of kidnapping after kidnapping by enemies with the aim of coercing the government to free more and more terrorists, who go on to commit more and more kidnappings, as well as other acts of terrorism. Thus, heartfelt compassion enables greater carnage and the empowerment of evil.

Did the Founders foresee this?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “J.J.” wrote a comment that has much in it with which I agree. But I question this:

The Founders never envisioned that the citizens would elect a man with no ethics. A man who would not follow the law. At one time the media was well enough balanced between left and right to get the word out to people. Now it’s not. They never envisioned a situation where the balance of powers among the arms of government would be so ignored…The Founders could not have envisioned an electorate that was so ignorant of the process of government and their important role in it.

I agree that the Founders could not have envisioned the exact details of what’s happening now. But I think the Founders knew that something of the general sort was a distinct and perhaps even likely possibility. The Founders were not naive, and they were students of both history and human nature. They tried to design a government that protected liberty as best it could, knowing it might not succeed and that there would always be highly-motivated forces working against it.

Note the following quote from Madison’s Federalist Paper #10. I found it when I was researching a piece I wrote years ago for the Weekly Standard, and it made a deep impression on me. Here’s the Madison quote [emphasis mine]:

”¦[M]easures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority”¦By a faction, I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community”¦

…Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society”¦It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm”¦

Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people”¦

That, of course, is why the Founders originally limited voting to property holders. I think you’ll agree that the Founders foresaw, and tried to prevent, the very sort of things we are seeing now. That they did not succeed is through no fault of theirs; it is the fault of the left and of those on the right who failed to understand that teaching children our history and the principles of our founding was of the utmost importance, and that failure to do so could be fatal to the republic.

Another person who fully realized the danger was Ronald Reagan. I’ve posted this clip before, but it’s always deeply meaningful and almost unbearably poignant:

The War on Women: Dick Morris may not be right about much, but clearly…

The New Neo Posted on by

…he was right about this. Remember the Republican debates in early 2012, and George Stephanopoulos’ seemingly out-of-the-blue and off-the-wall question?

Conservative commentator Dick Morris believes that the Democrat party is covertly trying to convince voters that Republicans want to “ban contraception.”

Seem a little far-fetched?

Remember when George Stephanopoulos, former senior political adviser to President Bill Clinton, moderated that ABC News Republican debate last month? Immediately following the debate, he was accused of asking “unfair” and biased questions and of running the debate in a manner that was anything but objective.

And while these charges are debatable, most everyone agrees that the moment where Stephanopoulos suddenly shifted the topic from job creation to hypothetical questions involving whether the states have a right to ban contraception was”¦odd (to say the least).

“Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?” Stephanopoulos asked the slightly bewildered-looking former Massachusetts governor…

Though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t:

antihobby

Democrats are elated at finding the perfect Republican War on Women campaign issue for 2014 and beyond. And it’s a twofer, because it also manages to be anti-religion at the same time. It shouldn’t work, because the details of the case argue against it if anyone is familiar with them. But Democrats are counting on the fact that few people will familiarize themselves with the actual ruling, and/or wouldn’t be able to reason their way through it if they did.

That’s not to say there isn’t a legal case against the ruling that could be argued without lies and hyperbole and rabble-rousing. That case would be about whether a closely-held corporation should be considered a person for the purposes of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is the statute involved here—one that, ironically enough, was introduced by Ted Kennedy and Chuck Schumer and passed unanimously by the House and almost unanimously by the Senate. Those were the days, my friend.

But what difference do facts and logic make, anyway? Demagoguery rules, and it is being swallowed by Democrats around the country and regurgitated on Twitter and other social media in order to stir up fear against Republicans in 2014. The country has sunk so low that it just might work; it worked in 2012 to help give us another term of Obama.

Why is it successful? Birth control is an issue that affects people in their immediate lives in an intimate way. If women become falsely convinced by political manipulators that the right has a plan to ultimately take their birth control away, that can come to dominate an entire election as other issues fade. The IRS, the release of five Taliban for Bergdahl, the VA, the degeneration of Iraq under Obama’s watch, even the economy—all of those things happen to other people and/or very far away and/or are vague in terms of what caused them or even what Obama’s offenses might have been. They recede in importance compared to a perceived threat that’s very close up and personal.

The left knows this, and uses that knowledge to get what it wants. This strategy of telling women the right is out to take away their access to birth control and their sexual freedom itself was hatched several years ago, and the tactics have probably been mapped out well in advance. The Hobby Lobby case looks like a defeat for the left, but don’t misunderstand them. They actually see it as a wonderful opportunity dropped in their laps, and they will be sure to not let this manufactured crisis go to waste.

[NOTE: Megan McArdle’s article on Hobby Lobby and the reaction to it is one of the best I’ve seen on the subject. One criticism I have, though, is that she, like many others who have written about the case, ignores the fact that Hobby Lobby is in fact helping to cover most forms of contraception, including birth control pills, and that it’s only certain methods considered possible abortifacients for which the company is refusing to pay.]

The left and Hobby Lobby: fanning the flames

The New Neo Posted on by

I was curious about the reaction of liberal blogs to the Hobby Lobby ruling, and clicked on HuffPo and immediately saw this, right at the top, filling the width of the entire page:

THE OPERATIVES [in HUGE blue font, with the following in large font, plus the photo]
5 Justices Go After Women, Workers… ‘Baldly Incoherent’ Rulings… Big Blow To Unions… HOBBY LOBBY HAMMER DROPS… Birth Control Cut Off ”“ But Not Vasectomies Or Viagra… 49-Page Ruling Mentioned Women Just 13 Times.

huffpo

The flames are being fanned: these evil men are waging war on women!

More reaction from the left here. My favorite (and I mean that in a sarcastic sense) is from none other than Harry Reid, our illustrious Majority Leader: “It’s time that five men on the Supreme Court stop deciding what happens to women.”

I’ve got a idea! Let’s pack the Court, and have an equal number of men and women on it, and then have the men decide cases that affect men and the women decide cases that affect women. What could go wrong?

Of course, Reid’s entire attack is also based on a lie about the ruling, since he would like people to believe that employees of companies such as Hobby Lobby won’t get their contraception paid for. First of all, as already pointed out, most contraceptives are actually provided. Secondly, Hobby Lobby and the rest can “tell the government that providing the coverage violates their religious beliefs. At that point, the groups’ insurers or a third-party administrator takes on the responsibility of paying for the birth control.” Nobody’s depriving anyone of anything, nor are they even stopping insurance coverage for contraception. The ruling merely protects the company itself from having to support certain types.

But it would require too much attention to detail to learn that—fortunately for the left. They prey on ignorance and actively foster it.

Obama announces he has to crown himself king because Congress won’t

The New Neo Posted on by

I wish I didn’t have more bad news to report, but I do*:

President Obama announced this afternoon that he will bypass Congress to enact “comprehensive immigration reform.” However, at no point did he discuss what his plan would entail.

Obama’s keyword is “comprehensive,” which means “the bill I want them to pass.”

According to William Jacobsen:

The most chilling portion of his announcement was when he suggested, “American cannot wait forever for them to act. That’s why today, I’m beginning a new effort to fix our immigration system”¦ on my own, without congress.“

That cold and chilly wind has been coming on us for a long, long time.

Jacobson adds that “We can only hope this is nothing more than his typical political posturing and that no actual action will come from his reckless disregard of our check and balance system.”

We can certainly hope, but let’s hope that we can do more than only hope—because I believe that Obama is testing the waters here and has every intention of acting. Doing this is not just important to him, right now it’s the most important thing in the world to him, and I mean that literally. It would establish his ability to do practically anything he wants, and if successful it would facilitate the permanent domination of the Democratic Party electorally. So, he will announce an executive action on this unless Congress shows some spine and stops him in some way. And then there would be a resultant constitutional crisis.

Interesting times we live in, aren’t they?

From Ace:

Obama is claiming that Congress’ choice not to pass a law constitutes an abandonment of constitutional power (rather than the exercise of it), and then that power flows precisely to the President.

Just how the Framers’ designed it, huh?

You have refused to grant me the power of Imperium. Therefore, you have irresponsibly abandoned your exercise of that power, and the power to declare myself emperor flows into my own hands.

Grant me power, or I will seize it. The choice is yours.**

Jonathan Turley is a pro-Democrat-but-somewhat-libertarian law professor who’s been calling Obama on his imperial presidency for quite some time. He has this to say about today’s announcement (note the condemnation of both Bush and Obama; but there is little doubt that he thinks the problem has escalated greatly under the Obama):

A growing crisis in our constitutional system threatens to fundamentally alter the balance of powers ”” and accountability ”” within our government. This crisis did not begin with Obama, but it has reached a constitutional tipping point during his presidency. Indeed, it is enough to bring the two of us ”” a liberal academic and a conservative U.S. senator ”” together in shared concern over the future of our 225-year-old constitutional system of self­governance.

We believe that people of good faith can likewise transcend politics and forge a bipartisan coalition to examine these changes. In our view, the gridlock in Washington is not simply the result of toxic divisions. The dysfunctional politics we are experiencing may in part be the result of a deeper corrosion ”” a dangerous instability that is growing within our Madisonian system…

First, we need to discuss the erosion of legislative authority within the evolving model of the federal government. There has been a dramatic shift of authority toward presidential powers and the emergence of what is essentially a fourth branch of government ”” a vast network of federal agencies with expanded legislative and judicial power. While the federal bureaucracy is a hallmark of the modern administrative state, it presents a fundamental change to a system of three coequal branches designed to check and balance each other. The growing authority invested in federal agencies comes from a diminished Congress, which seems to have a dramatically reduced ability to actively monitor, let alone influence, agency actions.

Second, much of the tit-for-tat politics that has alienated so many Americans is due to the fact that courts routinely refuse to review constitutional disputes because of an overly constricted view of the standing of lawmakers to sue and other procedural barriers. While there can be legitimate disagreement over how and when legislative standing should apply, current legal barriers rob the system of a key avenue for resolution of such conflicts. A modest expansion of standing would provide greater clarity to the line of constitutional separation without causing a flood of cases…

The framers believed that members of each branch of government would transcend individual political ambitions to vigorously defend the power of their institutions. Presidents have persistently expanded their authority with considerable success. Congress has been largely passive or, worse, complicit in the draining of legislative authority. Judges have adopted doctrines of avoidance that have removed the courts from important conflicts between the branches. Now is the time for members of Congress and the judiciary to affirm their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution” and to work to re-establish our delicate constitutional balance.

Good luck, Professor Turley. I hope you’re not crying in the wilderness here. Because the hour is late and getting later.

Oh, and this is what I predict Obama will actually announce, if he doesn’t get enough pushback from his own party (and maybe even if he does). He’ll announce an immigration approach that will appear to include what conservatives (and most Americans) would like to see: increased patrol of the borders. He’ll also say he will expedite deportations. So this will all lend credence to his plea that he’s only doing what Congress should have done and what the American people want.

But there’s a catch: the border element will mysteriously fall by the wayside, and the entire operation will end up only expediting the granting of asylum to most of the parents and children who have come here illegally, under the argument that they are fleeing in fear of their lives and also under our family reunification policy. He’ll try to keep the statistics on all of this hush-hush. But it will accomplish his goal, and he will extend programs like his executive action of June 2012 that started the whole Cloward-Piven illegal immigration ball rolling.

If he doesn’t do any of this, or if he actually puts teeth into border patrols and subsequently expedite deportations, I’ll be very surprised. Although even that wouldn’t make his unilateral action right in doing this, at least the short-term effects on immigration would be a plus. The proper way to do it, however—and the way I believe every other previous president, Democratic or Republican, would have gone about it—would be to finally work with Congress and to allow the border to actually be beefed up as a start, followed by other Congressional actions. As it is, though, there’s no way Obama can be trusted on this.

[*NOTE: On the subject of bad events coming on the heels of more bad events, see this post of mine from March of 2009, about two and a half months after Obama first took office:

…[F]or now my working hypothesis is that Obama is a man of the Left, that he is insufficiently devoted to the age-old American idea of liberty but is instead a committed statist, and that the mind-numbing pace of his change is deliberate and has been effective so far.

I used the word “numbing” in the above paragraph, and I mean it. I noticed in the same comments section of yesterday’s post that another reader pointed out that “I am seeing the effect already amongst friends who have just stopped listening to any news.”

Oddly enough, this is what I have noticed among my liberal friends, Obama-supporters all. I cannot tell you how many times I have asked them what they think about Obama so far and they answer that they haven’t really had time to follow it all, and it’s all so very confusing.

Now it’s true that most of my liberal friends are not exactly newshounds, nor do they read blogs, even blogs on the Left. But it seems as though they are turning away from politics even more than usual, especially considering that they should be joyfully lapping up the wonderful news, now that their man Obama is in. I believe that their turning away is both an attempt at protecting themselves from the anxiety of hearing about the financial crisis, and a reaction to a feeling of “something just isn’t right with Obama” in the pits of their stomachs.

I am convinced that Obama is counting on this reaction. He knows the Left is behind him (except for a few details such as his Afghanistan policy, or those who think he’s not far enough to the Left in terms of his financial interventions). He knows those on the Right will despise him and what he’s doing. He knows both of those groups will be paying attention to the details.

But he also knows that those more in the middle will not be noticing much, until the deeds are done. And he is counting on them to look away and hope for the best. The question is whether his pace is fast enough, and whether they will catch on””and whether they will then understand what is happening, or care. Or will the predictions of the Grand Inquisitor come to pass in this country, as they have in so many others?]

[**NOTE: This business of blaming Republicans for forcing his hand is an old, old trick of Obama’s. I first noticed it, and was alarmed by it, early in his 2008 campaign when he broke his promise on campaign finance funds and blamed it on the Republicans.]

Three kidnapped Israeli teenagers found murdered. What will the reaction be?

The New Neo Posted on by

The finding of the bodies of the three kidnapped Israeli teenagers is very sad but not unexpected news:

The Times reports that senior government officials in Israel said military searchers found the three bodies buried “in a field near Hebron,” a large West Bank city:

“They know it’s the three, they will know for sure after they do the autopsy.” The official said the three appeared to have been shot to death, likely “very close to the kidnap” time, and that the prime suspects had still not been caught…

New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren tweeted that Israeli forces are blocking roads into and out of Hebron.

From the start I had assumed the three were going to be killed, perhaps torturously, or kept alive and used to extract enormous concessions from the Israeli government. The Israeli government has a history of releasing terrorists, sometimes in large numbers, in order to save the lives of kidnapped hostages, which only encourages further kidnappings. In this case the hostage situation did not occur, and the boys are rumored to have been killed early on.

The Israeli government also seems to have known a fair amount about the kidnapping, apparently from a phone call one of the kidnapped teens managed to make.

The political context is as follows:

The disappearances set off an uproar in Israel and deeply aggravated the already strained relations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which had just taken steps to form a unity government backed by Hamas, the militant group that controls the Gaza Strip. Israeli officials, who have rejected that government, have identified two Palestinians from Hebron they say are affiliated with Hamas as prime suspects. Hamas did not take responsibility, but praised the abductions.

Let that sink in: Hamas praised the abductions. We give the Palestinian Authority aid, and a unity government causes Hamas to get that aid unless unless we cut the assistance off, which Congress had threatened to do even before the kidnapping if Hamas joined the government. There is a new resolution to that effect going through the legislative process in the House, which has a lot of support. However:

Lowey sources explained that the White House now controls the current year’s appropriation, which is transferred in tranches. There is little possibility that will be stopped, they say. It is the new 2014-2015 appropriation that is under review. Even if the funding cut is successful in the House, a similar measure must pass in the Senate.

Ah yes, what does President Obama think of it all? He sings a different tune, as you might expect. As I read the following I could only conclude that if the House passes the resolution Harry Reid will never bring it to a vote in the Senate. The chances are close to zero because his aim is to avoid embarrassing Democratic senators. They would either have to vote for it and defy Obama (unlikely most would do that) or block it and enrage most of the American public—that is, most of those who manage to hear about it [from June 3, 2014]:

The Obama administration sought Tuesday to bridge a rift with Israel over the willingness of the United States to recognize and fund a new Palestinian government affiliated with the militant group Hamas, arguing that the new government deserves a chance to succeed.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf [yes, Marie Harf] read a lengthy statement defending the U.S. position even before reporters could ask her about harsh criticism from Israeli officials.

She stressed that the announced lineup of ministers includes none who are members of the militant Palestinian group that has advocated Israel’s destruction. The new coalition reunites the moderate Fatah faction ”” which has held peace talks with Israel ”” with Hamas.

Why, they’re just pussycats, then.

Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations and Netanyahu adviser, said:

…any international move that legitimizes Hamas is a dangerous mistake.

“I don’t think that people in Washington understand the depth of Israel’s disappointment over the decision to support this government,” Gold said.

“Hamas isn’t just a terror organization. Hamas is not just fundamentally against peace and against Israel’s right to exist. Hamas is an organization that has adopted an agenda to annihilate Jews.”

I don’t think Dore Gold understands that those “people in Washington” (i.e. Obama and his administration) understand that only too well.

So does Hamas. They don’t seem too frightened about the possibility of an aid cuttoff, do they? Recall, also, that one of the murdered teenagers was a citizen of both Israel and the United States. Obama will probably mouth some “concern” about that and move on. Israel will almost certainly retaliate against Hamas in some way, although it’s hard to see what good that will do, especially now that under Obama the US has joined the nations of the world who wink at Palestinian terrorism.

More SCOTUS: public sector union dues

The New Neo Posted on by

In another ruling today, SCOTUS held 5-4 that public sector unions cannot compel dues from non-members who are not “full-fledged” public service workers.

More here:

Union leaders had feared that the justices might strike down those state laws [requiring public service workers who are not union members to pay dues anyway] as unconstitutional. The justices did not go that far. They issued a more narrow ruling that the home health care workers at issue in the case are not “full-fledged public employees” because they are hired and fired by individual patients and work in private homes, though they are paid in part by the state, via Medicaid.

Because they’re not truly state employees, the justices decided these workers did not have to pay union dues…

…[I]n writing for the majority, Justice Samuel Alito sharply criticized a 1977 precedent, known as Abood, that granted states the right to compel union dues. Alito called that ruling “questionable” and “anomalous,” all but inviting a further challenge in the future. He was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy.

Alito cited a “bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support.”

Seems pretty obvious to me. But it’s not the least bit obvious to the liberal justices. And if it were struck down it would toll the death knell for public service unions, and the unions know it.

Anyone who still doesn’t understand how important it is to elect a Republican president in 2016, please realize that rulings on cases of this sort would go very differently if one of the conservative justices on the Court (Scalia, who is 78, for example, or even swing vote Kennedy, who is 77) retires and a Democrat gets to choose his successor. In other words, a Democratic president in 2016 could easily turn the Supreme Court into a reliably and consistently liberal institution, marginalizing the remaining conservative justices entirely.

And saying it doesn’t matter who appoints justices because Roberts (appointed by Bush II) sometimes votes with the liberals, and Kennedy (appointed by Reagan) votes with liberals about half the time, is hardly the point, because (a) judges appointed by Democratic presidents will always vote with the liberals, as opposed to just sometimes; (b) three out of the five justices appointed by Republican presidents vote very consistently conservative; and (c) the oldest justice, Ginsburg (who is 81), is most likely the one to retire soon, and if she holds out till after Obama’s term his successor will be appointing her replacement, giving a Republican president the opportunity to make the Court quite consistently conservative.

In other words, the next president could determine the direction of the Court for the next decade or more. And that’s just the Supreme Court; the same is true for other federal courts, because a president gets to make such appointments during his/her term of office, too.

This is enormously important in helping shape the country’s direction in a wide variety of ways. Plus, although a more conservative Court cannot by itself stop a tyrant who is intent on grabbing more power from doing so, it can certainly do its bit to help or to hurt.

Remember back in Obama’s first term, when he acted on Honduras to support Zeleya’s power grab and block his removal? Most people were not paying much attention, but it was highly significant. Time to revisit what the controversy was actually about:

Mr. Zelaya, a frequent critic of the U.S., has been locked in a growing confrontation with his country’s Congress, courts, and military over his plans for the referendum ”” planned for Sunday ”” that would have asked voters whether they want to scrap the constitution, which the president says benefits the country’s elites.

The Supreme Court had ruled the vote was illegal because it flouted the constitution’s own ban on such referendums within six months of elections. The military had refused to take its usual role of distributing ballots. But Mr. Zelaya fired the chief of the army last week and pledged to press ahead.

So fairly early in his first term Obama attempted to defend Zeleya’s power grab against Honduras’ constitution, its military, and its Supreme Court’s attempt to limit him. It was a very ominous sign for the future, as I wrote:

It’s not a mere question of Obama looking on and doing nothing while a Chavez-inspired Zelaya grabs more power; I could understand non-intervention in the Honduran process. But Obama has gone out of his way””in a manner that contradicts his own stated preference for the autonomy of other nations””to actively intervene in Honduran affairs in order to protect Zeleya and his undermining of Honduran due process and its constitution.

There is no benign explanation for this policy of Obama’s. If the American people don’t understand what it tells us about him, it would mean that we have failed to understand history and learn from it.

The Supreme Court is one of the bulwarks against such power grabs, although it can’t stop them by itself. And although the recent 9-0 ruling against Obama’s pretend-recess appointments may be a sign that, if the executive’s offense were especially egregious, even the liberals on the Court might decide to vote against Obama, there’s no question that putting more liberals on its bench is flirting with danger and asking for trouble.