Powerline has a beautiful, funny  ad for their new mobile device app.   Perfect.

The more I examine the Mount Vernon Statement, the more it appears a cynical ploy by Beltway Conservatives to rewrite history and get a piece of the action. Two days ago on Fox News, Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, promoted the Mount Vernon Statement as asserting that the GOP doesn’t speak for conservatives. The conservative movement, in his words, had become too close to the GOP:

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Hitting the airwaves before CPAC is a new declaration by several who’s who within Beltway conservative circles on a new conservative manifesto. There is nothing terribly new in this declaration. It is a rehashing of the Reagan Coalition with shades of neo-conservative desires of spreading democracy worldwide. If I were to gander the purpose of this manifesto, I’d say it is for established conservative politicos trying to tap into the Tea Party movement with something concrete. The declaration is nothing ground-breaking. But after the jump, you can read the text for yourself: (more…)

You know, this is an amazing week. Massachusetts goes Republican, health care dies and the Supreme Court unshackles the First Amendment. It’s the best week I’ve had since spring break in medical school — and I don’t even remember it. And there was another item . . .  Air America, the liberal talk show network went out of business — which is a redundancy because nobody was listening anyway. ~ Charles Krauthammer on Fox

Do not be idle – join the fight for your children and grandchildren.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to attend the inauguration of Virginia’s 71st governor, Bob McDonnell.  All the guests were full of energy and enthusiasm as we watched him take the oath of office, along with his Lieutenant-Governor Bob Bolling and Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli.  It really felt like being at a concert of my favorite rockstar – the excitement goes beyond description. I couldn’t do it justice if I tried. There was a little something for everyone, from the flyover after the oath to the Redskins cheerleaders to the history in which Richmond is steeped.  The next four years should be good for Virginia and I pray for the Governor and his family.

Below is the full text of his Inaugural Address, courtesy of #bobmcdonnell: (more…)

That’s my Spockian reaction to the comments section of Quin Hilyer’s blog post regarding Sarah Palin’s decision not to attend CPAC this year.  Though Quin’s title might have been provocative, it was a reasonable (I felt) post expressing why Palin made the wrong decision.  Unfortunately, any criticism of Sarah Palin is deemed heresy to a certain portion of her supporters who now seem eager to evict Hilyer out of the conservative movement.  This Pavlovian response is but the mere mirror response of Palin critics whenever someone has the temerity to praise her (See especially the comments of Dennis, who is “disturbed” that anyone has the gall to actually defend Palin.)

Is there anyone left who is capable of rationally discussing the merits or demerits of anything this woman does?  Supporters do themselves no favors by reflexively shouting down anyone who dares utter a single negative comment about her.  Detractors often reveal that they are just as incapable of entertaining other points of view, and do so in ways that reveal their own inability to move beyond the media narrative.

I’m not saying we all have to hang out in some perpetual limbo where we keep an “open mind” (YACK!) about Sarah Palin.  Again, I’m just fascinated that there just seems to be not only no middle ground regarding her, but that she elicits only the most extreme reaction either way.

And for the record, I largely agree with Dr. Beckwith.  I understand that there is a large berth given to the type of sponsor CPAC allows, but it makes sense for Palin and others to distance themselves as much as they can from the fringe element.

In one of the most idiotic moves in the history of American conservatism, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), has allowed the wingnut John Birch Society (JBS) to co-sponsor it’s annual conference. Sarah Palin, rightfully, declined an invitation to speak at CPAC’s 2010 conference.

It was a nearly a half-century ago that William F. Buckley, Jr. helped purge the conservative movement of the JBS. Palin, smartly, sees Buckley’s wisdom. And I believe that every conservative politician who shows up at this conference should be forewarned that this will be used against you in both the primaries and the general election. So, if you are smart, you will follow Sarah’s lead.

Now, time for Bob Dylan’s commentary:
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Via DrewM. over at Ace of Spades, we are provided with another gleaming example of David Frum’s genius. David Frum is the self-styled intellectual leader of the conservative movement who regularly insults conservatives and conservative ideas.

In a recent article Mr. Frum attempts to correct the misguided idea among many on the right that Obamacare might be constitutionally defective. However, Mr. Frum’s period of instruction might have been more convincing had he actually read the Constitution first. Check out this example of keen constitutional analysis:

DeMint’s and Ensign’s argument against the constitutionality of the Obama-Reid health reform rests upon the ancient theory of enumerated powers. Under this theory, Congress may do only what the Constitution specifically authorizes Congress to do. Since (for example) the Constitution speaks only of a Supreme Court, Congress has no power to create lower federal courts. Since the Constitution does not mention a national bank, Congress may not charter banks.

Wow! According to Section 1, Article III of my Constitution Congress DOES have the enumerated power to create lower courts.

At any rate, the rest of the article mistakenly conflates Medicare and Social Security with Obamacare’s requirement that individual’s buy a product (insurance) from a private company.

I did find Frum’s equation of small government conservatives with the jurisprudence of Roger Taney more humorous than insulting. Taney was the author of the Dred Scott decision, a decision in which an arm of the federal government (the Supreme Court) stripped individual states of the power to define what was property within their borders or who could be a citizen. According to Taney, the citizens of Illinois, or any other state, lacked the authority to decide that a black man was more than just an article of private property. It is impossible to imagine a decision more antithetical to small government conservatism than Dred Scott. However, you would have to know something about both the constitution and conservatism to understand that point, something Mr. Frum apparently lacks.

If you want to read an intelligent constitutional take down of Obamacare then you should read this article from Richard Epstein.

I don’t go in for all the Glenn Beck bashing that is prevalent in certain quarters of the right, but there is one aspect to his schtick that is bothersome, and that is his quixotic push for a third party.  The desire for the establishment of a meaningful third party is probably as old as the republic.  And while there are theoretical problems with trying to attempt to build a three-party system in the United States under the current Constitution, I think that the would-be reformers are missing the practical problems with what they are doing.

The most obvious problem is that a third-party, presumably made up of conservatives, would siphon off votes from the Republican party and merely throw more elections to the Democrats.  Offer up all the rationale you want for wanting to wreck the GOP, but you can’t escape the plain fact that this will be the inevitable outcome.  As bad as the party has been recently, conservatives need to wake up.  A “conservative” party will not be a viable alternative to the Democratic party unless it also splinters.  Therefore a vigorous push to advance conservative third-party candidates in all Congressional districts will do little except push the country to the left.  Some may wish to argue that the Doug Hoffman model provides a roadmap, except that Hoffman really wasn’t a third-party candidate, and the events surrounding NY-23 were unique to that district.

And if this third-party movement is urging a complete split from the GOP, does that mean that principled conservative Republicans like Tom Coburn and Michele Bachmann will face challenges from candidates from this conservative party?  If so, why would you destroy the political careers of those conservatives who are fighting the hardest for your interests?  If not, then are you really a third-party movement, or just an energized drive to move the GOP to the right?  If that’s the case, then I can support what you’re doing, but then stop pretending to be something you’re not.  You can’t have it both ways.

Now, let’s for the sake of argument imagine that this third-party gains steam and actually manages to attain 10-15% of Congressional seats in the coming election, and you now you hold the balance of power in the House of Representatives.  That’s great as it gives you some bargaining power.  Kind of.  Do you think you’re going to get your guy elected Speaker of the House?  Probably not.  You are going to have to cast your lot with either Nancy Pelosi or whoever emerges as the Republican candidate for Speaker – a candidate from what is now a more moderate and less conservative caucus.  If you vote for Nancy Pelosi you’ve basically betrayed everything you’re supposedly fighting for, so you’re going to have to vote for the Republican.  Alas he can be even less conservative than the current batch of Republican leadership.  You can gain concessions about committee posts and whatnot, but the fact is the GOP is going to be running the House – again, a GOP now less conservative than before.  So what exactly have you accomplished?

Finally, what if the third-party movement that you’re trying to create isn’t a conservative party at all?  What if it just becomes something like the Liberal Party in the UK?  So now you’re going to align yourself with individuals that might even be further left than the Democratic party – it’s possible.  Again, what does that accomplish?

It’s agonizing to have to defend the current two-party system, but it’s even more agonizing to ponder the alternatives.  To paraphrase, it’s the worst system except for all the others.

Arkansas 2 is part of what I call the Jacksonian belt, the swath of counties from southwestern Pennsylvania along the Appalachian chain and extending to Oklahoma and Texas which were largely settled by the Scots-Irish immigrants that streamed into America in the dozen years before the Revolution and their descendants. Their great hero, and the son of Scots-Irish immigrants himself, was Andrew Jackson, the victor of Horseshoe Bend and New Orleans, who set about removing Indians from much of this territory and was the founder of the Democratic party. In 2008 voters in the Jacksonian belt voted heavily against Barack Obama in both the Democratic primaries and the general election, as you can see on these national maps and by clicking on individual states to see the county-by-county returns. This map showing the counties which cast a higher percentage of votes for John McCain in 2008 than for George W. Bush in 2004 is essentially a map of the Jacksonian belt.

If Vic Snyder is in trouble, it’s a good bet that many other Democrats from the Jacksonian belt are too.

Very interesting. My Scots-Irish ancestors are smiling from heaven. More here.

The Republicans could be on the verge of a big day today.  They are poised to sweep all the major races in Virginia and pick up double-digit seats in the state legislature.  Doug Hoffman is looking strong in NY-23, and the New Jersey’s governor race is still up in the air.  Yet in a sense the party doesn’t deserve such a successful outcome.  As Jay Anderson details, the national GOP continues to back so-called moderates that wind up betraying the party in the end, and he wonders if they will ever learn their lesson.

Jeffords, Chafee, Specter, Scozzafava

See a pattern here? Yeah, me, too.

Each of these people received significant amounts of campaign dollars and on-the-ground assistance from the national Republican party during their last election campaigns – sometimes even in Republican primary fights against more conservative GOP challengers – only to gladly take the money and then run away from the party and collude with the Democrats when things didn’t go their way.

I don’t really blame them. Like the proverbial scorpion who stung the frog, it’s just in their nature. Liberals acting like liberals. No, I blame the frogs in the Republican Party establishment who continue to make the same miscalculation over and over and over again and never learn from their mistakes when it comes to commiting significant party resources (not to mention party credibility) on behalf of allegedly more “electable” liberals against more solidly conservative opposition.

Meanwhile, at Hot Air the always insightful Doctor Zero also has a great post on the matter.

Too much of the Republicans’ “Stupid Party” strategy is based on the mechanics of getting people with little elephants on their campaign signs elected. They view the election as the conclusion of a contest, when in fact it’s only the beginning. A successful Republican Party doesn’t have to be ideologically rigid, but it should insist on candidates who possess an intellectual foundation of conservative theory, and the ability to explain it at least as well as the thousands of people posting comments on conservative blogs.

Republican voters would be well-advised to ignore the people who engineered the Scozzafava debacle, and listen for the sound of Sarah Palin’s monster truck instead. America needs conservatives more than it needs Republicans.  Both the party, and the country, benefit when they are one and the same.  Next Halloween, just to be on the safe side, we should test the blood of every “moderate” Republican with a hot wire and a petri dish, just to make sure we don’t have another DIABLO on our hands.

Straw men arguments about ideological purity will continue to be advanced by those with an interest in continuing to derail the conservative movement coughDavidFrumcough.  But again, this isn’t about ideological purity, it’s about advancing strong candidates that bear at least some semblance to being actual Republicans.  It’s about not needlessly tacking to the center in states where good conservative candidates are available – like in Florida with Marco Rubio.

Will the national party establishment pull their heads from their rear ends after tonight?  Hey, if the director of a Planned Parenthood facility can have a change of heart, anything is possible.

The NY-23 race continues to heat up, and some polls suggest that Doug Hoffman is in the lead (though this particular poll might be taken with a grain of salt).  Nevertheless, Newt Gingrich is sticking to his guns, blasting what he calls the “purge” mentality and also criticizing outsiders for sticking their nose in a local New York election.  Yes, Newt Gingrich, born and raised in Pennsylvania, who later became a Congressman from Georgia, is deriding outsiders for getting involved in an upstate New York election.  Wrap your head around that one.

As for the purge remarks, Phil Klein is right on the money.

The problem is that Gingrich is making a valid point in general, but one that doesn’t apply in this specific instance. There’s no doubt that if you want to build a majority, you have to be willing to accept less conservative candidates in certain regions where a conservative has no chance of winning. As many problems as I have with Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, I concede that it’s unrealistic to believe that we could get a genuine conservative Senator elected in Maine, which Obama won by 17 points. In the case of Giuliani, you were dealing with a city that hadn’t elected a Republican who remained a Republican in over 50 years. He was conservative on economic issues, and uniquely suited to deal with the most pressing problem facing the city — rampant crime. The only option was to support him, or allow David Dinkins to have another disastrous term as mayor.

But the New York Congressional race is entirely different. Scozzafava isn’t just a social liberal — she’s an economic liberal, too. She supports card check legislation that would allow labor unions to expand their ranks through intimidation. She called the cops on a conservative journalist who was asking her questions about her position on taxes. And there’s actually a conservative in the race who has a realistic chance of winning.

This particular district is a fairly solid Republican one, despite Obama’s getting 52% of the vote in 2008.  Had Doug Hoffman been the GOP nominee, the race wouldn’t even be a contest as he’d probably outpoll Owens by a decent margin.

Another thing to keep in mind is that there was no primary.  Local Republican voters did not get the opportunity to select their candidate, so it’s time for people like Newt to get off their soapboxes about non locals interfering in the matter.

But getting back to the RINO issue, this was touched on in the comments to this American Catholic post by Donald McClarey.  Eric Brown – a self-described DINO – asks about the -INO labels:

But why should we have such rigid political orthodoxy?

I’m not saying that a party should not have agreement on a fundamental vision and philosophy, or principles, which is necessary for unity. But if there is not room for disagreement on means to the same end, there is very little room for intellectual freedom and creativity that actually allows for constructive criticism from within the party and viable and practical solutions to problems we face as a society.

If anything, we benefit from Democratic Senators like Ben Nelson who is opposed to the public option, who is opposed to the “opt out” compromise, and who most certainly will not vote for a health care reform bill with abortion in it. He is being attacked as a “fake” Democrat. I can’t see how such dissent is a bad thing — maybe because I’m pro-life?

Perhaps, I am misunderstanding one’s definition of a “RINO” or “DINO.” Is it someone who is so antithetical to the whole platform that they belong in the other party? Can someone be pro-choice and completely conservative on everything else and not be a “RINO”?

I’ll expand a bit on what I said to Eric in the comments section.  I actually don’t particularly care for the RINO label, though I have used it from time to time.  Political parties are distinct from ideological movements, so as such there is no “Republican” approach to issues in the same way that there is a conservative or liberal approach.  It is true that the Republican Party tends to be conservative in orientation, but it isn’t necessarily a conservative party.  Sure parties, as Donald writes in his post, should stand for something.  But there is room – as Klein writes – for slight variations in opinion.  Political parties are not religions, and there is no need to enforce some rigid orthodoxy.  I may not particularly care for  moderates like Collins and Snowe, but I can appreciate that they might be the best opportunity for Republican victory in states like Maine.  And while they’re both fairly left-of-center, they do ally themselves with the rest of the party on enough issues that they are not completely useless.

In the case of Scozzafava, however, she is in no meaningful sense of the term a Republican.  She is opposed to the party’s platform on BOTH economic and social issues, and has garnered the support of groups like ACORN and Planned Parenthood.  She is, it seems, to the left of the Democratic Party’s nominee.  Forget the NRA endorsement – opposition to gun rights is a complete non starter in this district.  She is one of the few people for whom the term RINO is a completely apt description.  That, plus what was mentioned above about the makeup of this district, and it’s clear that conservatives and Republicans really only have one option in this race.  Sorry Newt.  You might right in the abstract, but you’re wrong on this particular matter.

This one’s getting hot in the blogosphere, especially the leftosphere, which lives for well-deserved fun at “conservative” expense. [Especially since they cannot affirmatively defend the president's and the leftist congressional leadership's communitarian agenda on its own merits.]

Still, the lefties have cause for derision.

Conservapedia.com is a lame and intellectually underpowered effort to counter the left-leaning bias of Wikipedia, which is a “People’s encyclopedia.” Unfortunately for the truth, lefties seem far more motivated to contribute their “truth” to the internet, as if truth can be democratized, a matter of consensus and shouting loudest.

As opposed to you know, truth.

Anyway to cut back to the conservapedists, they’ve started a
“Conservative Bible Project.”

Arrrgh. Did I, as a self-described conservative, sign up for this?

They have some good points, like opposing the contemporary current towards monkeying with Biblical language toward “gender-neutrality.”

However, they’ve also taken aim at perhaps the most beloved and beautiful story in the New Testament, from John 8:

1Jesus went unto the mount of Olives.

11She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.

That’s the King James Version; the Catholic Douay-Rheims is right in that zone too.

Although Roman Catholics don’t give a damn, since the pericope de adultera ["story of the adulteress"] was declared canonical by the Council of Trent [1563], we got modern day fundies actually rejecting a passage of the Bible based on Biblical scholarship, its case being somewhat persuasive, since there were early versions of the Gospel of John that lacked this passage!

[Moving directly from Jn 7 to Jn 8 omitting the pericope de adultera!]

Anywayz, who says religion is boring? We got fundamentalists erasing parts of the Bible, and the Magisterium telling them to chill.

What a world. I’m not sure conservatives should take this one lying down. Otherwise we give this one up to conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, and as one of those other self-described conservatives, I get cast as picking up a rock to stone the adulteress.

I’m not good with that. Not good atall.

An excellent piece in today’s issue of the American Thinker makes Glenn Beck’s point that, perhaps, Obama’s election will be better for America in the long run:

Would the country be as aware of the following if not for an extremist government in power in Washington?  Acorn and the “community organizer” groups have been revealed to be nothing more than corrupt partisan hacks exploiting the poor and the taxpayers.  The unions and their leaders exposed as power hungry ideologues with no interest in the long term well-being of their members.  The mainstream media’s willingness to lose all credibility with the vast majority of the public with its not so subtle cheerleading for their preferred politician has become obvious to all.  The Democratic Party, at one time the self-declared defender of the little guy, has openly declared war on small business and capitalism.  The Democratic members of Congress have been revealed to be indifferent to the voters, incapable of reading bills and fully in the pockets of liberal special interests groups.

This issue was debated in an earlier post. Read the rest of the AE piece here.

Since I stayed home with my 7-month old daughter Bernadette a couple of days last week, it afforded me an opportunity to catch a couple of Glenn Beck shows on Fox News.  It’s the first time I’ve really been able to see more than a few minutes of the program since he started, and I was a bit curious.  He’s no longer on the radio here in DC, so it’s really the first time I’ve seen or heard Beck at any great length in some time.  A few thoughts.

- For the first time in my life I thought to myself, “Gee, I could really go for a commercial break right about now.”  I believe the first segment on each show ran for almost 20 minutes uninterrupted.  I often complain that most talks shows – both political and sports – run far too many commercials, but that was just too much unfiltered Beck to take in one sitting.  Maybe MTV, even though I haven’t watched it in about 12 years,  has spoiled the way I look at television.  Whatever it is, there needs to be more breaks in the action just to slow down the pace of the show.  I realize that part of the problem is the idiotic bycott aginst Beck, but man, just throw it back to the studio or something if you can’t find advertisers.

- Beck’s at an 11.  He needs to be at a 7.  I appreciate the emotion, and it makes for an entertaining program.  But the constant drumbeat of “OH MY GOD WE NEED TO GET THESE RASCALS OUT NOW GRRRRRRR!!!!” combined with the hammy over-performance and the “I’m on the verge of tears and/or a nervous breakdown” is again too much to take.

- That said, I do not think he is a threat to the republic.  Yeah, he is a bit of a ham who tends to over-dramatize things, but I’ve seen far worse.  We’ve got bigger issues than whether or not Beck is an over-the-top performer.

But he does make me appreciate the truly good talkers like Rush, Laura Ingraham and Mark Levin all the more.  I have mixed emotions about Beck, quite frankly.  I appreciate his fortrightness and his true passion for trying to restore some of our Founding ideals.  But in a lot of ways he reminds me of Hannity – though, to be sure, he’s much better than Hannity.  Neither really offers up any unique insight.  It’s sort of the same old stuff packaged in a different way.  Rush, Laura, and Mark – say what you will about them – have unique takes on any given topic and offer fresh perspectives.  They go a little deeper and really make interesting connections.  Beck is more about throwing out the red meat.  There’s a place for that, but in the end it’s actually just a bit boring.

I’m normally a little suspicious when “insider” accounts of the White House are published, so take the following with a grain of salt.  But according to a soon-to-be released book by Bush staffer Matt Latimer titled: Speech-less: Tales of a White House Survivor, Bush had some, err, interesting things to say about conservatism.  Captain Ed, via Byron York, relays some of the more telling quotes. (more…)

This is video of a brief talk I gave yesterday at a gathering of conservative Republicans.

My talk to the RALC

Andy McCarthy has a warning for the conservatives recommending politeness in the townhalls.

This is not a nice, ivory tower, Oxford debate. This is gut-check time about whether we are going to maintain the bedrock American relationship between the citizen and the state. We are in the battle against ruthless, radical ideologues who have the media and the daunting numbers on their side.  On our side, we have the further burden of wavering moderates and in-Washington-too-long types who define success as making a deal — any deal — that they think they can sell as a bipartisan compromise that staved off something extreme (but what in reality would be a sell-out that is 3/4 extreme, with Obama simply coming back in 2010 or 2011 to get the remaining 1/4 … plus).

If our side’s approach lacks passion: (a) the brass-knuckled Rahmbo/Pelosi/Reid leadership will easily succeed in showing the potential Democrat convincables (without whom we cannot win) that they better stay on the team if they know what’s good for them, and (b) the GOP moderates and old Washington hands will interpret civility as a greenlight to do the dealing they’re dying to do.

Virginia Democrat Senator Jim Webb has had an amazing change of heart since defeating Republican George Allen in 2006. Webb—a former Republican—ran as a “moderate” (snicker) Democrat and defeated once Presidential hopeful Allen by less than 9000 votes out of 2.4 million cast.

In Webb’s excellent history of the Scots-Irish in America, Born Fighting, Webb—himself a proud Scots-Irish—writes the following:

“. . . a feeling that the culture so dramatically symbolized by the Southern redneck was the greatest inhibitor of the plans of the activist Left and the cultural Marxists for a new kind of society altogether.” (Page 295.)

“In the age of political correctness and ultraethnic sensitivities, it has become delicate, to say the least, to celebrate many of this culture’s hard-won accomplishments when teaching American history in today’s public schools.” (Page 17.)

“The Scottish people did not care much for the larger crowd and they especially did not care much for elites.” (Page 42.)

“America’s elites have had very little contact with this culture.” (Page 18.)

“. . . they ignore them at their peril.” (Page 19.)

Despite these condemnations of “elites” and “political correctness”, Webb apparently has no problem enthusiastically supporting the elitist and politically correct agenda of the Obama administration. He has also apparently surrendered his manhood to the will of Queen Pelosi in the House and Grandma Reid in the Senate. Case in point: Despite Webb’s strong lip-service support for the 2^nd amendment, he voted with the rest of the Democrat elites to confirm Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court; ignoring the wise Latino woman’s hostility toward gun rights. I have to assume that the price for Webb obtaining more political power within the Democrat Party was his willingness to sing soprano in a voice similar to that of Harry Reid’s. (Doesn’t Reid’s voice remind you of a grandmother battling menopause?)

Sotomayor’s speeches, along with many of her decisions, would certainly lead an objective observer to conclude that she is what Webb would describe as someone with “ultraethnic sensitivities” and a member of “the activist Left and the cultural Marxists”—a group which he clearly targets for derision and contempt in his book. What’s happened to Senator Webb?

Now comes Webb’s tucking tail and running off to East-Asia (at taxpayer’s expense) during the August recess. Is this courageous, highly-decorated Vietnam War veteran afraid to face his constituents because of the boiling anger over Obama’s health care “reform” or, has he become an elitist who just doesn’t want to have much “contact with this culture?” Hey Senator, as you’ve pointed out, many of your constituents don’t care much for elites. You ignore us at your (political) peril.

Senator Webb, call your office. There are some great inhibitors that would like to talk to you.

As a conservative, how do I differentiate between the government giving me money to buy a car vs. the government giving me money to send kids to the school of my choice? Why is the latter but not the former acceptable in a limited-government, conservative orthodoxy?

Whenever freedom is lost, wherever tyranny is found, there are three accompanying factors: religious oppression, economic depression, and a culture of death.

Orwell’s 1984 provides a vivid example of this principle. Religion in Oceania has been wholly abolished, the people live in government-induced squalor, and the state routinely comes between children and their parents, and is working on preventing marriage altogether.

But there are ample historical examples as well. (more…)

Ramesh Ponnuru has an op-ed in the New York Times today in which he criticizes conservatives for having a blind spot with respect to judicial activism involving racial issues.  I disagree with many of his arguments. However, I’ll set aside, for the moment, the propriety of conservatives using the New York Times to argue with their own, and move on to a good ol’ fashioned fisking:

[W]hen it comes to the race cases before the Supreme Court, too many conservatives abandon both originalism and judicial restraint.

The Voting Rights Act decision was a case in point. Eight justices avoided weighing in on the constitutionality of the law’s requirement that certain jurisdictions, mostly in the South, get Justice Department permission before making any changes to election procedures. Instead they ruled that a utility district in Texas that wanted to be freed from the provision should have an opportunity to try.

But Justice Clarence Thomas went further, declaring the provision unconstitutional. Congress, he argued, was justified in the 1960s in responding to the denial of the voting rights guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, but things have changed and the provision is no longer needed.

Justice Thomas is, in my view, right to consider the law outdated. But is that really for him to say? Congress is the proper body to make that judgment. In 2006, it decided to renew the law for 25 years. Its determination that the law was still necessary may have been mistaken, but it is not clear that the Constitution authorizes judges to second-guess it.

Well, if one believes in judicial review, the Court will always have the authority to “second guess” laws when it believes they potentially conflict with any provision of the Constitution. Treating a subset of states according to different, more onerous standards is at least dubious under basic principles of federalism. I’m not entirely familiar with the jurisprudence or the history with respect to the federal governmnent discriminating against certain states, but I’d wager it’s a great deal more complex and more enlightening to this discussion than Ponnuru lets on. (more…)

There is a fascinating and sweeping essay by William Voegeli on the future of conservatism.  It touches upon the reformers vs. traditionalist debate, but it also goes beyond that.  It also explores some of the (my term) hypocritical left-wing analyses of conservatism and its supposed extremism.

Voegeli presents a fairly even-handed commentary, and seems sympathetic in principle to right-wing reformers who believe that the party must adapt to political realities in order to survive. As one who would almost certainly be counted as a traditionalist, I do agree that we can’t shut our eyes totally to basic political reality, nor can we pretend that all of our recent woes stem totally from an abandonment of true conservative ideals (as many conservatives are wont to say).

That said, he doesn’t fully subscribe to the idea that conservatives ought to completely abandon core principles.  As he writes: (more…)

I’m not asking here about objectively evaluating the merits of a Romney candidacy in 2008 or 2012, but was Steele wrong necessarily when he pointed out that a good number of the base rejected Mitt Romney in 2008 because of a) his flip from pro-choice to pro-life and the distrust that created b) his Mormonism and c) some of his economic positions? (more…)

The Boy Scouts are being sued again, and the Ninth Circuit has invited everybody to play:

The City of San Diego leases portions of Balboa Park and Fiesta Island to the San Diego Boy Scouts, which use the land to operate a camp and aquatic center. The Boy Scouts use the leased areas for their own events but otherwise keep them open to the general public — and have spent millions of dollars to improve and maintain facilities on the properties, eliminating the need for taxpayer funding. While the Boy Scouts’ membership policies exclude homosexuals and agnostics, the Scouts have not erected any religious symbols and do not discriminate in any way in administering the leased parklands. (more…)

I know that this wasn’t really a fair fight, but Ann Coulter lets everyone know that the rank and file Hollywood liberal is simply repeating things the NYT says and really doesn’t think about the issues at hand. She also makes it clear that Joy Behar doesn’t belong in the same galaxy, intellectually, as Ann.

Be sure to catch parts 2, 3, and 4 as well.