Like most folks outside Colonel Gaddafi’s immediate family, I greatly enjoyed Sheikh Qaradawi’s recent fatwa calling on “whoever can fire a bullet” to kill the Libyan leader. But Point de Bascule, the excellent Quebec website, points out that until recently Qaradawi’s Muslim Brotherhood and Gaddafi’s World Islamic Call Society were all buddy-buddy.

Along the way, Point de Bascule also sheds some light on a fellow called Dr Mahmoud Ayoub, who was an “expert witness” at my “Islamophobia” trial at the British Columbia “Human Rights” Tribunal. He was flown in from his university in Philadelphia, and treated with fawning deference by the Canadian Islamic Congress’ oleaginous counsel, and only marginally less so by the troika of hack “human rights” judges. Dr Ayoub described himself as a loyal Canadian citizen who shared Trudeau’s vision of a harmonious multicultural society but had moved to America because Canadian taxes were too high. At this point I leapt to my feet and cried, “Objection, your honor! Every loyal Canadian knows that confiscatory taxation is an indispensable part of Trudeau’s vision of a harmonious multicultural society.”

Well, no, okay, I didn’t. I let it go, and soon Dr Ayoub was testifying that we’d all got the wrong end of this “jihad” stick: It was nothing to do with blowing up infidels and such, but was a benign lifestyle concept that translated out of Arabic means “healthy, nutritious, lo-fat granola bar” (I quote from memory). The usual Islamoguff. May Allah bless the Canadian taxpayers who sprung for his round-trip airfare.

Anyway, among the evidence of my “flagrant Islamophobia” cited in the official complaint was my quoting of Colonel Gaddafi as follows:

There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe without swords, without guns, without military conquests. The 50 million Muslims of Europe will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.

Maclean’s counsel rose and quoted the above passage, at which point the Canadian Islamic Congress’ lawyer, Faisal Joseph, objected on the grounds that Gaddafi “has no credibility in the Muslim world”.

If that’s true, why then had Joseph called as his “expert witness” Mahmoud Ayoub? Dr Ayoub was not only the “representative of the Americas” on the executive committee of Gaddafi’s World Islamic Call Society (in which capacity he had sent a cable of thanks to “Brother Mu’ammar Al-Gaddafi”), but he was also the author of a sycophantic biography called Islam and the Third Universal Theory: The Religious Thought of Mu’ammar al Qadhdhafi, published in 1987 – or, if you’re using the Jihad Calendar, halfway between the Libyan bombing of a German disco full of US soldiers and the Libyan bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie.

So the plaintiffs were simultaneously arguing that Gaddafi has no credibility in the Muslim world, but his hagiographer has such credibility we’re calling him as an expert witness. By the way, Dr Ayoub is the same “expert” who assured the Orlando Sun-Sentinel after the revelations of the 9/11 killers’ extra-curricular activities:

“It is incomprehensible that a person could drink and go to a strip bar one night, then kill themselves the next day in the name of Islam,” said Ayoub. “People who would kill themselves for their faith would come from very strict Islamic ideology. Something here does not add up.”

Indeed – in the same way that a nutjob who hangs out with Ukrainian “nurses” and a bevy of Austin Powers fembots would hardly have enough “religious thought” to fill a book, would he?

I’m always impressed by the say-one-thing-in-Cairo-another-on-CNN shamelessness of jetset Muslims – Imam Rauf at Ground Zero, Tariq Ramadan, Sheikh Qaradawi, and Dr Ayoub… Taqqiya is the most important concept in Islamic imperialism. 

I like Andrew Stiles’ “Who Said It?” game-show, so I think we ought to have a late-night edition. Who said this?

Why did no one question Queen Elizabeth for invading Iraq?

a) Charlie Sheen

b) Colonel Gaddafi

c) John Galliano

d) Colonel Qadafy

Answer: It was the Colonel, pointing out that the Queen has been on the throne “for 57 years” (59, actually), whereas he’s only been queen for 41 years. On the other hand, he has way more fabulous gowns.

By the way, at the Arab League end-of-summit party, Gaddafi is by far the best Michael Jackson lookalike.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan testified before the Senate Budget Committee today, in large part to defend the massive increases in education spending that have occurred under President Obama (68 percent, including the stimulus). In his 2012 budget, Obama calls for an 11 percent increase in spending on education.

Sen. Jeff Session (R., Ala.), ranking Republican, pointed out that when it comes to education, more spending doesn’t necessarily produce better results. Case in point:

Spending per student — South Korea: $8,000; United States: $12,000.

International ranking (reading, math) — South Korea: 1st, 1st; United States: 14th, 25th.

And yet, the Obama administration not only thinks we have the money to spend more on education (we don’t, as Sessions points out), but that doing so is the only way to “win the future.” If the figures above are any indication, it clearly isn’t.

In the clip below, Session and Duncan are discussing federal Pell grants. The number of grant recipients are projected to rise from about 6 million in 2008 to 9.6 million in 2012. During that same period, grant costs are set to double to $36 billion.

Overall, the amount of money the federal government gives out or guarantees in student loans is set to increase from $98 billion in 2008 to $167 billion in 2012, an increase of 68 percent.

As Duncan tries to make the case for more spending, Sessions interjects: “Why don’t we just spent three times as much? Won’t that just help us fix it all?”

Duncan responds by arguing that when in comes to Pell grants, the administration “made some very tough cuts,” i.e. asking for a $5 billion increase while “reducing costs” by $20 billion:

Sessions: “This is Washington math. You haven’t cut Pell grants. Pell grants are increasing dramatically, Mr. Secretary. The numbers are plain.”

Duncan: “That’s correct, and they would have increased even more substantially, even more significantly did we not made the tough painful decision to eliminate…”

Sessions: “You’re proposing they be increased that much, they’re not going to be increased that much becaue we don’t have the money!”

Lots more here.

Dan already wrote a piece about it, but Chris Christie was in the office last week. I just wanted to quote him more extensively on 2012. I asked him whether he knew that, given the moment, there is a serious chance he could win the Republican nomination if he ran. This is what he said in full:

Yes. Believe me, I’ve been interested in politics my whole life. I see the opportunity. But I just don’t believe that’s why you run. Like I said at AEI, I have people calling me and saying to me, “Let me explain to you how you could win.” And I’m like, “You’re barking up the wrong tree. I already know I could win.” That’s not the issue. The issue is not me sitting here and saying, “Geez, it might be too hard. I don’t think I can win.” I see the opportunity both at the primary level and at the general election level. I see the opportunity. 

But I’ve got to believe I’m ready to be president, and I don’t. And I think that that’s the basis you have to make that decision. I think when you have people who make the decision just based upon seeing the opportunity you have a much greater likelihood that you’re going to have a president who is not ready. And then we all suffer from that. Even if you’re a conservative, if your conservative president is not ready, you’re not going to be good anyway because you’re going to get rolled all over the place in that town.

I just see how much better I get at this job every day, and I do, and I learn things. If not every day, at least every week. And my wife and I were actually talking about this last night. We had dinner together with the family after the [New Jersey budget] speech and she was saying how much better she thought I was yesterday than I had been before in my speech. She said, “You are getting better.”

That’s just the nature of life. So, I see the opportunity, I recognize and understand it and I’m really flattered that people think of me that way. But, if I don’t believe it in here [pointing to his heart], I’m not going to be a good candidate on top of everything else.

And remember in the context of sitting there on election night 2009, and my wife and I were convinced we were going to lose. It is a bit to get your arms around, too. You’re a successful United States attorney and then within a year of that time you have people talking about you and I was running around campaigning for folks. All of these handmade “Christie for President” signs in the crowds when I was in Michigan and Iowa and all the other places that I went, Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida. It’s also been overwhelming, too.

Like I said before, I am who I am and people have to trust, they don’t have to but they should trust, my instincts on this. I know me better than anyone else knows me. If I felt like I was ready, I’d go, but I’m not. But I’m also not going to go if I don’t think I’m ready.

When I walked into the Governor’s office last January there have been some difficult days in the job. There has never been a day where I’ve felt like I’m over my head, I don’t know what to do, I’m lost. I don’t know whether I’d feel the same way if I walked into the Oval Office a year and a half from now. So, unless you get yourself to the point where you really believe you have a shot to be successful, then I don’t think you have any business running for it.

On the readiness front, you can’t argue with what he feels, but I think he’s wrong. He’s at least as ready as Bill Clinton in 1991 (indecisive governor of a small state), George W. Bush in 1999 (decisive governor of big state, but in a very weak office), and Barack Obama in 2007 (no executive experience whatsoever). I joked with the governor that if he’s getting better every day, by November 2012, he’ll be ready to go. He laughed, but seemed unconvinced.

(Consider this another piece in my continuing series taking issue with the reasons non-candidates give for not running for president.)

National Review is accepting applications for its 2011 summer internship. The intern will work in our New York headquarters and receive a modest but adequate salary. Duties will include sundry editorial and administrative tasks, and there will be occasional opportunities to write. The ideal candidate will be a rising college senior with an excellent academic record, some experience in student or professional journalism, and a strong, principled belief in NR’s mission. If you wish to apply, please send a cover letter, your résumé, and a few clips to nr.summer.internship@gmail.com.

“This is as serious a debate [as] we can have in the Congress of the United States because it affects our children and their future, because the deficits have gotten so far out of hand. . . . Fiscal responsibility is a part of who we are. . . . Pay as you go. Do not add to the deficit. . . . If we all share that view we should all be able to come together because the numbers will add up or they will not add up and the bill, for sure, will be [paid by] our children and grandchildren.”

You won’t believe . . .

Gov. Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s embattled Republican governor, addressed a joint session of the state legislature this evening in Madison, though the 14 Democrat state senators who have been on the lam in Illinois for weeks did not attend.

Walker, whose state faces a $3.6 billion budget shortfall, outlined a two-year, $59 billion budget that would cut spending across the board. Over $4 billion would be gutted from state coffers, a 6.7 percent reduction. “The facts are clear: Wisconsin is broke,” he said. “It’s time to start paying our bills today — so our kids are not stuck with even bigger bills tomorrow.”

Walker, who is not shy about his fiscal conservatism, takes an axe to numerous state programs in his proposal. If passed, over $700 million in education funds and over $1 billion in county and municipal aid would be slashed. That state’s Medicaid budget would be cut by $500 million. Over 20,000 government jobs would be eliminated. The state commerce department would disappear. It would also require, as his budget-repair bill stipulates, for public employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their salaries toward their pensions and pay 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums. Taxes would not be raised.

“Our budget reduces the structural deficit by 90 percent,” Walker said. “Gone are the segregated fund raids, illegal transfers, and accounting gimmicks. Gone are the tax or fee increases. Our state cannot grow if our people are weighed down paying for a larger and larger government. A government that pays its workers unsustainable benefits that are out of line with the private sector. We need a leaner and cleaner state government.”

Turning to the on-the-run senators, Walker expressed optimism. “I have been asked a lot over the past week about what happens next,” he said. “Well, I’m an optimist.  I believe that after our budget repair bill passes, tempers will cool, and we will find a way to continue to work together to help grow our economy.”

Walker then warned that if the senators did not return soon, their districts would feel the pain. “It’s true we are reducing aid to local government by just over one and a quarter billion dollars,” he said. “But we are providing almost $1.5 billion in savings through our budget repair bill. If the 14 Senate Democrats do not come home, their local communities will be forced to manage these reductions in aid without the benefit of the tools provided in the repair bill.”

Keep reading this post . . .

Jonah, I think we’re basically saying the same thing, with a couple of caveats:

The first is, I’m not as enamored as you apparently are of Brooks and Douthat, both of whom seem to have been neutered by the Times or, worse, have neutered themselves. Whatever the case, neither has been making a particularly compelling case for conservative principles — tonally, they seem almost disinterested bystanders, interjecting the occasional polite demurral just to keep the cocktail-party orthodoxy from becoming too stultifying even for the hosts.

I also have you at the disadvantage of a couple of decades, and can remember vividly the reaction Safire got when he broke up the ennui occasioned by a steady diet of Flora Lewis, “Red Tony” Lewis, and the others who populated the Times’s bien-pensant editorial pages. Back in those days, Nixon was considered the very foaming embodiment of right-wing malevolence, the Man Who Took Down the Pink Lady, instead of the domestic left-liberal we conservatives know him to be. (Truly, the evil Tricky Dick did lives on after him in the form of OSHA, the EPA, et al.) Longacre Square, or whatever it’s called now, shook with the force of an earthquake when Safire’s hiring was announced. I happen to think he was a pretty good columnist, although his classic “Timesman” ethical and stylistic resemblance to my beloved Times mentor, the great Harold C. Schonberg, possibly prejudices me in his favor. 

The second is tactical. For decades, the Left — always a minority — has loomed larger than it really is via its control of institutions like the Times. Even as it’s welcomed writers like Brooks and Douthat onto the op-ed pages, it’s bet the farm on a peace, land and bread hard line in its news coverage, story selection, and “news analyses,” with the business results we can all see. Hola, Carlos Slim!

The news pages still influence the larger, Time/Newsweek/CBS/NBC/ABC coverage. But, as you correctly note, the Times’s influence and that of the other Big Six (throw in the WaPo) as agenda-setters is waning as fast as “Col.” Qaddafi’s grip on power in the imaginary “country” of “Libya.”

Which is why, more than ever, the editorial pages matter. Crack that Fabergé egg, and you’ve cracked the citadel of the Left. It’ll look like Constantinople in 1453.

Which is why our pipe dream will never happen. Still, since you’ve got your major newspaper column, and I’ve got mine, what say we start a Draft Steyn movement and see what happens?

I promise that this will be my last Oscar-related post for at least another year, but this one is still sticking in my craw. I couldn’t help but hear that after Inside Job, a film about the ’08 financial meltdown, won the Oscar for “Best Documentary Feature,” its producer/director/gadfly or whatever, Charles Ferguson, said this on stage: “Three years after our horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that’s wrong.”

I’m sure the Madoff family would disagree, but more important, I could almost hear what thousands of American victims must have been thinking: “Almost a decade after the murder of almost 3,000 Americans, no one has been brought to trial, not even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who took credit for the attack. And more than a decade after the USS Cole bombing, no prosecutions have been brought against the mastermind, Saudi-born Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. And that’s wrong.”

Too bad they didn’t get to say it to 32 million viewers.

How much will states have to spend to implement the Medicaid expansion mandated by Obamacare? According to a new report released by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Fred Upton (R., Mich.), head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, states will spend at least $118 billion through 2023 to cover the expansion.

Obamacare does help the states with funding in the early years, but the Medicaid expansion soon becomes just another unfunded mandate. From the report (emphasis in original):

The massive increases in new federal spending under the health care law did not include the new Medicaid state spending mandates; and American taxpayers are still discovering the extent of PPACA’s costs. In 2017, state governments will be forced to spend new money on expanded Medicaid populations, and by 2020, the states will shoulder these new costs fully. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) originally estimated new state spending on Medicaid at $20 billion between 2017 and 2019, and an independent report from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured found that new state spending would be even higher at $43.2 billion through 2019. More recently, CBO has estimated a $60 billion cost to the states through 2021. …

This report conservatively estimates that PPACA will cost state taxpayers at least $118.04 billion through 2023.

The state-by-state findings9 of this report indicate just how unrealistic PPACA’s Medicaid mandates are for the states. California will spend at least another $19.4 billion on Medicaid; perhaps that is why former Governor Schwarzenegger said, “It is not reform to push more costs on states that are already struggling … and this bill … is a disaster for California…” The Texas Health and Human Services Commission estimated that Texas alone will be forced to spend $27 billion—more than the program’s entire annual budget today. The state of Idaho found that the law would grow its Medicaid program by nearly 50 percent. With $675 million in new costs for his state, it is not surprising that Governor Beshear (D-KY) recently said, “I have no idea how we’re going to pay for it.” Finally, former Governor Bredesen (D-TN) noted reality: “I can’t think of a worse time for this bill to be coming … nobody’s going to put their state into bankruptcy or their education system in the tank for it.”

Just another fun surprise cost in Pelosi’s you-have-to-passread-it-to-know-what’s-in-it bill.

Correction: I originally identified Hatch as head of the Senate Finance Committee, not the top Republican.

A new report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found a stunning amount of government waste as a result of duplicative or overlapping agencies and programs, and identified 34 areas where lawmakers can realize significant savings.

The GAO study, which was mandated by an amendment that Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.) attached to last year’s debt-limit resolution, did not provide an exact dollar figure as to how much money the government was potentially wasting, but Coburn estimated it could be as much as $200 billion. He said the report had identified “the mother lode of government waste.”

“This report confirms what most Americans assume about their government,” Coburn said in a statement. “We are spending trillions of dollars every year and nobody knows what we are doing. The executive branch doesn’t know. The congressional branch doesn’t know.  Nobody knows.”

On Monday, before the report was made public, Coburn predicted that the findings would “make us all look like jackasses,” and would contain enough actionable information “keep Congress busy for the rest of the year.”

The report, titled “Opportunities to Reduce Potential Duplication in Government Programs, Save Tax Dollars, and Enhance Revenue,” spells out in plain terms the implications of its findings.

“Reducing or eliminating duplication, overlap, or fragmentation could potentially save billions of taxpayer dollars annually and help agencies provide more efficient and effective services,” the report states. “Considering the amount of program dollars involved in the issues we have identified, even limited adjustments could result in significant savings.”

A few highlights from the report:

• Eight federal agencies oversee 80 programs to provide “transportation for the transportation disadvantaged.” The GAO could not determined a cost estimate for these programs because the agencies “often do not separately track transportation costs from other program costs.” However, 23 of these programs were allotted $1.7 billion in 2009.
• Two separate bureaus within the State Department received close to $80 billion in 2010 for “Arms Control and Nonproliferation.” The reports found significant redundancy, noting that a guiding document to outline the role and responsibilities of these bureaus “has never been drafted and approved.”
• The Department of Transportation funds more than 100 “surface transportation” programs overseen by five individual agencies (and 6,000 employees) at an annual cost of nearly $60 billion. According to the report: “The current approach to surface transportation was established in 1956 to build the Interstate Highway System, but has not evolved to reflect current priorities in transportation planning.”
• Federal data centers, which grew in number from 432 in 1998 to more than 2,000 in 2010, cost up to $450 million annually. The federal government could save between $150 billion and $200 billion over the next decade simply by consolidating these centers.
• Twenty federal agencies runs 56 programs designed to promote “financial literacy,” but, ironically enough, no one has any idea how much these programs actually cost, because “most federal agencies do not have an estimate for spending on ‘financial literacy’ per se.”
• Nine federal agencies operate 47 job-training programs, 44 of which overlap with at least one other program. These programs cost $18 billion in 2009, but GAO found that due to their duplicative nature, “little is known about [their] effectiveness.
• Ten agencies oversee 82 distinct programs on “teacher quality” at an annual cost of more than $4 billion. The report discovered that “there is no government wide strategy to minimize fragmentation, overlap or duplication among these many programs.”
• Fifteen federal agencies administer over 30 food-related laws to the tune of $1.6 billion annually. GAO discovered that “seafood oversight,” normally performed by the FDA, had been split by recent legislation that assigned responsibility for monitoring catfish to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
• Domestic ethanol tax credits, totaling close to $6 billion, are “largely unneeded today to ensure demand for domestic ethanol production.”
• More than 170 tax expenditures — in the form of tax exclusions, credits, deductions, deferrals, and preferential tax rates — account for almost $1 trillion.
• At least five departments, eight agencies, and more than two dozen presidential appointees have been tasked with coordinating an effective defense again a biological terror attack, at a cost of $6.5 billion. However, the report concludes: “There is no national plan . . . and the United States lacks the technical and operational capabilities required for an adequate response.”

The full report is here.

One of the chief arguments against Governor Walker’s proposal — maybe the chief argument — is that strong public-sector unions are necessary to offset the political power of plutocratic elites and thus achieve sensible, balanced public policies. This is the argument of Paul Krugman, for example. I find it a little odd. The argument can only be persuasive to someone who is already committed to contemporary-liberal economic policies. The vast majority of liberals already are. So is this an argument directed solely at those few liberals who have reservations about the power of these unions, the Richard Cohens of the world? And it’s also odd because the argument is so often made by people who think there is something objectionable in Governor Walker’s support for legislation that will weaken his political opponents and thus strengthen his allies. The countervailing-power argument is precisely that the law should boost the power of one side of the political debate. (Again: Nobody who makes this argument can expect Walker’s supporters to respond, “Well now that you point it out I suppose our conservative agenda is destructive and it would be good to throw up obstacles to it by strengthening our opposition.”)

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Charles Koch defends his business empire and his free-market ideology. While discussing the latter, Koch argues — contra President Obama — that cutting government spending will help the economy, not hurt it. He offers our neighbor to the north as an example: “When Canada recently reduced its federal spending to 11.3% of GDP from 17.5% eight years earlier, the economy rebounded and unemployment dropped. By comparison, our federal spending is 25% of GDP.”

David Henderson of the Hoover Institute recounts this story in his paper, “Canada’s Budget Triumph.” In 1993, Canada’s economy was sickly. Its unemployment rate hovered around 11.4 percent and the national debt totaled 67 percent of GDP. Moreover, the federal government consumed over 23 percent of GDP. (Sound familiar?)

The next year, however, the newly elected Liberal prime minister, Jean Chretien, and his finance minister, Paul Martin, raised taxes slightly and cut budgets drastically. Unemployment insurance, department funding, defense spending, and business subsidies all took hits. Chretien and Martin continued cutting for years and by 1997, Canada enjoyed a budget surplus of $3 billion — the first surplus since 1969.

Between 1993 and 1997, federal spending on programs — the precise datum Koch cites — dropped from 17.4 percent of GDP to 12.3 percent. Meanwhile, the federal government’s share of GDP fell from 22.3 in 1993 to 15.2 in 2006, when Martin and the Liberal party lost to the Conservatives.

Although Canada’s experience suggests that cutting government spending will not draw forth the apocalypse, a few caveats are necessary. First, Canada benefited from an economic boom in the U.S. — the same boom that made balancing our budget much easier. Second, as Paul Krugman argues, the Bank of Canada pursued a policy of easy money, which helped offset any constricting effects of smaller government budgets.

“My own sense is the Bank of Canada did good things,” Henderson says. “They were kind of like the Greenspan of Canada.”

Henderson agrees with Krugman that this monetary policy and the trade boom played roles in rectifying Canada’s fiscal troubles. But he also thinks the government’s responsible budgeting was in on the act. “What’s really striking,” he tells NRO, “is if you assume Canadian growth depended solely on the U.S. and you look at Canadian GDP in 2001, when the U.S. hit its recession, you would have expected Canada to have a recession. It didn’t.” From 2000 to 2001, the Canadian GDP-growth rate dropped from 5.2% to 1.8%.

Unfortunately, the Canadian leviathan has reinflated recently under Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper. His government implemented a stimulus package in response to the Great Recession two years ago. And the federal government’s share of GDP has ticked up to 18 percent. “Stephen Harper was expected to be the most libertarian prime minister in the last 100 years — and he isn’t,” says Henderson. “He’s the one who’s really reversed most of this.”

Today’s release of polling data showing that a significant majority of New Yorkers think their city’s abortion rate is too high was perfectly timed. Tomorrow the New York City Council votes on a bill that would force pregnancy care centers to prominently post notices that they don’t perform abortions. The probable passage of Bill #371 was one of the main topics of conversation at a luncheon following the memorial mass for Dr. Bernard Nathanson yesterday in New York.

What a horrible irony that, in the city that leads our country in the number of abortions, the abortion lobby is going after the people who are doing the most to help women in need. This is just the latest in a campaign of intimidation against pregnancy care centers — it’s a breathtaking piece of draconian legislation that requires volunteers to recite government-mandated language about the fact that they don’t perform abortions every time they answer the phone. Penalties include possible jailtime.

— Charmaine Yoest is president of Americans United for Life.

BREAKING: Rampant speculation about a government shutdown can cease, at least for the time being. The House has overwhelming passed a two-week spending resolution to keep the government running and cut federal spending by $4 billion. The final vote was 335 to 91, with more Democrats voting for the bill (104) than against it (85). Six Republicans voted no.

As noted previously, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has said the Senate will take up, and subsequently pass, the House bill sometime in the next two days. The current continuing resolution is set to expire on March 4.

UPDATE: The six Republican dissenters were: Reps. Justin Amash (R., Mich.), Michele Bachmann (R., Minn.), Louie Gohmert (R., Texas), Steve King (R., Iowa), Ron Paul (R., Texas), and Walter Jones (R., N.C.). Amash was the only freshman to vote no.

UPDATE II: Rep. Amash explains his vote:

I support the efforts of my GOP colleagues to move the budget process along so that we can work toward serious spending reductions. Unfortunately, this budget cuts spending at the rate of only $133 million/week or $6.95 billion/year. That’s four-tenths of one percent of our annual deficit.

I attended his funeral yesterday in Manhattan and wrote this up about it. 

Fr. Gerry Murray, a longtime friend of NR, was the doctor ’s pastor. His homily from the funeral Mass can be read here. 

The brunette from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes died yesterday at 89. In lieu of flowers, her family is directing friends and fans to donate to the Santa Maria, California, Care Net Pregnancy & Resource Center. She was a pro-life adoption advocate. 

And when I say “Oxfordians,” I don’t mean people who don’t think Shakespeare was Shakespeare. In Impromptus today, I comment on the Thai prime minister, the felicitously named Abhisit Vejjajiva. His English name is Mark (which his political foes in Thailand insist on calling him). Born in Newcastle, the future PM went to Eton and Oxford. Last year, David Pryce-Jones pointed out that the world now has two prime ministers who went to Eton and Oxford: Abhisit and David Cameron.

Who else went to those schools? DP-J. I once heard him say, “I emerged from Eton and Oxford a perfectly nasty little leftist.” I doubt P-J was ever a nasty anything. Anyway, he overcame his education nicely.

By the way, in my column, I hail Kathleen Ferrier’s recording of “Come You Not from Newcastle” (the easiest thing in the world to hail). A reader writes, “I can save you a lot of time when you’re writing about ‘best recordings.’ If Ferrier did it, it’s the best.” Well, that is not a rule: but a guideline, for sure.

(Let me remind you of Ghost Busters: “I make it a rule never to get involved with possessed people. [Foreplay, or whatever the proper word is.] Actually, it’s more of a guideline than a rule.”)

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Dan Foster reminds me that the correct term is, not “Oxfordian,” but “Oxonian.” To quote my hero from Springfield: D’oh!

UPDATE II: Another colleague, Rick Brookhiser, brings up another Etonian/Oxonian: Bertie Wooster.

Wooster’s college at Oxford was Magdalen — same as DP-J’s. And now, this graduate of Pattengill Elementary in Ann Arbor is signing off . . .

BREAKING: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) announced Tuesday that Senate Democrats will support a short-term spending bill drafted by House Republicans. The resolution, which is expected to pass the House this afternoon, cuts federal spending by $4 billion over a two-week period. Many of the cuts were taken directly from President Obama’s 2012 budget proposal.

Following a “good discussion” with colleagues during a weekly caucus lunch, Reid told reporters that the Senate will hold a vote on the House bill “in the next 48 hours.”

“We’ll pass this, and then we’ll look to funding the government on a long-term basis,” Reid said. “The sooner we get this short-term funding of the government done, the quicker we can move to a long-term CR. That is where we are headed.”

Despite his apparent support for the measure, Reid said that passing short-term spending measures was “a terrible way to govern.” Senate Democrats, as well as President Obama, had expressed a preference for a longer, 30-day measure, but Reid said Republicans refused to budge.

Reid said he had spoken several times with the president and predicted that Obama would be involved in negotiations over a long-term resolution. Earlier today, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio), who has also been in contact with the White House, criticized Obama for not being fully engaged in the spending debate.

Reid’s announcement is yet another example of how that debate seems to have shifted in the GOP’s favor.

Is Mike Huckabee misspeaking, or misinformed?

In an interview with The Steve Malzberg Show on Monday, Huckabee talked about Obama’s “having grown up in Kenya.”

Huckabee’s comment came in response the host asserting that Obama spent “millions of dollars in courts all over this country to defend against having to present a birth certificate.”

“One thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya, his view of the Brits, for example, very different than the average American,” Huckabee said in response.

“If you think about it, his perspective as growing up in Kenya with a Kenyan father and grandfather, their view of the Mau Mau Revolution in Kenya is very different than ours because he probably grew up hearing that the British were a bunch of imperialists who persecuted his grandfather,” Huckabee added.

Full story at Politico.

From Monday night’s Fox News All-Stars.

On developments in Libya:

Some people look at troop movements, others look at the freezing of assets. To me, the leading indicator here with Qaddafi is the fact that his favorite nurse — from whom he’s been inseparable — described in WikiLeaks as a buxom Ukrainian blonde, was evacuated to Kiev today. I am not an expert on this, but I would say if you are holding Qaddafi shares, that is a strong sell signal.

On President Obama’s comments about Medicaid while meeting with the nation’s governors yesterday:

Obama now is pretending he’s the man who wants to see states experiment on their own. He’s a federalist! Well then, why did you pass a national health-care law which imposes all these mandates [on the states] and has all these governors screaming that it’s unaffordable and also inflexible?

The fact is that the Obamacare law imposes on states the following eligibility standard. You have to give Medicaid to people up to 130 percent of the poverty line. It was originally intended as a plan for the poor. Now it’s becoming an entitlement. And on the S-CHIP program, which is the one that is for the assistance of children, in some states the eligibility requirements are so expansive that a family earning about $70,000 is eligible.

Now that’s insane. It’s unaffordable. It would add 20 million people on the rolls in this decade. In 2019, there will be 85 million Americans on Medicaid, costing a total of $900 billion a year. Utterly unsustainable, but that’s what’s in the law.

Lou: To paraphrase Will Rogers, there’s no need for comedy writers when you have the whole Bay Area environmental community working for you. I once ran across an Oakland “household” (really an entire hemp-clad neighborhood overbulging a single house) that described itself as an “intentional community.” Their proudest achievement was what they called “the gray water paradigm,” which meant that the plumbing had been disconnected so that all wastewater went out to the compost piles and artificial wetlands in the back yard. They called it “permaculture.” Bet the neighbors loved it. Maybe all of San Francisco should follow their example.  

Meanwhile, my AEI collaborator Ken Green points out today that the secret of many newfangled low-energy buildings is in fact that they are essentially no-energy buildings. In other words, one person’s efficiency is another person’s deprivation. Just don’t call it rationing.

Negotiations between party leaders over how to keep the government running (and how to cut federal spending) are ongoing, but already the debate has shifted noticeably in the Republicans’ favor.

The House is expected to vote this afternoon on a short-term continuing resolution that would cut federal spending by $4 billion over a two-week period and give lawmakers time to negotiate a longer-term solution. This bill, once passed, will proceed to the Senate, where it could be taken up as early as tomorrow. The current continuing resolution expires on March 4. If no action is taken before then, the government will shut down.

Because the Republican’s short-term proposal includes cuts taken straight from President Obama’s budget, it has attracted support from Democrats in the Senate. A GOP Senate aide tells NRO there are “more than enough Democrats” willing pass the House proposal. There appears to be only some minor contention over the appropriate length of a short-term resolution. Some Senate Democrats, as well as the White House, have said they would prefer a 30-day measure. White House press secretary Jay Carney even indicated that President Obama would be willing to accept $8 billion in spending cuts over that period. Democrats have also stressed the need for a long-term solution that funds the government through the end of September.

House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) said this morning that he too believed a resolution through Sept. 30 (the end of the fiscal year) “would be the right move,” noting that the House had already passed such a measure, which includes more than $60 billion in spending cuts. “Why isn’t the Senate working on it this week?” he asked.

The speaker also accused the president of being too slow to engage in the debate over the short-term CR. “If there had been a conversation ten days ago, or two days ago, we might have had something to talk about,” Boehner told reporters. “The fact is, we were forced to move on our own, and I think we’re taking the responsible path forward.”

In a press briefing on Tuesday, Carney would not say whether the president would be willing to support the two-week resolution pending in the House, but did provide several indications regarding what the White House could accept as part of a spending compromise.

As previously mentioned, Carney clearly stated that the administration would be amenable to what would essentially be a doubling of the House’s short-term plan, i.e., $8 billion in cuts over a four-week period. If true, that’s a clear indication of how Republicans have succeed in gaining the upper hand on spending.

“There’s no debate here about the need to cut spending,” Carney said — certainly a profound admission coming from this White House. Or perhaps not, given the administration’s proclivity for making statements and failing to back them up with real action. Either way, Carney diligently tacked on some telling caveats:

“The president is committed to making tough choices on spending,” he continued. “But he is equally committed to not going down a road that does harm to the economy [and] doesn’t address the kind of investments that we need to make so we can win the future in the 21st century.”

Could this signal an effort by President Obama to include some of the “investments” (i.e., massive spending increases) outlined in his 2012 budget as part of a bipartisan spending deal? And how much, if at all, will Republicans be willing to compromise? Stay tuned.

Call me optimistic, but I figure this GAO report is a real opportunity for congressional Republicans to score a big win on spending while avoiding a shutdown and even allowing Democrats to save face:

The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.

These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to the Government Accountability Office.

A report from the nonpartisan GAO, to be released Tuesday, compiles a list of redundant and potentially ineffective federal programs, and it could serve as a template for lawmakers in both parties as they move to cut federal spending and consolidate programs to reduce the deficit. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), who pushed for the report, estimated it identifies between $100 billion and $200 billion in duplicative spending. The GAO didn’t put a specific figure on the spending overlap.

Senator Coburn is that rare breed: a real conservative who is also a bipartisan deal maker. If his numbers are right, he could put together a long-term continuing resolution even more ambitious in its cuts than the one passed by the House last month, but focused on the “redundant and potentially ineffective” programs in the (nonpartisan!) GAO report. I suspect Coburn would have an easy time building a coalition with (or at least shaming) nominal budget-hawk Democrats in support of such a measure, which could then serve as a basis for compromise between the House and Senate. The House will certainly want its C.R., itself the product of a marathon and unusually democratic amendments process, represented in whatever funding measure ultimately comes out of Congress, but these are mere details.

This could an exacto-knife to the Gordian knot that is the current impasse. I doubt Senate Democrats want to go down fighting for duplicative bureaucracies.

Michael: I’m basically with you. I am all for the New York Times hiring more conservatives, but I don’t think it would make much of a difference. Ross Douthat and David Brooks are both great columnists. Ross is more conservative than Safire was and both Douthat and Brooks are at least as reasonable. Personally, I think both are better columnists than Safire was as well, though that might be a matter of taste. (I’d be delighted to debate Safire’s strengths and weaknesses, as I see them, if you want).

And, yes, it would be great fun to have a smart conservative bombthrower at the Times, and it would speak well of management if they followed your advice (personally, I think the Times page could best use a right-leaning libertarian like Tim Carney or Michael Moynihan, but those guys shouldn’t hold their breath, I’m sorry to say).

But the days of William Safire are simply over at the Times. The Gray Lady simply doesn’t have the cultural heft she once did. That’s particularly true of the op-ed page, but it’s also true of the business in general. The era of the Olympian columnist is drawing to a close. On the right, after George Will and Charles Krauthammer leave the scene (which will hopefully be many decades from now), I sincerely doubt anybody will fill their shoes. Not because there are no potential worthies (and certainly not because I wouldn’t want the job), but simply because those days are behind us.

For instance, I don’t think Ross Douthat has failed to shine across the land because he lacks sufficient candlepower intellectually or stylistically. I think his lantern doesn’t shine as far because the Times is no longer at such an illustrious elevation that everyone can see it over the horizon.

The Great Leveling that has come with the Internet has simply lowered the Times‘s perches, particularly for conservatives (or shall we say non-liberals). The Times has long been the place for establishment liberals to get their marching orders, but I don’t think that has ever been more true than today. For starters, there was a time when many conservatives simply felt they had to read the Times to be informed, just as there was a time when conservatives felt they had to watch the network news broadcasts. Those days are over. And I would bet that if the Times hired any plausible conservative to replace Frank Rich, it wouldn’t lead to a single new subscriber to the Times, outside of friends and family. The one possible exception would be Mark Steyn, who could actually make me read theater criticism, something Frank Rich couldn’t possibly do.

Obviously, the Times still has significant influence, but it blew it. Since the advent of the Internet, it has doubled-down on its Times-ness at precisely the time  it should have changed its market strategy. While the news consumer had an ever growing menu of choices, it convinced itself that as the self-proclaimed “newspaper of record,” it didn’t have to change. Indeed, they thought they were so awesome that their awesomeness would drive their business model (remember the pay wall few bothered to scale?). If anything, it became even more the newspaper of Frank Rich, Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, and Maureen Dowd, and as a result, only that shrinking segment of the country that likes their stuff remained committed to the paper. They thought they were investing in what is best about the Times when in fact they were becoming ever more obviously a niche product.

I simply think it’s too late for the Times. They might survive. In fact, I sincerely hope they survive. But they are part of the chorus now and much less of a star solo performer. Throwing a third non-liberal columnist into the mix wouldn’t rebrand the paper, it would only rebrand the columnist.

Yuval’s post on new developments in the health-care fight explains why President Obama felt the need to claim to offer states more flexibility in the implementation of his health-care law. I agree with Yuval’s description of how the offer falls short from a policy perspective, but it has two additional flaws as well.

First, the Obama offer creates a political trap for Republicans. Governors who pursue the waivers will be trotted out as demonstrations of how flexible and bipartisan the law is, which is not a comfortable place for GOP politicians right now.

Second, Obama’s rhetoric betrays the limits of his flexibility. This is not the first time he has come forward with an open hand that in reality was not so open. In September of 2009, he said: “If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen.” In February of 2009, he said: “I won’t hesitate to embrace a good idea from my friends in the minority party.” As we know, Obama went forward with his approach, and Obamacare passed with no Republican votes and 34 Democratic votes against it in the House.

This time, the president’s words were: “If your state can create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively as the Affordable Care Act does — without increasing the deficit — you can implement that plan.”

The problem with this offer, and Obama’s previous offers of flexibility, is the vagueness of the key words. He gets to decide what is “serious,” what is a “good idea.” In this case, he — specifically, skeptical senior officials at HHS — gets to decide in advance whether market-based reforms would “create a plan that covers as many people as affordably and comprehensively.”

As the Scottish philosopher Montgomery Scott wisely said: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” Republican governors should proceed with caution.

From Reuters:

Wisconsin officials said Tuesday they would not ease entry restrictions at the Capitol Building in Madison after a judge ordered there be public access during business hours. …

The state agency that operates the Capitol building said it was already in compliance with the judge’s order.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Daniel Moeser ordered state officials on Tuesday to open access. Moeser’s order was granted without a hearing and specified it would stand until the trial court is able to schedule a hearing on the matter.

A hearing on the restraining order sought by the Wisconsin State Employees Union is scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.

Access to the building was tightened earlier this week and remained restricted at midday on Tuesday with law enforcement officers escorting people to hearing rooms and to other offices.

In response to question from me, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin offered this exclusive response to President Obama’s Defense of Marriage Act decision:

I have always believed that marriage is between one man and one woman. Like the majority of Americans, I support the Defense of Marriage Act and find it appalling that the Obama administration decided not to defend this federal law which was enacted with broad bipartisan support and signed into law by a Democrat president. It’s appalling, but not surprising that the President has flip-flopped on yet another issue from his stated position as a candidate to a seemingly opposite position once he was elected.

 – Maggie Gallagher is chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage. 

Thanks to my recent discovery of Twitter, I see that Slate‘s Dave Weigel is repeating the line that the $61 billion in spending cuts just approved by the Republican-controlled House will hurt the economy:

Democrats have been arguing for weeks that the GOP’s spending cuts will be bad for the economy, and in the last week they’ve celebrated two new analyses that bear none of their fingerprints but validate just about everything they’ve been saying.

I am not quite sure what there is to “celebrate” in these two studies.

Many of us have said it before, but it’s worth repeating: Both studies are based on the same faulty models that predicted that the stimulus of 2009 would stimulate economic growth. This theory assumes that $1 in government spending triggers well above $1 in economic growth and creates many jobs. The Goldman Sachs study goes even further: Its estimate seems to imply a multiplier effect greater than 3, well above anything in recent literature. A review of the literature about the value of the multiplier reveals that in most cases, a dollar in government spending produces less than a dollar in economic growth — and these findings often ignore the impact of paying for this government dollar by increasing taxes. Harvard University’s Robert Barro finds a multiplier between 0.4 and 0.7; at Stanford, John Taylor and John Cogan find that the stimulus package couldn’t have had a multiplier much greater than zero. Even the multipliers used by Christina Romer and Jared Bernstein in their January 2009 paper “The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan” ranged from 1.05 to 1.55 for the output effect of government purchases. More recently, Dartmouth economists James Feyrer and Bruce Sacerdote acknowledged that the stimulus didn’t boost the economy nearly as much as the administration models claimed that it would. These are only some of the many studies on the issues.

Secondly, as economist John Taylor reported yesterday over at Economics One, the Goldman Sachs report is based on inaccurate budget numbers. The report doesn’t seem to understand that changes in budget authority (what Congress requests in a given year) do not translate immediately or equally into what the government ends up spending in a given year. According to the CBO’s calculations, the cuts translate into only a $19 billion spending reduction, which is less than a third of the $60 billion cut the Goldman Sachs report assumes. What’s more, even with these cuts, total budget outlays will increase by 6.7 percent from 2010 to 2011. It is really hard to argue seriously that a budget that will grow by almost 7 percent is too draconian for the economy.

Third, the Goldman Sachs model, like the models used by Zandi to estimate the effects of the stimulus, fails to recognize the economic benefits of cutting spending or reducing spending growth now instead of postponing it to an uncertain date in the future. Numerous studies by economists — not to mention many members of the business community — say that recent policy changes have hampered business investment, making a bad situation worse.  The prospect of endless future debt and deficits raises the threats of increased taxes and government crowding-out of capital markets. As a result, U.S. companies don’t build new plants, they don’t conduct research, and they don’t hire people. People stay unemployed — for weeks, months, years.

Finally, these models ignore a large body of economic literature that looks at the impact spending cuts had on the economies of countries that have adopted them. That literature concludes that spending cuts are often good for the economy. For instance,  in a review of every major fiscal correction in the OECD since 1975, Goldman Sachs economists Ben Broadbent and Kevin Daly found that decisive budgetary adjustments focused on reducing government expenditure have (i) been successful in correcting fiscal imbalances; (ii) typically boosted growth; and (iii) resulted in significant bond and equity market outperformance. Tax-driven fiscal adjustments, by contrast, typically fail to correct fiscal imbalances and are damaging to growth. These results are confirmed by many more economists.

By the way, Mark Zandi is one of the architects of the 2009 stimulus bill and, as it turns out, the best we can say about his assumptions for the benefits of stimulus spending is that they appear to have been wildly optimistic.

Frank Rich, the former “Butcher of Broadway” and reliably unreadable op-ed columnist, is leaving the paper to go to New York Magazine. From the WSJ:

New York Times columnist Frank Rich is leaving the newspaper to join New York magazine as an essayist, ending a three-decade career at the Times.

Rich, who has been an op-ed columnist since 1994, will write a monthly essay on politics and culture that will anchor a special section he will oversee as editor-at-large.

Rich’s hire adds an influential voice in political journalism to the weekly magazine and reunites him with New York editor-in-chief Adam Moss, who previously was editor of the New York Times magazine and oversaw the paper’s culture and style coverage, among other roles.

According to paidcontent.org, Rich’s departure may have something to do with incipient changes in the Times‘ op-ed format:

The changes come as the NYT prepares a major overhaul of the Week in Review section. Rich’s weekly 1,500-word column (previously most columns were around 800 words) was part of an expanded Op-Ed page that the Times introduced in the Week in Review section in 2005.

Since then, the proliferation and acceleration of commentary on the web has called into question the role of a weekly opinion section. 

Business writer Joe Nocera will move into the op-ed mix in April.

Suggestion for Andy Rosenthal, whose work I have liked and admired since I met him in Moscow back in 1986 on the Vladimir Horowitz Magical Mystery Tour of the Rodina: Time to think out of the box. I mean way out of the box — the way your dad did when he hired William Safire.

That did wonders for the Times‘s credibility and liveliness back then and hiring a similar unapologetic and even contentious conservative — a rose of reason surrounded by the thorns of Krugmanism — would do the same.

Just think of the letters you’ll get.

From the Chiaroscuro Foundation: 

Two-thirds of New Yorkers (64%) – including 57% of pro-choice women – think too many abortions are taking place in New York City every year, and more than half of city residents surveyed (51%) would support a 24-hour waiting period before abortion procedures can take place, according to a comprehensive citywide poll released today by the New York City-based Chiaroscuro Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that supports alternatives to abortion.  The 53-question survey was conducted by McLaughlin & Associates within the past month.  

Almost three-quarters of New Yorkers (74%) think too many African-American pregnancies are being terminated in the city, according to the poll, and 63% of city residents support parental consent before anyone under the age of 18 can have an abortion. 

A majority of New Yorkers (81%) were completely unaware of New York City’s inordinately high abortion ratio.  A full 41% of viable pregnancies in New York City are now aborted – nearly twice the national average of 22% – according to the latest New York City Health Department statistics.  The Bronx has the highest abortion-to-live-births ratio with  48%, and 60% of African-American pregnancies in New York City were aborted in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available.  In a 10-year period beginning in 2000, more than 900,000 pregnancies in the city ended in abortion- nearly one-eighth of the entire city population of just over 8 million.  

The entire survey, including crosstabs, is available here.  The Chiaroscuro Foundation is encouraging people and organizations on all sides of the abortion debate to study and use the research for public good.

“When New Yorkers learn how many abortions are taking pace in their city every year, they are shocked,” said Greg Pfundstein, Executive Director of the Chiaroscuro Foundation. “Pro-choice and pro-life New Yorkers overwhelmingly agree that the 41% abortion ratio is too high.  That is why is the Chiaroscuro Foundation and others have been asking Mayor Bloomberg to address this as a public health crisis as serious as any other in the city. We have yet to receive a response.”

New Yorkers agree that New Yorkers deserve better. 

A (now torn down) billboard is not an atrocity. It is an education. 

After reporting how the Forest Service in the Pacific Northwest plans to kill owls in order to save them, I’m pleased to note that San Francisco is polluting water in order to save it. You can’t make this stuff up.

As early adopters the low-flow toilet, San Franciscans are discovering not only that people are not engineered to environmental specifications, requiring multiple flushes on occasion, but that the city’s sewerage system now needs additional water to function properly.

“Skimping on toilet water has resulted in more sludge backing up inside the sewer pipes, said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the city Public Utilities Commission. That has created a rotten-egg stench near AT&T Park and elsewhere, especially during the dry summer months. The city has already spent $100 million over the past five years to upgrade its sewer system and sewage plants, in part to combat the odor problem,” according to SF Gate.

The city plans to start pumping bleach into the sewers to combat the smell — about 8.5 million pounds of bleach annually. And, of course, the environmentalists are upset. In a further complication, dechlorinists are a growing faction in the environmental movement. Where will it all end?

James Delong solemnly notes at the American Enterprise Institute: “The claimed benefit from low-flow toilets is a savings of 20 million gallons of water per year. This leads to an interesting calculation, because a single-family home in SF pays $10.50 for its first 300 cubic feet of water use, and $4.90 for each 100 cubic feet used thereafter. One cubic foot equals 7.48 gallons, so the total value the city places on the 20 million gallons saved by the low-flow program is $131,000.”

I love to steal numbers from AEI and the other conservative think tanks, but they really should hire some comedy writers.

Amazing things happening:

Maryland’s same-sex marriage legislation hit an unexpected roadblock Tuesday morning when two delegates who had expressed support for the bill failed to show up for a committee vote.

Colleagues frantically tried to locate Del. Tiffany T. Alston (D-Prince George’s) and Del. Jill Carter (D-Baltimore) for about half an hour before calling off a scheduled vote in the House Judiciary Committee. Both Alston and Carter are co-sponsors of the House version of the bill.

“It simply means the soup’s not ready yet,” said Don H. Dwyer Jr. (R-Anne Arundel), a staunch opponent of the bill, suggesting supporters were short of votes.

Some multimedia-savvy young people are optimistic. 

I wrote, “I’m not sure that the anti-abortion movement — the pro-life movement, whatever you want to call it — has ever had a more important figure.” Ramesh answered with something unequivocal: Nathanson “was important, but not the most important American pro-lifer.” He went on to say that Henry Hyde and Ronald Reagan, for two, were more important.

If you could take a poll to determine who has changed the most minds about abortion — I wonder who would win. I have a feeling Nathanson would place higher than either Hyde or Reagan. Perhaps even come out on top. Mother Teresa?

Anyway, who cares? This is just idle talk, some musing. Everyone has his place. Let me do some quoting, from December 2006. Some of us were asked to recommend books (as per tradition). This is what I wrote:

I’ve read several good books, but I will single out the book of my colleague, Ramesh Ponnuru. It is The Party of Death: The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life. The book is about abortion, mainly, and there is no more important topic — even during wartime. What is the fetus? Is it a “meaningless blob of protoplasm,” or is it an unborn child, a living human being? If the latter, abortion is screamingly important — far different from an appendectomy.

Ponnuru’s book is diamond-clear and diamond-hard, without a drop of mush in it. I believe it’s irrefutable. Certainly I have seen no refutation, and would not bank on it. Furthermore, The Party of Death is, believe it or not, a cracking good read — mordantly funny, often.

I would say this: Be pro-choice if you want to. (Ponnuru isn’t.) But, in any case, don’t be ignorant. This book is very much an ignorance-defeater.

Testifying before the Senate Banking Committee today, Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke dismissed the findings of several recent reports predicting that House Republicans’ proposal to cut federal spending by $61 billion over a seven-month period would have a negative impact on economic growth:

[A] Goldman Sachs report released last week predicted that the Republican spending cuts would slow growth by as much as 2 percentage points in the second and third quarters of this year. Senate Democrats pounced on the analysis to argue that Republicans were trying to “drag our economy back into a recession.”

But Bernanke said that analysis is off the mark.

“Two percent [reduction in growth] is enormous and would be based on $300 billion in cuts,” Bernanke told the panel in his semiannual report to Congress. “Sixty billion to $100 billion isn’t sufficient to create that kind of effect.”

Although Bernanke didn’t provide a projection of possible jobs losses from the spending bill, he said the proposed spending cuts aren’t likely to lead to the 700,000 job losses predicted by Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.

At most, Bernanke said, the GOP cuts would impact economic growth “at the margins,” with the potential to reduce gross domestic product by only one- or two-tenths of a percent.

Earlier this month, Bernanke told House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) that bringing federal spending levels under control was one of the best actions Congress could take to promote economic growth in the short term.

More here.

has always struck me as interesting but highly unethical. Perhaps the participants in the great (almost entirely Catholic as far as I can tell) blogosphere debate about lying can weigh in.

The White House is trumpeting its newly released report on “Women in America” as “the first comprehensive federal report on women since 1963,” though much of it seems a reiteration of the National Economic Council’s report from just a few months ago. The new report details the gains women have made in education and in the workforce, parrots misleading statistics about women earning 75 cents for each dollar earned by men (without providing context for how personal choices drive that statistic), and laments women’s higher poverty rate.

There are some interesting statistical items (on changing demographics, the decline in the proportion of married women, and the delayed age of childbirth, for instance), but there is very little here that is new or likely to provide policymakers with insights into how to advance women’s wellbeing.

What’s most frustrating about exercises like this is the rhetoric surrounding them, which usually implies that women are a special victim class that needs extra attention from Uncle Sam. Valerie Jarrett, chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, explains: “The Obama Administration has been focused on addressing the challenges faced by women and girls from day one because we know that the success of women and girls is vital to winning the future.”

Of course the success of women and girls is vital to winning the future — but so is the success of “men and boys,” and it seems unlikely that such a report on that topic will be forthcoming.

Andrew Biggs: “Lining Up for Government Jobs“

Max Boot: Rolling Stone vs. the military

Michael Cannon: “Why Hospital Price Quotes Are So Often Useless“

Maxine Waters just took my name in vain at the immigration subcommittee hearing, citing my NRO piece entitled “Contra Nadler.” I’m not sure what the point was, but it’s great to be criticized by such an esteemed personage.

In a recent article for NR–now on the homepage–I speculate about what a Romney-vs.-Palin primary would look like, and conclude that it would probably be unusually bitter. For one thing, there is a new class divide in the Republican party based partly on income and education, and each of these politicians is associated, to a degree unusual for Republican politicians, with one side of that divide. Romney tends to draw support from Republicans with higher incomes and college degrees, and these voters tend not to support Palin.

Reader D. M. writes in response: “Sir: I support Palin.

“And by the way, I have a BS in Applied Math, MS and PhD in Engineering, 12 years of college, a total of 250 semester hours of graduate work in applied math, mathematical physics, astrophysics, electrical and aerospace engineering. Worked in aerospace for a long time, and in academe for an equally long time.

“And I enthusiastically support Sarah.”

Fair enough. But you appear to be wonderfully atypical.

P.S. The article mentions the candidates’ Intrade rankings. Since it was written, Romney’s odds as indicated by the market have risen slightly and Palin’s have fallen below those of Daniels, Pawlenty, and Huckabee.

I agree with my old comrade on the Andrew Lloyd Webber beat, Mark Steyn, that The King’s Speech was not a classic for the ages, but it was damn good and it had one thing going for it that made every one of us Industry folk in the scribblers department, of a certain age, rooting like hell for it:

The screenwriter, David Seidler, is 73 years old.

He graduated from Cornell in 1959.

The other night, Mrs. Kahane and I were at a screening of a forthcoming picture. Taking a question afterward, the writer said he first began working on the script 20 years ago.

Welcome to Hollywood, kids.

I’m at a hearing of the immigration subcommittee, and the pseudo-congressman from Puerto Rico is going on about how “we” are a nation of immigrants. “We”? Puerto Rico is a foreign country that became a colony of the United States in 1898, no different from the French colony of Togo or the British colony of Uganda (or the U.S. colony of the Philippines). Congress granted residents of the island U.S. citizenship during World War I, but Puerto Ricans remain a distinct people, a distinct nation, with their own (foreign) language, their own history, their own culture. Like other remnants of late-colonialism (like Belize, Djibouti, Comoros, etc.), most Puerto Ricans don’t want independence at this point, because it would end the gravy train. But that’s not our problem — we need to end this unnatural situation and give the nation of Puerto Rico an independent state as soon as practicable.

Jay writes of the late Bernard Nathanson, “I’m not sure that the anti-abortion movement — the pro-life movement, whatever you want to call it — has ever had a more important figure.” He was important, but not the most important American pro-lifer. Arguably, he wasn’t even the most important American convert to the pro-life cause. Henry Hyde wrote the law that has probably saved more unborn children than any other pro-life initiative. And Ronald Reagan forged an alliance between pro-lifers, conservatives, and Republicans that identified each group with the others’ cause. It was by no means inevitable that this alliance would form. Pro-lifers could well have ended up politically marginalized without it.

Yuval’s clarifying post on Obama’s health-care moves raises a crucial political question. How are Republicans going to talk about Obama in the 2012 election campaign? The most sensible interpretation of Yuval’s post, it seems to me, is that Obama wants to move toward a single-payer system over time, built that intention into his plan from the start, hid his true goal from the public, and continues to hide it to this day.

The Republicans won in 2010 because the Tea Party was bold enough to say out loud that Obama was hiding his radical, effectively socialist, and utterly unaffordable plans from the public. Yet Republicans seem reluctant to make the same point today, when everything indicates that the original Tea Party take on Obama was right. How can Republicans win with a campaign based on conventional policy analysis when Obama isn’t telling the truth about what his actual policy intentions are?

I’m not calling on Republicans to claim that Obama wants to “destroy” America. But Obama does want to radically transform this country, and he’s not being honest about what that involves. At some point, Republicans are going to have to say this if they want to win. I recently made this point about the budget debate. It’s not that Obama is “failing to lead” on the budget. The problem is that he knows all-too-well where he’s leading us.

The other day, Jonah was bold enough to say: “There’s good reason to believe that Obama has always been lying — yes, lying — about opposing gay marriage.” I’m generally reluctant to use the “l word,” but Jonah is absolutely right. (I play out the same point and relate it to the health-care battle in a new piece “Obama’s Past Tells the Truth.”)

Yes, Obama is personally popular and many Americans think he’s a nice guy. But misleading the American public about your plans for the country isn’t nice. If Republicans are afraid to expose the ruse and define Obama by the intentions he refuses to avow, they will be defeated.

Michael Franc notices the Wisconsin fight is fracturing the Democrats’ coalition.

Jim Geraghty interviews Nebraska attorney general Jon Bruning, who wants to take on Sen. Ben Nelson.

Andrew Stiles profiles Rep. Tom Graves, who cut spending before it was cool.

Ramesh Ponnuru imagines a Republican primary between Sarah Palin and Mitt Romney.

Jay Nordlinger observes the sheer dirtiness of the Left.

Daniel Pipes admits to optimism that the Arab Revolt will end well.

Dennis Prager confesses to pessimism over the Egyptian revolution.

Thomas Sowell argues that democracies require some preconditions to flourish.

Mona Charen applauds a male wrestler for refusing to manhandle a female opponent.

A new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report was just released that takes an unprecedented look at duplication in the federal government (the summary of report is here.) According to Senator Coburn, the amount of money wasted on duplicate programs could reach between $100 billion and $200 billion.

The Wall Street Journal has some details:

The agency found 82 federal programs to improve teacher quality; 80 to help disadvantaged people with transportation; 47 for job training and employment; and 56 to help people understand finances, according to a draft of the report reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. [...]

The report says there are 18 federal programs that spent a combined $62.5 billion in 2008 on food and nutrition assistance, but little is known about the effectiveness of 11 of these programs because they haven’t been well studied. [...]

On teacher quality, the report identified 82 programs that often have similar descriptions and goals and are spread across 10 federal agencies, including the Department of Education, the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Fifty-three of the programs are relatively small, receiving $50 million or less, “and many have their own separate administrative processes.”

The GAO highlighted 80 different economic development programs at the Department of Commerce, HUD, Department of Agriculture and Small Business Administration, that spent a combined $6.5 billion last year and often overlapped. For example, the four agencies combined to have 52 different programs that fund “entrepreneurial efforts,” 35 programs for infrastructure, and 26 programs for telecommunications.

Now, here is a question for those who think that any tiny cuts in government spending would hurt the economy: Would addressing this obvious waste and mismanagement of taxpayers’ money by ending the money to duplicate programs also hurt the economy?

As has been noted in this space over the last few days, the most important of Scott Walker’s proposals is to stop the automatic collection of public-sector union dues by state government. With this proposal, Walker wants to do public workers a favor — they can decide whether they want to hand over a portion of their paycheck to the unions or not. What’s not to like? Walker is offering freedom of choice and potentially a substantial savings — roughly $1,000 a year for teachers — to public workers. I write about this today:

When the Wisconsin General Assembly voted to pass Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill, the Democratic legislators made themselves indistinguishable from the protestors surrounding the assembly floor.

They wore the same pro-union orange T-shirts. They behaved in the same sophomoric way, breaking out in a noisy, finger-pointing demonstration. They chanted the same ubiquitous word: “Shame!” They might as well have brought guitars onto the floor for a Woody Guthrie sing-along and touted “Walker = Hitler” signs.

In Wisconsin, it’s less that Democrats act to protect a special interest than that they belong to a special interest. A complete identification has long existed among state government, the public-sector unions, and the Democratic party. By seeking to break up this powerful, self-dealing nexus, Walker is “assaulting,” in President Barack Obama’s formulation, a partisan political machine dependent on the state for its functioning.

A petition to ignore Sarah Palin for a week has generated 32,500 signatures.

Launched by Left Action, a group of over 1 million liberal activists, the petition laments that “We’ve tried debating her, arguing with her, boycotting her, voting against her, and yet… she keeps coming back.  Much like a vampire or a nasty fungus.”

The group also has tips on how to navigate your way through a Palin-free world (and yes, these are all real suggestions from the site):

·         If a friend mentions “Sarah Palin,” reply as if he or she said, “Para Sailing.”  And keep doing it. Para sailing is way cooler.

·         For your dose of gossip, consider switching to someone far less annoying.  Like Snooki. 

·         Visit “Telling Sarah Palin She’s Full of Crap” on Facebook, and join 100,000 other people who will be talking about everything else BUT Palin.

·         Refer to her as “she who shall remain nameless” for the duration of the week

·         Have other conversation topics ready to go

Left Action also tells petition signers to “keep it nice, and no threats — even in jest.”

Good to know that, comparisons to fungi and Harry Potter arch-villain Voldemort (or ‘He who must not be named’) aside, this will be a ‘civil’ effort.

For those of you who aren’t ignoring the Palins, the latest news is that Bristol Palin has a book deal with Harper Collins imprint William Morrow. The book, entitled Not Afraid of Life, will discuss Palin’s life as a single mother, her relationship with Levi Johnston, and her time on Dancing with the Stars.

Let me join the cheering hordes. We couldn’t be more delighted.